Ugh.... this is why I think there should be a test before you are allowed to vote in this country.....
Completely agree.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Thanks for replying Scurry. As you may have seen from the sheet, I included the Elochi console as well. From the wiki it would seem that the proc limit is removed with the passive ability "Haywire" (see screenshot, this console is not on ANY of the wiki's yet, the proc, however, is).
Actually, no. Haywire gives a chance to reflect weapons fire, not reduce the proc limit.
I do think you should also factor in three characters for the refining limit, since all players get at least three slots free.
At the minimum, let's assume you grind to 8000 on one character, and only do DoFF missions on the other two. With them KDF-aligned and doing contraband missions, you can add at least 2000 per toon. (I typically get more like 4000, but I'll err on the low side) Oh, and I'll assume they are converted to zen rather than sold directly. Every couple of days or so, you also get the Labor Camp doff missions for prisoners obtained from these missions, so that's another 250 per toon per day.
That's 12500 dil per day instead, about 90 zen, meaning 1.44 million per day, using master key 10-packs to convert. (Price is currently at 1.8 mil, and it's not coming down anytime soon.)
Didn't the devs say kerrat drops were not intended and may be nerfed (like tour of the universe)?
As far as I have heard, the nerf has already occurred, and no more are on the horizon. Could I have a source? Also, note that the drop limit you mentioned (800K worth) only applies to foundry missions. I can get about 1 mil for every hour, mixing in Kerrat. Add this to doff missions such as Strike at Fugitive Support Network crits, which happen twice a week for me - these get me another 400K baseline per crit - so add about 110K.
Along with this, add on refugees from Support doff missions in clusters - these don't give much, but they can be swapped for doffs which will go for a decent sum. Assume one support mission per toon per day, and so one exchange mission per toon per day. 12% chance for a purple going for at least 300K EC, and that's another 100K per day on 3 toonsat the very minimum, and I haven't factored in the blue and green incomes yet. This also doesn't factor in the chance at a crit on the support mission, which will give you Doffs that, although bound, can be downgraded to sell at the academies.
These are what I consider 'safe' income, since I considered the minimum. You have a chance to get more.
Subtotal: 2.65 million (at the minimum level, with chances for additional)
Although you don't like risk, I base my efforts on what they call expected income. Probability of each outcome multiplied by the income of that outcome. Which is why once I had the initial capital, I started opening holonovel codes.
Using the doffs I have, on a crit (29% chance), I can get Hamlet (0.145*2mil) or Horatio (0.145*10mil). A success (51% chance) gives me a blue doff, which I can dispose of for at least 120K (0.51*120K). A fail (20% chance) gives me a green doff, which typically goes for 80K at least (0.2*80K). Thus, the expected income is 2.35 mil. Each holonovel code costs 1 mil - which gives me a long-run profit of 1.35 mil per code! And this mission can be run every 2 hours, giving 150 dil per success, with chance for more or less depending on crit or fail. Hence, with sufficient initial capital to get into this for the long haul, I do it twice a day - meaning additional long-run profit of 2.7mil per day.
Total (with sufficient capital, and income) - 5.35 mil per day
So there you have it - 2.65 mil baseline income, and 5.35 mil if you take a slightly more risky method.
That's just one of the ways to earn more.With your earlier 432 mil figure, that gives you 163 days at the most, on safe income. Add crits, and the time drops. Add my suggested method, and you get 81 days, with the chance to be less!
Also, I'd like to recalculate for different 'best' setups. In PvE, it's widely stated that the Scimitar beam Aux-to-Bat build is the best so far, being capable of nearly soloing some Elite STFs.
Scimitar - 2500 Zen - 28 days to earn, redirecting Dilithium output to Zen.
8 Disruptor Beam Array Mk XII [acc]x3 - about 3 mil each, so - 24 million
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million on exchange at the moment
3xA2B Technicians - Free from B'Tran cluster
Well, that's just 35 million so far. That's 35 days separate.
Incidentally, the bugship is a true outlier. It's not the best anymore. It's only so costly because of it being a decent ship, while being incredibly rare.
Erm, actually, why do you say the Elachi console/weapons are unobtainable without EC cap? Surely you can just go with buying keys and opening lockboxes one-by-one for the lobi for the console.
My personal PvP setup:
Fleet Dhelan - 4 Fleet modules (8mil each) - 32 million
1xElachi Dual Beam Bank Mk XII [acc]x3- 13 million
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million
3xDisruptor Dual Heavy Cannons Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD] (700K each) - 2.1 million
2x Nanite Disruptor Turret Mk XII [acc]x3 (19 million each) - 38 million
2pc Lobi set - 120 mil
Subtotal: 216 million
Which is a bunch lower than the 432 million figure.
Therefore, an excellent PvP ship can be geared in a much shorter time.
I understand some things are subjective, but I tried to ensure that every bit of the math was calculated from a player's account that had no intention of participating in the pay-to-win scheme (minimal unlocks, etc). As far as the best gear and ships are concerned, the fact we can have discussions and debate it makes the system broken IMO. While you may not agree that Elachi weapons are better than Elite Fleet weapons, I do use ATC for parsing, and consistently parse about 4-8% lower than a friend using my exact skill and boff loadout (I got him into STO). The only difference between the two characters is I have the 700 day vet buff going (which should have zero impact) and he has the bug ship and the full Elachi Mk XII accx3 set (with weapons and console). Using Elite Fleet Disruptors, the fleet Armatage, this shouldn't happen when both of us are sitting still, side-by-side and begin firing on a mob at the same time without using any abilities (just for clarity, our weapons and aux power were set to 125 and 75 for the side-by-side parse).
