My take is that fleet holdings serve two main purposes:
For players, they're one source for end-game quality gear, much of it unique, and a source for fleet credits to buy that gear with. They also provide a goal that is long term, yet has an achievable end.
For Cryptic, they serve as a resource sink, primarily for dil, and a time sink since the overall length of the projects defines a minimum amount of time it takes players to finish. While I know some people complain about that time, I think people who are used to building up fleets see it as a fact of life. If anything, it helps with long term planning.
The time and resource sinks built into previous fleet holdings are "fair" in the sense that they're the same for every group, large or small. But with the design of the colony, Cryptic's intent seems to be to make the time-sink more open-ended. A 25% overall reduction in provision costs will help large groups a little, but it won't alter the equation for small groups. The increased dil cost feels like it's not designed to balance a reduced provision cost, but instead to punish us for asking for one.
It's a pretty map, I'm sorry for the artists who did a good job on it.
TL:DR version of the following post: The cost for a full colony has been reduced by roughly 2.5million colony provisions (~25%) and increased by roughly 60.5million dilithium (yes sixty, that isn't a typo)
First: Personally I am flabberghasted at the removal of doff requirements, it wasn't really neccessary on my account, but I am used to contributing hundreds of doffs one at a time from the good old days *shrugs*.
You are going to run those 9 times for each track = 44,550 dil total
Thats looks fairly generous. 45% reduction in provisions for a small dilithium addition.
I agree we can use a few good dilithium sinks but that seems a bit excessive. That's 'somewhere' in the range of 80 million (~4 times previous values) dilithium to completion now? And we still have to worry about ~7.35 million colony provisions?
By the way nice move on removing the autocollect values from the holding summary, cannot have me calculating that again can we?
Let's compare the equipment provisions for a change shall we?
Overall equipment provisioning projects look fine to me. Their dilithium costs roughly doubles but they have significantly higher colony provision reductions 'and' generate equipment tokens.
Upgrades:
For obvious reasons I did not check 'every' upgrade again but the projects I had access to (subtracks 1-3 + colony 1) show a 20% reduction in required provisions with a negligible increase in dilithium (compared to the rest).
To summarize:
Upgrades = Ok changes
Equipment provisioning = Better than I expected
Experience projects = WHAT THE FRAK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!
ok 80 mil dil.. thats with the prize right now 266,000 zen. that sound a little bit extreme. dil is already the last thing people contribute, not really going to see many t5 colonies at all.
to be fair, i would prefere the old provision costs, just because you have a reason to actually play the game for them (aka the colony defense simulation). i think this would be by far the better way.
to be fair, i would prefere the old provision costs, just because you have a reason to actually play the game for them (aka the colony defense simulation). i think this would be by far the better way.
This was also my point of view. In my opinion, playing the invasion simulation seems like to be a better choice than having XP projects with relatively large dilithium requirements.
As I suggested earlier today, as a possible alternative, please, let us have the option to choose between two different projects. One could be the current one (which requires dilithium and less provisions) and the previous one (which requires more provisions but no dilithium).
I am certain that nobody who is managing fleet holdings will care about the little bit longer list of available projects to slot. Actually, we are talking about three projects (one for each subtrack) to be added.
I can't say I'm in favor of what seems to be a massive Dilithium increase. I'm trying to save up for Phoenix Prize Boxes and maybe some ships I otherwise couldn't afford. This can put a good dent in that (which I'm sure Cryptic prefers, as they need my money, not my log-in/click/collect/convert time).
But there needs to be a balance in what's required and how to get them. It sounds like the Colony provision numbers have been reduced well, but considering what the mini-games reward, it's still a bit high.
The Dilithium bump hurts, but I wonder...has anyone taken the amount of time to do the mini-games and compared it to, say, running some Red Alerts and patrols? It may be that Dilithium is easier and faster than the Colony provisions, so it may have a speed benefit at the expense of not using it for other things.
That all being said, I'd rather have more types of item to input and less Dilithium. Dilithium has a plethora of uses, including helping F2P players ultimately catch up on gear, ships, etc. Increase the rewards and/or, mcevergreen suggested, add another option that allows more of a certain input and less Dilithium.
TL:DR version of the following post: The cost for a full colony has been reduced by roughly 2.5million colony provisions (~25%) and increased by roughly 60.5million dilithium (yes sixty, that isn't a typo)
First: Personally I am flabberghasted at the removal of doff requirements, it wasn't really neccessary on my account, but I am used to contributing hundreds of doffs one at a time from the good old days *shrugs*.
You are going to run those 9 times for each track = 44,550 dil total
Thats looks fairly generous. 45% reduction in provisions for a small dilithium addition.
I agree we can use a few good dilithium sinks but that seems a bit excessive. That's 'somewhere' in the range of 80 million (~4 times previous values) dilithium to completion now? And we still have to worry about ~7.35 million colony provisions?
By the way nice move on removing the autocollect values from the holding summary, cannot have me calculating that again can we?
Let's compare the equipment provisions for a change shall we?
Overall equipment provisioning projects look fine to me. Their dilithium costs roughly doubles but they have significantly higher colony provision reductions 'and' generate equipment tokens.
Upgrades:
For obvious reasons I did not check 'every' upgrade again but the projects I had access to (subtracks 1-3 + colony 1) show a 20% reduction in required provisions with a negligible increase in dilithium (compared to the rest).
