The Zeroth Benchmark is for all crew, not just those with skin in the game on the feature skills. I see 2 crew (Locutus and Surak) who are very high proficiency and 2 more that are borderline high proficiency (Warship EMA and Stranded Quark). The system works by combining certainty with antimatter to build up a huge reserve of antimatter in the first 8 hours and then riding that wave to the 10 hour finish line. By having 1/3 of your crew have high proficiency you introduced enough risk to allow RNG to pick your pockets enough times in the early going to sabotage your chances late. I also am not sure what your starting AM was but from the third screenshoot I see you missed 2 seat traits on 6 seats so that is also something else to keep an eye on.
If you would like to discuss this further I welcome you to join our Discord server so we can more easily share screenshots, and also leave this thread clear for discussions about the VVT and voyage system
Speaking of the VVT, it was updated yesterday with new functionality, the link in the original post has been updated!
The Zeroth Benchmark is for all crew, not just those with skin in the game on the feature skills. I see 2 crew (Locutus and Surak) who are very high proficiency and 2 more that are borderline high proficiency (Warship EMA and Stranded Quark). The system works by combining certainty with antimatter to build up a huge reserve of antimatter in the first 8 hours and then riding that wave to the 10 hour finish line. By having 1/3 of your crew have high proficiency you introduced enough risk to allow RNG to pick your pockets enough times in the early going to sabotage your chances late. I also am not sure what your starting AM was but from the third screenshoot I see you missed 2 seat traits on 6 seats so that is also something else to keep an eye on.
If you would like to discuss this further I welcome you to join our Discord server so we can more easily share screenshots, and also leave this thread clear for discussions about the VVT and voyage system
Speaking of the VVT, it was updated yesterday with new functionality, the link in the original post has been updated!
It also had starting am of just 2700 cause of a stupid dumb ship trait of dominion and my legendary dominion ship isn’t maxed.
The Zeroth Benchmark is for all crew, not just those with skin in the game on the feature skills. I see 2 crew (Locutus and Surak) who are very high proficiency and 2 more that are borderline high proficiency (Warship EMA and Stranded Quark). The system works by combining certainty with antimatter to build up a huge reserve of antimatter in the first 8 hours and then riding that wave to the 10 hour finish line. By having 1/3 of your crew have high proficiency you introduced enough risk to allow RNG to pick your pockets enough times in the early going to sabotage your chances late. I also am not sure what your starting AM was but from the third screenshoot I see you missed 2 seat traits on 6 seats so that is also something else to keep an eye on.
If you would like to discuss this further I welcome you to join our Discord server so we can more easily share screenshots, and also leave this thread clear for discussions about the VVT and voyage system
Speaking of the VVT, it was updated yesterday with new functionality, the link in the original post has been updated!
It also had starting am of just 2700 cause of a stupid dumb ship trait of dominion and my legendary dominion ship isn’t maxed.
200 AM (the difference between your 2,700 and the 2,900 recommended by Bylo) would have made roughly 20 minutes difference if you were passing 60% of your checks, as your combined gold and silver suggests you most likely would have. Though with so much proficiency, it's far from a guarantee.
Nice work on the traits and the tool. And excellent write up again.
I think I mentioned this in the part 2 thread as well, but I can’t help thinking that you focus too much on high proficiency. High proficiency isn’t bad per se.
The experiment you described in part 2 shows that hazards in voyages work essentially the same as away team missions. You need to score higher than a (undefined) threshold and your score is base + the rng outcome of proficiency. Thus the minimum score is base plus min proficiency. For a reliable voyage length you need to pass as many hazards as possible without needing the proficiency. Therefore, the minimum score needs to be as high as possible. The proficiency range itself is thus irrelevant. The only problem is that the game shows the average strength of each crew and that overestimates the min score for high proficiency crew. Therefore, if you staff your voyage on the in game values high proficiency crew are dangerous.
But avoiding high proficiency crew is solving that problem in an indirect way. The direct way to decide on the best way to staff a voyage would be to circumvent the in game voyage scores and directly use the minimum voyage score. Your tool already has the required values pre-calculated. So if you use this tool to decide who to load on a voyage based on the minimum voyage score, there is no need to avoid high proficiency crew. Of course, the result would still be that you generally won’t select high proficiency crew because they tend to have low minimum voyage scores, but crew with a high minimum score plus high proficiency, like captain Braxton (who has the 8th highest minimum voyage score), should still be selected for a reliable 10 hr voyage (Traits depending of course). In such cases the high proficiency is just a bonus that doesn’t come at the expense of reliability.
The tool actually shows very nicely that a lot of crew are very well balanced. Most crew with a high chance of a trait match don’t have very high voyage scores (minimum or average) and crew like ba’ul that have a powerful combination of skills and voyage score lack a good trait set.