I do have screenshots of the graph if my friend would be willing to OK me posting them here. Else I can send them to you in private. To be honest, this parse over 4 hours made me furious. Oddly enough, he was furious as well (he had already bought 5 of the fleet weapons and feels he wasted is FC).
Elite Fleet Disruptors will of course underperform in PvE, as their special proc is applied to shields - which go down in a flash for PvE. In PvP, where shields are up more often, elite fleet disruptors will parse much higher.
To the OP: (Disclaimer: I do not, have never, and most likely will never Trust or Like PWE.) Zen prices really are not that bad. I mean $25.000 For a ship or $50.000 for a 3 part ship? Does not really seem that harsh TBVH.
Now there are some items there that seem oddly priced and perhaps incorrectly so but for the most part things seem decent.
The Lobi store on the other hand IS just insane. Yeah... 800 Lobi for a ship? That is $200.00 for a ship that is often not even that amazing. The Recluse is a good carrier but honestly an Atrox (and soon the Fleet Atrox) is easily able to hold its own and be an utterly terrifying opponent and boon to its friends just for a quarter of the cost. Just as one example.
I do think you should also factor in three characters for the refining limit, since all players get at least three slots free.
Wouldn't this be assuming that this player would only use these characters as mules and not actually play them? If you are also wanting a decent ship on the other two characters, why would we double up the 8K dil limit when to be fair, each character would likely be needing the 8K dil for ships of their own? I mean, if we are to use this in the calculations, then we have to also assume and imply that the players my numbers are based on, only really get one toon to play. I can't say I agree with this in the spirit of fairness as I would hope these players would be just as able and willing to play and have fun on these toons as anyone else.
As far as I have heard, the nerf has already occurred, and no more are on the horizon. Could I have a source? Also, note that the drop limit you mentioned (800K worth) only applies to foundry missions. I can get about 1 mil for every hour, mixing in Kerrat. Add this to doff missions such as Strike at Fugitive Support Network crits, which happen twice a week for me - these get me another 400K baseline per crit - so add about 110K.
It was said, IIRC, that kerrat had erroneous loot tables just after they nerfed tour of the universe. I'm making a bit assumption that they haven't acted on this yet in order to prevent exponentially increasing fallout. As for the loot limit, I don't believe that is accurate. A friend and I were using Q a bit to get his baby toons to VA, and noticed after about an hour, zero loot was dropping. It is noteable that we were "f"-ing (spamming the F button) through all the dialogues and hitting escape during cutscreens.
Using the doffs I have, on a crit (29% chance), I can get Hamlet (0.145*2mil) or Horatio (0.145*10mil). A success (51% chance) gives me a blue doff, which I can dispose of for at least 120K (0.51*120K). A fail (20% chance) gives me a green doff, which typically goes for 80K at least (0.2*80K). Thus, the expected income is 2.35 mil. Each holonovel code costs 1 mil - which gives me a long-run profit of 1.35 mil per code! And this mission can be run every 2 hours, giving 150 dil per success, with chance for more or less depending on crit or fail. Hence, with sufficient initial capital to get into this for the long haul, I do it twice a day - meaning additional long-run profit of 2.7mil per day.
I believe the key question here is, how long did it take you to achieve a doff roster capable of 29% crit rates (assuming low failure and disaster rates), or how much zen did it take? For me, it took about six months to be able to make this sort of capital.
Also, I'd like to recalculate for different 'best' setups. In PvE, it's widely stated that the Scimitar beam Aux-to-Bat build is the best so far, being capable of nearly soloing some Elite STFs.
Scimitar - 2500 Zen - 28 days to earn, redirecting Dilithium output to Zen.
8 Disruptor Beam Array Mk XII [acc]x3 - about 3 mil each, so - 24 million
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million on exchange at the moment
3xA2B Technicians - Free from B'Tran cluster
Well, that's just 35 million so far. That's 35 days separate.
Incidentally, the bugship is a true outlier. It's not the best anymore. It's only so costly because of it being a decent ship, while being incredibly rare.
Erm, actually, why do you say the Elachi console/weapons are unobtainable without EC cap? Surely you can just go with buying keys and opening lockboxes one-by-one for the lobi for the console.
My personal PvP setup:
Fleet Dhelan - 4 Fleet modules (8mil each) - 32 million
1xElachi Dual Beam Bank Mk XII [acc]x3- 13 million
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million
3xDisruptor Dual Heavy Cannons Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD] (700K each) - 2.1 million
2x Nanite Disruptor Turret Mk XII [acc]x3 (19 million each) - 38 million
2pc Lobi set - 120 mil
Subtotal: 216 million
Which is a bunch lower than the 432 million figure.
Right, but this is symantics, and wouldn't necessarily apply to a player in Starfleet.
Elite Fleet Disruptors will of course underperform in PvE, as their special proc is applied to shields - which go down in a flash for PvE. In PvP, where shields are up more often, elite fleet disruptors will parse much higher.