To summarize:
Upgrades = Ok changes
Equipment provisioning = Better than I expected
Experience projects = WHAT THE FRAK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!
ok 80 mil dil.. thats with the prize right now 266,000 zen. that sound a little bit extreme. dil is already the last thing people contribute, not really going to see many t5 colonies at all.
They seem to be determined to kill of thier title since S13. I reached a point where I say let them.
I hope this goes live the way it is now.
Would make things easier for so many peeps I know.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
After testing this, I have a question: Why does the amount contributed from the coffer decrease with the number of provisions remaining? This makes it very annoying to fill the requirement, because toward the end, you're only contributing a few provisions at a time.
I'm afraid I don't understand. Can you walk me thru the behavior you're seeing, step by step?
It seems that dukedom01 and johnbr216 already beat me to it. As they explained, there are two problems:
1. The "CONTRIBUTE ITEMS" window reports that the coffer has 10 times as many provisions as it actually does.
2. The contribution from the coffer appears to get divided by 10, with some rounding that I don't completely understand.
Thanks for the additional information. We'll definitely check this out. It looks like some recent updates to Commodity donations didn't all make it into this most recent patch. At a glance, it appears to be half-complete work. This strange behavior is a result of our change to Commodities needing to be donated in batches of 10, and rewarding 33 Fleet Credits for every 10 turned in.
What happens if the number required is not an exact multiple of 10? Or have the requirements been changed so that they're always an exact multiple of 10? How does this work with the discounts we get from the dilithium mine?
When you came up with this requirement that colony provisions be donated in batches of 10, did you consider how other features would have to change to accommodate this? It seems to me that you are complicating your code for little to no benefit, and unnecessary complications are how you get bugs. Why make a special case just for colony provisions? Do you intend to use this batch functionality for anything else? Doffs? dilithium? fleet marks? If the answer is no, then forget about it. Allow users to contribute single provisions, round the reward to 3 or 4 fleet credits per provision, and be done with it.
EDIT: I forgot to ask: Are the tokens for the invasion simulation supposed to be listed in the "Provisions" tab? The last time I checked, they weren't there.
TL:DR version of the following post: The cost for a full colony has been reduced by roughly 2.5million colony provisions (~25%) and increased by roughly 60.5million dilithium (yes sixty, that isn't a typo)
First: Personally I am flabberghasted at the removal of doff requirements, it wasn't really neccessary on my account, but I am used to contributing hundreds of doffs one at a time from the good old days *shrugs*.
You are going to run those 9 times for each track = 44,550 dil total
Thats looks fairly generous. 45% reduction in provisions for a small dilithium addition.
I agree we can use a few good dilithium sinks but that seems a bit excessive. That's 'somewhere' in the range of 80 million (~4 times previous values) dilithium to completion now? And we still have to worry about ~7.35 million colony provisions?
By the way nice move on removing the autocollect values from the holding summary, cannot have me calculating that again can we?
Let's compare the equipment provisions for a change shall we?
Overall equipment provisioning projects look fine to me. Their dilithium costs roughly doubles but they have significantly higher colony provision reductions 'and' generate equipment tokens.
Upgrades:
For obvious reasons I did not check 'every' upgrade again but the projects I had access to (subtracks 1-3 + colony 1) show a 20% reduction in required provisions with a negligible increase in dilithium (compared to the rest).
To summarize:
Upgrades = Ok changes
Equipment provisioning = Better than I expected
Experience projects = WHAT THE FRAK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!
Wait, the XP projects didn't have dilithium requirements before. When did this change? The last patch?
I am unable to determine from your numbers how much dilithium Cryptic thinks each doff and provision is worth. Trying to solve for it leads to nonsensical and inconsistent results. This is likely due to the cost refactoring that Borticus was talking about.
12*x + 1020*y = 1650
30*x + 1088*y = 27750
x = 1511.046511627907, y = -16.1593707250342
30*x + 1088*y = 27750
60*x + 905*y = 58570
x = 1012.599265670076, y = -2.415420928402833
Wow, just too much dil. There are too many other uses for dil, I can't see our fleet doing much if any of this. the previous way would take us a long time, but at least it did not require a ridiculous amount of dil that simply has too many other uses.
These new costs imo are much more manageable than previous when it comes to provisions. Dilithium can be picked up easily enough though I do agree with some of the others that a slight reduction to dilithium should be considered. I would say about 10% dilithium input reduction if one is done but otherwise this is pretty much what I would expect for a t5 holding. Great work on that.
@borticuscryptic I have been testing some of the fleet equipment from this new holding and have noticed some rather interesting bugs with them. I have filed reports with brief video clips included in the Bug Hunter forum for your convenience. In a nut shell some of the items are not giving the bonuses they should be.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
But did they at what was given for the Reputation makeover? 9 I posted this in the GNN Thread in reaction to two comparison images pre and post 'reduction'.
'As the Doffs in Reputation Projects were replaced on a 100:1 ratio, removing 154 Doffs should have resulted in a 15,400 addition of Dilitium. As the modified Dilitium contribution is still 81,015 Dilitium greater. Provisions have decreased by 3,825, so each Provision is worth 21.18 Dilitium? This does not even account for the 204 increase in Fleet Marks.
Any thoughts on how this is a substantial reduction?'
