The Voyage Project (Part 3 - Tool Included)
Bylo Band
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(Link to version 1.1.0 of the VVT: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FxdGCLD_XWZkcHPc1PO-ihWRhBftaMaWfvVV6XNsPrg/edit#gid=1114378525)
As a special component of this third and almost certainly final part of the Voyage Project we will be introducing our brand new voyage tool to assist players in all aspects of improving their voyages. We call the tool the Viable Voyagers Tool (VVT) and I think you will love it, but I am very biased. It will be explained in greater detail later, but it is referenced a few times in my write up here so I wanted you to be aware of its existence at the start and to give you the initials so it is not confusing. I have setup a special Discord server for players to access and share screenshots and to ask for specific advice for both my new voyage system and the VVT. The join code for the server is on the Read Me page of the VVT but we ask that you keep all the general discussion, questions, etc here on the forums and leave the Discord server free for specific voyage diagnostics and screenshots. We love these forums and do not want to disrespect them needlessly, but we do understand that it is just easier to share screenshots and give specific advice on Discord.
In reviewing Part 2 (where we discussed the true nature of crew proficiency scores on voyages - https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/17493/the-voyage-project-part-2-sort-of/p1) for this write up I feel a brief recap is in order. After publishing I worked with a handful of players and shared with them my new voyage system in preparation for this portion of the project and several times I was contacted by people in the early stages of adopting my new voyage system (more on that later!) and they were asking me why their voyages failed to reach 10 hours. Each time I would go over the screenshots and without fail, every time I found multiple High Proficiency crew like Gary Seven, Warship EMA, Mirror Shukar, etc and after diagnosing these issues changes were made and subsequent attempts were successful. Then during last weekend's event I got stuck with the Tholian ship trait and decided to test proficiency risk and use FOUR High Proficiency crew like Locutus and Amelia Earhart and I got everything lined up for another potential 10 hour voyage, and for the first time in months my voyage failed to hit 10 hours!
High Proficiency crew and their corresponding spikes of RNG are the enemy of both voyage predictability and reliability and the reverse is also true, the increased RNG from High Proficiency crew is the fuel that enables voyages chasing 12 hours, and to everyone who has been asking for a list of those crew or how to identify them, fear not, we have you covered (keep reading until the end!). The larger issue here however is that RNG is the enemy of reliability and performance, but crew proficiency is not the only source of RNG in voyages, there are a couple of others and it is important to understand what they are and how they can be countered by the player.
Ship traits and seat traits play a fairly significant part in every voyage as they enable a total of 450 additional anti-matter (AM). As far as is known there is no way for players to directly control this, each day the ship and seat traits seem to be random, the best a player can do to control this form of RNG is to max out as many 5* ships as possible and collect a wide array of crew with a diverse distribution of traits to try and match those seats.
Maximizing the starting AM in this way allows players to control to some degree the final source of voyage RNG, that being skill hazards. The widely accepted probability for voyage skill hazards is Gold = 35%, Silver = 25%, Tertiary = 10% each (incidentally we tested this ourselves and it checked out) which means that over the course of a 10 hour voyage you can expect approximately 130 hazards for your gold skill, 97 for your silver skill, and 38 for each of your four non-feature skills, so naturally it makes sense to load up on the gold and silver. That being said, while the odds eventually even out over a long voyage, at any given point in the voyage it is possible to hit many non-feature skills in a row, leading to a rapid loss of AM which threatens the life of the voyage since the non-feature scores are lower and begin failing much earlier, therefore having more AM is key to overcoming those short runs of bad RNG. In this sense the player that makes sure to start as many voyages as possible with the maximum bonus AM of 450 buys themselves the maximum time for their RNG "odds to get even" (RIP Neil Peart).
The key to unlocking your maximum voyage potential once you control for your desired proficiency risk and level up your 5* ships is crew traits! Whether you are gambling on a 12 hour voyage or following the Bylo Method (description to come!) where you strive to reliably hit 10 hours and recall 100% of the time, everyone benefits from maximizing their starting AM. To achieve this reliably players will want to make sure their roster of voyagers has a diverse collection of not only skill pairs but also traits, to make sure they can hit as many of seat bonuses as possible.