Your tool is very helpful for assessing all the different aspects of voyages. Thanks a lot for creating and sharing it.
...
High proficiency isn’t bad per se.
The experiment you described in part 2 shows that hazards in voyages work essentially the same as away team missions. You need to score higher than a (undefined) threshold and your score is base + the rng outcome of proficiency. Thus the minimum score is base plus min proficiency. For a reliable voyage length you need to pass as many hazards as possible without needing the proficiency. Therefore, the minimum score needs to be as high as possible. The proficiency range itself is thus irrelevant.
...
Yep, this is why it is up to the user and Lorca's Your Voyage tab has min, avg, and max time to pass checks. You may have a better floor with your high RNG crew than with the more consistent voyagers. Some users will use this exclusively to push the max and not care about consistency and certainty of making X hours. I like looking at the % variance, which covers that decently.
I have a sparse roster compared to others on here, so I can't be so picky with voyages. I can be picky when it comes to crew retrieval, beholds, and cites, though.
Ba'ul was one that jumped out really quick. Solid numbers, lower end variance, but dismal trait match odds. Still may be your best option in a behold. If you have it already, your cites may give you better return elsewhere, unless you're really hurting in sec/eng. Or, you could have a hoard of cites and not care.
Also, haven't forgotten about you @enzo_karotti ... first, I got caught up in learning some basic code to create the new features I'm finishing up. Second, I don't have any open source suites at work and that's where I've spent most of the night. I'm interested to see what each export file type keeps or doesn't.
No need to apologize!
My intention was to help out other users with the same or similar problems. The solution was as basic as the code, the thing is to find the spot where a "0" or a ")" or whatever is missing. I will continue to use your files with LibreOffice.
cheers
Minor update incoming shortly - script hotfix, Katrine "main cast variant" corrected, and Lorca will be adding the new crew's info sometime shortly after it is released. The first two are already live in the file.
Do I need to to get a fresh copy? - Not necessarily. The "set to default" script was off by one column, which means you could still use the other two buttons to perform the same task. You could manually update Katrine's info in Base_Stats, and you could add the new crew manually. If you've done work on the sheet yourself and are afraid of losing it, read below to see my recommendations...
Script hotfix
Not sure if users can edit the script since they've made a copy and it runs in their sheet, but I found a bug on the "set to default script".
If you've done customization to your sheets, you should be able to drag and drop. No columns have moved, no references have been changed.
Download updated version to fix or swap in code at line 34, if it will let you. Line 34 should read:
spreadsheet.getCurrentCell().setFormula('=Query($O$21:$AR$615,"Select P,Q,R,S,Z,T,AJ,U,V where (P<>\'\' and O=TRUE and AR=TRUE) Order by Q Desc Limit " & $F$12)');
Importing your customized info
If you have manually selected crew in the AVR tab, it is probably best to duplicate that tab so you have a default copy and a personalized copy. That way, you can look at one for citation judgement and one for planning for the future or running voyages if you have most of the VVs. If you've done that, make a copy of the new version, right click the tab, "copy to", choose "existing spreadsheet", and choose the your copy of the new version.
If you've been editing Base_Stats to put in your current crew, then you'll need to copy the data from that tab in your copy and overwrite the data in your copy of the new version. Base_Stats is the master essentially for all of the input data, so that is the backbone of this file.
Just wanted to drop this here so that people can reflect on some possibilities.
- I'm running a MEC/CMD voyage at present
- The 5* ship is lvl 9/10 but does have bonus
- 7 crew have bonus (rough seating traits!)
- Starting AM 2750 - overall not great.
- Tertiary skill total 23.966
This is the state at 8 hrs ... will post 10 hrs later (if I make it or not):
This is a list of the crew with associated variance, including a split per main skill:
- Boy is it difficult to get MED variance down on a voyage like this. But I hope I've compensated for that by boosting the MED skill a bit higher than suggested (around 1.000 points).
- CMD is solid.
EDIT - 10 hrs
So, here's the end result. Pretty solid really and something I might expect with around 1350 drop in AM over the two hours.
If I see a voyage with this kind of (a balanced, steady, Bylo) setup with 1400 at 8 hrs I'm always going for the 10 hrs.
I recalled but realised I could have made quite a run (on this voyage combo that is generally rated difficult) with probably 30-40 minutes left in the tank (781/24).
Anyway, hope this helps people regarding the implementation of this method for voyages ... things to look at, take note of, how to adjust etc. etc. The VVT spreadsheet is of great help for this.
