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Explain reputation to me... And when to bother with it?
odanova
Member Posts: 14 Arc User
New level 50 here... I'm casually going through the PVE Stories, I'm still on the Klingon front...
So I've grinded all the tier 1 reputation systems so far, though I found the rewards prohibitively expensive - massive amounts of dilithium or, in the case of the Tier 1 'unlockables' a requirement of some 500 marks (yikes...)
I've also gotten saddled with 2 more missions from the Romulan and Dyson command sections but I doubt I'm anywhere near those locations PvE wise and I'm not about to drop 300k for a transwarp O_O
So, what's the point of these reputation things? Are we realistically meant to focus on one, grind it out and earn the rewards then switch focus until the next tier is unlocked with whatever marks you have left over?
And when are you realistically meant to do them? I know it's available at level 50 and is 'end-game' but I assume some of these are interconnected to the PvE areas. I know Romulans and Dyson seems to be...
Would it be best for me to just get on with the story and then grind the marks and rep once I reach the relevant story area for the reputation places?
For that matter; When do we arrive at those stages? I'm assuming the Romulan one is the first we realistically arrive at (or maybe Nakura marks, since that's in the Klingon zone...) -I fancy doing it along side the missions rather than grinding immediately otherwise I think I'll probably 'burn out' and I don't want that so early on in the game!
Any advice/help?
So I've grinded all the tier 1 reputation systems so far, though I found the rewards prohibitively expensive - massive amounts of dilithium or, in the case of the Tier 1 'unlockables' a requirement of some 500 marks (yikes...)
I've also gotten saddled with 2 more missions from the Romulan and Dyson command sections but I doubt I'm anywhere near those locations PvE wise and I'm not about to drop 300k for a transwarp O_O
So, what's the point of these reputation things? Are we realistically meant to focus on one, grind it out and earn the rewards then switch focus until the next tier is unlocked with whatever marks you have left over?
And when are you realistically meant to do them? I know it's available at level 50 and is 'end-game' but I assume some of these are interconnected to the PvE areas. I know Romulans and Dyson seems to be...
Would it be best for me to just get on with the story and then grind the marks and rep once I reach the relevant story area for the reputation places?
For that matter; When do we arrive at those stages? I'm assuming the Romulan one is the first we realistically arrive at (or maybe Nakura marks, since that's in the Klingon zone...) -I fancy doing it along side the missions rather than grinding immediately otherwise I think I'll probably 'burn out' and I don't want that so early on in the game!
Any advice/help?
Post edited by odanova on
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Do 'em as you see fit. If you want something from a particular reputation I would focus on that. The gear and traits are nice ways to customize your character.
Again, do 'em as you see fit. They are only loosely tied in to the story. However there's a bonus daily box that is enough to cover the 20-hr advancement projects, so my advice would be to only run one of a particular reputation a day unless you really want to advance that reputation quickly.
Each rep is connected to some kind of battlezone/adventure zone (most notably the dyson rep-dyson sphere) plus several cued events.
Also if you are not aware yet, once you have gotten each rep to tier 5 on one character, you can generate sponsorship tokens that you can give to you other characters (provided you have an account bank) that will give the recipient double exp for that rep.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
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My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
Click here to view my DeviantArt.
Each rep tells you where you can earn those marks. Some reps you can earn marks really easy, like really really easy. Just look at all the rep factions, find out based on stats what gear you want and add up the number of marks you need and start grinding it out. Find out what activities yield the most mark/hour or whatever if you want to focus on efficiency.
First off you dont *need* to take that transwarp, you can manually fly to the locations. It doesnt take that long. And take a closer look next time at the cost of the transwarp. It probably said 30k not 300k.
It depends on what gear you want. Look at all the gear, look at the stats and see if it is something you want. If a rep faction has no gear or passives that you dont want you dont really have to do it. But i think its worth doing because when you reach tier 5 eventually you get a 50k unrefined dilithium, a bunch of marks which can also be turned in for refined dilithium. And if it is your first toon doing the rep system with reaching tier 5 allows you to create sponsorship tokens. You can give those tokens to your alts who *do* want gear from that rep faction. You alts will have to do the rep grind all over again but the token will double their XP gains so they level the rep tiers faster.
