to Alt or not to Alt, that is the question

lyran2

What are the advantages of running Alternate Characters (Alts)?

I had alts before when I had originally played STO (through season 4), but I never noticed any advantages. Plus, I never really cared about gear or loadouts originally.

Since comming back to STO I started a new character and conslidated where I could and scraped the rest for EC.

Weeks later running a single character all the way to 50 (to include fleet mission projects) seems pretty time intensive.

rattler2

Trying different ships and character classes. Also... having a character in another faction.

Unknown

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bendalek

Dil farming mostly ... Sadly that's what KDF now stands for "Klingon Dilithium Farmers".

Romulan's alts are primarily used to farm for SRO BoFF's.

Myself I have around 8 toons all up, so I'm not much of an "Alt-aholic" ... I just like trying new classes and ships, different builds and specs ... Really, once you've got all Reps maxed, and purchased (read: The Grind!) one of every Rep item in the game, there's not much else to do ...

It's fun to experiment, and RP different races and/or classes.

reginamala78

Game isn't very alt-friendly other than farming really. Gameplay is almost identical no matter which class you are. If I were starting over today, I'd only make 3 characters, one each faction of a different career, and call it good.

rattler2

It got more alt friendly when they introduced the Sponsorship tokens. Get 100 marks in a T5 rep, make token, Account bank Token, Retrieve token on desired alt, reap 2x rep exp, profit.

stonewbie

I have a ton of alts and most of them are dil grinders that convert to zen so that i can pool it all together to spend on my main or my primary alt. But i wont always go with whats best for dil per hour, i go for whats fun. For example i have a mirror Ki'Tang with A2B dual cannons, a Kar'fi torp boat, a Tvaro stealth bomber, a fed in an avenger, an eng in a sovereign refit, another kdf tac that used to be in a mirror voquv but just switched to a raptor and then there is my main. Most of them are geared up with rare of very rare XI and XII from missions, with 1 or 2 rep pieces. But i wont go leveling all their rep or all their crafting. My main is the only one with max faction rep and max crafting, anyone else has zero crafting and only enough rep to get gear that i really really want.


Now as far as playing alts just to play them like for fun? i keep telling myself that i'll roll an alt. But then a lot of times i end up saying why bother? they wont have the gear because it comes from rep. Or their doffs will suck since i dont want to spend the time farming up rare or vr doffs for them. Or why bother leveling an engineer, i can never get them to work...or why bother leveling a sci i always end up turning them into torpedo boats. Then there is the mission episode...why level a romulan? i hate the elachi storyline and i hate tovan. Or why level a fed there are too many breaks in the storyline and i will have to do patrols or episode repeats to get caught up for the next episode. Why level a KDF when i dont like the way Qonos looks and i dont like their style or culture? It's a lot of: ohh ohh i want to do this but but all this other stuff doesnt make me want to.

reginamala78

sopwithsnipe wrote: »

It's not alt friendly? I've got 30 characters. You are only limited by your imagination... and the costume creator.

And by enough time to do it all and not have your brain melt out your ears as you repeat Colosseum or Surface Tension for the umpteenth time, or ISE for the thousandth time stocking up on marks and dil and gear for yet another character's build. Its not that you can't do it (I have 14, all rep-maxed and endgame geared, not my best decision), its that with how repetitive the content is with little-to-no variation per character, and how much equipment is per-character, there isn't much gained from huge numbers of alts. Play each faction's story once, try each career path once, and keep a good number of ships and boffs to switch between depending on mood, and you've done 95% of what the game has.

rattler2

I've got 5 alts, making it 2 characters per career path. KDF plays a bit differently due to ship options, and so does Romulan. However... not all my alts have MACO gear on. My Fed Medic is running the Solanae set in space and Dyson rep ground set.

Battlecruisers can't really be played like an Assault Cruiser either. lol

farmallm

I mostly run 3 characters. I do have 3 I don't use much so they are mostly bank space or when I get time to get around them.