You are quite correct @RaraRacing for whatever reason a great number of MED crew seem to have larger than normal variance scores. The new Collection has helped certainly, but your solution is the same one I employ when I have MED as a feature skill. It was really cool to see such an amazing amount of AM at the 8 hour dilemma, that is fantastic!
I got bad ship traits for a week and got stuck on med/cmd.
Running with 2800am maximum, compensating for it with 12k+ primary and secundary or 23k+ tertiary I only had 1in 7 cmd/med voyages get less then 10 hrs
It was really cool to see such an amazing amount of AM at the 8-hour dilemma, that is fantastic!
Yes, I didn't mention it in the post, but that comes down to:
- the relatively low variance scores in all 4 tertiary skills meaning I'm certain not to fail checks for quite some time
- luck in probably getting more DIP and SEC checks than SCI and ENG (I'll check the voyage final stats)
I just filled in the Your_Voyage tab and included all bonuses ... the variance numbers are slightly different because I do not have max bonuses for all skills and I've used max bonuses for my calculations above.
I hadn't quite made full use of your VVT tool yet, but have mainly used it as an indicator regarding variance. Anyway, interesting to see the result.
EDIT: @JimBerlin below ... yes I know, see point 2 above. However, I just saw this ...
The tertiaries were skewed to SEC by lot (almost double) with DIP being similar to ENG and SCI. The bias to optimal timing is probably irrelevant when considering DIP.
And thanks ... I hate to boast, but staffing voyages (with my limited crew (7 of 12 crew used have been available to all players) ... am by no means a whale) is something I feel I'm quite good at ... see my Ready Room threads.
Across a large number of voyages, even tertiary scores, on average, should perform more steadily than unevenly distributed ones. If you're low in a skill/higher in 3 or high in 1/low in 3, you've sort of introduced a new RNG factor that is an axe that swings both ways. If you're shooting for 10, but find at 8 that you don't have enough AM to carry you through, this may be the cause.
@RaraRacing , you may have had a bunch of Dip checks in the 3-7 hr range and not caught the fails that would have been associated with your Sci & Eng scores. That's a knob that's not so easy to adjust, depending on your crew and the featured pair. Just something to keep in mind.
Going back to our proficiency discussion in Phase 1, I started thinking about this game-wide, for shuttle missions, gauntlet, etc. For Gauntlet, only using 2 high prof crew for the main skill and 3 medium-low prof crew (and NON-Gauntlet specific crew) for instance has made a better balance, so I see more runs into the double digits, instead of getting killed on battle #2 or 5 all the time.
Your approach to limiting the proficiencies makes total sense for the conservative & consistency route for 10 hour Voyages, and also makes sense why those we *think* should easily cross the 10-hour mark often fail and leave us scratching our heads.
[Tuvok]HOWEVER[/Tuvok] (I love that BTW) – I think even with all the new bonus skill bumps from collections over the past few months, the Bylo Method will never get to the 12-hour mark. I think it is an unfortunate trade-off to require some high proficiency crew to get you to the 12-hour mark and have to cross your fingers the whole way. I may be wrong, but logic dictates... I can only think it's a matter of highest possible skills and traits combined (and very lucky RNG on the high profs) to get the elusive 12-hours. (My top so far is now 11:23)
All that being said - I absolutely love the whole process you outlined and how everything came together to get this put together! Very well done!
It has been over 6 months since I have had any DIP-anything in Voyages, where I am guessing most of my VVT crew would probably work best. My disappointing Voyage skill combos have left me lacking in Voyage interest all that time. (Oh look, SEC/MED... again, sigh)
[Tuvok]HOWEVER[/Tuvok] (I love that BTW) – I think even with all the new bonus skill bumps from collections over the past few months, the Bylo Method will never get to the 12-hour mark. I think it is an unfortunate trade-off to require some high proficiency crew to get you to the 12-hour mark and have to cross your fingers the whole way. I may be wrong, but logic dictates... I can only think it's a matter of highest possible skills and traits combined (and very lucky RNG on the high profs) to get the elusive 12-hours. (My top so far is now 11:23)
You are 100% correct. The Bylo Method is not for people chasing 12 hours, quite the opposite, it is designed to hit 10 hours and then recall immediately after the 10 hour dilemma, which ties back to Part 1 where we learned that it is most efficient to recall voyages right after dilemmas. People chasing 12 hour voyages will want to do the exact opposite of what I recommend, and that is load up on proficiency and hope RNGesus is with you!