Wading into the sea of crew traits is daunting to say the least, there are so many to keep track of. Not all traits are created equal either, as only certain traits are ever featured on voyages and further still not every trait featured on voyages appear in every skill seat. Here then is a table that shows the 45 traits that appear on voyages, and which seats those traits give a seat bonus.
As a special component of this third and almost certainly final part of the Voyage Project we will be introducing our brand new voyage tool to assist players in all aspects of improving their voyages. We call the tool the Viable Voyagers Tool (VVT) and I think you will love it, but I am very biased. It will be explained in greater detail later, but it is referenced a few times in my write up here so I wanted you to be aware of its existence at the start and to give you the initials so it is not confusing. I have setup a special Discord server for players to access and share screenshots and to ask for specific advice for both my new voyage system and the VVT. The join code for the server is on the Read Me page of the VVT but we ask that you keep all the general discussion, questions, etc here on the forums and leave the Discord server free for specific voyage diagnostics and screenshots. We love these forums and do not want to disrespect them needlessly, but we do understand that it is just easier to share screenshots and give specific advice on Discord.
In reviewing Part 2 (where we discussed the true nature of crew proficiency scores on voyages - https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/17493/the-voyage-project-part-2-sort-of/p1) for this write up I feel a brief recap is in order. After publishing I worked with a handful of players and shared with them my new voyage system in preparation for this portion of the project and several times I was contacted by people in the early stages of adopting my new voyage system (more on that later!) and they were asking me why their voyages failed to reach 10 hours. Each time I would go over the screenshots and without fail, every time I found multiple High Proficiency crew like Gary Seven, Warship EMA, Mirror Shukar, etc and after diagnosing these issues changes were made and subsequent attempts were successful. Then during last weekend's event I got stuck with the Tholian ship trait and decided to test proficiency risk and use FOUR High Proficiency crew like Locutus and Amelia Earhart and I got everything lined up for another potential 10 hour voyage, and for the first time in months my voyage failed to hit 10 hours!
High Proficiency crew and their corresponding spikes of RNG are the enemy of both voyage predictability and reliability and the reverse is also true, the increased RNG from High Proficiency crew is the fuel that enables voyages chasing 12 hours, and to everyone who has been asking for a list of those crew or how to identify them, fear not, we have you covered (keep reading until the end!). The larger issue here however is that RNG is the enemy of reliability and performance, but crew proficiency is not the only source of RNG in voyages, there are a couple of others and it is important to understand what they are and how they can be countered by the player.
Ship traits and seat traits play a fairly significant part in every voyage as they enable a total of 450 additional anti-matter (AM). As far as is known there is no way for players to directly control this, each day the ship and seat traits seem to be random, the best a player can do to control this form of RNG is to max out as many 5* ships as possible and collect a wide array of crew with a diverse distribution of traits to try and match those seats.
Maximizing the starting AM in this way allows players to control to some degree the final source of voyage RNG, that being skill hazards. The widely accepted probability for voyage skill hazards is Gold = 35%, Silver = 25%, Tertiary = 10% each (incidentally we tested this ourselves and it checked out) which means that over the course of a 10 hour voyage you can expect approximately 130 hazards for your gold skill, 97 for your silver skill, and 38 for each of your four non-feature skills, so naturally it makes sense to load up on the gold and silver. That being said, while the odds eventually even out over a long voyage, at any given point in the voyage it is possible to hit many non-feature skills in a row, leading to a rapid loss of AM which threatens the life of the voyage since the non-feature scores are lower and begin failing much earlier, therefore having more AM is key to overcoming those short runs of bad RNG. In this sense the player that makes sure to start as many voyages as possible with the maximum bonus AM of 450 buys themselves the maximum time for their RNG "odds to get even" (RIP Neil Peart).