The main ones I play is the Fed, KDF, and Romulan. As each one gives me a different way to play. Since I RP I get into the role and each one is different. My Fed is older wiser and slower to enter combat. While my KDF is younger and quicker to rush in. And my Romulan has an attitude you don't want to mess with.

The game is alt friendly as you can rep certain ones or do what ever you want. I had lots of fun with my main 3.

dracounguis

bendalek wrote: »

Dil farming mostly ... Sadly that's what KDF now stands for "Klingon Dilithium Farmers".

Yup, alts are good for farming mostly. And with doffing you don't even have to leave Sol to make it. And when something like the Crystalline Entity comes around, each toon can make 50k Dil from the event.

The downside of alts is, if farming, you don't really 'play' alot. And you can be more tempted to buy many ships (C-store or exchange) to outfit them where if you only had 1 toon, you get a ship and stick to it.

mirrorchaos

got a number of alts, until a number of months back my main and the older toons were being neglected, ive recently put in an effort to bring my main back to use. so far there is fairly good use out of that toon at the moment, still only half complete however.

my three eldest since 10'-11', K'Mec , Daughter of Kotos. Marro Celise. K'Ella.

K'Mec is the main ive already mentioned, Celise im currently in the middle of rebuilding from the ground up but mass effect is taking my attention from the game, a welcome relief from all that grinding cce runs recently, hope to have her up and active soon. K'Ella hasnt really seen much improvement other then the kdf vet 1k ship and a uniform change, thats about it in 3 years. if i can rebuild my toons up correctly and accurately they could become far more useful to me then they currently are.

another of my toons Letak Elmor runs a nebula class, when in cce runs, he skirts around the ce planting all sorts of science tricks in space. im thinking of bringing that alien gen cardassian upto spec. will have to see what happens in a few months from now with all that DR exp. stuff coming forward.

woodwhity

More ships, more classes, more races and Contraband-Farmers, the mainreason for most kdf out there^^.

captainrevo1

Dilithium farming is a major bonus.

Spreading the crafting between characters will help that dramatically.

Trying out the different factions, careers, ship types, builds which will increase with the release of the new intelligence ships and boffs.

Can be helpful if you have a particular queue you want to farm over and over for a fleet, as it can bypass the cooldown timer.

bobbydazlers

i have 3 characters i play but dont consider any of them alts, to me an alt is a character you dont really care about and only use on the odd occation if you need a character of that profession and faction or if you are using them to farm dil or ec for you.

all of my 3 characters (fed,klink,rom) i play equally, if i get an item on one of them i want to get it for the others also, if i do an event for a ship or other prize i want to do it with the others, i hate the new feature where if you get a ship with one character you can get it with 40 gizmos with any others and wish they would have put in a method to turn it off because when i have completed a task on one i enjoy doing it with the others, luckily this does not kick in till you donate the final 40 gizmos on your first character but its still anoying none the less.
i also enjoy trying to get all the accolades, reputation and such with all my characters.

so as for if you should have alts, dont know, never created one.

the same will apply if they ever bring in a forth faction, i will then have 4 characters but still no alts.

alexvio1

dracounguis wrote: »

And with doffing you don't even have to leave Sol to make it.

That's why the DOFF system was nerfed: they added 5 sec delay, removed some assignments and clusters, changed the DOFF UI.

thestargaze

I have like 10+ alts .. but only because I want to try different species and characters for RP.. but other than that the game is not very alt friendly.

In fact its quite a heavy work to give all the toons the attentions to get them fully equipped. The rep sponsor thing is helpful but its still a grind. And repeatable when you do the same missions all over again. I can be fun if you take a break but yeah.. it is heavy.

sunfrancks

It is all about the Dilithium really, more alts equals more earnable Dilithium.

I have 3 chars that I mainly play, all are Fed and are one of each career.

wilbor2

ive 5 chars ( 2 FED 2 KDF n 1 ROM) n as ive maxed all reps n got them all rep fleet gear + feet ships i just farm dill on them now ive grinded 6900 zen so far for when DR comes out :cool: