I might be more interested in it if the maintenance thing made some kind of sense. I can see ships requiring maintenance after repeated use, but after every single mission? No.
(I have combined two actual quotes here, not intending to mislead)
As has been pointed out multiple times in these threads it does make sense. In the real life military ships and especially aircraft DO go into maintenance after every single mission. And especially aircraft DOES spend more time in maintenance than on duty. So this actually makes a lot of sense. You can argue about the precise relations, you can argue that ships (RL) indeed do get less time while in use, but when they do get maintenance they do get a lot. In our gaming that would mean something like "after 20 missions your ship is in maintenance now for 2 complete weeks", which players wouldn't like either, so I think "splitting" that up and thus increasing the post mission cooldown for single assignments is a good decision for gameplay reasons.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Having a system filled with long-duration assignments would mean you only participate in the system in spurts on a daily basis. This system was designed with the potential to instead engage with it on a regular basis, as much or as little as you prefer.
(Other than the Tour of Duty which is intentionally time-gated.)
Additionally, the current design allows players that have already obtained a large selection of starships to play the system more than somebody that doesn't have those ships at their disposal. While this is not intended as a monetization strategy (we don't think it will significantly motivate additional ship sales), it is definitely intended to make purchasing a ship that you already intended to buy feel even better, since you'll now get additional use out of it after you no longer fly it.
Maintenance also offered us the means to make lower-tier starships, which were guaranteed to have lower stats than higher-tier ships, still have a purpose within the system. Though they aren't as good at completing or critting on assignments on their own, they become available again on a more regular basis. This additionally helps offset the fact that there aren't as many of these low-tier ships as their higher-tier counterparts.
The question of why it takes ~18 hours of Maintenance after a 15min Assignment is honestly pretty irrelevant, since all of the timers are complete abstractions of actual activities. Does anyone really think it only takes a starship 15 minutes to ... do anything? Even 4 hours is no where near what reality would require. With such drastic abstractions already in place, it doesn't seem very sensible to argue that several hours of maintenance is "unrealistic."
I'm sad to say, that as a player with only 2 ships at the T5+ mark, and the rest are well, pathetic, I can only do 1 Admiralty Mission a Day, 2 If I really play it right. But right now, the requirements I have are way too high for any of my ships to accomplish. I needed my only science vessel, and both my cruisers just to get a decent success rate on a mission that requires 150+ Eng, 80 Tac, and 190 Sci, and I have NO pass tokens so I can't skip them to get to the low eng/tac/sci that I can do. Either the Maintance times needs an overhaul, or the requirements needs an overhaul.
I am seeing this Admiralty Ship System as being nothing more than a grab to get me to spend money. You claim that it is not intentional, but it LOOKS like it was DESIGNED that way. And lower-tier ships being useful. Sorry, I can't do any more missions until tomorrow. I am not getting any use of this system.
And based on the Class of my Captain, why would I need a Science vessel when I am built to Kill not to Study? Having a cruiser makes sense since they are also include the battleships and additional warships, and I generally fly Escorts. So I had to spend money for a single Science Vessel just to help me get past these ridiculously high Science requirements. Here's the thing, I don't want a Science Ship. I don't want to fly it, but I was forced to get it so I can get through some Admiral missions. Thanks for trying to say that it was not intentional for it to be seen and used as a grab for cash.
Once the mission I have going in the Admiralty Ship System, it will be the last mission I do until you guys overhaul the system to make it more friendly with those with very few ships.
Except starships aren't RL modern day warships or aircraft. They're fictional technology several hundred years ahead of what we have now. We've seen on screen that many of them are designed for long term exploration without needing to stop for maintenance every few hours. So no, it doesn't make sense thematically IMO.
True. But, additionally, those fictional ships are part of a game. And the "maintenance" is a game mechanic, not an expression of canon/lore.
I suppose they could have just not tried to theme it at all, and just called it "cooldown". Would that have been better for you?
follow up to my last post I can now state that across 6 characters running 5 missions each hardly any ships went into maintenance and of the very few that did the maintenance cycle was significantly reduced even most notably one ship that had a maintenance cycle of 18hrs that was reduced to 10hrs.
