1) Slavers had their chance to steal goods almost tripled in this patch.
2) Relaunch timers never mattered, because Slavers attempt to steal every 15seconds. Hangars would have to refresh 2x this fast in order to have any impact on their ability to steal loot.
3) The average EC value taken over time has been more than doubled, despite these reductions. It's just far less spikey & inconsistent, now.
4) No individual items have been removed from the drop tables - you can still get DS9 commodities, Contraband and Prisoner Doffs. It's only the odds of receiving large numbers of them that've been reduced.
Hard data! Thanks Bort!
Okay Slavers attempt to steal once every 15 seconds. Assuming that each slaver makes its own attempt at theft just like any other ability with a CD, the odds of success must be extremely low to begin with other wise we'd be pulling loot in by the ton instead of very rarely.
I'm thinking a fraction of a percent. After all every 15 seconds means 4 attempts x the amount of Slavers you are using, lets say one hanger full, which means 24 attempts per minute.
This adds up to 1440 attempts per hour of Slaver Combat. So for if it was 1 percent you should have 14.4 successes which even at thier height of dropping this was never the case.
So successful looting is likely a fraction of a precent, say .1 percent, which ideally would give a successful loot of 1.44 percent an hour. This sounds right to my ears.
So trippling that should be 4.32 percent chance of stealing loot. Logically to keep the same average of loot drops roughly packages of multiple loot have to drop by a third. So drops of rare commidities would drop 1 commody instead of 3.
In my experience most of my loot drops are in some grouping of three 3, 6, 12 (although I never got more then three for a very long time), with the exceptions of EC which might come in at 400 I think sometimes, and prisoner doffs. Not certain about that, I've never stolen a prisoner doff, so I don't know how it comes packaged.
One also has to take in account the seeming swinginess of the system where some get tons and others get little to non for beyond the vairations one would expect.
Hopefully this change in odds with provide for a more even and fair distribution of loot stolen.
Still unknows, the actual chance of a successful steal, I was trying to make an educated guess.
Also unknown is there a different chance of stealing depending on rarity of Slaver, example Elites vs. Advanced? If not the extra types of possible loot could be at the expense of stealing more valueable contraband or preferably common commdities or EC.
Also unknown is are they're any other attributes that effect the odds of stealing, ex. High AUX, Skills, and so on.
One last unknown, but is the stealing of crew, and I'm not talking doffs but just basic crew of which a Galaxy Cruiser has 1000, tied to it own system or is it appart of the normal stealing attempts.
1) Slavers had their chance to steal goods almost tripled in this patch.
2) Relaunch timers never mattered, because Slavers attempt to steal every 15seconds. Hangars would have to refresh 2x this fast in order to have any impact on their ability to steal loot.
3) The average EC value taken over time has been more than doubled, despite these reductions. It's just far less spikey & inconsistent, now.
4) No individual items have been removed from the drop tables - you can still get DS9 commodities, Contraband and Prisoner Doffs. It's only the odds of receiving large numbers of them that've been reduced.
at the rate im getting now i wont even get 2000 cb for the rest of the year.
How do you get 2000 cb?
I get none for along time now (did not play since patch). Even with you getting less Contraband to day, you still are getting way more then I have for months.
You regularly get 20 cb and many of us get none. Even if you use two hangars full to my one, that's way way to swingy. I don't know what would account for that. Crazy Swingy.
One thing that may impact how much your getting is how often there AI malfunctions in general. It may have nothing to do with drop rate if they start acting wonky.
Oh and this blue circle you talk of, is this what's supposed to happen when your Slavers make a steal attempt? I've never seen this. Sometimes rarely they will shoot me with a blue beam, but I can't tell what it does as I don't seem to have stolen anything.
Cryptic lately I have noticed more people playing the Klingon side especially after they found out about the slavers and now people are just going to stop, playing the kdf side and maybe all together; hey Brandon are you out there pass on our messages we want our Orion slavers to do what they were meant to do. :mad:
I get none for along time now (did not play since patch). Even with you getting less Contraband to day, you still are getting way more then I have for months.
