I don't think fleet holdings would make much difference to the dil exchange. I stopped putting dil into the holdings and hoard my dilithium for Upgrading my gear which i'd imagine a lot of players do (Always projects in need of dil that struggle to get filled). Upgrades is a sink right there. Drop the dil cost to upgrade gear and then you'll see the price of dil/zen plummet
I have a crappy patrol escort and I'm doing missions to get some free sets (like the quantum phase weapons and sol defense).
I think "desperate" would perfectly describe my situation ahah
I'm doing a lot of stfs (mostly normal) to get dil and marks, but sooner or later I'll have to spend something to buy fleet modules or T6 ships ...
I've done some maths: in order to buy a T6 ship, I should sell 960k refined dil. Since the refining cap is 8000 per day, I'll have to refine dil for 120 days (4 months).
Of course I could spend, but I won't ... I noticed that when you get a ship by spending money, you end-up not enjoying it at all (or at least, I don't).
I thought that many other people were in my own situation, so I opened this thread. But maybe its just me ahah
Don't worry, I'm fairly certain we've all been there.
I flied the free Star Cruiser and Patrol escorts for a long time and I put torpedoes in the rear, combined dual beam banks with single beams and single cannons, didn't use reputation sets for a long time.
After a while and nowadays, I can do a lot better in those same ships. Quality of gear and knowing how to use it is much more important than having a fancy ship. I've seen enough players fail in ships like the Scimitar or other ships that should, in theory, perform very well.
I would focus on getting the right * gear first, perhaps upgrade some of it. Preferably the tactical consoles: each tac console will increase the performance of your weapons, so that's a good point to start. The latest episodes added a lot of good gear, so that's a wise choice.
While T6 ships like the Phantom or the Arbiter have some very useful traits, these are marginal improvements. In my opinion of course, I'm sure you'll find someone else posting different perspectives.
* You'll see a lot of discussion on what would be the 'right' gear to use. I'm currently flying a Vesta on my Parti-gen sci who's using a relatively cheap build: only reputation items, consoles from episodes and some reputation torpedoes, as well as the Particle Emission Plasma torpedo which can be bought from the exchange.
None of this required a lot of dilithium, only the upgrading of the torpedoes did. And if you don't have the Vesta, the Krenim event ship would be a good replacement.
Of course there's also the option to go with beams or dual heavy cannons. There's many different options, and deciding what you want to do and use is the first step before you decide in what ship you're going to do it. Since the skill revamp will go live next week and everyone will get a free respec, this is an excellent opportunity to explore the different options.
Getting the dilithium for a new ship will take some grinding, but it may not even be necessary to get a new ship. Your performance may potentially increase a lot more if you focus on gear first.
If you do want to get a new (C-store) ship first, try the Dyson battlezone. If you have 3 characters, it would be an easy way to get about 75-80 zen per day, even with the current prices. At most you'd be looking at a bit over 30 days, less during ship sales.
Again, just my perspective. Don't rush to the reputation store just yet, I'd wait and gather more information and see what others think about it
While it's true that brand-new players who spend no money and have avoided all past events will only have 5 ships that misses the point.
Admiralty has increased the overall dil supply. Most "old" players have more than 5 cards by now, and can easily earn some extra dil that didn't exist before Admiralty. Not as much as me since I have the Delta Pack and 6+ event ships, but 10,000 players earning an extra 500 dil a day is an extra 5 million dil per day pumped into the system. Add in those with more ships, and those with multiple characters and the extra dil added is now much higher than just 5 million.
While it's true that brand-new players who spend no money and have avoided all past events will only have 5 ships
...and the Temporal Ambassador ship, plus a shuttle (and a second shuttle/runabout for some EC, depending). Two event cards just went by this past weekend, not that it would help someone who starts, say, tomorrow.
Aaaaanyway.
Sorry, OP, I just bought 3k zen on the exchange to buy some keys. And yeah, it was nice when the exchange rate was 80-100. But the rate varies, and 300, while a bit high, is still do-able for a good number of us. /shrug
(When I joined, it was heading down below 200, with the forums full of "economy DOOMED! The rate is below 300! The game will fail!" complain threads. No matter what the rate is at, some fraction of the playerbase will dislike it. Just the way it is.)
If the price goes down, in less inclined to sell. If you don't want to grind you could always buy some zen for cash ... you know support the game and the developers ...
