I am in a 5/3/3 totally completed fleet on FED side... but a 4/2/2 about halfway done on the KDF side.
The doffs are killing us, again =/
I honestly wish those of us that have completed one on either side could just... use the TRIBBLE from both sides. Know what I am saying? its like double duty =/
You can with the doffs. I don't know how many Klingons have been ground into paste to fuel my Fed Base, or how many Vulcans and Tellarites have faced similar ends on my Klingon Base. Doff contribution needs a better interface.
Could be worse, we could be using the interface they ORIGINALLY gave us.
Our small bases both fed and kdf only progress as fast as they do because the few of u grind our asses off and all have multiple farming alts. Also, one of the guys spends real money to get EC and Dil. And we buy marks in the tens of thousands from mark farmers.
As far as motivating members to contribute, well TRIBBLE, I'm happy if they just stick around for a while let alone contribute at all. Things I think work though: taking a "get what you give" mentality with your members. Thanking them personally for any contributions they give no matter how small. Giving them stuff. Earlier on, my fleet founder gave me a Mobius as a gesture of thanks for my contributions so far. I felt obligated to not only stick around longer, but also to contribute more. It felt good and I wanted to give back. Guilt is a powerful tool. Ask catholics. lol
Having a set program for meaningful promotions and store access.
Bonding with your fleet members in TeamSpeak or other voice channel, doing stf's, PvP with them, etc. while on TS is a great time to say hey "can we please do blah" or "I'd really like to do A and if we can they we can do B". So things to boost commraderie with end in more players sticking around and also contributing.
Commodities aint cheap (even at the cheap vendors or embassy)
Dilithium is limited release over time
Doffs are a huge PITA to get (30k each, or you have to spend your previous fleet credits to get more, or wait 2-4 days at a time to get like 10)
There are your reasons.
Oh and I have probably put 2-3 million of my fleet credits back into the fleets I am in, just to help fill doff stuff. =/ (doffs are universally the last thing to get done because they are the hardest thing to get a lot of)
They really need to do something particularly about the duty officers. They are way too time gated.
Indeed Doffs seem to be the big hitching point in my fleet's projects as well..... dil/embasy provisions not so much so (as I usually will just fill them myself spending my own FC as I have millions in FC. I tend to push as much into dil as possible..... my Rom has maxed tiered on everything, so she has pretty much become a good dil farming source as I can turn marks into dil ore, leaving my only limit on it being how much I can refine per day.
I maintain 225 doff slots, normally filed to ~190..... mostly blue and purple at this point (a few greens). All commons go to fleet holding projects.
Overall fleet holdings generally are not bad when everyone contributes a little... but it does neem overwhelming when only a few are.... It would be better if people just contributed, even if it is a little..... every little bit helps.... and alot of people contributing a little can add upt oa lot.
OVeral it is a mentality problem..... most people aren't playing this game to interact with others, but only for themselves.
I am among the top 3-5 contributors in my fleet and I recently made it known that after our current set of upgrades is done I will be stopping for a while.
The base is T3 and creeping very slowly toward T4 Engineering.
The Embassy is T2 and about one-fifth toward T3 in both sub lines.
The mine has just started the T2 trade upgrades.
I've neglected my personal gear for quite some time in favor of the various fleet projects, time to make a change.
Because those other items cost money, and money is hard to come buy on a limited time to play every day. Marks you can earn in missions, and drops are random and typically suck. Thats why mainly.
The second difficulty is that a number of my fleeties do not understand how to get massive quantities of doffs. They are unaware of the fleet doff vendor; nor are they aware that you can make money by selling doffs the fleet does not need (engineering and tac doffs)(1) while cracking down Colonial Support chain doffs (2).
This is my issue. I use the doff system but I don't travel around for doff missions - I just do the ones that come up where I'm at. Honestly, I have no clue how people come up with the boatload of doffs for these assignments, and I haven't put in the time to figure out how best to get doffs. The Doffjobs channel seems more like a game-wide ESD zone chat (minus the gorn jokes) than anything else (very cliquish). The few times I've asked questions there I got snarky answers or none at all.
