I have to wonder if some of the people who get so up in arms trying to claim that you cant actually get dil in a time efficient way have always rationalized their impulse spending by saying "its the only way I can get this stuff, I will not spend hours a day grinding."
Like when baudl started his meltdown it was about how it would take -hours- get get dil, he claimed that people who were getting it in minutes were lying.
Now that he's been educated about the facts, he's moved on to 2+2=9 type math to 'prove' his point.
It's important to try to understand peoples motives, to try to figure out why they display the behavior they do. The above is my best guess.
And I have to question the motives of a person who rather spends half an hour a day being basically a bot. We didn't even mention yet how much 50 character slots cost and what you need to shell out for the contraband, which minimizes the profit margin of your endeavor even further.
Even though the concept seems to completely elude you, but had you worked those 25 minutes longer in your regular job and spend that money on ZEN directly you would have gotten a far bigger bounty. Why, because those 25 minutes in STO are worth literally pennies.
Maybe for you time is not the most significant resource available to you, but in this context you simply can't ignore it. The only thing you "educated" me about is that there are people that value their own time less than a few pennies an hour and seem to think they are the smart ones. Begging in a populated area in a city will yield you more in a 25 minute timeframe than what you do.
And yes, I still call BS on those 25 minutes. Mathematically possible, but I assume there is something human left in you that rebels after repeating something like you suggested over and over and over, just for a few dollars worth of Zen.
And fyi: I actually used to do that on 10 chars for a while, until I realized that I was literally a) working and b) for pennies/hour.
I still do it in other games, like Armored Warfare, where you need to logg in for a few seconds each day to get a daily gift and 1dollar in ingame cash at the end of the week. Still just pennies, but a) there is not other way to earn that cash in game b) it costs me only 20 seconds a day c) I remain up to date.
Hard to take someone seriously who alternates between "few pennies" and "few dollars" when the maths actually show the number is "more than what flipping burgers would buy", because it shows they're being dishonest.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
More like 35-40 mins.
A 10 character cycle in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
More like 35-40 mins.
A 10 character cycle in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
Color me skeptical.
Takes about 15-20 secs to just switch toons and load the map.
So I have serious doubts that someone could pump out 8 admiralty projects in 1min 10secs. (that's 8.75 sec per project). Highly unlikely. And not "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Is this person picking any 3 ships at random ? Because there is no way if they are being even a little bit selective with their ship choices.
Going by my own experience it ends up taking at least 2 to 2.5 mins per character (at top click speed).
So about 3mins per toon including character switch; 3mins x 10characters = 30 minutes.
Anyway, perhaps its possible by some Click Wizard out there, but I'll remain highly skeptical (at least until some kind of proof or video is posted).
I mean, if it takes me 10-15mins to do only contraband turn-ins on 12 toons (including character switch and map loads) I don't buy the 10 toons in 15min admiralty run.
Especially since I've timed myself many times on my Feds. 6 feds usually takes around 18 mins.
This is a simple 2 step process that is way over complicated.
1) play the game. you will naturally earn dil
2) Don't own a fleet. It is the Dil black hole.
If you preform these 2 steps you will have more dil then you know what to do with and you can sell the excess and still upgrade your gear.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
More like 35-40 mins.
A 10 character cycle in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
Color me skeptical.
Takes about 15-20 secs to just switch toons and load the map.
So I have serious doubts that someone could pump out 8 admiralty projects in 1min 10secs. (that's 8.75 sec per project). Highly unlikely. And not "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Is this person picking any 3 ships at random ? Because there is no way if they are being even a little bit selective with their ship choices.
Going by my own experience it ends up taking at least 2 to 2.5 mins per character (at top click speed).
So about 3mins per toon including character switch; 3mins x 10characters = 30 minutes.
Anyway, perhaps its possible by some Click Wizard out there, but I'll remain highly skeptical (at least until some kind of proof or video is posted).
Nothing wrong with a bit of skepticism until it goes the direction of, "unless it's proven to my satisfaction it is most probably false".
I'll just go ahead and reiterate, 10 characters in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
I mean, if it takes me 10-15mins to do only contraband turn-ins on 12 toons (including character switch and map loads) I don't buy the 10 toons in 15min admiralty run.
