Some things I'm really curious about the details on are and if, or when, the following will happen:
1) Fleet alliance system. Presumably small fleet can access big fleet's stores, and large fleet just has a place for excess alts?
2) Fleet merger system. While combining store provisions would be common sense, how would this work in terms of the fleet holdings' XP? A 1:1 gain is far too easy to exploit (get a couple dozen people to spend a week or two leveling up to Tier 1, then combine and get instant Tier 5 would be met with a ton of outrage).
3) Costs being reduced across the board. When? May 21 is coming up and would be the most logical time, especially since the costs are constants currently -- literally just a number in a database to be changed as the devs see fit. How much? Costs being reduced by dilithium, or fleet marks, or duty officers, or commodities, or some combination? For whom? This has been mentioned in regards to small fleets, but would it be for fleets of all sizes?
4) The third fleet holding. It was previously mentioned by Dan Stahl that it'd be either a dilithium mine, colony, or outpost, but that it won't be launched on May 21. Is this still going to be before their next December update (now known as Season 8)?
Glad to see they are finally capitalizing on what they said forever ago(that small fleets would eventually get to the same tier). The time investment v fleet count v rewards has been wonky for bases for a long time.
Glad to see they are finally capitalizing on what they said forever ago(that small fleets would eventually get to the same tier). The time investment v fleet count v rewards has been wonky for bases for a long time.
Probably, but not definitely -- or at least not in the way everyone wants and/or expects. Stahl said he wants to drop prices across the board and it's been sent to the systems team for their proposal.
Thanks OP this is really handy to know. Thanks for all the hard work.
No wonder there are so many smaller fleets now graveyards. Cryptic does need to do something about this, I play a lot, too much I think and still I have only been able to get to tier 1, with a 1,000 Starbase XP required to get to Tier 2.
There has been talk within the fleet leadership of possibly selling the two fleets we run and just join a larger fleet due to the insane costs involved.
Support the Game by Supporting the KDF, equality and uniqueness for all factions!
Thanks OP this is really handy to know. Thanks for all the hard work.
No wonder there are so many smaller fleets now graveyards. Cryptic does need to do something about this, I play a lot, too much I think and still I have only been able to get to tier 1, with a 1,000 Starbase XP required to get to Tier 2.
There has been talk within the fleet leadership of possibly selling the two fleets we run and just join a larger fleet due to the insane costs involved.
Thank you, I'm glad to provide this to the community.
It is still unclear when or to what extent Cryptic may reduce the fleet holding project costs. In the absence of that information, I will stand by my recommendation made in the original post that smaller Fed fleets should consider selling their fleet to groups who are interested in their own (particularly Romulan-theme ones) rather than making a new one, and the Fed fleets join the medium-sized fleets to help them level up. That way everyone is in a more advanced base than they were and the smaller fleet gets something for their work in the form of whatever payment was decided upon.
Heh... I wonder if the developers finally got their "no cheating" fleet to T4 and took a good hard look at how much longer it was going to take them to finish. So lower project costs for everyone!
Heh... I wonder if the developers finally got their "no cheating" fleet to T4 and took a good hard look at how much longer it was going to take them to finish. So lower project costs for everyone!
(A cynical thought, I know)
They've already said they're looking at lowering the costs. That's been mentioned a few times in this thread.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Heh... I wonder if the developers finally got their "no cheating" fleet to T4 and took a good hard look at how much longer it was going to take them to finish. So lower project costs for everyone!
(A cynical thought, I know)
Last I heard they weren't even close to Tier 4, but even if so that's only 40% of the XP (or by cost, it's between about 35-50% there). I would not be surprised if it's primarily a business decision -- out of the approximately 17,000 fleets in-game, far less than 1% would see Tier 5 this year (even though fleet starbases will be 1.5 years old come December). If they lower the costs, people can advance farther and get to the more expensive ones that cost dilithium, which would ultimately lead to more zen purchases and more profit for Cryptic.