For gear previewing unfortunately the in game interface doesnt allow you to look at gear stats for higher tiers. You have to first reach that tier then you can see what the gear stats are. Click the link below to go to a wiki where you can look at all the stats on the gear available from each rep faction.
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Reputation_System/Projects
You can progress along the chapters and episodes without worrying about the rep faction. And you can do the rep faction stuff without doing the episode storyline stuff. It's not a requirement to do one before the other. If you dont want to do the storyline stuff in the episode list then dont do it. If you do want to see the storyline stuff then do it all and once you are done you can work on the rep faction stuff. The storyline for some of these rep factions do have a chronological order, but you dont have to follow it. When you hit 50 you can do 8472 rep, or skip the episode storylines until you are doing the Undine stuff.
Someone mentioned Omega rep for the gear, and I do like the Assimilated Borg Technology ship set for its combination of survival-minded set bonuses and sector space travel speed, but when it comes to ship weapons, the Species 8472 Counter-Command rep is underrated. The 3-piece set bonus from that reputation's torpedo/turret/console/console ship gear set provides you with a Point Defense attack without requiring you to devote a console slot to nothing but the Point Defense, and the 8472 reputation's store has powerful phaser and disruptor weapons. They go well with ships that already strongly encourage a phaser or disruptor weapon build, like the Starfleet Dreadnought, the Klingon Bortasqu, The Andorian Kumari, or the Tier 6 Escort and Raptor that are coming in less than a week. If I wasn't already committed to using disruptors, the plasma weapons from New Romulus rep would be my second choice. The only gear I bother to get from Fleet holdings are consoles (and possibly a warp core, but the Dyson and 8472 reputations offer those now, too).
So, worth it? In my opinion, definitely. The reputation system has grown into a very valuable part of the game at level cap. If you're in a Fleet and can't decide whether to work on Fleet Holdings or reputations first, do the reputations. The rewards come much faster, and they'll help you gear up for some of the more difficult content for Fleet Marks, both PvE and PvP.
thats not really true... depands on what you like to do in the game. for example, i like to grind costumes and accolades. so for that i want all the rep systems to t5.
for a person that wants to do high dps and join dps chat channels, the nakura rep would be great to be t5 for the set that boost your dps pretty good and higher than the adapted maco or omega
in additional if you like the undine pve missions (ques) and you hate to see your ship drifting around cuz of the fluidic space you would want to get the undine space set to corect that.
Lol... what a non sense sentence. Dont listen to this guy..
Depends on your playstyle, the style of your ship/build. Some items from some reps will fit better than others, and omega can be the best of all reps, but it doesnt mean the other reputations are more fited to your playstyle. Remeber this game is ABOUT HAVING FUN, not about HAVING THE BEST OF THE BEST , that will not always give you the best fun in the game.
The romulan reputation is really easy to complete, if you dont want to feel overwheelmed, just do every day the tau dewa sector patrol mission with the bonus daily and you will get 115 romulan marks every day, enough to complete the entire reputation just using about 30 minutes in a easy mission. Nukara reputation is easy, yo uwill only need to waste about 25-30 minutes every day to fill the daily reputation projects (the hourly and daily ones), just going to nukara and doing a couple of ground missions, or doing the crystaline queue or something else that awards you nukara marks.
As you see, my advise is that you first complete all the tiers of the reputations you want, then, when you finish the last one , use the extra marks to buy watever you want. This is really easy on nukara and romulan reputations, that doesnt require any extra item to buy stuff (omega, undine and dyson requires for example borg neural processors, isomorfic injections and voth implants).
The undine battlezone and dyson battlezone are good to mix dilithium farming plus rep marks and those extra items you need to buy stuff.
Remember that depends on your play style, there will be sometimes that you will be only interestd in any specific reputation for just one specific item. For example, when i am not romulan or i am not going for a plasma build, the romulan reputation only serves to pick up the console universal energy conduit, that i place in all my ships.
Overall I stopped grinding all the gear sets for all of my alts post Omega, focusing on the traits only.
I have ground out a few things:
- the romulan impulse engines (bonus for attack patterns)
- counter command deflectors (bonuses to weapons skills)
- Elite Scorpion hangers
- romulan plasma weapons (for a while, very sexy in the damage capacity)
- counter command console
- Tholian console (beam accuracy)
- Voth experimental ground gun etc.
