[Kerry Malone]

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


Revised Changes to Starfleet Operations

SUMMARY

Given member feedback raised about the announced changes in our Federation fleets, we’ve amended the proposal and would like to explain our reasoning.

We have several issues we’re tackling with this change:

• Reduction in activity levels. Globally, not just in UFP.
• Not enough opportunities for members to contribute to fleet projects.
• Workload of Logistics officers.

To address these, we're implementing three changes in logistics.

We'll be slotting projects with "easy completion" in mind, to prioritize fast cycling projects over starbase development.

• Logistics staff will close projects that have been active for 24 hours or more by contributing the remaining required resources, with the exception of Dilithium.
• Logistics staff will slot projects across all holdings, and pay the Fleet Credits to replicate the needed provisions.

The aim here is to have at least two to three times as many projects going in UFP Main & 2nd fleet than we had running in all three fleets combined, therefore, consolidation makes a lot of sense. To implement part of these changes, we'll be removing the 2nd Fleet Character Cap.

Below is a more detailed and thorough layout of our goals and direction for the main and 2nd fleets.

MAIN ARTICLE

Given member feedback raised about the announced changes in our Federation fleets, we’ve amended the proposal and would like to explain our reasoning.

We have several issues we’re tackling with this change:

• Reduction in activity levels. Globally, not just in UFP, the game is undergoing a slow but steady decline. At this time, if we define an “active character” as one that has logged in during the past 30 days, we can place all active alternate characters into a single fleet, and still have it less than 75% full. This is a good opportunity for consolidation, simply in the interest of nearly doubling the visible population on the roster.
• Not enough opportunities for members to contribute to fleet projects. Prior to this change, we’ve kept only starbase projects running (to avoid paying Fleet Credits for provisions) on 2nd and 3rd fleet. These fleets, which make up roughly half each of our active alternate characters, tend to have projects that stagnate for very long periods.
• Workload of Logistics officers. Any solution that involves more projects or faster projects on our fleet holdings increases the demands of our logistics staff, and if we can mitigate this by hiring more staff and/or consolidating fleets, we should.

Consolidation of all active alternate characters into 2nd fleet and the following deactivation of 3rd goes a very long way towards addressing all three of these issues. We would therefore like to change the requirements for fleet members as follows:

• UFP First Fleet: This fleet remains unchanged. Every UFP member can have one Federation character on the roster for First Fleet, and characters inactive for more than two months will be removed. The fleet holdings projects and bank will be fully supported.
• UFP Second Fleet: This fleet becomes the place for all other active characters. Every UFP member can have any number of characters on the roster for Second Fleet, and characters inactive for more than one month will be removed. The fleet holdings projects and bank will be fully supported.
• UFP Third Fleet: This fleet becomes the place for all inactive characters. Every UFP member can have any number of characters on the roster for Third Fleet, with no restrictions on activity level (as space allows).

Consolidation of the fleets, however, is just one part of a larger set of changes we’re implementing in our logistics policy. Fleet holdings project contributions is, of course, the largest issue that needs to be addressed, and is the driving motivation behind all the changes.

The problems:

• We have selected projects with two goals in mind. We want to give members opportunities to earn Fleet Credits, and to advance the status of our fleet holdings. These objectives are sometimes at odds with each other.
• Projects take too long to complete. Projects in our fleets get held up for long periods of time on EC-expensive requirements: commodities, duty officers, consumables, etc. The thinking has been that if the fleet members don’t contribute these things, then there’s nothing we can do about it.
• Embassy, Spire, and Mine projects require special provisions, two of which can only be had by spending fleet credits. Nobody wants to spend fleet credits for these. These holdings have been left largely inactive because we don’t slot these projects.

To address these, we're implementing three changes in logistics.

• We'll be slotting projects with "easy completion" in mind, and we're going to prioritize fast cycling projects over starbase development.
• Logistics staff will close fleet projects that have been active for 24 hours or more by contributing the remaining required resources, with the exception of Dilithium.
• Logistics staff will slot projects across all holdings, and pay the Fleet Credits to replicate the needed provisions.
• Logistics staff will also rotate the Co-ordinate Colonisation mission every 4th special to allow for offloading of Civilian Doffs.

The aim here is to have at least two to three times as many projects going in UFP Main & 2nd fleet than we had running in all three fleets combined, with much faster completion times and many more opportunities for contributions. Obviously, demands on logistics staff increase, and with all this activity, we'd like to have all the active characters in one place to focus on meeting the increased demand for holdings projects (particularly, doffs and dilithium).

Therefore, consolidation makes a lot of sense for several reasons. We can’t support three fleets doing this if they’re less than half full with active characters. And even though we’re in the process of hiring more logistics staff, their jobs have become more involved, and we don’t believe we can support both alternate fleets. Because all active character numbers can fit into first and second fleets, because we can significantly improve both the number and the cycle time for holdings projects, and because we can reduce the maintenance workload, the best way to provide a healthy fleet for all characters is to consolidate.

There is one element we can’t take care of here. There are holdings projects that generally come in two flavors: those that require duty officers, and those that require dilithium. After doing some analysis, it’s highly unlikely that logistics staff will be able to provide all or even most of the officers, so for now we’re going to focus on the projects that require some dilithium, then perhaps later try those that require duty officers. In any case, dilithium or duty officers will likely prove to be our bottleneck from here on if the fleet can’t afford the doffs, and if we can’t rightly ask logistics staff to pay out their dilithium, then we’re going to have to rely on our members.