Honestly I'd be happy if they just removed the dil exchange, free stuff in MMOs annoys me greatly ... I'll leave it at that, don't want to go into my usual anti F2P rant.
you seem to forget that some players have been playing for years to amass the ship selection they have, you cant expect a new player to get the same quantity of ships in a short time as seasoned players have amassed in a long time.
this is just unfortunate for new players but its the way of the world, you will find this is the case in any aspect of life in the real world, no matter what you choose to do in your life you will find there are people out there that have been doing it longer and have more stuff then you do, if you cant live with this in the game how in hell do you expect to manage in real life.
you just have to knuckle down play the game and gradually you will collect more ships as you go along until more new players come into the game and look enviously at the number of ships you have.
that's life I am afraid, you just have to live with it.
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.
When I started playing the rate was around 350 or so. It would flucuate by five points or so but that was it. There were not as many Dil sources in the game at the time either. But the ones which were (STFs) paid out 1,440 Dil per completion.
Thw Devs decided more things needed to award DIl but instead of adding in new sources of Dil they took what was available ingame and spread it around, The net result was Dil became more valuable due to the fact STFs awarded less Dil but required the same effort to complete.
I used to spend hours agonizing over this subject and allowed my frustrations to boil over more than once. Then I simply decided to play the game. Without worrying about Dil. Found ways to make the things I had work better rather than continuously and unrelentingly complaining about not being able to get the things I wanted.
This is a game. It should not be a lifestyle choice. Every time I see one of these threads, they always sound the same:
"It's not fair!" You wanna talk about not fair? Try running over one hundred ISA's over the course of a week and only earning enough Encrypted Data Chips to purchase ONE piece of the MACO Space Set. Which was MK X.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I have a crappy patrol escort and I'm doing missions to get some free sets (like the quantum phase weapons and sol defense).
I think "desperate" would perfectly describe my situation ahah
I'm doing a lot of stfs (mostly normal) to get dil and marks, but sooner or later I'll have to spend something to buy fleet modules or T6 ships ...
I've done some maths: in order to buy a T6 ship, I should sell 960k refined dil. Since the refining cap is 8000 per day, I'll have to refine dil for 120 days (4 months).
Of course I could spend, but I won't ... I noticed that when you get a ship by spending money, you end-up not enjoying it at all (or at least, I don't).
I thought that many other people were in my own situation, so I opened this thread. But maybe its just me ahah
I'm the same as well. I don't have that kind of Dil floating around to spend. Plus I only have a few hours per week to play. And I rather play the game than use all that time to grind out Dil. I rarely hit the cap on 1 character. Since I'm playing FEs, Rep turn ins, etc. I rarely hit over 1k. This will take me months if not over a year to build up. I rather use the Dil in the game to buy zen, but with this price I don't see it as they priced me out of the market.
This is why now I say its cheaper for me to buy the zen with $ and skip the middle man.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I have a crappy patrol escort and I'm doing missions to get some free sets (like the quantum phase weapons and sol defense).
I think "desperate" would perfectly describe my situation ahah
I'm doing a lot of stfs (mostly normal) to get dil and marks, but sooner or later I'll have to spend something to buy fleet modules or T6 ships ...
I've done some maths: in order to buy a T6 ship, I should sell 960k refined dil. Since the refining cap is 8000 per day, I'll have to refine dil for 120 days (4 months).
Something just occurred to me....
Of course you can think its fine, and maybe its really so, but I started play this game when Legacy of Romulus was released and then the price was 80/100 dil per CP (yeah, maybe then it was too low).
I think the ideal price would be about 200, but of course everyone would have a different opinion about this.
You've been playing for almost three years, through a lot of time when the exchange rate was lower, and you don't have anything unlocked from the c-store from during that time? And no event ships?
Or do you keep each of your characters entirely separate and start them from zero? Did you nuke your old account and start a new one? Not play for most of that time?
The dilithium exchange is (within some limitations) a free market system. If you have a problem with the way its moving you have a problem simply with how people are using it. From my point of view here, there's new content coming, I have saved dilithium, and I want to make sure that I have the zen necessary to get what I want come Tuesday (I have it, I might as well do it now and not worry about the margins). So I buy now which drives up the price by some very tiny increment. Now, I'm not special so my reaction here is probably going to be shared by some fraction of the player base. Multiply out the tiny increment increase across that group (and groups like it) and there you have a larger increase in dilithium prices.