Especially since I've timed myself many times on my Feds. 6 feds usually takes around 18 mins.
A 12-character Contraband turn-in cycle normally takes less than 4 minutes when using a somewhat optimized workflow.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
More like 35-40 mins.
A 10 character cycle in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
Color me skeptical.
Takes about 15-20 secs to just switch toons and load the map.
So I have serious doubts that someone could pump out 8 admiralty projects in 1min 10secs. (that's 8.75 sec per project). Highly unlikely. And not "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Is this person picking any 3 ships at random ? Because there is no way if they are being even a little bit selective with their ship choices.
Going by my own experience it ends up taking at least 2 to 2.5 mins per character (at top click speed).
So about 3mins per toon including character switch; 3mins x 10characters = 30 minutes.
Anyway, perhaps its possible by some Click Wizard out there, but I'll remain highly skeptical (at least until some kind of proof or video is posted).
Nothing wrong with a bit of skepticism until it goes the direction of, "unless it's proven to my satisfaction it is most probably false".
I'll just go ahead and reiterate, 10 characters in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
I mean, if it takes me 10-15mins to do only contraband turn-ins on 12 toons (including character switch and map loads) I don't buy the 10 toons in 15min admiralty run.
Especially since I've timed myself many times on my Feds. 6 feds usually takes around 18 mins.
A 12-character Contraband turn-in cycle normally takes less than 4 minutes when using a somewhat optimized workflow.
Wow.. thanks for humoring me, I really had my doubts. But I concede the point to you, fair and square. Sorry to have doubted the claim. Thing is in my case, scrolling through 200+ ships over and over is what really kills my times.
I only mention it because I notice in the vid there's just 28 ships (which would be more manageable scrolling-wise and save a lot of time).
Is this due to making use of the ship filters ?
If so, I seemed to have overlooked a y-uge time saver.
In any event that's still impressive.
(Making me reconsider admiralty tbh)
I 'd be foolish to doubt your 4min claim on contraband at this point... But I don't think "I" could manage that feat myself, takes me 15-20 secs load time between characters, which doesn't leave much time to collect assignments, pick up "Confiscate Contra from Crew", refine, and switch characters again. But I will however take your word on it and try to improve my times, because I'm obviously leaving time on the table somewhere in the process.
Any time saved doing alt maintenance is more time to play the actual game. So I appreciate the admiralty demonstration, and hard targets on efficiency (contra). It's something to shoot for.
So @tacticalrook I'll admit that's fast, but I'm confused about HOW you accomplish that. I can tell there is at least SOME thinking in your ship selections, but many of them seem to be completely random. I'm with Taylor in that for me to actually consider stats and make sure the ships I choose will do the job, it will take longer. Or are your perceptual and motor skills THAT good that you can consider the stats and choose good ships that quickly? (Not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely impressed, because you seemed to get to 100% success chance every time.)
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
Wow.. thanks for humoring me, I really had my doubts. But I concede the point to you, fair and square. Sorry to have doubted the claim. Thing is in my case, scrolling through 200+ ships over and over is what really kills my times.
I only mention it because I notice in the vid there's just 28 ships (which would be more manageable scrolling-wise and save a lot of time).
Is this due to making use of the ship filters ?
If so, I seemed to have overlooked a y-uge time saver.
In any event that's still impressive.
(Making me reconsider admiralty tbh)
I 'd be foolish to doubt your 4min claim on contraband at this point... But I don't think "I" could manage that feat myself, takes me 15-20 secs load time between characters, which doesn't leave much time to collect assignments, pick up "Confiscate Contra from Crew", refine, and switch characters again. But I will however take your word on it and try to improve my times, because I'm obviously leaving time on the table somewhere in the process.
Any time saved doing alt maintenance is more time to play the actual game. So I appreciate the admiralty demonstration, and hard targets on efficiency (contra). It's something to shoot for.
Sounds counter-intuitive, but these kinds of grinds require making all of the major decisions before beginning the overall grind and more or less doing the same cookie-cutter micro-grinds on each character. Stopping to consider "what else can I do on this character?" or "how can I eek out a little more?" can easily derail the grind and eat up a lot of time.