Post edited by ltminns on
'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.'
But did they at what was given for the Reputation makeover. I posted this in the GNN Thread in reaction to two comparison images pre and post 'reduction'.
'As the Doffs in Reputation Projects were replaced on a 100:1 ratio, removing 154 Doffs should have resulted in a 15,400 addition of Dilitium. As the modified Dilitium contribution is still 81,015 Dilitium greater. Provisions have decreased by 3,825, so each Provision is worth 21.18 Dilitium? This does not even account for the 204 increase in Fleet Marks.
Any thoughts on how this is a substantial reduction?'
What makes you think the doffs were replaced using a ratio of 100 dilithium per doff? All I saw was your wish that they be replaced at that ratio. I never saw a dev say that's the ratio they used. If you know of such a statement, please let me know.
First off I would prefer MUCH reduced Doff requirements. Secondly, if it is less than for the main Starbase, they should just do what they did with the Reputation Projects - convert Doffs to a Dilitium contribution instead at a 100:1 ratio. Much rather donate 7,700 Dilitium than 77 Engineering Doffs. I would get 7,700 Fleet Credits instead of losing 38,500 Fleet Credits.
If I read it correctly, having a self-generating Provision type item is infinately preferable to purchasing those stupid Provisions from your Replicator at the cost of 500 Fleet Credits for no donation credit.
I tried to figure out the ratios they used from dukedom01's numbers, but I didn't get anywhere.
Granted, I didn't take into account the change in fleet marks, because dukedom01 didn't post those numbers. But I don't think that explains all of it. According to Borticus, they "refactored" the costs. They increased some costs, decreased others, and also converted some costs into others. The net result is what? It's really hard for us to tell exactly what they did.
There's no easy way to bullet-point out what this means, but it basically boils down to nearly all Dilithium and Colony Commodity costs having changed. This was necessitated by discovering a problem in our cost equations that had to be fixed. Some costs will have gone up compared to their current Tribble values, others will have gone down.
That said...
2) Colony Commodity costs for ALL projects have been decreased
Due to the aforementioned re-factoring, there's not an exact value I can quote to you, but we have decreased these costs across the board. In some places this will be a substantial reduction to costs.
One thing that's allowed us to reduce these costs is following the player feedback that higher Dilithium costs would be more acceptable than the current high Commodity prices. This made sense to use, so we used this as a trade off that further allowed us to lessen the load on Colony Commodities. In short, Dil Costs have gone up in order to facilitate Commodity costs going down.
Borticus also never answered my question on whether the refactoring affects all the fleet holdings or just the Dranuur Colony.
The most reasonable way to do the accounting, absent a specific statement from the devs, is to convert everything into fleet credits.
Colony provisions are worth 3.3 fleet credits per provision.
Fleet marks are worth 50 fleet credits each.
Each doff is worth 300 fleet credits. (That's how much you get for contributing the doff, not how much it costs to buy one.)
And each unit of dilithium is worth 1 fleet credit.
For those not following things in the Tribble Test Server section of the forums, here's 2 photos of standard Colony tier 4 projects before and after the latest changes.
Balanced resource requirements for the Fleet Colony Holding to require substantially less Commodities such as Ore, Batteries, and Luxury Goods, in favor of requiring more Dilithium.
Removed the Duty Officer requirements from the Fleet Colony XP related projects.
The removal of doffs finally killed off one of the basic building mechanics of all previous fleet holdings... the ability to reinvest fleet credits back into projects (doffs could also be obtained in other ways for zero FC). Provisions nixed the first part of it. I think mini or war games for provisions and high dilithium costs combined with the loss of this mechanic likely exceeds the boundaries of what is realistic for the game in it's current state.
No explanation for the difference in fleet marks. The before photo was taken Sept 21.
For those not following things in the Tribble Test Server section of the forums, here's 2 photos of standard Colony tier 4 projects before and after the latest changes.
Balanced resource requirements for the Fleet Colony Holding to require substantially less Commodities such as Ore, Batteries, and Luxury Goods, in favor of requiring more Dilithium.
Removed the Duty Officer requirements from the Fleet Colony XP related projects.
Before:
After:
I will do some math by myself this afternoon/evening. I think that I will have a look into the doff market on the exchange - which pretty much has no future in Season 14. But, for many new players, like I was back then in 2013, doffs are certainly a form of income, in the beginning of the game.
However, still, looking at the two different projects (and the pictures above), the one which we had before (the original one) and the one we are supposed to get (the current one), I mean, the differences are incredible. I don't mind about the increase in fleet marks, but, certainly about the costs in terms of dilithium.
As suggested yesterday, please, give the players the opportunity to choose. Please, include the opportunity to choose between different types of projects. One which requires dilithium and one which does not. As we have and as we always had it on the starbase.
Thinking about 100k dilithium per project, I don't see much of an opportunity to start XP projects on a daily basis. Anyway, the way from tier 4 up to tier 5 is a long one and even if you manage to start projects every day, it will take you 125 days.
If projects require these high amounts of dilithium, or even already the half of it, it will certainly prevend many fleets in progressing their new fleet holding. From a fleet leader point of view, I know exactly, that it will be frustrating. Fleet members will look every day into the same - still open/unfinished - projects. Everything is filled with the exception of dilithium. And, fleet members will look into these projects day after day. They will not be able to contribute anything. And, they just don't have 50k dilithium to contribute, but they would have some fleet marks or some white doffs.