Usually when I go to donate doffs I have 3-5 of the type needed, if that (and as I don't really use the system, I don't have uncommon+ doffs, either. Those 3-5 are usually all I've got of that category).
Oddly, dilithium is much easier to come by for me than doffs (as an aside, if anyone could point me to a doff resource explaining where/how to best use the doff system, I'd appreciate it). Marks, dil, and EC stuff I all contribute when needed. The doffs kill me, though.
Star Trek: Online - Now with 100% more dinosaurs!!
its quite obvious that fleet starbases were created mainly as something to force people to buy zen and turn into dil, and it worked amazingly.
sure people "wanted" a fleetbase, but i'm pretty sure they didn't want the absurd requirements.
when you're asking the average player who probably barely makes any dil/EC a day, and you put a 1000 dil price on the doff box you could get for free before, is it really any surprise the average player won't contribute or will barely contribute?
Fleet Marks don't hurt people at all to donate, and are the easiest thing to collect if you are willing to put a little time into it in whatever form you choose. FMs are needed only for the fleet holdings, so people have few qualms about donating them.
Dil is dil, and most need it for Rep-based stuff, or buy other things that need dil, or they want to get Zen out of it.
Commodities cost EC irregardless of how you get them. And in large amounts it's extra painful.
DOFFs cost either ECs or FCs. Pure and simple. Generating DOFFs have also been made much more difficult to do than in the past.
FMs don't hurt people, the other stuff does. Heck, even Expertise on the final upgrades for the Embassy and Dil Mine can be difficult to fill with how much you need.
Something else I've noticed is that some fleets (and don't get on my case if your fleet doesn't do this, obviously I don't mean all fleets) overextend themselves by trying to slot way too much projects that they simply don't have the resources for; heck, when I wrote my Starbase guide I even put in a specific note about slotting only what your fleet can handle.
A lot of people also have the mentality of 'I need to put in a lot of commodities/DOFFs/dil or else it just doesn't matter or help the fleet'. Which is entirely the wrong thought to have, and probably isn't at all the point of what Cryptic was trying to do when they made the fleet system. If anything they were thinking of everyone doing a little bit on the projects.
Like one person taking a moment and donating 10 DOFFs that they bought with FCs, then another donating a few more, and so on. So people split the burden of it, the entire point of the system I think, instead of one poor soul taking a large hit to EC or FCs to fill a project.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
There are ways to get around the dilithium shortages, mainly by using alt accounts and resource transfers.
The issue I have with DOFFs is that they are not convenient to get - I need to either have exchange access or some floating around which are not active or on assignment. Basically, I need to do at least 3 times as much "work" to donate a doff then to acquire commodities, FM or dilithium, as the latter two come from missions which give gear and expertise as well, both of which are needed for either EC or the rep grind.
I just recently donated 100 white uncommon doffs for a base project. I purchased these from the base thinking it would be easier than the exchange.
My God, whoever decided to put each individual doff in a box needs to be taken out back.
I lost count of how many clicks it took to buy, confirm, open and donate.
Can't they make a box with 25 / 50 / 100 ??
This is a reason why players won't contribute doffs.
Because my fleet leaders keep doing stupid things and don't seem to understand concepts like budgeting or a spreadsheet. Prioritizing the dil discount on the mine instead of elite cores. Queuing up T5 tac projects when we're just 5k xp away from Elite Fleet Shields. Loading up the dumbazz cosmetic projects when there are facility upgrades in need of resources. If someone wants my resources they need to prove they're going to use them responsibly, or else no.
What's sad is the fed fleet I'm in has a hard time even collecting Fleet Marks I fill in 1/2 the project requirements and it takes months for the other active half dozen fleeties to come up with the other 1/2. Since I'm soloing a fleet for my two kdf factioned alts it feels like I'm going to have to build one and a half starbases by myself.
Lets see Dilithium is valuable for getting gear or selling for Zen in addition the amount of Fleet Credits you get for donating Dilithium is way to small being a ratio of 1 Fleet Credit for 1 Dilithium.
>New projects starts
>FM and Expertise filled within seconds
>No doffs whatsoever, sometimes even for days
Dilithium I could understand, as it's a precious resource which people may want for themselves, but it's honestly driving me crazy seeing all the FM filled almost immediatelly, yet none of the people who filled it ever bother to buy duty officer packs for the FC they've earned...