Simple economics -- lowering cost may reduce marginal profit, but increase total profit (lowering price to generate more sells in such a way that the net profit will increase is a big reason why discounts are commonplace).
OP, you are blatantly ignoring the most important part about the Starbases: if you want COOL THINGS, you have to WORK FOR THEM. Yeah sure, Tac/Sec, Eng/Op, Med/Sci doffs should've been combined to start with. Starbase upgrade costs could be cut by 50%, but the ship/item requisitions project costs ought to be tripled to make up for it.
The reality is that a T5 Starbase is a powerful thing... and instead of trying to be Captain Saveaho, people are just going to have to cut their losses and realize that they cannot do such a massive project alone, or with a few people, and join a fleet capable of such. Which THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE TO START WITH. You can keep your 'group' identity and still build a Starbase ffs.
OP, you are blatantly ignoring the most important part about the Starbases: if you want COOL THINGS, you have to WORK FOR THEM. Yeah sure, Tac/Sec, Eng/Op, Med/Sci doffs should've been combined to start with. Starbase upgrade costs could be cut by 50%, but the ship/item requisitions project costs ought to be tripled to make up for it.
The reality is that a T5 Starbase is a powerful thing... and instead of trying to be Captain Saveaho, people are just going to have to cut their losses and realize that they cannot do such a massive project alone, or with a few people, and join a fleet capable of such. Which THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE TO START WITH. You can keep your 'group' identity and still build a Starbase ffs.
I believe you put this in the wrong thread -- having clicked on my response to Fleet Starbases creating Duty Officer exchange madness since your second paragraph is very similar to what I put in "My Recommendations" section and your first paragraph would appear to miss that this is an informational post and not one suggesting cuts to costs (plenty of those already, hence the thread I believe you meant to respond to) -- as this is a matter-of-fact thread, not a persuasive essay.
The reality is that a T5 Starbase is a powerful thing... and instead of trying to be Captain Saveaho, people are just going to have to cut their losses and realize that they cannot do such a massive project alone, or with a few people, and join a fleet capable of such. Which THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE TO START WITH. You can keep your 'group' identity and still build a Starbase ffs.
Or they can accept the cost, and finish it three years from now. The reality is the cost is not the problem. The problem is so many people acting like the Queen song "I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now."
Take away that greed and entitlement and the system is fine.
No one had a t5 starbase three months ago. I dunno about anyone else but I still had fun three months ago. My fleet doesn't have one now. I can't speak for the OP, but I'm still having fun right now. We'll get there. So will a few single and dual-player fleets I know of.
ZOMG we won't have a maxed third holding!!!! Pffft, won't have it right away. We'll finish it somewhere around the time our fourth holding is tier 2 I suspect.
Q: (realcornholio) Will you extend the member cap for fleets any time soon?
STO Team: Unfortunately, due to technical limitations, we are unable to increase the cap at this time. We are, however, looking into possible ways that fleets can ally with each other, which effectively could be similar to increasing the cap.
I'm really curious what these technical limitations are, as Cryptic has repeatedly said they weren't planning on raising the roster cap (of 500) but never said that was the reason behind it before.
Q: (gespensterjaeger) Solo fleets for solo people -- when will the price reduction for fleet upgrades be done?
STO Team: While we appreciate that there are players who run their own fleets by themselves, we simply can't balance around this. We are still working on the best options for adjusting fleet progression pricing, but do not have plans to adjust values to accommodate fleets below the established 25 player mark.
It looks like Cryptic wants to keep project prices the same for all fleet sizes, which is logical from the point of view that everyone is building the same thing -- a starbase isn't magically cheaper just because there's 5 people building it versus 25 or 500. They said they're still working on options to adjust fleet progression pricing, which ties in to Stahl's comments earlier this month about dropping prices across the board.
Just a quick update on the actual experiences portion from the original post: the first fleet to have all upgrades paid for and completed will be done on May 16. Since Season 6 started starbases on July 12, 2012 this means it took 308 days (or 10 months, 4 days). In addition to the monumental cost for the various currencies, it's also a very large time commitment.
