1. To get T4 Diplo to Transwarp directly to my prefered hub, DS9
2. Easy "passive" Dilithium earnings
3. Easy "passive" EC earning
4. Easy "passive" Spec points earning
5. Easy "passive" XP earning
I think that's pretty much it. Getting to T4 Diplomacy is the "hard" one. Once thats done, the particular missions don't matter much. Just click to fill your cue, click to claim the rewards. Dil, EC, Spec Points, XP,... all flow. As you redeem completed missions, refill with new ones from your list of current and department heads.
One additional benefit, if you do enough missions long enough, it gives you boosts to your ship systems. The same or similar benefits can be had from the Admiralty system too. All any of this requires is some clicks at your hub of choice before leaving to do whatever missions/patrols/STF's your going to do that day.
"Go play with your DPS in the corner, I don't care how big it is." ~ Me "There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
I always thought that Recruitment was the hardest to get to T4.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Colonial became easier for me when I started sucking the Cluster Missions dry.
Trade was slower too but with the Ferengi Trader on board the Marauder you can get that up much faster, especially combined with the Cluster Assignments.
The Exploration Missions in Local normally also award Mats. Those under the Science Tab give more CXP.
Generally, Development is the easiest. Seems like the crew love to party and have fun.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Some really good XP to be had from doff assignments aboard your ship in the Solanae sphere, just outside of Joint Command. Plus, I get all of my contraband from doffing. Good for turn ins or for ec sales on the exchange. You can actually never have to blow stuff up if you do admiralty & doff assignments.
Having done six alts worth of daily doffing (sitting in one sector or hanging around the corner of 4 sectors) here's what I have to say about each:
- Diplomatic: Moderate. Filling up on the ~200cxp missions would require a lot of travel. Four sectors will generally net you around 6. There's one sector east of DS9 that offers some unconventional diplomatic missions that only appear in "Current Sector"...your first officer won't give them.
- Marauder: Easy, but you need to be in Federation territory to get a lot of missions. Also requires 4-corner grinding much like Diplomatic.
- Engineering: Easy, but the high CXP stuff requires reasonably cheap replicator trash. KDF who do marauding missions will have likely have these after a week of sedentary doffing.
- Colonial: Difficult. Where you park greatly influences if you get more than the standard "relocate colonists" pair of missions.
- Development: Easy. Has many lucrative high-value missions, but save these for last...they want to keep your roster busy and it's easy to carelessly occupy your high value doffs better used elsewhere.
- Recruitment: Extremely rare. Must be grinded a different way.
- Trade: Extremely rare. Even if I hang around four sectors near DS9, I only get terrible missions that want to eat my GPL. Need to be on DS9 or orbiting it. I got most of mine from TTG.
- Science:Moderate. The best ones want a blue crafting material, but for the sake of getting to 100k, it's worth it to me. Otherwise, high chance of failure on the more common medium-value missions.
- Exploration: Easier for FED than KDF, as FED gets more of those 600+ CXP missions. Can also be gained via TTG.
- Medical: Easy. You'll have to replicate a ton of medical supplies, but there are a lot of good 200+ CXP missions for 5 medical supplies each. Also some 600-1000+ CXP missions that require three DOffs. Low failure rates.
- Military: Easy. Missions are everywhere, just avoid those that require 25x of three materials. Not worth it.
- Espionage: Easy, very easy for KDF. Also has some fantastic missions for getting alt-faction DOffs. I've gotten around 120k CXP simply because I keep going for said DOffs.
With all said and done, I don't see myself doing these after maxing most of them...except the ones that give loot. Not worth the time investment otherwise.
At 50 CXP per Uncommon Doff ground down to Common, that's 2,000 ground down to 6,000 Common. Carple Tunnel anyone.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Playing as a newish KDF toon I'd have to disagree here. Trade is actually easy. Just do the DS9 Trader missions and sell off your pillaged loot. Currently it's my 4th highest ranked category after Engineering, Marauding, and Science - no I'm not sure how Marauding isn't first. While Recruitment is very very difficult, and grind based, Espionage is currently my worst.