I don't want to blame anyone particular, as my fleets do have many casual players who just cannot afford a bigger dilithium investment or don't have enough doff slots, but there are also those who don't seem to realise they're doing more harm than good with their actions.
Sadly, there are also those who just wait for others to contribue everything. The worst part about it is that fleet leaders cannot control it - they can only check the overall players' contribution to a fleet, but cannot control what exactly and in what amounts they've contributed. Same goes for fleet provisions - you can't see who used them, when, and how many, which really makes the fleet leader job difficult.
From my point of view Fleet Marks are a very easy to get and give a lot of fleet credit. Fleet Marks can only be used on fleet projects. Dilithium can be very time consuming to earn or expensive in real life money to buy and it gives very little fleet credit. Plus Dilithium is used to buy most high end gear and in the crafting process (for all that is worth). Dilithium is the most needed and useful resource in the game, but while large quantities of it are needed for fleet projects the credit given for donating it is small and on top of that you need dilithium to buy fleet equipment.
1 Fleet Mark = 50 Fleet credits
1 Dilithium = 1 Fleet credit
Doffs can be time consuming to get, store, donate, and move around.
Commodities are just a pain to buy.
I donate what I feel like when I can. At the end of the day the fleet I am in is not my fleet and I can be removed at any time for any reason. Frankly if I don't trust the people who run the fleet I am not giving them all my dilithium whenever I have it. Just because someone gives a lot to a fleet it does not give them any protection from that fleet. I haven't been in a fleet where I felt like anything other than a milk cow. It is not a fun experience for me and the only reason I do it at all is to get better gear.
Indeed, I don't contribute many fleet marks, unless it is to simply finish a project off.... I hope that if I leave them open for others they may contribute and gain FC to use to buy doffs for fleet projects.... futile.
But overall it's the issue... people don't do things for the fleet.... they do things for themselves.... it's about what they can get out of it.... and not about what they can contribute for the benefit of the fleet as a whole. And there is really no way of fixing it, except maybe just making it harder for people to be as selfish with it, and encourage people to engage in their own fleet contributions.... like maybe limit the ability to buy things from others fleet SB's.
One of my big hang ups was always it seemed like I was building a starbase for somebody else....and recent fleet drama among other fleets further reinforces my misgivings....
Plus a majority of the resources required to upgrade a starbase, as others have echoed, I need for myself - dilithium for example, or I ran out of white doffs and had no more room.
I don't know if anyone's suggested, but you can always do what our fleet does: set up fleet ranks w/ varying degrees of access to the bank and fleet provisioning. Then, tie the fleet ranks to fleet credits earned. Sure, the FM and expertise will continue to be filled first, but if members want to access the shinies, they will be forced to contribute other needed items.
Regarding commodities and doffs, is it possible members don't know some of the best ways to obtain (ie, searching price per unit on commodities, buying doff mini packs from lockboxes, running academy doff recruitment missions, buying doffs from opposite faction, etc)?
As others have said, the main problem will be dil as it's also needed for personal items in the Rep store and dil exchange. Not much can be done except recommending the most efficient ways to get dil. Perhaps for future recruits only consider candidates that have achieved the top tier in at least 1 reputation (the thought being if they've reached the highest rep level, chances are they've probably already acquired the rep gear they wanted and spent the dil they would spend on it).
I contribute lots of doffs, but I'm currently stuck doing so as I've no more roster space and there have been no projects requiring the countless Eng and Ops doffs I have.. hopefully the Spire holding will have some. I only contribute a small amount of dilithium, the remains of what I have at the end of the day that round down my total to a nice even number (say if I had 1,003,476 dil, I'd contribute 3476)... it's too valuable to give massive chunks of though.
How is any fleet supposed to progress its starbase if people are only willing to part with Fleet marks?
It's seems that most Star Bases have come to a grinding halt or slow crawl - but already I talk to many people in many fleets and no-one except a tiny tiny few want to actually put in anything but fleet marks.
That leaves the bulk of the "real" work to just a few.
Now we have a new holding coming - which will add to the problem again.