I also noticed that the ships that still required maintenance had been moved to the maintenance tab before I claimed the rewards for the missions they took part in, I can only assume this was done automatically when I signed into the character.
after signing in with each character the first thing I did was collect the rewards from the missions so the ships that were in maintenance would only have been in the maintenance tab for a matter of a few seconds before I collected the reward, nowhere near enough time to account for the reduction in their maintenance times.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Except starships aren't RL modern day warships or aircraft. They're fictional technology several hundred years ahead of what we have now. We've seen on screen that many of them are designed for long term exploration without needing to stop for maintenance every few hours. So no, it doesn't make sense thematically IMO.
Yes, we all remember the "five year mission" setup, and you are right. But real life ships already are designed for multiple months, sometimes years on a mission (especially nuclear submarines). That doesn't mean they do not get maintenance every now and then. After every encounter a ship would make a thorough check whether everything is still working. Yes, even after 15 minutes. You have to take systems offline to switch components and similar, which happened a few times in the series (mostly as a pretense to not getting away or something like that), that is maintenance because during that time you normally cannot do things like transport from A to B or similar.
And in the "5 year mission" and our "Admirality mission", the terms "mission" refer of course to different aspects, let's call them "strategic mission" and "tactical mission", where the first one consists of multiple of the latter. And after every of the latter there should be maintenance as much as possible (think of all the repairs the events of an episode would make necessary in quite a few episodes of the TV series).
But you could argue (we wouldn't know since most of it happens offscreen due to not being really interesting TV material in itself) that these are way shorter than in game when looking at the relations between mission time and maint time. But then we would have the other aspect, the "major maintenance" after the time assigned for missions runs out. Which would mean after a few "tactical" missions we'd get a major maintenance which would indeed need weeks to stay in relation - from a player's perspective I would consider that more inconvenient than the times as they are now.
About "several hundred years ahead": the more complicated technology gets, the more maintenance it tends to need. So there would be an argument for the times being even longer than when compared to today. We can't be sure of course whether that trend would continue, or stop, or maybe even reverse in the next 400 years.
You can of course argue that the whole maintenance system isn't fun and should be abolished for gameplay reasons. But I don't see any problem with realism here (apart from the fact that all times, mission and maint, are way shorter than they would need to be if played to scale)
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
True. But, additionally, those fictional ships are part of a game. And the "maintenance" is a game mechanic, not an expression of canon/lore.
I suppose they could have just not tried to theme it at all, and just called it "cooldown". Would that have been better for you?
I would have preferred something that made sense thematically to the IP the game is founded on, but that's just me. Kudos to those who like it as is.
I think the thing is with maintenance it kind of forces you to use you ships wisely where possible, I guess if there was no maintenance players would just use their best ships wherever possible and hardly ever use low tier ships, having maintenance or cooldown if you prefer makes you consider your choices more wisely.
obviously the best mission with the higher requirements is where you need to use you best ships and smaller missions that where the requirements are very low are ideal for lower tier ships then finally any missions where the requirements fall in the middle ground you can usually fill with middle tier ships.
ok so there is going to be times that you just cant meet the requirements no matter what ships you throw at it and that's just the time you have to just do the best you can with what you have and hope for the best.
on one character I was slotting some missions on yesterday I actually ended up with no more ships I could use at all, I had laterally used every ship in my lineup and they were now either in maintenance or on a mission, I cant believe this would ever happen if there was no maintenance cycle for ships so I guess that's proof positive that this system gets you to use most if not all of the ships you have.
all in all I confess I like this system even more so now that I realise it gives every one of your ships a purpose at some time or another and now with the knowledge that the maintenance cycle doesn't start when you claim the rewards but after the time period for the mission its on its even better.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Personally, I like the Admiralty system. I do tend to agree that the maintenance times are a bit long, but I can live with it.
One thing I would really like to see, being a Romulan dominant player, is the ability to import high-level Fed/Klingon ships I've purchased into the system. I know I can't fly a T5 or T6 Federation Dreadnaught (nor would I want to on my Romulan), but since I've purchased it, I would really like to be able to import it into my Admiralty roster. Same would go for my Klingon-aligned Roms. Considering how few ships the Romulans have compared to the Federation, it would really help to fill my roster. Not to be greedy, but since we are all one big happy Alpha Quadrant, why can't my Fed have purchased Klingon ships in his roster, and vise versa? Kind of like "The Klingons assigned a ship to work with Rakhohl's fleet".
Overall, I'm enjoying the Admiralty system because it isn't just a click-through mini-game. You have to put some thought in to it.
I don't have any issue with the cooldowns on the ship cards. I'd rather exercise patience rather them speed things up, and nerfing the somewhat generous rewards to "balance" things out.