In summary, one of my friends told me today, that the current requirements of the new fleet holding are about 80 million dilithium - which is more than all the other existing fleet holdings together.
In this way, the new fleet holding seems to be not like a full five-tier holding, but a fifty-tier holding.
I didn't say they used the 100:1 ratio, but I used that as a guide for the rest of the calculations. They used that ratio for Reputation, why be different for something else. As I said earlier, the end game for them was always Dilitium, the way to get people to beg for that is to make ridiculous time and amounts of something else.
'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.'
I will repeat one of my previous suggestions, which no one else seemed to take seriously.
1. Replace the doff requirements with a GPL requirement (instead of a dilithium requirement).
2. Allow us to exchange batches of white, green, blue, or purple doffs directly for GPL (without having to grind them down first).
3. Allow us to buy GPL with fleet credits.
4. Restore the old GPL rewards to the Ferengi admiralty campaign.
No matter how you currently fill the doff requirement, this will make it easier for you without the additional burden of increased dilithium costs.
Edited for punctuation. Vanilla, don't eat this post.
I am with you on the same page that we need to have some other types of costs instead of the enormous costs on dilithium for the new fleet holding. Yesterday, I also proposed the use GPL for colony projects. But, as it seems, with the upcoming changes to the Ferengi admiralty campaign and the reduction of 80 % in GPL (in favour of EC), will close that door. Also, GPL can be gained heavily with the help of the Ferengi admiralty campaign and, thus, does not support the multiplayer content of this game, in my point of view.
From my point of view, having doff requirements in projects is not an issue. As someone mentioned in the forum, it is a matter of minutes to contribute them, especially now when you can buy 50 at the same time. It is a possible sink of fleet credits and opportunity to re-invest the gained fleet credits into new fleet projects.
Maybe distributing the weight of resources between different types of resources would make sense. At least higher requirements in terms of fleet marks would bring back life to PvE queues. These days, you can wait quite a bit to start an UAA (Undine Assault Advanced), for example.
However, I would have one question. Is still "everything subject to change" or are we are looking into the final requirements of the new fleet holding now? Is there still the chance that our feedback can be considered/addressed before the new fleet holding goes live on holodeck?
As mentioned today, speaking also on behalf of my fleet/armada members, we would appreciate the opportunity to choose our path and the required resources. Looking on the posts above during the past days, the majority of people is in favour of having other costs than heavy dilithium requirements - or at least an option to choose between dilithium and non-dilithium projects. I am not complaining here. I just would hope for reasonable requirements for both, dilithium and non-dilithium projects.
Again, I would like to thank the team for all the work which went into the new fleet holding.
I didn't say they used the 100:1 ratio, but I used that as a guide for the rest of the calculations. They used that ratio for Reputation, why be different for something else. As I said earlier, the end game for them was always Dilitium, the way to get people to beg for that is to make ridiculous time and amounts of something else.
I looked it up, and you are indeed correct: that is the ratio they used when they replaced the doff requirements for reputation projects.
Removed any Duty Officer input requirements on all Reputation Projects and increased the Dilithium input requirements by 100 per Duty Officer that was previously required.
However, I'm not certain we can conclude that they used the same ratio in this case. In fact, I'm not certain that they even remembered what ratio they used back then.
Even if we assume that they replaced doffs with dilithium at a ratio of 300:1 (which is what you'd expect based on fleet credit rewards), the math still doesn't add up: we still see a dramatic increase in costs. You can see my calculation here:
So, this quick calculation seems to show that the majority of dilithium costs (in the current version of the projects) comes from the reduction on provisions, not from the removement of doff requirements. If you also consider how the exchange market works in terms of doffs. What would you say?
From my point of view, having doff requirements in projects is not an issue. As someone mentioned in the forum, it is a matter of minutes to contribute them, especially now when you can buy 50 at the same time. It is a possible sink of fleet credits and opportunity to re-invest the gained fleet credits into new fleet projects.
For some people, the fleet credit sink is a negative, not a positive; those in large fleets have problems acquiring fleet credits. I am mostly neutral on that issue. From my point of view, the primary problem with the doff requirement is the amount of clicking it takes. I've commented on ways to improve that before.
However, I would have one question. Is still "everything subject to change" or are we are looking into the final requirements of the new fleet holding now? Is there still the chance that our feedback can be considered/addressed before the new fleet holding goes live on holodeck?
We are less than a week away from release. At this point, the mechanics are probably set. They will tweak a few numbers here are there, but they won't be making any major changes. They won't even fix the bugs which they've accidentally introduced, but aren't related to this holding. I've found several such bugs, which I've reported in the Tribble bug report forum.
So, this quick calculation seems to show that the majority of dilithium costs (in the current version of the projects) comes from the reduction on provisions, not from the removement of doff requirements. If you also consider how the exchange market works in terms of doffs. What would you say?
I don't think Cryptic ever considers the exchanges when deciding how much resources are worth. They have their own internal metrics, which we can only guess at. I already did the calculation based on fleet credits, and the math doesn't really add up. We see a significant increase in cost. See my post below.