The key to unlocking your maximum voyage potential once you control for your desired proficiency risk and level up your 5* ships is crew traits! Whether you are gambling on a 12 hour voyage or following the Bylo Method (description to come!) where you strive to reliably hit 10 hours and recall 100% of the time, everyone benefits from maximizing their starting AM. To achieve this reliably players will want to make sure their roster of voyagers has a diverse collection of not only skill pairs but also traits, to make sure they can hit as many of seat bonuses as possible.
Wading into the sea of crew traits is daunting to say the least, there are so many to keep track of. Not all traits are created equal either, as only certain traits are ever featured on voyages and further still not every trait featured on voyages appear in every skill seat. Here then is a table that shows the 45 traits that appear on voyages, and which seats those traits give a seat bonus.
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So how can players make sense of this information in a meaningful way across their entire roster of crew? The answer is the new Trait Seat Score! As you will see later in the actual tool, we have gone through and calculated all the trait matches for every crew, and presented it in an easy to read format. Well, OK, I need to come clean here and just rip this bandage off now, we did not do this for "every" crew, to prevent the tool from being bogged down with hundreds and hundreds of crew likely to never be used for voyages, I came up with the concept of the Viable Voyager (VV). All VV crew share two things in common: they are legendary and they have 3 skills. The idea for this was simple, we figured if people were going to take voyages seriously enough to read a series of guides and use a tool, we figured they'd also be serious enough about voyages to use proper voyage crew. I am sorry if this upsetting, but this is the reality of voyage strength, and while ultimately we all signed off on this decision I came up with it and advocated for it, so direct all your "HOW DARE YOU!" comments about VV to me
Now that we have that out of the way, here is a brief description of the Trait Seat Score. Every VV has different traits, and those different traits pair up with that crew's skills to generate a varying number trait seat matches, and 1 point is awarded for every trait seat match. Here is an example:
Gary Seven has four traits (Human, Hero, Resourceful, and Undercover Operative) and based on those four traits he has a voyage Trait Seat Score of 11, meaning he has a fair chance to hit a seat bonus. For reference the highest Trait Seat Score is a tie between Enemy Lines Sisko and Determined Paris (27) and the lowest is a four-way tie between Q2, Mirror Saru, Young Anya, and Ba'ul (2). The higher the Trait Seat Score the better, so this score will be helpful for all players both in deciding which crew to cite up and which crew to hunt for in begolds and Crew Retrieval. Our tool has these scores for all the VV and a whole lot more! (Before I continue I just want to say that in the early stages of this portion of the project there were roughly 360 VV crew in the game and the tool was still being created so I went through all 360 of them one-by-one and calculated their Trait Seat Scores by hand! It took many hours and scrambled my brains and this probably contributed to my mostly-crazy decision to make a Galaxy event run last week without ANY pre-farming...you can rest assured however, the tool now creates these scores automatically now, lol)
Also, before I move on and introduce my new voyage system, I want to share this image I created. It is sadly out of date now (fear not, this information has since been automated and introduced into the new VVT!) but while I was generating all the Trait Seat Scores for the VV by hand I also created this table to serve as a visual "WOW!" to showcase the distribution of all the Trait Seat Scores across all the VV. It is a pretty powerful image and I think really demonstrates that not all traits and Trait Seat Scores are created equal. For example, across the 360 VV at the time there were only 5 Ferengi with Diplomacy but 125 Human crew with Diplomacy, so a new Ferengi with Diplomacy will "move the needle" a lot more than a new Human.
I would like to begin with some backstory for context and hopefully entertainment. As many of you are aware, many months ago I coordinated the Voyage Project Part 1 on The Bridge sub-forum where we effectively showed that it is best to recall voyages right after dilemmas to achieve maximum efficiency from voyage yields. There was more to it than that of course, but that was the big takeaway.
Before our voyage length experiment I, like pretty much everyone I am aware of, staffed my voyages based on the formula found all over the forums: GOLD 12-13K+, SILVER 12-13K+, Tertiary Score and starting AM as high as possible. This formula was designed to give people the best chance possible at getting voyages beyond the 10 hour dilemma/to chase 11 hour voyages. (For the purposes of this presentation, Tertiary Score will be referred to hereafter as Tertiary, and refers to the sum of the other 4 non-feature skill scores) but fairly often leads to voyages flaming out early before they reach 10 hours.
