If the drop rates arent a joke, how many boxes does it take to win a ship?
Zero if you buy them from the exchange for credits.
For lock boxes, the odds are 1 in 250. For promo packs the odds are 1 in 100.
That does NOT mean if you open 100 packs you get a ship. Random chance is random. If you have 100 unopened packs the odds of getting a ship, before you open any packs is 67%. ( 1.0 - (0.99 ^ 100) ) . If instead you sell those packs on the exchange you will have 1.5 - 1.6 billion credits and can buy the ship with enough left over for a second lobi ship of your choice and a stack of lock box weapons.
Other than T6 Replacements for T5 Ships in the Lobi Store, of late they have not been putting new Ships in the Lobi Store. Too predictible a cost for a single Character unlock. Lockboxes and Promotions generate more revenue.
They're probably kicking themselves for putting the T6 NX and Kelvin Dreadnought in there.
Actually, I have three unopened T6 Promotion Ship Selection Boxes. Since Infinities of any flavor started, I have gotten 6 T6 Promotion Selection Boxes to 2 T6 Lockbox Selection Boxes. I have purchased and opened or sold quite a few ships from the Exchange.
The Character I currently play most of the time, a Discovery Tac, runs around in the Discovery Constitution.
'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.'
If the drop rates arent a joke, how many boxes does it take to win a ship?
Dave already pointed the maths out. From my personal experience, the promo-boxes do in fact drop a grand-prize more reliably. Last time I opened less than 30 boxes and got two (!) infinity-promo-choice-packs.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
If the drop rates arent a joke, how many boxes does it take to win a ship?
It doesn't work like that. The chance to get a ship is exactly the same in EVERY box.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Most certainly not a Promo level ship. Compared to them this one stands out in a bad way. Seems more like a Lobi ship if that... maybe not even a good zen ship.
Just by the trait and console alone i can see why people would call this a naked money grab. it most certainly looks like they are trying to snag players that simply want the ship for nostalgia and nothing else.
Hard pass for me.
Also the timing lends credence to their theory as well. A Promo after a flash promo after an upgrade / pheonix weekend in which most players would have poured all their Dil into it and leaving them exposed to this, kinda forcing them to pony up cash to participate.
Looks ok, not my style. Pass.
And we get something other than R&D boxes? Those materials are near worthless now they you get them everywhere. Do a good % of players even buy these unless there's a promo?
Commander ENG, but 5 TAC consoles? A typo or you just want this ship OP vs other small engineering ships? Very BoP like with the plethora of UNI slots.
Not sure how many people will chose this ship vs a Connie/D7. You do a disservice to all the non-Connie/D7 ships by making them compete in the same promo box. I'd have 2 different promos, one Connie/D7 and the other promo the other ships.
Looks ok, not my style. Pass.
And we get something other than R&D boxes? Those materials are near worthless now they you get them everywhere. Do a good % of players even buy these unless there's a promo? ....
Nope, R&D boxes have close to zero value aside from the lobi when they are promo boxes.
The expected / average cost of lock box and R&D ships are about the game: R&D boxes cost more but have much better odds.
The Exchange prices are wildly different between ships because the lock boxes also include other things people will buy. Traits, weapons, vanity shields, etc. while R&D packs include mats that sell for 5 credits. If you open 250 lock boxes per ship and sell everything, you'll get far more credits from the other 249 than for the other 99 R&D packs.
If they want to keep the zen prices the same, it would seem more fair to bump up the lobi in R&D packs or at least include more tech boosters and very rare components.
> @saurializard said:
> (Quote)
> (Quote)
> Nice ad-hominem against people who disagree with you, as always, you two.
>
> Considering the ship is behind the R&D gamble, just like the T6 TOS Connie and the DSConnie, I'm gonna take a "wild guess" once more and say that since it's not a lobi ship to accompany the Kelvin D lockbox, the minds behind this determined it'd be more valuable to put it behind the most expensive type of gambling and exchange purchase than a lobi or a lockbox.
>
> So I can actually safely guess, based on common sense and your own kind of logic that they're actually expecting a huge profit with it being rare than it being more easily common.
First off, I have never used an ad hominem against anyone. I made a statement of objective fact that years of observation on these forums has born out 100 percent. No matter the subject no matter the person talking anyone who claims that they know what most people want or what most people are going to do is wrong. Always been the case it's always going to be the case nobody here speaks for anyone except themselves including me. Now second point you claim that you think most people would want the Kelvin well sadly you're not correct about that either simply because it's Kelvin it means I very large portion of an unknown percentage of the player base won't want it at all another large portion will refuse to get it because it's in a promo box not a gamble box a promo box there are no gamble boxes. Yet another portion like myself would actually get the ship but they have others that they want first .Thirdly it doesn't matter why they put it in the Box they could have put it in the Box because that's where they were instructed to put it they could have put it in the Box because they know that even if everyone who has an account bought the ship that they'll get more money out of it this way as has been pointed out several times in other threads recently there could be any number of reasons why they put it in the promo box course the fact that everything from the Paramount films that has come into this CBS licensed game has been put into a promo box or a lock box probably has to do with the specific contract that they had to sign in order to get those materials nothing more nothing less making any kind of assumptions without information about why the company makes any such things it's just ridiculous.