I was discussing with another player in this thread and another, I have some parses to show you where this is not true. The Crescent cannons consistently outparse fleet disruptiors both in PVE and PVP. The variance between PVP and PVE seems to be the same, however this is only based on a 6 hour parse.
To the OP: (Disclaimer: I do not, have never, and most likely will never Trust or Like PWE.) Zen prices really are not that bad. I mean $25.000 For a ship or $50.000 for a 3 part ship? Does not really seem that harsh TBVH.
Now there are some items there that seem oddly priced and perhaps incorrectly so but for the most part things seem decent.
The Lobi store on the other hand IS just insane. Yeah... 800 Lobi for a ship? That is $200.00 for a ship that is often not even that amazing. The Recluse is a good carrier but honestly an Atrox (and soon the Fleet Atrox) is easily able to hold its own and be an utterly terrifying opponent and boon to its friends just for a quarter of the cost. Just as one example.
While I'm not going to disagree that the zen prices for ships are wildly out of place, I can't agree that they are decent either. With all the items a player has to spend dil on, I can't see making one player spend more than a few weeks obtaining a cstore ship with dil. I think this could be easily corrected by PWE placing a dil price on ships in the shipyards along with a zen price. This will allow the community to stabilize itself and set its own rate for zen.
I also believe that the cstore ships in no way contend with fleet ships, so the cstore ships are an evil I've learned to deal with.
And I completely concur with the lobi ships. Not only are they overpriced, but they not only contend with fleet ships, they can outdo them.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
My mistake, one of those abilities I was researching last night, gives the ability for there to be no cool-off for that proc.
Odd. None of the Elachi set abilities grant no-cooldown for that proc.
Wouldn't this be assuming that this player would only use these characters as mules and not actually play them? If you are also wanting a decent ship on the other two characters, why would we double up the 8K dil limit when to be fair, each character would likely be needing the 8K dil for ships of their own?
I was simply under the impression that the goal was to gain a 'highly competitive PvP setup' for one character. I simply wanted to demonstrate that, using what a free player has available, your rate of earning is rather pessimistic. A smart player would leverage the two slots he has as mules to boost earnings - after which he could delete them, resulting in the same outcome as your analysis in the same amount of time, i.e. one character with a highly competitive setup.
Anyways, remove the additional dilithium earned, and you just reduce earnings on my estimate by 640K+67K - meaning a minimum safe income of about 1.9Mil, with potential for more.
It was said, IIRC, that kerrat had erroneous loot tables just after they nerfed tour of the universe. I'm making a bit assumption that they haven't acted on this yet in order to prevent exponentially increasing fallout. As for the loot limit, I don't believe that is accurate. A friend and I were using Q a bit to get his baby toons to VA, and noticed after about an hour, zero loot was dropping. It is noteable that we were "f"-ing (spamming the F button) through all the dialogues and hitting escape during cutscreens.
I have not experienced anything like this. I have played for 2 hours straight and I have seen loot constantly dropping throughout during episode missions and levelling, and playing around in N'Vak.
And for the Kerrat issue, again, I have not seen any information on this, nor did a forum search turn anything up. Anyway, the point is moot until it is fixed, if ever.
I believe the key question here is, how long did it take you to achieve a doff roster capable of 29% crit rates (assuming low failure and disaster rates), or how much zen did it take? For me, it took about six months to be able to make this sort of capital.
For support missions, one can obtain doffs with crit traits from the B'Tran cluster for free. For the holonovel mission, there is no disaster result. Only two doffs are required - in order to get two with the required traits and career, total cost is 3mil for the necessary crit rate. From personal experience, getting the first crit - and hence giving sufficient capital to self-sustain - can be done for 10 mil. Hence, 13 mil - which can be earned in a week.
Also, note that my figures are a lower bound - there is a not-inconsiderable potential to earn more.
Right, but this is symantics, and wouldn't necessarily apply to a player in Starfleet.
Semantics, you mean? State your point clearly - I interpreted it as 'One will take a significant amount of time, namely, 432 million EC taking 261 days, in order to obtain a highly competitive PvP loadout'. Was this correct? If I was, then your point is disproven, for you can take less time to earn that - namely, 81 days - and you can find less expensive but no less effective options for less, further reducing the time and funds necessary.
Anyway, it isn't semantics. An assumption in your argument is that the bugship is the only highly competitive PvP setup available - which it is not. It is simply the most expensive. If the assumption is false, then the conclusions are suspect, no?
For Starfleet - a highly competitive PvP loadout:
Mobius TD - 80 mil (The additional science/engineering, I find, is more effective in the current meta)
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million
4xDisruptor Dual Heavy Cannons Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD] (700K each) - 2.8 million
2x Nanite Disruptor Turret Mk XII [acc]x3 (19 million each) - 38 million
2pc Lobi set - 120 mil
There you go, a simple but very competitive quad DHC loadout. Total - 251.8 million, which is still a lot lower than the figure you quoted.