As a result of my dissatisfaction with having a fair number of voyages crash and burn before 10 hours and fresh off of our experiment where we discovered it is most efficient to recall voyages directly after dilemmas, for several months I stopped caring about min/maxing my voyages and just threw strong enough crew on my teams to get to 8 hours and recalled them when they got there. It worked remarkably well, but it was not quite good enough to rebuild my chroniton war chest in the wake of my having used up around 100,000 of them for my 4th place finish in the Faster Finish 2 Skirmish event, so I went back to the tried-and-true method described above for trying to hit 11 hour voyages.
Then several months ago something happened that made me hit pause on EVERYTHING I was doing. We were in the middle of a Faction event so many of my stronger crew were assigned to shuttle duty and my ship trait was “Freighter” so I just threw my hands up in disgust, got defiant, and did whatever was necessary to throw together the best voyage I possibly could. My top priority was trying to offset the loss of 150 AM from the ship trait so no matter what, that voyage was going to start with 2,800 AM, and I managed it but in so doing I barely got my gold and silver scores over 10K, so I had very little hope for that voyage, but I sent it just for fun.
That voyage hit the 10 hour dilemma! I didn't understand how it was possible as it flew in the face of everything I thought I knew about voyages, so I tried to recreate that voyage using the methodology as near as I could figure for weeks, and every voyage I sent out hit 10 hours. Every. Single. One. For weeks I kept at it, and I sketched out a rough outline of the new parameters, and I slowly refined those parameters with the input of a few friends. It has proven to be remarkably resilient, it hits 10 hours when I don't hit the ship trait, it hits 10 hours when my best crew are out on shuttles during Faction events, it hits 10 hours when the seat traits are tough, it hits 10 hours when I have tough feature skills (like COM, MED), it hits 10 hours every time I've tested it. It is remarkably versatile!
Here then, after just my own testing and refinement for approximately one month, are the initial Benchmarks for my new voyage staffing system:
1. GOLD: 11K < X < 12K
2. SILVER: 11K < X < 12K
3. TERTIARY SCORE: 23K+ (not to go below 21K if at all possible)
4. STARTING AM: X ≤ 2,950 (try to not go below 2,900 if at all possible)
[Tuvok]HOWEVER,[/Tuvok] while I shared this with a small group of friends over the last few months a flaw was discovered (that actually necessitated the publication of the Voyage Project Part 2, so there you go everyone who likes behind the scenes content
This discovery did however lead to the creation of the Zeroth Benchmark - High Proficiency crew are to be avoided at all costs if at all possible. Therefore, the true Benchmarks for the Bylo Band Voyage System are:
0. LIMIT HIGH PROFICIENCY CREW TO 0-1 (0 is best, 1 can work, 2+ is dangerous!)
1. GOLD: 11K < X < 12K
2. SILVER: 11K < X < 12K
3. TERTIARY SCORE: 23K+ (not to go below 21K if at all possible)
4. STARTING AM: X ≤ 2,950 (try to not go below 2,900 if at all possible)
The true power of this system is its built in flexibility. It is rarely possible to hit all of those Benchmarks, so if you find you can only manage to start with 2,900 AM it is fine as long as you hit the other three or get close to it.
HOW IT WORKS:
This system works for two reasons, it greatly reduces the impact of RNG on the voyage and it allows for greater flexibility in crew selection.
It reduces RNG by having you the player willingly trading away the backend potential needed to push for 11 hours in exchange for higher AM reserves at the 6 and 8 hour dilemmas. Put simply, by surrendering any chance of success beyond the 10 hour dilemma and boosting the Tertiary skills, fewer early skill checks fail in the first 6 hours, which increases the AM at the 8 hour dilemma, which provides a safety cushion between the 8 and 10 hour dilemmas to ensure the voyage will survive even if the RNG decides to not have the Gold/Silver skill checks occur at the expected average rates. Following the old 12-13K Gold/Silver model, you are used to having around 1,000 - 1,200 AM at the 8 hour dilemma. In my system, I average between 1,500 - 1,700 AM! This is done by removing between 1-3K from the Gold/Silver skills and redistributing them to the Tertiary skills.
