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Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion

Suggestion: Ways to Balance Big Fleet vs Small Fleet spending.

demonsoul109demonsoul109 Member Posts: 4 Arc User
edited February 2013 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
Fleets have 2 problems Fleet credits and Dilithium. My Fleet is small and yes were all real friends having fun. But im not complaining about anything that has to deal with the amount of materials needed to build your starbase or embassy. But the amount of dilithium needed for these projects greatly favors a large fleet. At the same time Smaller fleet members are over flowing with fleet credits. And as ive seen in other threads the dilithium sink only gets worse as the tiers go up.

I have a set of solutions that will fix both problems.

1. Remove dilithium requirements from "standard building projects" and limit it to "special projects." Like adding a fountain to your embassy, or opening the blast doors on the starbase, ect.

2. A percentage of dilithium spent on Fleet store items should go into the fleet bank and can only be diverted to "special projects by the fleet leaders. Members should still be able to contribute to these projects for fleet credit. Have the consumables cost Fleets credit and dilithium but keep it reasonable. (This dilithium cannot be withdrawn just diverted.)

3. Duty officer assignments on a Fleet Starbase should pay in fleet credit not dilithium. upon a successful completion. This will keep the flow of fleet credit once the fleet is maxed out.

These three things are quite simple and would help balance things out a bit. You will still have to grind but not nearly as much and you will be able to have a great fleet without worrying about size. The progression should be close to the same just the big fleet will be decorated much faster.
Post edited by demonsoul109 on

Comments

  • cptvanorcptvanor Member Posts: 274 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Small fleets, are quite simply not supposed to progress as quickly as larger fleets are. This is the system that Cryptic has set up and how they seem to want it to work. They are going to do nothing to change that, unless they change their basic design principle first.

    And quite frankly I tend to agree with them at least a bit.

    I don't think a 5 or 10 person fleet should progress as quickly as a 25 to 30 person fleet should. I'm not saying that a 10 person fleet shouldn't be able to progress, but it should take them some time to do so.
  • marc8219marc8219 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    Its fine as it is. The point in making Fleets is to not only have your friends in it but to make new friends too and expand. This lets you pool resources from more people and share the results with more people too. This is an MMO, meant to involve lots of players, not just small groups that want to hog their starbases to themselves. If you want to do that you may, but also must be penalized with slow starbase progression.

    Fleets that are generous and expand a lot to share their base with more players deserve to progress much much faster.
    Tala -KDF Tac- House of Beautiful Orions
  • demonsoul109demonsoul109 Member Posts: 4 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    cptvanor wrote: »
    Small fleets, are quite simply not supposed to progress as quickly as larger fleets are. This is the system that Cryptic has set up and how they seem to want it to work. They are going to do nothing to change that, unless they change their basic design principle first.

    And quite frankly I tend to agree with them at least a bit.

    I don't think a 5 or 10 person fleet should progress as quickly as a 25 to 30 person fleet should. I'm not saying that a 10 person fleet shouldn't be able to progress, but it should take them some time to do so.

    The progression would still be slower you still have to take into account the fleet marks needed for progression. That could be increased a bit to slow progression. If progression vs size is a problem they can reduce the time to complete projects for larger fleets. This would encourage Fleets to grow larger.
  • mewimewi Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    The mass dilithium costs is what is crushing small fleets now, but cryptic wont fix that, they are too busy selling zen off of the gouge fest. That is why I quit contributing/recruit/etc to my own fleet that I run.

    Made it to tier 3 before the great dilithium nerf, would be tier 4 + by now.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    | Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
  • demonsoul109demonsoul109 Member Posts: 4 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    marc8219 wrote: »
    Its fine as it is. The point in making Fleets is to not only have your friends in it but to make new friends too and expand. This lets you pool resources from more people and share the results with more people too. This is an MMO, meant to involve lots of players, not just small groups that want to hog their starbases to themselves. If you want to do that you may, but also must be penalized with slow starbase progression.

    Fleets that are generous and expand a lot to share their base with more players deserve to progress much much faster.

    Yea we've been recruiting trying to grow. But everyone wants all the work done for them. Ive recruited 10 people in the last week and when they realized they had to contribute dilithium they all but 1 left. None realized we have tier 1 ships avalable for them weapons and duty officers. We'll have tier II shipyard in a day or so.
    My post is just a suggestion and the devs wont give a rats "Blank" about it anyway. Every suggestion can be improved upon. Given enough people add to it.
  • cptvanorcptvanor Member Posts: 274 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    demonsoul109 wrote: »
    Every suggestion can be improved upon. Given enough people add to it.

    Towards that end I do think the idea of having a % of the dilithium spent on stuff at the fleet store being diverted to projects would be a great thing. It would help everyone out, big or small.
  • marc8219marc8219 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    You not only need to recruit, but help make it easier to earn dil for them. Doing regular fleet elite STF runs, private pvp matches, officer reports and fleet actions together is great for fleets to interact together and all make dil at same time.

    I guess it may still be hard getting players that are willing to contribute, as many of the ones that can afford to are already in fleets with high tier starbase, and new players probably cant cap their dil each day.