Jeez guys really. Before you try figuring out what formula cryptic might have used you 'probably' should start by normalizing the projects you compare. If you compare a value that has a 15% reduction built in with a value that has a 20% reduction it cannot make sense. Remove the dilithium mine bonuses and any bonus you are getting from the armada from your calculations.
3. Give us the option to grind down batches of doffs instead of one at a time.
4. Change the doff grinder to reward doffs of the same department that you input.
If I am not mistaken, then this issue has been addressed and with the new season and you can then buy 50 at one time. Otherwise, the Crtl-key is your friend.
We are less than a week away from release. At this point, the mechanics are probably set. They will tweak a few numbers here are there, but they won't be making any major changes. They won't even fix the bugs which they've accidentally introduced, but aren't related to this holding. I've found several such bugs, which I've reported in the Tribble bug report forum.
I see your point. Well, it is a bit unfortunate that our efforts and our comments will not be taken into account and no changes will be made according to our input during the past days.
I still don't think that adding three projects (one for each subtrack, without dilithium requirements) is a major thing to do.
I also would have appreciated the opportunity of a discussion on the new fleet holding. I am sure that many people have had great ideas to reduce the heavy amount of dilithium which the new fleet holding will require - but all of these ideas will be left out. Of course, the community testing on tribble is much smaller than the amount of people playing on holodeck. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time, probably until the end of October/beginning-middle of November until the same concerns are raised - about the same issues - by people on holodeck.
I hope I am wrong and season 14 will be a great success. But, to be honest, I am bit afraid that some problems will be delayed and come back up when the ditlithium costs (at higher tiers) will become significant.
I don't think Cryptic ever considers the exchanges when deciding how much resources are worth. They have their own internal metrics, which we can only guess at. I already did the calculation based on fleet credits, and the math doesn't really add up. We see a significant increase in cost. See my post below.
Please, correct me if I am wrong. But, I thought that the exchange is a vital element of the whole game. Sometimes, you can even use prices from the exchange to determine how good your gear is or what are the most viable traits to have. I remember when inspirational leader was 300 million EC, because it was just the best possible trait you can get in the game. Of course, also the rarity of items has a strong influence on the prices which we see on the exchange. In short, most what I have is based on the exchange.
What is left to say? Well, I still hope that something can be done to address our comments. Again, I would like to say that I am not complaining or unwilling to spend any money on the game. But, everything has to be in a reasonable amount.
I am glad that this forum provides an opportunity to freely discuss ideas on upcoming content without the need of raising any kind of criticism. My only wish is to offer my point of view and experience to improve the content of this game.
I trust in our strong armada and I believe that our alpha fleet has the resources to get the colony up to tier 5 in a reasonable amount of time. As a leader of two fleets (fed+kdf), I will be "giving it all I've got" to build the new fleet holding. I will go with positive expectations into the new season, even though the feedback by my fleet/armada members, by myself, and by everyone else here in this community has not be considered.
Time to quote O'Brien: "Mark my words gentlemen. It will be build".
I don't know how yet, but I guess we are going to find out. All the best to all of you. See you in-game. :-)
Jeez guys really. Before you try figuring out what formula cryptic might have used you 'probably' should start by normalizing the projects you compare. If you compare a value that has a 15% reduction built in with a value that has a 20% reduction it cannot make sense. Remove the dilithium mine bonuses and any bonus you are getting from the armada from your calculations.
The before and after photos both benefit from having a completed dil mine and it's associated discount. The after pic also would be effected from joining an armada as a beta. The tribble colony is Tier 5 overall with the middle sub-tier complete and the other two at tier 4 with all optional/upgrade projects that were available complete.
In summary, one of my friends told me today, that the current requirements of the new fleet holding are about 80 million dilithium - which is more than all the other existing fleet holdings together.
In this way, the new fleet holding seems to be not like a full five-tier holding, but a fifty-tier holding.
If this is correct...Season 14 will definitely beat Delta Rising as the WORST fiasco EVER rolled out in the history of STO.
What I still like to have answered before we move forward is this:
Given that the changes to upgrades (20ish percent reduction) and equipment provisioning (1/2 provisions for double the dil) are roughly the same through the various tiers why do the large xp projects for the lack of a better word look so arbitrary?
Patch notes for today show cosmetic type changes to the Colony. Nothing about type and amounts of items necessary to level up this sink.
'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.'
Healthy dil costs give the fleet holding value and keep the dilex down so that sto remains truly f2p.
It's the thing sto has been missing for years. When sto was at its most vibrant and populous, the dilex was kept as low as 100/1 or lower because of large healthy dil costs for building fleets.
Healthy dil costs give the fleet holding value for Cryptic's bottom line (profit). When STO was at it's most vibrant there were far more active players, fewer missteps that caused players to leave, and things cost far less. F2P is just an marketing term. Somebody still has to pay to fill these colony projects, most likely with zen. Nobody wants the spend-fest to increase even more.
Yours truly, one of folks with well over 200 million FC contributed and re-invested into the game's holdings and (that's just on this account) helping fellow fleet mates get what they need.
My apologies for off topic (not testing feedback). You have to post how you really feel once in a blue moon and this will not happen again in this thread. Will take any further opinions to threads upstairs. I still support STO.
The reduction in provision costs does help, but the colony will still need, what, 7.5 million of them? The sources for them- three minigames and one ground event- are still insufficient. If the goal is to get people to play the game to advance their fleet, more queues and activities should reward these things.
