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The Voyage Project (Part 2) (Sort of)
Bylo Band
✭✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
While the first Voyage Project (https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/15954/the-voyage-project-part-1/p1) was winding down work had already begun behind the scenes on a part 2. The basic idea originated with @Prime Lorca [10FH] so I cannot take credit for thinking it up, but I did do a fair amount of grunt work that needed to be done to present the project on the forum, but by the time I got the preliminary work mostly done, my laptop died and all that work was lost. A few other things contributed to a loss of interest in setting it up at that time but the idea was so profound I started to just test it on my own informally, along with Lorca and @Banjo1012 , with Banjo accidentally serving as the control group by taking the exact opposite approach!
All of this is a nice way of saying that I am not going to run the second Voyage Project, because based on our own informal observations over months I am so convinced that what I am about to say is true that I do not believe this project needs to be run. As a result of work trying to set up this project I have forever changed how I staff my voyages and I am much happier now as a result. I will still explain what the project was going to be in case people want to set it up and run it officially to get actual data. As with previous projects, I will be using the base stats for all cards mentioned (no bonuses) to keep them all consistent.
THE IDEA:
The premise is/was simple, we were trying to determine the actual impact of proficiency scores on voyages. I will keep this initial comparison simple: say you have the rest of your voyage staffed and you need more Command and you have 2 choices, an immortalized Mirror Jean-Luc Picard or an immortalized First Officer Burnham, which should you choose or does it even matter? (In this case all other concerns like other skills and traits are irrelevant).
Mirror Jean-Luc Picard (Command): 1,042 + (243-753). Total score: 1,540.
First Officer Burnham (Command): 1,359 + (88-294). Total score: 1,550.
These voyage scores the game displays while filling seats are not real and instead represent an average expected value of sorts as they are an approximation of the crew's contribution to the chosen skill. In the above example, while both voyage scores are virtually identical, they get there in very different ways. F.O. Burnham gets there with with 93% certainty (7% RNG) whereas Mirror Picard gets there with only 83% certainty (17% RNG). Essentially, F.O. Burnham gets 93% of her Command score from her base (1,359) plus her minimum proficiency value (88) for a total base score of 1,447 toward her 1,550 score, and Mirror Picard gets 83% of his Command score from his base (1,042) plus his minimum proficiency value (243) for a total base score of 1,285 toward his 1,540 score. When staffing a voyage the game treats these two crew roughly the same when sorting by Command, but do the differences in how their scores are composed actually make a difference toward the success of the voyage?
THE PREMISE:
Once Lorca and I hashed out the basic idea, we had to define a few terms relating to this project, those being Low Proficiency and High Proficiency. In general terms, Low Proficiency crew are those like F.O. Burnham with stronger base+minimum proficiency scores and lower proficiency maximum scores, and High Proficiency crew are those like Mirror Picard with weaker base+minimum proficiency scores but with large proficiency maximum scores. For the purpose of being thorough, cards like Locutus provide an interesting case as he has very high maximum proficiency scores, but his minimum scores are also fairly robust so his overall proficiency status is less obvious.
It was at this point where Lorca and I realized the huge task ahead as we'd need to precisely define both concepts with specific parameters/ranges and then generate a large table of crew fitting both definitions while ALSO establishing the methodology for an actual test, and despite the daunting nature of such an undertaking, I was many hours into that process when my laptop died. So without a strict definition of the terms but with a solid understanding of the concepts, I began to staff my voyages by actively excluding crew I perceived to be High Proficiency from my hours of compiling crew proficiency lists, so crew like Armus, Gary Seven, Bartender Guinan, Captain Braxton, Fury Kes, Boothby Replicant, Red Angel, etc, and take mental notes of those voyages' projected and actual outcomes.
I held to this very strictly for months, Lorca did sometimes but other times would send voyages we jokingly called “The RNG Express” which had High Proficiency crew stacked to the rafters, and Banjo was almost always sending out voyages full of High Proficiency crew in his quest to hit a 12 hour voyage, and we started to notice a pattern so readily apparent that it has informed all of our voyages since; voyages with several High Proficiency crew are much less reliable than voyages that avoid using them. For the purposes of this exercise, reliability is roughly defined as voyages that achieved their expected potential length, which for us was basically, “The numbers say this should hit 10 hours, but will it?”
