Do you go for efficiency or fun?

alan171717 · December 2013

Was just thinking about this as I read a thread about console slots, and how best to use them, how many of you go for efficiency over fun?

I know I personally never do, 8/10 of my console slots are special powers, and I hope to improve that to 9/10 soon with Breen ships. It isn't great in gameplay, I just like having a ton of special powers

What about you my fellow Captains, do you prefer things to be all DPS all the time, or to make things uniquely yours? Or do you get pure joy from DPS?

jeffel82 · December 2013

I play for fun primarily, but I do try to tailor things so my chosen "fun" build is as efficient as possible. If that makes any sense.

kintisho · December 2013

alan171717 wrote: »

Was just thinking about this as I read a thread about console slots, and how best to use them, how many of you go for efficiency over fun?

I know I personally never do, 8/10 of my console slots are special powers, and I hope to improve that to 9/10 soon with Breen ships. It isn't great in gameplay, I just like having a ton of special powers

What about you my fellow Captains, do you prefer things to be all DPS all the time, or to make things uniquely yours? Or do you get pure joy from DPS?

this is why I am up to 8 chars... 2 are ALL death (efficiency)

6 are either fun (abilities) or hybrid exterminations across all factions

In the end its all down to what your are making a char for, why not run a mirror (2 chars)even if they are identical careers and even vessels the end results can be night and day..

adamkafei · December 2013

I try to balance efficiency with fun, though if you told me to fly the worst ship I could think of, I would prolly die lol, at the moment I have a cruiser specced towards DPS (as far as a nonA2B engineer captained Excelsior can), with a secondary focus on mobility, I've yet to find anything outside the high speed escort lines that keeps up with it

thegalaxy31 · December 2013

Whenever I stick a weird "fun" console setup on my ship, it feels like there are flies buzzing around me. So I just go total efficiency.

starswordc · December 2013

Mix of the two. I do try to optimize my main build but I have a decidedly non-optimal bridge crew for RP reasons, and I brought my T4 Galaxy out of mothballs for Foundry reviews because running them in my Avenger is too easy (I can reliably wipe a Fighter 01 group, fighters and frigates, with one firing cycle). If you can't have fun playing a game, why bother playing?

erei1 · December 2013

Usually I go for efficiency for ship/ground build as it's "fun" to me (efficiency=fun). However, for things like BOFF, I go for fun. For example, I still have green Bajoran etc for space, because they were the first BOFF I had.
However, I'm slowly replacing them by purple BOFF that are copy of the old green (same name, outfit, race....), and pretend they are the same person. But a Bajoran is still a Bajoran, and the traits are still not optimal.

To do the STO content, you don't need to min max. Even a fun ship can be enough. Having a crew full or Rom + a2b is just overkill.

bones1970 · December 2013

I have builds for nws, stf (space and ground), dps11000, dps30000 and fun and all (but 2 jhas) in different ships.

mercuriciodide · December 2013

It's not fun to be a big drag on others in STFs, so some level of efficiency is important.

lystent · December 2013

I got a WWII BB style build that reflects in perfect balance of firepower, heavy armor, and manuvera-*Yawwwwwwn zzzzzzzzzzzzz......*

jexsamx · December 2013

Fun is mandatory for me.

I have a certain set of rules I have to follow. Federation ships only use phasers and quantum torpedoes, Klingon ships only use disruptors and photons, Romulan ships must get to Rom Rep T2 at least and run only Romulan Plasma weapons and plasma torpedoes. Ground weapons follow suit.

BOffs are somewhat similar. My Orion Sci (in an Orion ship) has a crew that is mostly Orion save for one Klingon whom I justify as a representative from the KDF aboard to make sure the Orions don't do anything... foolish.

However, I do my best to mitigate the inherent weakness of, say, flying my Fleet Advanced Escort as a beam boat by outfitting it in high quality beams and making sure my tac consoles are as top-of-the-line as I can afford. Just because I outfit my ships in a specific way for fun is no excuse to slum it on crappy green Mk X gear.

hypl · December 2013

A balance of both. I tend to weigh in what I want and play around with a few setups to get something I'm comfortable with. Console powers feel kinda gimmicky after awhile, but I keep them around in case I want to play around with something special.

jetwtf · December 2013

Why would the 2 be exclusive? I have fun with an efficiant setup. Dying in a game is not fun.

kyeto13 · December 2013

jetwtf wrote: »

Why would the 2 be exclusive? I have fun with an efficient setup. Dying in a game is not fun.

This. While I do play around with new skills and consoles, I still have to hold my own in a fight. A Fun build for me is one that frustrates my enemies and leaves them vulnerable for attack.

hawke89305092 · December 2013

I'd say I lean more towards fun than efficiency. That's the reason all my Federation ships use phasers and photons, my three KDF characters are Klingon with all Klingon Boffs, and I tend to pick canon ships over Cryptic designs regardless of performance. Little things like that go a long way towards making the game feel more like Star Trek!

On the other hand, it's very rare I use an ability granting console - I guess I just prefer always on stat boosts. But then, that itself might not always be most efficient...

doffingcomrade · December 2013

Efficiency. It's the entire definition of a "game". To "game" something is to utilize the system for maximum efficiency to achieve "winning". I outsource all that "fun" nonsense to the peasants. The minimum effort required to achieve the result of "losing" is "none", so if you're not going to win, why bother doing anything at all?

earlnyghthawk · December 2013

mercuriciodide wrote: »

It's not fun to be a big drag on others in STFs, so some level of efficiency is important.

Well, as long as you're still having fun with that, that's cool.