You regularly get 20 cb and many of us get none. Even if you use two hangars full to my one, that's way way to swingy. I don't know what would account for that. Crazy Swingy.
One thing that may impact how much your getting is how often there AI malfunctions in general. It may have nothing to do with drop rate if they start acting wonky.
Oh and this blue circle you talk of, is this what's supposed to happen when your Slavers make a steal attempt? I've never seen this. Sometimes rarely they will shoot me with a blue beam, but I can't tell what it does as I don't seem to have stolen anything.
I have had no problem getting contraband until today's patch.
I was getting cb through slavers and duty officer assignments I havent checked the duty officer assignments yet I hope they did not TRIBBLE that up too. I never had 2000 cb at one time, I would save up a couple hundred and then use for dill, and sell some. Also I would give cb to my fed toons because its harder for the fed side to get cb, Now its really going to suck. :eek:
my slavers steal insane amount of items all the time never have Problems with advance or now with elite ones, but my mainuse was for this pets they are the top battle pets they get nerft from 4652 hp to now 2777hp thats crazy!!!!
the best performing battlepet was now destroyed.:mad:
1) Slavers had their chance to steal goods almost tripled in this patch.
2) Relaunch timers never mattered, because Slavers attempt to steal every 15seconds. Hangars would have to refresh 2x this fast in order to have any impact on their ability to steal loot.
3) The average EC value taken over time has been more than doubled, despite these reductions. It's just far less spikey & inconsistent, now.
4) No individual items have been removed from the drop tables - you can still get DS9 commodities, Contraband and Prisoner Doffs. It's only the odds of receiving large numbers of them that've been reduced.
Sat in Japori for an hour, relaunching slavers as needed.
All I stole was 440 EC -.-
Using advanced slavers, not spending FC/Dil on elite ones at this rate. The advantage to using this per was them stealing considering they do almost nothing in DPS. Seeing they are now worthless at stealing anything, just gonna stick with my Interceptors.
slavers have a better dps then interceptors, it was 1 year ago so and now, try it out if you never have done it its simply:
go into infected space elite fly to a free cube over the geerator and let a full 12 fighter wing kill him, you stay 12km away only watch the Show, take the time you will see slavers are much faster then interceptors.
if you try out the elite slavers vs elite interceptors the Differenz will be much bigger coz slavers get a weapon upgrade and interceptors nothing!!!!
ist possible that the elite interceptors do lower dps then advaced one.
i have noticed a ~20-30% higher dps rate on elite slavers vs advanced one about the great Torpedo fire rate.
elite slavers are top-end dps pets, i never use them for item steal its not interesting for me!!!
slavers have a better dps then interceptors, it was 1 year ago so and now, try it out if you never have done it its simply:
go into infected space elite fly to a free cube over the geerator and let a full 12 fighter wing kill him, you stay 12km away only watch the Show, take the time you will see slavers are much faster then interceptors.
if you try out the elite slavers vs elite interceptors the Differenz will be much bigger coz slavers get a weapon upgrade and interceptors nothing!!!!
ist possible that the elite interceptors do lower dps then advaced one.
i have noticed a ~20-30% higher dps rate on elite slavers vs advanced one about the great Torpedo fire rate.
elite slavers are top-end dps pets, i never use them for item steal its not interesting for me!!!
I'm not using Interceptors for DPS, I'm using them for the drains and debuffs. I fly a Fleet Corsair, so pets slowing things down and hitting those annoying heavies in STFs are more helpful. Plus, since its a tank build, the Interceptors draining weapons help me live longer.
When I stated the advantage of Slavers vs their disavantage of overall dps. It wasn't a statement meaning Interceptors deal more DPS. I meant purely for utility, Interceptor DPS is also low compared to say Scorps. However I use my pets for utility, not DPS.
just a little heads up.. its now 7:50PM..
starting from about 11am.. i now have 16 contraband..
if they dont fix this the price of contraband will be over 1m each soon.
