Talk: Assignmentinfo

functionality question and a tiny request[]

What "exactly" does the "long" section do. Whats the difference between yes/no? And may it be possible to add additional "categories" to the assignment. One to show, that "critical rewards" are missing and one to catagorize the rewards. That people wh are looking for DOFFs or certain Items can find them quick? --Skydragon 19:49, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

long is a mostly obsolete parameter that was used for infoboxes where the title took more than one line. I modified the CSS in our newest themes so that it is no longer necessary, but I forget if I made the necessary changes to Cavendish or not. (But then, right now, people can't use Cavendish, so it doesn't really matter.)

The reward and plus are just taking raw wikicode and would need a major redesign for that kind of automatic categorization. I do intend to do it eventually to support features I have in mind, but it's a complex task that needs to be well-planned before I attempt it. The alternative right now is just to add those categories manually. You can, right after the rewards, add [[Category:Assignments missing critical rewards]] and [[Category:Assignments rewarding duty officers]] where appropriate. All the assignment pages will need to be updated anyway once I decide on the best way to handle rewards, so it won't really create any extra work to later remove the manual categorization when the new automatic methods are in place. — Eyes

07:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

One other thing I would ask of you when you enter assignments, make sure the rewards are listed for a level 51 char, that made me stumble a few times already. Your recent additions are looking good, keep it up Skydragon. :) --Dukedom 09:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I would be great, if you add the [[Category:Assignments missing critical rewards]] category to the assignment template, so it is automatically included. I added it to all actual assignments. Would be a great option to keep track of it... --Skydragon 01:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Critical success rewards[]

We currently list the base rewards for a duty officer assignment in terms of ore, EC, CXP, SP, BOSP etc, but many assignments also include a second figure detailing the return on a critical success. This may have been based on the rewards given out for such a critical success, but I think these may also have been affected by the DOff quality. Either way, the UI in-game now displays the percentage modifier for a critical success. Would it be simpler to display this in the template and do away with the critical success figures? Divycom 12:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

There may be some difficulties with this approach. I've proved the concept with regards to formulae in the template on Assignment: Provide Intelligence of Rival House (just CXP for now) but my whole notion of how the rewards bonus are applied has been brought into question: I've put out a call for clarification on STO forums. Regardless of this, I'm still wary of using critical figures from obtained from players in-game, due to the effect that Duty Officer bonuses may have. Any thoughts? Divycom 16:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Still it would be a good idea to add the percentage modifier to the template? --EoD (talk) 12:34, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Apart from that, there is also sometimes a special reward (like a rare/very rare doff) on a critical success. Shouldn't this also be added to the template? --EoD (talk) 12:34, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Tertiary xp?[]

I noticed that there isn't a slot in the template for tertiary commendation xp (i.e, cxp = ###, 2xp = ###). In Assignment: Establish Listening Post, there is a tertiary cxp reward, so I inserted it into template anyway as "3xp," if its added in the future. I just think its silly that the template recognizes a tertiary commendation category, but can't list the rewards, regardless of if tertiary cxp is rare or not. AndroidAR 20:00, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Probably just an oversight. There have been many different editors expanding this template as both the duty officer system and our understanding of it has evolved. I've added the 3xp parameter now. — Eyes

22:33, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Other costs[]

While doing a minor clean up in an assignment I noticed this option. And in particular that it does not align well in the infobox. Anybody who actually knows what he is doing cares to 'fix' that before it annoys me so much that I destroy the template totally when trying it myself? --Dukedom 14:00, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I aligned Other Costs to the left and minimized the data entry/displayed and kept the IF condition so if there are no costs it wont be displayed.The data entry item is displayed bellow and starting for left by default.If there are more then one item then must be used a , or ; because i can't figure right now how to display the next item below the previous one.Perhaps Eyes can take a look to set how to display more then one type (something like the chances list) and also check my edit too.I could use the "wideentry" but i wanted to keep the small fonts display mode.Thank you. Cris333 16:10, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

assignmenttype is not needed[]