I was discussing with another player in this thread and another, I have some parses to show you where this is not true. The Crescent cannons consistently outparse fleet disruptiors both in PVE and PVP. The variance between PVP and PVE seems to be the same, however this is only based on a 6 hour parse.
i didnt read all of what you said, i did read most of it. i get the picture of what you are saying, but i dont agree necessarily whit everything.
first thing, i never payed for anything in this game, and as a rule i dont pay anything in any game i play. now i play this game on and off for 2 maybeee 3 years, im not 100% sure when i started. from that time till now i bought set of scimitars, set of bortias, voyager and number of zen ships only because of there universal consoles (you could say i bought consoles not ships)2 tal shiar ships that i bought for ec on exchange. i am in the fleet that will allow you to buy anything from fleet store only when you invest 200000 fleet credits in it (fleet is lvl5, so only the finest and most expensive) i probably by now invested in our 3 fleets over a million worth, i have 3 main toons that are all lvl 5 on reputation that is available + 4 grind lvl 50 toons that are lvl 3 rep., and all in all i think i have 20 toons for delitium refining, as we all know you can get dilitium on other ways then just playing stf's (20+8000=160000 dil a day for times when you need it realy fast). off corse i have no limit on ec and i have account bank.
all this was done for free. now, did i need 15 days to do this, no, would i be able to do this if i was paying custimer, no. this is f2p game (for some is p2w, for me definitely not). when i need something i grind like crazy 2-3h a day whit my main 7 characters, it will bring me 56k dilitium per day, when i burn out i go and play something els, or heck i have a life to, not everything is happening in front of my screen.
so i DO agree whit you on one thing this game needs more content, but as we can see atm that content is emerging so i really cant say nothing about that atm, what i would like to see is better thought specials, that are not base on one mission only (like last special whit crystalline being that burned me down, 14 days of same mission x 7 characters, TO MUCH). but i think you are scared for nothing.
any f2p game that allows you to get the highest content in 9-12 mounts time is really very good f2p game, of course improvement is necessary.
one thing are wishes, and other thing is reality. they need to make money, more money they make, better game we will get, and i definitely dont have statistic chart in front of me that can tell me how much of space they have to give something for less, it is a business that is there's to make, we can only hope and suggest some thoughts to them in hope they will implement it, rest is there's to decide.
of cores you have the right to say what you think, but dont kid your self if you think you are representing the majority of community here.
i just hope they are listening and are doing the best they can for the game (which in process dose not need to be best for all of us).
i represent only my self and these are my thoughts.
Odd. None of the Elachi set abilities grant no-cooldown for that proc.
Do you happen to have the texts for those innates? Every where I'm looking now says nothing about it except one article on reddit which showed the ability text and said it lowers/negates the buff the proc places.
I was simply under the impression that the goal was to gain a 'highly competitive PvP setup' for one character. I simply wanted to demonstrate that, using what a free player has available, your rate of earning is rather pessimistic. A smart player would leverage the two slots he has as mules to boost earnings - after which he could delete them, resulting in the same outcome as your analysis in the same amount of time, i.e. one character with a highly competitive setup.
This is the goal, however, most players have even multiple accounts to leverage "highly competitive" pvp loadouts. This is indeed against the EULA however. But most PVPers I know like knowing who they're up against and being able to select a class or ship to best fit the opponent. For instance, no escort likes fighting a decent cruiser (miracle worker lols)
Anyways, remove the additional dilithium earned, and you just reduce earnings on my estimate by 640K+67K - meaning a minimum safe income of about 1.9Mil, with potential for more.
And that is not far off from my calculations if you are converting dil to zen to keys to ec. The difference is +/- a week from almost a year. I'm not sure we should be arguing a week from those calculations as the point of the greater part of a year being consumed to obtain the ship and set is undoubtedly consumed, unless of course the wallet is opened to stay on that cutting edge.
I have not experienced anything like this. I have played for 2 hours straight and I have seen loot constantly dropping throughout during episode missions and levelling, and playing around in N'Vak.
Yep, the character name is Yellop@imp967 if you want to verify (name posted with permission)
This thread should be cited in the dictionary for examples of "wall of text"...
Did you read the disclaimer? :P
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
I was not lying, I just forgot to mention that I got the Scimitar in 10 days after already using dilithium to unlock the extra slots and EC uncap. I did spend some money early on, but I also did not refine 8k dilithium per day per character for very long, so it roughly cancels out.
EC Uncap: 500 Zen or ~66000 Dilithium. Account wide, so with 3 characters this takes 3 days with some spare change.
Extra Character Slots: 4 for 1025 Zen or ~135000 Dilithium. Account wide, so with 3 characters this takes 6 Days with again, some spare change.
Account Bank: 1000 Zen or ~135000 Dilithium (Prices may vary slightly). Account wide again. You now have 7 characters, so if you grind them all you can get this in 3 days with a LOT of spare dilithium.
This is the extras I bought with cash early on. If I ground them, it would have taken me 12 days, say 2 weeks.
You can now make 56000 Dilithium per day. Assuming you only have one toon geared, and are using the others to farm (I do this, and gear a second toon when I am done with the first one) you can still get 5000 per toon from 2 contraband exchanges and 2 runs of the PVE queues, which at low levels reward enough gear to sell for EC needed to get the contraband. So you have 6 toons easily making 5000 dil per day, with a main making 8000. If you play a little more on the alts you can get this up a a global 8k, but say you don't and therefore only get 38000 dilithium per day.
You want the best C-store ship for your character. Say you are a romulan and want the Scimitar 3 pack. THis costs 5000 Zen, or ~650000 DIlithium (depending on prices). You can get this in 18 days. C-store ships are account unlocks, so you don't need to get them twice.
