How do I get more/Better Bridge Officers?

[Veg]

So I googled around and it says you have to use a requisition officer who sells them for Dilithium Crystals, but when I talk to that guy he only sells white quality BOFFs, how would I go about actually getting good ones?

[chemiman]

There are several ways to get some BOffs.

In short: you can get some as reward from DOff assignments, and some as mission rewards, you can buy them from the exchange, and last but not least you can buy some via your fleet. There are also bundles that include BOffs in the ZEN store.

[jonnin]

Quality: as far as I know this has zero real effect. Granted that purples have more 'superior' racial traits, and white/green have less, so its probably in your interest to go for blue and purple or higher. Don't turn your nose up at a GOOD blue guy, for sure.

To recruit them, try going to your home base 'city' -- new rom, qonos, earth and look at both the local and personal duty officer recruit missions.
In the exchange, MOST candidates are cheap (way less than a million for even the better ones, unless romulan, not sure going price on best roms). Consider simply buying up a team, esp for federation. The recruit missions take days to get a random roll that may or may not be what you wanted, so a full team via recruits takes ages. If you have many characters, it goes quickly though, after a couple of days you suddenly have a bag full to pick from.

Romulans have a racial perk, operative, that comes in superior. This adds crit hit and damage, and is available even on blue quality officers: a blue with SRO is > a purple without it. This is, simply put, the best racial in the game and gives romulan captains an edge.
so romulans tend to fill their ships with SRO BOs -- try to focus on that if playing one.

Non roms, KDF has easy access to pirate from naussicians and their other races have a variety of interesting groundside traits. Consider those as your majority space BOs.

Federation has a bunch of aliens, but good space traits are rare(?). You can get one SRO officer from your fleet (the thing you are talking about: from the sound of it your fleet has not upgraded enough to make the purple one available? Edit, sorry, looks like he is blue, not purple, but see my initial paragraph) and at least one pirate from a mission (the guy that looks like a walking potato, voth missions I think?). I don't play much fed so not sure what else you can do for space-side. There may be a race that gets pirate regularly, but I don't recall it. (Edit: nope, looks like you can run down 2-3 pirates via specific earning of them but its not on their recruits).

There are several unique ones from boxes and other sources, including a couple of holograms that are brutal groundside. Not aware of anything really good in space but my main is a romulan, so I am maybe biased.

here is another good take on it, with details that I glossed over:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/kd3gfj/bridge_officers_best_traits_to_have/

[Agnithrax]

Ground stations are easy peasey lemon squeezey to find good 4 trait purples for; as for space it's a bit of a shoulder to the wheel on that. You'll get a few good 2 trait boffs from going through the episodes and then your fleet colonies have boffs to buy for dil: Lukari and Kentari, that are 3 space trait boffs but you've got to grind the fleet cash and the dil to buy those guys. Once you've got your 65 levels under your belt and start playing just buy a few 1 trait purples to fill the stations until you've made some fat stacks of what you need for your colony purchases. the embassy has some tasty Romulans and Remans for your tactical slots but imo quantity 3 serves me better than quality 2 but then i tank mostly so don't go all in for moar crit dakka. be careful in that auction house buying them purples my friend; check to ensure that the toon actually has 2 superior traits on it. there's a glitchey glitch were some nefarious bastids can sell blue rares under the purple very rare listing so caveat emptor my duder

[Gloria et Gratia!]

there are 3 META BOFFs from the jem hadar vanguard pack. but that you might consider too expensive.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by jonnin:

Quality: as far as I know this has zero real effect.

Correct. The quality is simply a reflection of the traits that they have: Purple means they have 2 superior traits, blue has 1 superior trait, green is baseline everything, and white has one substandard trait.

It is however the traits themselves that dictate the benefit you get.

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You can generate BOFFs from certain DOFF assignments, from episode rewards, from levelling up, or by purchase (this would include public vendors, fleet vendors, CStore and Exchange).

DOFF assignment and levelling up BOFFs are generated randomly and will always be of your own faction and its "default" races. (i.e. you will never see a Romulan or a Nausicaan if you're playing Federation.) BOFFs on the exchange are usually "leftovers" from someone else getting one of these two, as well.

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Regarding desirable space damage traits:*

First is Superior Romulan Operative - aka SRO.
- this trait can appear randomly on any Romulan BOFF, and in rare cases is coded into non-random Reman BOFFs.
- Romulan-faction captains can get unlimited numbers of BOFFs with this, by DOFF assignments, from episode rewards, from levelling up, or by Exchange purchase.
- Non-Romulan-faction captains can only get this by buying the blue-quality male tactical officer from the Fleet Embassy (though you CAN buy and use multiple copies of this officer).

Second is Engineered Soldier (Space).
Found only on the three Jem'Hadar Vanguard from the CStore Gamma bundle.
- Non-Romulan-faction captains: the Science and Engineer JHVs are the best damage dealing trait you can get for those professions.

Third is Pirate.
- ALL Nausicaans get this trait. If you are playing Klingon-faction or aligned, you can get unlimited Nausicaans by the same methods listed for Romulans above.
- The Hierarchy Science episode-reward BOFF also has this trait (and Efficient).
- Federation and Federation-aligned Dominion and Romulan faction captains can claim one Nausicaan from Admiral Sugihara at ESD after reaching tier 4 in the Diplomacy DOFF Commendation. (I recommend taking an Engineer.)