Quiet that.
The new system is the greatest grind relief and the most alt friendliest thing I have witnessed for a long time in this game.
The CD times maybe something to get used to, so is the prioritization and planning for the missions. But for me it’s ok, especially under consideration of the rewards. Without the long CD times one would get so much out of this system that one does not need to play the actual game itself at all in order to progress.
I found to set priorities to grab the “special circumstances” rewards or "event" or how they call it to be the greatest asset for the time being. Hope they are here to stay and not just some promotional idea. That would be annoying, the rest hardly is.
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The CD times maybe something to get used to, so is the prioritization and planning for the missions. But for me it’s ok, especially under consideration of the rewards. Without the long CD times one would get so much out of this system that one does not need to play the actual game itself at all in order to progress.
Agreed. I actually could live with longer mission times on the very short ones (15 mins) so that they won't finish while your only online just doing minor stuff (setting up doffs and now admiralty, selling loot, looking at the exchange, maybe hop into a red alert) without any other changes whatsoever.
I found to set priorities to grab the “special circumstances” rewards or "event" or how they call it to be the greatest asset for the time being. Hope they are here to stay and not just some promotional idea. That would be annoying, the rest hardly is.
Same here. Since most of my toons are maxed out in leveling concerning "what I really want" and now are only getting (very welcome but not really necessary) stat boosts and manual making options (you can always buy them for ec), I am mostly looking at the event. VR mats, dil - go for it. Of course I consider the actual rewards, too, but many only offer common mats and XP and then the only thing that would be interesting is a possible crit - but I consider that mostly not worth investing my precious T6s and give the T1 ships a go. Still often a 5% chance, so every now and again it will even work. Then there's probably going to be a party on the miranda.
I may be doing it all wrong, but as everybody else, I still have to learn how to run the system.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
From all the things STO has made through the years Admiralty is the most weak and meaningless one I have ever seen. What you get as rewards is just trash period. It is just a time sink. If the rewards had been T6 ships package or the opportunity of buying one with every level reached of mastery in admiralty I could see some beneficial use, but as it is, I just dont see the incentive to do it. I just do it to kill some time.
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
From all the things STO has made through the years Admiralty is the most weak and meaningless one I have ever seen. What you get as rewards is just trash period. It is just a time sink. If the rewards had been T6 ships package or the opportunity of buying one with every level reached of mastery in admiralty I could see some beneficial use, but as it is, I just dont see the incentive to do it. I just do it to kill some time.
Since when are Dil, crafting mats and a boatload of XP (which equals more dil if you have maxed your captain specs) trash rewards? . "I am not getting a super awesome ship for some clicks!!!!!!!!"
From all the things STO has made through the years Admiralty is the most weak and meaningless one I have ever seen. What you get as rewards is just trash period. It is just a time sink. If the rewards had been T6 ships package or the opportunity of buying one with every level reached of mastery in admiralty I could see some beneficial use, but as it is, I just dont see the incentive to do it. I just do it to kill some time.
Since when are Dil, crafting mats and a boatload of XP (which equals more dil if you have maxed your captain specs) trash rewards? . "I am not getting a super awesome ship for some clicks!!!!!!!!"
Because of the time consumed in maintenance and the ratio of complete projects vs failures. For every 3 projects I start 2 end in failure all across my 4 toons even when all the projects have more than 86% of succses they end most of the times in failures. How is this a positive thing?
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
Because of the time consumed in maintenance and the ratio of complete projects vs failures. For every 3 projects I start 2 end in failure all across my 4 toons even when all the projects have more than 86% of succses they end most of the times in failures. How is this a positive thing?
That would either be a stroke of bad luck, a bug, or a confirmation bias once you got the idea. I certainly do get most to success, and the ones that fail are mostly T1 thrown at uninteresting assignment to get it away.
Apart from that, it is a bonus feature that you get on top of everything, and for the time you (as a player) invest into it, it certainly does pay off rather handsomely. No, it isn't a machine to get everything thrice as quickly but I also do wonder where this tendency to call everything that is just a bit short of the maximum imagineable "TRIBBLE" or "trash" is really something I do not understand.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Maybe you have invested thousands of dollars in the game and you have 350 ships, I have 8 because I work and have a family and cannot throw all my hard earned money at the game and once I put 3 quests to do I have to sit and wait for 12 hours to be able to do it again, how is this positive? The amount of experience tasks I am getting had been between 90 and 500 points of experience how is that positive?