That's making it more expensive for you, OP (and for anyone else complaining about the rate) but here's where you should probably step back from complaining about it (however much it may be pissing you off). Doing so says that what I and like minded people just did was wrong. According to you, we shouldn't have bought zen in anticipation for content we want because of the incidental effect that would have for your planned transactions.
That's probably not the nicest thing you could be doing (which detracts from the point you probably want to be making instead about STO cost and accessibility.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
It is a player driven economy but at the top of it all its still Cryptic that provides the goods we are buying. So if there's a high demand for zen it's because they are making products which are highly desirable to the players. The lockbox keys are just one example as is the constant supply of highly powered box ships and lobi goodies. People are willing to throw hundreds of £/€/$'s at the game to acquire these items. So zen bought will always be high. But if it's all being used on highly desirable items then it ain't going to appear on the exchange at a low price, hence the high demand and cost. Then you've got the ease of acquiring dilithium nowadays, so there's a tonne of the stuff around ready to feed into the exchange. Again, cryptic created this situation as they developed the systems supplying the pink stuff. They know full well it'll push up the zen demand of the game is flooded with the stuff at the same time as providing an endless train of shiny toys everyone wants. Lockboxes are going into warp speed now we've got the ultra rare rewards of a super-grand prize ship like a Vonph in some of them. I don't think the rate will really drop unless they slow up the lockbox gravy-train or remove rewards from a tonne of stuff. Even a sink will only last some long as was the case with crafting.
Liking your sig. TBH STO is the only game I'm bothering to emulate on linux. I've dropped all other games that has no linux client. I need to use linux because of my work. Already set aside money for LTS when they release a native client.
I have a crappy patrol escort and I'm doing missions to get some free sets (like the quantum phase weapons and sol defense).
I think "desperate" would perfectly describe my situation ahah
I'm doing a lot of stfs (mostly normal) to get dil and marks, but sooner or later I'll have to spend something to buy fleet modules or T6 ships ...
I've done some maths: in order to buy a T6 ship, I should sell 960k refined dil. Since the refining cap is 8000 per day, I'll have to refine dil for 120 days (4 months).
Something just occurred to me....
Of course you can think its fine, and maybe its really so, but I started play this game when Legacy of Romulus was released and then the price was 80/100 dil per CP (yeah, maybe then it was too low).
I think the ideal price would be about 200, but of course everyone would have a different opinion about this.
You've been playing for almost three years, through a lot of time when the exchange rate was lower, and you don't have anything unlocked from the c-store from during that time? And no event ships?
Or do you keep each of your characters entirely separate and start them from zero? Did you nuke your old account and start a new one? Not play for most of that time?
Sorry, just a bit confused.
I started with the launch of Legacy of Romulus, I played for 2 months, maybe 3 ... then I didn't play for a lot of time, except some random times.
I started over about a month ago with a new account (I lost the previsious one, but I didn't have anything good xD).
The dilithium exchange is (within some limitations) a free market system. If you have a problem with the way its moving you have a problem simply with how people are using it. From my point of view here, there's new content coming, I have saved dilithium, and I want to make sure that I have the zen necessary to get what I want come Tuesday (I have it, I might as well do it now and not worry about the margins). So I buy now which drives up the price by some very tiny increment. Now, I'm not special so my reaction here is probably going to be shared by some fraction of the player base. Multiply out the tiny increment increase across that group (and groups like it) and there you have a larger increase in dilithium prices.
That's making it more expensive for you, OP (and for anyone else complaining about the rate) but here's where you should probably step back from complaining about it (however much it may be pissing you off). Doing so says that what I and like minded people just did was wrong. According to you, we shouldn't have bought zen in anticipation for content we want because of the incidental effect that would have for your planned transactions.
That's probably not the nicest thing you could be doing (which detracts from the point you probably want to be making instead about STO cost and accessibility.)
You have to forgive me, I didn't mean to accuse anyone.
You, of course, are free to play the way you like it.
But, do tell me, won't it be better (for you) if the price was below 200 ? You sell dilithium, so its reasonable you would want to get most out of your efforts.
I'm not really interested in upcoming lock boxes, so some mechanics are unknown to me ahah
It is a player driven economy but at the top of it all its still Cryptic that provides the goods we are buying. So if there's a high demand for zen it's because they are making products which are highly desirable to the players. The lockbox keys are just one example as is the constant supply of highly powered box ships and lobi goodies.