I still think the existing fleet defense queues, and the new s14 queues, should be leveraged to help with this by rewarding provisions. Give us a reason to play them!
Comments
For players, they're one source for end-game quality gear, much of it unique, and a source for fleet credits to buy that gear with. They also provide a goal that is long term, yet has an achievable end.
For Cryptic, they serve as a resource sink, primarily for dil, and a time sink since the overall length of the projects defines a minimum amount of time it takes players to finish. While I know some people complain about that time, I think people who are used to building up fleets see it as a fact of life. If anything, it helps with long term planning.
The time and resource sinks built into previous fleet holdings are "fair" in the sense that they're the same for every group, large or small. But with the design of the colony, Cryptic's intent seems to be to make the time-sink more open-ended. A 25% overall reduction in provision costs will help large groups a little, but it won't alter the equation for small groups. The increased dil cost feels like it's not designed to balance a reduced provision cost, but instead to punish us for asking for one.
It's a pretty map, I'm sorry for the artists who did a good job on it.
ok 80 mil dil.. thats with the prize right now 266,000 zen. that sound a little bit extreme. dil is already the last thing people contribute, not really going to see many t5 colonies at all.
to be fair, i would prefere the old provision costs, just because you have a reason to actually play the game for them (aka the colony defense simulation). i think this would be by far the better way.
ingame: @Felisean
This was also my point of view. In my opinion, playing the invasion simulation seems like to be a better choice than having XP projects with relatively large dilithium requirements.
As I suggested earlier today, as a possible alternative, please, let us have the option to choose between two different projects. One could be the current one (which requires dilithium and less provisions) and the previous one (which requires more provisions but no dilithium).
I am certain that nobody who is managing fleet holdings will care about the little bit longer list of available projects to slot. Actually, we are talking about three projects (one for each subtrack) to be added.
But there needs to be a balance in what's required and how to get them. It sounds like the Colony provision numbers have been reduced well, but considering what the mini-games reward, it's still a bit high.
The Dilithium bump hurts, but I wonder...has anyone taken the amount of time to do the mini-games and compared it to, say, running some Red Alerts and patrols? It may be that Dilithium is easier and faster than the Colony provisions, so it may have a speed benefit at the expense of not using it for other things.
That all being said, I'd rather have more types of item to input and less Dilithium. Dilithium has a plethora of uses, including helping F2P players ultimately catch up on gear, ships, etc. Increase the rewards and/or, mcevergreen suggested, add another option that allows more of a certain input and less Dilithium.
They seem to be determined to kill of thier title since S13. I reached a point where I say let them.
I hope this goes live the way it is now.
Would make things easier for so many peeps I know.
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It seems that dukedom01 and johnbr216 already beat me to it. As they explained, there are two problems:
1. The "CONTRIBUTE ITEMS" window reports that the coffer has 10 times as many provisions as it actually does.
2. The contribution from the coffer appears to get divided by 10, with some rounding that I don't completely understand.
Let me reiterate my previous questions.
When you came up with this requirement that colony provisions be donated in batches of 10, did you consider how other features would have to change to accommodate this? It seems to me that you are complicating your code for little to no benefit, and unnecessary complications are how you get bugs. Why make a special case just for colony provisions? Do you intend to use this batch functionality for anything else? Doffs? dilithium? fleet marks? If the answer is no, then forget about it. Allow users to contribute single provisions, round the reward to 3 or 4 fleet credits per provision, and be done with it.
EDIT: I forgot to ask: Are the tokens for the invasion simulation supposed to be listed in the "Provisions" tab? The last time I checked, they weren't there.
Wait, the XP projects didn't have dilithium requirements before. When did this change? The last patch?
Colony projects (Tribble 09/15/2017)
https://imgur.com/a/RwArP
Colony: Raise Morale & Renewable Energy (Tribble 09/16/2017)
https://imgur.com/a/HmsCx
It looks as though Ltminns got his wish. They changed the doff requirements into a dilithium requirement.
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/13266708/#Comment_13266708
I am unable to determine from your numbers how much dilithium Cryptic thinks each doff and provision is worth. Trying to solve for it leads to nonsensical and inconsistent results. This is likely due to the cost refactoring that Borticus was talking about.
12*x + 1020*y = 1650
30*x + 1088*y = 27750
x = 1511.046511627907, y = -16.1593707250342
30*x + 1088*y = 27750
60*x + 905*y = 58570
x = 1012.599265670076, y = -2.415420928402833
@borticuscryptic I have been testing some of the fleet equipment from this new holding and have noticed some rather interesting bugs with them. I have filed reports with brief video clips included in the Bug Hunter forum for your convenience. In a nut shell some of the items are not giving the bonuses they should be.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
'As the Doffs in Reputation Projects were replaced on a 100:1 ratio, removing 154 Doffs should have resulted in a 15,400 addition of Dilitium. As the modified Dilitium contribution is still 81,015 Dilitium greater. Provisions have decreased by 3,825, so each Provision is worth 21.18 Dilitium? This does not even account for the 204 increase in Fleet Marks.
Any thoughts on how this is a substantial reduction?'
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.'
What makes you think the doffs were replaced using a ratio of 100 dilithium per doff? All I saw was your wish that they be replaced at that ratio. I never saw a dev say that's the ratio they used. If you know of such a statement, please let me know.
