I am really enjoying the dutty officer system in Star Trek Online. It gets you logging in to the game every day and provides a steady trickle of xp, crafting materials, and the occasional item with the added benefit (for Cryptic) of getting players to log in each day and thus be more aware of opportunities to spend C-points without it being a pushy advertisemnt.

I'd really like to see something similar for Champions but the trouble is I can't think of what would work for superheroes in a similar way. Maybe a 'contacts' system where you build up a bunch of people you know like informants, scientists, reporters, sidekicks, and so on who 'work' for you. But that feels a little forced.

Does anyone have any ideas of what would make a good system like the doff one in STO?

What is the Duty Officer System in STO ?

Essentially you have NPC officers under your command that you can send on their own missions to earn XP among other things for you.

http://www.stowiki.org/Duty_officer

Given that you have a ship in STO you have crew. These duty officers do tasks, onboard ship or in the sector of space that you happen to be in.

So, you check the assignments log and in the current sector (All crew have a place where assigned Ie, Security-Space or Security-Ground, Biologist, Astrometrics, Doctor, Trader, Diplomat, etc.) and you see that you can to drill your Fire Control teams. You assign the Duty Officers and given the difficulty of the assignment wait for them to finish. Certain successful assignment completions, give buffs to weapons, sheilds, movement. Other give rewards in crafting components. You also get XP (and in-game currency) in the different skill areas that may be affected by the Duty Officer missions.

So you assign crew to to trading, negotiate treaties, do research, and if you are a Klingon player, kill/blackmail or intimidate members of rival houses, minor races and execute poorly performing crew members.

It's pretty cool. That reminds me, I have to check in and see how my crew did today....

We could name it The Sidekick!
'Ok, Boy Blunder. I think i'll take a lil' nap, you go and defeat Hi Pan, Black Talon and stop couple of bank robberies. After that farm me some Recognitions and Questionites, i need something new to wear. And don't bother me while you a it.'

Oh, and if you are playing in Klingon Empire you can also execute your men for incompetence. Which only adds to fun if if they previously failed on a simple task. :D

Duty officers aren't present ingame as NPC models, they are only portraits and dossiers on your crew list. It's a kind of passive minigame. Every officer has various traits suited for certain tasks. Based on these traits they can decrease or increase chance for mission positive outcome. You are assigning crewmen to certain tasks to get the highest possible chance.

Oh how I wished for that functionality in SWTOR...

Hmmm... I like this idea:

It could work in theme if they were presented as 'contacts' or 'informants' like;
'Cub Photographer'
'all seeing hacker'
'underworld informer'
'Police Liason'
'scrappy street-kid'
'hobo mystic'
'retired army mentor'
'obsessive fanboi'
'university professor' etc...

plenty of scope for setting appropriate 'missions'

If you wanted to go nuts with the idea: - if every character in the deck has an in-game model created as well as a portrait (much easier with champs system than STO's i'd imagine), when you have your deck of contacts, they could be used as a pool from which to pick the occasional hostage for extra nemesis content! / future alerts.

I think I would like them to do it as day jobs for your superhero that would happen while you were offline or you would get returns over a set periods like weekly. Different jobs give you different types of bonuses

The Doff system works so well in STO because so many episodes of the various TV series focused on crew members 'below decks' rather than just what was happening on the bridge. It fits our expectations of the genre and actually makes the game feel a bit more like the TV series.

We need an idea that captures an aspect of the Superhero genre that is missing from the current game. Something that is often mentioned in the comics (or movies or cartoons) but is never the focus of a big action scene ( based on my personal assumption that those should be normal gameplay).

So, what comes to mind? Here's a quick list off the top of my head:

Secret Identity activities

• Job
• Relationships
• Downtime

Charity events (Attend Fundraiser, Visit Orphanage)
Minor Heroics (Everything from Cat in Tree to Burning Building )
Training
Research (Find cure for Viper Bioweapon)
Detective work (forensics, investigations, footwork)
Super group activities (monitor duty, sports, meetings)
Press Events (Attend mujseum opening [ and NOT have your Nemesis show up)
Maintenance (Get Roinesh Stains out of Costume)

The problem is that all of these are done by your hero, not by NPCs. This means that we immediately miss out on the 'build your crew' aspect of the STO Doff system - also one of the ways this system makes money through the STO C-Store.

This feels like there's some potential here, but It's missing something. We're not quite there...