So how do you get people to put in the massive amounts of dilithium/ EC /Commodities /doffs that are required when you move past T4 ??
Don't come in this thread with insulting comments like: recruit more people - that in itself is difficult and another full time job that many people don't like. Or: "starbases are long-term projects" sorry most players DON"T think long term and are looking around for right now - and why shouldn't they - this is a game - not a life or a career!!
So what is the solution - or are Starbases just another waste?
With Many fleets offering free access to T5 bases for gear - why build out your own? After a few hundred thousand fleet marks you have enough for any gear a toon could need.
So Solutions? Ideas?
There is a simple solution. Cryptic should consolidate the 5 omega, tholian, and the rommie rep tree tiers into 3. It would still take a while to complete your reputation but it would only take 3/4 as many resources before. From there, Cryptic could keep making improvements. If you've finished a tree on one character, you should get discounts on that same rep tree with any secondary character.
Also, don't forget that one of the most attractive aspects of this game was alting because it was relatively easy to do and it would help keep the game fresh for a lot of us. However, alting is slowly dying. What's more, if Cryptic keeps on piling on new rep trees without some consolidation, you're going to see fleet mates shirking a lot more. All small fleets will evaporate, and we'll be left with a handful of mega fleets for each of the few factions. This is already happening to a certain extent. Fleet's can only do so much to create incentives so that people continue to give and participate. You can persuade/coerce fleet mates into contributing resources, but at some point you're going to alienate them and that's if the endless grind hasn't already alienated them. So yeah, at this point, I think only Cryptic can remedy this situation.
How is any fleet supposed to progress its starbase if people are only willing to part with Fleet marks?
It's seems that most Star Bases have come to a grinding halt or slow crawl - but already I talk to many people in many fleets and no-one except a tiny tiny few want to actually put in anything but fleet marks.
That leaves the bulk of the "real" work to just a few.
Now we have a new holding coming - which will add to the problem again.
So how do you get people to put in the massive amounts of dilithium/ EC /Commodities /doffs that are required when you move past T4 ??
Don't come in this thread with insulting comments like: recruit more people - that in itself is difficult and another full time job that many people don't like. Or: "starbases are long-term projects" sorry most players DON"T think long term and are looking around for right now - and why shouldn't they - this is a game - not a life or a career!!
So what is the solution - or are Starbases just another waste?
With Many fleets offering free access to T5 bases for gear - why build out your own? After a few hundred thousand fleet marks you have enough for any gear a toon could need.
So Solutions? Ideas?
The thing to remember is that most of the members of our fleets are F2Pers and will generally chose to hold on to their Dilithium to use for their personal needs.
The Daily Refining limit on Dilithium is also a major factor when it comes to Dilithium Hording.
Instead of a limit of 8000 refined Dilithium per day Cryptic should let us refine 56k Dilithium per week.
The limit on Energy Credits for F2P users can also contributes to Dilithium Hording; however, knowledgeable F2P users know that they can simply remove the Energy Credit Cap by converting Dilithium to Zen and then buying the 1 Billion Ec cap but not all F2P users understand this.
Dilithium becomes much more important to the F2P users that do not remove the EC cap because it then becomes their only way to get Lock Box Keys and useful high end equipment.
In most cases the 100 Doff limit can be contributed to one of the main reasons that some players are not contributing Doffs to Fleet Projects.
Players that do not invest in expanding their doff limit generally only have Uncommon-Vary Rare Doffs on their rosters and do not have the space for common doffs.
The lack of contributing Commodities to Fleet Projects can also be linked to the lack of having Energy Credits.
Commodities can be quite expensive if you don?t know where they can be purchased at the lowest possible price or have access to a Cell Ship or the like.
I would suggest polling members of your fleet to see how many are F2P users and to see how knowledgeable they are about working around the F2P matrix.
The lack of contributions could be the result of F2P players just not understanding how they could be using their Dilithium to their overall advantage or they could just be Fleet Leaches waiting for someone else to do all the work for them.
I gave a lot to my KDF fleet to get my K'Tinga. After that I stopped due to my dil was going for gear upgrades. And to purchase the Vor'cha. Other things came up first than helping the fleet. Since then they have died out as well.