People are willing to throw hundreds of £/€/$'s at the game to acquire these items. So zen bought will always be high.
But if it's all being used on highly desirable items then it ain't going to appear on the exchange at a low price, hence the high demand and cost.
Then you've got the ease of acquiring dilithium nowadays, so there's a tonne of the stuff around ready to feed into the exchange. Again, cryptic created this situation as they developed the systems supplying the pink stuff. They know full well it'll push up the zen demand of the game is flooded with the stuff at the same time as providing an endless train of shiny toys everyone wants.
Lockboxes are going into warp speed now we've got the ultra rare rewards of a super-grand prize ship like a Vonph in some of them.
I don't think the rate will really drop unless they slow up the lockbox gravy-train or remove rewards from a tonne of stuff. Even a sink will only last some long as was the case with crafting.
This may be true, but there's nothing cryptic can do to force us do something.
There people who want to get all the new stuff as soon as possible, there are people (like me) who just want a good ship and good stuff to play decently all the contents, and so on ...
Cryptic don't force me to buy zen ... they can't even do this.
Also, like you said, ECs and Dil/CPs are PLAYER driven economies: we players can change it.
Also, its pointless to argue about what Cryptic should do: they can't realistically listen to any of us, cause anyone has its own opinion on what to do.
Look at this thread: if they do something to make the price fall, they'll disappoint a lot of people. Same thing if they do something to make the price raise.
However, I'd like to ask you something: do you believe that, when this event will be over, the zen price could fall to, lets say, 250 ?
However, I'd like to ask you something: do you believe that, when this event will be over, the zen price could fall to, lets say, 250 ?
Very very unlikely. It was already around 300 before Admiralty increased the dil supply. I don't think it's dropped below 300 in between any of the events or new ships or new lockboxes in many months.
I never farm DIL. I just use my card and buy zen. Buy zen and sell it for DIL when i need it, so that I do not spend all my free time farming materials in the game so that I can enjoy the other aspect of it, farming specialization points via the Admiralty system.
However, I'd like to ask you something: do you believe that, when this event will be over, the zen price could fall to, lets say, 250 ?
Very very unlikely. It was already around 300 before Admiralty increased the dil supply. I don't think it's dropped below 300 in between any of the events or new ships or new lockboxes in many months.
We've also had a ton of market flooding events like the Mirror event and the recent Breach event. 50k DL per character, and people running multiple characters to get that DL boost.
If we don't get anything that makes one or the other desirable, it does tend to balance out at about 250/1 I think. And frankly I feel that around 250/1 would probably be the best area for both sides. 300/1 is still doable, but higher than about 320 and it starts to be less friendly to anyone besides the Zen sellers, as the miners get less in return for the same amount of work.
just be thankful there is a maximum limit of 500-1 on how high the exchange rate can go, otherwise at some point in the future you could be in even bigger trouble then you are now.
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.
I don't really think much about the Exchange rate anymore. As has been said several times, it's a player-driven economy. It's driven by supply and demand. If it were a price set by Cryptic, yes then there'd definitely be an avenue for complaining about it.
But because it's a live economy... there's nothing that can really be done to change the price. There's no point in saying X price would be better and we should somehow aim for it. There's no point in saying Y price is too much and is a sign of a problem of any type. It's just how the supply and demand works. And in cases such as right now, when new content is around the corner, the Excange rate will rise - often considerably.
However, I'd like to ask you something: do you believe that, when this event will be over, the zen price could fall to, lets say, 250 ?
Very very unlikely. It was already around 300 before Admiralty increased the dil supply. I don't think it's dropped below 300 in between any of the events or new ships or new lockboxes in many months.
Depends on your definition of "Below 300". I think I have seen it in the 295-299 range. Yeah, not a big drop, but technically below 300.
But, do tell me, won't it be better (for you) if the price was below 200 ? You sell dilithium, so its reasonable you would want to get most out of your efforts.
Demand is demand. You store it up for a while the price will go down but as soon as its unleashed again it will shoot right back up to where it should be according to that level of interest. What might help is just to focus on new strategies for conserving and earning dilithium so a ~340-300 price range isn't prohibitive.