It allows for greater flexibility in crew selection by capping the feature skills at effectively 11.5K, meaning players are no longer required to sacrifice strong crew at the altar of the feature skills. Since I began testing I regularly send one or two crew on each voyage that does not have either feature skill; I include them because they allow me to get the 25 AM seat bonus and boost my Tertiary scores, as I have already hit my benchmarks of 11.5K for the Gold and Silver. This is a really powerful and liberating part of the system and gives many more crew on your roster an opportunity to be useful and viable to help you on your voyages!
HOW TO USE IT:
Staff your voyages however you normally would until you start to retrain your process for crew selection (it took me a while!). Once you have all 12 seats filled, go back and compare your numbers to the five Benchmarks provided here, and start to make adjustments; get that starting AM as high as you possibly can, do not allow either feature skill to go over 12.5K, and get that Tertiary score as high as possible. My general rule of thumb is that once a feature skill goes above 12.5K I go back and find a crew with that skill I can replace with 500-1,000 less in the skill to keep my score between 11K and 12K.
There is an intuitive “sliding scale” principle you will become aware of very early on in this process. I refer to my numbers as Benchmarks as they are essentially just guideposts, they are not requirements. Sometimes you will not be able to get one of your feature skills over 11K AND THAT IS OK! Sometimes you will not be able to get your starting AM over 2,900 AND THAT IS OK! Sometimes your Tertiary will barely be over 21K AND THAT IS OK! Each Benchmark slides, and relates back to the other three. If you need to dip lower on one, you account for this deficiency by simply upping your numbers in the others! For example, if you cannot get your Tertiary over 22K, you can compensate by getting both feature skills over 11.5K and keeping your Starting AM over 2,900 and you will be just fine. Or for example, if you cannot get the Silver skill over 11K, you can compensate by making sure your Starting AM is 2,950 and your Tertiary is at 23K. In one of my test voyages I could not get either of my feature skills up to 11K (they were both 10.8K) and I still hit 10 hours because my Starting AM was 2,950 and my Tertiary score was over 24K!
If you have built your roster by favoring strong crew, crew with unique skill pairs, and crew with strong voyage traits, as most of us have, this system will work for you. For example, it has allowed me to include strong voyage crew without either feature skill into a lot more voyages than I used to to take advantage of their beefy numbers in buffing my Tertiary score, because usually I end up with at least one seat each voyage that is not needed to hit my Gold/Silver Benchmark scores, so I am free to slap a really strong crew into that seat to boost my Tertiary score.
WHY USE THIS SYSTEM:
I would start off by saying that if your personal goal is to always strive for the longest voyage possible, this system is not for you, continue to use the 12-13K Gold/Silver model or whatever system you are currently using.
I believe my system is the best I have ever encountered as it has many built in advantages.
First, it is extremely reliable at hitting the 10 hour dilemma every time, and based on previous testing this allows for optimal efficiency for voyage yields as it effectively eliminates the voyages that fail to achieve 10 hours. Using this system in my tests I have never failed to hit the 10 hour dilemma.
Second, it allows for much greater flexibility in crew selection as it eliminates the strict necessity of focusing only on the feature skills at all costs, and it also increases the range at which lesser crew like “Decrepit Legendaries (™)” are acceptable for use. Since you are not chasing those elusive 12-13K feature scores, some of your older crew with suboptimal skill scores become viable for use again to help you hit seat bonuses and pump up those Tertiary scores, especially those with strong Voyage Trait Scores.
Third, it removes all worry for players between the 8 and 10 hour dilemmas as there is no longer ANY need to “babysit” a voyage and hope it does not run out of AM. This is extremely liberating for both your mental health and personal lives/real world obligations!
Finally, because part of the system involves starting with 2,950 AM or close to it, players using this system will ALWAYS benefit from extending their voyages as each revival will get maximum bang for the buck. This last bit is especially helpful for people chasing the voyage exclusive super rare crew.