The RNG Express model made the expected duration some of the time, sometimes zoomed way passed it, and others flamed out spectacularly early. The longest voyages we sent were the ones with the most High Proficiency crew, but they also accounted for the shortest voyages. The voyages we were sending without any of the High Proficiency crew were able to get much closer to their expected duration lengths reliably but were never much thread to do much more than what was expected.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS:
Here is how I think it works based on our observations. It is my belief that voyage hazards operate the same as away missions on the galaxy map; they have a target number your crew need to roll in order to pass, and all 12 of your crew combine their base scores for the selected skill and then make a proficiency roll based on their 12 proficiency ranges. This proficiency roll gets added to the combined base scores and this amalgamation gets compared with the target value of the hazard and a pass/fail is determined. As voyages progress these target values on the hazards slowly increases until eventually they are so high they always fail.
I will demonstrate this using three simplified voyages using F.O. Burnham and Mirror Picard from earlier. For simplicity all three voyages will only be concerned with one skill, Command. One voyage will only run two copies Burnham (BURNHAM), the second will run one copy of Burnham and Picard (BOOTS), and the third will run two copies of Picard (PICARD). Here are the three voyages' Command totals. (To help understand the table, the three stats displayed on the cards are in the primary colors, and the secondary colors of orange and green represent combining the various numbers, so yellow+red and yellow+blue.)
(1)
All of this is a nice way of saying that I am not going to run the second Voyage Project, because based on our own informal observations over months I am so convinced that what I am about to say is true that I do not believe this project needs to be run. As a result of work trying to set up this project I have forever changed how I staff my voyages and I am much happier now as a result. I will still explain what the project was going to be in case people want to set it up and run it officially to get actual data. As with previous projects, I will be using the base stats for all cards mentioned (no bonuses) to keep them all consistent.
THE IDEA:
The premise is/was simple, we were trying to determine the actual impact of proficiency scores on voyages. I will keep this initial comparison simple: say you have the rest of your voyage staffed and you need more Command and you have 2 choices, an immortalized Mirror Jean-Luc Picard or an immortalized First Officer Burnham, which should you choose or does it even matter? (In this case all other concerns like other skills and traits are irrelevant).
Mirror Jean-Luc Picard (Command): 1,042 + (243-753). Total score: 1,540.
First Officer Burnham (Command): 1,359 + (88-294). Total score: 1,550.
These voyage scores the game displays while filling seats are not real and instead represent an average expected value of sorts as they are an approximation of the crew's contribution to the chosen skill. In the above example, while both voyage scores are virtually identical, they get there in very different ways. F.O. Burnham gets there with with 93% certainty (7% RNG) whereas Mirror Picard gets there with only 83% certainty (17% RNG). Essentially, F.O. Burnham gets 93% of her Command score from her base (1,359) plus her minimum proficiency value (88) for a total base score of 1,447 toward her 1,550 score, and Mirror Picard gets 83% of his Command score from his base (1,042) plus his minimum proficiency value (243) for a total base score of 1,285 toward his 1,540 score. When staffing a voyage the game treats these two crew roughly the same when sorting by Command, but do the differences in how their scores are composed actually make a difference toward the success of the voyage?
THE PREMISE:
Once Lorca and I hashed out the basic idea, we had to define a few terms relating to this project, those being Low Proficiency and High Proficiency. In general terms, Low Proficiency crew are those like F.O. Burnham with stronger base+minimum proficiency scores and lower proficiency maximum scores, and High Proficiency crew are those like Mirror Picard with weaker base+minimum proficiency scores but with large proficiency maximum scores. For the purpose of being thorough, cards like Locutus provide an interesting case as he has very high maximum proficiency scores, but his minimum scores are also fairly robust so his overall proficiency status is less obvious.
It was at this point where Lorca and I realized the huge task ahead as we'd need to precisely define both concepts with specific parameters/ranges and then generate a large table of crew fitting both definitions while ALSO establishing the methodology for an actual test, and despite the daunting nature of such an undertaking, I was many hours into that process when my laptop died. So without a strict definition of the terms but with a solid understanding of the concepts, I began to staff my voyages by actively excluding crew I perceived to be High Proficiency from my hours of compiling crew proficiency lists, so crew like Armus, Gary Seven, Bartender Guinan, Captain Braxton, Fury Kes, Boothby Replicant, Red Angel, etc, and take mental notes of those voyages' projected and actual outcomes.
