Well the fleet I was in had 3 active members that contributed and helped build the star base from season 7 to about a month ago now. We hit T3 but hadn't started the embassy and we were happy about that but I decided to work out how much it would cost in dilithium to upgrade to T5 via the shipyard.
Worked out it would be about 20 million dilithium and that the embassy would be another 6 million. So between the 3 of us we decided its not really worth it and that kind of a grind was not fun. We had a look to see if we could contribute our resources to a bigger fleet where projects will get done if we don't log in and grind fleet marks and dilithium daily. So we have joined another fleet and we're enjoying different content now and not having to work constantly on the star base.
Now we did manage to get some new members since season 7, two or three of them joined, then practically ignored any communication from the fleet and never contributed, they didn't get access to the stores. We had three other players that did contribute mainly fleet marks but I have a feeling they were starting to get bored with grinding them after a few days.
We usually chatted to people we found that didn't have a fleet and tried to sway them but when they found we were only T3 they just stopped responding to us. We had no drama, no massive rules except be polite to other members and 100k contribution to get access to the store. The problem is with some fleets hitting T5 already very few want to join less than a T4 now and you can see people looking for this in zone chat.
Yes we could have got everything maxed in a year through what felt like an endless oppressive grind but then we would have no fun and who knows what other extensions they'll add (and there's room for at least 3 more) by that time or how much it will cost. Regardless everyone in our fleet followed us to the new fleet, even those returning since leaving in season 7 have transferred over with us.
Just thought I'd share the experience I've had. I wish we could have got to T5 with our own base but it was too much of a grind and we were putting everything in with getting little back from it.
As regards to the OP I've always thought having a limit to joining fleets of a max of 3 fleets a week and scaling projects on numbers of members would have been a better idea. Yes it could have been abused by large organised fleets with hundreds of active members but it would not have been easy.
A small fleet is much better, we all know each other, have a nice community with ideals and everyone can make a contribution and feel like they are making a difference. Rather than be in a mega fleet fighting over being able to donate or have purchase ability from the fleet stores.
I completely agree. I'm in a small fleet with maybe 15-20 active players any we haven't really had any issues funding star-base projects. We're not up to Tier 5 yet but we're a good way into tier 4 and going strong. We even have a Klingon-side fleet although since we don't all play Klingon it's lagging somewhat compared to our Fed starbase (about half way into tier 3).
As regards to the OP I've always thought having a limit to joining fleets of a max of 3 fleets a week and scaling projects on numbers of members would have been a better idea. Yes it could have been abused by large organised fleets with hundreds of active members but it would not have been easy.
The problem with scaling projects is that it hurts small fleets with inactive members. I know in the case of my fleet we have a lot of inactive characters that are either the alts of our active members or the characters of friends who used to play but have since quit. With a system like this we'd basically have to boot them all in order to avoid excessive star base costs.
Well with just 3 people and a hell of a lot of hard work (yes it felt like work) we managed to get to T3 and we had no more than 70 (probably 50) inactive or alt characters. Even at a 50% discount it would have eased the strain considerably. Scaling wouldn't hurt a small fleet unless you were a massive fleet that has become inactive and even then it would be no worse than it currently is.
If large numbers go inactive for long periods you could send them a mail saying the fleet is downsizing to reduce costs. Most people would understand and rejoin, if not, well you're a smaller fleet now with reduced costs and manageable projects and upgrades.
I suggested something similar in zone chat once, got as good a reception as claiming obi wan kenobi was the best starship captain.
I would agree with reduced costs but as far as I can tell the reason projects cost as much as they do and why upgrades have the completion deadlines was so no fleet would advance too fast. However I do not agree that a smaller fleet should have the reduced cost but unlock everything 2-3 times longer. I've come across your proposal before and it would be easier on small fleets but it would also gimp them in the long run as they would still take forever to unlock the new stuff.
Cryptic rejected scaling because (as they said) it was too exploitable, so a large fleet could have a lot of members leave, slot projects at a reduced cost and then they join again to fill them. A limit on number of fleets you could join in a week coupled with scaling would not only have solved the scaling problem but it would also have prevented the bank raiders. However it would still provide opportunities to sell access to large fleets. The real reason this wasn't implemented is the same reason we won't see small fleets getting a break in requirements. Cryptic wants to sell Zen. They want you to buy Zen to convert to dilithium to fill the projects.
There are many ideas and ways to have made it fair and non exploitable but absolutely non of them would create a massive demand for dilithium and get people to buy Zen.