Personally, I tend to optimize more to minimize grind time/character rather than maximize payout/character, so I avoid things like "Confiscate", and alternate between refine and non-refine runs. This allows scaling to be effective because those few seconds here and there really add up when they're multiplied across every character.
Scrolling through ships is a challenge to optimize because the click-to-scroll region of the UI is far too small to utilize without severely slowing down the pace to avoid mis-clicks. Personally, I've found a simple solution to that problem is to use a mouse with a heavy free-spinning wheel, gets you straight to the bottom of long lists nearly instantly. Whatever the method, having the ability to get to the bottom of lists instantly is a critical time saver. It acts like a filter, to get straight to the ships with meaningful impact on the totals.
Leaving the windows open while switching characters, by binding a key to the switch characters command, also helps reduce the amount of time spent reopening the same windows and tabs to get to the basic starting point for the next character's micro-grind.
With the major time-consuming parts out of the way, these types of grinds (doffing included) tend to boil down to how well someone can physically tolerate repeated, fast-paced precision clicking of the same buttons and objects with very little reprieve. Conditioning, practice, and a tolerable cookie-cutter clicking order plays a big role in speed, but 15 minutes of intense precision clicking can easily feel like an hour if you aren't in the right mindset for it. I haven't found a way to eliminate the impact of this, and it seems to play a major role in why folks go off the deep end due to excessive grinding.. so be careful and try to keep hydrated to avoid grind madness.
So @tacticalrook I'll admit that's fast, but I'm confused about HOW you accomplish that. I can tell there is at least SOME thinking in your ship selections, but many of them seem to be completely random. I'm with Taylor in that for me to actually consider stats and make sure the ships I choose will do the job, it will take longer.
Or are your perceptual and motor skills THAT good that you can consider the stats and choose good ships that quickly?
(Not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely impressed, because you seemed to get to 100% success chance every time.)
I use the micro-grind strategy of churning the colour yellow (yellow on stats and looking for yellow tours), skipping most unreasonable green, blue, and purple jobs, and expecting to do at most one run per day. Since maintenance a non-issue if you're only doing one run per day, roster requirements are drastically reduced and the bottom ships are always safe to use from the start.
I'm somewhat familiar with the type and general magnitude of stat changes that happen with the ships at the bottom of the list based on icons and their frame colour (trying to read names and stats in that list is far too time consuming), as well as the special powers, so ensuring across-the-board yellowness on-the-fly isn't much of a problem. I'll occasionally misjudge the impact a ship has or start a job that has requirements not suited for this strategy, and need to spend an extra few seconds to ensure yellow totals or to back up and skip, but this doesn't add very much time to the overall grind unless it begins happening too frequently and signifies the need to take a break. For the micro-grind, yellowness and avoidance of high-cost jobs is all I really shoot for, minimizing for time rather than maximize for crit.
I understand this approach is what a lot of folks find unconventional and appears on the surface to be sub-par, but it scales to many characters much better than a time-consuming crit-hunting grind. If the goal is to maximize yields, why spend 2-5x longer per character to attempt to eek out a little more from crits when you can make significantly more by scaling the grind out to 2-5x as many characters while spending the same amount of grind time?
I decided to cut costs and stop paying my mortgage, utilities, and car insurance. Sold my beat up old car and bought me a LTS. Thing wouldn’t run anyway. And I got fired for playing at work six months ago so I didn’t really need it. Upside: That’s 500 zen a month.
I’m homeless now, but I was able to buy the temporal 3 pack, which was totally worth it. Now I’m eyeing the MW ships.
I spend most of my time playing at library, so the weather isn’t really an issue for me. Some days I get a crit at the soup kitchen and get a double serving of protein, meaning I don’t need to scavenge for my evening meal to max out on the daily calorie limit of 1600. Playing video games is really sedentary so that saves me looking for food too.
Usually, I setup my box and sign outside the library. People who frequent libraries are usually more socially conscious and will reward players 5 or 10 dollars at a time. There was another guy, a KDF player who tried muscling in on my territory so we PVPed for the spot and I won. Lucky me!