And just statistically speaking roughly 70 to 80% of all the assumptions are proven false that is a scientific statistic based on an analysis of many factors assumptions are the least reliable way of making any decision or any judgment.
Jesus, dude. Paragraphs much? I went cross eyed trying to read that wall of text at 1:00 AM
This ship is far below what I expect from a Grand Prize Promo ship.
This one is an easy pass.. I can't imagine many people buying up packs to get this ship.
This is how I feel too. The ship is neither a heavily sought after bit of space fashion, nor does it hold a unique, interesting, or particularly powerful console or trait, and it doesn't have some impressive layout. It's just... a ship... and in that it doesn't warrant being a promo box ship.
> @fred26291#2759 said:
> If the drop rates arent a joke, how many boxes does it take to win a ship?
Each box has a 1 percent chance, number of boxes opened does not change the chance per box. On average through massive testing on the tribble server 1 ship will be won per 100 boxes. This has been tested many many many times now by numerous people.
However the correct answer is 0, as thats how many I open and I always get the ships I want. I just buy the ship on the exchange, quite easy.
Please cite that official Cryptic 1% statement if any, otherwise not fact & at best an educated guess. "On average through massive testing on the Tribble server ...". Since we, as players, have no way of knowing if the odds are different on Tribble compared to Holodeck, again, an educated guess at best no matter how many times tested. Holodeck is apples & Tribble is oranges or vice versa.
"However the correct answer is 0, as thats how many I open and I always get the ships I want. I just buy the ship on the exchange, quite easy." Absolutely correct & I kick myself every time I break-down & gamble lol.
I wish Cryptic would implement some sort of progressive gambling odds so the more you gamble & lose the better you next percentage would rise till you win whether it be .5% or 1%, but I doubt that benefit would be considered.
> @fred26291#2759 said:
> If the drop rates arent a joke, how many boxes does it take to win a ship?
Each box has a 1 percent chance, number of boxes opened does not change the chance per box. On average through massive testing on the tribble server 1 ship will be won per 100 boxes. This has been tested many many many times now by numerous people.
However the correct answer is 0, as thats how many I open and I always get the ships I want. I just buy the ship on the exchange, quite easy.
Please cite that official Cryptic 1% statement if any, otherwise not fact & at best an educated guess. "On average through massive testing on the Tribble server ...". Since we, as players, have no way of knowing if the odds are different on Tribble compared to Holodeck, again, an educated guess at best no matter how many times tested. Holodeck is apples & Tribble is oranges or vice versa.
"However the correct answer is 0, as thats how many I open and I always get the ships I want. I just buy the ship on the exchange, quite easy." Absolutely correct & I kick myself every time I break-down & gamble lol.
I wish Cryptic would implement some sort of progressive gambling odds so the more you gamble & lose the better you next percentage would rise till you win whether it be .5% or 1%, but I doubt that benefit would be considered.
Cryptic does not release the exact odds.. I am sure you can imagine why.
That being the case, given a large enough sample size, the testing on Tribble by the Player Base is absolutely a definitive method of determining drop rates. It's not about defending or admonishing Cryptic it's about basic mathematics.
These things are not difficult to find, 1% is an accurate figure, the tests have been conducted multiple times over the years.
> @fred26291#2759 said:
> If the drop rates arent a joke, how many boxes does it take to win a ship?
Each box has a 1 percent chance, number of boxes opened does not change the chance per box. On average through massive testing on the tribble server 1 ship will be won per 100 boxes. This has been tested many many many times now by numerous people.
However the correct answer is 0, as thats how many I open and I always get the ships I want. I just buy the ship on the exchange, quite easy.
Please cite that official Cryptic 1% statement if any, otherwise not fact & at best an educated guess. "On average through massive testing on the Tribble server ...". Since we, as players, have no way of knowing if the odds are different on Tribble compared to Holodeck, again, an educated guess at best no matter how many times tested. Holodeck is apples & Tribble is oranges or vice versa.
Reality has a probabilistic bias.
You really can determine odds within a narrow confidence range with enough experimentation.
People have opened large numbers of packs and lock boxes on Holodeck over the last 7 years too, not just on Tribble.
Yes, there's a very slight chance that Cryptic chose odds of 1 in 98 or 1 in 102 instead of a nice round 1:100, despite that going against human nature. Even if true, the real odds are close enough to 1:100 that it offers a very useful approximation.
Packs are 1:100 +/- some negligible offset, and lock boxes are 1:250.
Honestly, I can't help but wonder if many players will use this promotion as another oportunity to try and obtain the DSC Constitution as oposed to the Franklin......
In the end, that's the big problem with this release.