PhyrexianHero, another quality post. Thanks for the effort in putting this together.
I do hope Dstahl comes through on his Podcast comments about wanting to drop prices, and actually gets that done. Sooner rather than later. Certainly, I hope it's done by launch of RoL.
I do not expect any sort of "rebate" to happen. If I buy a product on Monday, and a month later it goes on price markdown, I don't often get any refund. That being said, some companies do offer a price match if something goes on sale within a certain timeframe of purchase. It would also be "good customer service" of Cryptic to do something along those line (sometimes they can be really good at that, other times, not so much, lol).
What I suppose would be nice is if they give any existing Fleet Holdings a "make good" bump. So for example, say they slash project costs by 10%, then they should raise everyone's existing Holdings' XP by 10%. Something like that anyway. Even if it was a "lossy" conversion (as Cryptic is famous for (ie reduce price 10% but only give a 3% bump)), it would still be appreciated.
Either way, I would welcome any price reduction, compensation or not.
On another topic, I noticed on the List of Limited Time Projects it seems to be missing the "Winter Festival Project" (or "Breen Ornament Project" described here). Was this left off for a reason, or just missed?
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
A simple Fleet Balance pass using the 500 member limit as a base and providing a % discount to projects and upgrades to smaller Fleets would be the best.
Cryptic has stated that casual players make up the majority.
The Fleet system was made to keep those that had too much time and resources occupied.
This idea would leave that in place while encouraging casual players to make Fleets as well having resonable goals.
We all knew it was expensive, but we never knew truly how expensive it was when we started. Hopefully this information will allow current and future fleets to use this knowledge in a way that is helpful for everyone involved.
first we got lured in without knowing how expensive it will get but now with your post I bet some will be turned away from even starting the building process.
Our small fleet stoped building some time ago allready. I told my buddies about the cost you list here and it ended in a hillarious laugh in voic chat (about the costs not about your post ofc)
first we got lured in without knowing how expensive it will get but now with your post I bet some will be turned away from even starting the building process.
Our small fleet stoped building some time ago allready. I told my buddies about the cost you list here and it ended in a hillarious laugh in voic chat (about the costs not about your post ofc)
Thanks for the great overview
Same thing happened to my old fleet so we all joined another larger fleet. It was the shock dilithium nerf of S7 which killed us though, over a few days pretty much the whole fleet stopped logging in. It didn't matter that rewards were added again, damage was done.
I think a lot of smaller fleets think they will be able to just use bigger fleets facilities for free later to get what they want, dunno how I feel on that though.
The thing is that it's much harder and time consuming to hit the 8.000 dilithium cap on a single char than to have 2 chars grinding 4k per toon or even 4 chars refining 2k each.
It's easily possible to "grind" between 3.000 and 4.500+ dilithium (depending on doff assignment crit luck and CD) just by logging in for 4-5 minutes each day per character and never leaving Sol. (turn in contraband, relocate/resettle colonists, dilithium mining, academy quiz). Go through 10 characters in an hour and you'll get your 30-50k+.
the way i see it guys big or small fleets at t5 deserve their status.
those news about lowering prices just ended up as many people begging others in ESD to form new fleets...in a game that already has too many fleets.
i have a small fleet and well...its hard getting up there.i will be content to reach tier 3.dont plan to go ahead unless we do some major active player recruitment which is difficult cause we are a "national" fleet(people from the same country...small country if i might add).me with the other founders of the fleet just discussed the issue and decided to open up to any active player who wants to be part of us and stop the whole national thing since it didnt really work out cause most of us are adults and/or married so we simply dont have the luxury to play as much as we wanted.and even though we have the money to get zens and turn them into dil to power our fleet ,when you pass a certain age games just arent so appealing anymore for you to spend too much money on them.so even though i have a small struggling fleet with only a handfull of active players i say the costs must not change.at some point in this game some lines must be drawn.not everyone can have everything.those who put the extra effort should be rewarded.thats how it is on other mmos and it pains me to say that since im a casual player and not very sociable in mmos but its the just thing to do.
lowering costs is something that we must make sure that never happens.giving a large "mother" fleet the opportunity to have smaller "daughter" fleets under its wings and helping them out,plus giving those who help out something special as an incentive is a better solution.then again that is easy to happen without a dedicated system and its already happening ,i think.
since we havent seen yet a blog post about the issue im pretty sure that it was just the devs thinking out loud and not a final decision.