I am not saying you are wrong on your views but from a casual player view, kind of sucks.
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
Maybe you have invested thousands of dollars in the game and you have 350 ships, I have 8 because I work and have a family and cannot throw all my hard earned money at the game and once I put 3 quests to do I have to sit and wait for 12 hours to be able to do it again, how is this positive? The amount of experience tasks I am getting had been between 90 and 500 points of experience how is that positive?
27 ships with two of them bought. All other are event ships, ships from giveaways or ships i bought with EC or via Dil/Zen exchange. And if you only can do 3 missions a day, pick them with care. Those Tier1/2 ships are great to get rid of multiple missions a day that offer a bad requirement/reward ratio.
First of all, no, I have not invested thousands of dollars. I have about 20 ships (not counting one time use cards), most of them from giveaways (small to mid tier) or events. And yes, I also do work and have a life which may make me somewhat more lenient when it comes to accepting cooldowns, because I rarely do more than one session in a day since I don't have the time apart from maybe 1-2 hours in the evening, and even then sometimes I like to do something else than just playing STO.
And yes, getting even 100 XP points is certainly positive, though it wouldn't scale well to the time invested. But I have different numbers on my screen. When I look at the assignments currently available to me, I see in the six available slots (rounded) 4500, 4000, 3500, 4500, 2000, 4500. I have seen 17000. But since we have an XP week, these are probably already the inflated figures, so the normal output will be less. With 4 slots (I have 5 but I will probably need one for a T1-skip) that amounts to 10k XP easily plus rare mats (sometimes even 10 VR ones - which you would need a couple of queues for - including salvaged tech) plus 1k of dil plus 200k+ ec every now and then, depending on the event. Nothing that fancy but certainly more than nothing, considering that it will take me maybe 5 minutes tops to set it up.
I think you confused the Spec XP (green double arrows up) with the campaign XP (red/blue faction symbols). The latter are indeed about the numbers you describe but work in a totally different scale (you need 200k to complete a campaign and this should take at least a couple of weeks).
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
the only thing I will say needs a fix on Admiralty is a confirmation when you use a pass token, its easy to accidentally use one where you didn't want to with a errant click, not that I particularly care about loosing the token but there has been a couple of times I passed on a mission that I was intending to do unintentionally.
TBH I cant see myself ever intentionally using a pass, if I cant fill the requirements of a mission I will either do another one I can fill or just take a chance and do it with less then 100% filled on requirements, in that respect I find pass tokens a pain in the posterior.
this is just a minor niggle though and overall I think the Admiralty system is just perfect the way it is.
First of all, no, I have not invested thousands of dollars. I have about 20 ships (not counting one time use cards), most of them from giveaways (small to mid tier) or events. And yes, I also do work and have a life which may make me somewhat more lenient when it comes to accepting cooldowns, because I rarely do more than one session in a day since I don't have the time apart from maybe 1-2 hours in the evening, and even then sometimes I like to do something else than just playing STO.
don't you just find that infuriating, whenever you are in favour of something like this someone always plays the "you must have more time then me cos family/work/life" card or "you must be a whale who spends $1000's every day in the game" card.
you probably find that the majority of players work, have family responsibilities and a full life outside of sto and probably spend just as much time playing as the other guy/girl, and spend very little $$ on the game if any.
at the end of the day I realise that I cant do all the things I want to do in the game, I have to choose when I play what I have got time for and do that thing.
this week because I have been concentrating on getting to grips with the Admiralty system I have had little time for anything else but another time I might try to catch up with some of the missions I have yet to do or maybe if there is an event like mirror or CCE I will spend my time doing that.
that is the beauty of sto, you are free to do what you want to do when you want to do it and nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to or haven't got the time for.
so yes i have a large family also with children and grandchildren and other relatives to spend time with and i also work a full time job and do lots of overtime and the only real money I have ever spent on the game was to buy lifetime sub.
Post edited by bobbydazlers on
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
re: maintenance. Amusing little combo I noticed, for anyone who has the three T6 event ships from the past year. Nandi, Samsar, and Sarr Thein each give -10% maint for each of the other two ship roles. The three of them together give a total of 128/128/122, with -60% maintenance time. Cuts the 18 hours down quite nicely.