I tried to figure out the ratios they used from dukedom01's numbers, but I didn't get anywhere.
https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/13273828/#Comment_13273828
https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/13274233/#Comment_13274233
Granted, I didn't take into account the change in fleet marks, because dukedom01 didn't post those numbers. But I don't think that explains all of it. According to Borticus, they "refactored" the costs. They increased some costs, decreased others, and also converted some costs into others. The net result is what? It's really hard for us to tell exactly what they did.
Borticus also never answered my question on whether the refactoring affects all the fleet holdings or just the Dranuur Colony.
Colony provisions are worth 3.3 fleet credits per provision.
Fleet marks are worth 50 fleet credits each.
Each doff is worth 300 fleet credits. (That's how much you get for contributing the doff, not how much it costs to buy one.)
And each unit of dilithium is worth 1 fleet credit.
From protoneous's screenshots,
we get
Before: 11475*3.3 + 154*300 + 816*50 = 124867.5
After: 7650*3.3 + 96415 + 1020*50 = 172660.0
That's an increase of 47792.5 fleet credits.
No explanation for the difference in fleet marks. The before photo was taken Sept 21.
I will do some math by myself this afternoon/evening. I think that I will have a look into the doff market on the exchange - which pretty much has no future in Season 14. But, for many new players, like I was back then in 2013, doffs are certainly a form of income, in the beginning of the game.
However, still, looking at the two different projects (and the pictures above), the one which we had before (the original one) and the one we are supposed to get (the current one), I mean, the differences are incredible. I don't mind about the increase in fleet marks, but, certainly about the costs in terms of dilithium.
As suggested yesterday, please, give the players the opportunity to choose. Please, include the opportunity to choose between different types of projects. One which requires dilithium and one which does not. As we have and as we always had it on the starbase.
Thinking about 100k dilithium per project, I don't see much of an opportunity to start XP projects on a daily basis. Anyway, the way from tier 4 up to tier 5 is a long one and even if you manage to start projects every day, it will take you 125 days.
If projects require these high amounts of dilithium, or even already the half of it, it will certainly prevend many fleets in progressing their new fleet holding. From a fleet leader point of view, I know exactly, that it will be frustrating. Fleet members will look every day into the same - still open/unfinished - projects. Everything is filled with the exception of dilithium. And, fleet members will look into these projects day after day. They will not be able to contribute anything. And, they just don't have 50k dilithium to contribute, but they would have some fleet marks or some white doffs.
In summary, one of my friends told me today, that the current requirements of the new fleet holding are about 80 million dilithium - which is more than all the other existing fleet holdings together.
In this way, the new fleet holding seems to be not like a full five-tier holding, but a fifty-tier holding.
1. Replace the doff requirements with a GPL requirement (instead of a dilithium requirement).
2. Allow us to exchange batches of white, green, blue, or purple doffs directly for GPL (without having to grind them down first).
3. Allow us to buy GPL with fleet credits.
4. Restore the old GPL rewards to the Ferengi admiralty campaign.
No matter how you currently fill the doff requirement, this will make it easier for you without the additional burden of increased dilithium costs.
Edited for punctuation. Vanilla, don't eat this post.
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.'
I am with you on the same page that we need to have some other types of costs instead of the enormous costs on dilithium for the new fleet holding. Yesterday, I also proposed the use GPL for colony projects. But, as it seems, with the upcoming changes to the Ferengi admiralty campaign and the reduction of 80 % in GPL (in favour of EC), will close that door. Also, GPL can be gained heavily with the help of the Ferengi admiralty campaign and, thus, does not support the multiplayer content of this game, in my point of view.
From my point of view, having doff requirements in projects is not an issue. As someone mentioned in the forum, it is a matter of minutes to contribute them, especially now when you can buy 50 at the same time. It is a possible sink of fleet credits and opportunity to re-invest the gained fleet credits into new fleet projects.
Maybe distributing the weight of resources between different types of resources would make sense. At least higher requirements in terms of fleet marks would bring back life to PvE queues. These days, you can wait quite a bit to start an UAA (Undine Assault Advanced), for example.
However, I would have one question. Is still "everything subject to change" or are we are looking into the final requirements of the new fleet holding now? Is there still the chance that our feedback can be considered/addressed before the new fleet holding goes live on holodeck?
As mentioned today, speaking also on behalf of my fleet/armada members, we would appreciate the opportunity to choose our path and the required resources. Looking on the posts above during the past days, the majority of people is in favour of having other costs than heavy dilithium requirements - or at least an option to choose between dilithium and non-dilithium projects. I am not complaining here. I just would hope for reasonable requirements for both, dilithium and non-dilithium projects.
Again, I would like to thank the team for all the work which went into the new fleet holding.
I looked it up, and you are indeed correct: that is the ratio they used when they replaced the doff requirements for reputation projects.
TRIBBLE MAINTENANCE AND RELEASE NOTES - SEPTEMBER 2, 2016
However, I'm not certain we can conclude that they used the same ratio in this case. In fact, I'm not certain that they even remembered what ratio they used back then.
Even if we assume that they replaced doffs with dilithium at a ratio of 300:1 (which is what you'd expect based on fleet credit rewards), the math still doesn't add up: we still see a dramatic increase in costs. You can see my calculation here:
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/13274370/#Comment_13274370
I wish they would explain how they arrived at the current costs, but they almost never explain their math.
