Achievement FAQ

by Rogue Shindler, Achievement Master

26th April 2011

Answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about the Achievement
system.
 

Updated March 2017

1. What do I need to do to get my achievements?
    

All deck and tournament based achievements for 1E and 2E hinge on a
few of the same details. Your deck must be:

• Accurately input into the TCC Deck Builder
• Made "public"
• Assigned to a completed, rated, sanctioned
  tournament

Any decks that do not meet all of these requirements, no matter the
other requirements, will not trigger an achievement.

In addition, decks must meet the minimum pre-requisites for a
"complete deck" for their specific game:

• First Edition: Your deck must have 6 missions, at least
  30 cards in your draw deck section, and exactly 30 cards in your seed
  card section.
• Second Edition Your deck must have 5 missions, at least 35
  cards in your draw deck section, and at least 20 cards in your dilemma
  pile section.
• Tribbles: Your deck must have at least 30 cards in
  it.

Non-deck-based achievements such as running events, completing
reports, play frequency, WCT points, and Tribbles all update on their
own when the event is entered in the system; players need not do
anything else.
 

2. When will I get my achievements?

They system updates at 12am U.S. Eastern time. Tournament results
must be completely entered and submitted and decks assigned, etc,
before this 'tick', or any potential achievements will not be
awarded until the following day.
 

3. Why didn't I get this new achievement? I just finished a tournament online and my deck has all
   the cards required!

All tournaments are governed by the rules and eligible for the
achievements that were legal on the day for which the tournament is
scheduled. No achievements are awarded unless they were legal for that
tournament, and until both the results are entered and the deck is
posted.

For live tournaments, the spread on this isn't much; usually the
same or next day between tournament and results. For online
tournaments, the same rules apply; the time frame is just more
elongated. Since most tournaments last a round per week, it can take a
month or more to finish a tournament and post the results.  While
during that time rules may change, new cards may come out, and new
achievements may be released, you don't play by the new rules, and
you can't add the new cards, so why would you suddenly be eligible
for new achievements?

Unless one is retroactive for a very particular reason, all new
achievements begin eligibility on the day of release, and tournaments
that began before that date will not earn those new
achievements.

4. How do I know if my deck has properly qualified for an
   achievement?

If you have a complete deck in the system and save it, view the
deck again and the deck builder will tell you at the top of the page
which achievement(s) your deck qualifies for.
 

5. I build my deck to get (X) affiliation achievement, but deck
   builder disagrees...
   1. Second Edition
      This cycle of achievements cues off of two things; your HQ and your
      percentage of affiliated nouns (personnel and ships). If you have more
      than one HQ, you will not earn a single-affiliation achievement.
      Likewise, if you have a single headquarters, but have more than half
      of your nouns from a different affiliation/faction (too many
      non-aligned cards is the most common example), it will not
      trigger.
   2. First Edition
      Similarly, this cycle of achievements cues off of two things; your
      percentage of affiliated nouns (personnel and ships), and the
      facilities included in your deck. You cannot play a Nor in your
      Federation deck and still get the Federation affiliation. All of your
      affiliated facilities must match. Neutral and now Non-Aligned
      facilities do not count against this. DQ decks without facilities cue
      off key ships (Voyager, I.K.C. Voq'leng).

   3. In addition, In the absence of their own facility,
      decks that contain the card They Call Themselves the Maquis are considered
      to be Maquis affiliation as though they contained a Maquis affiliation facility.
      The Deck Builder views this card as a facility for affiliation purposes, and
      will disqualify decks containing it from other single affiliation achievements.
      
      Because the Mirror Quadrant factions (KCA and TE) are recognized as
      separate achievements, their facilities are not considered the same
      affiliation as their non-MQ counterparts. As such, playing both Office
      of the President and Terran Empire Rebellion HQ will earn you neither
      the Federation nor the Terran Empire achievement.

 

6. I lost some of my achievements? What happened?

The recent release included a handful of Achievement name changes
to either bring them in line with existing naming convention or set
them up to establish a new naming convention.

The first sets affected are the multiple HQ cycles. These have been
upgraded from just “play” and “win” to multiple play and win
cycles like the affiliation achievements. As such, some players will
lose Twice as Sweet, but gain Double Down Victor, the
same achievement by a different name.

7. Nope, it wasn't any of those. WHAT HAPPENED?

Achievement statuses are fluid, not locked in. As long as you have
a complete, legal, public Federation deck posted and attached to a
completed, sanctioned tournament, you will have the Federation Player
achievement. If you delete that deck for some reason, or alter it to
no longer meet the criteria for that achievement, the system will no
longer recognize it, and will log the achievement as lost. If you wish
to alter or reuse a deck, we suggest using the "Copy Deck" function
and making alterations to the facsimile so you do not affect the
status of your current achievements.