Having done six alts worth of daily doffing (sitting in one sector or hanging around the corner of 4 sectors) here's what I have to say about each:
- Diplomatic: Moderate. Filling up on the ~200cxp missions would require a lot of travel. Four systems will generally net you around 6. There's one system east of DS9 that offers some unconventional diplomatic missions that only appear in "Current Sector"...your first officer won't give them.
- Marauder: Easy, but you need to be in Federation territory to get a lot of missions.
- Engineering: Easy, but the high CXP stuff requires reasonably cheap replicator trash. KDF who do marauding missions will have likely have these after a week of sedentary doffing.
- Colonial: Difficult. Where you park greatly influences if you get more than the standard "relocate colonists" pair of missions.
- Development: Easy. Has many lucrative high-value missions, but save these for last...they want to keep your roster busy and it's easy to carelessly occupy your high value doffs better used elsewhere.
- Recruitment: Extremely rare. Must be grinded a different way.
- Trade: Extremely rare. Even if I hang around four systems near DS9, I only get terrible missions that want to eat my GPL. Need to be on DS9 or orbiting it. I got most of mine from TTG.
- Science:Moderate. The best ones want a blue crafting material, but for the sake of getting to 100k, it's worth it to me. Otherwise, high chance of failure on the more common medium-value missions.
- Exploration: Easier for FED than KDF, as FED gets more of those 600+ CXP missions. Can also be gained via TTG.
- Medical: Easy. You'll have to replicate a ton of medical supplies, but there are a lot of good 200+ CXP missions for 5 medical supplies each. Also some 600-1000+ CXP missions that require three DOffs. Low failure rates.
- Military: Easy. Missions are everywhere, just avoid those that require 25x of three materials. Not worth it.
- Espionage: Easy, very easy for KDF. Also has some fantastic missions for getting alt-faction DOffs. I've gotten around 120k CXP simply because I keep going for said DOffs.
With all said and done, I don't see myself doing these after maxing most of them...except the ones that give loot. Not worth the time investment otherwise.
Playing as a newish KDF toon I'd have to disagree here. Trade is actually easy. Just do the DS9 Trader missions and sell off your pillaged loot. Currently it's my 4th highest ranked category after Engineering, Marauding, and Science - no I'm not sure how Marauding isn't first. While Recruitment is very very difficult, and grind based, Espionage is currently my worst.
Having done six alts worth of daily doffing (sitting in one sector or hanging around the corner of 4 sectors) here's what I have to say about each:
- Diplomatic: Moderate. Filling up on the ~200cxp missions would require a lot of travel. Four systems will generally net you around 6. There's one system east of DS9 that offers some unconventional diplomatic missions that only appear in "Current Sector"...your first officer won't give them.
- Marauder: Easy, but you need to be in Federation territory to get a lot of missions.
- Engineering: Easy, but the high CXP stuff requires reasonably cheap replicator trash. KDF who do marauding missions will have likely have these after a week of sedentary doffing.
- Colonial: Difficult. Where you park greatly influences if you get more than the standard "relocate colonists" pair of missions.
- Development: Easy. Has many lucrative high-value missions, but save these for last...they want to keep your roster busy and it's easy to carelessly occupy your high value doffs better used elsewhere.
- Recruitment: Extremely rare. Must be grinded a different way.
- Trade: Extremely rare. Even if I hang around four systems near DS9, I only get terrible missions that want to eat my GPL. Need to be on DS9 or orbiting it. I got most of mine from TTG.
- Science:Moderate. The best ones want a blue crafting material, but for the sake of getting to 100k, it's worth it to me. Otherwise, high chance of failure on the more common medium-value missions.
- Exploration: Easier for FED than KDF, as FED gets more of those 600+ CXP missions. Can also be gained via TTG.
- Medical: Easy. You'll have to replicate a ton of medical supplies, but there are a lot of good 200+ CXP missions for 5 medical supplies each. Also some 600-1000+ CXP missions that require three DOffs. Low failure rates.