Plus a bunch of other smaller things.
My advice, If your playing the game, and your getting reputation marks, Spend them, but I'd advise you not to let them effect they way you play the game, carry on playing content you enjoy and have fun.
If your after certain specific pieces of gear theres good stuff available from them, but again, all in good time, its not going anywhere so there is really no rush in my opinion
You could wait for the Winter Event which starts early December.
You can raise epohhs to trade in for your choice of marks.
It's the only way I get Rom marks and I'll be stocking up on Undine marks the same way.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
And then after you've bought what you want with the marks, you can turn the rest into dilithium ore with a project that gives 500 ore for 50 marks.
I personally did all five of the reps at approximately the same time, and once I learned what the most entertaining and efficient ways for me to get the various marks were, the system became much more manageable..I too was rather overwhelmed when I saw how complex the system looked at first. The traits and rewards for finishing the reps make them all worth it in my opinion.
I'm actually glad I did them all at the same time because they all can be fully completed in around 40 days (if you ONLY use the 20h daily project) rather than 40 days * 5 reps = 200 days if they are completed one at a time.
If you're interested, here's what I used:
8472: Undine space battlezone and undine infiltration pve queue
Dyson: Dyson ground battlezone, Dyson allied space zone, and Storming the Spire pve queue (also The Breach because of its unique style). You only need to do one really quick thing (5 minutes or less in space if you take the central command mission) in a zone to get the daily reward of 55 marks plus the mission reward and some dilithium.
New Romulus: Azure nebula rescue, "Away team" style daily missions on New Romulus that you unlock as you progress, and Epohh turn-ins - find a team in zone chat for epohh tagging and you'll easily get enough to quickly progress, then raise the epohhs up all the way and turn them in for 400 romulan marks each. DO NOT do the random tasks in the ground exploration zones on New Romulus.. the rewards you get for the time invested in running around finding the things to interact with is NOT worth it in my opinion, which is kind of too bad because it's a unique style of mostly non-combat gameplay.
Nukara: Crystalline catastrophe pve queue or Azure nebula rescue (I couldn't be bothered to do the nukara prime planet zone; I really can't stand environmental suits)
Omega: Elite PvE queues, i.e. Infected space and khitomer ground
Omega rep for Task Force Omega (anti-borg group). Nukara for anti-Tholian ops. Romulan for D'Tan and the Mol'Rihan (New Romulus) gang. Dyson for the sphere group, and Counter-Command for the group in charge of stuffing Undine operations...
Do things they like (kill borg helps Omega. Kill tholians helps Nukara. Check out Epohhs helps Romulans, etc.)
In practice, however, it's just a grindy system to get alternate traits, unlock gear, kill time, and eventually help pay out lots of Dilithium...
It is 55 marks a day from the bonus box, which, when combined with the marks from completing the mission, gives you 2 to 3 days worth of the 20 hour daily (the one that eats 30 marks and gives the most advancement to the cause...). On that note, you only need to run one mission every other day...
Therefore, if you're really interested, you could either run all the missions daily for like 20 days or so (stockpile enough to complete each tree) or run them on an alternating day schedule (Rom, Undine, and Nukara odd days, Omega and Dyson even days)...
As far as the gear goes, I wouldn't worry about buying every single set. Since you can usually only run like 2 space sets (one support set of deflector/engine/shield/potential core-singularity) and one set of weapons (console, torp, beam usually), I'd find the two that support your build the most and focus on them - hitting the missions daily and/or multiple times a day to make sure you have to marks to pick them up. Ground gear, I'd recommend MACO or KHG (based on Faction) for the Anti-Borg work, and the Dyson set because it's great to hurt those Voth and Dyson Ground Battlezone is probably the most efficient place to earn Dilithium in the game right now... (that, and it can go to a BOff once you've used it up if you don't like it a ton...)
The rest can come later. As you hit T5 in each rep track, you'll get piles of dil to help finance your purchases and then you can convert marks to keep the dil train rolling...
