(Continued from Star Trek Online: A Comprehensive Review - Part 1)

Friendly Faces

One of the game’s core principles is that you do not pilot your ship alone. Although you are the captain, and get to make all the decisions, you are aided and abetted by your bridge officers – affectionately called ‘boffs’ by the already-active fanbase. You pick up a boff in the Federation tutorial and through mission rewards and by talking to personnel staff you can pick up more.

Every ship has a number of consoles that can be manned by boffs, allowing you to benefit from their special abilities, and the larger and more advanced ship you have, the more consoles you can have, and hence the more boffs you can have. Just like your character, each boff comes from one of the three officer classes – tactical, engineering or science. And, again, just like your character, you get to customise the appearance and the uniform of each one.

Each boff comes with two specialised skill sets – one set that provides a bonus in space encounters, and one set that provides a bonus to ground encounters. Tactical boffs tend to enhance your attacks or have special attacks of their own. Engineering boffs tend to provide defence or repair bonuses. Science boffs tend to provide jamming or scanning boosts. As you progress through the game, not only do you get to improve your own skills, but also those of your active boffs. Also, if you have a boff that is the same class as your own character, then once you are of a high enough rank you can start teaching him (or her) some of your own skills too.

Inversely, sometimes it is helpful for you to have your own access to abilities just like your boffs. This is where skill kit items come in useful – if you equip a kit from your inventory to a spare slot on your character then you get to activate the ability just as if you were a boff yourself.