I don't really care about the fact this is in the Lobi store, or the cost of it, that's just par for the course with cross faction small craft...
But...
Why are cross faction small craft back, exactly? They always seemed like a waste of resources given how little they offered over things like the EC runabouts or C-Store fighters, and I for one didn't miss them at all when they were dropped from the last few lockbox lineups. Seems like something that could have just stayed gone.
I second the idea of a playable Jem Hadar fighter, please. I Like its looks, it would be an instant buy from me. Thanks devs!
Also, I too, would love to see more shuttle missions in the future of the game. Atmosphere assault, while buggy with its invisible hangup spots, is still really cool. It would be a lot of fun to fly around the surface and chase enemy fighters canyons of a dilithium mine asteroid a-la the trenches on the breach, dodging laser drills and what not as a fleet marks mission. Just an idea.
A small update was made to the blog to correct some information regarding the non-combat pet:
UPDATED WITH CORRECT INFORMATION (12/18/13 @4:57 PM PST): A non-combat Voth Heavy Fighter pet that can be launched from your starship is also being added to the Lobi Store for 20 Lobi Crystals.
Apologies for the confusion. C-Store shuttles typically have their non-combat pet counterparts included, while Lobi non-combat pet counterparts are available for purchase in the "Vanity Pets" tab of the Lobi Store.
You guys should seriously consider making the torp a purple mk12 equivalent that can be loaded onto ANY ship - I and a lot of others would have bought it for that. I have a few fighters and am not interested in any more. I think it would greatly increase sales if this weapon was useable on all ships. Right now it's just useless as fighters don't even load torps much.
I am not the only one to make this comment - it would make a lot of sense to listen to your customers on this one.
P.s. - Still waiting for the lobi mk12 Breen space set
you guys at cryptic are light years from the reality, you are giving us a shuttle that only few will buy and even then it will be used one in a million times, way to go guys, go on continue wasting money...
Yeah... the Lobi Small Craft really aren't worthwhile as an investment. Even on the KDF and KDF Rom sides there just isn't the content to support it, and the equipment they include being limited to Small Craft negates their value as a weapon/console purchase; Fed and Fed Rom sides have a ton of C-Store options at far less cost. More ships, or more small craft missions, before more small craft please... that or remove the Small Craft restriction for their equipment.
That's my $0.02... though it merely echoes that of others. :P
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
So, my two slips of latinum, with complete and utter honesty and frankness:
I am pissed, guys. I'm trying to be fair here, but...nobody's going to use this. Anybody who was here during the end of the summer event has the yellowstone and the toj'du, and the Kestrel runabout is the rommie equivalent for no ZEN at all.
I don't know a single person who uses a lobi small craft. This is, quite frankly, a waste of time and code.
And you still haven't even given us a timetable on t5 dyson rewards. I ground my butt off to get t5 dyson yesterday, in anticipation, and here you guys are giving us an overly expensive ship instead of our eagerly-anticipated big reward. Or even a TIMETABLE for that big reward.
Priorities, guys. BranFlakes, you seem like a reasonable guy--surely you can understand that the ratio of small craft to small craft missions and the difficulty of said missions to their rewards does not provide incentive to ANYONE to get this ship. Nobody asked for this, hardly anyone seems to want this--meanwhile, there's a few thousand guys, minimum, chomping at the bit for the t5 dyson reward. Normally, I will defend Cryptic and the devs against the KDF grognards and Fed "Nerf the Klinks" crybabies, but this is freaking ridiculous.
Let's do a comparison here: Kestrel runabout is 33k EC. That's a 30-minute Foundry mission.
Delta Flyer and all other account-unlock small craft are 500 ZEN--that's about a week's grind at current prices.
All lobi shuttles are 300 lobi, which means (in the absence of the lobi promotion) 70 keys or so. That's about 8 thousand ZEN. Per shuttle. Character unlock, discard and you lose it.
Power-wise, C-store shuttles are better than EC and free shuttles, and Lobi shuttles are better than either. Given equal captains, a C-store shuttle will always beat a free or EC shuttle, and a Lobi shuttle will beat both. HOWEVER, the increased stats of lobi shuttles are in no way a match for their ridiculous cost.