I don't do Fleet stuff to gain Fleet credits to use. So I was doing the rest with Dil or using EC for the other items needed. I just got done with the stuff I wanted. So I plan on giving to the fleet again if they have projects up.
Same goes for my Fed and Romulan they are in. I'm using EC and Dil for equipment upgrades. So I'm not helping on them either for now.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Here is my idea for a new approach to the Fleet economy.
I offer this idea freely to the Devs if they find it interesting and/or useful.
The goal is to create a balanced system that is equally fair to all fleet sizes and avoids the massive grinds for specific items that the current system is overloaded with.
1: Throw the current contribution system and all of its requirements out the airlock and forget about it. Project durations will be maintained however.
2: Place a Fleet Resource Coordinator (FRC) on the base.
3: Donate any and all items, DOffs, BOffs and select currencies to the FRC to be converted into Fleet Resources (FR). The amount of FR generated will depend on the quality/rarity of the donated item(s)/currency and the total available is stored numerically in the Fleet Bank in the same manner as ECs. These would likely be a cap on the total FRs banked, but probably high enough to not be a serious issue.
4: Players receive Fleet Credits (FC) for donations to the FRC. The amount of FC generated will depend on the quality/rarity of the donated item(s)/currency.
5: Reset all projects to use FR rather than the specific items currently required.
6: Any fleet member normally able to contribute to fleet projects can allocate FR to a scheduled project.
This system will remove bottlenecks created by specific item requirements.
The broader base of items/currencies available for donation would allow smaller fleets to achieve development goals more quickly and easily.
The retained time-gates on projects will maintain advancement balance regardless of fleet size. Small fleets will still take longer to complete projects simple because they have fewer donations overall in comparison to larger fleets.
This system also makes canceling a project, even a fully funded one, a non-issue. The allocated FR is simply returned to the bank to await reallocation. This is exploit-proof as the players receive FCs when items are donated and converted into FRs, not when items are donated to specific projects.
This would also allow players to gain FCs when there are no projects running, allowing them to purchase items from the fleet stores more easily.
I'll chime in and agree with most people on this, that the problem with contributing Dilithium is that you need it, in HUGE quantities, for just about everything, and at purple MKXII levels you're talking about 30,000 dil EACH. Figure that the CE only gives 50k for 14 days of play, and if you get perfect on the mine, with the super-mining section, you only get 6k, that's still 5 days of grinding, to just get the 30k you need for one piece of MKXII gear.
Fleet stores are almost just as bad (what 20k a pop?) so basically after a week of grinding dilithium I now have a choice, one piece of gear, or help out the fleet. Then there's the worst of it, you give to the fleet, don't get the new shiny piece of equipment, and realize had you gotten your new piece of equipment, your grind would have been easier if you're doing Breen missions and CE and STFs, and you get almost no tangible from giving it to the Fleet, because then the fleet decides to run projects you have zero interest in.
It is possible to both A) contribute and save for personal gear at the same time.
Not how I play. Since I only play a few hours per week. Due to life, family, work. It took me 2 months to build up 120k for my Vor'cha to purchase from the Dil store. Also I bought a K'Tinga from the Fleet. That sucker costed way more than the 120k I put in for the Vor'cha. Not to mention the amount of EC as well. I really wanted the ship. So I did what I had to do to get it. After this no more, its not worth it.
So in reality unless I can use EC to contribute. They are not getting my dil since I'm using it.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I agree with some, small fleets its a pain. Due to the prices are too high. So eventually the others just give up. Cause it takes too long, or they get tired of it. Then it stalls out. Larger fleets don't have this problem cause many are active on giving.
Some has stated this before that this really hurts the smaller fleets.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Comments
You can with the doffs. I don't know how many Klingons have been ground into paste to fuel my Fed Base, or how many Vulcans and Tellarites have faced similar ends on my Klingon Base. Doff contribution needs a better interface.
Could be worse, we could be using the interface they ORIGINALLY gave us.
As far as motivating members to contribute, well TRIBBLE, I'm happy if they just stick around for a while let alone contribute at all. Things I think work though: taking a "get what you give" mentality with your members. Thanking them personally for any contributions they give no matter how small. Giving them stuff.
Having a set program for meaningful promotions and store access.