Want to hear another thing they could have done? Have lower costs, longer times like you say but have 1 tier to begin with and it's unlock. Then released T2 after a month. T3 after another 2 months and staggered it that way to prevent too much advancement too fast. If you look at the reasons for why Cryptic did what they did, there are many ways that it could have been done better. If you look at it from a "we need to sell Zen" it supports the current model.
What happens if the person who wants to get invited, is not a part of any fleet. Who's provisions does it use then?
I would assume it blocks that person from buying anything, but I have not tested it as of yet....
you need to have access to a fleet's provisions to buy fleet gear. My assumption is that you will be blocked from any fleet gear regardless of previous Fleet Credit accumulation as you dont have permission to access a Fleet Provisions pool (by virtue of being fleetless)
you need to have access to a fleet's provisions to buy fleet gear. My assumption is that you will be blocked from any fleet gear regardless of previous Fleet Credit accumulation as you dont have permission to access a Fleet Provisions pool (by virtue of being fleetless)
Well presumably you could still purchase the times that don't require fleet provisions (DOffs for example).
Simple solution to people "selling" access to Tier 5 fleets. Treat them the same as Gold or EC Farmers... Ban em
here's the thing tho, the method i described isnt made obvious by any tooltip or literature by Cryptic. There's always benefit of a doubt because of how this info isnt general knowledge.
Plus, you need to be part of the fleet if you want to buy a fleet ship (and only fleetships)
I don't think anything needs to be changed, there are plenty of large fleets that are recruiting. A small fleet shouldn't be able to complete with a large fleet, certain tiers and projects shouldn't even be accessible unless you a minimum number of members and if everything was made too cheap and too easy people would be clamoring sooner and more often for more content, more this , more that, simply because it was too easy for them to get all the existing toys.
Frankly there are way too many fleets to begin with, it's way too easy to start a fleet and the current system is working as intended if it's helping to put the mickey mouse operators that can't compete out of business.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
I see what you mean valoreah, Cryptic will not reduce the dilithium costs though as they are selling a lot of Zen for conversion to dilithium. Also even with only 3 of us dilithium was never a problem to get, we could complete 3 STFs in 20mins, then switch toons and run again. Within an hour we had 60k between us refined. Sometimes more sometimes less. It was the fleet marks and the spending of fleet creds on doff packs that was killing us, that and knowing if we took a day off that the projects would not get filled and progress would not be made.
Either way much happier in a bigger fleet, we contribute what we can but we know that we don't have to go off making sure we have enough dilithium, marks, doffs and ec to buy all these commodities within 20 hours of filling a project. The projects will get done usually in an hour or two of coming up and are finished daily.
people cried for another set of goals to throw resources at to get better stuff.
the starbase, embassy and rep system is exactly that.
much easier goal than balanced diverse endgame systems with multiple directions of specialisation that doesnt give clear gear advantage.
starbase, embassy and rep system are just the way PW forces you to spend resources for nothing... simply because at the end you have always to pay to get every gear/buff.
When you go shopping, do you pay to enter into the shop?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Well, it's not entirely true that it will take small fleets "forever" with a reduced cost/increased timer project. Small fleets are taking longer regardless. It's a question of where/how you want to spend your time. Would you rather spend your time waiting on a project to finish or would you rather spend your time in an endless grind for resources to put toward projects? Smaller fleets are taking longer due to the time involved with farming resources, especially dilithium with it's 8K per day cap. It's easier/faster for a large fleet to contribute the 200K for special projects. A fleet of 200 people can each contribute 1k and move on. That's a single daily missions worth. A fleet of 5 people needs to contribute 40k a piece, which will take those members longer to obtain.
Were costs reduced, you could move on to do other things while waiting for the timer to finish. I seriously doubt Cryptic will be interested in reducing costs without some method of adding to the completion timer as the length of time required to fully level a starbase was on of the design goals. Reducing costs with while increasing the completion timer doesn't give any fleet an unfair advantage over the other.
Here's another idea: All fleets get a daily stipend of dilithium that go towards projects, say 10,000 per day. This would be a trivial bonus for a large fleet but a great one for a small fleet, yet still fair since ALL fleets get the same stipend. Think of it as your starbase has a "miner" working for it in the background to accumulate dilithium specifically for projects. Cryptic can still sell us lots of dilithium for other stuff, like all that expensive fleet gear!
They should make the projects scalable by fleet size. The smaller fleets should have to gather less items while large fleets have to gather more items in order to complete the projects.