Gearing a scimitar is surprisingly easy to do
5 Disruptor DCs Mk XII Acc x3 for 1.25 Mil in TOTAL.
3 Disruptor turrets Mk XII Acc for ~600K
5 Disruptor Induction Coils Mk XII Green: 1 Mil Total
Plasmonic Leech: 11M
Shields, Warp Core, Deflector and Impulse Engines: 2M in total (I got mine for less than this)
Random Consoles as desired: 2M EC
For a total of under 20M EC and 30 days of grinding, you have a scimitar with decent gear and can compete anywhere. You have easily enough time while running Dil grinding to get the tech doffs if you want an Aux 2 bat build.
I KNOW this is valib, because it is what I did myself.
You do not need Purple Mk XII gear and consoles to succeed in PVP or PVE. The difference is small enough to be overcome with skill. The fact is, you are so far into diminishing returns that you are overestimating your cost considerably.
To address playing the exchange: it is 100% fail safe assuming you are not an idiot. If the item you try to resell doesn't sell, you just drop the price until it does. Assuming you bought an item which was underpriced compared to other identical items (think one Mk XII DHC for 1M, the next identical one for 2M and 3 more at 2.2M) then you post it for 1,999,999 and it WILL sell. You just don't know enough about the exchange to reliably play it.
Do you happen to have the texts for those innates? Every where I'm looking now says nothing about it except one article on reddit which showed the ability text and said it lowers/negates the buff the proc places.
This is the goal, however, most players have even multiple accounts to leverage "highly competitive" pvp loadouts. This is indeed against the EULA however. But most PVPers I know like knowing who they're up against and being able to select a class or ship to best fit the opponent. For instance, no escort likes fighting a decent cruiser (miracle worker lols)
Well......both your prediction and mine would be modified, no?
And that is not far off from my calculations if you are converting dil to zen to keys to ec. The difference is +/- a week from almost a year. I'm not sure we should be arguing a week from those calculations as the point of the greater part of a year being consumed to obtain the ship and set is undoubtedly consumed, unless of course the wallet is opened.
Yes, true. However, remember that I said that my figure is a pure baseline - as you build your doff roster with the results of your support missions, you begin to crit more and more - thereby boosting your income. The 300K figure for purple doffs is also a bare minimum - the majority sell for 400-500K, and there are those which go up to 2 mil, and even 10 mil in one case.
Furthermore, that one doesn't factor in the holonovel code shuffle - nor does it factor in duty officer mini-packs. Bear in mind that those methods and others like them form the lion's share of income - which shortens things immeasurably. In exchange for a small short-run risk, your long-run profits are boosted significantly, since the odds are in your favour. Remember, even after single-character adjustment, following the initial week or so of pure grinding, you can boost income to 4.5 million per day baseline - which is a whole lot higher than your estimate. With your cost estimate, that's 96 days - not bad at all to obtain top-tier gear, isn't it? And with my cost estimate Fedside - that's 56 days. I think that 2 months to reach top-level equipment isn't too much to ask.
There are also other methods other traders use once they have the initial capital, but they tend to require more initial investment than what I outlined. The thing is this: the Exchange follows predictable, cyclical trends. Taking advantage of these trends is what leads to high EC earnings. It's these things that lead me to 5 fully-kitted out toons in a year - with plenty of rare ships to my name.
PM's ok? I do not currently have the permission of the participant to post his name or parse publicly (yet).
Actually if you do it right you can grind dilithium and do it quite easily. Infact with 5 characters 3 of them being KDF or KDF allies, I can grind ~150 CC a day. Granted it takes me a while but all you have to do is Breathing room, and the 4 defense of the empire and thats 1440*5= 7200 dilitium right there. So that puts me 200 Dilithum over the 7000 mined per day, just doing 5 missions for my 2 KDF and one rom KDF ally.
Then I can do a few missions for my 2 fed toons and do a few quickies like exploration and the Defari and that's about another 2800 or so per character. Takes some time but I can crank out what? Close to 200 CC a day doing that.
Once I get some time I plan to do exactly that and in 10 days, that's an Ar'kif tactical carrier for my Rom. 12.5 days for every other ship I want for my toons. Granted that's about 3 months of grinding, but considering I have no fleet and nothing else to do, why not.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
Comments
Completely agree.
I do think you should also factor in three characters for the refining limit, since all players get at least three slots free.
At the minimum, let's assume you grind to 8000 on one character, and only do DoFF missions on the other two. With them KDF-aligned and doing contraband missions, you can add at least 2000 per toon. (I typically get more like 4000, but I'll err on the low side) Oh, and I'll assume they are converted to zen rather than sold directly. Every couple of days or so, you also get the Labor Camp doff missions for prisoners obtained from these missions, so that's another 250 per toon per day.
That's 12500 dil per day instead, about 90 zen, meaning 1.44 million per day, using master key 10-packs to convert. (Price is currently at 1.8 mil, and it's not coming down anytime soon.)
As far as I have heard, the nerf has already occurred, and no more are on the horizon. Could I have a source? Also, note that the drop limit you mentioned (800K worth) only applies to foundry missions. I can get about 1 mil for every hour, mixing in Kerrat. Add this to doff missions such as Strike at Fugitive Support Network crits, which happen twice a week for me - these get me another 400K baseline per crit - so add about 110K.
