Weekly R&D Lab Bonus projects and unlocks

sqwished · August 2015

Has anyone gotten a look at these Projects yet? If so, is just me or do they seem horrendously over priced for the ridiculously small amount of bonus they provide.

For those that haven't seen them yet each requires

200,000 Expertise (I don't see a problem with this one at all)
20,500 Dilithium (Again a two/three days hitting the cap, easily done)
256 Fleet marks (Again easy enough to achieve)
750,000 Fleet credits <After reading this one and double checking to make sure I wasn't seeing things, I had to pick my jaw up of the floor. Cryptic, you've just placed these out the reach of almost every small fleet in the game. And after discussing the cost, amongst some of the richest members of my fleet, even they are dumb founded by the cost of these.

Secondly onto the Trait and R&D unlock costs

To purchase all of these a player is looking at 700,000 in fleet credit and 200,000 in Dilithium. My biggest objection is the cost of the Starship trait slot. Again how many of these are no out of reach of the smaller fleets. And a friend and fellow fleet member has raised a good point are any of these buffed by the discounts earned the the holdings? because if so we have a T3 dil mine, so have the maximum discount available, but what about the costs for fleets that aren't in our position?

timelord79 · August 2015

Yup. Utterly pointless at these costs. Once we unlocked them and decided that only the direct combat effectiveness project is actually worth anything we looked at the cost and immediately revoked holding management rights from anyone in the fleet who doesn't absolutely needs it in fear of someone slotting one of those projects.
What's worse is that they go into the upgrade projects.
Anyone dumb enough to slot one of them before the holding is even finished risks a deadlock on leveling progress.

tarastheslayer · August 2015

timelord79 wrote: »

Yup. Utterly pointless at these costs.
Anyone dumb enough to slot one of them before the holding is even finished risks a deadlock on leveling progress.

Anyone dumb enough to slot them at that price range is a lunatic. Why would you pay that much for 1% extra xp or 2.5% extra dil? I wouldn't even do the combat one because you simply don't need it, though no doubt it'll just go to prove with the rest of the power leaps that everything Geko said about resetting power creep was just rhetoric.

At the end of the day this is the worst idea I've ever seen Cryptic roll out (debatable mind). 750,000 fleet credits is enough to outfit a fair number of ships with change left over for another day. At least knocking a zero of the end would be a start, but the idea that this is somehow affordable for the majority of fleets is laughable.

orionburst · August 2015

Its probably that high due to the fact that ship improvement project would be vital to the dpsers as there would be plenty of dpsers who would slot it to enhance their dps for the bragging rights they value - as such, I'd treble the current cost

if anything, the other two tasks should be dropped by half, and maybe that lame 1% exp should be raised to 2.5% like the dil

shevet · August 2015

My own inexpert analysis - coming straight from the Rectal Extraction Department, as per usual - is that Cryptic expects the Armada system to yield a large supply of fleet credits for people, which these projects will then soak up.

A more likely scenario, it seems to me, though, is that there will be a brief surge in fleet credits, as people in large fleets fill in the easy stuff on projects for smaller fleets in their armada. Then the smaller fleets will just hit the usual project bottlenecks a bit quicker, and the supply of fleet credits will level off.

The limiting factors tend to be things like dilithium - which is easily obtained, but everyone also has many uses for it - and things that cost EC, most notably white-quality doffs, which are not so easy to find in anything like the quantities required. Sure, people can grind for EC and doffs in many ways, but they might prefer to spend time on, y'know, actually playing the game, instead.

For large fully developed fleets, fleet credits aren't that easy for individual members to get. Certainly not easy enough to justify this level of pricing for purely temporary (and mostly trivial) boosts.

Basically, I don't think anyone in their right mind would queue one of these projects at the costs stated. There are too many uses for fleet credits which lead to permanent, or at least long-term, benefits. Who wants to blow the cost of a piece of Fleet quality gear on something that will be gone in a week?

lucho80 · August 2015

They inflated the fleet credits needed because their bad theory is that with the Armada system, people should have more fleet credits. Unfortunately, even in the smallest of fleets, the fleet credits portion of projects get filled extremely quickly, leaving players to have to either go doff grinding or spending EC in order to gain fleet credits.

Unknown · August 2015

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taylor1701d · August 2015

750,000 Fleet cred for a bottom of the barrel % bonus ?! Just wow.
I had been looking forward to these Fleet-wide bonus projects, that said, I had no idea they would cost shylock-like prices.
l'll be sure to inform our fleet, and never, ever, slot one of these Fleet-wide bonus project for these outrageous prices.