My personal best voyage time has been stuck at 10:53 for over a year because I simply have stopped taking voyages passed 10 hours. I love just setting my voyages using my method (at this point it is second nature to me, I helped create the VVT to help other people "see" what I see) and never having to worry about them, I know they'll hit 10 hours every time and I just recall after the 10 hour dilemma, I never have to think twice about a voyage once I send it. It is a great feeling. But you are correct, people chasing 12 hour voyages will absolutely want no part of my system, but I think they can benefit just as much from paying attention to proficiency
And I set up the VVT for people who ARE chasing 12 hours. You see... the Combined_Rolls tab helps identify the top crew for guaranteed success, as well as the ones who have potential to go the furthest. Braxton and Spock+Kirk are near the top on both lists. They'll help maintain AM supply early and give your voyage a shot to go even deeper. I think it helps significantly to have crew who help do both of these things if you're chasing 12 hours.
Then I set up the Your_Voyage tab to help your targeting. My advice is to aim your gold and silver skills just below 14,400 and get your tertiaries as high as possible. I say just below 14,400 for a couple reasons. 14,400 is where you have a 50/50 shot to pass a hazard at 12 hours. You'll need some favorable rolls toward the end, but they'll just need to be in the top 50th to 70th percentile. If you go above 14,400, then your tertiaries suffer and it will be nearly impossible to have enough AM at 10 hours to even have a shot at 12 hours. I have discussed this at some length with @Banjo1012 . If you go below 13,500 on gold and silver, then your odds of passing those hazards at the end drop. It becomes unlikely that you will be able to pass enough at the end to sustain your voyage.
In my opinion, the tertiaries can have any level of (im)balance you desire. The voyage will far exceed their chances to succeed in a skill check. For that reason, their pass/fail ratio is likely to be a close representation of their average score, so you may as well just reside that average ad high as possible. If the tertiaries are balanced, then you'll be guaranteed to pass them all for a certain time, then start to fail some, then fail them all. If they are imbalanced, then you have a chance that RNG will be favorable and check your weaker skills more early and your stronger skills more later. Or... the opposite can happen and totally wreck your voyage.
TL;DR: the VVT is set up for both 10-hour and 12-hour voyage players.
Thanks for the comments, @Commander Sinclair . Your analysis on how to design a 12 hr voyage sounds right to me. The variance in rolls from proficiency range cuts both ways; raising your minimum roll lowers your max.
The only thing the weighted rankings tab has that is geared specifically towards consistent voyages is the color scheme on the heat maps that corresponds to variance. By default, red=high variance amongst the pool=potential for both higher and lower rolls vs. their avg. You can go in and swap the colors around if that bothers you.
I'm still working on refining the rankings tab to include more potential constraints for searches, such as displaying the "other" skill and allowing a constraint by that. If anyone has any other suggestions, let me know and I'll fold it in if it's easy enough. Sometimes these things are way more difficult to implement than conceive.
Hopefully everyone is enjoying the Honor Sale, taking full advantage, and having fun beefing up their rosters. I just wanted to pop in to say the VVT has been updated with all the new cards (it gets updated weekly) and is a great resource to help pinpoint the best cards to receive your hard-earned citations.
I have a fleetmate who was asking about 8 hour voyages. What numbers do you give for 8 hours?
I have a little "guide" of sorts in the Your_Voyage tab. There's different ways to get to 8 hours, but I find the simplest is to target 9,600 on gold and silver, then get the rest as high as you can.
I've been using the guide to help me freeze crew, even though I've got more than enough crew slots I like to keep my crew streamlined.
Have frozen 18 5* 3-skillers (and 5 2-skillers and 1 1-skill crew) ... with another 6 on the short-list ... most have been a combo of average to low voyage scores and high variance. Examples include Armus, EV Suit Seven and Age of Sail Crusher.
Anyway, still getting 10 hrs each time out on all skill combos ... basically these are crew that were either:
- not used much, if ever;
- easily replaced.
I can list 'em all here, but it is fairly player-specific, so won't be much help to others. Point is, there's a lot of deadwood on an average roster, I'll spend the 100 Merits to bring 'em back if needed (events) and so they don't clutter my daily roster (voyage options, etc.) when choosing crew.
That is a very creative idea, I love it! That also highlights a very important aspect of playing, and it is great to see you use the tool to audit your existing crew like that!