You can get 85% by using an Intrepid variant (I'm not sure which one has the ability), the Jem'Hadar attack ship (if anyone still has those old T5s ) and a Sarr Theln. 25% from the Intrepid's bonus (-25% per Sci), 50% from the JHAS (-25% per Sci), and 10% from the Sarr Theln (-10% for Tac and Eng).
I think the theoretical maximum if you want to hit the 100/100/100 ballpark is probably 75%, though, with each ship giving -25% for one of the other two roles.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Having a system filled with long-duration assignments would mean you only participate in the system in spurts on a daily basis. This system was designed with the potential to instead engage with it on a regular basis, as much or as little as you prefer.
(Other than the Tour of Duty which is intentionally time-gated.)
Additionally, the current design allows players that have already obtained a large selection of starships to play the system more than somebody that doesn't have those ships at their disposal. While this is not intended as a monetization strategy (we don't think it will significantly motivate additional ship sales), it is definitely intended to make purchasing a ship that you already intended to buy feel even better, since you'll now get additional use out of it after you no longer fly it.
Maintenance also offered us the means to make lower-tier starships, which were guaranteed to have lower stats than higher-tier ships, still have a purpose within the system. Though they aren't as good at completing or critting on assignments on their own, they become available again on a more regular basis. This additionally helps offset the fact that there aren't as many of these low-tier ships as their higher-tier counterparts.
The question of why it takes ~18 hours of Maintenance after a 15min Assignment is honestly pretty irrelevant, since all of the timers are complete abstractions of actual activities. Does anyone really think it only takes a starship 15 minutes to ... do anything? Even 4 hours is no where near what reality would require. With such drastic abstractions already in place, it doesn't seem very sensible to argue that several hours of maintenance is "unrealistic."
I'm sad to say, that as a player with only 2 ships at the T5+ mark, and the rest are well, pathetic, I can only do 1 Admiralty Mission a Day, 2 If I really play it right. But right now, the requirements I have are way too high for any of my ships to accomplish. I needed my only science vessel, and both my cruisers just to get a decent success rate on a mission that requires 150+ Eng, 80 Tac, and 190 Sci, and I have NO pass tokens so I can't skip them to get to the low eng/tac/sci that I can do. Either the Maintance times needs an overhaul, or the requirements needs an overhaul.
I am seeing this Admiralty Ship System as being nothing more than a grab to get me to spend money. You claim that it is not intentional, but it LOOKS like it was DESIGNED that way. And lower-tier ships being useful. Sorry, I can't do any more missions until tomorrow. I am not getting any use of this system.
And based on the Class of my Captain, why would I need a Science vessel when I am built to Kill not to Study? Having a cruiser makes sense since they are also include the battleships and additional warships, and I generally fly Escorts. So I had to spend money for a single Science Vessel just to help me get past these ridiculously high Science requirements. Here's the thing, I don't want a Science Ship. I don't want to fly it, but I was forced to get it so I can get through some Admiral missions. Thanks for trying to say that it was not intentional for it to be seen and used as a grab for cash.
Once the mission I have going in the Admiralty Ship System, it will be the last mission I do until you guys overhaul the system to make it more friendly with those with very few ships.
Honestly, if you only have two T5+ ships, then you haven't been doing a lot of events or claiming a lot of giveaways. I only have two T5 ships I actually bought from the C-Store - but there's still a duo of T6 ships and several T5 ships in my account-wide roster, and that's despite my failing to get two of the Breen ships and one of the Risian ones before they went the way of the dinosaur.
True, I didn't include lockbox and mirror ships in my math - partly because all the lockbox ships were gifts from my more financially successful younger brother and his billions of EC, and partly because I only got a couple of mirror ships at a very low price, and partly because they're character-bound.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Yes, the Enterprise went on a five year mission far from stardock.
But what were those 500 crewmen for?
Some were bridge personnel, some astrometrics, some yoemen, but there were also phaser and torpedo technicians, transporters techs, engineers, and a host of other personnel whose jobs were to keep the various systems of the ship functioning. You often see maintenance themes in the shows, which is the most common reason people went into the Jefferies tubes in the first place.
Maintenance was an ongoing issue with futuristic starships in canon, represented in the shows, and often maintenance and repair is a critical issue in an episode.
So I don't get the whole, "Maintenance isn't canon," when it specifically is. No, not all maintenance needs to be done in spacedock, but on occasion the crew takes the navigational deflectors offline, and on occasion there will be power outages to systems while the engineers perform maintenance, and sometimes the crew just needs shore leave or liberty, (which is maintenance, but of personnel rather than the ship.)