So? It's still free money you can use toward fleet project just for creating a fleet.
What good is a fleet to a single person? What would he or she really get for "free" by building up a starbase using a small stipend alone? It would take a single player a very very long time to get access to anything at all. Even with a stipend building up a starbase is still a grindfest, but a little extra dil would take the edge off for smaller fleets.
Congrats to Levi3 for completing the second upgrade of the T4 starbase solo! Now you have the Eng Fab to go - then the actual tier upgrade if you are crazy enough to waste another 1.8 million dilithium
Crazy - the 3 T4 upgrades themselves are 900k x 3 = 2.7 million - cryptic must love you!
You're still asking for Cryptic to give away 'free money'. A fair amount of free money really, that's 70k Dilithium a week.
Not really, but this thread does support my argument that smaller fleets are suffering due to the inequity of effort needed to build up a starbase. People are abandoning their fleets to join larger ones to avoid the heavy grind.
By the way, I just offer ideas because it's an interesting topic and I like this game. I myself don't run a fleet.
all of my toons are in a relatively small fleet of my choosing, only my 2 PVP toons joined a BIG FLEET.
these 2 toons also contribute to that BIG fleet, play the fleet actions and STF's, chat with folks, and now i have access to everything i want from their shops.
Also, i've found a couple of very nice guys there, which also like PVP, and came to have respect for the leader.
btw - there is the possibility to post to ANY channel with ANY toon, so if you want, you can chat with the folks from both fleets.
also a big fleet holds more surprises in terms of nice people! (at least on KDF side)
all of my toons are in a relatively small fleet of my choosing, only my 2 PVP toons joined a BIG FLEET.
these 2 toons also contribute to that BIG fleet, play the fleet actions and STF's, chat with folks, and now i have access to everything i want from their shops.
Also, i've found a couple of very nice guys there, which also like PVP, and came to have respect for the leader.
btw - there is the possibility to post to ANY channel with ANY toon, so if you want, you can chat with the folks from both fleets.
also a big fleet holds more surprises in terms of nice people! (at least on KDF side)
it is only as difficult as you make it.
Yes and only about 40 days for that nice Fleet B'rel - funny - what will hit first the Rommie faction of Orion's T5 shipyard - darn that 14 day cooldown!
Comments
Worked out it would be about 20 million dilithium and that the embassy would be another 6 million. So between the 3 of us we decided its not really worth it and that kind of a grind was not fun. We had a look to see if we could contribute our resources to a bigger fleet where projects will get done if we don't log in and grind fleet marks and dilithium daily. So we have joined another fleet and we're enjoying different content now and not having to work constantly on the star base.
Now we did manage to get some new members since season 7, two or three of them joined, then practically ignored any communication from the fleet and never contributed, they didn't get access to the stores. We had three other players that did contribute mainly fleet marks but I have a feeling they were starting to get bored with grinding them after a few days.
We usually chatted to people we found that didn't have a fleet and tried to sway them but when they found we were only T3 they just stopped responding to us. We had no drama, no massive rules except be polite to other members and 100k contribution to get access to the store. The problem is with some fleets hitting T5 already very few want to join less than a T4 now and you can see people looking for this in zone chat.
Yes we could have got everything maxed in a year through what felt like an endless oppressive grind but then we would have no fun and who knows what other extensions they'll add (and there's room for at least 3 more) by that time or how much it will cost. Regardless everyone in our fleet followed us to the new fleet, even those returning since leaving in season 7 have transferred over with us.
Just thought I'd share the experience I've had. I wish we could have got to T5 with our own base but it was too much of a grind and we were putting everything in with getting little back from it.
As regards to the OP I've always thought having a limit to joining fleets of a max of 3 fleets a week and scaling projects on numbers of members would have been a better idea. Yes it could have been abused by large organised fleets with hundreds of active members but it would not have been easy.
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.
The problem with scaling projects is that it hurts small fleets with inactive members. I know in the case of my fleet we have a lot of inactive characters that are either the alts of our active members or the characters of friends who used to play but have since quit. With a system like this we'd basically have to boot them all in order to avoid excessive star base costs.
If large numbers go inactive for long periods you could send them a mail saying the fleet is downsizing to reduce costs. Most people would understand and rejoin, if not, well you're a smaller fleet now with reduced costs and manageable projects and upgrades.
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.