I held to this very strictly for months, Lorca did sometimes but other times would send voyages we jokingly called “The RNG Express” which had High Proficiency crew stacked to the rafters, and Banjo was almost always sending out voyages full of High Proficiency crew in his quest to hit a 12 hour voyage, and we started to notice a pattern so readily apparent that it has informed all of our voyages since; voyages with several High Proficiency crew are much less reliable than voyages that avoid using them. For the purposes of this exercise, reliability is roughly defined as voyages that achieved their expected potential length, which for us was basically, “The numbers say this should hit 10 hours, but will it?”
The RNG Express model made the expected duration some of the time, sometimes zoomed way passed it, and others flamed out spectacularly early. The longest voyages we sent were the ones with the most High Proficiency crew, but they also accounted for the shortest voyages. The voyages we were sending without any of the High Proficiency crew were able to get much closer to their expected duration lengths reliably but were never much thread to do much more than what was expected.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS:
Here is how I think it works based on our observations. It is my belief that voyage hazards operate the same as away missions on the galaxy map; they have a target number your crew need to roll in order to pass, and all 12 of your crew combine their base scores for the selected skill and then make a proficiency roll based on their 12 proficiency ranges. This proficiency roll gets added to the combined base scores and this amalgamation gets compared with the target value of the hazard and a pass/fail is determined. As voyages progress these target values on the hazards slowly increases until eventually they are so high they always fail.
I will demonstrate this using three simplified voyages using F.O. Burnham and Mirror Picard from earlier. For simplicity all three voyages will only be concerned with one skill, Command. One voyage will only run two copies Burnham (BURNHAM), the second will run one copy of Burnham and Picard (BOOTS), and the third will run two copies of Picard (PICARD). Here are the three voyages' Command totals. (To help understand the table, the three stats displayed on the cards are in the primary colors, and the secondary colors of orange and green represent combining the various numbers, so yellow+red and yellow+blue.)
(1)
12
Comments
- The BOOTS voyage cannot ever roll less than 2,732 on a Command hazard and will therefore pass 100% of all Command hazards up until then, has a chance to roll proficiency to pass a Command hazard between 2,733 and 3,448, and will fail 100% of Command hazards of 3,449 and beyond (RNG range of 715).
- The PICARD voyage cannot ever roll less than 2,570 on a Command hazard and will therefore pass 100% of all Command hazards up until then, has a chance to roll proficiency to pass a Command hazard between 2,571 and 3,590, and will fail 100% of Command hazards of 3,591 and beyond (RNG range of 1,019).
I created a rough image in MS Paint that visually represents these numbers with regard to voyage success:
The general idea is that as proficiency scores rise potential voyage length also rises, at the expense of reliability. Or, keeping proficiency scores to a minimum causes reliability to rise, at the expense of potential voyage length.
CONCLUSION:
Proficiency ranges are the cause of RNG variation in voyage length. As players introduce more High Proficiency crew during the crew selection process, they introduce a corresponding amount of additional RNG risk to the voyage above the standard amount. Every voyage must have a baseline of RNG as all cards have proficiency ranges above zero, but crew with wider ranges introduce additional RNG which effects the reliability of duration predictions, but the greater maximum proficiency scores also allow for the chance for longer voyages..