On those notes, arguably the "best" place to set up camp is Dyson Battlezone Command Center. You can run STFs (Infected Space Elite or Khitomer Ground Elite), Crystalline Catastrophe, and Azure Nebula Rescue via the queue system so you beam straight from Dyson to the mission and back. That leaves a 2 zone hop (ground to middle zone, sphere, there to Undine Zone) to get at your undine marks by capping a single point...
Only problem with this is bank access, but then again, I'm a bit corrupted by having a Tuffli freighter that I can pop into for banking & exchange, otherwise it's a 3 zone hop back to Sphere Command for the amenities...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
The Nukara rep can go anywhere in the story so I would probably start as soon as you get to level 50. If you've got a decent ground weapon doing any of the easy ground content on Nukara is probably the quickest way to get a daily (if you've got transwarp to starbase K7 available). Otherwise as people have said just do any of the three nukara queued space events the first 15 minutes you log in every other day then go back to continuing the story missions. If you're not that interested in the Nukara missions after trying them out and if you don't like the look of any of the gear then it's not a massive loss if you give up on it as the story content is pretty limited.
The Romulan rep should be started as soon as you've finished the Romulan story arc. As well as having some fun gear it also has fun story missions every-time you go up a tier. You should aim to finish these before you do the mission Sphere of Influence near the end of the mission chain. Unfortunately apart from the marks you get from these story missions it's one of the slowest to get marks for. The quickest way is supposedly Epohh tagging but I find this terminally dull and it takes a while to get marks from it so you can't build the rep whilst doing it.
The New Romulus ground small missions are a little dull but don't take too long if you do the mission to unlock the transporters and it's a nice environment. I would recommend doing the tau dewa sector patrol mission at least once and doing the galadorn core, beta lankal and acamar missions because they're a little different. The Acamar one is also the quickest way to complete the patrol if you just do it quickly 6 times in a row but this is a bit boring. The alert in Tau Dewa gives you a choice of Nukara and Romulan marks but often fails so can be a waste of 15 minutes. I would wait till you've got really good at space murder before doing that.
The Borg rep is widely regarded as giving the best gear/traits. Story wise it comes after the borg arc but it still makes sense where ever you do it as long as you do the PvE queues in their correct order. The order isn't given in game (ridiculously) but can be found on the STO wikia. As people have said the quickest way to do it is to just bust out Infected the Conduit in five minutes then get on with your day.
The Dyson Rep can only be accessed once you've done Sphere of Influence. Each level gives you little cutscenes which are more of a sidequest to get a BOFF so unless you particularly want him there's no rush. Although technically you should finish the chain before moving onto A Step Between Stars I don't think it's really necessary. The quickest way to get a daily supply of marks is to do the daily mission from the dyson joint command (especially if you have a cloaked ship).
The Undine Rep returns to the good old days of not really having any story. It's supposed to be started after Surface Tension and the quickest way to get marks is to capture one point in the space battlezone daily. The only reason I'd leave starting it till last is because the space battlezone only makes sense after A Step Between Stars but really I think the queued events for it could fit anywhere in the story after the Borg arc so if you want to get a head start by doing them once or twice before then feel free.
Having said all that if you're going for speed I would probably recommend doing them all at the same time. (Especially with the new daily marks meaning you only need to do each one once every two times you log in).
If you're looking to experience all the gameplay content in the game and only do one thing for each reputation every time you log in (which will probably take about an hour and a half). Then you'll probably have enough marks to get half way through each reputation by the time you've done everything once anyway.
Steps:
1. Create a new alt and level them to 50 as quickly as possible.
2, optional. Create sponsorship tokens on your main character and use these on your new alt to cut time to reach tier 5 in half.
3. Start leveling up all reps as quickly as possible, relying on frequent collection of the daily bonus marks. I used the following:
- For Omega, one run of ISE OR Gamma Orionis encounter OR sector Red Alert.
- For New Romulus, one run of Azure Nebula Rescue OR New Romulus ground of choice.
- For Nukara, a second run of Azure Nebula Rescue OR Crystalline Entity (normal is fastest).
- For Dyson, one run of the daily from Joint Command.
- For Undine, liberate one block in the battlezone.
With the daily bonus marks, you'll only need to do each of the above once in 2 or 3 days. The idea is to cycle daily rep projects fueled with daily bonus marks.