But seeing how those "others" in STF are not providing EC, dilithium, or gear to me, to "optimuze" my builds, I go for what I feel works, and is fun. And part of the fun, is mostly making do with whatever drops I can get, that I feel are usable, a few things from the fleet's bank here & there, and when a character gets to that point, rep items to throw on there.
After all, like someone else has said, if it's not fun, why play? And other people's idea of fun, may not be mine, and vice versa. So I neither welcome criticism on what I feel is fun, not do I criticize others, as long as their fun is not actually, hateful or demeaning.

reginamala78 · December 2013

Efficiently enough to win, but beyond that, my idea of challenge is to do the most with the least. Anyone can spend half a billion and make a truly killer ship, but doing it for 20 million? Especially if you manage to best the half-billion ship in the process.

Besides, if you blow through all the content in moments, its no fun, so why load up on all that super-fancy stuff anyways if not to get creative with it?

tksmitty · December 2013

I prefer fun over efficiency. I also don't like to be a drag on other players in team situations because it won't be fun for them.

I refuse to run the current FOTM builds because I find them mind numbing-ly boring. My build doesn't suck just because I don't pull 30k DPS. I get optionals and finish missions with my 12k build no problem...

...and I enjoy every second of it (and I haven't spent 200 dollars/million EC on it either).

This is my current build: *Click to embiggen*

I'm working toward the Reman set, the Romulan Experimental Beam and maybe even the Bioneural Infusion Circuit console (Lobi permitting).

hasukurobi · December 2013

alan171717 wrote: »

Was just thinking about this as I read a thread about console slots, and how best to use them, how many of you go for efficiency over fun?

I know I personally never do, 8/10 of my console slots are special powers, and I hope to improve that to 9/10 soon with Breen ships. It isn't great in gameplay, I just like having a ton of special powers

What about you my fellow Captains, do you prefer things to be all DPS all the time, or to make things uniquely yours? Or do you get pure joy from DPS?

I like to try out all the variables and combinations of things and find the most powerful and setups for things under the widest scope of situations as I can.

ruminate00 · December 2013

Efficiency is fun.

doffingcomrade · December 2013

reginamala78 wrote: »

Efficiently enough to win, but beyond that, my idea of challenge is to do the most with the least.

Isn't that what efficiency means?

shpoks · December 2013

jexsamx wrote: »

Fun is mandatory for me.

I have a certain set of rules I have to follow. Federation ships only use phasers and quantum torpedoes, Klingon ships only use disruptors and photons, Romulan ships must get to Rom Rep T2 at least and run only Romulan Plasma weapons and plasma torpedoes. Ground weapons follow suit.

BOffs are somewhat similar. My Orion Sci (in an Orion ship) has a crew that is mostly Orion save for one Klingon whom I justify as a representative from the KDF aboard to make sure the Orions don't do anything... foolish.

However, I do my best to mitigate the inherent weakness of, say, flying my Fleet Advanced Escort as a beam boat by outfitting it in high quality beams and making sure my tac consoles are as top-of-the-line as I can afford. Just because I outfit my ships in a specific way for fun is no excuse to slum it on crappy green Mk X gear.

Wow! That's exactly how I play STO!

sunfrancks · December 2013

I go for a happy medium of the two. Id rather have fun, but also have some teeth

szerontzur · December 2013

I like to tinker and experiment.. sometimes that leads to surprisingly efficient setups(most recent was a twin photon torp, twin DBB rapid-fire crit-spam based loadout), and sometimes it turns out being not-so-efficient(like a crazy particle gen build centered around Feedback Pulse and Tractor Beams - which could hit as hard as a beam array).

Sure, I have ships set up with some of the more traditional loadouts, but I just (personally) have more fun messing around with new and interesting ways to make things go boom.

thedoctorbluebox · December 2013

I play for FUN, if you aren't playing for fun, there is no point in playing.

sernonserculion · December 2013

shpoks wrote: »

Wow! That's exactly how I play STO!

Same! A thematic build is fun to set up. Setting your own rules this way, and then make the best out of it (efficiency), is also fun. The end result not ending in a total disaster, but fun, is probably a testament to something not gone wrong for once. There you have it, three times is a charm.

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fraghul2000 · December 2013

Why would the 2 be exclusive? I have fun with an efficiant setup. Dying in a game is not fun.

This is spot on.

Flying an efficient ship and having fun don't contradict each other as far as I'm concerned. If anything, flying a survivable ship, that deals decent damage and looks good while doing so is fun to me.

Using consoles that don't contribute to my ships performance, just to do something different, would be far from my idea of fun...

jellico1 · December 2013

I took my most deadly character a Romulan Tac with 5 superiot operatives and

put him in a tier 2 Fed curiser refit

Kirks ROK enterprise class heavy cruiser

and i do infected elite and KASE every day with it as well as fleet alerts with great sucess

To me this is a lot of fun and my dps is close to what most pugs deal out and better than a lot of them

as a example i have no problem handling the probes at KASE thats good firepower from a tier 2 ship

centaurianalpha · December 2013

I like the STV approach: Janeway was willing to adapt any tech that would improve her chances of getting her crew home. So for at least my first build, since I find myself in a new and very different quadrant, this is my pattern. Research, crafting, DOff assignments, looting, and any other means of building a tough ship with little cash. STO offers such a staggering array of tech & means to get it, that one is perfectly justified in building multiple characters for fleet roles, immersion in the alien cultures, recreating the "feel" of the different Trek series, etc.

I do have some personal reservations regarding crew selection; I personally can't see myself having a completely diverse crew, since officers from the farthest reaches should indeed be a rarity. While we're having fun with crews, I can see re-creating a "Mudd's Women" crew, at least for the visual appeal!

It takes good skill & planning to make an efficient crew in any case.

Do you go for efficiency or fun?

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