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Bridge officer

From Star Trek Online Wiki

Contents 1 Overview 2 Development 2.1 Promotions 2.2 Careers and ranks 3 Skills 3.1 Getting new abilities 3.2 Using abilities 3.3 Points 3.4 List of abilities 4 New Crew 4.1 Candidates 4.2 Officers 4.3 Rarity 5 Using your officers 5.1 Ground 5.2 Space Combat 6 Stations 7 Customization 7.1 Race and Gender 7.2 Features and Clothes 7.3 Traits 7.4 Name

Overview

A Bridge officer (sometimes called by the acronym, "Boff") in Star Trek Online is a commissioned member of your bridge crew. Bridge officers are available to the player in both ground and space play. Players can view their current bridge officers by opening their status screens (defaulted to the U key on your keyboard). On the left side of this window lists your player, ship and bridge officer stats and information.

Development

Players can develop their bridge officers much like they develop their own character by giving them promotions and new skills.

Promotions

Players can promote their officers when they have spent a sufficient amount of skill points on them, such as ranking the officer from Ensign/Bekk to Lieutenant would require the player has spent a minimum of 200 bridge officer skill points on their abilities.

Careers and ranks

Bridge officers follow a similar rank system to that of players however the highest ranked bridge officer a player can attain is that of Commander. This adheres to Star Trek lore as except in extremely rare cases you would never find more than one Captain or Admiral as part of ships main crew.

In addition to following a similar ranking system they also follow the same profession choices that a player can choose for themselves - which are Engineering, Tactical and Science. On most ships players always have at least one position available to each profession except a Bird-of-Prey and a Danube Class Runabout which have universal bridge slots. Universal bridge slots mean you can put any profession of officer in that station.

Skills

Getting new abilities

There are three known methods of giving new abilities to your officers.

The first is by using candidates. When you have a candidate and have given then a commission you are confronted with a new window to select their purpose. The two main choices are "Train Up" and "Join". Join would immediately place them into your crew as an officer. Train up allows you to switch abilities on another officers. Abilities can only be switched with officers and candidates of the same career. To switch an ability, click the Train up option. This presents players a window for the them to choose the ability they want to be trained to one of their current officers. Simply select the ability, then the officer, then click the "Train" button.

The second is by directly using a trainer such as the unnamed Bridge Officer Trainer located in the Personnel section of the Earth Spacedock or the Sparring Ring area at The Great Hall of Qo'noS. To train a new ability simply find the ability you want, click on it to open up a small drop down menu, choose the bridge officer you wish to give the ability too and then finally select the "Train" button. This method is much easier than the candidates option as abilities are easier to acquire, however typically costs more to do.

The third option is available through your player. When your player reaches rank 9 in certain abilities you may teach those abilities to bridge officers for free. To do this open up your status window (default: U key) and choose your Captain from the left side menu. When chosen your Captain will be displayed on screen. At the bottom of this window is a button called "Train Officer". If you have no abilities that can be trained to an officer this button will disabled.

Be cautious as this will remove the current ability that the bridge officer has. Such as if I bought a new engineering candidate that has the Ensign/Bekk level Engineering Team I ability and wanted to give this to my current engineering officer who already has an Ensign/Bekk level ability of Emergency Power to Shields I, it would overwrite that ability with the new one. Any points spend in the previous ability are LOST and do NOT carry over to the new ability.

Using abilities

Bridge officers abilities are either used automatically or manually through your HUD. On ground missions your officers may sometimes automatically use abilities if the need to use it is urgent. In space the player must manually use the abilities. These abilities are icons located under the bridge officer section of your HUD whilst flying your ship. Each specific ability is linked to the type of officer that will use it and is represented as such.

Points

Bridge officers use a skill point system much like players use for their character however they are specifically called bridge officer skill points. See main article: Bridge officer skill point

List of abilities

See main article: Bridge officer ability

New Crew

Candidates

Bridge officer candidates are primarily available from the requisition officer, such as Elsa Mora at the Earth Spacedock or V'Qlar in The Great Hall of Qo'noS. To acquire new candidates players must "buy" the candidate using Starfleet Merits if playing as a member of the Federation or Honor if playing in the Klingon Empire. Once acquired the candidate does not automatically join your bridge crew and instead the player must select the purpose of the candidate.