One easy way (which works for me) is to spread playtime out across more than one character. You just play one and your daily refining limit is ~8k. Play two and you double it to ~16k. Three and you triple the maximum dil income rate. And there's three factions to explore in the game anyway and account-unlocked event ships to reduce the burden of equipping them to a playable level (and that isn't to say that you can't focus on one character, but just that taking a look at other things will have additional benefits.)
And always try to make the most of available dilithium sources. Keep your admiralty going (you can repeat the KDF assignment chain, with the big dil payout at 10/10), as well as a few types of reputation mark turn-ins (only takes one daily bonus every once-in-a-while), consider spending some time with the dyson ground battlezone, and the current dilithium exchange rate is going to be a non-issue for you too.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
...Three and you triple the maximum dil income rate...
...consider spending some time with the dyson ground battlezone, and the current dilithium exchange rate is going to be a non-issue for you too.
Assuming the high end of the above range (340) and assuming you have 3 characters* and do manage to make 8.5k (8k+500 at the fleet mine holding) on each of them daily, pricing out a single ship is as such:
8500/340 = 25
25*3 =75
3000/75 = 40
On Sale (2400) = 2400/75 = 32
I'm not sure the exchange rate can be said to be a non-issue when it takes more than a month at an hour or more a day for a ship. I also don't think the market is going to come down to 300 or so for a long time, if ever. Mostly wanted to put the time invested in context for the OP.
*I have 7, and most of them manage to make the 8000 each day with 20min or so in the Dyson ground. This gives 56k dil = 175 zen/day @ 320 = 17/13 days at regular/sale prices. 20m*7*13/60 = 30.33 hours of playtime...this is the bottom line, there are no shortcuts to a ship.
Dilithium prices are fine. Hell, I just managed to buy 100 keys using just my admiralty/contraband farming for the last month. Normally I would spend "real money" to do this.
NOTHING IS WRONG PEOPLE, DON'T MAKE CRYPTIC FIX SOMETHING THAT ISN'T BROKEN!
Comments
Don't worry, I'm fairly certain we've all been there.
I flied the free Star Cruiser and Patrol escorts for a long time and I put torpedoes in the rear, combined dual beam banks with single beams and single cannons, didn't use reputation sets for a long time.
After a while and nowadays, I can do a lot better in those same ships. Quality of gear and knowing how to use it is much more important than having a fancy ship. I've seen enough players fail in ships like the Scimitar or other ships that should, in theory, perform very well.
I would focus on getting the right * gear first, perhaps upgrade some of it. Preferably the tactical consoles: each tac console will increase the performance of your weapons, so that's a good point to start. The latest episodes added a lot of good gear, so that's a wise choice.
While T6 ships like the Phantom or the Arbiter have some very useful traits, these are marginal improvements. In my opinion of course, I'm sure you'll find someone else posting different perspectives.
* You'll see a lot of discussion on what would be the 'right' gear to use. I'm currently flying a Vesta on my Parti-gen sci who's using a relatively cheap build: only reputation items, consoles from episodes and some reputation torpedoes, as well as the Particle Emission Plasma torpedo which can be bought from the exchange.
None of this required a lot of dilithium, only the upgrading of the torpedoes did. And if you don't have the Vesta, the Krenim event ship would be a good replacement.
Of course there's also the option to go with beams or dual heavy cannons. There's many different options, and deciding what you want to do and use is the first step before you decide in what ship you're going to do it. Since the skill revamp will go live next week and everyone will get a free respec, this is an excellent opportunity to explore the different options.
Getting the dilithium for a new ship will take some grinding, but it may not even be necessary to get a new ship. Your performance may potentially increase a lot more if you focus on gear first.
If you do want to get a new (C-store) ship first, try the Dyson battlezone. If you have 3 characters, it would be an easy way to get about 75-80 zen per day, even with the current prices. At most you'd be looking at a bit over 30 days, less during ship sales.
Again, just my perspective. Don't rush to the reputation store just yet, I'd wait and gather more information and see what others think about it
Admiralty has increased the overall dil supply. Most "old" players have more than 5 cards by now, and can easily earn some extra dil that didn't exist before Admiralty. Not as much as me since I have the Delta Pack and 6+ event ships, but 10,000 players earning an extra 500 dil a day is an extra 5 million dil per day pumped into the system. Add in those with more ships, and those with multiple characters and the extra dil added is now much higher than just 5 million.