So the next time your ship requires an 18 hour cooldown, think of it as liberty call for the crew. Now you get to have an episode like 'Trouble with Tribbles' or one of the O'brien family drama episodes. Me? My officers are out in the bars fleecing local farm boys at the dom-jot tables and impregnating or being impregnated by a variety of aliens. It's good for morale.
Comments
(I have combined two actual quotes here, not intending to mislead)
As has been pointed out multiple times in these threads it does make sense. In the real life military ships and especially aircraft DO go into maintenance after every single mission. And especially aircraft DOES spend more time in maintenance than on duty. So this actually makes a lot of sense. You can argue about the precise relations, you can argue that ships (RL) indeed do get less time while in use, but when they do get maintenance they do get a lot. In our gaming that would mean something like "after 20 missions your ship is in maintenance now for 2 complete weeks", which players wouldn't like either, so I think "splitting" that up and thus increasing the post mission cooldown for single assignments is a good decision for gameplay reasons.
I'm sad to say, that as a player with only 2 ships at the T5+ mark, and the rest are well, pathetic, I can only do 1 Admiralty Mission a Day, 2 If I really play it right. But right now, the requirements I have are way too high for any of my ships to accomplish. I needed my only science vessel, and both my cruisers just to get a decent success rate on a mission that requires 150+ Eng, 80 Tac, and 190 Sci, and I have NO pass tokens so I can't skip them to get to the low eng/tac/sci that I can do. Either the Maintance times needs an overhaul, or the requirements needs an overhaul.
I am seeing this Admiralty Ship System as being nothing more than a grab to get me to spend money. You claim that it is not intentional, but it LOOKS like it was DESIGNED that way. And lower-tier ships being useful. Sorry, I can't do any more missions until tomorrow. I am not getting any use of this system.
And based on the Class of my Captain, why would I need a Science vessel when I am built to Kill not to Study? Having a cruiser makes sense since they are also include the battleships and additional warships, and I generally fly Escorts. So I had to spend money for a single Science Vessel just to help me get past these ridiculously high Science requirements. Here's the thing, I don't want a Science Ship. I don't want to fly it, but I was forced to get it so I can get through some Admiral missions. Thanks for trying to say that it was not intentional for it to be seen and used as a grab for cash.
Once the mission I have going in the Admiralty Ship System, it will be the last mission I do until you guys overhaul the system to make it more friendly with those with very few ships.
I also noticed that the ships that still required maintenance had been moved to the maintenance tab before I claimed the rewards for the missions they took part in, I can only assume this was done automatically when I signed into the character.
after signing in with each character the first thing I did was collect the rewards from the missions so the ships that were in maintenance would only have been in the maintenance tab for a matter of a few seconds before I collected the reward, nowhere near enough time to account for the reduction in their maintenance times.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Yes, we all remember the "five year mission" setup, and you are right. But real life ships already are designed for multiple months, sometimes years on a mission (especially nuclear submarines). That doesn't mean they do not get maintenance every now and then. After every encounter a ship would make a thorough check whether everything is still working. Yes, even after 15 minutes. You have to take systems offline to switch components and similar, which happened a few times in the series (mostly as a pretense to not getting away or something like that), that is maintenance because during that time you normally cannot do things like transport from A to B or similar.
And in the "5 year mission" and our "Admirality mission", the terms "mission" refer of course to different aspects, let's call them "strategic mission" and "tactical mission", where the first one consists of multiple of the latter. And after every of the latter there should be maintenance as much as possible (think of all the repairs the events of an episode would make necessary in quite a few episodes of the TV series).
But you could argue (we wouldn't know since most of it happens offscreen due to not being really interesting TV material in itself) that these are way shorter than in game when looking at the relations between mission time and maint time. But then we would have the other aspect, the "major maintenance" after the time assigned for missions runs out. Which would mean after a few "tactical" missions we'd get a major maintenance which would indeed need weeks to stay in relation - from a player's perspective I would consider that more inconvenient than the times as they are now.
About "several hundred years ahead": the more complicated technology gets, the more maintenance it tends to need. So there would be an argument for the times being even longer than when compared to today. We can't be sure of course whether that trend would continue, or stop, or maybe even reverse in the next 400 years.