Isn't creating a bunch of props for one assignment slightly excessive? In my opinion it is far more elegant to just use commendation = None and catch it (and any upcoming assignments) on a 'fake' Commendation: None page. So unless there is a really good reason why we need those additional props I will revert the template and fix the affected page(s). --Dukedom 09:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

There are ~20 assignments(well mostly variations) without any parental commendation plus, good point, 'any upcoming assignments'.Creating Commendation: None ,yes , sounds more 'logical' then assignmenttype but hope you know this will auto create a new Category: None assignments link which sounds a bit controversial, illogical or confusing but if that's ok then revert the changes and if everything is working/fine in the end i will flag for delete the newly related pages created by me including the linked property.So 2 pages will need to be created (the red links listed on this section). Cris333 10:37, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

romulan only assignments on tribble[]

As a heads up, there are assignments on tribble already that will only show up for romulan characters. --Dukedom 09:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

You can just use "faction=Romulan" in such a case. --EoD (talk) 12:42, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Cooldown[]

Would it be possible to add a {{{cooldown}}} parameter? (Similar to duration). I've added it to at least one assignment (ie: |cooldown = 96h) and it doesnt seem to break anything, it just doesnt show. It would be nice to have, as there are many assignments with long cooldowns, and some, you can even see the cooldowns displayed in the assignment lists (Holodeck Performance of Hamlet is one you can see). Tahno (talk) 16:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, Locationtype needs "Suliban Liaison" for cell ship assignments. --Tahno (talk) 18:06, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I added a parameter called "cooldown". --EoD (talk) 12:50, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Tier[]

I noticed assignments have Tier parameter, but I have no idea what does that mean. Anyone knows? For example, this assignment is Tier 0: “Confiscate Contraband From Crew”. From template description: "# The Tier (or Rank) at which the assignment becomes available." So does that depend on the Commendation level, player level? Thanks. --Damixon (talk) 00:26, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

From the doc subpage, it appears to be intended to reflect the Commendation level; description appears to have been added in the 10:58, 15 November 2013 revision (love the comment on that revision lol). Unscjon117 (talk) 14:41, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Given that Commendations currently progress via "ranks" in-game, perhaps the original author wanted to use a term that wouldn't be misinterpreted as character rank - although as you've seen, this then leaves the question as to what "Tier" represents, without perhaps a "tooltip" attached to the keyword label "Tier" when the template is displayed/used. Have seen "tooltips" implemented elsewhere in the wiki; don't (currently) have any experience with adding same. Unscjon117 (talk) 16:22, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for explaining. It is hard to track which assignments are unlocked at which tier so hopefully it is documented properly so far. --Damixon (talk) 12:27, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

loctype[]

This parameter/property appears to be another victim of platform variation (thanks, devs). While I can't speak for desktop, on console (specifically Xbox One, in case there's also variance with PS4), the Duty Officers UI is broken down (listed as "Filter by:") as follows:

Featured (Chains, Very Rare, Personal)
Commendations (all 11 Commendation categories)
Item (Dilithium, Energy Credits, Skill Points, Duty Officer, Bridge Officer, Other Items)
In Progress

Unscjon117 (talk) 15:39, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

My understanding is that this parameter should be set to the name of the GUI tab in which the new assignment may appear. This would be the most useful way for this parameter, since it will thus allow any user to quickly narrow down where to search for a desired assignment. However this parameter will vary by platform, as e.g. PC does not have most Xbox options (e.g. no "Chains", "Very Rare" - see below for a full list). Besides, "Personal" seems to contain different assignments depending on the platform. E.g. an assignment that might appear in "Personal" on Xbox - might not appear there on PC. Trajos (talk) 21:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Valid loctype for PC - there are only 9 possibilities:

Current Map
Personal
Ambassador ( FED-only) or Marauder ( KLG-only)
Engineering
Operations
Science
Medical
Tactical
Security. Redundant tab, since anything that appears here will always appear in Tactical.