I still never did understand what was so hard about balancing fleet star base progression. to me it seems simple. Decide what the avg time to base completion should be 1 yr 2 yrs whatever, then apply accelerators/decelerators capped to remain in line with your target avg. It still gives larger fleets/whales the option to "hammer" through and get done faster while not being such a barrier to entry for smaller fleets and most importantly the life blood of any mmo ...newer players.
I see newer players constantly trying to start new fleets everyday, and it makes me frustrated because I wonder how many of those will move on to other games once they hit the wall.
I still never did understand what was so hard about balancing fleet star base progression. to me it seems simple. Decide what the avg time to base completion should be 1 yr 2 yrs whatever, then apply accelerators/decelerators capped to remain in line with your target avg. It still gives larger fleets/whales the option to "hammer" through and get done faster while not being such a barrier to entry for smaller fleets and most importantly the life blood of any mmo ...newer players.
I see newer players constantly trying to start new fleets everyday, and it makes me frustrated because I wonder how many of those will move on to other games once they hit the wall.
thats sounds like youre saying that people play STO just to have tier 5 star base.please remember that people loved this game before fleet bases ever existed.
thats sounds like youre saying that people play STO just to have tier 5 star base.please remember that people loved this game before fleet bases ever existed.
Never said they didn't, but any mmo that adds barriers to entry for newer players instead of easing them ultimately start declining. We all get burned out from an mmo every once in awhile. If there's no one there to pick up the load while we're on "vacation" the population retraction snowball effect can kick in. STO's already had enough of those. I would strangely enough like to see a long term increase in population, crazy me. While SBases themselves aren't the only barrier they are a very noticeable one. Why do you think mmo's shorten xp curves over time, streamline older quest chains, ease earlier content difficulty? for this very reason.
This is one of the few mmos that actively rewards/punishes players based on fleet/guild size. Most mmos use time factors to guild progression
So, weren't we supposed to hear something about reduced costs in early May?
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
So, weren't we supposed to hear something about reduced costs in early May?
I'm not aware of a specific timeframe being given, just what was in the original post that Dan Stahl was waiting to hear back on the proposal from the systems team. He gave that interview on April 4, so when we'd hear back is anyone's guess.
Honestly, you don't have to dump crate loads of dil to upgrade your starbase. You can just do the projects that require doffs. By the way, doffs are extremely easy to get in this game. Just send refugees off left and right and grind your results down to white ones. Where you need a lot of dil is for getting the tiers up and embassy projects. It would't be fair to the fleets that have had to use so much dil and other resources to change the rules to make it easy for everyone. The changing of doff requirements to all white should have been enough to accelerate fleet progression.
I still never did understand what was so hard about balancing fleet star base progression. to me it seems simple. Decide what the avg time to base completion should be 1 yr 2 yrs whatever, then apply accelerators/decelerators capped to remain in line with your target avg. It still gives larger fleets/whales the option to "hammer" through and get done faster while not being such a barrier to entry for smaller fleets and most importantly the life blood of any mmo ...newer players.
I see newer players constantly trying to start new fleets everyday, and it makes me frustrated because I wonder how many of those will move on to other games once they hit the wall.
Yup, all they needed to do was the following at fleet base launch:
Add 1 project per category that granted 2k EXP at half the cost with 5 day duration or run time.
Less than half the speed for the small guy, but a quarter of the cost. Win/Win.