Plus, nobody was waiting eagerly for this ship, and player reaction is overwhelmingly negative. Meanwhile, our dyson t5 reward still doesn't even have a timeline.
I normally like you guys a lot. You're a lot better overall than all of the other dev teams whose work I have experienced, but you seriously dropped the ball this time.
And you still haven't even given us a timetable on t5 dyson rewards. I ground my butt off to get t5 dyson yesterday, in anticipation, and here you guys are giving us an overly expensive ship instead of our eagerly-anticipated big reward. Or even a TIMETABLE for that big reward.
The only lobi small craft I got was the timeship shuttle for the skin it unlocked in the wells and mobius and for the fact that I now own all items obtainable through the lobi store and the actuall temporal stuff.
More ships, or more small craft missions, before more small craft please...
I agree. We need more small craft missions. We have small craft missions fighting the Elachi, the Tal Shiar (and Remans), and the Jem'Hadar. Let's have a Voth small craft mission and a Starfleet vs KDF (playable by both Starfleet and KDF players) small craft mission too!
We need more small-craft missions, but we mostly need small craft need to be fixed. As it stands, they're stupidly squishy, the equipment from them is stuck on small craft, and the Boff seating requires that you run one of a very small number of options as far as powers.
But fixing the missing textures bug that came out with s8 would be SUPER.
Well I like it, I will get one just to test it. Now I understand what that shuttle event was about.
Lots of negative feed-back on this thread allready, so hate to add up a bit to it. But its kinda disapointing that this new shuttle doenst comes with the "perks" that the timeshuttle came. Probably would've been better received if an exclusive skin was added to unlock it also on the other 2 voth ships. Also it cant use any voth consoles so thats a down side aswell
Other then that it looks like a "tuff little ship" , add or replace its beam with the omni beam+obelisk core and its great.
I totaly agree that we need more shuttle contend, and who knows, maybe the voth zone that its still under development might came with some new shuttle content.
I see a lot of people posting about how this is wasting time, not priority, etc..
Let me try and explain how that's an incorrect mindset.
This ship was needed, and was built as part of the Voth ship group that arrived with The Sphere.
The art end of this ship art was built by a new ship artist, and it provided a perfect chance to get their hands dirty and build a player-ready ship from scratch. We're pretty happy with how it came out, and this training will go a long way towards getting you more, full-sized ships of awesome. Imagine trying to train someone on a very complicated ship with mountains of moving parts -- the time wasted troubleshooting would far outstretch any time "wasted" on this ship.
Shuttles are relatively similar to one another, and it takes less time to make a shuttle than a full-sized ship, at least in regards to systems. Not to say it's insignificant in any way, but this ship had to be built, it being player-flyable is secondary, and an added bonus to the way we've shifting our ship-building philosophy over the last couple of years.
If you're going to build it, you might as well reuse it. This ship is an enemy ship, a hangar bay combat pet, a non-combat pet, and a flyable ship, all at once. Time-saving at it's best.
It should be noted that the team is full of people with different disciplines, thinking that something like a character costume update was put on hold to make this ship is simply incorrect. I make ship art, I occasionally dabble in environment art and effects -- me doing that does not stop a new cut scene from being made.
In the end, really, no time was wasted on this ship, it was needed from the beginning, at a minimum as an NPC ship, but we figured, "what the heck, let's make it flyable by players, maybe they'd like a little bit of an extra thing."
I see a lot of people posting about how this is wasting time, not priority, etc..
Let me try and explain how that's an incorrect mindset.
This ship was needed, and was built as part of the Voth ship group that arrived with The Sphere.
The art end of this ship art was built by a new ship artist, and it provided a perfect chance to get their hands dirty and build a player-ready ship from scratch. We're pretty happy with how it came out, and this training will go a long way towards getting you more, full-sized ships of awesome. Imagine trying to train someone on a very complicated ship with mountains of moving parts -- the time wasted troubleshooting would far outstretch any time "wasted" on this ship.
Shuttles are relatively similar to one another, and it takes less time to make a shuttle than a full-sized ship, at least in regards to systems. Not to say it's insignificant in any way, but this ship had to be built, it being player-flyable is secondary, and an added bonus to the way we've shifting our ship-building philosophy over the last couple of years.