HOW TO USE THE NEW VVT IN CONJUNCTION WITH THIS SYSTEM:
Included in every crew's stats in the VVT is a Voyage Score Variable Pct (VSVP) score, which we define as the difference between the minimum and maximum value of a roll. In other words, use the VSVP scores to determine your proficiency risk.
It is entirely possible that in the future I will have to go back and change my Zeroth Benchmark to read something like "Ensure your total VSVP is no greater than X" but for now my rule of thumb is to view any crew with a VSVP score above 9% as being High Proficiency, and treat them accordingly. Some crew like Warship EMA (Variance score 9.69%) are a tad more complicated as they are often essentially "required" given their unique Trait Seat matches (for hard to hit traits like Hologram in this case) so there is no hard and fast rule, but if you are looking for a starting point in evaluating your proficiency risk, that is where I recommend you start.
If you have any questions about this voyage system, want advice on how to make the switch, details on how to use it in conjunction with the VVT, please ask! In closing, here is a venn diagram that I believe demonstrates visually the value of my new voyage system.
I now hand the microphone to Lorca!
If you are just starting out, you can just about go by the numbers in the spreadsheet to develop your roster. It’ll take a while for the crew with good numbers to be stat-creeped to irrelevance. But once you get to 15 or maybe as few as 10 immortalized VV’s, you’ll have to look deeper into the numbers. You’ll have to find the holes in your roster and decide what to prioritize as you continue to develop your roster.
That’s why there’s a lot of numbers in the spreadsheet. You can look at the voyagers who are most reliable or have the most potential to pass late-voyage hazards for a given skill. You can look at who is most likely to match a bonus trait for a given skill. You can see which VV’s may also help you in gauntlet or events, if those are your focus. This is just a tool to help you find the crew that you’ll have the most fun using for your play style. No one from WK Labs™ is going to tell you how to play. We just want you to have fun.
I hope you find this resource helpful as you develop your roster!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10zMyjjqEAGErOwAw3nRmJXuoLHRBIItk7XV8liF1iB8/edit?usp=sharing
Acknowledgements:
Conceptual Planner: @Bylo Band
Testing Technician: @Banjo1012
Formula Consultants: @Dirk Gunderson
Trait-Seat_Calcs and Adjusted_Voyage_Rankings by: @JimBerlin
If anything is wrong, blame: @Prime Lorca [10FH]
I am curious what you consider high proficiency that should be avoided? Do you have an approximate number? Avoiding people with huge prof would be easy but the middle high ones like Warship EMA I am unclear about what qualifies for that. Can you give me an average number or range that would qualify as high enough to be avoided?
I aim for this breakdown, which almost always allows me to hit a 10-hour voyage:
- Primary: at least 11.75 k
- Secondary: at least 11.5 k
- Other 4: at least 22.0 k total (none under 4.0 k individually)
I had never thought about the comparison between similarly ranked voyage crew when one is driven by a high base and the other by high proficiencies. That's definitely food for thought...
I'll let Bylo answer, of course, but the question seemed worthy of making a new tab, called Low_RNG. It has crew ranked from low to high RNG. Basically, the top one-third is at or below 7%.
I also think it's worth noting that many of the best MED crew have high proficiencies. MED is in a category all its own in several categories.
If you are referring to the thread where I was completely shredded as a human being then yes, I remember it well.
Heat maps in the Adjusted Rankings help put that into view. Just keep in mind that the basis for the color is the output Top N Viable Voyagers table... so the 50th percentile is midpoint, high value in list is red by default, and low value is green. I hope that helps.
Edit: what's "good" in CMD/MED may be different than CMD/ENG
Thanks a bunch for this @ all the people involved!!
... now on to the reading of the post (and seeing where my all-time fave RAF O'Brien ranks)
He made a couple top 25 lists. He's interesting to say the least.
Just some notes to pass along.
1 Add headers to the bonuses sheet
2 New Eden Pike has a copy paste error with Nepenthe Troi
Great start so far, lots of things to dig into.
Thank you for the feedback. Both are fixed.
Quick admission: I've been responsible for most of the data entry errors so far, including this one.