PS: Would have solved the stupid insane quantity of fleet credits that some are rolling with and likely will soon crash the doff market with.
I'm not aware of a specific timeframe being given, just what was in the original post that Dan Stahl was waiting to hear back on the proposal from the systems team. He gave that interview on April 4, so when we'd hear back is anyone's guess.
Hmm, you're right, I'm not sure where I got "early" from, though I swear I saw it somewhere.
Q: (azurianstar) Are you still considering scaling down Dilithium Costs or creating an alliance/co-op system to help small fleets advance their Starbases?
Dstahl: Yes, we are and plan to address small Fleet project challenges and will release more information about it closer to the May release.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Honestly, you don't have to dump crate loads of dil to upgrade your starbase. You can just do the projects that require doffs. By the way, doffs are extremely easy to get in this game. Just send refugees off left and right and grind your results down to white ones. Where you need a lot of dil is for getting the tiers up and embassy projects. It would't be fair to the fleets that have had to use so much dil and other resources to change the rules to make it easy for everyone. The changing of doff requirements to all white should have been enough to accelerate fleet progression.
Referring back to the original post, the minimum dilithium to upgrade the fleet holdings is 20,535,750 for the starbase and 8,544,000 for the embassy. The minimum possible number of duty officers is 14,503 and 3,640, respectively.
To actually minimize the dilithium, you'd need to acquire an additional 21,317 duty officers (starbase) and 1,600 duty officers (embassy).
I'd say that 28 million dilithium is "crate loads of dil" and that 41,060 duty officers is not that easy to get. My fleet uses about 360 duty officers a day doing two 1000 XP projects to get to Tier 5 and this includes 90 security and 90 medical doffs. Those aren't easy, or inexpensive, to get every 20 hours.
Comments
1) Fleet alliance system. Presumably small fleet can access big fleet's stores, and large fleet just has a place for excess alts?
2) Fleet merger system. While combining store provisions would be common sense, how would this work in terms of the fleet holdings' XP? A 1:1 gain is far too easy to exploit (get a couple dozen people to spend a week or two leveling up to Tier 1, then combine and get instant Tier 5 would be met with a ton of outrage).
3) Costs being reduced across the board. When? May 21 is coming up and would be the most logical time, especially since the costs are constants currently -- literally just a number in a database to be changed as the devs see fit. How much? Costs being reduced by dilithium, or fleet marks, or duty officers, or commodities, or some combination? For whom? This has been mentioned in regards to small fleets, but would it be for fleets of all sizes?
4) The third fleet holding. It was previously mentioned by Dan Stahl that it'd be either a dilithium mine, colony, or outpost, but that it won't be launched on May 21. Is this still going to be before their next December update (now known as Season 8)?
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Probably, but not definitely -- or at least not in the way everyone wants and/or expects. Stahl said he wants to drop prices across the board and it's been sent to the systems team for their proposal.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
system Lord Baal is dead
No wonder there are so many smaller fleets now graveyards. Cryptic does need to do something about this, I play a lot, too much I think and still I have only been able to get to tier 1, with a 1,000 Starbase XP required to get to Tier 2.
There has been talk within the fleet leadership of possibly selling the two fleets we run and just join a larger fleet due to the insane costs involved.
Thank you, I'm glad to provide this to the community.
It is still unclear when or to what extent Cryptic may reduce the fleet holding project costs. In the absence of that information, I will stand by my recommendation made in the original post that smaller Fed fleets should consider selling their fleet to groups who are interested in their own (particularly Romulan-theme ones) rather than making a new one, and the Fed fleets join the medium-sized fleets to help them level up. That way everyone is in a more advanced base than they were and the smaller fleet gets something for their work in the form of whatever payment was decided upon.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
(A cynical thought, I know)
Last I heard they weren't even close to Tier 4, but even if so that's only 40% of the XP (or by cost, it's between about 35-50% there). I would not be surprised if it's primarily a business decision -- out of the approximately 17,000 fleets in-game, far less than 1% would see Tier 5 this year (even though fleet starbases will be 1.5 years old come December). If they lower the costs, people can advance farther and get to the more expensive ones that cost dilithium, which would ultimately lead to more zen purchases and more profit for Cryptic.