If you're going to build it, you might as well reuse it. This ship is an enemy ship, a hangar bay combat pet, a non-combat pet, and a flyable ship, all at once. Time-saving at it's best.
It should be noted that the team is full of people with different disciplines, thinking that something like a character costume update was put on hold to make this ship is simply incorrect. I make ship art, I occasionally dabble in environment art and effects -- me doing that does not stop a new cut scene from being made.
In the end, really, no time was wasted on this ship, it was needed from the beginning, at a minimum as an NPC ship, but we figured, "what the heck, let's make it flyable by players, maybe they'd like a little bit of an extra thing."
I hope this helped clear stuff up!
Thank you for the explanation. Allow me to offer my sincere apologies for any offense taken by the dev team at my earlier comments.
I see a lot of people posting about how this is wasting time, not priority, etc..
Let me try and explain how that's an incorrect mindset.
This ship was needed, and was built as part of the Voth ship group that arrived with The Sphere.
The art end of this ship art was built by a new ship artist, and it provided a perfect chance to get their hands dirty and build a player-ready ship from scratch. We're pretty happy with how it came out, and this training will go a long way towards getting you more, full-sized ships of awesome. Imagine trying to train someone on a very complicated ship with mountains of moving parts -- the time wasted troubleshooting would far outstretch any time "wasted" on this ship.
Shuttles are relatively similar to one another, and it takes less time to make a shuttle than a full-sized ship, at least in regards to systems. Not to say it's insignificant in any way, but this ship had to be built, it being player-flyable is secondary, and an added bonus to the way we've shifting our ship-building philosophy over the last couple of years.
If you're going to build it, you might as well reuse it. This ship is an enemy ship, a hangar bay combat pet, a non-combat pet, and a flyable ship, all at once. Time-saving at it's best.
It should be noted that the team is full of people with different disciplines, thinking that something like a character costume update was put on hold to make this ship is simply incorrect. I make ship art, I occasionally dabble in environment art and effects -- me doing that does not stop a new cut scene from being made.
In the end, really, no time was wasted on this ship, it was needed from the beginning, at a minimum as an NPC ship, but we figured, "what the heck, let's make it flyable by players, maybe they'd like a little bit of an extra thing."
I hope this helped clear stuff up!
MY complaint is you put it in the gambling-token store.
Whatever happened to selling through the Zen Store? This is what we have to look forward to isn't it? Gambling-Trek Online. Farm all day, buy keys, open boxes and save up enough tokens... for a ship that is only useable in vanishingly small number of missions.
Training is a good thing, and I hope the new designer does well at Cryptic. My complaint is the MARKETING. As it is Lobi Store I don't anticipate ever owning one... as I refuse to gamble with lockboxes any longer!
MY complaint is you put it in the gambling-token store.
Whatever happened to selling through the Zen Store? This is what we have to look forward to isn't it? Gambling-Trek Online. Farm all day, buy keys, open boxes and save up enough tokens... for a ship that is only useable in vanishingly small number of missions.
Training is a good thing, and I hope the new designer does well at Cryptic. My complaint is the MARKETING. As it is Lobi Store I don't anticipate ever owning one... as I refuse to gamble with lockboxes any longer!
I don't like the Lobi store any more than you do, but they've repeatedly said that CBS (not to mention suspension of disbelief in their own setting) requires them to control the numbers of the off-faction ships in the game. The easiest way to do that is to just charge an exorbitant price for them. Plus is probably makes them a lot of money.
At least it's a predictable pattern. Fed, KDF, and Rom ships go in the C-Store, wacky alien ships go in reward packs (however obtained). And the lockbox and Lobi ships are all on the exchange, too, if you're better at earning monopoly money than real money.
I probably won't buy this thing but I appreciate the option.
MY complaint is you put it in the gambling-token store.
Whatever happened to selling through the Zen Store? This is what we have to look forward to isn't it? Gambling-Trek Online. Farm all day, buy keys, open boxes and save up enough tokens... for a ship that is only useable in vanishingly small number of missions.