Once I’ve got 10 dollars I have to walk to the bank and make the deposit. That can take up to 45 minutes both ways. Once I’m back at the library I take the money I’ve earned and buy as much zen as I can. I can bring in anywhere from 1000 to 5000 zen a week if I don’t get arrested.
These other guys spend all their time and money on drugs and alcohol, which makes them total deviants in my book. I try to talk to them, telling them how I went from nothing to Fleet Admiral with just a little hard work and ingenuity, but they never want to hear it. They’re total addicts but can’t admit it to themselves.
Not me. I’ve travelled to dozens of alien planets. I fly ships that would make Bill Gates and Warren Buffet weep. And I wouldn’t change a thing.
I sometimes grind Dil on my characters by simply going to the Voth Battlezone and just kill Voths. It helps me relax after getting home from work. Of course, I can simply use real money to buy Zen (come on Zen bonus sale...), which I can then use to buy Dil, but it's not as fun as vaporizing Voths from time to time.
I would assume Cryptic will have an Arc Store sale sometime during the Winter Event, so maybe I will pick up something with a direct credit card purchase as well.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
More like 35-40 mins.
I do mine in 15 minutes period 10 toons. I don't knit pick the ships. I just meet the 90%-100% succcess requirement then move on.
Comments
And I have to question the motives of a person who rather spends half an hour a day being basically a bot. We didn't even mention yet how much 50 character slots cost and what you need to shell out for the contraband, which minimizes the profit margin of your endeavor even further.
Even though the concept seems to completely elude you, but had you worked those 25 minutes longer in your regular job and spend that money on ZEN directly you would have gotten a far bigger bounty. Why, because those 25 minutes in STO are worth literally pennies.
Maybe for you time is not the most significant resource available to you, but in this context you simply can't ignore it. The only thing you "educated" me about is that there are people that value their own time less than a few pennies an hour and seem to think they are the smart ones. Begging in a populated area in a city will yield you more in a 25 minute timeframe than what you do.
And yes, I still call BS on those 25 minutes. Mathematically possible, but I assume there is something human left in you that rebels after repeating something like you suggested over and over and over, just for a few dollars worth of Zen.
And fyi: I actually used to do that on 10 chars for a while, until I realized that I was literally a) working and b) for pennies/hour.
I still do it in other games, like Armored Warfare, where you need to logg in for a few seconds each day to get a daily gift and 1dollar in ingame cash at the end of the week. Still just pennies, but a) there is not other way to earn that cash in game b) it costs me only 20 seconds a day c) I remain up to date.
A 10 character cycle in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
Color me skeptical.
Takes about 15-20 secs to just switch toons and load the map.
So I have serious doubts that someone could pump out 8 admiralty projects in 1min 10secs. (that's 8.75 sec per project). Highly unlikely. And not "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Is this person picking any 3 ships at random ? Because there is no way if they are being even a little bit selective with their ship choices.
Going by my own experience it ends up taking at least 2 to 2.5 mins per character (at top click speed).
So about 3mins per toon including character switch; 3mins x 10characters = 30 minutes.
Anyway, perhaps its possible by some Click Wizard out there, but I'll remain highly skeptical (at least until some kind of proof or video is posted).
I mean, if it takes me 10-15mins to do only contraband turn-ins on 12 toons (including character switch and map loads) I don't buy the 10 toons in 15min admiralty run.
Especially since I've timed myself many times on my Feds. 6 feds usually takes around 18 mins.
1) play the game. you will naturally earn dil
2) Don't own a fleet. It is the Dil black hole.
If you preform these 2 steps you will have more dil then you know what to do with and you can sell the excess and still upgrade your gear.
Nothing wrong with a bit of skepticism until it goes the direction of, "unless it's proven to my satisfaction it is most probably false".
I'll just go ahead and reiterate, 10 characters in 15 minutes is normal for a somewhat optimized workflow. 35-40 minutes is a very long time to spend on only 10 characters.
A 12-character Contraband turn-in cycle normally takes less than 4 minutes when using a somewhat optimized workflow.
