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rerednaw
Member Posts: 159 Arc User
Hi I'm back in STO after a hiatus. I noticed the level cap got bumped, the crafting system changed, and they now have Tier 6 ships?
I am not sure about the difference between T5U and T6 ships? Is one better than the other?
Are any of my existing ships 5U? If I have to buy 10 upgrade tokens...am I better off buying new ships outright?
Kind of confused, help appreciated.
Thanks!
I am not sure about the difference between T5U and T6 ships? Is one better than the other?
Are any of my existing ships 5U? If I have to buy 10 upgrade tokens...am I better off buying new ships outright?
Kind of confused, help appreciated.
Thanks!
Post edited by rerednaw on
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one: same class ships share upgrade tokens across account.
[ If you upgrade one Tactical Odyssey Class with a token then a different character can upgrade their Tactical Odyssey Class for free: however it does not give free upgrades for the Operations or Science Odyssey Classes]
two: depends on the T5 ships you have. Some have freebie upgrades. e.i. the 1000 day vet one, The Risa Summer event ones etc
T6 ships come with an Intelligence Officer seat and 1 more mastery skill than T5U, T5U have 4 mastery slot
to upgrade see a ship selector guy on ESD or KDF Shipyard
Do yourself a massive favour, and buy a Lockbox/Lobi ship. They are free to upgrade, and they are every bit as good (Read: Better) than paid ships. And you can buy it with EC, so you never need to use real money, which you should never use real money anyway.
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
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Everything else is a waste of resources.
BS. An upgrade token is around 10 mill on the exchange. Upgrade is cheap, and is a must, if you have store or fleet ships. It is well worth it.
I should buy a T6 ship to unlock all the levels of ship mastery (then level it)... And upgrade a T5 ship I love using? Like my fleet sovereign or my science Oddy?
I take it that when you buy a car you add nothing to it. To me the upgrade is no more than people "pimping" their cars.
OP it does depend on what you want. Personally none of the T6 ships interest me, the Fed ones are ugly as sin, except for the upcoming Intrepid even with that it won't get me out of my ships.
As said when you upgrade one class you get them upgraded free across your account. Also if you join a fleet and get a fleet version of that ship it gets to be upgraded for free.
Wait could you clarify this? So all fleet versions get upgrades for free? I don't have to spend a token?
Edit: I looked deeper and fleet ships do have to pay for an upgrade token if you bought them with a ship module.
There seems to be some confusion: You spend the token once on any given ship to upgrade it. Once you have though, it grants you a free upgrade accountwise, on both fleet and store versions on that given ship.
I am a lifer so I have a lot of ships across different factions.
I pretty much stick to the canon ships except once in a when I get the urge for something different.
Non-canon. I have a few of the Dyson and Risian ships though not on all my toons as the grind got to be too much back then. I hear that some of the grinds are not as bad now so it may be the best method to pick up some 'free' 5U's.
A few of my characters unlocked the Breen which is a canon ship...but it's technically cross-faction.
I'll wait until there are T6 versions of the classics then, thanks.
T5-U is the upgraded version of T5. You can upgrade Cstore ships for 700 zen, and you can upgrade lockbox ships for free. T5U does have advantages to T5. They each gain an extra console slot, but won't receive one that would put them above 5 of a type (a fleet galaxy, which comes with 5 eng slots, won't get a 6th one, but will instead get a third tac slot). They also get a generous buff to hull points, which increases as you level up from 50 to 60. You can view exactly what you can expect to gain from upgrading before actually doing the upgrade.
T5U ships also get access to 4 levels of the ship mastery system. Each level of this new system grants different buffs to your ship, weather it be more hull points or whatever.
You can also upgrade most of your individual equipment, making your current ship even more powerful. Simply unequip the item you wish to upgrade, right click it in your inventory, and select upgrade. A new screen will pop up, and from here you can view costs and materials required.
T6 ships are supposed to be vastly superior to T5. They each have unique abilities, new Intel boff hybrid seats, more HP, better shields, and unique consoles. In addition, they have access to 5 levels of starship mastery. I'm pretty sure every player will eventuslly have at least 1 in their arsenal. I can't really go much further I to detail since I don't have one yet. I would say, if you have the zen and find one you like, get a T6. If not, definitely upgrade the ship you use the most to T5U and use it until you can get a T6.
T5U's are really T5.5. To consider them equal or better than the T6 ships is almost the same as considering the Venture class (a T4.5) as equal to a T5.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
One upgrade token is 700 Zen, and you're likely to be using it on a ship that cost 2500 Zen to unlock at the Store. That basically means you spent 3200 Zen on a T5-U ship. The exception is if you bought the 4-pack, which effectively makes the upgrade tokens 500 Zen each, making the total price 3000 Zen - but that's only effective "economically" if you actually have four classes of T5 ship you would intend to upgrade and actually use.
On the other hand T6 ships are 3000 Zen. So you are technically paying less (or, at best, equal) Zen *total* for a T6 ship than a T5-U. And T6 ships have a *bit* more bells and whistles than their T5-U counterparts (e.g. the extra BOff capabilities, the fifth ship mastery ability, etc.)
So overall, with an upgrade token you technically paid a bit more for a ship that does a bit less - again, if you look at it from the standpoint of total Zen spent (I'm certainly not arguing that 700 is more than 3000).
For some people that makes no difference (that 2500 is "in the past" - all I "see" is the 700 I have to spend right now).
For some people it adds weight to the decision (I'd rather just go ahead and spend 3000 Zen on a ship that does a bit more than have invested 3200 Zen in one that does a bit less).
Upgraded, you get a better than average officer seating, 5 tac consoles!!, and mostly damage oriented passive unlocks.
They are very solid ships with the upgrade, so long as you wanted a DPS /escortish type ship. Honestly the romulan one is nearly as good as the T6 escort (and neither is as good as a t5U scimitar). The fed one is also as good as any other fed escort IMHO. The kdf one lags behind as their t6 damage ship was excellent and they have other hybrids that are better (karfi, for example, is nearly the same thing with strong pets on top of it).
ok if you look at your character rep you will see ship traits. by levelling T-6 ships you unlock the 5th level trait. for example, the Phantom escort unlocks the reciprocity trait. as you level each class of T-6 ship, the traits become available just like the rep traits.
I have flown 5 of the T-6 ships. the klingon battlecruiser is a good all around ship.
the scryer is a POS, but the trait is nice I may have to suffer through levelling it.
The eclipse is a decent cruiser,
The phantom is an excellent escort for my play style.
the inel officers add a nice variation to the theme. on the eclipse, I have a commander intel/eng and a lcdr eng. I have EPTS1, ET2 and DM2 on the lcdr. the Intel is slotted evade target lock, EMP probe, RSP2, and surgical strikes 2, which gives me another offensive power, and it gives me the shield and hull heal, DEM and RSP.
Your concept of free is odd, since the DR pack was not free, therefore nothing in it was free. :P
This is subjective. If you do not FLY each and every ship in a package, you are not actually saving any money! Lets talk about that... I have 1 fed, who is actually a rom. If I bought the 9 ship DR pack, I would get 2 usable ships --- the kdf raptor, and the romulan escort. The romulan and kdf tanks are worthless to me, I might level them for the traits on some chars but that is 13k zen for 2 ships.... 6000 each.
This is true for the other packs too. Buy the scimitar pack and fly the tactical version.... at 2 times the cost to get the other consoles and unlock a once every hour AOE bomb?! Now that was some money well spent (/sarcasm). Buy 12 dysons? Even hard core sci players probably only use 2 or 3 at the MOST. And so on... these "package deals" may fit a few players but the vast majority of folks are not going to actually FLY and PLAY most of the ships they bought. For the DR pack specifically, its 13k for, to the average player, 2 or 3 ships that are usable TOPS (probably just 1 or 2 in reality) + the traits from the unused ships (of which a couple are nice, most seem meh).
I am not saying that some buyers did not do well to make the purchase -- it has merits for an alt-heavy serious player with high chars in each faction... , but at a guess, MOST of the buyers will NOT use at least 4 ships (the break even point, 3k each being 12k for 4) enough to justify the cost. For non-feds, there are ONLY 4 ships so its already at the break-even point for them, and again, 2 of the 4 are not exactly "all that" in a game that does not reward tanking.
Westmetal did make one point that I hadn't considered: if the intended upgrade was a fleet ship purchased using modules bought wholly with Zen, the total investment comes to 2700 Zen, which is actually less than a T6 ship.
Unfortunately, that also opens up an additional wrinkle. First, the only way (using Zen) to spend 2000 Zen on a fleet ship is if you don't own the C-store variant the fleet ship is based on. If you do (own the C-Store variant), than the total Zen invested is actually 3700 (in most cases).
Second, assuming it was a fleet ship bought using 2000 Zen, then that literally means the 2700 Zen investment is only benefiting a single character (note that in this scenario no other character on the account would be able to pick up an upgraded version of the C-Store ship or the fleet ship without investing an *additional* 2500-3000 Zen). A non-fleet T5 upgraded on his account would also apply to any other character using that particular ship. And purchasing a T6 would make it available to any other character wanting to use it as well.
So the decision would boil down to what is more valuable to the OP - a 2700 Zen investment benefiting a single character, or a 3000-3200 Zen investment benefiting multiple characters (where the T5-U is still more of a total Zen investment than the T6 would have been). That's mostly subjective - it would depend on what the OP's intent is with any other characters on his account.
I found noroblad's points to be ones I agree with quite a lot. In essence, calculating the effective value of ships from a pack is strongly dependent on how much of the pack is being used. If I literally only use one of the T6 ships among all of my characters, then I basically invested 12500 Zen for one ship. Package deals only make sense if you're going to actually use most of what is in the package.
Until Delta Rising a T4 ship would have been fine for playing most end-game content. Now T5 is fine, especially for Normal-level content.
T5U is a compelling upgrade since you get another console slot and spec upgrades, even for Fleet ships that already had additional console slots and higher specs. As a result, you end up with ships that are better than the T6 ships minus the overload and rock-and-roll abilities.
There is no requirement to get T5U or T6 ships.
Whatever you do, have fun! Try flying when you got, optimize it and try to make it work... you'll have more fun trying to do this than forking out more money or Zen converted from Dilithium grinds.
The starship chart at the bottom of the linked page show which ships qualify for T5U upgrades: http://sto.gamepedia.com/Playable_starship
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.