4. Collect the tier 5 rewards for each rep. Ideally, this is done during a dilithium or marks bonus weekend.
5. Convert all the mark and reputation currency (Neural Processors and such) rewards into dilithium and refine it. Use the hourly projecs for the best results on marks (even better during the bonus weekends).
6, optional. Transfer dilithium your primary character and/or go shopping.
7, optional . Delete the alt character and start again.
This does not require that much in the way of game time, as most of the collection missions are short. I've found this more enjoyable than regular dilithium farming, as all the different rep tracks combined offer a varied choice of source missions. You can also mix things up along the way, as you'll not gain anything from completing all the tracks at the same time - you can't process all that dilithium at once anyway.
Vice Admiral Mathrias | U.S.S. Utrecht (Blockade Runner Retrofit)
Vide Admiral Kyurin | U.S.S. Cairhien (Fleet Dreadnought Cruiser)
Vice Admiral Kiarl Leftrin | U.S.S. Aegir (Fleet Recon Science Vessel)
--= Starfleet Strategic Command =--
The order in which you do them doesn't matter much, though some won't make sense story wise but looks like that has been discussed above. If you prioritize anything I would push through Omega first simply for the fact that getting Borg STFs is easy and the stuff you can get it still very good and offers options for a variety of builds/play styles. For your 2nd I would suggest Dyson for the simple reason that the Voth ground battlezone is a fun way to earn lots of dil quickly. Plus depending on what your build plans are there is good stuff available through that rep -- the torpedo being a big one.
Doing the reputation system is totally optional. You do not need rep gear to play STO. With one exception which I will get to later...
Rep systems provides you with access to various gears that can help improve the performance of your starship whether it is weapons, consoles, or general ship gear like warp cores and shields. This also applies to ground combat where you can get things like weapons, armor and shields. The more damage that you can do or the more damage you can take will improve your overall performance in space / ground combat.
As it stands now, you can basically play all content in STO without the need for any rep gear, this includes Elite queued PvE missions that I will just refer to as eSTFs. However, this will change once Delta Rising is released on Oct 14th...
When Delta Rising is released, the old eSTFs will be simply known as "Advanced" missions. The new "Elite" missions are designed for people with ships that have very high DPS (damage per second). You will need rep gear and fleet gear (you must join a fleet for that) if you want push the limits of your DPS.
An example of the increase in difficulty is the Borg eSTF on Tribble (the test server before things go live on Holodeck) called Infected: The Conduit (a.k.a ISE) which has been around for a long time. There was one person that posted a video of ISE from Tribble which basically showed that the Borg Tactical Cubes has 3 million hit points... However, the team needed to do a total of around 7 million points of damage to destroy the cube. That basically implies that the Borg cube was healing itself very quickly. Things on the Tribble server gets tweaked so ISE could have been tweaked to either increase or decrease the difficulty since that video was posted on Youtube.
I have read that there is a queued PvE mission in Delta Rising is only available at elite difficulty (I can't remember the name of the mission). That may change once DR goes live, but it might not. That mission is designed so that you will quickly know if your starship is too weak because the mission has 4 parts to it and part 1 is supposed to be the most difficult part of it.
In the end you only need rep gear (and fleet gear) to do the elite version of the queued PvE missions once Delta Rising is released. And quite possibly one new exclusive elite queued PvE mission that will be released as part of Delta Rising.
leveling to lvl 50 and complete reps to t5 look like a big waste of time just to get the dilithium ore and after that to delete the toon. isn't better to level up the alt if you want extra dilithium ref cap and keep it? and instead if leveling over and over you can run ques and the dilithium will come around anyway:)
Yah i agree too...leveling rep factions not for gear and not for traits but for the tier 5 rewards is a waste of time. Actually, maybe not a waste of time but just a different use of your time. You do just enough activities to earn all the different marks to do each daily 20hour project. Then you hit tier 5 on all rep factions and get all the rewards. But all that does is give you a stockpile of dilithium that you can convert. So for a few weeks you wont have to worry about doing anything but logging in and hitting refine and then logging out. But eventually that stockpile will run out and now you will end up looking for the best dil/hour farming method.