Along with this, add on refugees from Support doff missions in clusters - these don't give much, but they can be swapped for doffs which will go for a decent sum. Assume one support mission per toon per day, and so one exchange mission per toon per day. 12% chance for a purple going for at least 300K EC, and that's another 100K per day on 3 toonsat the very minimum, and I haven't factored in the blue and green incomes yet. This also doesn't factor in the chance at a crit on the support mission, which will give you Doffs that, although bound, can be downgraded to sell at the academies.
These are what I consider 'safe' income, since I considered the minimum. You have a chance to get more.
Subtotal: 2.65 million (at the minimum level, with chances for additional)
Although you don't like risk, I base my efforts on what they call expected income. Probability of each outcome multiplied by the income of that outcome. Which is why once I had the initial capital, I started opening holonovel codes.
Using the doffs I have, on a crit (29% chance), I can get Hamlet (0.145*2mil) or Horatio (0.145*10mil). A success (51% chance) gives me a blue doff, which I can dispose of for at least 120K (0.51*120K). A fail (20% chance) gives me a green doff, which typically goes for 80K at least (0.2*80K). Thus, the expected income is 2.35 mil. Each holonovel code costs 1 mil - which gives me a long-run profit of 1.35 mil per code! And this mission can be run every 2 hours, giving 150 dil per success, with chance for more or less depending on crit or fail. Hence, with sufficient initial capital to get into this for the long haul, I do it twice a day - meaning additional long-run profit of 2.7mil per day.
Total (with sufficient capital, and income) - 5.35 mil per day
So there you have it - 2.65 mil baseline income, and 5.35 mil if you take a slightly more risky method.
That's just one of the ways to earn more.With your earlier 432 mil figure, that gives you 163 days at the most, on safe income. Add crits, and the time drops. Add my suggested method, and you get 81 days, with the chance to be less!
Also, I'd like to recalculate for different 'best' setups. In PvE, it's widely stated that the Scimitar beam Aux-to-Bat build is the best so far, being capable of nearly soloing some Elite STFs.
Scimitar - 2500 Zen - 28 days to earn, redirecting Dilithium output to Zen.
8 Disruptor Beam Array Mk XII [acc]x3 - about 3 mil each, so - 24 million
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million on exchange at the moment
3xA2B Technicians - Free from B'Tran cluster
Well, that's just 35 million so far. That's 35 days separate.
Incidentally, the bugship is a true outlier. It's not the best anymore. It's only so costly because of it being a decent ship, while being incredibly rare.
Erm, actually, why do you say the Elachi console/weapons are unobtainable without EC cap? Surely you can just go with buying keys and opening lockboxes one-by-one for the lobi for the console.
My personal PvP setup:
Fleet Dhelan - 4 Fleet modules (8mil each) - 32 million
1xElachi Dual Beam Bank Mk XII [acc]x3- 13 million
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million
3xDisruptor Dual Heavy Cannons Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD] (700K each) - 2.1 million
2x Nanite Disruptor Turret Mk XII [acc]x3 (19 million each) - 38 million
2pc Lobi set - 120 mil
Subtotal: 216 million
Which is a bunch lower than the 432 million figure.
Therefore, an excellent PvP ship can be geared in a much shorter time.
Elite Fleet Disruptors will of course underperform in PvE, as their special proc is applied to shields - which go down in a flash for PvE. In PvP, where shields are up more often, elite fleet disruptors will parse much higher.
Now there are some items there that seem oddly priced and perhaps incorrectly so but for the most part things seem decent.
The Lobi store on the other hand IS just insane. Yeah... 800 Lobi for a ship? That is $200.00 for a ship that is often not even that amazing. The Recluse is a good carrier but honestly an Atrox (and soon the Fleet Atrox) is easily able to hold its own and be an utterly terrifying opponent and boon to its friends just for a quarter of the cost. Just as one example.
My mistake, one of those abilities I was researching last night, gives the ability for there to be no cool-off for that proc.
Wouldn't this be assuming that this player would only use these characters as mules and not actually play them? If you are also wanting a decent ship on the other two characters, why would we double up the 8K dil limit when to be fair, each character would likely be needing the 8K dil for ships of their own? I mean, if we are to use this in the calculations, then we have to also assume and imply that the players my numbers are based on, only really get one toon to play. I can't say I agree with this in the spirit of fairness as I would hope these players would be just as able and willing to play and have fun on these toons as anyone else.
It was said, IIRC, that kerrat had erroneous loot tables just after they nerfed tour of the universe. I'm making a bit assumption that they haven't acted on this yet in order to prevent exponentially increasing fallout. As for the loot limit, I don't believe that is accurate. A friend and I were using Q a bit to get his baby toons to VA, and noticed after about an hour, zero loot was dropping. It is noteable that we were "f"-ing (spamming the F button) through all the dialogues and hitting escape during cutscreens.
I believe the key question here is, how long did it take you to achieve a doff roster capable of 29% crit rates (assuming low failure and disaster rates), or how much zen did it take? For me, it took about six months to be able to make this sort of capital.
Right, but this is symantics, and wouldn't necessarily apply to a player in Starfleet.
I was discussing with another player in this thread and another, I have some parses to show you where this is not true. The Crescent cannons consistently outparse fleet disruptiors both in PVE and PVP. The variance between PVP and PVE seems to be the same, however this is only based on a 6 hour parse.