Training is a good thing, and I hope the new designer does well at Cryptic. My complaint is the MARKETING. As it is Lobi Store I don't anticipate ever owning one... as I refuse to gamble with lockboxes any longer!
I see a lot of people posting about how this is wasting time, not priority, etc..
Let me try and explain how that's an incorrect mindset.
This ship was needed, and was built as part of the Voth ship group that arrived with The Sphere.
The art end of this ship art was built by a new ship artist, and it provided a perfect chance to get their hands dirty and build a player-ready ship from scratch. We're pretty happy with how it came out, and this training will go a long way towards getting you more, full-sized ships of awesome. Imagine trying to train someone on a very complicated ship with mountains of moving parts -- the time wasted troubleshooting would far outstretch any time "wasted" on this ship.
Shuttles are relatively similar to one another, and it takes less time to make a shuttle than a full-sized ship, at least in regards to systems. Not to say it's insignificant in any way, but this ship had to be built, it being player-flyable is secondary, and an added bonus to the way we've shifting our ship-building philosophy over the last couple of years.
If you're going to build it, you might as well reuse it. This ship is an enemy ship, a hangar bay combat pet, a non-combat pet, and a flyable ship, all at once. Time-saving at it's best.
It should be noted that the team is full of people with different disciplines, thinking that something like a character costume update was put on hold to make this ship is simply incorrect. I make ship art, I occasionally dabble in environment art and effects -- me doing that does not stop a new cut scene from being made.
In the end, really, no time was wasted on this ship, it was needed from the beginning, at a minimum as an NPC ship, but we figured, "what the heck, let's make it flyable by players, maybe they'd like a little bit of an extra thing."
I hope this helped clear stuff up!
Nice, I look forward to the new Federation, KDF and Romulan cstore ships that the training guy is working on for next month
That is of course in addition to the shuttle, assorted other items and outfits to match what was in the just released Voth lockbox.
I really had no problems with it but the main complaint is little content to use it in.
Yeah I am hoping in 2014 that Cryptic will be pushing out more raiders as well as raiding type missions where a battle cloak really helps to have as far as content goes. So I agree with you a lot there needs to be more content on this issue with the main attraction of a battle cloak
I see a lot of people posting about how this is wasting time, not priority, etc..
Let me try and explain how that's an incorrect mindset.
This ship was needed, and was built as part of the Voth ship group that arrived with The Sphere.
The art end of this ship art was built by a new ship artist, and it provided a perfect chance to get their hands dirty and build a player-ready ship from scratch. We're pretty happy with how it came out, and this training will go a long way towards getting you more, full-sized ships of awesome. Imagine trying to train someone on a very complicated ship with mountains of moving parts -- the time wasted troubleshooting would far outstretch any time "wasted" on this ship.
Shuttles are relatively similar to one another, and it takes less time to make a shuttle than a full-sized ship, at least in regards to systems. Not to say it's insignificant in any way, but this ship had to be built, it being player-flyable is secondary, and an added bonus to the way we've shifting our ship-building philosophy over the last couple of years.
If you're going to build it, you might as well reuse it. This ship is an enemy ship, a hangar bay combat pet, a non-combat pet, and a flyable ship, all at once. Time-saving at it's best.
It should be noted that the team is full of people with different disciplines, thinking that something like a character costume update was put on hold to make this ship is simply incorrect. I make ship art, I occasionally dabble in environment art and effects -- me doing that does not stop a new cut scene from being made.
In the end, really, no time was wasted on this ship, it was needed from the beginning, at a minimum as an NPC ship, but we figured, "what the heck, let's make it flyable by players, maybe they'd like a little bit of an extra thing."
I hope this helped clear stuff up!
I'm glad this offers training grounds for a new team member. And hope to see more from them.
However only reason why I don't like it, as others stated. Is lack of stuff to do with those ships. This is why I won't bother trying to get one or any other small ships of this nature. Why spend time and money on something that won't get used. Everything I buy or get on the game gets used at one point. As I rotate my Boffs, outfits, ships, etc.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
MY complaint is you put it in the gambling-token store.
It's not gambling if you get the currency out of every box, not to mention completely free of charge about twice per year.