I dont know about in DR, but right now it is really easy to get that 8000 dil a day to meet the refine cap. All it takes is 4 queues...elite cure, infected, khitomer and crystalline (select nukara mark reward). trade in your 3 neurals for 1k dil, trade in all omega marks for dil, trade in your nukara marks for dil. If you got all optionals then that should be 8k right there.
And seriously deleting it and restarting over? now thats just stupid. Why delete it when you can use it as a daily dil farm alt?
I think I have a rough idea of what I'll be doing now.
The rep system is just to give you something to do while you wait for ...something to do.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Vice Admiral Mathrias | U.S.S. Utrecht (Blockade Runner Retrofit)
Vide Admiral Kyurin | U.S.S. Cairhien (Fleet Dreadnought Cruiser)
Vice Admiral Kiarl Leftrin | U.S.S. Aegir (Fleet Recon Science Vessel)
--= Starfleet Strategic Command =--
But that dilithium is unrefined you are still limited by the 8k a day dil cap whether it is a delete and start over toon or a get to 50 and farm dil toon. The only advantage of a delete toon is that you can stop doing anything for a couple of days/weeks and just log in and refine. But once you refine all the dil that was saved up from tier 5 rewards you lose time when you delete and have to get it to level 50 all over again. It should be easy enough to make a comparison, the only variable is the time it takes to level a toon from 1-50. And dont forget that leveling rep via the 20hour and 1hour projects takes other forms of currency too which will have to be farmed up. I have a fresh 50 from the XP event and she is sitting on 292k expertise.
All rep (20hour + 1hour project a day)
daily cost: -112500 ec, -15000 expertise
total cost: -4162500 ec, -555000 expertise
37 days to tier 5
Dilithium refined over 37 day period: 296000
undine 750mark 32000dil 40000ec
dyson 750mark 32000dil 40000ec 5 implants
romulus 750mark 32000dil 40000ec
nukara 750mark 32000dil 40000ec
omega 500mark 9000dil 40000ec 10 neurals
total worth = +178000dil, +200000ec
23 days to refine dilithium
Now you get to factor in a few variables. The initial level up from 1-50 isnt a big deal, but you have to factor in the days of refining lost when you level up that new toon to level 50. You have to factor in the time it takes to go earn marks from each faction just to be able to do the two daily projects. Factor in time that may need to be spent doing activities to earn expertise. Expertise might actually come naturally because each day you will still want to do enough activities to earn 8000 dil so you can still refine while you are working towards your goal of the combined tier 5 rewards. Factor in sponsorship bonuses...you use bonus tokens for each faction then you cut down the required materials cost by 50%. BUT remember you are also refining 8000 a day. Instead of 37 days to get to tier 5 you are now looking at 18 days. During those 37 days you refined 296000 dil, but in 18 days you are only 144000dil. And then once you get your tier 5 lump payment you are still looking at 23days to refine it all.
Now compare that to someone that just goes from level 1-50 and starts refining 8k a day right as they hit 50.
day 18 = 144000dil refined same as the delete toon
day 37 = 296000dil refined same as the delete toon
day 41 = 328000dil refined same as the delete toon if they use a rep sponsor token
day 60 = 480000dil refined same as the delete toon if they had not used a sponsor token
At day 41 or 61 the delete toon has used up all of their stockpiled unrefined dilithium from all sources and they should delete. Once that happens now that person falls behind in refining. If it takes a person 5 days to get from 1-50 and ready for the rep grind again the other person is still putting along and has earned and refined 40000 dil in the time it took that other person to level. If the delete toon takes 2 weeks to level another toon then the other person has earned and refined 112000.
What do you have to factor in for the player that just gets to 50 and just refines and does not delete? you get to factor in the time it takes to earn 8000 dil a day. For this you can run elite cure, elite khitomer, elite infected and elite crystalline (pick nukara marks for reward) and that tells you how long it takes to earn 8000 dil. That takes me anywhere between 30-45 minutes for all 4 runs. Dont have to worry about earning expertise or earning EC.
Whether the person is a fast leveler or a slow leveler the moment they delete that toon to start over they will fall behind. And because of the 8k a day refinement limit they will not catch yup. There is no "they might catch up if they try really hard". Nope once they delete then they fall behind and there is no catching up. Not to mention you have to earn 555k worth of expertise and are paying roughly 4million EC to level all 5 rep to tier 5. So thats E.C you either have to earn or burn or trade in 1-2 master keys for which will cost you 20k-55k dil. I say 1 or 2 because throughout all that you are still earning dil from lootdrops and whatnot.