While I'm not going to disagree that the zen prices for ships are wildly out of place, I can't agree that they are decent either. With all the items a player has to spend dil on, I can't see making one player spend more than a few weeks obtaining a cstore ship with dil. I think this could be easily corrected by PWE placing a dil price on ships in the shipyards along with a zen price. This will allow the community to stabilize itself and set its own rate for zen.
I also believe that the cstore ships in no way contend with fleet ships, so the cstore ships are an evil I've learned to deal with.
And I completely concur with the lobi ships. Not only are they overpriced, but they not only contend with fleet ships, they can outdo them.
Odd. None of the Elachi set abilities grant no-cooldown for that proc.
I was simply under the impression that the goal was to gain a 'highly competitive PvP setup' for one character. I simply wanted to demonstrate that, using what a free player has available, your rate of earning is rather pessimistic. A smart player would leverage the two slots he has as mules to boost earnings - after which he could delete them, resulting in the same outcome as your analysis in the same amount of time, i.e. one character with a highly competitive setup.
Anyways, remove the additional dilithium earned, and you just reduce earnings on my estimate by 640K+67K - meaning a minimum safe income of about 1.9Mil, with potential for more.
I have not experienced anything like this. I have played for 2 hours straight and I have seen loot constantly dropping throughout during episode missions and levelling, and playing around in N'Vak.
And for the Kerrat issue, again, I have not seen any information on this, nor did a forum search turn anything up. Anyway, the point is moot until it is fixed, if ever.
For support missions, one can obtain doffs with crit traits from the B'Tran cluster for free. For the holonovel mission, there is no disaster result. Only two doffs are required - in order to get two with the required traits and career, total cost is 3mil for the necessary crit rate. From personal experience, getting the first crit - and hence giving sufficient capital to self-sustain - can be done for 10 mil. Hence, 13 mil - which can be earned in a week.
Also, note that my figures are a lower bound - there is a not-inconsiderable potential to earn more.
Semantics, you mean? State your point clearly - I interpreted it as 'One will take a significant amount of time, namely, 432 million EC taking 261 days, in order to obtain a highly competitive PvP loadout'. Was this correct? If I was, then your point is disproven, for you can take less time to earn that - namely, 81 days - and you can find less expensive but no less effective options for less, further reducing the time and funds necessary.
Anyway, it isn't semantics. An assumption in your argument is that the bugship is the only highly competitive PvP setup available - which it is not. It is simply the most expensive. If the assumption is false, then the conclusions are suspect, no?
For Starfleet - a highly competitive PvP loadout:
Mobius TD - 80 mil (The additional science/engineering, I find, is more effective in the current meta)
Plasmonic Leech - 11 million
4xDisruptor Dual Heavy Cannons Mk XII [Acc]x2 [CritD] (700K each) - 2.8 million
2x Nanite Disruptor Turret Mk XII [acc]x3 (19 million each) - 38 million
2pc Lobi set - 120 mil
There you go, a simple but very competitive quad DHC loadout. Total - 251.8 million, which is still a lot lower than the figure you quoted.
Very well, please provide the PvP data.
i didnt read all of what you said, i did read most of it. i get the picture of what you are saying, but i dont agree necessarily whit everything.
first thing, i never payed for anything in this game, and as a rule i dont pay anything in any game i play. now i play this game on and off for 2 maybeee 3 years, im not 100% sure when i started. from that time till now i bought set of scimitars, set of bortias, voyager and number of zen ships only because of there universal consoles (you could say i bought consoles not ships)2 tal shiar ships that i bought for ec on exchange. i am in the fleet that will allow you to buy anything from fleet store only when you invest 200000 fleet credits in it (fleet is lvl5, so only the finest and most expensive) i probably by now invested in our 3 fleets over a million worth, i have 3 main toons that are all lvl 5 on reputation that is available + 4 grind lvl 50 toons that are lvl 3 rep., and all in all i think i have 20 toons for delitium refining, as we all know you can get dilitium on other ways then just playing stf's (20+8000=160000 dil a day for times when you need it realy fast). off corse i have no limit on ec and i have account bank.
all this was done for free. now, did i need 15 days to do this, no, would i be able to do this if i was paying custimer, no. this is f2p game (for some is p2w, for me definitely not). when i need something i grind like crazy 2-3h a day whit my main 7 characters, it will bring me 56k dilitium per day, when i burn out i go and play something els, or heck i have a life to, not everything is happening in front of my screen.
so i DO agree whit you on one thing this game needs more content, but as we can see atm that content is emerging so i really cant say nothing about that atm, what i would like to see is better thought specials, that are not base on one mission only (like last special whit crystalline being that burned me down, 14 days of same mission x 7 characters, TO MUCH). but i think you are scared for nothing.
any f2p game that allows you to get the highest content in 9-12 mounts time is really very good f2p game, of course improvement is necessary.
one thing are wishes, and other thing is reality. they need to make money, more money they make, better game we will get, and i definitely dont have statistic chart in front of me that can tell me how much of space they have to give something for less, it is a business that is there's to make, we can only hope and suggest some thoughts to them in hope they will implement it, rest is there's to decide.
of cores you have the right to say what you think, but dont kid your self if you think you are representing the majority of community here.
i just hope they are listening and are doing the best they can for the game (which in process dose not need to be best for all of us).
i represent only my self and these are my thoughts.
Check PvP Gameplay for more
Do you happen to have the texts for those innates? Every where I'm looking now says nothing about it except one article on reddit which showed the ability text and said it lowers/negates the buff the proc places.
