A really fantastic job on this edition! It was a fun read!
Thanks again for the mission review. Much appreciated :)

Spectacular issue congrats on ur first issue as THE BIG MAN :) very nicely laid out as well

So, after 3 BWEs and Two Stress tests, I finally decided to take up crafting.

I have to say, this system was quite enjoyable compared to the go buy 500 recipes from a trainer in other games.

I managed to get 100 in a particular crafting discipline. Using the "Discovery" party of the system is how you boost your levels quickly. A word of advice is the basic components, burn through those first, they'll get you those first 20 levels fairly quickly if you have enough. Then discover, each armor piece has a "Discovery" that boosts your levels by large leaps. Just a bit of advice.

Crafting material stacks cap at 250. so, remember to keep your tools on you if you plan to do alot of crafting. It was also pretty decent experience as well.

Great job on the edition everyone. :woohoo:

The July-August edition of The Stonewall Times is now available!

Click here to view or download the PDF

In this edition we introduce Fleet Starbases, take a look at the amazing STO Foundry mission "The Wounded Wolf" made by our very own Voleron, get an update on exoplanet discoveries from Stonewall member AstroRobLA at NASA, and look back at what the Legacy 1.2 update brought to SW:TOR.

Huge thanks to everybody who contributed to the making of this issue! :)

It's my debut as Editor In Chief, and I also acted as layout artist for this issue.

We're currently looking to appoint a layout artist, so if you'd like to help please message me for details. No special software required, and we can either provide templates or let you do your own thing :)

I hope you enjoy this edition of the Times!

Ali

I'm one of those on the leaderboard (I've been as high as #2, now I think I'm #5), though that's really not why I've been contributing.

I'm on odd hours, and often when I am there are holes in the short duration missions. I've probably spent 50M credits buying up green diplomats and white chefs, etc. just so we can get the assignments going and not sitting there waiting. The quicker we get this done, the more quickly the starbase gets built and we have all the features everyone is waiting for.

Personally, requisitions are a really minor thing for me - I have all the C-store ships, eventually I'd like to pick up a Fleet Science Retrofit, but we are a long way from Tier V and being able to buy those.

That said, it would be nice to be able to buy something with the fleet credits I've accumulated. I saw some provisions for armor/weps on the vendors - but can't yet buy them because I'm not high enough rank. I'm not greedy - LOL. I just want one piece of armor and maybe a new gun. Hopefully something can be worked out so people who have contributed and have Fleet Credits to spend can buy limited items.

As to people missing out on contributing - well, you do have to plan a bit. Pay attention to what is being asked for with specific missions so you've got it on hand when the missions come up. The 3 main ones take 20 hours to complete - so yeah, you kind of do have to plan for them. And the 30-min missions, set a timer when you log on for the next one. Have something ready, there you go.

I'll be honest, more often than not there are only one or two people contributing stuff at a time, so it's physically impossible for anyone to "ninja" it all away. But if no one else is going for it, of course people are going to fill it up if they can - to get the mission going, so the next one comes up, and we can get the Starbase on it's way to completion. But, like anything in an MMO, you need to plan ahead a little, and be flexible when you can log in if you want to be at the forefront of new content.

Episode 677 - Enterprise - "Canamar" - 02/26/2003

http://www.allstepisodes.com/megvid.php? n=5217

Mistaken as smugglers, Archer and Trip find themselves on a prisoner transport ship.

Enjoy!

Quote by Dr Cuddlebear RP

Best way to have erotic role play is with a trusted partner. Please dont go back to your quarters with some strange. Also the Ferengi whips dont work so well as ive found out

*reads the SA thread*

*reads this post*

Win.

Best way to have erotic role play is with a trusted partner. Please dont go back to your quarters with some strange. Also the Ferengi whips dont work so well as ive found out

I tend to name my ships after places I've lived or visited, currently I'm on the U.S.S Fairfax, with the next one likely being the Chicago.

Quote by Nova

My science captain goes with inventors or engineers. So far she's got the USS Jobs and USS Kelly Johnson

Hedy Lamarr!