Between the three above, you should be able to fill all your active bridge slots EXCEPT in the following cases:
- you don't yet have access to all of the above
- you're playing Federation or Federation-aligned Dominion AND your build requires either 3 science or 3 engineer officers.

There are one or two BOFF traits that are specifically useful for exotic-damage science builds, which could potentially be used as a substitute for the above in such a build, but these SHOULD NOT be used on a weapons build. (The best example is K-13 Survivor Science)


* I intentionally left off Kentari Ferocity, as it operates so differently that it is difficult to compare to anything else.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Agnithrax:

be careful in that auction house buying them purples my friend; check to ensure that the toon actually has 2 superior traits on it. there's a glitchey glitch were some nefarious bastids can sell blue rares under the purple very rare listing so caveat emptor my duder

That's not the players exploiting a "glitch". It's actually a very old bug.

What happens is, the color/quality is simply a reflection of the traits that they have: Purple means they have 2 superior traits, blue has 1 superior trait, green is baseline everything, and white has one substandard trait.

A few officers are coded to have combinations of traits that do not match their color, as candidates. When they are commissioned, their color/rarity is recalculated, which causes it to change.

It pretty much only happens to purple Gorn (Gorn can't have 2 superior traits because they have 3 "required" traits, none of which have a superior variant, so they automatically get downgraded to blue)... and the Embassy Romulan actually gets upgraded to purple because he has 2 superiors.

[Simon Riley]

"Exchange"

[The Tomekeeper]

Originally posted by Veg:

So I googled around and it says you have to use a requisition officer who sells them for Dilithium Crystals, but when I talk to that guy he only sells white quality BOFFs, how would I go about actually getting good ones?

buy romulans from fleet romulan embassy. you'll need fleet creds and dil. get the blue tactical (for some reason has better trait than the purp) (superior romulan operative)

there's a few other good ones, focusing on fed alignment, there's a hierarchy bridge officer from a mission with pirate trait

there are a few other ways to get some good ones. if you have the dominion pack thing you can get some good boffs from that,

cardassians are also good, but i think you have to buy their pack to get them as well now, although at one point the white boffs were tradeable so you can still get them

its ages since ive played so im probably forgetting some stuff, but i think i generally had 2 romulans with SRO, a pirate, a cardassian... there probably is something im forgetting tho

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Avnas:

Originally posted by Veg:

So I googled around and it says you have to use a requisition officer who sells them for Dilithium Crystals, but when I talk to that guy he only sells white quality BOFFs, how would I go about actually getting good ones?

buy romulans from fleet romulan embassy. you'll need fleet creds and dil. get the blue tactical (for some reason has better trait than the purp) (superior romulan operative)

there's a few other good ones, focusing on fed alignment, there's a hierarchy bridge officer from a mission with pirate trait

there are a few other ways to get some good ones. if you have the dominion pack thing you can get some good boffs from that,

cardassians are also good, but i think you have to buy their pack to get them as well now, although at one point the white boffs were tradeable so you can still get them

its ages since ive played so im probably forgetting some stuff, but i think i generally had 2 romulans with SRO, a pirate, a cardassian... there probably is something im forgetting tho

Pirate is better and more commonly available than the Cardassian trait. (Fed players can get 2 BOFFs with Pirate; KDF are unlimited.)

But no, you don't have to buy Cardassians, necessarily. They are generated by a very rare DOFF assignment.

[UsedDentalFloss]

Honestly? I just use the Exchange and got purples. With the exception of the one you start with and one that I got from the Temporal Pack you get the Paladin from. Other purples I got from the Exchange.

Oh. I'm Federation, if that makes a difference.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by UsedDentalFloss:

Honestly? I just use the Exchange and got purples. With the exception of the one you start with and one that I got from the Temporal Pack you get the Paladin from. Other purples I got from the Exchange.

Oh. I'm Federation, if that makes a difference.

It does, because it's actually the traits that matter, not the rarity. And there are NO BOFFs who are available to the Federation by the methods you mention, that have desirable space-damage traits. ;)

The one from the Temporal bundle is nice for ground... all four of his traits are ground traits.

[jozenone]

I just wish that there was a send back to the academy option. I'm drowned in candidates

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by jozenone:

I just wish that there was a send back to the academy option. I'm drowned in candidates

If they are candidates you do not want, there IS an option to convert them to a training manual (for one of their eight displayed skills).

[c.jackharkness]

grab a cardi boff , just because , they are worth it . you can find great ones in your fleet , truely great traits . and you can get one hell of a good ground boff from the dyson arc , and "boldly they rode" and "of bajor" that old arc gives you a free jemmy boff.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by c.jackharkness:

grab a cardi boff , just because , they are worth it . you can find great ones in your fleet , truely great traits . and you can get one hell of a good ground boff from the dyson arc , and "boldly they rode" and "of bajor" that old arc gives you a free jemmy boff.

SRO, the Jem'Hadar Vanguard trait, and Pirate are all better than the Cardassian trait, and unless you are Fed (or Fed-allied Jem'Hadar) AND have not bought the Gamma pack AND/OR have not maxed out Diplomacy, you can get all the space BOFF seats filled before running out of those three traits.