...and the Temporal Ambassador ship, plus a shuttle (and a second shuttle/runabout for some EC, depending). Two event cards just went by this past weekend, not that it would help someone who starts, say, tomorrow.
Aaaaanyway.
Sorry, OP, I just bought 3k zen on the exchange to buy some keys. And yeah, it was nice when the exchange rate was 80-100. But the rate varies, and 300, while a bit high, is still do-able for a good number of us. /shrug
(When I joined, it was heading down below 200, with the forums full of "economy DOOMED! The rate is below 300! The game will fail!" complain threads. No matter what the rate is at, some fraction of the playerbase will dislike it. Just the way it is.)
Honestly I'd be happy if they just removed the dil exchange, free stuff in MMOs annoys me greatly ... I'll leave it at that, don't want to go into my usual anti F2P rant.
*looks about nervously and hides his ship roster...*
We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!
this is just unfortunate for new players but its the way of the world, you will find this is the case in any aspect of life in the real world, no matter what you choose to do in your life you will find there are people out there that have been doing it longer and have more stuff then you do, if you cant live with this in the game how in hell do you expect to manage in real life.
you just have to knuckle down play the game and gradually you will collect more ships as you go along until more new players come into the game and look enviously at the number of ships you have.
that's life I am afraid, you just have to live with it.
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.
Thw Devs decided more things needed to award DIl but instead of adding in new sources of Dil they took what was available ingame and spread it around, The net result was Dil became more valuable due to the fact STFs awarded less Dil but required the same effort to complete.
I used to spend hours agonizing over this subject and allowed my frustrations to boil over more than once. Then I simply decided to play the game. Without worrying about Dil. Found ways to make the things I had work better rather than continuously and unrelentingly complaining about not being able to get the things I wanted.
This is a game. It should not be a lifestyle choice. Every time I see one of these threads, they always sound the same:
"It's not fair!" You wanna talk about not fair? Try running over one hundred ISA's over the course of a week and only earning enough Encrypted Data Chips to purchase ONE piece of the MACO Space Set. Which was MK X.
I'm the same as well. I don't have that kind of Dil floating around to spend. Plus I only have a few hours per week to play. And I rather play the game than use all that time to grind out Dil. I rarely hit the cap on 1 character. Since I'm playing FEs, Rep turn ins, etc. I rarely hit over 1k. This will take me months if not over a year to build up. I rather use the Dil in the game to buy zen, but with this price I don't see it as they priced me out of the market.
This is why now I say its cheaper for me to buy the zen with $ and skip the middle man.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Something just occurred to me....
You've been playing for almost three years, through a lot of time when the exchange rate was lower, and you don't have anything unlocked from the c-store from during that time? And no event ships?
Or do you keep each of your characters entirely separate and start them from zero? Did you nuke your old account and start a new one? Not play for most of that time?
Sorry, just a bit confused.
That's making it more expensive for you, OP (and for anyone else complaining about the rate) but here's where you should probably step back from complaining about it (however much it may be pissing you off). Doing so says that what I and like minded people just did was wrong. According to you, we shouldn't have bought zen in anticipation for content we want because of the incidental effect that would have for your planned transactions.
That's probably not the nicest thing you could be doing (which detracts from the point you probably want to be making instead about STO cost and accessibility.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
People are willing to throw hundreds of £/€/$'s at the game to acquire these items. So zen bought will always be high.
But if it's all being used on highly desirable items then it ain't going to appear on the exchange at a low price, hence the high demand and cost.
Then you've got the ease of acquiring dilithium nowadays, so there's a tonne of the stuff around ready to feed into the exchange. Again, cryptic created this situation as they developed the systems supplying the pink stuff. They know full well it'll push up the zen demand of the game is flooded with the stuff at the same time as providing an endless train of shiny toys everyone wants.
Lockboxes are going into warp speed now we've got the ultra rare rewards of a super-grand prize ship like a Vonph in some of them.
I don't think the rate will really drop unless they slow up the lockbox gravy-train or remove rewards from a tonne of stuff. Even a sink will only last some long as was the case with crafting.
Liking your sig. TBH STO is the only game I'm bothering to emulate on linux. I've dropped all other games that has no linux client. I need to use linux because of my work. Already set aside money for LTS when they release a native client.
Anway, sry for the offtopic. Please carry on.
I started with the launch of Legacy of Romulus, I played for 2 months, maybe 3 ... then I didn't play for a lot of time, except some random times.