Well the handy thing about starship interiors is that they are *mostly* all the same, so anything that happens away from the bridge, be that in Ten Forward or engineering or the ready room or wherever, can happen on any individual's ship. This is especially helpful for pickup roleplay, which is something I want to be a core part of the reboot. Also, bridges are bound to ships, not accounts, so if you absolutely must have the official backdrop for bridge scenes but don't want that for your individual play, you can assign it to an alt ships that you switch into for RP.

Next week is a little rough for me because I move into a new apartment next weekend, but if I know in advance, I should be able to set aside Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday evening EST.

Quote by Toddoverton

No, I don't advocate any kind of first-come-first-served and I absolutely think we should protect the stores from pillaging. What I do favor is a system where priority is given to those who have contributed to the fleet and its projects.

I will focus on this part because the rest is just points against an example of a solution that I posted which may or may not be good (which is besides the point, as I am neither an admin nor a dev, so im not going to do the legwork to design the system, im offering only insights to where problems arise)

How will we decide the priority towards who has contributed to the fleet?

The Leaderboard?

Well in that case the same people will get the rewards over and over.

Do you really think people will stop donating if the Leaderboard decides your priority on provisioning?

The FC will become a score, useless beyond farming it to have a top spot for provisions.

I think i said enough on this topic because I'm starting to repeat myself.
We will see what the future brings and how it will affect the fleet and game in general.

Yeah, I realised after posting that restricting people to Sci/Tac/Eng based on their career would sort of defeat the point of being flexible. Besides, who says a doctor can't deploy a phaser turret? :P

I like the idea of two ships as well. Especially if there are more people interested in RP, there could be two groups, or simply if people are interested in more stories.

Speaking of groups, as far as I know we can invite anyone to our Fleet base. Also, I realised with creating Foundry missions, we'd be limited to team sizes, which are 5 players at most, so it might be best to use public maps for RP that don't have a player number restriction.

Speaking of ships, I toured the Constitution (TOS) and Defiant (Belfast) interiors this morning courtesy of two Fleeties, and they're absolutely gorgeous. What's great about them is they're in much better proportion than the typical ship interiors, and you can actually sit down in most of the chairs...

Problem is if we use those, then we'd need someone one the RP teams with those interiors. I'm not really sure how to get around that, unless we use the standard ship interiors or figure out if multiple teams can use the same Foundry mission (when it's back up, that us).

Quote by AdamTM

Nothing is stopping newcomers to bleed us dry. There are already threads about this where people join fleets just to grab their stuff from Provisions.

Actually, the good news here is that there are things that prevent this from happening. For example, I think it has been pretty firmly decided that only members, and not cadets, will be eligible to purchase things from the fleet starbase provisions. That means that we have an internally-imposed waiting period of at least two weeks between joining the fleet and getting access to the stores. This is just one way that our own fleet-management mechanics will work to protect the process.

Quote by AdamTM

The point is, the people that are grinding FMs like maniacs -dont- get any reward (most of the time), because the cap is shared. The grinding and work doesnt have any influence on the fact that I cant convert my currency (i grinded and worked for).

That is the self-limiting incentive to which I referred. You only need so many FMs and FCs. Having three times as much fleet credit as you can spend really does nothing for you. So those who are contributing a great deal now will eventually reach a point where they don't feel the need to contribute as much or as often, and that will leave room for others to move up. The problem has its own solution built in, if we just wait for it.

Additionally, it is my understanding that projects get more expensive as they go. So in a week or so, I would expect that our projects will be large enough to handle all the FMs we can generate. And that's okay... those who have lots of FCs don't really have anything they can spend it on anyways. You aren't missing anything. I haven't spent a single FC on anything, so it's not like I'm getting something you aren't.

Quote by AdamTM

However i agree that Provisions shouldn't be for everyone and I am fully in support to have a system that decides who gets what, when.

We will definitely have such a system. No doubt about that.

Quote by AdamTM

Or are you suggesting that "first come first serve" is a good mechanic? Because i find it highly unfair, also it leaves us open to people that join just to grab our provisions.

No, I don't advocate any kind of first-come-first-served and I absolutely think we should protect the stores from pillaging. What I do favor is a system where priority is given to those who have contributed to the fleet and its projects. But you are right that the process has to be controlled. And my understanding is that it will be, so I feel less concern than you do about that. But I definitely agree with your point.

Quote by AdamTM

Like you said, we -do- communicate with eachother, so if someone has the flu and can't contribute, then we decide that this time, member X -can- donate 2X if he has the resources that the missing member would have donated. Nobody is going to suffer from this, nobody has to wait, there is no progression block.