Bonding with your fleet members in TeamSpeak or other voice channel, doing stf's, PvP with them, etc. while on TS is a great time to say hey "can we please do blah" or "I'd really like to do A and if we can they we can do B". So things to boost commraderie with end in more players sticking around and also contributing.
Indeed Doffs seem to be the big hitching point in my fleet's projects as well..... dil/embasy provisions not so much so (as I usually will just fill them myself spending my own FC as I have millions in FC. I tend to push as much into dil as possible..... my Rom has maxed tiered on everything, so she has pretty much become a good dil farming source as I can turn marks into dil ore, leaving my only limit on it being how much I can refine per day.
I maintain 225 doff slots, normally filed to ~190..... mostly blue and purple at this point (a few greens). All commons go to fleet holding projects.
Overall fleet holdings generally are not bad when everyone contributes a little... but it does neem overwhelming when only a few are.... It would be better if people just contributed, even if it is a little..... every little bit helps.... and alot of people contributing a little can add upt oa lot.
OVeral it is a mentality problem..... most people aren't playing this game to interact with others, but only for themselves.
The base is T3 and creeping very slowly toward T4 Engineering.
The Embassy is T2 and about one-fifth toward T3 in both sub lines.
The mine has just started the T2 trade upgrades.
I've neglected my personal gear for quite some time in favor of the various fleet projects, time to make a change.
QFT.
This is my issue. I use the doff system but I don't travel around for doff missions - I just do the ones that come up where I'm at. Honestly, I have no clue how people come up with the boatload of doffs for these assignments, and I haven't put in the time to figure out how best to get doffs. The Doffjobs channel seems more like a game-wide ESD zone chat (minus the gorn jokes) than anything else (very cliquish). The few times I've asked questions there I got snarky answers or none at all.
Usually when I go to donate doffs I have 3-5 of the type needed, if that (and as I don't really use the system, I don't have uncommon+ doffs, either. Those 3-5 are usually all I've got of that category).
Oddly, dilithium is much easier to come by for me than doffs (as an aside, if anyone could point me to a doff resource explaining where/how to best use the doff system, I'd appreciate it). Marks, dil, and EC stuff I all contribute when needed. The doffs kill me, though.
sure people "wanted" a fleetbase, but i'm pretty sure they didn't want the absurd requirements.
when you're asking the average player who probably barely makes any dil/EC a day, and you put a 1000 dil price on the doff box you could get for free before, is it really any surprise the average player won't contribute or will barely contribute?
Fleet Marks don't hurt people at all to donate, and are the easiest thing to collect if you are willing to put a little time into it in whatever form you choose. FMs are needed only for the fleet holdings, so people have few qualms about donating them.
Dil is dil, and most need it for Rep-based stuff, or buy other things that need dil, or they want to get Zen out of it.
Commodities cost EC irregardless of how you get them. And in large amounts it's extra painful.
DOFFs cost either ECs or FCs. Pure and simple. Generating DOFFs have also been made much more difficult to do than in the past.
FMs don't hurt people, the other stuff does. Heck, even Expertise on the final upgrades for the Embassy and Dil Mine can be difficult to fill with how much you need.
Something else I've noticed is that some fleets (and don't get on my case if your fleet doesn't do this, obviously I don't mean all fleets) overextend themselves by trying to slot way too much projects that they simply don't have the resources for; heck, when I wrote my Starbase guide I even put in a specific note about slotting only what your fleet can handle.
A lot of people also have the mentality of 'I need to put in a lot of commodities/DOFFs/dil or else it just doesn't matter or help the fleet'. Which is entirely the wrong thought to have, and probably isn't at all the point of what Cryptic was trying to do when they made the fleet system. If anything they were thinking of everyone doing a little bit on the projects.
Like one person taking a moment and donating 10 DOFFs that they bought with FCs, then another donating a few more, and so on. So people split the burden of it, the entire point of the system I think, instead of one poor soul taking a large hit to EC or FCs to fill a project.
The issue I have with DOFFs is that they are not convenient to get - I need to either have exchange access or some floating around which are not active or on assignment. Basically, I need to do at least 3 times as much "work" to donate a doff then to acquire commodities, FM or dilithium, as the latter two come from missions which give gear and expertise as well, both of which are needed for either EC or the rep grind.