I would classify him as a necessary evil, lol. Just slide your numbers when you use him and you'll be fine. I use him fairly regularly, I just make sure to keep my other numbers button down and things still work out.
But I would like to make a special gesture of gratitude towards @Bylo Band. He has been very gracious with both his time and advice, as well as assisting me with voyage set ups, since I expressed interest in contributing towards this in the previous threads.
I feel very honoured that he has given me a sneak peek into this system and how it would affect my roster. With his advice, and constant patience with my questions and voyage analysis requests, it has made a very noticeable impact on my voyage success.
I've also been sending him my crash and burns when I've stubbornly or accidentally slipped back to my old ways. Maybe they might have helped with this project, I hope. If nothing else, they've reinforced what not to do 😅
Once again, a huge thank you to everyone involved for their contributions to this forum, this game, and specifically this extended project. This goes to show how much good can come from this forum when people set aside petty differences, and work towards a common goal. I hope to see more of this in the future.
This has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for this game and made me do some deep dives into different concepts and into my roster itself. Not to mention the impact it's had on my voyages. For that, I am truly thankful.
LLAP 🖖🏼
Seriously, though, this is a well-developed voyage tool. Not only does it cleanly display features that are sprayed across multiple ham-fisted worksheets in my personal Excel workbook, the estimation functionality is more accurate than any tool I have seen before. The amount of work that has gone into it is second only to the amount of care put into it. Well done to everyone who had a hand in its creation!
As for the Bylo Method, it dawned on me that this is by and large what I have been doing for a while. At first, I struggled to reach the 12.5k/12.5k primary/secondary scores because my crew wasn’t quite strong enough to get the job done. Yet, as my crew got better I really ended up improving the tertiary scores while leaving my featured skills in the 11.5-12k range. As time has gone by, voyages petering out between 9:45 and 9:59 went from a routine occurrence to a rare freak occurrence fueled by unfortunate hazard check RNG. I don’t usually follow the 0th principle - my definition of “high proficiency-induced stat variance” is higher than what Bylo uses - but the beauty of voyages in general is that there are multiple “destinations” (such as going for the longest possible voyage with your crew or consistently hitting a target) and even more paths to get there.
One limitation that won’t be easy to get around is that the distribution of individual tertiary skills doesn’t always seem be 10% each. That the tertiaries represent 40% of the total has been proven many times over (which shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone with even a passing background in statistics); when looking at individual skills, however, sometimes it seems like the distribution is more like 12/10/10/8% rather than 10% each...annoying, if your beefiest tertiary gets checked the least and your weakest tertiary is checked the most (of the four skills). However, unless a lot of experimentation can correlate which skills are checked with a controllable variable, it is not feasible to try and account for this apparent phenomenon.
All in all, this project represents a great development in our understanding of voyage mechanics. Bravo again to everyone who has helped us get to where we are.
But I am still a little confused as to what constitutes a high proficiency number to be avoided? How high is too high? Or is it more just trying to eliminate using any crew with any proficiency? It would be helpful to me if I could see ranges. Like higher than 1000 total proficiency should be avoided? 1500? Is it just their proficiency in the primary/secondary skill or just any high proficiency? Should I avoid or limit middle proficiency crew as well? It is hard to avoid using these crew if I cannot tell who they are by looking at their numbers. If I could get clarification on this it would be very helpful to me. Thanks.
I also appreciate you guys getting this out befor thebhonor sale. Good thinking there and very considerate.
My problem is that I have much less access to a computer for all of this. At work I can't use my computer for any of this, and at home I have family activity. I can't look up crew as I plan out my voyages so well.
So what I need is a brief list of who would be the "traditional" best crew due to proficiency rating. In other words, a list of the most common crew to avoid. (For instance, I can remember to avoid Gun Show Picard and Gary Seven, but there are a lot of good voyage crew like First Officer Burnham, Braxton, or Sinister Picard who I don't know if they are good proficiency or just good all-around.)
And I also wonder if you have a list of the top crew to get who may be un-thought-of. I have hundreds (literally) of 1/5 and 2/5. I don't even know where to begin except by all they old lists of top voyagers. Can we get a "Bylo's Top 30" or a top 3 for each pairing or some place to start? That would be great.