Well, think for a minute about how that would really play out in real life. It is my "turn" to contribute to a project, but I don't log on on Tuesday to make my contribution. So they wait a half-day to see if I log on. When I don't, then they send an email and wait a day for me to reply. When I don't, then they spend half a day finding the next person on the list and notifying them that they get to contribute sooner than expected. But the officer has to work and can't get around to it until he gets home in the evening. Then they find out that the next person on the list doesn't have the resources ready to go (Why should they? It isn't their turn.). So the officers go looking for the third person on the list. By the time they go through all of this and actually get the contribution made, it is easy to see how this project has been delayed for 48 or 72 hours or more. More complicated is always less efficient. If we are going to have this kind of system, then we are going to have to accept that advancing the base projects to completion is going to take considerably longer than the year we are currently predicting. Is that a trade that we are collectively willing to make? My guess is no.

Quote by AdamTM

What I'm asking for is -tools- to administrate the members, contributions etc. How those tools look like, I don't care. If the devs decide that for example a cooldown mechanic on donation is a good way, im ok with that, if we set up an internal system to handle this, im ok with that too. Right now the resource-sink is not working properly.

My sense is that it is currently working as designed, and that there is little reason to hope for any kind of reform from the developers. I could be wrong, but I see no evidence that they think this is a problem that they need to solve. I think that they see this as our responsibility. Everyone agrees that we need an open and clear set of rules, and those are definitely coming. I think we also have adequate means to enforce those rules. And that is why I don't feel the same apprehension you do about it at this time.

Quote by Bren

Before S6, I was playing around in the Foundry trying to set up an interior of a ship along with some maps that could be used for RP, but unfortunately Foundry is down at the moment, so I haven't had a chance to dabble further with that.

I've been active in email RPs (or sims, as we call them) for about 10 years and have run a few of them, so I have some experience in storytelling and setting in that regard.

Getorix's roster layout is what I'm used to as well, so I think that would work great. DoctorDisaster's are also very valid and are good to think about before we decide what to do.

Perhaps, instead of basing it on a ship exclusively, we could base it off Stonewall Starbase and have a ship attached to it that isn't necessarily under the command of a specific person but is commanded as mission require it. Somewhat like the Defiant for DS9. That way if we choose a captain for the RP who isn't available for a session, someone else can easily run the mission. Also, since RP is mostly ground map based (if we're playing as a crew), it gives us greater scope.

The key, I've found, is to be flexible, so that if someone can't be part of the session or new people join, they can easily be fitted into the RP. New people or rotating crew can just come from the base. It should be more important to have fun than to keep everything super strictly in fitting with canon or storylines, in my opinion. We all have different playing styles, after all.

As for characters, it's probably best to stick to your toon's career division if they're an officer, ie. Science = Science/Medical Department, Tactical = Security/Tactical Department, Engineer = Operations/Engineer Department. Civilian positions won't matter as much, obviously. :)

I'd suggest using the Fleet uniform as our RP uniform, but if we choose another one, the extra uniform slot - or "off duty" slot - could be used for that. Since you can basically completely redesign your character in it, it's rather useful. Although, if we want to use off-duty outfits in the RP as well, that might not work. :)

My main character is a Human Male Engineer and my two alts are a Human Female Scientist and an Andorian Male Tactician. So basically I can fit in anywhere, really.

I love all of the ideas and recommendations you guys have. I think flexibility is key, and I also think that if someone has a science toon they should be able to play tactical or engineer if they want to. As you said, we have costume slots, and it would be very simple to create a uniform that matches whatever field they will be playing as (if we even need to enforce that kind of thing).

I also really like the idea of having it on the starbase and having different ships come and go for the stories. I was speaking with DoctorDisaster the other day and I thought that it would be nice to have two or more "ships" with their own story lines going at one time (each one would have one or two "episodes" a month).

They would mimic the shows in that the Enterprise-D was the ship of TNG and Voyager was the ship of its own show. Having the Fleet base as the central communal mission starting point might be very beneficial as well as helpful for coordination. If we do go down this route will we all need to be within the same fleet to use the fleet starbase? Or can we cross invite from another fleet? I haven't tried that function yet when on the fleet base.