[12:35] Vessel Two of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 225232 (271723) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Lance.
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
i think i might have figured out why we arent getting much CB and i think i know where the error is..
before, i got CB in stacks of 4 or 6.. mostly 6..
today i am only getting CB in stacks of 1..
so, i got 17 CB in the few hours of game play that i usually get over 100.. and its not the drop rate that is busted..
17x6 is 102...
so yesterday i got 102, today i get 17..
this needs fixed.
[12:35] Vessel Two of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 225232 (271723) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Lance.
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
i think i might have figured out why we arent getting much CB and i think i know where the error is..
before, i got CB in stacks of 4 or 6.. mostly 6..
today i am only getting CB in stacks of 1..
so, i got 17 CB in the few hours of game play that i usually get over 100.. and its not the drop rate that is busted..
17x6 is 102...
so yesterday i got 102, today i get 17..
this needs fixed.
Per the Dev:
"4) No individual items have been removed from the drop tables - you can still get DS9 commodities, Contraband and Prisoner Doffs. It's only the odds of receiving large numbers of them that've been reduced."
You are absolutely correct that the number dropped that changed. Intentionally. They are well aware of the change.
The question is, do they understand how dramatically nerfed this really is and how it affects the value and utility of a very unique game asset. As you have presented the figures, this is an 84% (17/102) reduction in contraband quantities. Was that truly the intent?
Before this last patch I was getting between 10-25 Contraband an Hour from my slavers on Elite mode, now after 2 1/2 hours I have gotten nothing. Anyone else having this problem? I tried first on my mirror Vo'Quv and then switched to my regular Vo'quv.
Ok after over 3 hours i get 1 Contraband this is not even close to equal as to what it was by 3 hours i normally have between 30 on a bad day to 75 on a very good day of contraband
so, i got 17 CB in the few hours of game play that i usually get over 100.. and its not the drop rate that is busted..
this needs fixed.
you get free CB for doing nothing!!!!! and crying about that? sorry i dont see a reason for fix a free item get Funktion, if i Need CB i do some marauding doff missins an get tonns of them.
i got today in 1 hour spae missions ~20 CB and thats to much!!!!
i vote for delete completely the funktion of random item get for free on slavers, so the stupid TRIBBLE i will have insane amount of items for free will stop!!!!
you get free CB for doing nothing!!!!! and crying about that? sorry i dont see a reason for fix a free item get Funktion, if i Need CB i do some marauding doff missins an get tonns of them.
i got today in 1 hour spae missions ~20 CB and thats to much!!!!
i vote for delete completely the funktion of random item get for free on slavers, so the stupid TRIBBLE i will have insane amount of items for free will stop!!!!
You do realize that you only get Contraband with the Advanced and Elite Orion Slavers, right? You know, the ones that cost dilithium... or Fleet Marks and dilithium? As in: not free. Personally, the Contraband drop is the primary reason I invested in them, and I would like to receive meaningful results for that investment.
While my opinion differs from yours, I do have a suggestion: If you have no interest in Contraband or other commodities, I suggest putting them into your Fleet Bank (if not directly into Fleet Projects). I am sure your fleetmates would appreciate it, and it would hasten your own access to higher quality Fleet equipment, ships and personnel by improving your fleet's overall progress.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Cryptic lately I have noticed more people playing the Klingon side especially after they found out about the slavers and now people are just going to stop, playing the kdf side and maybe all together; hey Brandon are you out there pass on our messages we want our Orion slavers to do what they were meant to do. :mad:
Im still going to play KDF, my Ferisan rules in ground warfare! Plus I have alot more going on then grinding on this side. I did try them, and no prisoners or contraband, but I admit at least I am getting some drops again. Nothing to help with my fleets dilithium demands though...but drops none the less. Ill browse these forums to see if anyone else is having better luck then me, im going to stick with my dps fighters until then. ..+30k dilithium too each for them... =T.T=
and slavers are still better than other fighters even without the contraband stealing.
anyway, like i said on the first paqe,
"obvious and predictable.
the bonus to dil farming via contraband that slavers provided on top of being competent fighter pets was an outstanding advantage in farming rates to those using them.
myself included.
as is the case with any obvious advantage, it needs addressed so that it is balanced against other options. be that by direct numbers, or in non numerical comparisons."