    I think rather then remove dil requirements they need to add more ways to earn dil while doing other stuff like adding small amounts like 480 dil to Romulan and Fleet Mark events.
    Or have dil bonus event where you can earn a more during the event. This might encourage some to be less stingy.
    Tala -KDF Tac- House of Beautiful Orions
  • marc8219marc8219 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited January 2013
    You not only need to recruit, but help make it easier to earn dil for them. Doing regular fleet elite STF runs, private pvp matches, officer reports and fleet actions together is great for fleets to interact together and all make dil at same time.

    I guess it may still be hard getting players that are willing to contribute, as many of the ones that can afford to are already in fleets with high tier starbase, and new players probably cant cap their dil each day.

    I think rather then remove dil requirements they need to add more ways to earn dil while doing other stuff like adding small amounts like 480 dil to Romulan and Fleet Mark events.
    Or have dil bonus event where you can earn a more during the event. This might encourage some to be less stingy.
    Tala -KDF Tac- House of Beautiful Orions
  • weirdstealthweirdstealth Member Posts: 14 Arc User
    edited February 2013
    mewi wrote: »
    The mass dilithium costs is what is crushing small fleets now
    This is true, I love my fleet, and I really don't want to go and join one of the larger ones just to have a nice Tier 5 Star base. but I don't want to spend weeks mining dilithium, only to spend all of it on fleet projects that have next to no return, for small fleets it'd be nice if we can have a lower amount of dilithium to complete a project, and have that dilithium put into a "bank" for later use.
  • bpharmabpharma Member Posts: 2,022
    edited February 2013
    I think the irony is that if the number of people quitting small fleets because of the costs joined into 1 fleet you'd probably be hitting T4 by now.

    Personally my fleet has trouble getting fleet marks but then we're a smaller fleet now as more than 50% of our players left when season 7 nerfed STF's through the floor. Some have come back but we're down to 5 off and on players from about 13+ regulars.

    We just had the upgrade to T3 shipyard and we filled the dilithium requirement (365k or something) in a few days between 4 of us and no we didn't buy dilithium, we can just complete 3 STFs in 20-30 mins.

    So yeah if anyone is interested PM me and maybe we can have everyone join 1 fleet of like minded, determined people =)
    It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
    A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
    Has damage got out of control?
    This is the last thing I will post.
  • chikahirochikahiro Member Posts: 35 Arc User
    edited February 2013
    cptvanor wrote: »
    Small fleets, are quite simply not supposed to progress as quickly as larger fleets are. This is the system that Cryptic has set up and how they seem to want it to work. They are going to do nothing to change that, unless they change their basic design principle first.

    And quite frankly I tend to agree with them at least a bit.

    I don't think a 5 or 10 person fleet should progress as quickly as a 25 to 30 person fleet should. I'm not saying that a 10 person fleet shouldn't be able to progress, but it should take them some time to do so.

    I've been suggesting that Cryptic should make smaller projects that small fleets can do faster, but in the general scope of things will take the same amount of time. With the time/resources it takes to finish 1 normal size project (and get the same rewards), you'd have to do 3-5 of the smaller ones. Granted, larger projects should be the better reward for the time/resources spent since you're commiting so much, but that's just me.

    Reasoning? Momentum and morale. Even if its the same amount of work in the end, it would be more encouraging for smaller fleets to go through multiple projects in this fashion than to stare at the massive requirements for the current projects. That would encourage more people in the fleets to contribute since its not so daunting. Meanwhile, fleets that are large, efficient, or have a high level of participation would still be better off picking the large projects, since they'd have the better bang for the buck, so to speak.

    For example? Support Local Systems II (500 engineering XP) requires
    • 20 hours
    • 600 Fleet Marks
    • 36,000 Dilithium
    • 12 Engineering or Operations Duty Officers
    • 40,000 Expertise
    • 3,000 [Provisions]
    • 500 [Water Purification Systems]

    So, a mini-version could be Supply Refugee Convoy (100 engineering XP)
    • 5 hours
    • 150 Fleet Marks
    • 9,000 Dilithium
    • 4 Engineering or Operations Duty Officers
    • 10,000 Expertise
    • 750 [Provisions]
    • 125 [Water Purification Systems]

    You'd have to do this 5 times to get the same XP reward as the bigger Support Local Systems project, and you'll have to spend:
    • 5 more hours in completion time (25 vs 20)
    • 150 more Fleet Marks (750 vs 600)
    • 9,000 more Dilithium (45k vs 36k)
    • 8 more Duty Officers (20 vs 12)
    • 750 more Provisions (3,750 vs 3,000)
    • 125 more Water Purification systems (625 vs 500)

    After all, what *really* matters is the various types of XP earned. A fleet that has given up working on projects, regardless of size, earns no XP at all. If Cryptic wants dilithium to go into starbases, then making some more bite-size projects would help out. If they want more Dilithium bought with Zen? It would help out with that, too. If they want more fleets engaged in the system, this could do it since I think people will be encouraged by having more forward movement.

    That's just my opinion, mind you.
    My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays
    http://samonmaui.blogspot.com
    As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
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