I would like to get to the bottom of that myself.
This is the goal, however, most players have even multiple accounts to leverage "highly competitive" pvp loadouts. This is indeed against the EULA however. But most PVPers I know like knowing who they're up against and being able to select a class or ship to best fit the opponent. For instance, no escort likes fighting a decent cruiser (miracle worker lols)
And that is not far off from my calculations if you are converting dil to zen to keys to ec. The difference is +/- a week from almost a year. I'm not sure we should be arguing a week from those calculations as the point of the greater part of a year being consumed to obtain the ship and set is undoubtedly consumed, unless of course the wallet is opened to stay on that cutting edge.
Yep, the character name is Yellop@imp967 if you want to verify (name posted with permission)
PM's ok? I do not currently have the permission of the participant to post his name or parse publicly (yet).
Did you read the disclaimer? :P
EC Uncap: 500 Zen or ~66000 Dilithium. Account wide, so with 3 characters this takes 3 days with some spare change.
Extra Character Slots: 4 for 1025 Zen or ~135000 Dilithium. Account wide, so with 3 characters this takes 6 Days with again, some spare change.
Account Bank: 1000 Zen or ~135000 Dilithium (Prices may vary slightly). Account wide again. You now have 7 characters, so if you grind them all you can get this in 3 days with a LOT of spare dilithium.
This is the extras I bought with cash early on. If I ground them, it would have taken me 12 days, say 2 weeks.
You can now make 56000 Dilithium per day. Assuming you only have one toon geared, and are using the others to farm (I do this, and gear a second toon when I am done with the first one) you can still get 5000 per toon from 2 contraband exchanges and 2 runs of the PVE queues, which at low levels reward enough gear to sell for EC needed to get the contraband. So you have 6 toons easily making 5000 dil per day, with a main making 8000. If you play a little more on the alts you can get this up a a global 8k, but say you don't and therefore only get 38000 dilithium per day.
You want the best C-store ship for your character. Say you are a romulan and want the Scimitar 3 pack. THis costs 5000 Zen, or ~650000 DIlithium (depending on prices). You can get this in 18 days. C-store ships are account unlocks, so you don't need to get them twice.
Gearing a scimitar is surprisingly easy to do
5 Disruptor DCs Mk XII Acc x3 for 1.25 Mil in TOTAL.
3 Disruptor turrets Mk XII Acc for ~600K
5 Disruptor Induction Coils Mk XII Green: 1 Mil Total
Plasmonic Leech: 11M
Shields, Warp Core, Deflector and Impulse Engines: 2M in total (I got mine for less than this)
Random Consoles as desired: 2M EC
For a total of under 20M EC and 30 days of grinding, you have a scimitar with decent gear and can compete anywhere. You have easily enough time while running Dil grinding to get the tech doffs if you want an Aux 2 bat build.
I KNOW this is valib, because it is what I did myself.
You do not need Purple Mk XII gear and consoles to succeed in PVP or PVE. The difference is small enough to be overcome with skill. The fact is, you are so far into diminishing returns that you are overestimating your cost considerably.
To address playing the exchange: it is 100% fail safe assuming you are not an idiot. If the item you try to resell doesn't sell, you just drop the price until it does. Assuming you bought an item which was underpriced compared to other identical items (think one Mk XII DHC for 1M, the next identical one for 2M and 3 more at 2.2M) then you post it for 1,999,999 and it WILL sell. You just don't know enough about the exchange to reliably play it.
http://i.imgur.com/1rXzzEu.jpg
There you go, nothing but chance to reflect damage.
Well......both your prediction and mine would be modified, no?
Yes, true. However, remember that I said that my figure is a pure baseline - as you build your doff roster with the results of your support missions, you begin to crit more and more - thereby boosting your income. The 300K figure for purple doffs is also a bare minimum - the majority sell for 400-500K, and there are those which go up to 2 mil, and even 10 mil in one case.
Furthermore, that one doesn't factor in the holonovel code shuffle - nor does it factor in duty officer mini-packs. Bear in mind that those methods and others like them form the lion's share of income - which shortens things immeasurably. In exchange for a small short-run risk, your long-run profits are boosted significantly, since the odds are in your favour. Remember, even after single-character adjustment, following the initial week or so of pure grinding, you can boost income to 4.5 million per day baseline - which is a whole lot higher than your estimate. With your cost estimate, that's 96 days - not bad at all to obtain top-tier gear, isn't it? And with my cost estimate Fedside - that's 56 days. I think that 2 months to reach top-level equipment isn't too much to ask.
There are also other methods other traders use once they have the initial capital, but they tend to require more initial investment than what I outlined. The thing is this: the Exchange follows predictable, cyclical trends. Taking advantage of these trends is what leads to high EC earnings. It's these things that lead me to 5 fully-kitted out toons in a year - with plenty of rare ships to my name.
Certainly.
Then I can do a few missions for my 2 fed toons and do a few quickies like exploration and the Defari and that's about another 2800 or so per character. Takes some time but I can crank out what? Close to 200 CC a day doing that.
Once I get some time I plan to do exactly that and in 10 days, that's an Ar'kif tactical carrier for my Rom. 12.5 days for every other ship I want for my toons. Granted that's about 3 months of grinding, but considering I have no fleet and nothing else to do, why not.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1