1 doff = 300 FC
300 dilithium = 300 FC
154 doffs (in the previous version of the project) = 46,200 FC = 46,200 dilithium
1 doff = 30,000 EC (on average on the exchange)
1 master key = 125 zen = 37,500 dilithium (300 dilithium for 1 zen)
1 master key = 5,000,000 EC
5,000,000 EC = 166 doffs = 37,500 dilithium
166 doffs = 37,500 dilithium
1 doff = 226 dilithium
So, this quick calculation seems to show that the majority of dilithium costs (in the current version of the projects) comes from the reduction on provisions, not from the removement of doff requirements. If you also consider how the exchange market works in terms of doffs. What would you say?
For some people, the fleet credit sink is a negative, not a positive; those in large fleets have problems acquiring fleet credits. I am mostly neutral on that issue. From my point of view, the primary problem with the doff requirement is the amount of clicking it takes. I've commented on ways to improve that before.
I will also add the following suggestions:
3. Give us the option to grind down batches of doffs instead of one at a time.
4. Change the doff grinder to reward doffs of the same department that you input.
We are less than a week away from release. At this point, the mechanics are probably set. They will tweak a few numbers here are there, but they won't be making any major changes. They won't even fix the bugs which they've accidentally introduced, but aren't related to this holding. I've found several such bugs, which I've reported in the Tribble bug report forum.
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/categories/tribble-bug-reports
I don't think Cryptic ever considers the exchanges when deciding how much resources are worth. They have their own internal metrics, which we can only guess at. I already did the calculation based on fleet credits, and the math doesn't really add up. We see a significant increase in cost. See my post below.
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/comment/13274370/#Comment_13274370
If I am not mistaken, then this issue has been addressed and with the new season and you can then buy 50 at one time. Otherwise, the Crtl-key is your friend.
I see your point. Well, it is a bit unfortunate that our efforts and our comments will not be taken into account and no changes will be made according to our input during the past days.
I still don't think that adding three projects (one for each subtrack, without dilithium requirements) is a major thing to do.
I also would have appreciated the opportunity of a discussion on the new fleet holding. I am sure that many people have had great ideas to reduce the heavy amount of dilithium which the new fleet holding will require - but all of these ideas will be left out. Of course, the community testing on tribble is much smaller than the amount of people playing on holodeck. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time, probably until the end of October/beginning-middle of November until the same concerns are raised - about the same issues - by people on holodeck.
I hope I am wrong and season 14 will be a great success. But, to be honest, I am bit afraid that some problems will be delayed and come back up when the ditlithium costs (at higher tiers) will become significant.
Please, correct me if I am wrong. But, I thought that the exchange is a vital element of the whole game. Sometimes, you can even use prices from the exchange to determine how good your gear is or what are the most viable traits to have. I remember when inspirational leader was 300 million EC, because it was just the best possible trait you can get in the game. Of course, also the rarity of items has a strong influence on the prices which we see on the exchange. In short, most what I have is based on the exchange.
What is left to say? Well, I still hope that something can be done to address our comments. Again, I would like to say that I am not complaining or unwilling to spend any money on the game. But, everything has to be in a reasonable amount.
I am glad that this forum provides an opportunity to freely discuss ideas on upcoming content without the need of raising any kind of criticism. My only wish is to offer my point of view and experience to improve the content of this game.
I trust in our strong armada and I believe that our alpha fleet has the resources to get the colony up to tier 5 in a reasonable amount of time. As a leader of two fleets (fed+kdf), I will be "giving it all I've got" to build the new fleet holding. I will go with positive expectations into the new season, even though the feedback by my fleet/armada members, by myself, and by everyone else here in this community has not be considered.
Time to quote O'Brien: "Mark my words gentlemen. It will be build".
I don't know how yet, but I guess we are going to find out. All the best to all of you. See you in-game. :-)
The before and after photos both benefit from having a completed dil mine and it's associated discount. The after pic also would be effected from joining an armada as a beta. The tribble colony is Tier 5 overall with the middle sub-tier complete and the other two at tier 4 with all optional/upgrade projects that were available complete.
If this is correct...Season 14 will definitely beat Delta Rising as the WORST fiasco EVER rolled out in the history of STO.
Sorry, thought it was a bit obvious. It's only the Colony.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
2311 days and counting.
Given that the changes to upgrades (20ish percent reduction) and equipment provisioning (1/2 provisions for double the dil) are roughly the same through the various tiers why do the large xp projects for the lack of a better word look so arbitrary?
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.'
Healthy dil costs give the fleet holding value for Cryptic's bottom line (profit). When STO was at it's most vibrant there were far more active players, fewer missteps that caused players to leave, and things cost far less. F2P is just an marketing term. Somebody still has to pay to fill these colony projects, most likely with zen. Nobody wants the spend-fest to increase even more.
Yours truly, one of folks with well over 200 million FC contributed and re-invested into the game's holdings and (that's just on this account) helping fellow fleet mates get what they need.
My apologies for off topic (not testing feedback). You have to post how you really feel once in a blue moon and this will not happen again in this thread. Will take any further opinions to threads upstairs. I still support STO.
I still think the existing fleet defense queues, and the new s14 queues, should be leveraged to help with this by rewarding provisions. Give us a reason to play them!