I never did the numbers, so thank you for doing so.
Vice Admiral Mathrias | U.S.S. Utrecht (Blockade Runner Retrofit)
Vide Admiral Kyurin | U.S.S. Cairhien (Fleet Dreadnought Cruiser)
Vice Admiral Kiarl Leftrin | U.S.S. Aegir (Fleet Recon Science Vessel)
--= Starfleet Strategic Command =--
What I use for space is the Solonae space set from the episode in the Dyson Sphere story arc. It is called Step Between Stars. You can get three pieces of the space set from this mission, and just pick a decent warp core from a mission reward, or exchange.
For ground, I use the J'Hemhadar (not sure if spelled right) set. It can be obtained through the missions you fight them in.
However, if you don't want to skip any missions, and go through the story from start to finish, then I say go for it. The sets are really only going to help if you queue up for the PVEs/STFs on elite. Though, it is possible to do a lot of them with just regular enemy drops, but can be hard.
As for whether or not the rep systems are worth the time, I have 12 characters, and my first one is a little over a year old. It wasn't till a few weeks ago that I got any rep system besides the Omega past T4. I have some of the set pieces for both space and ground on him from the Omega rep system, and they do help. All of the rep systems offer good sets, depending on what you are after.
However, it doesn't need to feel like a grind to level them up. The good thing about the bonus experience event we now have is that you level up so fast that you can run just one quick mission on normal for each one, and have all you need for running the rep system's 20 hour project.
I am in the process of leveling more characters. I am reaching level 50 while still on the level 20-28 missions. So, I queue up for the Conduit on normal for the Borg STF mission in space. This last about 5-10 mins, and gives enough marks to at least run the 20 hour mission. And, if done right, everyone runs together in it.
For the Romulan marks, I go with the Azure Nebula Rescue. It can be done in about 15 mins, and is easy if you stick with someone in it, and work with them. It gives an option for marks, and I recommend the Romulan ones. They are the hardest to get quickly.
The Nukara rep is one that I like to run the Crystalline Catastrophe for. If done on normal, and you stay just in 9 km of it, you can have enough distance to see when the crystal is charging (by an indicator above its head that says absorbing), and bug out to about 12-15 km from it to avoid its burst attack. It will help collect the Nukara marks.
Dyson marks are really easy to get in the Dyson sphere. You don't need to team with someone to do it. Just make sure you collected the mission from the man in the center of where you beam in, and follow someone that is in there. (NOTE: This will require access to the Dyson Sphere, which means you need to be in the later missions). If you are not skipping missions, I suggest waiting. None of the queued events for Dyson marks give decent mark rewards for the time it takes to run them.
For the Undine marks, I suggest the Undine Infiltration mission on normal. It is very easy to do (even on elite now), and when fighting, everyone can stay together to work as a team.
By doing each of these once every 20 hours, you can have enough marks to run the 20 hour projects. If you do this every day, and only run the 20 hurt projects, and not the hurly ones, you can have them to T5 in about a month and a half, with a good number of marks left over. Plus, you get the bonus marks, and Dil from them.
As you level up the Tiers, you will get traits that you can use on ground, or space. These are also not needed, but do make it a lot easier to run missions, and queued events. Also, you can switch them out when you get new ones, and play around with them some. You may find a combination you like.
Hope this helps.
Initially I went and did the Dyson ground stuff for a play session, after an hour and a bit I had a nice chunk of marks, enough to run the 20hr project 5 times. I just loaded up the 20 hr and kept doing it, saving marks for when it was ready again.
Did nukara the same way, and kept the marks for the 20 hr.
Then I did pave queues for romulan and Borg marks , just feeding the 20 hr projects.
You actually start to fill your inventory pretty fast, and my ship and ground gear steadily improved. Now I can fill those projects up quickly , and its actually not very painful, I could grind more but I'm also doing story missions and wrapping up those for delta rising. My advice is just do em slow and steady, its not that bad and you will get goodies along the way that help you out.