There are also In Progress and Completed tabs, however these 2 are not valid choices for loctype, as a new assignment will never appear there. Note that there are no all 11 Commendation categories, there are only the ones listed above. So e.g. "Colonial", "Development", "Trade" or "Recruitment" assignments would all appear under "Operations", or Current Map/Personal that can contain an assignment from absolutely any commendation. However, each assignment will strictly appear in only the tab or set of tabs. E.g. "Evaluate Bridge Officer Candidate" will only ever appear on PC in "Personal", and will not appear in "Operations", despite this being a "Recruitment"-commendation assignment. While "Asylum" - another "Recruitment"-commendation will only ever appear under "Operations" tab, and will never appear in "Personal". Additional complication is that anything that appears in "Security" tab will always appear under "Tactical". Finally, a small number of assignments may appear in more than one tab. E.g. "Dilithium Mining in Unstable Asteroid Cluster" appears in Engineering tab, but may occasionally additionally appear in Current Map. However this is never the other way around, i.e. it would never appear in Current Map without also appearing in Engineering tab.

Trajos (talk) 21:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say that:

"Chains", "Commendations", and "In Progress" are self-explanatory.
"Items" appears to be just a filtered set of assignment groups that award the named item (in significant amount for the first three, as most assignments award *some* amount of those).

While the doc subpage includes a list of possible values (some of which appear to be applicable to all platforms), there appear to be some notable exceptions:

"Current Map", which appears to be intended as "location specific", but otherwise only appears to exist on desktop (missing from console/XB1), and
"Very Rare", which appears to be intended as a selection of Very Rare assignments, but otherwise only appears to exist on console (reported to be missing from desktop).

This raises a number of questions, including (but not necessarily limited to):

Does the entire Assignment section of the STO wiki need to be modified to accommodate desktop vs console as has been done with some other pages (e.g. Story Arc: Wasteland? My view: may be a bit too extreme.
Should these be qualified as desktop/console? My view: ...and further widen the platform variance gap? No.
Should "Current Map" and "Personal" be renamed to "Location specific" and "Location independent", or perhaps just revise the template to categorize those assignment pages as such, to reduce ambiguity and eliminate platform-unique references? My view: absolutely, one or the other - and make use of redirects during the transition.
Should the description of each be expanded on the subcategory pages as to where they're found, and the doc subpage description be expanded to describe when they should be utilized? My view: seems to make sense anyway.

Unscjon117 (talk) 15:39, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I think we should simply list all the loctypes for assignment, considering all platforms, comma-separated. E.g. "Evaluate Candidate" would have loctype=Personal (PC), Very Rare. Personal should be split however between Personal (PC), and Personal (Xbox), so that the user does not search in vain an assignment in the tab that will never contain that assignment, given the user's platform.

Renaming Current Map - for PC this should not be renamed, since it is a dedicated GUI tab on PC. The way it works on PC is that this tab is populated with assignments whenever the player changes maps, and each assignment can appear in only specific maps, or in any space map, or in any map in game. The current system seems to work well with a map image showing exact locations where the assignment might pop up.

If this is not the way it works on Xbox - I would be happy to rename this to Current Map (PC) to make users aware that it only applies to PC users. Trajos (talk) 21:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Just spent ~2.5 hours formulating replies to this,... started over,... then spent another ~2.5 hours on this. X-D Anyway,...

Someone I once worked with had a tendency to use the phrase: "don't spread the cancer". In this context, tagging every assignment page with separate desktop and console labels a) would take significant effort and not provide sufficient "return on investment" with regard to "added value", and b) "further widen the platform variance gap" (see #2 above).

Some of what has been discussed above is "already covered" one way or another. If I were to start with what isn't needed based on the various bits of discussion above:

Most of the assignment lists on console don't need a separate tag on the wiki, as they're already covered by an existing wiki category (e.g. Commendation, assignment Rarity, etc.).
Also don't see a need to separately tag or rename "Current Map", as whatever appears in that list on desktop likely appears in at least one other list on console. Additionally it appears that, on desktop, "Current Map" and "Personal" are not all inclusive of "location specific" and "location dependent" assignments, respectively.