This is only true of Elite Slavers, at Advanced Interceptors are straight up better at combat, more damage and great debuffs. Elite Interceptors get even better at debuffing/cc, but Elite Slavers get a massive buff in damage.
I'd say Elite Slavers are on par or better for dps then Elite Scorpions now. They constantly fire photons vs. Scorpions hy torps every 30 seconds, disruptor beam array vs. Turret and Quantum mines vs. Nearly non functional dual cannons.
Still a descent drop rate would be great. I'm not greedily just half descent.
I actually bought my Elite Slavers mostly for the flavour, but I do enjoy them.
I'd say Elite Slavers are on par or better for dps then Elite Scorpions now. They constantly fire photons vs. Scorpions hy torps every 30 seconds, disruptor beam array vs. Turret and Quantum mines vs. Nearly non functional dual cannons.
i dont take the exactly cube kill times from this two fighters, but its possible that elite slavers are at Moment the best performing battlepets in the game.
thats why i say i give nothing on the loot or not loot or low loot TRIBBLE, you get a impressive battle-pet!!!!!
i vote to delete the steal Option from all slavers so the stupid discusion will end.
The stealing and crew capture are the key part of the flavour, they're raiders first and for most.
Here is how I see the progression of abilities in slavers.
Basic Slavers are armed with Distruptor beam arrays to help distrupt an area of the shields long enough fof thier advanced sensors and transporters to lock onto random crew man and random commodities and teleport them out. The mines are a discouragement from someone they raided from following to get there crew back, drop and fly.
In Advanced Slavers use Quantum mines for a bugger explosion and faster mines of hitting faster pursors. The transporters and sensors have become more advanced and detect the signatures of illegal contraband substances.
And finally Elite Slavers. They have super advanced transporters and sensors so they can detect the harder to find rare commodities and can even detect different individuals to some degree in order to capture mlre valuable targets at least some of the time. The Photon Torps are for those the mines fail to discourage. Dead people can't hunt you down.
i just wish they announced this in a way that sounded like a nerf.. instead "Orion Slavers now have a better chance to raid enemy vessels during combat. However, their rewards have been decreased in order to keep the average value of goods approximately the same as it was before." which is BS..
i wouldnt have sold my entire stock pile of CB if i knew this.. prices on the EX has almost doubled..
[12:35] Vessel Two of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 225232 (271723) Plasma Damage to you with Plasma Lance.
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
i just wish they announced this in a way that sounded like a nerf.. instead "1) Slavers had their chance to steal goods almost tripled in this patch." which is BS..
i wouldnt have sold my entire stock pile of CB if i knew this.. prices on the EX has almost doubled..
Also - were the HP of the slavers nerfed too? What's the deal with that?
Comments
Hard data! Thanks Bort!
Okay Slavers attempt to steal once every 15 seconds. Assuming that each slaver makes its own attempt at theft just like any other ability with a CD, the odds of success must be extremely low to begin with other wise we'd be pulling loot in by the ton instead of very rarely.
I'm thinking a fraction of a percent. After all every 15 seconds means 4 attempts x the amount of Slavers you are using, lets say one hanger full, which means 24 attempts per minute.
This adds up to 1440 attempts per hour of Slaver Combat. So for if it was 1 percent you should have 14.4 successes which even at thier height of dropping this was never the case.