My God, whoever decided to put each individual doff in a box needs to be taken out back.
I lost count of how many clicks it took to buy, confirm, open and donate.
Can't they make a box with 25 / 50 / 100 ??
This is a reason why players won't contribute doffs.
--Red Annorax
Wow how original. How did that work out for the guys in that conversation again?
>FM and Expertise filled within seconds
>No doffs whatsoever, sometimes even for days
Dilithium I could understand, as it's a precious resource which people may want for themselves, but it's honestly driving me crazy seeing all the FM filled almost immediatelly, yet none of the people who filled it ever bother to buy duty officer packs for the FC they've earned...
I don't want to blame anyone particular, as my fleets do have many casual players who just cannot afford a bigger dilithium investment or don't have enough doff slots, but there are also those who don't seem to realise they're doing more harm than good with their actions.
Sadly, there are also those who just wait for others to contribue everything. The worst part about it is that fleet leaders cannot control it - they can only check the overall players' contribution to a fleet, but cannot control what exactly and in what amounts they've contributed. Same goes for fleet provisions - you can't see who used them, when, and how many, which really makes the fleet leader job difficult.
1 Fleet Mark = 50 Fleet credits
1 Dilithium = 1 Fleet credit
Doffs can be time consuming to get, store, donate, and move around.
Commodities are just a pain to buy.
I donate what I feel like when I can. At the end of the day the fleet I am in is not my fleet and I can be removed at any time for any reason. Frankly if I don't trust the people who run the fleet I am not giving them all my dilithium whenever I have it. Just because someone gives a lot to a fleet it does not give them any protection from that fleet. I haven't been in a fleet where I felt like anything other than a milk cow. It is not a fun experience for me and the only reason I do it at all is to get better gear.
But overall it's the issue... people don't do things for the fleet.... they do things for themselves.... it's about what they can get out of it.... and not about what they can contribute for the benefit of the fleet as a whole. And there is really no way of fixing it, except maybe just making it harder for people to be as selfish with it, and encourage people to engage in their own fleet contributions.... like maybe limit the ability to buy things from others fleet SB's.
Plus a majority of the resources required to upgrade a starbase, as others have echoed, I need for myself - dilithium for example, or I ran out of white doffs and had no more room.
Regarding commodities and doffs, is it possible members don't know some of the best ways to obtain (ie, searching price per unit on commodities, buying doff mini packs from lockboxes, running academy doff recruitment missions, buying doffs from opposite faction, etc)?
As others have said, the main problem will be dil as it's also needed for personal items in the Rep store and dil exchange. Not much can be done except recommending the most efficient ways to get dil. Perhaps for future recruits only consider candidates that have achieved the top tier in at least 1 reputation (the thought being if they've reached the highest rep level, chances are they've probably already acquired the rep gear they wanted and spent the dil they would spend on it).
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
There is a simple solution. Cryptic should consolidate the 5 omega, tholian, and the rommie rep tree tiers into 3. It would still take a while to complete your reputation but it would only take 3/4 as many resources before. From there, Cryptic could keep making improvements. If you've finished a tree on one character, you should get discounts on that same rep tree with any secondary character.
Also, don't forget that one of the most attractive aspects of this game was alting because it was relatively easy to do and it would help keep the game fresh for a lot of us. However, alting is slowly dying. What's more, if Cryptic keeps on piling on new rep trees without some consolidation, you're going to see fleet mates shirking a lot more. All small fleets will evaporate, and we'll be left with a handful of mega fleets for each of the few factions. This is already happening to a certain extent. Fleet's can only do so much to create incentives so that people continue to give and participate. You can persuade/coerce fleet mates into contributing resources, but at some point you're going to alienate them and that's if the endless grind hasn't already alienated them. So yeah, at this point, I think only Cryptic can remedy this situation.
The thing to remember is that most of the members of our fleets are F2Pers and will generally chose to hold on to their Dilithium to use for their personal needs.
The Daily Refining limit on Dilithium is also a major factor when it comes to Dilithium Hording.
Instead of a limit of 8000 refined Dilithium per day Cryptic should let us refine 56k Dilithium per week.