RECOMMENDATIONS:
- If you are frustrated with voyages crashing “early”, not staying out as long as you expect them to, or are looking for a more reliable way to hit dilemmas, limit your inclusion of High Proficiency crew to no more than 2 per voyage. I have set myself a limit of 1 per voyage for months now, and my voyages have become much, much more reliable! My ability to project/predict my voyage lengths has gotten so much more dependable. Through informal testing with a few other players (apologies to accidental test subject @guest_1242853734135808!) we have found that adding a second High Proficiency crew can be attempted (it is still risky, be warned) but anything above 2 is too much RNG to be trusted, and 0-1 is definitely recommended. I haven't allowed Gary Seven, Captain Braxton, Red Angel, Caretaker, etc on a voyage in a very long time, and my voyage reliability has gotten better for it! The days of seemingly strong voyages crashing and burning shy of the 10 hour dilemma are essentially over since I stopped using High Proficiency crew on my voyages. ATTENTION: As cards get slightly better over time due to power creep and with the addition of new Collections recently boosting skill scores this may be less important for seasoned players in fleets with max starbases, but for newer players striving to make consistent voyage gains, for players in developing fleets trying to achieve voyage security, or players who just want to hit 8/10 hour voyages before recalling, it is my considered opinion that avoiding High Proficiency crew is essential to achieving these goals reliably, and this concept of de-prioritizing High Proficiency crew should always be kept in mind when making future begold and citation decisions with regard to voyage strength.
- If you are sending out voyages trying to achieve a new personal best for voyage length or are chasing a 12 hour voyage, given that the High Proficiency crew tend to have higher overall voyage numbers thanks to their large proficiency ranges, I would recommend running as many High Proficiency crew as possible. The elevated scores and additional RNG from the maximum proficiency scores will provide the potential fuel for longer voyages, just be warned that they also come with greater risk.
CLOSING REMARKS:
As I said previously, we had intended to run this as an actual forum project /experiment complete with clearly defined concepts and spreadsheets like last time, but we never got around to it, but did an informal version in “the lab” using observation in the meantime, and it did not take long for us long to realize we had little need to run the project because the results were glaringly obvious. My current voyage plan is to run a 10 hour voyage then recall so I now very much regret citing up cards like Gary Seven, Captain Braxton, and other High Proficiency cards as I value voyage consistency; I never use those cards anymore for anything other than Gauntlet, and for other players with a similar mindset, I have begun looking to acquire crew with higher base scores and strong traits over the raw voyage numbers of the High Proficiency cards, and my voyages have been consistently strong after that shift in priority. On the other hand, my friends who are chasing 12 hour voyages love those cards I listed because the higher total voyage numbers and RNG makes those 12 hour voyages possible, provided they get lucky with the RNG.
If you read this and believe me, wonderful, take these words to heart, make a few changes to your voyage staffing process and enjoy the results, no matter which style fits your goals! Feel free to PM me for assistance, I am available to help. If you read this and do not believe me, more power to you, I wish you well. If you read this and wished we had actually done a real project/experiment and want to set one up for players to report their crew, voyage scores, and voyage lengths, I will gladly hand off the baton. I have no desire to conduct such an experiment, but I would gladly help contribute data, and open this thread up to the cause! The biggest obstacles to such an official project/experiment would be defining the exact parameters of the two groups and then devising a testing method (we honestly never quite figured that second part out!).
It was important for me to post this as it dovetails perfectly into the new voyage staffing strategy I have developed, and depending on how this thread goes I will write that up and potentially share it on the forums.
(end)
Do you have a list of the main "high proficiency" crew? This will affect how I prioritize citations.
Anecdotally, I was wondering why I had so many "sure-thing" voyages fail just shy of 10 hours and then make it far beyond expectations when revived.
My rule of thumb is that if I use them in gauntlet, then they make my voyages high risk. Which is normally good, because I am trying to chase that 12-hour mark.
(the aforementioned "certain success vs. possible success" rolled into something like, where is the cutoff of certain success if you have 12K primary Skill?, etc. – what are the actual numbers the server side is seeing?)
Well done guys!
https://datacore.app/behold/?crew=emh_android_crew&crew=braxton_captain_crew&crew=dsc_spock_science_crew&crew=picard_mambo_crew&crew=janeway_evolved_crew&crew=data_scrooge_crew&crew=picard_numberone_crew&crew=bashirs_parents_crew&crew=spock_evsuit_crew&crew=leila_kalomi_crew&crew=paris_luau_crew&crew=dsc_burnham_red_angel_crew
I was concentrating my efforts in reaching over 11h, but sometimes same crew combo gives me 9:30 h and sometimes 11:15 h, this is obviously beacause of high proficiency range of some of the crew I used.
So now I need additional columns for lowest possible score and highest and to try some voyages only with low proficiencies.