So successful looting is likely a fraction of a precent, say .1 percent, which ideally would give a successful loot of 1.44 percent an hour. This sounds right to my ears.
So trippling that should be 4.32 percent chance of stealing loot. Logically to keep the same average of loot drops roughly packages of multiple loot have to drop by a third. So drops of rare commidities would drop 1 commody instead of 3.
In my experience most of my loot drops are in some grouping of three 3, 6, 12 (although I never got more then three for a very long time), with the exceptions of EC which might come in at 400 I think sometimes, and prisoner doffs. Not certain about that, I've never stolen a prisoner doff, so I don't know how it comes packaged.
One also has to take in account the seeming swinginess of the system where some get tons and others get little to non for beyond the vairations one would expect.
Hopefully this change in odds with provide for a more even and fair distribution of loot stolen.
Still unknows, the actual chance of a successful steal, I was trying to make an educated guess.
Also unknown is there a different chance of stealing depending on rarity of Slaver, example Elites vs. Advanced? If not the extra types of possible loot could be at the expense of stealing more valueable contraband or preferably common commdities or EC.
Also unknown is are they're any other attributes that effect the odds of stealing, ex. High AUX, Skills, and so on.
One last unknown, but is the stealing of crew, and I'm not talking doffs but just basic crew of which a Galaxy Cruiser has 1000, tied to it own system or is it appart of the normal stealing attempts.
How do you get 2000 cb?
I get none for along time now (did not play since patch). Even with you getting less Contraband to day, you still are getting way more then I have for months.
You regularly get 20 cb and many of us get none. Even if you use two hangars full to my one, that's way way to swingy. I don't know what would account for that. Crazy Swingy.
One thing that may impact how much your getting is how often there AI malfunctions in general. It may have nothing to do with drop rate if they start acting wonky.
Oh and this blue circle you talk of, is this what's supposed to happen when your Slavers make a steal attempt? I've never seen this. Sometimes rarely they will shoot me with a blue beam, but I can't tell what it does as I don't seem to have stolen anything.
I have had no problem getting contraband until today's patch.
the best performing battlepet was now destroyed.:mad:
Sat in Japori for an hour, relaunching slavers as needed.
All I stole was 440 EC -.-
Using advanced slavers, not spending FC/Dil on elite ones at this rate. The advantage to using this per was them stealing considering they do almost nothing in DPS. Seeing they are now worthless at stealing anything, just gonna stick with my Interceptors.
go into infected space elite fly to a free cube over the geerator and let a full 12 fighter wing kill him, you stay 12km away only watch the Show, take the time you will see slavers are much faster then interceptors.
if you try out the elite slavers vs elite interceptors the Differenz will be much bigger coz slavers get a weapon upgrade and interceptors nothing!!!!
ist possible that the elite interceptors do lower dps then advaced one.
i have noticed a ~20-30% higher dps rate on elite slavers vs advanced one about the great Torpedo fire rate.
elite slavers are top-end dps pets, i never use them for item steal its not interesting for me!!!
I'm not using Interceptors for DPS, I'm using them for the drains and debuffs. I fly a Fleet Corsair, so pets slowing things down and hitting those annoying heavies in STFs are more helpful. Plus, since its a tank build, the Interceptors draining weapons help me live longer.
When I stated the advantage of Slavers vs their disavantage of overall dps. It wasn't a statement meaning Interceptors deal more DPS. I meant purely for utility, Interceptor DPS is also low compared to say Scorps. However I use my pets for utility, not DPS.
starting from about 11am.. i now have 16 contraband..
if they dont fix this the price of contraband will be over 1m each soon.
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
lol i wouldnt call a few million ec extra for playing something i was going to play for dilthium anyway insignficant.
i went from getting around 5 mil ec a week easy just from selling contraband from slavers to 0 ec
but hey i guess if the devs say its working fine it must be
before, i got CB in stacks of 4 or 6.. mostly 6..
today i am only getting CB in stacks of 1..
so, i got 17 CB in the few hours of game play that i usually get over 100.. and its not the drop rate that is busted..