I would like to set up a meeting time for all of us on vent in the next week if possible to lay down some "rules" and expectations.

When is everyone free to do this? Please let me know what time zone you are in when responding.

Thanks!
Admiral MrIzzy

Quote by Toddoverton

Quote by AdamTM

Looking at the leaderboard there is a certain danger that we have a runaway-FC problem and its systemic from my analysis.

...

We can't have a situation where ~80% of the fleet is locked out from the progression.
The system is designed in such a way that it doesn't scale well for large fleets like ours and the game doesn't give us the tools to manage the progression sensibly.

If PW/C isn't able or willing to fix these problems (soonish) we will need some internal rules for project-contributions as well as Provisioning. Lest people down the ladder become increasingly frustrated and just stop contributing to the fleet in any way.

It will be a bitch for the admins to keep track of all this but thats the only way to do it right now.

This is not just us, there are other fleets with similar problems

I personally don't see this as being a big problem in the medium- to long-term.

First, since FC can only be spent on a few things, people are really only incentivized to get as much FC as they need for the things they want to purchase. At a certain point, it will become self-limiting, since most people won't want to put in more than they will get out, and because people will not want to be known as "the project hog" who is shutting everyone else out. You can solve this problem by simply asking people to stop contributing if they have a positive FC balance that they aren't immediately using so that others can catch up.

That might be so, I don't have concrete numbers, but from a quick assessment of expected contributions I did, we will have this problem into T3.

Quote by Toddoverton

Second, the game developers are working from the assumption that we are not comnplete strangers to one another who never communicate or work collaboratively. They instead assume that we do. Which is true. That is as it should be. I think we should abandon any idea that the game developers will add tools or tricks to the game that will solve the problem you describe. We are on our own on this one.

Thats pretty bad because we need tools to administer those rules that we make up.
I mean communication is cool and all but how do you enforce this without an admin going over purchase logs 24/7?
Nothing is stopping newcomers to bleed us dry. There are already threads about this where people join fleets just to grab their stuff from Provisions.

Quote by Toddoverton

Third, I think that the fleet ships and other fleet provisions are not intended to be nor should be available to just anyone and everyone. Why should those who work most diligently and contribute the most get the most out of it, including some rewards that just aren't available to those who don't? Those who put real money into the game have things that the rest of us don't. Those who grind dilithium like maniacs have things that the rest of us don't. Why should this be different?

The point is, the people that are grinding FMs like maniacs -dont- get any reward (most of the time), because the cap is shared.
The grinding and work doesnt have any influence on the fact that I cant convert my currency (i grinded and worked for).

However i agree that Provisions shouldn't be for everyone and I am fully in support to have a system that decides who gets what, when.

Or are you suggesting that "first come first serve" is a good mechanic? Because i find it highly unfair, also it leaves us open to people that join just to grab our provisions.

Quote by Toddoverton

The only alternaive, which you are going to hate, is to have a fleet rule (as some fleets do) that establishes minimum (and maximum) daily contributions for all fleet members. That way, everyone contributes their quota and no more, everyone stays about equal in terms of FCs, and the fleet projects still move forward. That is not my preferred solution. I am willing to live with a certain inequality of outcomes which is the natural and unavoidable result of leaving people free to contribute as much or as little as they like, and allow social pressures to smooth out the rough edges. You will find that it is that or a quota system.

No, I -love- that alternative.
First of all it would be flexible.

Quote by Toddoverton

I would also point out that the limitations we are talking about here will slow down the progress of starbase construction and upgrading. Everyone seems really happy with how fast we have progressed, exactly because the projects fill up so fast and the timer starts ticking. That will suffer if we have a system where the last 2000 dilithium on a project is reserved for only me to fill but I don't log on for two days because I had the flu. Are we willing to wait on people to make their reserved contributions, when the cost of waiting is to lengthen the time it takes to get to Tier V? I think that would be an... unpopular... result of the kind of solution that was described in the post you quoted.

Like you said, we -do- communicate with eachother, so if someone has the flu and can't contribute, then we decide that this time, member X -can- donate 2X if he has the resources that the missing member would have donated.
Nobody is going to suffer from this, nobody has to wait, there is no progression block.