This also add another way to assess value of the character - voyage reliability or best lowest voyage score
The secondary skill was high and the primary skill was pretty good but the proficiencies of the crew were not high.
https://datacore.app/behold?crew=janeway_determined_crew&crew=spock_captain_crew&crew=forrest_admiral_crew&crew=borg_queen_crew&crew=braxton_captain_crew&crew=dahj_activated_crew&crew=dsc_number_one_crew&crew=ruafo_crew&crew=phlox_nanoprobe_crew&crew=janeway_viceadmiral_crew&crew=emh_android_crew&crew=dsc_jett_reno_medic_crew
Does my voyage fit into your theory? Are there other factors also in play? It seems like with my low proficiencies this voyage should have never gone so long.
Raw power still counts for something - I would still rather put Locutus on a DIP/SEC voyage over Grilka - but a more realistic ranking of crew performance in voyages will help both the people looking to obtain more consistent voyage lengths and those scraping for every extra minute they can get.
And rather than trying to build a table of arbitrarily selected criteria (high/medium/low), I would think it worthwhile to try to build a formula that can account for both raw power and the variance. Maybe even one formula for people seeking to reduce the RNG component and another for those seeking to maximize it?
Thank you Bylo Band for the very clear analysis.
As a relatively new player i concentrated on voyages to get SR and chrons asap.
Behold choices, cites and LTOs needed to improve voyage and if possible serve in multiple game areas. So many were dual. Gauntlet use and voyage. This strategy led to 6 hr voyages within 2 months and 10hr voyages in 5 months. But it also caused about a quarter to fail unless babysitted.
I used tokens an dilitium to revive in these cases to get to the next dilemma.
This strategy allowed for a fast buildup of SR and i am sitting on over 50 fully fused SR at lv 1-10. It also allows you to get to long voyages without too many legendaries.
Now i am slowly replacing high proficiency crew with low proficiency crew, going for guaranteed 10 hrs over longer voyages, even replacing FFFE high proficiency crew with 1* crew sometimes., And voyages do not fail anymore. It is ideal if i am very busy.
When I have time to babysit, i still go for 11+voyages, you can mix it up .
To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." When the idea was first hatched this was the obvious first question we tried to answer, and it is not easy in the slightest! The example I slid into the write up with Locutus is a good illustration because we struggled to clearly define his value here, as his maximum proficiency numbers are really high, but his proficiency minimum scores are also pretty good, which limits his range. The two crew that LEAP out as obviously High Proficiency are Defensive Phlox and Kahless, the Unforgettable. Very high maximums, very low minimums.
As Lorca pointed out while I was doing the second draft, there is actually a second source of voyage RNG that as far as we know cannot be controlled, and that is the skill selection process for hazard checks. I looked over your crew and it looked slightly on the High Proficiency side but not to any degree I would consider extreme, so you may have shot the moon on your skill checks, or maybe you got a higher than expected percentage of gold/silver skill hazards? In either case, that is an impressive voyage!
Sorry, @Banjo1012 . 🖖
My only regret was I wasn't an active forum participant when you did Part 1. I would have loved to have helped with that.
I just went back and read through it all. It was so nice to see an actual discussion of ideas, as opposed to the content we usually get now. I wish there was more of that presently.
If you do another project like this, please let me know. I'd happily be a part of it. 🖖
As far as actually designing a test to get hard data for this Part 2 stuff, it will be very tough, and a big part of why we kept it informal in our "lab" was we couldn't agree on a way to proceed, and if a handful of people couldn't agree, there seemed little hope in opening it up to hundreds of people. It would have been chaos! Under perfect circumstances, the best test method we devised would have been to send an identical voyage twice, with one of them going with a lot of High Proficiency crew and then the second with Low Proficiency crew, and then repeating this dozens of times. This of course has numerous problems!
The first problem is pretty pedestrian but important nonetheless, there is no way to lock in a voyage to ensure you get the exact same setup twice in a row. This often happens naturally, but if a voyage comes back after the voyage reset time there is always a chance the parameters will change, at which point you run the risk of having lots of single voyages without a second voyage for comparison. The second problem was trying to control for varying levels of voyage strength. There was no way to send out the same voyage twice (ie same feature skills, ship trait, and seat bonuses) with different crew and keep the scores the same, so then how would you even go about comparing the results? That is when we hit on the idea to try and compare the results with pre-voyage duration predictions but that was also problematic because we couldn't find a universally accepted method for doing that...