17x6 is 102...
so yesterday i got 102, today i get 17..
this needs fixed.
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
Per the Dev:
"4) No individual items have been removed from the drop tables - you can still get DS9 commodities, Contraband and Prisoner Doffs. It's only the odds of receiving large numbers of them that've been reduced."
You are absolutely correct that the number dropped that changed. Intentionally. They are well aware of the change.
The question is, do they understand how dramatically nerfed this really is and how it affects the value and utility of a very unique game asset. As you have presented the figures, this is an 84% (17/102) reduction in contraband quantities. Was that truly the intent?
you get free CB for doing nothing!!!!! and crying about that? sorry i dont see a reason for fix a free item get Funktion, if i Need CB i do some marauding doff missins an get tonns of them.
i got today in 1 hour spae missions ~20 CB and thats to much!!!!
i vote for delete completely the funktion of random item get for free on slavers, so the stupid TRIBBLE i will have insane amount of items for free will stop!!!!
You do realize that you only get Contraband with the Advanced and Elite Orion Slavers, right? You know, the ones that cost dilithium... or Fleet Marks and dilithium? As in: not free. Personally, the Contraband drop is the primary reason I invested in them, and I would like to receive meaningful results for that investment.
While my opinion differs from yours, I do have a suggestion: If you have no interest in Contraband or other commodities, I suggest putting them into your Fleet Bank (if not directly into Fleet Projects). I am sure your fleetmates would appreciate it, and it would hasten your own access to higher quality Fleet equipment, ships and personnel by improving your fleet's overall progress.
it seems they don't care or maybe its even a "feature"
Im still going to play KDF, my Ferisan rules in ground warfare! Plus I have alot more going on then grinding on this side. I did try them, and no prisoners or contraband, but I admit at least I am getting some drops again. Nothing to help with my fleets dilithium demands though...but drops none the less. Ill browse these forums to see if anyone else is having better luck then me, im going to stick with my dps fighters until then. ..+30k dilithium too each for them... =T.T=
This is only true of Elite Slavers, at Advanced Interceptors are straight up better at combat, more damage and great debuffs. Elite Interceptors get even better at debuffing/cc, but Elite Slavers get a massive buff in damage.
I'd say Elite Slavers are on par or better for dps then Elite Scorpions now. They constantly fire photons vs. Scorpions hy torps every 30 seconds, disruptor beam array vs. Turret and Quantum mines vs. Nearly non functional dual cannons.
Still a descent drop rate would be great. I'm not greedily just half descent.
I actually bought my Elite Slavers mostly for the flavour, but I do enjoy them.
i dont take the exactly cube kill times from this two fighters, but its possible that elite slavers are at Moment the best performing battlepets in the game.
thats why i say i give nothing on the loot or not loot or low loot TRIBBLE, you get a impressive battle-pet!!!!!
i vote to delete the steal Option from all slavers so the stupid discusion will end.
Here is how I see the progression of abilities in slavers.
Basic Slavers are armed with Distruptor beam arrays to help distrupt an area of the shields long enough fof thier advanced sensors and transporters to lock onto random crew man and random commodities and teleport them out. The mines are a discouragement from someone they raided from following to get there crew back, drop and fly.
In Advanced Slavers use Quantum mines for a bugger explosion and faster mines of hitting faster pursors. The transporters and sensors have become more advanced and detect the signatures of illegal contraband substances.
And finally Elite Slavers. They have super advanced transporters and sensors so they can detect the harder to find rare commodities and can even detect different individuals to some degree in order to capture mlre valuable targets at least some of the time. The Photon Torps are for those the mines fail to discourage. Dead people can't hunt you down.
i wouldnt have sold my entire stock pile of CB if i knew this.. prices on the EX has almost doubled..
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
Also - were the HP of the slavers nerfed too? What's the deal with that?