Bylo or Lorca may be able to give you a number, but I am a fan of the "it depends" answer because that's usually the truth.
The issue is not the proficiency score itself, but the variability its range imparts on the voyage roll (usually the score and range go hand in hand). A crew may have more proficiency contribution to score, but lower variance. Some crew have high proficiency ranges in one skill, but lower in the other two. That means the variance of the total score isn't a perfect metric, but it's a start.
There are 364 viable voyagers, currently. The lowest value of % Variance is 2.8% (Uxbridge). The 10th percentile would be ≤5.7%, 25th percentile is ≤6.7%, and 50th percentile is ≤7.8%. That changes significantly if you look at it from a perspective of voyage skill pairs. Glancing at the top 25 on a MED/DIP voyage, the 50th percentile is around 8% with a low of 5.8%.
Clear as mud?
I’m sort of in the same boat. I don’t have a computer at home, but I do at work. What I did was work out the best possible scenario for all 15 possible voyage pairs (I’m shooting for 12 hours so I found one ideal set up for each) then put each one in the notes on my phone. It’s right there ready to go. Only thing is sometimes I can move crew around to try and trait match but I keep the crew the same.
Looking forward to sitting down with this spreadsheet (now there’s something I don’t say every day...) and deciding which crew to work on next! Current projects are Reverend Phlox and Boothby Replicant, so interested to see how they figure in the grand plan.
Thanks again for your dedication to the cause. LLAP
First of all: WOW! I'm really impressed by all your knowlegde and the dedication for the game that you put so much work into such a tool. Thank you!
I downloaded a copy and tried it out. Put my current voyage crew into the slots at "Your_Voyage", but instead of showing numbers I got "Error:511". I added a ";0" before the last bracket, which solved it.
I'm using Libre Office 7.1 (german version).
There are brief lists in the Top_25s tab. It has the top 25 crew in a bunch of metrics. That may be a problem on a small device, like a phone. They are brief lists, but there are too many of them. If it's not a problem, then there's your tab.
My alternative to that is my second-favorite tab: Combined_Rolls.
(The Your_Voyage tab is my favorite.)
The Combined_Rolls tab organizes crew in two groups: "Best Guarantee" and "Most Potential".
The "Best Guarantee" list ranks crew in terms of their combined minimum roll. Basically, if your RNG is a 1 every time, these are the crew who will take you the furthest. They have the highest Base + Min Proficiency. If you are looking for a guarantee, then I recommend using this "Best Guarantee" list.
The "Most Potential" list is sort of the opposite. If you're chasing that 12-hour voyage, then getting good rolls at 10-12 hours is important. Crew on the "Most Potential" list can potentially pass those late hazards. Their score is based on their Base + Max Proficiency. If you're going for 12 hours, then you may want to consider crew from this list.
There's crossover on these lists. For example, Captain Braxton is #5 on one list and #7 on the other. His base + min proficiency and base + max proficiency are both good. He'll definitely take you far and might take you very far. On the other end of the spectrum is Mirror Spock. Whoa! He is second from bottom of one list and third from bottom on the other. He will definitely take you nowhere! He's +1 Vulcan, +1 Mirror, and has some event and arena/skirmish use, but... as a voyager he is useless. (I say this as someone who has him at 5/5 for those other uses.)
There is also (thanks to Apollo) a Low_RNG tab. They are the most consistent crew in the game. They may or may not be consistently good, but they are consistent. I used the tab to see where the top one-third, middle one-third, and bottom one-third are in terms of variability. You can see that this has two shortcomings. First, MED primary crew aren't well represented because they tend to have the highest proficiencies. Second, as implied, they are not consistently good, just consistent. You're going to have MED voyages, so RNG is just going to be a part of those. You can try to minimize it if you want, but you might end up getting consistent 9:45 voyages.
So... I typed all that and I'm not going to delete it in case someone finds it useful, but I should have just asked: What are your voyage goals? What other game play modes do you care about, @DavideBooks ?