The duty officer system is a game mechanic introduced to Holodeck with Season 5. There are over 36 thousand individual duty officers[1].
Once a player of any faction (Federation, Klingon, or Romulan) reaches level 11[2], the duty officer (not to be confused with bridge officers) system becomes available. Duty officers represent the junior officers, enlisted personnel, and civilian crew members of the player's starship. The mechanics of the system are rather similar to those of many collectible card games, in that officers can be acquired from random booster packs purchasable on the C-Store. They can be slotted for bonuses, but not renamed or upgraded.
The overview tab
The crew roster
Players can make use of duty officers in four ways:
A player's starship has five slots for duty officers that enhance space operations and five slots for duty officers that enhance ground operations, depending on the officer's specialization.
Duty officers can be sent out on special missions called assignments, which can reward skill points, bridge officer skill points, energy credits, temporary buffs, items, more duty officers, and experience toward commendations. These assignments can vary in real-time duration between 1 minute to 3 days. By default you can have a maximum of 20 of such assignments running at the same time. You can exceed this limit by buying up to three additional assignment slots in your fleet embassy.
Duty Officers on your ship can build components and will offer assignments – some of these are new and some of these are additional chances to focus your efforts on a specific commendation category (e.g. Science, Engineering, or any other category).
At the respective factions’ academies, Personnel Officers allow a captain to commission cadres of duty officers, and also to turn in five underperforming duty officers, plus a modest amount of Dilithium, for a random duty officer of the next highest quality. Note: in late 2012, the Dilithium required increased significantly.
Overview
Duty officers have the following characteristics:
Faction Side
Duty Officers can belong to the Federation faction, Romulan, or Klingon faction. They are distinguished by the frame color surrounding their avatar image and a small icon in the corner. Over this faction frame is displayed the quality (rarity: Common, uncommon, rare, etc.) of the duty officer. The department icons (Tactical, Operations, Medical, etc) on their dossiers also indicate the officer's faction affiliation.
Just because a species is generally associated with a particular faction does not mean an officer is usable by that side. Always check the dossier for affiliation before buying! You can turn on the option at the bottom of the Exchange window to only show usable items.
Assignments will reward you with a proper faction duty officer, but if you intend to trade or buy another one, you have to make sure that the duty officer belongs to your faction. There is no warning in game - like with bridge officers - to stop you from buying or trading from the other faction and discover the Duty Officer (DOFF) isn't going to do what you wanted.
The other faction's duty officers will go into your roster/passengers/brig but they will not be displayed as a slottable Recommendation from the assignment Department Heads. If you received another faction's duty officers they can be traded/mailed/sold using drag and drop from your roster/brig/passenger slots, or dismissed for a small bonus in dilithium and recruitment points.
The other faction's duty officers CAN, however, be used to supply Starbase projects.
See how to distinguish faction side on this frame comparison image.
Quality
This is indicated by the color of the duty officer's name and the border around the portrait, if there is one. Currently, there are duty officers of white, green, blue, purple, dark purple and gold quality. Higher quality duty officers have a higher chance to complete assignments successfully, and will provide better assignment rewards than standard (common) quality officers. Currently, only white quality duty officers have a chance of dying while on assignment (note the difficulty of the assignment). Green, blue, and purple quality duty officers cannot die while on assignment, but can sustain injury which will make them unavailable for a period of time (Usually 8 hours) and is likely to place them in sickbay.
Rank
Duty officers, with the exception of civilians, will have an enlisted or officer rank. Some assignment slots may require duty officers of a particular rank to succeed. Ultra Rare and Epic duty officers will have same rank as Very Rare quality duty officers.
Duty officers will be in one of the seven following departments: Tactical, Security, Engineering, Operations, Science, Medical, and Civilian. Some assignment slots require duty officers of a specific department, or the chances of the various outcomes may be modified by placing a duty officer of a specific department in a particular slot.
Specialization
This is the duty officer's primary role aboard the starship, such as Conn Officer, Security Officer, Astrometric Officer, etc. This defines what effect the officer has if assigned to a space or ground role. As with department, some assignment slots may require an officer with a specific specialization, or including an officer with a given specialization may modify the chances of the assignment outcome.
R&D School
This is an optional role some duty officers may have, allowing them to be used in crafting of special items unlocked with level 15 in Research and Development schools. Currently available R&D specialties are:
Duty officers can have one or more traits. These are only important for assignments. Assignment slots indicate which traits will increase or decrease the chance of the possible outcomes of the assignment.
