Yes Virginia, You Can Skip Buying the LTS

sekritagent

As a lifer as of the 1-year anniversary, the lifetime subscription is officially past its sell-by date. Unless you're just dying to be a Liberated Borg, this option is hugely unlikely to be worth the cost. Even at the discounted price of $200, here's the only Veteran rewards that are worth a spit:

1. Liberated Borg characters (all factions but they're cosmetics and a couple traits mostly)
2. 1000 Day Veteran Ships if you like the designs (to be fair, has free T5U upgrade)
3. 700 Day Android Bridge Officer
4. Certain Uniform pieces to make the "canon" Admiral uniform (they did this intentionally)
5. 500 monthly ZEN stipend (handy but 40 months or 3.33 years to recover your $200)

If those sound like $200 worth of value to you, by all means, go for it!

But allow me to suggest a better use of those $200 if you're silver (and best you can get this with dilithium and not your precious ca$h). For these purposes, I'll assume you're rolling 1 Fed, 1 KDF, and 1 Romulan and don't care much about managing loads of ships, boffs, or doffs on them. Obviously you can alter your quantities and get more of what you want and less of what you don't.

• KDF Only: T4 Draguras Support Vessel (Aceton Assimilator) - 2000 ZEN [other races can get from Exchange]
• KDF Only: T3 Vandal Destroyer (Plasmonic Leech) - 1500 ZEN [other races can get from Exchange]
• FED or KDF: Playable FED Klingon, Caitian, Ferasan, or Joined Trill - 500 ZEN
• All Factions: T5 Ship 3-pack or 2 T5 ships (if you can't get into the T6 designs) - 5000 ZEN
• All Factions: A 4-pack of T5U upgrades - 2000 ZEN
• All Factions: 2*10 Account Shared Bank (500 ZEN each) - 1000 ZEN
• All Factions: A T6 ship of your choice (if you're into these) - 3000 ZEN each
• All Factions: Borg Engineering Bridge Officer - 500 ZEN each
• All Factions: Energy Credit Increase (once per account) - 500 ZEN
• All Factions: 3*2 Bridge Officer Limit Increase (250 ZEN each) - 750 ZEN
• All Factions: 3*100 Duty Officer Limit Increase (725 ZEN each) - 2175 ZEN
• All Factions: 2 Uniforms of your choice (550 ZEN each) - 1100 ZEN

Total: 20025 ZEN or $200.25

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ummax

people buy subs for other reasons. I want to support the company so have been via sub even though in comparison to just using zen its not a good deal. However I dont like to purchase my zen outright and buy a ship.

I like to earn my gear by using the dilithium exchange. Still I dont like being a true "free player" and not pay them anything. Also the xp boost you get is nice and I think people forget about that. I think considering the new levels and specializations they have added that particular piece of the package actually has value as previously it did not.

Different strokes for different folks but as someone who hates the cash store concept I can't see how people can fork over zen and then call the game fun if they buy all the game bits (ships and dilithium with zen purchased with real money).

The subscriptions are more about paying a fee for service so your not a "freeloader" in my opinion more then anything since I cannot make myself buy zen outright it cheapens the entire game experience for me this is my way of providing monetary support to the company that maintains and develops this game.

bones1970

A better use is 1 month gold when you level a character-up, you get free respects, bank & inventory space and much more

sekritagent

Yes, 1 month gold on top of that (or in substitution for one of the items in my list)

rswfiredotcom

The irony is I had honest to God planned to buy the LTS in November at $300, after paying for both LoR and DR Packs in October (my return to the game), but after everything that has happened, I don't think I can bring myself to do it anymore. It is no different than it was three years ago. The game had apparently gotten better (really loved my Romulan) but then DR came out and...just no.

hyperionx09

At this point, the only way to get me to prioritize buying LTS over DLC/Cash Shop items for other games is to give it a permanent XP boost perk or sell it for what it's really only worth as-is; 75-100 USD. The LoR and DR pack are still better investments than LTS.

Give LTS permanent 3x EXP gain across Normal, Advanced, and Elite over the standard. That alone would justify at least 200 USD.

Give Gold non-LTS permanent (for the duration of the paid membership) 2x EXP gain across Normal, Advanced, and Elite over the standard, to help sell pay-as-needed memberships.

If they're to tempt me to pay the standard price of 300 USD full up, they'd ALSO need to include full unlock to all faction-specific Hull Material skins (namely Mirror and Material 1 through however many there are per faction; though class-exclusives like Intel, Dyson, Vesta, and the Avenger's unique skins can remain exclusive to those classes), permit unlocking of space set visual overlays or skins upon full set completion. For example: Collect all 3 Assimilated Borg ship equipment and unlock the Borg overlay to complement your chosen skin without having to keep the shield on, or collect all 3 Breen ship equipment to unlock the Breen skin for all owned ships without having to keep the shield equipped for the skin.

Basically, do the same for ships as what is currently done for character Rep costumes. Collect the set, unlock the skins or skin overlays. In addition, unlock more character clothing options if Cryptic doesn't want to sell them as packs. Full Tal Shiar clothing options for Romulans, for example.

I'm not going to bother wishing for a guaranteed ship every new Tier, since I understand Cryptic wants money, but just giving guaranteed access to full ship skins and overlays, a permanent EXP boost, and almost unrestricted access to faction-specific clothing is plenty enough, especially in this current meta.