So I have been working with the VVT since it’s inception. I started by making rosters of every combo with the criteria that the voyage will have a chance at 12 hours and the tertiaries are as high as possible. I set rosters in stone and stuck with them religiously. This kind of just shifted the balance more towards tertiary skill numbers yet away from starting AM so the scale slid but didn’t change my overall lengths. Then I started to pay attention to the crew I used for those 15 rosters. Putting them together conditioned me to recognize the crew to use. So I put together a list of all the crew I had with total voyage scores over 3980. Came out to 67 and it rises each time a new collection is introduced and more boosts are awarded. So now, instead of sticking to those rosters I am sticking to those 67 crew. This has allowed me to hit all criteria. 12 hour possibility with the featured skills, well over 20k for the tertiaries, and good starting AM. HUGE difference. Just in the past two or three weeks of doing this I have had 9 voyages clear 11:20. I was just using it as the your voyage tab, but once I opened myself up to the other tabs and pieced them all together as a whole, things really started coming together. I want to give a huge thanks to Lorca, Jim, Bylo, and Dirk on putting this together. I am correctly only marked as the tester as I can’t do much more than pencil and paper. I’m so computer illiterate I don’t even own one, I have to use my work computer to do my VVT thing. Thanks guys. As an example, here is my current voyage
And of course I always love when I can take the NX-01 for a spin!
Thanks for the kind words, @Banjo1012 . And I do want to say that without your help in testing, I wouldn't have been able to nail down the rounding for the starbase and collection bonuses. And your voyage systems and strategies were a major inspiration for the Your_Voyage tab.
And while I'm here, I'll go ahead and share my assessment of our two latest VV's.
Klingon West
They're just stacking up the VV's at the top lately. Klingon West is another top voyager.
#10 voyage total
#17 combined maximum roll
#24 combined minimum roll
Tied for 9th with 23 trait-seat matches
Almost 76% chance to match a trait.
Top 25 for average primary roll, minimum SEC roll, and maximum SEC roll.
It's a common skill combo, but he'll sit near the top of the heap. His main weakness is variance. He has enough to make him an inconsistent voyager, but not enough to make him valuable in the gauntlet.
Tactical Stamets
Tactical Stamets has a top 20 voyage total. He's the new SEC champ for both minimum and maximum rolls. His skill order isn't terribly common. As Discovery main cast, his event outlook is good. He's a hair over 8% variance, so he won't be reliable for the 10-hour crowd, but his top 35 for both combined minimum and combined maximum roll make him a strong option for the 12-hour chasers. Stamets' trait-seats are in the middling range. Basically, he's competing against the Human/Federation/Starfleet crowd for voyage seats and he will often be the best option, but not always.
I haven't seen @Prime Lorca [10FH] in a while and they were usually the one to be able to add new crew. Sorry for any inconvenience. This tool's conception was outside of other tools with no code or formulas referenced to avoid any "hint of impropriety", as it were. Automatic crew import was something Idol's tool featured heavily, and I believe Lorca wanted to stay away from this to not be accused of stealing or rehashing. However, I have definitely seen a "share and share alike" attitude from this community. A couple of things that have been displayed here and in other things I've shared have ended up elsewhere. Everything here is free and open source, as far as I'm concerned. So, I have no issue with that. I still am not willing to take any code from others and if I mimic functionality, I'm building it from scratch. This is all meant to be a learning experience for me. I use a lot of what I learn messing with this for internal SQC tools at work.
That said, work and other priorities keep me from working on this and other tools as much as I'd like. What I do have done is all of the groundwork for the Voyage Project Part 4 and am mostly done with a reworked tool that does everything automatically. I believe Bylo may be finished with something he's been working on, too. So a couple of interesting things are coming down the pipeline. Putting things in by hand is not a sustainable solution with only one person maintaining numbers, and Iwill incorporate an auto-import amongst other new features.
As long as Prime Lorca doesn't have any issues (appears to be retired from the game), I will release a revamped tool soon. I am waiting for a couple of business trips where I will be alone for a week at a time roughly, which gives ample time to hammer out all issues and test. These have been delayed due to Covid and delays in manufacturing, raw materials, and construction at external sites (this is part of business these days)
If anyone has any specific requests for functionality, feel free to post here or PM me. LLAP
1. Jim has taken the baton and run with it. Voyage Project 4, from what I've seen so far, is really good. And I will also add that Jim is being modest, he's been absolutely BURRIED with RL work and other things and has still managed to keep up on extra curricular things like this, so it is my hope that when he posts Part 4 and the updated tool that it is well received by the community.
2. I won't say it has been an active experiment on par with the other projects but I have been working on a new twist to voyages to keep them fresh/interesting, and I am pleased with the results. It was not really worthy of an entire new thread but I am excited to share it and will add it to Jim's Part 4 post when the time comes.
Comments
If you would like to discuss this further I welcome you to join our Discord server so we can more easily share screenshots, and also leave this thread clear for discussions about the VVT and voyage system
Speaking of the VVT, it was updated yesterday with new functionality, the link in the original post has been updated!
It also had starting am of just 2700 cause of a stupid dumb ship trait of dominion and my legendary dominion ship isn’t maxed.
200 AM (the difference between your 2,700 and the 2,900 recommended by Bylo) would have made roughly 20 minutes difference if you were passing 60% of your checks, as your combined gold and silver suggests you most likely would have. Though with so much proficiency, it's far from a guarantee.