Candidates have two purposes, they can either become a full member of your bridge crew or they can be used to train a current bridge officer with a new skill. The skills they can train are directly related to the candidate in question and different candidates have different skills.

For either purpose the player must first give the candidate a commission. This is done by opening up your status window (defaulted to the U key on your keyboard). Once this window has opened, navigate to the "Assignments" tab. This tab will show you your current ships stations, your standard away team and your bridge officer candidates. To give the candidate a commission right click on the candidate you wish to give the commission to and a menu will appear with an open to do so.

Candidates are also obtained periodically from Starfleet for free when a candidate asks to be assigned to your ship.

They can also be traded with other players; either through direct trade, or via the exchange. In both cases no Merits/Honor are used, but candidates on the exchange cost energy credits, and the costs of direct trade are at the discretion of both parties.

Also candidates can be sent through the mail to other characters (on a players account) or other players. This can only be done at a mail console that allows adding items to a message.

Officers

Fully fledged officers who already have a commission can sometimes be obtained through quests, notably quests early in the game when the player doesn't have any or only 1 or 2 officers.

Rarity

Bridge officers and candidates appear to follow a system of rarity similar to items.

Using your officers

Ground

Members of your bridge crew will typically form your away team for ground missions and ground combat. If a player is playing a mission with other players then members of the bridge crew are replaced with the other players. If slots are left they will be filled with members of the bridge crew. On away missions your officers will provide the player with various types of support. They offer fire-power from all types of careers, however officers with a Tactical background excel in this area. Engineering officers can provide support in the form of turrets and shield regeneration skills. Science officers are able to heal you and your team and provide buffs and debuffs.

When playing in a team with other players, the number of bridge officers included in an away team will be reduced so that the total away team size doesn't not exceed 5. For example if you're in a team of 3 players, 2 bridge officer will be part of your away team. By default bridge officers are evenly chosen from players bridge crews, however the team leader has the ability to decide which officers beam down, or allow team members to choose their respective officers.

Space Combat

When the player is involved in space combat the officers provide the player with various skills that can be used to shape the course of the battle. These skills are by default located to the bottom-right side of the players HUD and are categorized by career type (Tactical, Engineer and Science). To activate a skill simply left click it with your mouse or use one of the keyboard shortcuts (by default these are special links with the ALT key and a number).

Stations

Officers are assigned to their specific console. Their station is ranked by rank (Ensign/Bekk, Lieutenant etc.). An officer can only access the abilities that correspond to the rank of their station. If an engineering officer is a commander but station at a lieutenants station, they could only access Ensign/Bekk, and Lieutenant abilities. The more advanced a ship is, the higher tier stations you get. Bridge Officers may only be promoted to a rank lower than your own.

For an exact figure on ships allocation of consoles slots use the starship classes article.

Customization

Race and Gender

Players are unable to change the race and gender of their bridge officers. If the player wants a bridge officer of a specific race and gender they will need to acquire a new candidate from a requisition officer.

Features and Clothes

Although players can't edit the species of a bridge officer, they can adjust their features - such as hair, eyebrows, tattoos, scars, complexion and scaling options. They can also edit their uniforms enabling players looking to have a specific uniform set for their whole bridge crew. To edit their uniforms and features visit a clothier, such as Ghemik Temur on Earth Spacedock or Taluk at the Great Hall. Although the "clothier" name implies that it is clothing only, it will let the player change features. The first set of changes made are free if the player hasn't altered that officer before, however further changes cost varying amounts of Energy Credits.

Traits

Bridge officers have up to 4 ground traits which cannot be changed. Like player character traits, these benefit the individual officer or team as a whole. Different traits are suited to different professions and roles. Required racial traits also apply.

Only one special bridge officer currently in-game has a space trait - the Borg Bridge Officer that was available from the Amazon.com pre-order package has Efficient, which increases the efficiency of ship subsystems by 5%.

Name

To edit an officers name open the status window (default: U key). Use the list on the left hand side of the status window to select the officer you wish to rename. Once selected choose the "Rename" button and input a new name. Currently, you can only rename the officer once. Further revisions to their name require the player to buy a "rename" from the Cryptic store using Cryptic Points.