You open a box, you get Lobi crystals. Every. Single. Time.
Tell me, how is that gambling??
Ok ive now had a gutful of this greedy TRIBBLE and the Lobi stuff.
Cryptic wonder why they are losing so many players, dear god how stupid can they be.
Comments
But...
Why are cross faction small craft back, exactly? They always seemed like a waste of resources given how little they offered over things like the EC runabouts or C-Store fighters, and I for one didn't miss them at all when they were dropped from the last few lockbox lineups. Seems like something that could have just stayed gone.
Also, I too, would love to see more shuttle missions in the future of the game. Atmosphere assault, while buggy with its invisible hangup spots, is still really cool. It would be a lot of fun to fly around the surface and chase enemy fighters canyons of a dilithium mine asteroid a-la the trenches on the breach, dodging laser drills and what not as a fleet marks mission. Just an idea.
MY FLEET:http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=498091
A small update was made to the blog to correct some information regarding the non-combat pet:
Apologies for the confusion. C-Store shuttles typically have their non-combat pet counterparts included, while Lobi non-combat pet counterparts are available for purchase in the "Vanity Pets" tab of the Lobi Store.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
DELTA PRICE RISING
But if its only for small craft, than its useless too.
I am not the only one to make this comment - it would make a lot of sense to listen to your customers on this one.
P.s. - Still waiting for the lobi mk12 Breen space set
That's my $0.02... though it merely echoes that of others. :P
I am pissed, guys. I'm trying to be fair here, but...nobody's going to use this. Anybody who was here during the end of the summer event has the yellowstone and the toj'du, and the Kestrel runabout is the rommie equivalent for no ZEN at all.
I don't know a single person who uses a lobi small craft. This is, quite frankly, a waste of time and code.
And you still haven't even given us a timetable on t5 dyson rewards. I ground my butt off to get t5 dyson yesterday, in anticipation, and here you guys are giving us an overly expensive ship instead of our eagerly-anticipated big reward. Or even a TIMETABLE for that big reward.
Priorities, guys. BranFlakes, you seem like a reasonable guy--surely you can understand that the ratio of small craft to small craft missions and the difficulty of said missions to their rewards does not provide incentive to ANYONE to get this ship. Nobody asked for this, hardly anyone seems to want this--meanwhile, there's a few thousand guys, minimum, chomping at the bit for the t5 dyson reward. Normally, I will defend Cryptic and the devs against the KDF grognards and Fed "Nerf the Klinks" crybabies, but this is freaking ridiculous.
Let's do a comparison here: Kestrel runabout is 33k EC. That's a 30-minute Foundry mission.
Delta Flyer and all other account-unlock small craft are 500 ZEN--that's about a week's grind at current prices.
All lobi shuttles are 300 lobi, which means (in the absence of the lobi promotion) 70 keys or so. That's about 8 thousand ZEN. Per shuttle. Character unlock, discard and you lose it.
Power-wise, C-store shuttles are better than EC and free shuttles, and Lobi shuttles are better than either. Given equal captains, a C-store shuttle will always beat a free or EC shuttle, and a Lobi shuttle will beat both. HOWEVER, the increased stats of lobi shuttles are in no way a match for their ridiculous cost.
Plus, nobody was waiting eagerly for this ship, and player reaction is overwhelmingly negative. Meanwhile, our dyson t5 reward still doesn't even have a timeline.
I normally like you guys a lot. You're a lot better overall than all of the other dev teams whose work I have experienced, but you seriously dropped the ball this time.
Sincerely and in full frankness,
worffan101
Read the patch notes again, maybe?
Saw that LITERALLY a minute after I posted that big rant LOL. Now I feel like a dunce.
What I said about the shuttle still kind of holds, but I am mollified by my t5 dyson rewards. Back to salivating in eager anticipation...
You guys could have put that time in making another cstore ship that people would actually buy....
I agree. We need more small craft missions. We have small craft missions fighting the Elachi, the Tal Shiar (and Remans), and the Jem'Hadar. Let's have a Voth small craft mission and a Starfleet vs KDF (playable by both Starfleet and KDF players) small craft mission too!