Wow.. thanks for humoring me, I really had my doubts. But I concede the point to you, fair and square. Sorry to have doubted the claim. Thing is in my case, scrolling through 200+ ships over and over is what really kills my times.
I only mention it because I notice in the vid there's just 28 ships (which would be more manageable scrolling-wise and save a lot of time).
Is this due to making use of the ship filters ?
If so, I seemed to have overlooked a y-uge time saver.
In any event that's still impressive.
(Making me reconsider admiralty tbh)
I 'd be foolish to doubt your 4min claim on contraband at this point... But I don't think "I" could manage that feat myself, takes me 15-20 secs load time between characters, which doesn't leave much time to collect assignments, pick up "Confiscate Contra from Crew", refine, and switch characters again. But I will however take your word on it and try to improve my times, because I'm obviously leaving time on the table somewhere in the process.
Any time saved doing alt maintenance is more time to play the actual game. So I appreciate the admiralty demonstration, and hard targets on efficiency (contra). It's something to shoot for.
Or are your perceptual and motor skills THAT good that you can consider the stats and choose good ships that quickly?
(Not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely impressed, because you seemed to get to 100% success chance every time.)
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
Personally, I tend to optimize more to minimize grind time/character rather than maximize payout/character, so I avoid things like "Confiscate", and alternate between refine and non-refine runs. This allows scaling to be effective because those few seconds here and there really add up when they're multiplied across every character.
Scrolling through ships is a challenge to optimize because the click-to-scroll region of the UI is far too small to utilize without severely slowing down the pace to avoid mis-clicks. Personally, I've found a simple solution to that problem is to use a mouse with a heavy free-spinning wheel, gets you straight to the bottom of long lists nearly instantly. Whatever the method, having the ability to get to the bottom of lists instantly is a critical time saver. It acts like a filter, to get straight to the ships with meaningful impact on the totals.
Leaving the windows open while switching characters, by binding a key to the switch characters command, also helps reduce the amount of time spent reopening the same windows and tabs to get to the basic starting point for the next character's micro-grind.
With the major time-consuming parts out of the way, these types of grinds (doffing included) tend to boil down to how well someone can physically tolerate repeated, fast-paced precision clicking of the same buttons and objects with very little reprieve. Conditioning, practice, and a tolerable cookie-cutter clicking order plays a big role in speed, but 15 minutes of intense precision clicking can easily feel like an hour if you aren't in the right mindset for it. I haven't found a way to eliminate the impact of this, and it seems to play a major role in why folks go off the deep end due to excessive grinding.. so be careful and try to keep hydrated to avoid grind madness.
I use the micro-grind strategy of churning the colour yellow (yellow on stats and looking for yellow tours), skipping most unreasonable green, blue, and purple jobs, and expecting to do at most one run per day. Since maintenance a non-issue if you're only doing one run per day, roster requirements are drastically reduced and the bottom ships are always safe to use from the start.
I'm somewhat familiar with the type and general magnitude of stat changes that happen with the ships at the bottom of the list based on icons and their frame colour (trying to read names and stats in that list is far too time consuming), as well as the special powers, so ensuring across-the-board yellowness on-the-fly isn't much of a problem. I'll occasionally misjudge the impact a ship has or start a job that has requirements not suited for this strategy, and need to spend an extra few seconds to ensure yellow totals or to back up and skip, but this doesn't add very much time to the overall grind unless it begins happening too frequently and signifies the need to take a break. For the micro-grind, yellowness and avoidance of high-cost jobs is all I really shoot for, minimizing for time rather than maximize for crit.
I understand this approach is what a lot of folks find unconventional and appears on the surface to be sub-par, but it scales to many characters much better than a time-consuming crit-hunting grind. If the goal is to maximize yields, why spend 2-5x longer per character to attempt to eek out a little more from crits when you can make significantly more by scaling the grind out to 2-5x as many characters while spending the same amount of grind time?
::Hugs::
I would assume Cryptic will have an Arc Store sale sometime during the Winter Event, so maybe I will pick up something with a direct credit card purchase as well.
I do mine in 15 minutes period 10 toons. I don't knit pick the ships. I just meet the 90%-100% succcess requirement then move on.