[Kerry Malone]

Hey guys!

There's been a fair amount of discussion between myself and the XO's about slotting of Special Projects on the main fleet holdings.

At the moment, SFO Logistics only slot:

Host Multicultural Symposium & Co-Ordinate Colonization Efforts

The reason for this is due to the fact that we need fast turn-over projects that allow you, the players, to donate Fleet Marks, DOffs and other commodities faster than the standard 20 hour projects. Once a Special Project completes, it has a 30 min cooldown before the next one slots. At the moment, these do process through quite quickly, so we've been happy with the turnover.

That being said, we do listen to feedback, and a lot of the feedback we get is requests for the ability to donate Fleet Marks. This has become an even bigger issue with the Delta Recruit promotion, where you can get upto 1,000 Fleet Marks for all your alts if you leveled a Delta Recruit to 50.

Now, we do have a special project that is called "Unload Surplus Marks". This will allow for a special 2,000 Fleet Mark donation project. The downside to this project is that it has a 50% Fleet Mark value penalty. This is why it is not regularly slotted, because people do not like it. However, I would like to take a poll of the active membership as to whether you feel we should slot this project or not, and if we do, how frequently.

Please vote in this poll so that we can correctly assess what you, the members, would like from us.

[Three of Seven]

My opinion would be to run it when there are officers online to slot it, on both 1st and 2nd fleet, as it's a fast project to finish. Personally, I don't mind the 50% value, higher value donations take the form of doffs and other bits anyway, just marks are easy to come by

[Kains]

Totally agree. You can always grind Marks

Thanks for putting this poll up. Hope it helps!

[ForTheGamer]

Marks are easy to grind for, I have them all the time. However, as 3 said, we should limit it to only if officers are online. So that when there isn't an officer online we can slot a big project and not have them worry about it.

I'd be willing to take the 50% penalty just so I can hand and earn my marks. As Kains says, it is easy to earn marks. Fleet Marks should actually be the easiest to obtain, since you can earn them from nearly everything if you choose so.

I will admit that I'm terrible at collecting other stuff outside of marks.

[Three of Seven]

I will admit that I'm terrible at collecting other stuff outside of marks.

I often end up with many mini-doff packs, drop me a message if you need some and I'll mail them

Applies to anyone!

[Lycos]

I agree with the majority, myself I don't see why not esp when they are pretty easy to get as well

[Dark]

I agree with the sentiment - all the time if there's an officer active to keep it up.

It still bugs the heck out of me that some of the fleets exclusively want Sci/Med DOffs. It's really causing bottlenecks, especially since people apparently like to spread them out as opposed to focus on a project to get it done.

Also lack of civilians, but I always say that. Stupid civilians wandering around my warship!

[Scaper84]

Whenever my hallways start clogging up with civilians, I toss them on the exchange. My lean, mean escort has no room for you colonists!

But to the point, I agree with the comments here. I don't mind the drop in exchange rate if it means being able to put my fleet marks to use.

[Kerry Malone]

I do agree with the sentiments being shared here guys, and I'm glad you're sharing them!

The only concern I have is one that Dark brought up, is that I cannot guarantee that an SFO Logistics Officer or Command Officer will be available to slot the projects 'on demand'. We have been working tirelessly to try and provide much better coverage, but it is still very hard to get staff to do that.

So, I would say for the time being at least, that a system based on an officer being online to slot it on demand would tend to favour timezones where the majority of our holdings staff reside - which would be European. Therefore I would propose that it be something that is required to be slotted - if indeed it is slotted (Vote is still young!).

[Kains]

Yeah, silly civilians on my ship... My 50 person Defiant has by 20ish Boffs (Yeah yeah...), 500 Doffs (Yep, I'm that guy), also a full host of civilians, and a full brig (At least that one is an 'accomplishment').

I figure I have people stacked up like lumber.

*Back on topic*

I do so love being able to bring my Defiant into the Starbase, play the 'Beep beep beep* as I back in, and then dump the haul of worthless Doffs every now and then... I figure it would sound a bit like a cross between when dominoes fall and that sound effect of Rocky punching slabs of meat.

...

...Some systems in this game are so stupid. I love 'em, but they are soooo stupid

[Keenan]

I voted for both on the weekend when online attendance is higher. I have characters with over 2k fleet marks so it will be nice to use them up, even at half credit. Though fleet credit boosts are not too bad on the exchange.

play the 'Beep beep beep* as I back in, and then dump the haul of worthless Doffs every now and then

I just visualized your sig's Galaxy's nacelles tipping up and Doffs tumbling out the back.

[RMY1081]

I voted for, Yes - all the time on both fleets, but I do see the problem with keeping an officer online to slot them. Maybe the Unload Surplus Marks project could be made into an event so it's (mostly) guaranteed that an officer will be on to slot the project?

[Jellybug]

How quickly do the half-credit Marks projects fill up on weekdays? I'm not around on the weekends, but I do notice the Mark requirements of regular projects filling up almost immediately when they open up. However, the half-credit projects of old seemed to stagnate. Whether these projects are a good idea or not will be determined by whether they get filled up quickly or not.

It still bugs the heck out of me that some of the fleets exclusively want Sci/Med DOffs. It's really causing bottlenecks, especially since people apparently like to spread them out as opposed to focus on a project to get it done.

Also lack of civilians, but I always say that. Stupid civilians wandering around my warship!

If a player is getting DOffs from packs, it's an even split. With active recruitment, however, it's strongly skewed in favor of the Civilians, particularly if the player isn't actively flying around sector space hunting for recruitment missions - it's much easier to just hit the Academy and, if Romulan, the Command Center.

At their Academy, a Fed or KDF character can recruit (ignoring critical successes) 5 civilians per day, 3 unspecified officers per day, and 2 each from Tactical, Engineering, Science, and Civilian every two days. With consistent effort, that's 6.75 Civilians per day and 1.75 Tac/Eng/Sci per day.

A Romulan character of either faction gets to run the 48h missions again at the Command Center, so their numbers are 7.75 Civ compared to 2.75 Tac/Eng/Sci per day.

The oversupply of civilians is significantly worse for players with KDF types who do much raiding.

So this means two things. First, we should be providing opportunities to contribute Tac/Sci/Eng DOffs to fleet projects in roughly equal quantities. Second, players need to be able to contribute at least three times as many civilians as the other types.

Because the civ-centric missions are Special Projects, the main drawback of the half-credit Mark projects is the reduced contribution opportunity for civilian DOffs for as long as Unload Surplus Marks is active.

[Dark]

First, we should be providing opportunities to contribute Tac/Sci/Eng DOffs to fleet projects in roughly equal quantities. Second, players need to be able to contribute at least three times as many civilians as the other types.

Hear hear!

Because the civ-centric missions are Special Projects, the main drawback of the half-credit Mark projects is the reduced contribution opportunity for civilian DOffs for as long as Unload Surplus Marks is active.

It feels like it's something that requires monitoring. If officers are on, they can keep tossing it up until they need to leave or it stops filling up in a reasonable amount of time.

[Hevelin]

And let's not forget the fleets for our KDF friends, please. Yes, they can be a bit moody at times but they do throw good parties.