So there it is. We’re going to slot far more holdings projects, even in the Embassy, Spire, and Mine, where special provisions are required, and we’re going to supply those provisions. We’re going to let projects remain active for 24 hours and then toss in all the requirements except the dilithium, to get them cycling faster. We’re increasing staff to keep the project queues full around the clock, but we’re also asking a lot more from them. We’re not going to do this for three fleets, and since all active characters can fit into two, we don’t have to.


Rear Admiral KerryMalone
Starfleet Operations Commanding Officer

[Three of Seven]

Thank you for sorting out the recent feedback guys, should anyone have any additional thoughts, feelings and feedback on any changes, please get in touch and we can all work to an appropriate solution to help all the STO players

[James Rean]

Just a FYI. I still have 73 mine provisions on hand from when I was a starbase officer. Unfortunately they are bound so I can't put them in the fleet bank. I'm more than happy to put them into the 1st fleet mine projects so the current starbase officers don't have to burn the fleet creds to do so.

[Kerry Malone]

That is most appreciated James

[LynxMukka]

Thank you to the Starfleet Operations team for taking onboard recent feedback regarding the use of our third fleet. I suspect the revised changes will combine what both members want and what SFO feels necessary regarding providing opportunities to fleet members.

It would be helpful to see what the opinions are on these revisions since the UFP always remains flexible to the wants and needs of the members that make up this community. Can I thank members on their patience with the issue, since it's clear quite a few people have felt strongly about this in days gone past.

[Kains]

I'm more than happy to put them into the 1st fleet mine projects so the current starbase officers don't have to burn the fleet creds to do so.

That's the spirit! I know so many people contribute to the starbases, and everything we do honestly, but it so cool to see such a straight up positive post offering to help.

It's a good sign in my books

[James Rean]

Its no problem. I remember what a pain in the butt provisions and doffs were when Cehus and I were point men on upgrade projects.

[Dark]

Duty Officers are a heck of a lot easier to acquire than Dilithium though. I'm guessing you want to pick the projects with the least amount of Dilithium required?

[Jellybug]

Although that's very true, Dark, we very often have a lot of projects held up on Doffs to the point of sitting for days. Gathering Duty Officers for Fleet Credits isn't a well-known strategy, but it's absolutely viable. It's how I paid for most of the fleet equipment for both my Mogh and my Vesta.

By completing the free duty officer missions at the character's academy, a Federation or KDF character can come up with at least 11 duty officers, while Romulans can yield 19 or more. This equates to 3,200 and 5,500 Fleet Credits at minimum, respectively, per character, every few days. Add that to the daily 5 civilians easily obtainable through the ubiquitous Resettle Colonists mission (1,250 Fleet Credits per character, per day), and it's a tidy chunk of FC for very little effort. Duty officers can be mailed to your contributing characters, and even those from the opposing faction will meet fleet project requirements. It's a great way to go.

In the discussion regarding the previous proposal, a guide to recruiting duty officers was linked. I'd encourage everybody to have a look, and keep in mind the numbers above. It'd be great if we could count on lots of duty officer contributions from fleet members, because fleet projects generally require either dilithium or duty officers. We'd rather slot the duty officer projects, because we certainly can't provide the dilithium if it's not being contributed by the fleet members within our 24-hour time window. Also, from a player's perspective, putting in doffs seems a much smarter way to go than putting in dil - especially with the changes in the crafting & upgrade system.

[Code743]

For my part, I'm less than impressed that the previous topic on this issue has been deleted.

To have spent best part of half an hour compiling a post with the intension of helping members overcome possible issues around fleet holdings only to have it summarily deleted is pretty rude, imo. Especially considering I had received positive feedback on said post.

Also, I now have a reputation comment notification that links to nowhere and won't clear itself. Someone in admin is going to have to fix this.

[LynxMukka]

For my part, I'm less than impressed that the previous topic on this issue has been deleted.

To have spent best part of half an hour compiling a post with the intension of helping members overcome possible issues around fleet holdings only to have it summarily deleted is pretty rude, imo. Especially considering I had received positive feedback on said post.

Also, I now have a reputation comment notification that links to nowhere and won't clear itself. Someone in admin is going to have to fix this.

I've just looked into this, and it was mistakenly archived to a CL4 forum. I've recovered the thread, but it will eventually be placed into the main CL3 archive.

[Emiiko Akorem]

We'll be slotting projects with "easy completion" in mind, to prioritize fast cycling projects over starbase development.

Logistics staff will close projects that have been active for 24 hours or more by contributing the remaining required resources, with the exception of Dilithium.
Logistics staff will slot projects across all holdings, and pay the Fleet Credits to replicate the needed provisions.]

i love you! tytytyty!

[Kerry Malone]

i love you! tytytyty!

Awww...

I love you too Emiiko

[Code743]

I've just looked into this, and it was mistakenly archived to a CL4 forum. I've recovered the thread, but it will eventually be placed into the main CL3 archive.

Thanks Lynx. I'll save it as a word document and perhaps turn it into a full-blown guide.
One day...
Maybe...