What I'm asking for is -tools- to administrate the members, contributions etc.
How those tools look like, I don't care. If the devs decide that for example a cooldown mechanic on donation is a good way, im ok with that, if we set up an internal system to handle this, im ok with that too.

Right now the resource-sink is not working properly.

Quote by INVAD3R J

I'm a bit confused on how we go about buying fleet ships. So even if we have the fleet credits and bought the required ship modules and have the tactical tier completed for the base we still can't buy them until we get an additional fleet starbase mission to complete?

The ships are locked into shipyard tiers.

So right now we have Shipyard tier 1, so you can only buy the ships available for Tier 1.

Additionally not all ships require fleet ship modules so be careful what you buy them for.

AFAIK, unless you are a collector, its not worth investing into the ships as equivalent versions are available through the Z-store without the need for FC or Provisioning cap.

This is especially true for escorts because the fleet versions are flat out worse than what you can get from Z-store or via Dilithium and don't come with the ship-modules that give you the cool special abilities. (Fleet Heavy Escort Carrier doesn't have the torpedo AOE skill, Z-store version does)

Also be aware that there are only a limited amount of Provisions for the ships, i.e. if you buy the last one nobody else will be able to purchase them for a time (?)

Be careful with pruchasing things from the fleet until we the admins come up with some sort of system how to manage provisions for individuals.

here is a list of which ships become available at which tier: http://www.stowiki.org/Fleet_starbase">http://www.stowiki.org/Fleet_starbase

Okie I guess that makes sense. So since all I want is a Tier 1 Olympic has anyone talked about how we go about selecting gets to provision a ship? Lottery? Seniority?

Quote by AdamTM

Looking at the leaderboard there is a certain danger that we have a runaway-FC problem and its systemic from my analysis.

...

We can't have a situation where ~80% of the fleet is locked out from the progression.
The system is designed in such a way that it doesn't scale well for large fleets like ours and the game doesn't give us the tools to manage the progression sensibly.

If PW/C isn't able or willing to fix these problems (soonish) we will need some internal rules for project-contributions as well as Provisioning. Lest people down the ladder become increasingly frustrated and just stop contributing to the fleet in any way.

It will be a bitch for the admins to keep track of all this but thats the only way to do it right now.

This is not just us, there are other fleets with similar problems

I personally don't see this as being a big problem in the medium- to long-term.

First, since FC can only be spent on a few things, people are really only incentivized to get as much FC as they need for the things they want to purchase. At a certain point, it will become self-limiting, since most people won't want to put in more than they will get out, and because people will not want to be known as "the project hog" who is shutting everyone else out. You can solve this problem by simply asking people to stop contributing if they have a positive FC balance that they aren't immediately using so that others can catch up.

Second, the game developers are working from the assumption that we are not comnplete strangers to one another who never communicate or work collaboratively. They instead assume that we do. Which is true. That is as it should be. I think we should abandon any idea that the game developers will add tools or tricks to the game that will solve the problem you describe. We are on our own on this one.


Third, I think that the fleet ships and other fleet provisions are not intended to be nor should be available to just anyone and everyone. Why should those who work most diligently and contribute the most get the most out of it, including some rewards that just aren't available to those who don't? Those who put real money into the game have things that the rest of us don't. Those who grind dilithium like maniacs have things that the rest of us don't. Why should this be different?

The only alternaive, which you are going to hate, is to have a fleet rule (as some fleets do) that establishes minimum (and maximum) daily contributions for all fleet members. That way, everyone contributes their quota and no more, everyone stays about equal in terms of FCs, and the fleet projects still move forward. That is not my preferred solution. I am willing to live with a certain inequality of outcomes which is the natural and unavoidable result of leaving people free to contribute as much or as little as they like, and allow social pressures to smooth out the rough edges. You will find that it is that or a quota system.

I would also point out that the limitations we are talking about here will slow down the progress of starbase construction and upgrading. Everyone seems really happy with how fast we have progressed, exactly because the projects fill up so fast and the timer starts ticking. That will suffer if we have a system where the last 2000 dilithium on a project is reserved for only me to fill but I don't log on for two days because I had the flu. Are we willing to wait on people to make their reserved contributions, when the cost of waiting is to lengthen the time it takes to get to Tier V? I think that would be an... unpopular... result of the kind of solution that was described in the post you quoted.

That's my observation.