- Military: Easy. Missions are everywhere, just avoid those that require 25x of three materials. Not worth it.
- Espionage: Easy, very easy for KDF. Also has some fantastic missions for getting alt-faction DOffs. I've gotten around 120k CXP simply because I keep going for said DOffs.
With all said and done, I don't see myself doing these after maxing most of them...except the ones that give loot. Not worth the time investment otherwise.
Yep, it all depends on where you are. I'm talking about the laziest possible once-a-day DOffing, what you do to quickly fill up your spots on alts that you don't know if you'll ever take seriously again.
From the sound of it, Trade still requires continuous grinding and in a location you can hardly get anything else.
edit: Just realized I mixed up "system" and "sector" in my earlier post. whoops
My usual order for new toons (it was different for the first ones), from quickest to reach to slowest:
The first are quick for me
1) Colonial - I will go to the nebulas and clusters and go through the chain from 1 to 7, picking up the worthwhiles. I am willing to buy commodities for that, so the 1h trade missions I consider worthy, the 15mins not so much.
2t) Development - go through the game chain, play games, look for the odd outlier
2t) Engineering - the four dil missions (250 and 3*50) also give good CXP - must dos every other day after the cooldown is over
4t) Military - almost all regular missions reward decent CXP, also quite a bit of dil found here. Stay away from many of the "local only" missions
4t) Espionage - Infiltrate Orion, debrief prisoner (keep a high level one ready for that if you have them), interrogation resistance, KDF also assassination by telekinesis. All give nice rewards apart from CXP, too.
4t) Medical - Again, every other day there's a mission with a whomping 1300 CXP. Another more rarely directly above it gives 800 without any commodity needs. If you're willing to invest in medical supplies (they're dirt cheap), go for the 300ers further down the list. If available, take care of refugees and reclaim borg drones.
The following take considerably more time
7t) Exploration and
7t) Science work very similar for me (I think I usually get Explo a tad faster). Look out for the 360s and especially the 474 in Explo, there's a few nice ones (devidian, some others). Research Lab Officers are key here, grab any you can (possibly some will also be blocked by R&D, so grab more). Also here is more or less the only place where I manually change the first officer preset - too many Research Lab Scientists are placed in the same mission, not allowing you to use them all, and there are quite a few. Also when finished with most others grab the usually 4 mat rewarding missions from the "local" tab - not as rewarding in CXP but worthwhile for the mats, especially for a newer toon.
9) Trade - Here I will take many opportunities if I can get them, but only focus on it after I finished all colonization chains. Then it's DS9 time, hello trader, hello haggle. Still takes a while, but from the haggling you will get a net gain. (Be aware that when you're on DS9, a lot of other missions in the mid tier are not available)
10) Diplomacy - can be time consuming. Whenever you see one, get it over others, if you're looking for the nice T4 rewards. Diplo should get priority. There are some sweet spots around DS9, mostly somewhat "north" of it (badlands, defera, the cluster over there, also one sector NE of DS9). Be ready to put some ec in, but I think the 50k ec are not worth it and will dry your cash reserve
And the only one I haven't finished on all toons
11) Recruitment - Three basic ways to somewhat reliably get it (ignoring stuff like the whopping 75 you get from colonists etc.):
a) Recruitment missions on Academy/Fleet Starbase (additional ones for Roms on New Rom). Nice, but usually out of the way, so travel time, also only available every 72-96 hours. This includes general recruitment, which I tend to skip because of the 1k dil, and R&D help, which I do despite the 1k dil, because it is also worth it in mats, if you're not doing much queueing, which newish toons with limited equipment may not do.
b) BOff Recruitment from the personal tab. Rare, but give good rewards, especially on a crit. Also you can sell the purple ones for quite some money on the exchange (or grind down manuals), especially female Orion, Human, Vulcan, Bajoran, Benzite, Trill, to a lesser extent Andorian (they can sell for two to ten times the basic price, a good look at which genders are sold for what price is recommended, get in at the right time with good traits, and 500k ec per boff is possible). Rigelian and Tellarite females for some reason don't yield more than their male counterparts...
c) As mentioned grinding doffs up and/or down. Up costs dil, prohibitively so I'd say, down needs disposable higher level doffs to start with, which is a finite resource, unless you spend ec. Also the 5 second timer between missions will get on your nerves fast. It does for me, so I'm not using it.