I think I mentioned this in the part 2 thread as well, but I can’t help thinking that you focus too much on high proficiency. High proficiency isn’t bad per se.
The experiment you described in part 2 shows that hazards in voyages work essentially the same as away team missions. You need to score higher than a (undefined) threshold and your score is base + the rng outcome of proficiency. Thus the minimum score is base plus min proficiency. For a reliable voyage length you need to pass as many hazards as possible without needing the proficiency. Therefore, the minimum score needs to be as high as possible. The proficiency range itself is thus irrelevant. The only problem is that the game shows the average strength of each crew and that overestimates the min score for high proficiency crew. Therefore, if you staff your voyage on the in game values high proficiency crew are dangerous.
But avoiding high proficiency crew is solving that problem in an indirect way. The direct way to decide on the best way to staff a voyage would be to circumvent the in game voyage scores and directly use the minimum voyage score. Your tool already has the required values pre-calculated. So if you use this tool to decide who to load on a voyage based on the minimum voyage score, there is no need to avoid high proficiency crew. Of course, the result would still be that you generally won’t select high proficiency crew because they tend to have low minimum voyage scores, but crew with a high minimum score plus high proficiency, like captain Braxton (who has the 8th highest minimum voyage score), should still be selected for a reliable 10 hr voyage (Traits depending of course). In such cases the high proficiency is just a bonus that doesn’t come at the expense of reliability.
The tool actually shows very nicely that a lot of crew are very well balanced. Most crew with a high chance of a trait match don’t have very high voyage scores (minimum or average) and crew like ba’ul that have a powerful combination of skills and voyage score lack a good trait set.
Your tool is very helpful for assessing all the different aspects of voyages. Thanks a lot for creating and sharing it.
I have a sparse roster compared to others on here, so I can't be so picky with voyages. I can be picky when it comes to crew retrieval, beholds, and cites, though.
Ba'ul was one that jumped out really quick. Solid numbers, lower end variance, but dismal trait match odds. Still may be your best option in a behold. If you have it already, your cites may give you better return elsewhere, unless you're really hurting in sec/eng. Or, you could have a hoard of cites and not care.
No need to apologize!
My intention was to help out other users with the same or similar problems. The solution was as basic as the code, the thing is to find the spot where a "0" or a ")" or whatever is missing. I will continue to use your files with LibreOffice.
cheers
Do I need to to get a fresh copy? - Not necessarily. The "set to default" script was off by one column, which means you could still use the other two buttons to perform the same task. You could manually update Katrine's info in Base_Stats, and you could add the new crew manually. If you've done work on the sheet yourself and are afraid of losing it, read below to see my recommendations...
Script hotfix
If you've done customization to your sheets, you should be able to drag and drop. No columns have moved, no references have been changed.
Download updated version to fix or swap in code at line 34, if it will let you. Line 34 should read:
spreadsheet.getCurrentCell().setFormula('=Query($O$21:$AR$615,"Select P,Q,R,S,Z,T,AJ,U,V where (P<>\'\' and O=TRUE and AR=TRUE) Order by Q Desc Limit " & $F$12)');
Importing your customized info
If you've been editing Base_Stats to put in your current crew, then you'll need to copy the data from that tab in your copy and overwrite the data in your copy of the new version. Base_Stats is the master essentially for all of the input data, so that is the backbone of this file.
New Chekov compared to the field in Sec/Sci @30/30
Just wanted to drop this here so that people can reflect on some possibilities.
- I'm running a MEC/CMD voyage at present
- The 5* ship is lvl 9/10 but does have bonus
- 7 crew have bonus (rough seating traits!)
- Starting AM 2750 - overall not great.
- Tertiary skill total 23.966
This is the state at 8 hrs ... will post 10 hrs later (if I make it or not):
This is a list of the crew with associated variance, including a split per main skill:
- Boy is it difficult to get MED variance down on a voyage like this. But I hope I've compensated for that by boosting the MED skill a bit higher than suggested (around 1.000 points).
- CMD is solid.
EDIT - 10 hrs
So, here's the end result. Pretty solid really and something I might expect with around 1350 drop in AM over the two hours.
If I see a voyage with this kind of (a balanced, steady, Bylo) setup with 1400 at 8 hrs I'm always going for the 10 hrs.
I recalled but realised I could have made quite a run (on this voyage combo that is generally rated difficult) with probably 30-40 minutes left in the tank (781/24).
Anyway, hope this helps people regarding the implementation of this method for voyages ... things to look at, take note of, how to adjust etc. etc. The VVT spreadsheet is of great help for this.