The limit on Energy Credits for F2P users can also contributes to Dilithium Hording; however, knowledgeable F2P users know that they can simply remove the Energy Credit Cap by converting Dilithium to Zen and then buying the 1 Billion Ec cap but not all F2P users understand this.
Dilithium becomes much more important to the F2P users that do not remove the EC cap because it then becomes their only way to get Lock Box Keys and useful high end equipment.
In most cases the 100 Doff limit can be contributed to one of the main reasons that some players are not contributing Doffs to Fleet Projects.
Players that do not invest in expanding their doff limit generally only have Uncommon-Vary Rare Doffs on their rosters and do not have the space for common doffs.
The lack of contributing Commodities to Fleet Projects can also be linked to the lack of having Energy Credits.
Commodities can be quite expensive if you don?t know where they can be purchased at the lowest possible price or have access to a Cell Ship or the like.
I would suggest polling members of your fleet to see how many are F2P users and to see how knowledgeable they are about working around the F2P matrix.
The lack of contributions could be the result of F2P players just not understanding how they could be using their Dilithium to their overall advantage or they could just be Fleet Leaches waiting for someone else to do all the work for them.
Good Luck with That
I don't do Fleet stuff to gain Fleet credits to use. So I was doing the rest with Dil or using EC for the other items needed. I just got done with the stuff I wanted. So I plan on giving to the fleet again if they have projects up.
Same goes for my Fed and Romulan they are in. I'm using EC and Dil for equipment upgrades. So I'm not helping on them either for now.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I offer this idea freely to the Devs if they find it interesting and/or useful.
The goal is to create a balanced system that is equally fair to all fleet sizes and avoids the massive grinds for specific items that the current system is overloaded with.
1: Throw the current contribution system and all of its requirements out the airlock and forget about it. Project durations will be maintained however.
2: Place a Fleet Resource Coordinator (FRC) on the base.
3: Donate any and all items, DOffs, BOffs and select currencies to the FRC to be converted into Fleet Resources (FR). The amount of FR generated will depend on the quality/rarity of the donated item(s)/currency and the total available is stored numerically in the Fleet Bank in the same manner as ECs. These would likely be a cap on the total FRs banked, but probably high enough to not be a serious issue.
4: Players receive Fleet Credits (FC) for donations to the FRC. The amount of FC generated will depend on the quality/rarity of the donated item(s)/currency.
5: Reset all projects to use FR rather than the specific items currently required.
6: Any fleet member normally able to contribute to fleet projects can allocate FR to a scheduled project.
This system will remove bottlenecks created by specific item requirements.
The broader base of items/currencies available for donation would allow smaller fleets to achieve development goals more quickly and easily.
The retained time-gates on projects will maintain advancement balance regardless of fleet size. Small fleets will still take longer to complete projects simple because they have fewer donations overall in comparison to larger fleets.
This system also makes canceling a project, even a fully funded one, a non-issue. The allocated FR is simply returned to the bank to await reallocation. This is exploit-proof as the players receive FCs when items are donated and converted into FRs, not when items are donated to specific projects.
This would also allow players to gain FCs when there are no projects running, allowing them to purchase items from the fleet stores more easily.
Fleet stores are almost just as bad (what 20k a pop?) so basically after a week of grinding dilithium I now have a choice, one piece of gear, or help out the fleet. Then there's the worst of it, you give to the fleet, don't get the new shiny piece of equipment, and realize had you gotten your new piece of equipment, your grind would have been easier if you're doing Breen missions and CE and STFs, and you get almost no tangible from giving it to the Fleet, because then the fleet decides to run projects you have zero interest in.
Not how I play. Since I only play a few hours per week. Due to life, family, work. It took me 2 months to build up 120k for my Vor'cha to purchase from the Dil store. Also I bought a K'Tinga from the Fleet. That sucker costed way more than the 120k I put in for the Vor'cha. Not to mention the amount of EC as well. I really wanted the ship. So I did what I had to do to get it. After this no more, its not worth it.
So in reality unless I can use EC to contribute. They are not getting my dil since I'm using it.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Some has stated this before that this really hurts the smaller fleets.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.