You can of course argue that the whole maintenance system isn't fun and should be abolished for gameplay reasons. But I don't see any problem with realism here (apart from the fact that all times, mission and maint, are way shorter than they would need to be if played to scale)
I think the thing is with maintenance it kind of forces you to use you ships wisely where possible, I guess if there was no maintenance players would just use their best ships wherever possible and hardly ever use low tier ships, having maintenance or cooldown if you prefer makes you consider your choices more wisely.
obviously the best mission with the higher requirements is where you need to use you best ships and smaller missions that where the requirements are very low are ideal for lower tier ships then finally any missions where the requirements fall in the middle ground you can usually fill with middle tier ships.
ok so there is going to be times that you just cant meet the requirements no matter what ships you throw at it and that's just the time you have to just do the best you can with what you have and hope for the best.
on one character I was slotting some missions on yesterday I actually ended up with no more ships I could use at all, I had laterally used every ship in my lineup and they were now either in maintenance or on a mission, I cant believe this would ever happen if there was no maintenance cycle for ships so I guess that's proof positive that this system gets you to use most if not all of the ships you have.
all in all I confess I like this system even more so now that I realise it gives every one of your ships a purpose at some time or another and now with the knowledge that the maintenance cycle doesn't start when you claim the rewards but after the time period for the mission its on its even better.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
One thing I would really like to see, being a Romulan dominant player, is the ability to import high-level Fed/Klingon ships I've purchased into the system. I know I can't fly a T5 or T6 Federation Dreadnaught (nor would I want to on my Romulan), but since I've purchased it, I would really like to be able to import it into my Admiralty roster. Same would go for my Klingon-aligned Roms. Considering how few ships the Romulans have compared to the Federation, it would really help to fill my roster. Not to be greedy, but since we are all one big happy Alpha Quadrant, why can't my Fed have purchased Klingon ships in his roster, and vise versa? Kind of like "The Klingons assigned a ship to work with Rakhohl's fleet".
Overall, I'm enjoying the Admiralty system because it isn't just a click-through mini-game. You have to put some thought in to it.
Quiet that.
The new system is the greatest grind relief and the most alt friendliest thing I have witnessed for a long time in this game.
The CD times maybe something to get used to, so is the prioritization and planning for the missions. But for me it’s ok, especially under consideration of the rewards. Without the long CD times one would get so much out of this system that one does not need to play the actual game itself at all in order to progress.
I found to set priorities to grab the “special circumstances” rewards or "event" or how they call it to be the greatest asset for the time being. Hope they are here to stay and not just some promotional idea. That would be annoying, the rest hardly is.
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Agreed. I actually could live with longer mission times on the very short ones (15 mins) so that they won't finish while your only online just doing minor stuff (setting up doffs and now admiralty, selling loot, looking at the exchange, maybe hop into a red alert) without any other changes whatsoever.
Same here. Since most of my toons are maxed out in leveling concerning "what I really want" and now are only getting (very welcome but not really necessary) stat boosts and manual making options (you can always buy them for ec), I am mostly looking at the event. VR mats, dil - go for it. Of course I consider the actual rewards, too, but many only offer common mats and XP and then the only thing that would be interesting is a possible crit - but I consider that mostly not worth investing my precious T6s and give the T1 ships a go. Still often a 5% chance, so every now and again it will even work. Then there's probably going to be a party on the miranda.
I may be doing it all wrong, but as everybody else, I still have to learn how to run the system.
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
Since when are Dil, crafting mats and a boatload of XP (which equals more dil if you have maxed your captain specs) trash rewards? . "I am not getting a super awesome ship for some clicks!!!!!!!!"
Because of the time consumed in maintenance and the ratio of complete projects vs failures. For every 3 projects I start 2 end in failure all across my 4 toons even when all the projects have more than 86% of succses they end most of the times in failures. How is this a positive thing?
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
That would either be a stroke of bad luck, a bug, or a confirmation bias once you got the idea. I certainly do get most to success, and the ones that fail are mostly T1 thrown at uninteresting assignment to get it away.
Apart from that, it is a bonus feature that you get on top of everything, and for the time you (as a player) invest into it, it certainly does pay off rather handsomely. No, it isn't a machine to get everything thrice as quickly but I also do wonder where this tendency to call everything that is just a bit short of the maximum imagineable "TRIBBLE" or "trash" is really something I do not understand.
I am not saying you are wrong on your views but from a casual player view, kind of sucks.