With basic missions from space, though, recruitment will take way more time than any other, especially for some reason for Feds. While the others will be done within a few weeks or a couple of months, don't be surprised if you need two years here.
(It should be said that I do somewhat prioritize getting to T4 over dil, mats and/or other rewards)
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Comments
1. To get T4 Diplo to Transwarp directly to my prefered hub, DS9
2. Easy "passive" Dilithium earnings
3. Easy "passive" EC earning
4. Easy "passive" Spec points earning
5. Easy "passive" XP earning
I think that's pretty much it. Getting to T4 Diplomacy is the "hard" one. Once thats done, the particular missions don't matter much. Just click to fill your cue, click to claim the rewards. Dil, EC, Spec Points, XP,... all flow. As you redeem completed missions, refill with new ones from your list of current and department heads.
One additional benefit, if you do enough missions long enough, it gives you boosts to your ship systems. The same or similar benefits can be had from the Admiralty system too. All any of this requires is some clicks at your hub of choice before leaving to do whatever missions/patrols/STF's your going to do that day.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
But since only diplomacy/marauder has significant rewards for T4ing, that's the one that counts.
Trade was slower too but with the Ferengi Trader on board the Marauder you can get that up much faster, especially combined with the Cluster Assignments.
The Exploration Missions in Local normally also award Mats. Those under the Science Tab give more CXP.
Generally, Development is the easiest. Seems like the crew love to party and have fun.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
- Diplomatic: Moderate. Filling up on the ~200cxp missions would require a lot of travel. Four sectors will generally net you around 6. There's one sector east of DS9 that offers some unconventional diplomatic missions that only appear in "Current Sector"...your first officer won't give them.
- Marauder: Easy, but you need to be in Federation territory to get a lot of missions. Also requires 4-corner grinding much like Diplomatic.
- Engineering: Easy, but the high CXP stuff requires reasonably cheap replicator trash. KDF who do marauding missions will have likely have these after a week of sedentary doffing.
- Colonial: Difficult. Where you park greatly influences if you get more than the standard "relocate colonists" pair of missions.
- Development: Easy. Has many lucrative high-value missions, but save these for last...they want to keep your roster busy and it's easy to carelessly occupy your high value doffs better used elsewhere.
- Recruitment: Extremely rare. Must be grinded a different way.
- Trade: Extremely rare. Even if I hang around four sectors near DS9, I only get terrible missions that want to eat my GPL. Need to be on DS9 or orbiting it. I got most of mine from TTG.
- Science:Moderate. The best ones want a blue crafting material, but for the sake of getting to 100k, it's worth it to me. Otherwise, high chance of failure on the more common medium-value missions.
- Exploration: Easier for FED than KDF, as FED gets more of those 600+ CXP missions. Can also be gained via TTG.
- Medical: Easy. You'll have to replicate a ton of medical supplies, but there are a lot of good 200+ CXP missions for 5 medical supplies each. Also some 600-1000+ CXP missions that require three DOffs. Low failure rates.
- Military: Easy. Missions are everywhere, just avoid those that require 25x of three materials. Not worth it.
- Espionage: Easy, very easy for KDF. Also has some fantastic missions for getting alt-faction DOffs. I've gotten around 120k CXP simply because I keep going for said DOffs.
With all said and done, I don't see myself doing these after maxing most of them...except the ones that give loot. Not worth the time investment otherwise.
At 50 CXP per Uncommon Doff ground down to Common, that's 2,000 ground down to 6,000 Common. Carple Tunnel anyone.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Yep, it all depends on where you are. I'm talking about the laziest possible once-a-day DOffing, what you do to quickly fill up your spots on alts that you don't know if you'll ever take seriously again.