Running with 2800am maximum, compensating for it with 12k+ primary and secundary or 23k+ tertiary I only had 1in 7 cmd/med voyages get less then 10 hrs
Yes, I didn't mention it in the post, but that comes down to:
- the relatively low variance scores in all 4 tertiary skills meaning I'm certain not to fail checks for quite some time
- luck in probably getting more DIP and SEC checks than SCI and ENG
I just filled in the Your_Voyage tab and included all bonuses ... the variance numbers are slightly different because I do not have max bonuses for all skills and I've used max bonuses for my calculations above.
I hadn't quite made full use of your VVT tool yet, but have mainly used it as an indicator regarding variance. Anyway, interesting to see the result.
EDIT: @JimBerlin below ... yes I know, see point 2 above.
The tertiaries were skewed to SEC by lot (almost double) with DIP being similar to ENG and SCI. The bias to optimal timing is probably irrelevant when considering DIP.
And thanks ... I hate to boast, but staffing voyages (with my limited crew (7 of 12 crew used have been available to all players) ... am by no means a whale) is something I feel I'm quite good at ... see my Ready Room threads.
@RaraRacing , you may have had a bunch of Dip checks in the 3-7 hr range and not caught the fails that would have been associated with your Sci & Eng scores. That's a knob that's not so easy to adjust, depending on your crew and the featured pair. Just something to keep in mind.
Edit: btw, great voyage for that pair!
Your approach to limiting the proficiencies makes total sense for the conservative & consistency route for 10 hour Voyages, and also makes sense why those we *think* should easily cross the 10-hour mark often fail and leave us scratching our heads.
[Tuvok]HOWEVER[/Tuvok] (I love that BTW) – I think even with all the new bonus skill bumps from collections over the past few months, the Bylo Method will never get to the 12-hour mark. I think it is an unfortunate trade-off to require some high proficiency crew to get you to the 12-hour mark and have to cross your fingers the whole way. I may be wrong, but logic dictates... I can only think it's a matter of highest possible skills and traits combined (and very lucky RNG on the high profs) to get the elusive 12-hours. (My top so far is now 11:23)
All that being said - I absolutely love the whole process you outlined and how everything came together to get this put together! Very well done!
It has been over 6 months since I have had any DIP-anything in Voyages, where I am guessing most of my VVT crew would probably work best. My disappointing Voyage skill combos have left me lacking in Voyage interest all that time. (Oh look, SEC/MED... again, sigh)
I do look forward to trying this out though.
You are 100% correct. The Bylo Method is not for people chasing 12 hours, quite the opposite, it is designed to hit 10 hours and then recall immediately after the 10 hour dilemma, which ties back to Part 1 where we learned that it is most efficient to recall voyages right after dilemmas. People chasing 12 hour voyages will want to do the exact opposite of what I recommend, and that is load up on proficiency and hope RNGesus is with you!
My personal best voyage time has been stuck at 10:53 for over a year because I simply have stopped taking voyages passed 10 hours. I love just setting my voyages using my method (at this point it is second nature to me, I helped create the VVT to help other people "see" what I see) and never having to worry about them, I know they'll hit 10 hours every time and I just recall after the 10 hour dilemma, I never have to think twice about a voyage once I send it. It is a great feeling. But you are correct, people chasing 12 hour voyages will absolutely want no part of my system, but I think they can benefit just as much from paying attention to proficiency
Then I set up the Your_Voyage tab to help your targeting. My advice is to aim your gold and silver skills just below 14,400 and get your tertiaries as high as possible. I say just below 14,400 for a couple reasons. 14,400 is where you have a 50/50 shot to pass a hazard at 12 hours. You'll need some favorable rolls toward the end, but they'll just need to be in the top 50th to 70th percentile. If you go above 14,400, then your tertiaries suffer and it will be nearly impossible to have enough AM at 10 hours to even have a shot at 12 hours. I have discussed this at some length with @Banjo1012 .
In my opinion, the tertiaries can have any level of (im)balance you desire. The voyage will far exceed their chances to succeed in a skill check. For that reason, their pass/fail ratio is likely to be a close representation of their average score, so you may as well just reside that average ad high as possible. If the tertiaries are balanced, then you'll be guaranteed to pass them all for a certain time, then start to fail some, then fail them all. If they are imbalanced, then you have a chance that RNG will be favorable and check your weaker skills more early and your stronger skills more later. Or... the opposite can happen and totally wreck your voyage.
TL;DR: the VVT is set up for both 10-hour and 12-hour voyage players.
The only thing the weighted rankings tab has that is geared specifically towards consistent voyages is the color scheme on the heat maps that corresponds to variance. By default, red=high variance amongst the pool=potential for both higher and lower rolls vs. their avg. You can go in and swap the colors around if that bothers you.