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
27 ships with two of them bought. All other are event ships, ships from giveaways or ships i bought with EC or via Dil/Zen exchange. And if you only can do 3 missions a day, pick them with care. Those Tier1/2 ships are great to get rid of multiple missions a day that offer a bad requirement/reward ratio.
And yes, getting even 100 XP points is certainly positive, though it wouldn't scale well to the time invested. But I have different numbers on my screen. When I look at the assignments currently available to me, I see in the six available slots (rounded) 4500, 4000, 3500, 4500, 2000, 4500. I have seen 17000. But since we have an XP week, these are probably already the inflated figures, so the normal output will be less. With 4 slots (I have 5 but I will probably need one for a T1-skip) that amounts to 10k XP easily plus rare mats (sometimes even 10 VR ones - which you would need a couple of queues for - including salvaged tech) plus 1k of dil plus 200k+ ec every now and then, depending on the event. Nothing that fancy but certainly more than nothing, considering that it will take me maybe 5 minutes tops to set it up.
I think you confused the Spec XP (green double arrows up) with the campaign XP (red/blue faction symbols). The latter are indeed about the numbers you describe but work in a totally different scale (you need 200k to complete a campaign and this should take at least a couple of weeks).
TBH I cant see myself ever intentionally using a pass, if I cant fill the requirements of a mission I will either do another one I can fill or just take a chance and do it with less then 100% filled on requirements, in that respect I find pass tokens a pain in the posterior.
this is just a minor niggle though and overall I think the Admiralty system is just perfect the way it is.
don't you just find that infuriating, whenever you are in favour of something like this someone always plays the "you must have more time then me cos family/work/life" card or "you must be a whale who spends $1000's every day in the game" card.
you probably find that the majority of players work, have family responsibilities and a full life outside of sto and probably spend just as much time playing as the other guy/girl, and spend very little $$ on the game if any.
at the end of the day I realise that I cant do all the things I want to do in the game, I have to choose when I play what I have got time for and do that thing.
this week because I have been concentrating on getting to grips with the Admiralty system I have had little time for anything else but another time I might try to catch up with some of the missions I have yet to do or maybe if there is an event like mirror or CCE I will spend my time doing that.
that is the beauty of sto, you are free to do what you want to do when you want to do it and nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to or haven't got the time for.
so yes i have a large family also with children and grandchildren and other relatives to spend time with and i also work a full time job and do lots of overtime and the only real money I have ever spent on the game was to buy lifetime sub.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
You can get 85% by using an Intrepid variant (I'm not sure which one has the ability), the Jem'Hadar attack ship (if anyone still has those old T5s
I think the theoretical maximum if you want to hit the 100/100/100 ballpark is probably 75%, though, with each ship giving -25% for one of the other two roles.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Honestly, if you only have two T5+ ships, then you haven't been doing a lot of events or claiming a lot of giveaways. I only have two T5 ships I actually bought from the C-Store - but there's still a duo of T6 ships and several T5 ships in my account-wide roster, and that's despite my failing to get two of the Breen ships and one of the Risian ones before they went the way of the dinosaur.
True, I didn't include lockbox and mirror ships in my math - partly because all the lockbox ships were gifts from my more financially successful younger brother and his billions of EC, and partly because I only got a couple of mirror ships at a very low price, and partly because they're character-bound.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
But what were those 500 crewmen for?
Some were bridge personnel, some astrometrics, some yoemen, but there were also phaser and torpedo technicians, transporters techs, engineers, and a host of other personnel whose jobs were to keep the various systems of the ship functioning. You often see maintenance themes in the shows, which is the most common reason people went into the Jefferies tubes in the first place.
Maintenance was an ongoing issue with futuristic starships in canon, represented in the shows, and often maintenance and repair is a critical issue in an episode.
So I don't get the whole, "Maintenance isn't canon," when it specifically is. No, not all maintenance needs to be done in spacedock, but on occasion the crew takes the navigational deflectors offline, and on occasion there will be power outages to systems while the engineers perform maintenance, and sometimes the crew just needs shore leave or liberty, (which is maintenance, but of personnel rather than the ship.)
So the next time your ship requires an 18 hour cooldown, think of it as liberty call for the crew. Now you get to have an episode like 'Trouble with Tribbles' or one of the O'brien family drama episodes. Me? My officers are out in the bars fleecing local farm boys at the dom-jot tables and impregnating or being impregnated by a variety of aliens. It's good for morale.
Like ship slots..