Changes that might be useful for all platforms:

Rather than dual-tagging assignments "Other Items" for console, might be a more cross-platform useful idea to add a "rewardtype" parameter to the template and then have it automatically place those pages in the "Assignments awarding <rewardtype>s" category if the parameter has a value - which would eliminate the need to manually add those categories to assignment pages individually. I may try that in a sandbox anyway...

Changes that might require further discussion:

Using "loctype" for PC-specific "Department" listings seems... unnecessary, unless there are assignments that only show up by department, and not under any other listing. Keep in mind that a) the doc subpage will need to be updated accordingly, b) wiki editors on console won't have any idea how to tag those to benefit desktop players, and c) a corresponding category would need to be created for each department, along with a parent category (e.g. "Departmental assignments"), which would in turn need to be linked under a parent category (e.g. "Duty officer assignments" if nothing else was suitable).

Time to find something else to do with what remains of my evening... Unscjon117 (talk) 01:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@User:Unscjon117 My thoughts on the points raised:

would take significant effort - I have sufficient time and determination to make it happen for PC, so don't see this as an issue. The investment is justified in my personal case, given how much easier it would become for me to play the game in my specific case. And it is not the case that I have to edit every assignment every day or something, I just update "loctype" once, and leave it there for everafter.

I do appreciate this might not be the case for you, but we are all unpaid volunteers, so you don't have an obligation to put in as much time and effort into editing the wiki as other fellow editors. I am sure that if there are any other fellow Xbox editors for whom it will matter sufficiently - they will pick up the slack, so I don't see a reason to worry about it.

don't need a separate tag on the wiki - possibly.
rewardtype" parameter to the template and then have it automatically place those pages in the "Assignments awarding <rewardtype>s" category - that is already covered by cargo queries. I agree it would be useful to create a template making a cargo query, and to use this template in e.g. Ferasan Nepeta Leaves and other commodity pages, I will see if I can create that template someday. And if you are not familiar with cargo queries - have a look at e.g. {{Doffsbytraitrnd|Aegis}} etc in Duty_officers_by_R&D_school.

On that note - please refrain from using e.g. "risk={{Risk|low}}", instead just use "risk=Low", since with your usage it will be impossible to run a cargo query, and besides I don't see what the point is of even having the "{{Risk|}}" template in the first place? "Assignmentinfo" already applies a different text formatting to the value of "risk" parameter (e.g. blue for "None", green for "Low" etc.)

I propose we take a step back, and ask some more fundamental questions. Why are you making the proposals that you are making, and why am I responding to agree/disagree and to make additional proposals?

Each of us is considering a workflow of a player like ourselves, but - what we also need to do, is to considering a workflow of other players. Let me tell you my workflow (which would likely be shared by some other PC players), so you would get a better idea of where I am coming from:

Decide on the goal reward, or on goal of burning excessive amounts of commodity
Visit appropriate wikipage, listing the list of assignments allowing to do the above. E.g. Dil page to list assignments rewarding more Dil, commendation category if I want to rank up a commendation, or commodity page if I need to burn some excess commodities.
Pick an assignment, and visit its wikipage.
Look at loctype, switch to the game and click on the tab with the same name in the game.
See if that assignment is currently there, and kick it off if it is.
If it is not there - check "Locations" section of the wikipage, and physically travel with my captain to one of the locations listed if I am really eager to find that assignment.

As you can see, removing "Current Map" as a value would frustrate the workflow at step 4, hence why I am interested in using "loctype" as the name of the GUI element on PC, hope now is clear where I am coming from. Trajos (talk) 12:48, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Current and best practices[]

There has been conflict lately over the handling of assignment pages. The duty officer system does offer a lot of headaches for documentation, and that's before we consider cross-platform issues. So I want to try to consolidate discussion here. We need to deal with any of the parameters in the template that may lead to confusion or disagreement, but also some assignment page issues, like titling them and when to separate/combine assignment pages.