I'm still working on refining the rankings tab to include more potential constraints for searches, such as displaying the "other" skill and allowing a constraint by that. If anyone has any other suggestions, let me know and I'll fold it in if it's easy enough. Sometimes these things are way more difficult to implement than conceive.
I have a fleetmate who was asking about 8 hour voyages. What numbers do you give for 8 hours?
I have a little "guide" of sorts in the Your_Voyage tab. There's different ways to get to 8 hours, but I find the simplest is to target 9,600 on gold and silver, then get the rest as high as you can.
Have frozen 18 5* 3-skillers (and 5 2-skillers and 1 1-skill crew) ... with another 6 on the short-list ... most have been a combo of average to low voyage scores and high variance. Examples include Armus, EV Suit Seven and Age of Sail Crusher.
Anyway, still getting 10 hrs each time out on all skill combos ... basically these are crew that were either:
- not used much, if ever;
- easily replaced.
I can list 'em all here, but it is fairly player-specific, so won't be much help to others. Point is, there's a lot of deadwood on an average roster, I'll spend the 100 Merits to bring 'em back if needed (events) and so they don't clutter my daily roster (voyage options, etc.) when choosing crew.
And of course I always love when I can take the NX-01 for a spin!
And while I'm here, I'll go ahead and share my assessment of our two latest VV's.
Klingon West
They're just stacking up the VV's at the top lately. Klingon West is another top voyager.
#10 voyage total
#17 combined maximum roll
#24 combined minimum roll
Tied for 9th with 23 trait-seat matches
Almost 76% chance to match a trait.
Top 25 for average primary roll, minimum SEC roll, and maximum SEC roll.
It's a common skill combo, but he'll sit near the top of the heap. His main weakness is variance. He has enough to make him an inconsistent voyager, but not enough to make him valuable in the gauntlet.
Tactical Stamets
Tactical Stamets has a top 20 voyage total. He's the new SEC champ for both minimum and maximum rolls. His skill order isn't terribly common. As Discovery main cast, his event outlook is good. He's a hair over 8% variance, so he won't be reliable for the 10-hour crowd, but his top 35 for both combined minimum and combined maximum roll make him a strong option for the 12-hour chasers. Stamets' trait-seats are in the middling range. Basically, he's competing against the Human/Federation/Starfleet crowd for voyage seats and he will often be the best option, but not always.
https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/categories/ready-room
I would welcome a major shift in just about everything right now, given how stale the game seems to me (YMMV).
Thanks.
I haven't seen @Prime Lorca [10FH] in a while and they were usually the one to be able to add new crew. Sorry for any inconvenience. This tool's conception was outside of other tools with no code or formulas referenced to avoid any "hint of impropriety", as it were. Automatic crew import was something Idol's tool featured heavily, and I believe Lorca wanted to stay away from this to not be accused of stealing or rehashing. However, I have definitely seen a "share and share alike" attitude from this community. A couple of things that have been displayed here and in other things I've shared have ended up elsewhere. Everything here is free and open source, as far as I'm concerned. So, I have no issue with that. I still am not willing to take any code from others and if I mimic functionality, I'm building it from scratch. This is all meant to be a learning experience for me. I use a lot of what I learn messing with this for internal SQC tools at work.
That said, work and other priorities keep me from working on this and other tools as much as I'd like. What I do have done is all of the groundwork for the Voyage Project Part 4 and am mostly done with a reworked tool that does everything automatically. I believe Bylo may be finished with something he's been working on, too. So a couple of interesting things are coming down the pipeline. Putting things in by hand is not a sustainable solution with only one person maintaining numbers, and Iwill incorporate an auto-import amongst other new features.
As long as Prime Lorca doesn't have any issues (appears to be retired from the game), I will release a revamped tool soon. I am waiting for a couple of business trips where I will be alone for a week at a time roughly, which gives ample time to hammer out all issues and test. These have been delayed due to Covid and delays in manufacturing, raw materials, and construction at external sites (this is part of business these days)
If anyone has any specific requests for functionality, feel free to post here or PM me. LLAP
1. Jim has taken the baton and run with it. Voyage Project 4, from what I've seen so far, is really good. And I will also add that Jim is being modest, he's been absolutely BURRIED with RL work and other things and has still managed to keep up on extra curricular things like this, so it is my hope that when he posts Part 4 and the updated tool that it is well received by the community.
2. I won't say it has been an active experiment on par with the other projects but I have been working on a new twist to voyages to keep them fresh/interesting, and I am pleased with the results. It was not really worthy of an entire new thread but I am excited to share it and will add it to Jim's Part 4 post when the time comes.