8. Why do some achievements have a clock-looking icon? What have
   some like that dissappeared?

The clock is a "countdown" icon, and achievements marked by it
are Decay achievements. This means they are only available for a
limited time. Each Decay achievement has it's expiration date
detailed on it's Long Description page. Most (but not all)
countdowns end at the projected release of a new achievement set. If a
release date is pushed out, so is the expiration date.

It is always possible that an achievement's countdown could be
"reset" at the release of a new achievement set, pushing out the
expiration to the following set's release. This depends on the nature
of the Decay achievement and the designers' reason it was restricted
with a countdown.

9. What's up with these Casting
   achievements? Why are there so many pieces? What are
   "sub-achievements?"

The Good/Great Casting achievements were meant to celebrate the
wide variety of characters that these talented actors have portrayed
throughout the Star Trek universe. The goal is to play most or all of
them over the course of several tournaments, just as they appear in
several different episodes, series, and/or movies. The easiest way to
track this (both for the players and they system) was to create
"sub-achievements."

Because coding a single achievement to track all the different
tournaments and decks including these characters would be a nightmare
about a plague, we took the simpler route of breaking the individual
requirements out into these sub-achievements, easily trackable chunks
that we could then refer to with the primary achievement as simply
"earn all these sub-achievements."

10. Why aren't the
    sub-achievements worth anything, and why isn't mine gold?

Sub-achievements aren't really achievements; they themselves
aren't really worthy of note, and thus have no point value and no
gold border for "first" recognition. They are merely a way of
tracking each of the requirements for the primary achievement. When
you have collected them all and earned the primary achievement,
though, you will get a sizeable point payoff and have the potential to
earn gold.

11. Okay, I put a bunch of (insert
    Casting achievement actor here) characters in my deck, but I'm not
    getting any sub-achievements! What gives?

Except on very rare occasions, most actors only play one character in
any given episode or storyline. To reflect this (and to avoid
complicated verification checks that would make the system
staggeringly slow), you are only allowed ONE AND ONLY ONE character in
your deck at a time to qualify for these tournaments. If you had more
than one Armstrong character in your deck, the system wouldn't know
which one to credit, especially if you had already qualified for one
character and not another. Limiting these sub-achievements to one
character per deck is both easier to track (for you and the system)
and more in the spirit of the achievement. 

12. (NEW) What's up with Gold achievements? Did they change?

Yes. Initially, gold bordered icons were awarded to the first person (or persons, if earned within the same 24 hour check period) to earn an achievement (everyone else gets the standard silver border icon). While that was fun at first, it became clear that this was unfair to players whose groups can only meet with infrequent regularity or in rural areas who can only play online. It did not seem fair to reward players who get to have a tournament every week (who are already receiving the reward of getting to play!) over those who don't get to play as often.

Starting in January 2016, gold achievements were extended to include anyone who earned an achievement during its initial release period (generally until the next achievement set is released). This gives everyone ample opportunity to earn gold for new achievements they care about, but still maintains the sense of urgency to get them before they go away.

13. Will you tell me if (X) is a hidden achievement?

No, but if we go long enough without anyone earning a hidden
achievement, we may reveal it, or give hints to the community.

14. Why are some achievements so HARD?

Not all achievements are created equal; in fact many are fairly
easy (Play this affiliation, File a Report, Play 1 Tribble). But to
truly achieve something noteworthy you must aim high! Can the hive
survive without its Queen? Can the Starfleet leathernecks hold the
line against more competitive decks? These are truly difficult tasks,
but if you accomplish them, it is truly an Achievement!

15. What if my play group agrees to all play the same deck so at
    least one of us will get the associated "win" achievement?

Aside from inviting the ire of the greater player community for not
legitimately earning your achievement, you mean? 

Well, for starters, tournaments with special restrictions like this
are not sanctioned tournaments; they are actually scenario
formats. While restricted formats like these can be fun, they are
unsanctioned, and achievements specifically state that they can only
be earned in a sanctioned tournament.

Whether you impose these restrictions as part of the official
tournament or enter a "gentleman's agreement" under the table to
all bring the same deck, restrictions like this are counter to the
spirit of the Achievements program and are grounds for rendering your
tournament unsanctioned.

Routine checks are done on tournaments as they are scheduled and
results are posted. Any tournament listed as a sanctioned format but
otherwise imposing deck restrictions is actually a scenario format,
there for unsanctioned, and will be edited to reflect that.

Likewise, any events found with every player attaching the same or
similar decks  that are all eligible for the same achievement(s) will
be considered suspect and rendered unsanctioned.

It is the responsibility of the Tournament Director to maintain a
fun, fair play environment, and thus up to them to remedy this
situation if they see it happening at their events.

The bottom line is, don't. Let's all just have fun instead of
trying to game the system, okay?