What a letdown.

Lando Calrissian: "This deal is getting worse all the time..."

tarastheslayer · August 2015

orionburst wrote: »

Its probably that high due to the fact that ship improvement project would be vital to the dpsers as there would be plenty of dpsers who would slot it to enhance their dps for the bragging rights they value

Sadly that's probably true

sqwished · August 2015

taylor1701d wrote: »

I had been looking forward to these Fleet-wide bonus projects, that said, I had no idea they would cost shylock-like prices.
l'll be sure to inform our fleet, and never, ever, slot one of these Fleet-wide bonus project for these outrageous prices.
What a letdown.

I agree with you, I was hoping to make a great deal of use from them and maybe just maybe help out the fleet members alts a little. But at that cost, everyone in our fleet has said no way. First thing we did was send fleet wide mails across both factions, alter the message of the day. We've refrained from going as far as removing management privileges for certain officer ranks, since we have a good core group of officers that use their heads. Since the image's were from out T1 lab, I can only assume that the bonuses will increase as the higher tiers are unlocked. But they're still ridiculously priced for what they offer.

lucho80 wrote: »

They inflated the fleet credits needed because their bad theory is that with the Armada system, people should have more fleet credits. Unfortunately, even in the smallest of fleets, the fleet credits portion of projects get filled extremely quickly, leaving players to have to either go doff grinding or spending EC in order to gain fleet credits.

This again, causes me to question how well those in charge actually know their game. I'm not trying to have a go at the dev's, but some feed back on the extortionate pricing of these items would be greatly appreciated.

Unknown · August 2015

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Unknown · August 2015

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iceeaglex · August 2015

Considering the bonus exp from armada system does not work and has never worked from the start, any one that put such a massive amount of resources into these projects has only themselves to blame.

lucho80 · August 2015

iceeaglex wrote: »

Considering the bonus exp from armada system does not work and has never worked from the start, any one that put such a massive amount of resources into these projects has only themselves to blame.

I would agree here. Don't spend resources until bugs are fixed. Those armada bonuses are broken and it seems the complaints about them not working are ending up nowhere. That reminds me, I have to test a doff I use in case I've been using junk for more than a year now thinking it's working on targets.

Unknown · August 2015

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markhawkman · August 2015

sqwished wrote: »

Has anyone gotten a look at these Projects yet? If so, is just me or do they seem horrendously over priced for the ridiculously small amount of bonus they provide.

For those that haven't seen them yet each requires

200,000 Expertise (I don't see a problem with this one at all)
20,500 Dilithium (Again a two/three days hitting the cap, easily done)
256 Fleet marks (Again easy enough to achieve)
750,000 Fleet credits <After reading this one and double checking to make sure I wasn't seeing things, I had to pick my jaw up of the floor. Cryptic, you've just placed these out the reach of almost every small fleet in the game. And after discussing the cost, amongst some of the richest members of my fleet, even they are dumb founded by the cost of these.

Secondly onto the Trait and R&D unlock costs

To purchase all of these a player is looking at 700,000 in fleet credit and 200,000 in Dilithium. My biggest objection is the cost of the Starship trait slot. Again how many of these are no out of reach of the smaller fleets. And a friend and fellow fleet member has raised a good point are any of these buffed by the discounts earned the the holdings? because if so we have a T3 dil mine, so have the maximum discount available, but what about the costs for fleets that aren't in our position?

I can fill that with little more effort than sneezing.

What would you have preferred? 4k warp coils? They have to tack something onto it to be an actual cost..

Unknown · August 2015

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reverandclint · August 2015

The project boost is currently broken to boot ... filled the bonus XP project yesterday (had the extra fleet credits and nothing to spend them on yet anyway) ... and it only lasted 24hrs vs 5 days.

Yesterday after the boost went active the other boost projects were unavailable (like they're supposed to be) and everyone in the fleet had the boost icon ... this morning the boost was gone & all the boost projects are back available.

-sigh-

It wasn't a crippling loss on my main ... but that is still a serious snafu.

The boosts are too expensive for 5 day projects but they are just stupid expensive with a run time error in them.

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

[q

reverandclint wrote: »

The project boost is currently broken to boot ... filled the bonus XP project yesterday (had the extra fleet credits and nothing to spend them on yet anyway) ... and it only lasted 24hrs vs 5 days.

Wasn't there a Tribble Bugfix report about this, which made it look to me as if it was more a display issue - the countdown timer resets back to 24h after 24h have run out.