I started over about a month ago with a new account (I lost the previsious one, but I didn't have anything good xD).
You have to forgive me, I didn't mean to accuse anyone.
You, of course, are free to play the way you like it.
But, do tell me, won't it be better (for you) if the price was below 200 ? You sell dilithium, so its reasonable you would want to get most out of your efforts.
I'm not really interested in upcoming lock boxes, so some mechanics are unknown to me ahah
This may be true, but there's nothing cryptic can do to force us do something.
There people who want to get all the new stuff as soon as possible, there are people (like me) who just want a good ship and good stuff to play decently all the contents, and so on ...
Cryptic don't force me to buy zen ... they can't even do this.
Also, like you said, ECs and Dil/CPs are PLAYER driven economies: we players can change it.
Also, its pointless to argue about what Cryptic should do: they can't realistically listen to any of us, cause anyone has its own opinion on what to do.
Look at this thread: if they do something to make the price fall, they'll disappoint a lot of people. Same thing if they do something to make the price raise.
However, I'd like to ask you something: do you believe that, when this event will be over, the zen price could fall to, lets say, 250 ?
Very very unlikely. It was already around 300 before Admiralty increased the dil supply. I don't think it's dropped below 300 in between any of the events or new ships or new lockboxes in many months.
We've also had a ton of market flooding events like the Mirror event and the recent Breach event. 50k DL per character, and people running multiple characters to get that DL boost.
If we don't get anything that makes one or the other desirable, it does tend to balance out at about 250/1 I think. And frankly I feel that around 250/1 would probably be the best area for both sides. 300/1 is still doable, but higher than about 320 and it starts to be less friendly to anyone besides the Zen sellers, as the miners get less in return for the same amount of work.
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.
But because it's a live economy... there's nothing that can really be done to change the price. There's no point in saying X price would be better and we should somehow aim for it. There's no point in saying Y price is too much and is a sign of a problem of any type. It's just how the supply and demand works. And in cases such as right now, when new content is around the corner, the Excange rate will rise - often considerably.
Depends on your definition of "Below 300". I think I have seen it in the 295-299 range. Yeah, not a big drop, but technically below 300.
Demand is demand. You store it up for a while the price will go down but as soon as its unleashed again it will shoot right back up to where it should be according to that level of interest. What might help is just to focus on new strategies for conserving and earning dilithium so a ~340-300 price range isn't prohibitive.
One easy way (which works for me) is to spread playtime out across more than one character. You just play one and your daily refining limit is ~8k. Play two and you double it to ~16k. Three and you triple the maximum dil income rate. And there's three factions to explore in the game anyway and account-unlocked event ships to reduce the burden of equipping them to a playable level (and that isn't to say that you can't focus on one character, but just that taking a look at other things will have additional benefits.)
And always try to make the most of available dilithium sources. Keep your admiralty going (you can repeat the KDF assignment chain, with the big dil payout at 10/10), as well as a few types of reputation mark turn-ins (only takes one daily bonus every once-in-a-while), consider spending some time with the dyson ground battlezone, and the current dilithium exchange rate is going to be a non-issue for you too.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
"Starfleet Dental Lightening Response Team"? You have a special squad just to handle teeth-whitening duties?
Assuming the high end of the above range (340) and assuming you have 3 characters* and do manage to make 8.5k (8k+500 at the fleet mine holding) on each of them daily, pricing out a single ship is as such:
8500/340 = 25
25*3 =75
3000/75 = 40
On Sale (2400) = 2400/75 = 32
I'm not sure the exchange rate can be said to be a non-issue when it takes more than a month at an hour or more a day for a ship. I also don't think the market is going to come down to 300 or so for a long time, if ever. Mostly wanted to put the time invested in context for the OP.
*I have 7, and most of them manage to make the 8000 each day with 20min or so in the Dyson ground. This gives 56k dil = 175 zen/day @ 320 = 17/13 days at regular/sale prices. 20m*7*13/60 = 30.33 hours of playtime...this is the bottom line, there are no shortcuts to a ship.
A free ship every month to 6 weeks sounds pretty generous since you're not putting any real world cash into the game.
There are quite a few special purpose groupings.
NOTHING IS WRONG PEOPLE, DON'T MAKE CRYPTIC FIX SOMETHING THAT ISN'T BROKEN!