Simple economics -- lowering cost may reduce marginal profit, but increase total profit (lowering price to generate more sells in such a way that the net profit will increase is a big reason why discounts are commonplace).
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
No word yet on when the third fleet holding will be added except that it will not be with the Legacy of Romulus expansion's launch on May 21.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
The reality is that a T5 Starbase is a powerful thing... and instead of trying to be Captain Saveaho, people are just going to have to cut their losses and realize that they cannot do such a massive project alone, or with a few people, and join a fleet capable of such. Which THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE TO START WITH. You can keep your 'group' identity and still build a Starbase ffs.
I believe you put this in the wrong thread -- having clicked on my response to Fleet Starbases creating Duty Officer exchange madness since your second paragraph is very similar to what I put in "My Recommendations" section and your first paragraph would appear to miss that this is an informational post and not one suggesting cuts to costs (plenty of those already, hence the thread I believe you meant to respond to) -- as this is a matter-of-fact thread, not a persuasive essay.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Or they can accept the cost, and finish it three years from now. The reality is the cost is not the problem. The problem is so many people acting like the Queen song "I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now."
Take away that greed and entitlement and the system is fine.
No one had a t5 starbase three months ago. I dunno about anyone else but I still had fun three months ago. My fleet doesn't have one now. I can't speak for the OP, but I'm still having fun right now. We'll get there. So will a few single and dual-player fleets I know of.
ZOMG we won't have a maxed third holding!!!! Pffft, won't have it right away. We'll finish it somewhere around the time our fourth holding is tier 2 I suspect.
I just can't see this as a problem, or as broken.
I'm really curious what these technical limitations are, as Cryptic has repeatedly said they weren't planning on raising the roster cap (of 500) but never said that was the reason behind it before.
It looks like Cryptic wants to keep project prices the same for all fleet sizes, which is logical from the point of view that everyone is building the same thing -- a starbase isn't magically cheaper just because there's 5 people building it versus 25 or 500. They said they're still working on options to adjust fleet progression pricing, which ties in to Stahl's comments earlier this month about dropping prices across the board.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
I do hope Dstahl comes through on his Podcast comments about wanting to drop prices, and actually gets that done. Sooner rather than later. Certainly, I hope it's done by launch of RoL.
I do not expect any sort of "rebate" to happen. If I buy a product on Monday, and a month later it goes on price markdown, I don't often get any refund. That being said, some companies do offer a price match if something goes on sale within a certain timeframe of purchase. It would also be "good customer service" of Cryptic to do something along those line (sometimes they can be really good at that, other times, not so much, lol).
What I suppose would be nice is if they give any existing Fleet Holdings a "make good" bump. So for example, say they slash project costs by 10%, then they should raise everyone's existing Holdings' XP by 10%. Something like that anyway. Even if it was a "lossy" conversion (as Cryptic is famous for (ie reduce price 10% but only give a 3% bump)), it would still be appreciated.
Either way, I would welcome any price reduction, compensation or not.
On another topic, I noticed on the List of Limited Time Projects it seems to be missing the "Winter Festival Project" (or "Breen Ornament Project" described here). Was this left off for a reason, or just missed?
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Cryptic has stated that casual players make up the majority.
The Fleet system was made to keep those that had too much time and resources occupied.
This idea would leave that in place while encouraging casual players to make Fleets as well having resonable goals.
first we got lured in without knowing how expensive it will get but now with your post I bet some will be turned away from even starting the building process.
Our small fleet stoped building some time ago allready. I told my buddies about the cost you list here and it ended in a hillarious laugh in voic chat (about the costs not about your post ofc)
Thanks for the great overview
Same thing happened to my old fleet so we all joined another larger fleet. It was the shock dilithium nerf of S7 which killed us though, over a few days pretty much the whole fleet stopped logging in. It didn't matter that rewards were added again, damage was done.
