[Kerry Malone]

Fader est suae quisque fortunae
Every man is the artisan of his own future


Changes to 3rd Fleet

Hello Everyone.

Happy 5th STO Anniversary!

To better help facilitate the changing dynamics of the Starfleet Operations Division, the Command Team have decided to make some changes to the way the fleets operate. This won’t affect many of you at all, and even if it does, its a very minor change.

As of February 1st, 3rd Fleet will be reduced in status from an “Active” Fleet to a “Holding/Reserve” Fleet. What this change in status means is that from now on, 3rd Fleet will receive minimal support from the SFO Logistics & Banking Team.

Whilst the Fleet itself will remain open, the Fleet Shop will not be provisioned, and the other bank areas will be kept to minimal stock to provide basic ‘leveling’ gear for your alternate characters. Also, there will not be regular slotting of Holdings projects within 3rd Fleet, and progress of upgrading the fleet will cease for the time being.

The invite/membership criteria of the fleet has been revised to be clearer to the membership exactly what 3rd Fleet is for.

• UFP Main (or 1st Fleet) will be for your primary characters, as normal. You may only have one character at a time in Main Fleet (with the exception of quick invites to purchase ships). Characters will be discharged from the fleet after two (2) months of inactivity, as per existing guidelines.
• UFP 2nd Fleet will be the main repository for secondary characters that are used consistently. This will be for primary alternate characters, such as class variants and the like. 2nd Fleet will have a five (5) characters per member limit. Characters will be discharged from the fleet after one (1) month of inactivity.
• UFP 3rd Fleet will be a repository for spare alternate characters that you don’t use on a regular basis - such as Crafting Characters, Farming Characters and Spare Characters that you don’t play regularly - but want to be stored safely in a fleet to avoid fleet invite spams on ESD. There will be no upper cap on the number of characters you can store here, and discharges will only happen if you are removed from the UFP Community.

The descriptions of the fleets on the invite request form will change to reflect this, so you don’t accidentally put a character into the wrong fleet.

I do want to emphasise that whilst we will not be forcing players to move fleets - it is encouraged that you locate your characters to the correct fleet that best fits with the descriptions above.

Our aim with these changes is to reduce the maintenance workload the SFO CL4s do so diligently, to increase the amount of activity on our 2nd fleet roster, and most importantly, to cycle our fleet holdings projects faster.

We hope you continue to enjoy your UFP STO experience, and live long and prosper.



Rear Admiral KerryMalone
Starfleet Operations Commanding Officer

[Mike57]

Sorry, but I don't like that.
I can accept, that you will take it slow there, because the other fleets TAKE priority. That's ok. But to me that is not a reserve fleet. My main character from my second account is placed there just because of the numerial restrictions placed on 1st and 2nd fleet. I happen to have lots of alts, which I play regularly.

If you say: we'll turn down the volume - I can live with that.
If you say: we'll reduce the support there - it's okay for me. I would have liked to get my equipment there, but ok.
If you say: we'll stop development - no, I don't like it.

If you lack personnel to slot new jobs there, well I would be glad, if I could do that. It seems to be a small responsibility and I guess I'm online enough with my toon to get on with it. It will be slow down, but it will not be a complete shutdown of development. And toons in that fleet would still be able to drop their marks and other support into the further development.
I would like that.
If that is a way to keep it going (even with a small flame) and you will accept that.
I'll be open to any interview about that.

[Phoenix]

Agree don't like this idea

[Shestagon]

I understand the changes to 3rd fleet, but the timing seems to be a bit odd, with the addition of more logistics officers and a quartermaster, any pressure the staff would have been feeling due to maintaining 3 fleets would, I imagine, now be alleviated.

[Kerry Malone]

3rd Fleet was never intended to be a mainstay fleet, but rather a place to store alternate characters.

We feel that a reduction in services on 3rd is not moving away from the main point of the fleet - which is that its a place to store infrequently used Alternate Characters. With Cryptic's new content heavily penalizing the use of alternate characters, a place to store characters that are not used frequently, but are still important - is how we've decided to proceed.

Its not so much a case of a lack of staff, but rather a need to focus the staff we have in a specific direction.