Active Duty
Up to 10 duty officers can be placed on Active Duty. Up to 5 can apply their specializations to Space operations, while another 5 can can be used to improve Ground operations. This limit can be exceeded by purchasing 1 additional slot for ground and space through the Fleet Spire, allowing the maximum of 6 for each region. Depending on the specialization, only 1 or up to a maximum of 3 duty officers may be active at the same time.
Each officer applies their abilities separately.
"X% chance to" ability probability for activating at least once is shown by this formula: 1-((1-x)^y) with x being the percentage in decimal form and y being the number of same duty officers times the number of uses.
Duty officers become Bound to Character once they are posted on active duty roster.
[SP] Team abilities grant a chance to drain attacker's Weapon Power
[SP] Chance of Heal from Reverse Shield Polarity, Feedback Pulse
[SP]Heartfelt Appeal: Chance on using a Science Ability on Foes to reduce incoming Heals to that Foe by 50% and cause the next few to Heal your own ship also
Each rank achieved awards one free duty officer and unlocks the remaining officers in that category for purchase with dilithium (available from Lt. Ferra at Starfleet Academy or Lt. S'stas at Klingon Academy)
1,000 for uncommons (Rank 2)
6,000 for rares (Rank 3)
12,000 for very rares (Rank 4)
Additionally Holographic Duty Officers may be purchased from the Replicator with energy credits when achieving each rank in the Engineering, Medical, and Military fields:
1,000 for common Hologram (Rank 1)
10,000 for uncommon Hologram (Rank 2)
100,000 for rare Hologram (Rank 3)
1,000,000 for very rare Hologram (Rank 4)
Rewards from some duty officer assignments and missions [1]
(Note: Each time Star Trek Online is updated the above details are subject to changing)
Dismissing Duty Officers
If you wish to get rid of one or more of duty officers (DOFFs), you can select "dismiss" and get an amount of Dilithium Ore and Recruitment CXP based upon their rarity. Note that certain DOffs like the Emergency Medical Hologram do not return any dilithium or XP upon dismissal. Generally speaking, it isn't as profitable to dismiss a Duty Officer as it is to donate one or more to your fleet projects. At first, fleet projects require common (white) DOFFs, which are removed from your ship's roster and placed on permanent assignment in the fleet structures.
Dismissing a Common: 1 and 10 Recruitment XP
Dismissing an Uncommon: 10 and 25 Recruitment XP
Dismissing a Rare: 25 and 100 Recruitment XP
Dismissing a Very Rare: 50 and 250 Recruitment XP.
Another way to dispose of unwanted duty officers is to exchange either five low quality duty officers for one higher quality officer at the personal officers at the academy, or to exchange one high quality duty officer for three lower quality officers:
(Does not apply to Prisoners, Ultra Rare or Epic duty officers)
Reassign 5 Common for 1 Uncommon (costs 500 or 600 at race specific vendor): 25 Recruitment XP
Reassign 5 Uncommon for 1 Rare (costs 2500 or 3000 at race specific vendor): 100 Recruitment XP
Reassign 5 Rare for 1 Very Rare (costs 5000 or 6000 at race specific vendor): 500 Recruitment XP
Exchanging an Uncommon for 3 Common: 50 Recruitment XP
Exchanging a Rare for 3 Uncommon: 150 Recruitment XP
Exchanging a Very Rare for 3 Rare: 300 Recruitment XP
Players of the Klingon faction additionally have the following assignments to "dismiss" duty officers (other than prisoners/colonists/refugees) for a reward:
(Note: The above details are subject to change when the next game upgrade is published and there are additional details not provided when managing DOFFs.)
Personal assignments
By choosing to Visit the Bridge (which is an option from the small drop down arrow at the bottom-right of the mini-map) you can walk to other parts of the ship where certain officers will offer a list of specialized assignments in specific categories. Some of these officers also offer unique assignments to acquire consumables (ship batteries, hypos, etc.).
The assignments offered reset every 20 hours and are specific to your ship, so visiting another player's ship will present different assignments.
A small number of assignments are also specific to certain sectors, in particular the exploration clusters, where you will often find additional Colonial assignments.
Schedule morning, afternoon, or evening interrogation sessions
Roster size
The standard roster size is 100 duty officers, but this can be increased up to a total of 500 through C-Store purchase options consisting of 25 more slots for 225 or 100 more slots for 725 .