From the sound of it, Trade still requires continuous grinding and in a location you can hardly get anything else.
edit: Just realized I mixed up "system" and "sector" in my earlier post. whoops
The first are quick for me
1) Colonial - I will go to the nebulas and clusters and go through the chain from 1 to 7, picking up the worthwhiles. I am willing to buy commodities for that, so the 1h trade missions I consider worthy, the 15mins not so much.
2t) Development - go through the game chain, play games, look for the odd outlier
2t) Engineering - the four dil missions (250 and 3*50) also give good CXP - must dos every other day after the cooldown is over
4t) Military - almost all regular missions reward decent CXP, also quite a bit of dil found here. Stay away from many of the "local only" missions
4t) Espionage - Infiltrate Orion, debrief prisoner (keep a high level one ready for that if you have them), interrogation resistance, KDF also assassination by telekinesis. All give nice rewards apart from CXP, too.
4t) Medical - Again, every other day there's a mission with a whomping 1300 CXP. Another more rarely directly above it gives 800 without any commodity needs. If you're willing to invest in medical supplies (they're dirt cheap), go for the 300ers further down the list. If available, take care of refugees and reclaim borg drones.
The following take considerably more time
7t) Exploration and
7t) Science work very similar for me (I think I usually get Explo a tad faster). Look out for the 360s and especially the 474 in Explo, there's a few nice ones (devidian, some others). Research Lab Officers are key here, grab any you can (possibly some will also be blocked by R&D, so grab more). Also here is more or less the only place where I manually change the first officer preset - too many Research Lab Scientists are placed in the same mission, not allowing you to use them all, and there are quite a few. Also when finished with most others grab the usually 4 mat rewarding missions from the "local" tab - not as rewarding in CXP but worthwhile for the mats, especially for a newer toon.
9) Trade - Here I will take many opportunities if I can get them, but only focus on it after I finished all colonization chains. Then it's DS9 time, hello trader, hello haggle. Still takes a while, but from the haggling you will get a net gain. (Be aware that when you're on DS9, a lot of other missions in the mid tier are not available)
10) Diplomacy - can be time consuming. Whenever you see one, get it over others, if you're looking for the nice T4 rewards. Diplo should get priority. There are some sweet spots around DS9, mostly somewhat "north" of it (badlands, defera, the cluster over there, also one sector NE of DS9). Be ready to put some ec in, but I think the 50k ec are not worth it and will dry your cash reserve
And the only one I haven't finished on all toons
11) Recruitment - Three basic ways to somewhat reliably get it (ignoring stuff like the whopping 75 you get from colonists etc.):
a) Recruitment missions on Academy/Fleet Starbase (additional ones for Roms on New Rom). Nice, but usually out of the way, so travel time, also only available every 72-96 hours. This includes general recruitment, which I tend to skip because of the 1k dil, and R&D help, which I do despite the 1k dil, because it is also worth it in mats, if you're not doing much queueing, which newish toons with limited equipment may not do.
b) BOff Recruitment from the personal tab. Rare, but give good rewards, especially on a crit. Also you can sell the purple ones for quite some money on the exchange (or grind down manuals), especially female Orion, Human, Vulcan, Bajoran, Benzite, Trill, to a lesser extent Andorian (they can sell for two to ten times the basic price, a good look at which genders are sold for what price is recommended, get in at the right time with good traits, and 500k ec per boff is possible). Rigelian and Tellarite females for some reason don't yield more than their male counterparts...
c) As mentioned grinding doffs up and/or down. Up costs dil, prohibitively so I'd say, down needs disposable higher level doffs to start with, which is a finite resource, unless you spend ec. Also the 5 second timer between missions will get on your nerves fast. It does for me, so I'm not using it.
With basic missions from space, though, recruitment will take way more time than any other, especially for some reason for Feds. While the others will be done within a few weeks or a couple of months, don't be surprised if you need two years here.
(It should be said that I do somewhat prioritize getting to T4 over dil, mats and/or other rewards)