But fixing the missing textures bug that came out with s8 would be SUPER.
Lots of negative feed-back on this thread allready, so hate to add up a bit to it. But its kinda disapointing that this new shuttle doenst comes with the "perks" that the timeshuttle came. Probably would've been better received if an exclusive skin was added to unlock it also on the other 2 voth ships. Also it cant use any voth consoles so thats a down side aswell
Other then that it looks like a "tuff little ship"
I totaly agree that we need more shuttle contend, and who knows, maybe the voth zone that its still under development might came with some new shuttle content.
Let me try and explain how that's an incorrect mindset.
This ship was needed, and was built as part of the Voth ship group that arrived with The Sphere.
The art end of this ship art was built by a new ship artist, and it provided a perfect chance to get their hands dirty and build a player-ready ship from scratch. We're pretty happy with how it came out, and this training will go a long way towards getting you more, full-sized ships of awesome. Imagine trying to train someone on a very complicated ship with mountains of moving parts -- the time wasted troubleshooting would far outstretch any time "wasted" on this ship.
Shuttles are relatively similar to one another, and it takes less time to make a shuttle than a full-sized ship, at least in regards to systems. Not to say it's insignificant in any way, but this ship had to be built, it being player-flyable is secondary, and an added bonus to the way we've shifting our ship-building philosophy over the last couple of years.
If you're going to build it, you might as well reuse it. This ship is an enemy ship, a hangar bay combat pet, a non-combat pet, and a flyable ship, all at once. Time-saving at it's best.
It should be noted that the team is full of people with different disciplines, thinking that something like a character costume update was put on hold to make this ship is simply incorrect. I make ship art, I occasionally dabble in environment art and effects -- me doing that does not stop a new cut scene from being made.
In the end, really, no time was wasted on this ship, it was needed from the beginning, at a minimum as an NPC ship, but we figured, "what the heck, let's make it flyable by players, maybe they'd like a little bit of an extra thing."
I hope this helped clear stuff up!
Twitter! STO_JamJamz
Thank you for the explanation. Allow me to offer my sincere apologies for any offense taken by the dev team at my earlier comments.
MY complaint is you put it in the gambling-token store.
Whatever happened to selling through the Zen Store? This is what we have to look forward to isn't it? Gambling-Trek Online. Farm all day, buy keys, open boxes and save up enough tokens... for a ship that is only useable in vanishingly small number of missions.
Training is a good thing, and I hope the new designer does well at Cryptic. My complaint is the MARKETING. As it is Lobi Store I don't anticipate ever owning one... as I refuse to gamble with lockboxes any longer!
I don't like the Lobi store any more than you do, but they've repeatedly said that CBS (not to mention suspension of disbelief in their own setting) requires them to control the numbers of the off-faction ships in the game. The easiest way to do that is to just charge an exorbitant price for them. Plus is probably makes them a lot of money.
At least it's a predictable pattern. Fed, KDF, and Rom ships go in the C-Store, wacky alien ships go in reward packs (however obtained). And the lockbox and Lobi ships are all on the exchange, too, if you're better at earning monopoly money than real money.
I probably won't buy this thing but I appreciate the option.
Soooo the Avenger came out of a box??
Nice, I look forward to the new Federation, KDF and Romulan cstore ships that the training guy is working on for next month
That is of course in addition to the shuttle, assorted other items and outfits to match what was in the just released Voth lockbox.
All coming to the cstore next month, right?
Yeah I am hoping in 2014 that Cryptic will be pushing out more raiders as well as raiding type missions where a battle cloak really helps to have as far as content goes. So I agree with you a lot there needs to be more content on this issue with the main attraction of a battle cloak
I'm glad this offers training grounds for a new team member. And hope to see more from them.
However only reason why I don't like it, as others stated. Is lack of stuff to do with those ships. This is why I won't bother trying to get one or any other small ships of this nature. Why spend time and money on something that won't get used. Everything I buy or get on the game gets used at one point. As I rotate my Boffs, outfits, ships, etc.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
You open a box, you get Lobi crystals. Every. Single. Time.
Tell me, how is that gambling??
Cryptic wonder why they are losing so many players, dear god how stupid can they be.