I would agree with reduced costs but as far as I can tell the reason projects cost as much as they do and why upgrades have the completion deadlines was so no fleet would advance too fast. However I do not agree that a smaller fleet should have the reduced cost but unlock everything 2-3 times longer. I've come across your proposal before and it would be easier on small fleets but it would also gimp them in the long run as they would still take forever to unlock the new stuff.
Cryptic rejected scaling because (as they said) it was too exploitable, so a large fleet could have a lot of members leave, slot projects at a reduced cost and then they join again to fill them. A limit on number of fleets you could join in a week coupled with scaling would not only have solved the scaling problem but it would also have prevented the bank raiders. However it would still provide opportunities to sell access to large fleets. The real reason this wasn't implemented is the same reason we won't see small fleets getting a break in requirements. Cryptic wants to sell Zen. They want you to buy Zen to convert to dilithium to fill the projects.
There are many ideas and ways to have made it fair and non exploitable but absolutely non of them would create a massive demand for dilithium and get people to buy Zen.
Want to hear another thing they could have done? Have lower costs, longer times like you say but have 1 tier to begin with and it's unlock. Then released T2 after a month. T3 after another 2 months and staggered it that way to prevent too much advancement too fast. If you look at the reasons for why Cryptic did what they did, there are many ways that it could have been done better. If you look at it from a "we need to sell Zen" it supports the current model.
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.
you need to have access to a fleet's provisions to buy fleet gear. My assumption is that you will be blocked from any fleet gear regardless of previous Fleet Credit accumulation as you dont have permission to access a Fleet Provisions pool (by virtue of being fleetless)
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
here's the thing tho, the method i described isnt made obvious by any tooltip or literature by Cryptic. There's always benefit of a doubt because of how this info isnt general knowledge.
Plus, you need to be part of the fleet if you want to buy a fleet ship (and only fleetships)
Your measure would frankly be too simplistic.
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
Frankly there are way too many fleets to begin with, it's way too easy to start a fleet and the current system is working as intended if it's helping to put the mickey mouse operators that can't compete out of business.
Sorry my bad, the ingame channel is called "Public Service" (without the quotes)
thats on me man sorry
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
Either way much happier in a bigger fleet, we contribute what we can but we know that we don't have to go off making sure we have enough dilithium, marks, doffs and ec to buy all these commodities within 20 hours of filling a project. The projects will get done usually in an hour or two of coming up and are finished daily.
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.
starbase, embassy and rep system are just the way PW forces you to spend resources for nothing... simply because at the end you have always to pay to get every gear/buff.
When you go shopping, do you pay to enter into the shop?
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Here's another idea: All fleets get a daily stipend of dilithium that go towards projects, say 10,000 per day. This would be a trivial bonus for a large fleet but a great one for a small fleet, yet still fair since ALL fleets get the same stipend. Think of it as your starbase has a "miner" working for it in the background to accumulate dilithium specifically for projects. Cryptic can still sell us lots of dilithium for other stuff, like all that expensive fleet gear!
The stipend would be allocated to the fleet itself. A player could not use it for anything but a fleet project.
What good is a fleet to a single person? What would he or she really get for "free" by building up a starbase using a small stipend alone? It would take a single player a very very long time to get access to anything at all. Even with a stipend building up a starbase is still a grindfest, but a little extra dil would take the edge off for smaller fleets.
You're still asking for Cryptic to give away 'free money'. A fair amount of free money really, that's 70k Dilithium a week.
Crazy - the 3 T4 upgrades themselves are 900k x 3 = 2.7 million - cryptic must love you!
Not really, but this thread does support my argument that smaller fleets are suffering due to the inequity of effort needed to build up a starbase. People are abandoning their fleets to join larger ones to avoid the heavy grind.
By the way, I just offer ideas because it's an interesting topic and I like this game. I myself don't run a fleet.
PVP in a mostly PVE game could get expensive.
here is how i did this:
all of my toons are in a relatively small fleet of my choosing,
only my 2 PVP toons joined a BIG FLEET.
these 2 toons also contribute to that BIG fleet, play the fleet actions and STF's, chat with folks, and now i have access to everything i want from their shops.
Also, i've found a couple of very nice guys there, which also like PVP, and came to have respect for the leader.
btw - there is the possibility to post to ANY channel with ANY toon, so if you want, you can chat with the folks from both fleets.
also a big fleet holds more surprises in terms of nice people! (at least on KDF side)
it is only as difficult as you make it.
Yes and only about 40 days for that nice Fleet B'rel - funny - what will hit first the Rommie faction of Orion's T5 shipyard - darn that 14 day cooldown!