[MaximusRex]

How will this impact the ability to earn fleet credits needed to buy fleet store items? I know some members would rotate their mains into 2nd/3rd fleets in order to have a better shot at fleet credits.

[Kerry Malone]

We're working on improving the donation abilities available to people in 1st and 2nd.

[Rellimie]

I'm not sure how this will decrease the workload, all it seems to be doing is shifting the type of work. Now there will be more and more fleet invite requests as people will have to shuffle toons more and more in order to earn fleet credits.

Speaking of fleet credits, doesn't this create more of a backlog of fleet marks. There are a lot of complaints about being able to off load them with 3 fleets, now there is only 2.

I hope this gets evaluated after a month and reconsidered.

[Kerry Malone]

Ya know, you could donate other things besides Fleet Marks. Fleet Marks merely is one of eight items that need to be filled on a holdings project.

[Kains]

Unfortunately this i more of the continuation of issues with Cryptic's design as opposed to the perceived difference in how things should be run. Fleet marks are a tiny amount of any one project (Less than 20% if my memory is right), and are filled instantaneously, leaving the rest of it to be slowly filled over days.

Simply having another fleet doesn't actually fix this problem, despite how it sounds, it just simply spreads out the available resources that much more, while still leaving the projects unfilled.

The biggest things that need to be contributed are the most irritating: Doffs, due to time and availability, and Dilithium, for obvious reasons.

This was a problem before and unfortunately will always be a problem. We could have 10 fleets, each with projects open on all venues (Starbase, Embassy, Mine, and Spire) and still not have enough space for the Fleet Marks that Cryptic is making available. The real problem comes into the stuff that people really want: The shiney stuff (Ships, weapons, cores, etc). To make those happen the Starfleet staff have to make choices based one what people are donating to ensure people have access to what they want.

I know it sucks, it really does, but if you're looking for an avatar to set on fire for the mess go to the official forums and ask for fleet projects that take more than a pittance of fleet marks (Most take... what... 800? So a fleet of 500+ are being served with projects that can handle *1* person!)

Of course, if we can get them to raise the player cap from 500 AND add projects that take 10k Fleet Marks for full credit, that would be awesome....

[Curzon Peers]

The fleets system is just another one of Cryptic's abandoned features at this point.

Anyways as for this fleet change, I can't say I am that thrilled, when I moved my character over to 3rd it was specifically because 1st and 2nd always seemed to ticking projects rather than filling.

[Rellimie]

Ya know, you could donate other things besides Fleet Marks. Fleet Marks merely is one of eight items that need to be filled on a holdings project.

I do. Or at least I did. When I first joined I donated a ton of dilithium and Doffs. There were a lot of people complaining about how fast the projects were filling up so I stopped donating. I didn't need the fleet credit so I thought I was helping out by not donating. I know their are others that felt the same.

Now it sounds like the opposite has happened. There is not enough people donating. I only have 3 toons, I can only imagine what it takes to have 5 or 6 toons.

What I don't understand is what is the rush to level up 2nd fleet? So the projects on 2nd and 3rd fleet took forever. What's the big deal? 1st fleet is leveled 100%. Need gear, go there.

In reality this does not affect me all that much. I just know that this will cause a headache for others. Also, the people that have been donating resources to that fleet for more than just credits might feel slighted.

[Kerry Malone]

I should emphasise that we're not *closing* the fleet. We're merely scaling back the attention the fleet will be getting.

[Mike57]

As I said before, I am not against "scaling back", I am not against saying "for stuff go to 1st and 2nd fleet", but your statement said "upgrading will cease" and "no regular slotting of Holdings projects". For me there is a difference.
I want to continue development. If we do that, we will be able to change course with minimum effort, if a change of policy feels prudent.

I'm always running low on dil and ec, so I don't donate dil and I don't donate commodoties (if I know I will need them for my toon). But I have always spent fleet marks and doffs - I am filled up with the doffs, because I'm always trying to finish my commendations. And that is my main source for fleet marks as well. I don't collect fleet marks, because I learned that there is not much use for it.

To sum it up, turn the 3rd fleet down a bit, but continue these jobs. I don't care how long it tales, I will continue doing it.

[Dark]

Doffs, due to time and availability

Man, I've got literally over three dozen civilians hanging around my ship, and you guys never slot civilian projects.