...and that was assuming we could even come up with lists of crew to fit our definitions! This is basically how it went, we had the ideas, but couldn't really figure out a methodology that we felt would pass muster here. So we did what we did, started paying attention to proficiencies a lot more, taking a lot of screenshots, comparing the pre-voyage numbers to finish times, and the pattern started to become apparent. At that point, we didn't really feel we needed to understand the formula to explain why the apple fell from the tree, we were content to be aware that the apple fell from the tree. if that makes sense. I stopped using crew like Caretaker, Red Angel, Locutus, Gary Seven, Captain Braxton, Guinan etc, and my voyages stopped crashing early. We learned in Part 1 that it is most efficient from a resource harvesting perspective to recall immediately after the last dilemma you can achieve (wording it that way since for some that is only 2 hours, for others 10, and everyone in between) so I shifted focus from trying to run my voyages as long as possible to running them to 10 hours then recalling, and found that once we started this project and I no longer used these High Proficiency crew, my voyages rarely failed to hit 10 hours, and that was the lightbulb moment for me.
Of course the reverse is also true. For people chasing 12 hour voyages I think this idea is equally powerful, as it sort of unlocks a big portion of the RNG and will let folks tinker with their crew to try and get the best chance for a long voyage, and that is exciting too!
Just remember when you start looking over your cards with this idea in mind, a portion of every card's base score is hidden in the proficiency range, so be mindful. For example:
Locutus of Borg (Diplomacy): 847 + (399-783).
Locutus' base Diplomacy is not 847, it is actually 1,246, because a minimum of 399 will be added to any Diplomacy check. So for RNG purposes, his stats are better read like this:
Locutus of Borg (Diplomacy): 1,246 + (0-384). So even though his max proficiency number looks scary, his actual range is only 384, which IMO is still on the high side, but it is not as severe as it appears at first glance.
I don't know how Datacore works exactly, but in my efforts to git that 12-hour mark I have realized that you need 2,850+ AM to have even the smallest chance. And even that may be too little AM. That means traits pick a lot of your crew for you when you're going for those long voyages. Basically, I'm saying that the datacore programming would have to me pretty nuanced in order to staff a voyage to get the best chance for 12 hours. What I think would be cool is if datacore could take a voyage that you've staffed manually and give the odds of reaching the 12 hour dilemma.
I do have a question about proficiencies. Do all crew proficiencies get rolled( thus reducing total variance), or does it calculate a total proficiency roll that gets rolled once?
Suppose you have Locutus (399-783)and Bartender Guinan(358-730) on a voyage as only Dip crew. Do both get rolled or do you get one 757-1513 roll?
Cheers on your efforts!
If you have the ranges for each crew and assume a gaussian distribution, it's not terribly hard to calculate a confidence interval for a specific time. The issue I see is the front end data entry. I guess if you have a profile saved, screenshots of both the screen with your skill totals and AM and the one thereafter with all your crew's icons could allow it to pull those. Nobody wants to enter all that in manually.
Isn't it all the collective? All crew dip bases plus their min prof is collective base with the remaining prof differences as collective range for roll?
That's one of the factors that seems to complicate labeling a card as high or low prof. One skill could have a very small range while another doesn't. A card with a very wide prof in secondary or tertiary skill could be contributing more than you think to the collective prof range. Aviation Yar for example.
My suspicion is that all the proficiency minimums are added, then all the proficiency maximums are added to give the range for one single roll. If each crew rolled individually, I think the resuslts would be closer to consistent, due to good RNG cancelling bad. I think voyages would be more consistent if each crew rolled individually. Given the wild swings in voyage length, I think it more likely to be a single roll based on the aggregate mins and maxes.
AM vs crew is all handled by the optimizer. At a basic level what Datacore does is it puts crew in all positions, estimates the length, then tries different crew and sees if the voyage was shorter or longer. If it's shorter it ignores the the option and tries again, if it's longer it saves that new longest and then tries a variation on that to see if it can get even longer. Repeat enough times until it thinks it found the best possible.