First, I would like to just ask editors to please describe how you've dealt with difficult issues in the past, as best as you can remember, so we can get a unified sense of what our current practices are, as much as there is agreement. Then we can get into any trouble spots in those practices. — oOeyes 23:05, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm... good question. FWIW, I haven't had "difficult issues" elsewhere (e.g. in a professional IT environment).

Re: the Assignmentinfo template:

Some articles (still) list critical rewards in the "rewards" parameter instead of using the "crit" parameter that appears to have been added for that purpose; not referring to general xp rewards on critical, but rather specific rewards only ever obtained on critical (e.g. commodity, duty officer, etc.). I recently added the "rewardtype" parameter in order to avoid having to hard-code those categories on corresponding articles (and to ensure it was done consistently where applicable).
Re: rewards, the current standard/"best practice" here appears to be listing rewards as they appear in-game prior to starting the assignment, with as few duty officers as possible slotted, and with no matching dept/spec/trait criteria where avoidable.
It should be noted that, while on desktop there may be a UI control to unassigned all duty officers, console/XB1 has no such control. However, assigning a duty officer with no matching criteria doesn't appear to change the listed outcome percentages. It should also be noted that obtaining outcome percentages in that manner is effectively more accurate with regard to expected outcome, as it isn't possible to run an assignment without assigning any duty officers (for assignments having duty officer requirements, that is).
Template:Assignmentinfo/doc could stand some (significant) revision with regard to what isn't currently documented.

Re: article titles, it appears to be a "best practice" (here and elsewhere) that they be named for exactly what they're describing, and be sufficiently unique to avoid any ambiguity. Where that can't be avoided, "best practice" appears to be a single disambiguation page (e.g. "<Topic>") that provides links to articles named e.g. "<Topic> (variation)". This should not be used where there is no ambiguity.

For the STO wiki and duty officer assignments, the "standard" established here appears to be to use "Assignment: " followed by the exact name of the assignment. Article titles such as "Haggle", as just a single word, appear to be candidates for disambiguation pages, as they meet neither of those criteria.

Re: where there are multiple similar assignments with the same exact duty officer/trait requirements and subsequent rewards, and the only difference is a specific input/reward e.g. "Relieve Minor Shortfall of Tulaberries", using a single article such as “Relieve Minor Shortfall of Gamma Quadrant Commodity” both avoids ambiguity and provides sufficient information to let the reader know what it's about. One potential outstanding question in this case may be whether there should be a redirect for each actual assignment name referenced on that page.
Where similar assignments differ by assignment rarity, as the STO wiki categorizes those in that manner, they should be kept separate. Not just because the rewards tend to differ (increase) as assignment rarity increases, but arbitrarily combining assignments with different rarity would clutter the article itself.

Unscjon117 (talk) 13:58, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

I would imagine most active editors work in a professional IT environment, me included. I agree with Unscjon117 that there appear to be less disagreements there indeed, however this seems to be due to rather strict guidelines, but I think that is expected - as this is what often differentiates a paid vs volunteer environment. In a paid environment you are told what to do (or not to do) and get paid for the lack of flexibility, in a volunteer environment it is more difficult to tell you what to do, cos you can just walk away anytime if you disagree.