Oh, wait, no, that was the Armada probation countdown timer..
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9490253-star-trek-online:-release-notes:-august-6th,-2015

Resolved an issue where Armada probation timers greater than 24 hours would not display the number of days remaining.

This would cause the timers to look as if they reset every 24 hours.

So looks like the problem exists and remains.

sqwished · August 2015

markhawkman wrote: »

I can fill that with little more effort than sneezing.

Well if you can afford to dump that amount of resources in for the pitiful return they offer, well more fool you. And has Mattjohnsonva said, how long can you carry on filling them up before you run out of resources to dump in them? Sorry dude, but they're stupidly over priced and as others have stated both here and on other sites, they're broken. Another typical example of Cryptic's shoddy programming. Sorry guys but you really should have run this lot across a few more drawing boards before letting them go live.

And to be honest I've got better things to waste 3/4 of a million FC on, things that will better benefit me more than anything else. Besides I already get the 5% veteran skill point boost, so an extra 1% really wont make that much of a difference to me anyway.

As for the Additional trait slots, I can see the justification in the cost of some of them, but the Starship trait one, is the kicker.

borticuscryptic · August 2015

Thanks for the feedback. We're going to investigate both the costs and the buff duration timers. Neither sound as though they are working as designed.

sqwished · August 2015

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. We're going to investigate both the costs and the buff duration timers. Neither sound as though they are working as designed.

Thanks for the reply buddy. Looking forward to what your findings come back with.

mattaukett · August 2015

Good to hear that the costs are being looked at Borticus.

I did a quick bit of maths on the fleet credit buff and assuming you're not needing the 1/2 credits reward project I reckoned those projects cost equivalent to something in the region of 15k fleet marks, which is going to be somewhere near a fleets entire credit income for a week I imagine assuming all projects get filled and run with the earnings put back into the buff projects.

markhawkman · August 2015

mattjohnsonva wrote: »

markhawkman wrote: »

sqwished wrote: »

Has anyone gotten a look at these Projects yet? If so, is just me or do they seem horrendously over priced for the ridiculously small amount of bonus they provide.

For those that haven't seen them yet each requires

200,000 Expertise (I don't see a problem with this one at all)
20,500 Dilithium (Again a two/three days hitting the cap, easily done)
256 Fleet marks (Again easy enough to achieve)
750,000 Fleet credits <After reading this one and double checking to make sure I wasn't seeing things, I had to pick my jaw up of the floor. Cryptic, you've just placed these out the reach of almost every small fleet in the game. And after discussing the cost, amongst some of the richest members of my fleet, even they are dumb founded by the cost of these.

Secondly onto the Trait and R&D unlock costs

To purchase all of these a player is looking at 700,000 in fleet credit and 200,000 in Dilithium. My biggest objection is the cost of the Starship trait slot. Again how many of these are no out of reach of the smaller fleets. And a friend and fellow fleet member has raised a good point are any of these buffed by the discounts earned the the holdings? because if so we have a T3 dil mine, so have the maximum discount available, but what about the costs for fleets that aren't in our position?

I can fill that with little more effort than sneezing. What would you have preferred? 4k warp coils? They have to tack something onto it to be an actual cost..

And will you fill it the next week, and the week after that, and the next, how many weeks will your fleet credit pool last at 750,000 a week, or 3 million a month?

*does math* I could probably keep it going by myself at least 4 months.

dabelgrave · August 2015

For a fleet with maxed out holdings, I estimate this is about a third of the FC they could obtain in a week. Realistically though, most FC usually goes toward character improvements, and would not be given back to the fleet. A fleet with a few main contributors generating more FC than they'll ever use could do it, but a fleet with the FC spread thin between its members is more likely to struggle. But at this point, the reward does not justify the cost.

sisteric · August 2015

All I can say is that I come from a small fleet. And these numbers are unobtainable by me, or what's left of the fleet, in a month. One week of bonus every 2 months is a bit unrewarding to me.

I am getting frustrated and disappointed in the fleet and armada system always being designed in a manner that makes small fleet feel left out in the cold. It's really not very inclusive design philosophy. And very anti-new person on top of that.

So this is just one more thing in STO that I will never get a chance to use......

blakes7tvseries · August 2015

We reduced the people who can slot projects to one person. We don't plan to slot them ever if we do only after everything is upgraded.

tarastheslayer · August 2015

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. We're going to investigate both the costs and the buff duration timers. Neither sound as though they are working as designed.

This is good news Borticus, though I'd also ask if its possible to review the buffs on the dilithium and xp projects, as the three aren't anything like of equal value as the combat project is the only one that will give a noticeable return.

Weekly R&D Lab Bonus projects and unlocks

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