I think a lot of smaller fleets think they will be able to just use bigger fleets facilities for free later to get what they want, dunno how I feel on that though.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
That sounds good.
Except it also sounds boring.
I would ditch the game if all I did was grind.
those news about lowering prices just ended up as many people begging others in ESD to form new fleets...in a game that already has too many fleets.
i have a small fleet and well...its hard getting up there.i will be content to reach tier 3.dont plan to go ahead unless we do some major active player recruitment which is difficult cause we are a "national" fleet(people from the same country...small country if i might add).me with the other founders of the fleet just discussed the issue and decided to open up to any active player who wants to be part of us and stop the whole national thing since it didnt really work out cause most of us are adults and/or married so we simply dont have the luxury to play as much as we wanted.and even though we have the money to get zens and turn them into dil to power our fleet ,when you pass a certain age games just arent so appealing anymore for you to spend too much money on them.so even though i have a small struggling fleet with only a handfull of active players i say the costs must not change.at some point in this game some lines must be drawn.not everyone can have everything.those who put the extra effort should be rewarded.thats how it is on other mmos and it pains me to say that since im a casual player and not very sociable in mmos but its the just thing to do.
lowering costs is something that we must make sure that never happens.giving a large "mother" fleet the opportunity to have smaller "daughter" fleets under its wings and helping them out,plus giving those who help out something special as an incentive is a better solution.then again that is easy to happen without a dedicated system and its already happening ,i think.
since we havent seen yet a blog post about the issue im pretty sure that it was just the devs thinking out loud and not a final decision.
I see newer players constantly trying to start new fleets everyday, and it makes me frustrated because I wonder how many of those will move on to other games once they hit the wall.
thats sounds like youre saying that people play STO just to have tier 5 star base.please remember that people loved this game before fleet bases ever existed.
Never said they didn't, but any mmo that adds barriers to entry for newer players instead of easing them ultimately start declining. We all get burned out from an mmo every once in awhile. If there's no one there to pick up the load while we're on "vacation" the population retraction snowball effect can kick in. STO's already had enough of those. I would strangely enough like to see a long term increase in population, crazy me. While SBases themselves aren't the only barrier they are a very noticeable one. Why do you think mmo's shorten xp curves over time, streamline older quest chains, ease earlier content difficulty? for this very reason.
This is one of the few mmos that actively rewards/punishes players based on fleet/guild size. Most mmos use time factors to guild progression
I'm not aware of a specific timeframe being given, just what was in the original post that Dan Stahl was waiting to hear back on the proposal from the systems team. He gave that interview on April 4, so when we'd hear back is anyone's guess.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Yup, all they needed to do was the following at fleet base launch:
Add 1 project per category that granted 2k EXP at half the cost with 5 day duration or run time.
Less than half the speed for the small guy, but a quarter of the cost. Win/Win.
PS: Would have solved the stupid insane quantity of fleet credits that some are rolling with and likely will soon crash the doff market with.
Hmm, you're right, I'm not sure where I got "early" from, though I swear I saw it somewhere.
However, from http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=852601
Referring back to the original post, the minimum dilithium to upgrade the fleet holdings is 20,535,750 for the starbase and 8,544,000 for the embassy. The minimum possible number of duty officers is 14,503 and 3,640, respectively.
To actually minimize the dilithium, you'd need to acquire an additional 21,317 duty officers (starbase) and 1,600 duty officers (embassy).
I'd say that 28 million dilithium is "crate loads of dil" and that 41,060 duty officers is not that easy to get. My fleet uses about 360 duty officers a day doing two 1000 XP projects to get to Tier 5 and this includes 90 security and 90 medical doffs. Those aren't easy, or inexpensive, to get every 20 hours.
Well, we have a week and a half until Legacy of Romulus expansion so time will tell...
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)