I am currently formulating a proposal based on the recent arguments we had, so please bear with me, and will present it shortly for discussion. Trajos (talk) 18:07, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

@Unscjon117, @oOeyes, @User:Damixon, @User:SFC, @User:DankPMK, @User:ScientificTheory, @User:PiralDorrm, @User:Keetnawilson13 - for anyone willing to join the discussion, please see my comprehensive proposal in Template_talk:Assignmentinfo/TrajosProposalNov19, also please feel free to tag anyone else who might be interested. Trajos (talk) 18:31, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Assignments By Item Proposal[]

@oOeyes I propose storing 6 additional columns in the cargo table:

{{#cargo_store:_table=Assignments
...
|cost={{#var:cost}}
|cost={{#var:costqueryable}}
|reward={{#var:reward}}
|reward={{#var:rewardqueryable}}
|plus={{#var:plus}}
|crit={{#var:crit}}

Justification: I'd like to create a template {{Assignmentsbyitem}} based on the idea of Template:Assignmentsbycommendation. It would be included mainly on commodity pages, such as Medical Supplies etc. to list all assignments that require that commodity, and then just below all ones that reward it, something similar to where=reward LIKE '%{{{1|}}}%' OR plus LIKE '%{{{1|}}}%' OR crit LIKE '%{{{1|}}}%' I've made the relevant change to the Template itself, but seems like an admin action is required to augment the actual cargo table with the additional 6 columns? NB. costqueryable and rewardqueryable are intended for queries only, but would not be rendered by the template, e.g. in cases like Assignment: Haggle for Gamma Quadrant Commodity where they would be listed elsewhere on the page. Trajos (talk) 15:14, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

A point of clarification: this looks like you're adding only four columns? Do you simply want the queryables to be hidden in the infobox, or in the Assignmentsbyitem template as well? Because if it's the former, then we only need the four columns. If it's the latter, we'll need six. In that case, I'd probably go with something like visible_cost and cost, where the latter lists all of them. (A little storage inefficient, but I like to err toward simpler queries most of the time.) — oOeyes

18:53, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@oOeyes I intended queryables to be completely hidden, including in Assignmentsbyitem.
Specific example: Assignment: Haggle for Gamma Quadrant Commodity would include queryable reward=Bateret Incense,Ferasan Nepeta Leaves,Jevonite,Tulaberries,Shapeshifting Lockets,Unrefined Ketracel. Then, on each rare commodity page, i.e. Bateret Incense etc. we would include Assignmentsbyitem that would generate a table like Assignmentsbycommendation, however I probably think the generated table should not show the value of queryable, since it would be quite long, and then probably not relevant to the average reader, as the reader is likely interested in a list of assignments awarding Bateret Incense if they are on that page, and probably not interested in the fact that some of these assignments could reward other stuff too (though if you/anyone else has a different view - happy to discuss). In terms of variable/column names - feel free to rename them if you have better ideas, I am not too good at naming variables. Trajos (talk) 19:18, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay. I decided to go with a more complete overhaul for a few reasons. The first is that the LIKE solution has a problem (just as a random example, say the game had "Flux Capacitor" and "Advanced Flux Capacitor," which the LIKE solution would return both when looking for Flux Capacitor), the second is that I try to avoid putting formatted values in any field used in query conditions rather that try to remember the weird edge cases that need workarounds, and the third is to try to regenerate the Cargo tables as little as possible. So I'm aiming to get them in the table in a format good for querying, especially so it can make use of the HOLDS and HOLDS NOT alternatives in Module:Cargo which abstracts away some of the uglier code in using RLIKE and proper delimiters instead.

The downside is that it looks like I'm going to need to make more bot passes to check for edge cases in the parameter usage and look over the how plus and crit are being used more closely, so I expect I'll run out of time tonight. — oOeyes

00:09, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Yep that makes sense regarding being able to better pinpoint the relevant item in question. Regarding the separator used for the new fields: a small tweak I'd propose is to use * character instead of ~, so it would resemble multiplication more closely? E.g. 30*Provisions. And sure - I appreciate this change is on a bigger side, no rush. Trajos (talk) 01:55, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi @oOeyes, another useful addition to the cargo table would be "ore" column so that it could be displayed in the tables generated by {{Assignmentsbycommendation}}/Assignmentsbyitem. Ore is one of the most desirable rewards DOff assignments can provide, hence the amount of Ore rewarded is one of the most important factors influencing which assignment to slot into the 20 available slots. Trajos (talk) 16:56, 11 December 2019 (UTC)