The benefit of this is you don't need to code special logic like look for traits. You just tell dc what value you want to get as high as possible and it keeps trying combinations until it finds the answer.
The reason why you're seeing the need for high AM is probably because 12 is the limit of what a Voyage can reach, so you need to get lucky on all fronts, high AM, high selection of pri/sec, high rolls towards the end. If any of those miss you won't hit 12. But that doesn't mean am vs skill is any more important going for 12 than 10.
Puts another feather in the cap for my all-time favorite voyager RAF O'Brien.
It is funny to read this ... the other day I replied to someone on the forum (think the Dabo thread) about SEC/MED voyages and how they've been rough for me to get a steady result on ... back in the day, when she was released, I cited up Twilight T'pol to address both SEC/MED and SCI/MED voyages ... the results were fine and I got a lot of use out of her, getting in my first 10 hr voyages for those skill combos etc.
Then a while back I noticed that my SEC/MED and SCI/MED voyages sometimes hit 10 hrs with almost no AM left, the only combos to really have that "issue" of stability, the numbers looked good but I was just making it, where other voyage combos with worse-looking numbers were making 10 hrs with 200-300 AM to spare each time, no problem.
I started shuffling crew around ... trying out various combinations ... and without really noticing it, I've not used Twilight T'Pol in a while and have a selection of set crew of 12 for both combos that comfortably makes 10 hrs and that includes "weaker" crew such as Merry Men Crusher, TP Chakotay (Ba'ul is only 3/5 but a good swap once 5/5)
Interesting stuff ... thanks again.
Though it does feel like you are being harsh on yourself regarding Braxton (i.e. bummed that you cited him up) ...
CMD is 1499 min. +313 : 1656 --> 90.5%
ENG is 1141 min. +242 : 1262 --> 90.4%
SEC is 672 min. +144 : 744 --> 90.3%
total 3312 min. + 699 : 3662 --> 90.4%
So ... he's riding on less than 10% RNG across all three skills! I mean, I'd then like to know your RNG cut-off point then, it must be quite strict ... ok, he's no FO Burnham but he's in a different league from Mirror Picard, Gary Seven et al. too.
The thing with Braxton is, his minimum numbers are just so high, with his CMD being 52 pts higher than FO Burnham ... so even though he has more RNG involved than her, it also doesn't kick in until you are farther into the voyage (the opposite of what you showed with Mirror Picard).
Or do I not understand something here? Keep 'em coming ... these are the kinds of posts that get me excited and get me reevaluating my crew etc.
That part where you mentioned the good RNG at the end... if you don't have crew with high enough max proficiency, then you won't be able to make those checks at the end regardless of RNG. That's why I mentioned the special staffing thing. There's a difference (though subtle) between maximizing for the longest likely voyage and the most potential to hit 12 hours. That's why I say it would need to be more nuanced than what you described. Though I certainly thank you for the explanation! That was some insight that I needed.
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
Excellent ... can't wait for part 3 then
Speculation (don't answer this - keep up the suspense) ... Maybe the extra reason is why I like him? ... he has over 20% of his total voyage score in skill #3, which I like because it makes crew flexible to cover various voyage combos (see Borg Queen, RAF O'Brien, Xindi Insectoid, Pollard as some of my fave/most used crew for voyages - FO Burnham also falls into that category, but I only have her 1/5).
@(HGH)Apollo ... I would think that the following crew in your list do not fall under the "low proficiency" category, while maybe not high, at least solidly in the middle of the pack like Braxton:
- Captain Spock for CMD
- Warship EMA (for SEC and CMD)
(- Braxton (see above), Forrest - ENG)
But, I could be wrong.
I'm not sure if the proficiency aspect only counts for the two main voyages skills (if a crew has them) or across all skills.
It technically counts for all, but voyages typically go well past the limits of (what I call) tertiary voyage scores. By doing this, it allows the RNG to even out bad rolls with good ones. For that reason, I find that the two main voyage skills provide nearly all of the RNG. Well... all that is within the captain's control, anyway. As Bylo said earlier, the game picks the skills to check throughout the voyage. That is a source of RNG, but not one within the player's control.