Lets say I decide to play the R&D Box Lottery and I am lucky enough to win the Grand Prize T6 ship pack.
I now have a choice.. I can pick 1 ship from a list of the most highly desired ships in the game. I have the Discovery Connie sitting there.. the Tzenkethi Tzen-Tar, The Juggernaut.. etc. With these options sitting there.. why would I pick this?
It's not a bad ship.. not at all. It has descent stats, a nice layout and the look will appeal to some people. It's not that the ship is bad, but it's not 'R&D Grand Prize' desirable. If this was the prize ship in a normal lockbox.. sure.. it would probably be fairly popular.
When I look at my options for winning the R&D Lottery, I just don't see why anyone would pick this ship given the list of other options. It just feels like a Lock Box ship put into an R&D Box.. for some reason.
I pointed this out way earlier in the thread that this is really what this feels like.
Like they wanted to capitalize on their assumed or perceived value of the ship.
The ship most certainly is not on par with the other promo ships. It's not really a good lobi ship and should have probably been a zen ship.
I just don't see how this particular ship was placed in that particular box with those particular ships other then for financial reasoning's.
It just doesn't fit. it doesn't have mass appeal or massive fire power or even a trait or console that wows you enough. The ship is bad in comparison, the timing is bad, and even the wording for the introduction of the ship is bad. So cringy just reading it makes you think... money grab. I personally was thinking.... "You built a ship for nostalgia... made it this bad and thought people would be so enamored with its showing on TV and such that they would ignore the fact its a bad ship? At least all the constitutions have great traits and consoles that made them even more desirable... this ship is going to flop. Why would i waste a pick on this when i could get any of those or any of the other ships? This was a waste of resources by the company."
It's not anywhere near the other ships. Not one its far removed. They will either need to buff this ship up or just admit they messed up and put it in the lobi or zen store or this ship will more then likely be a total flop.
I pointed this out way earlier in the thread that this is really what this feels like.
Like they wanted to capitalize on their assumed or perceived value of the ship.
The ship most certainly is not on par with the other promo ships. It's not really a good lobi ship and should have probably been a zen ship.
I just don't see how this particular ship was placed in that particular box with those particular ships other then for financial reasoning's.
It just doesn't fit. it doesn't have mass appeal or massive fire power or even a trait or console that wows you enough. The ship is bad in comparison, the timing is bad, and even the wording for the introduction of the ship is bad. So cringy just reading it makes you think... money grab. I personally was thinking.... "You built a ship for nostalgia... made it this bad and thought people would be so enamored with its showing on TV and such that they would ignore the fact its a bad ship? At least all the constitutions have great traits and consoles that made them even more desirable... this ship is going to flop. Why would i waste a pick on this when i could get any of those or any of the other ships? This was a waste of resources by the company."
It's not anywhere near the other ships. Not one its far removed. They will either need to buff this ship up or just admit they messed up and put it in the lobi or zen store or this ship will more then likely be a total flop.
Not a good look Cryptic... not a good look.
To me, it's the reverse of the Vengeance.
For me, the Vengeance being a lobi ship is a anomaly because back then, they weren't sure people would be willing to give the Kelvin timeline a chance considering the bile Into Darkness (mostly rightfully, but YMMV) got. So they didn't take the risk and they put it there.
And unfortunately for them, they greatly underestimated it'd get as much love. Because while Into Darkness is divisive for its plot, the Vengeance has gotten a lot of love for the "big, evil, badass ship" value and because it still is a great ship in-game for many reasons: the trait is great, the pets are some of the best the game can offer, its console is part of a set that can be applied on any ship, it has many choices of hull materials and unlock 1 (now 2) for other ships, it has a unique (with the Konnie's) warp VFX, a solid Boff layout, access to the Intel abilities, and recently got even more customizations.
And despite all this, it's still one of the cheapest "high-tier" ships you can find on the exchange, because it's a lobi ship, so you're guaranteed to get it if you have enough lobis (even more when there is a lobi sale) or around 200M EC which is basically nothing compared to other "high-tier" ships.
I'm pretty sure somewhere someone is still kicking themself for putting it as a lobi, had they known it'd be that desirable.
So, IMHO, they tried to avoid this mistake with the Franklin... but they only focused on "hey it's a great-looking replica of the Franklin, which was a badass ship in Beyond!" and forgot that unlike the Vengeance that was a state-of-the-art ship filled with power, designed by Khan, with unique and devastating abilities, and that easily squashed the Enterprise by itself, the Franklin in the movie is an old ship with its main interest being that it looks cool (YMMV), is a walking/flying reference to the series Enterprise, is a tough little ship due to being built during the time Starfleet hasn't made deflector shields and gives some pretty cool shots when it navigates through Yorktown Station.
And that's it.
It only wins because of a tech unrelated to its design, because the enemy has a specific weakness and that weakness causes a chain reaction.The only time it fires something is to attract the enemy. The rest of the time, the Franklin's main interest is to ram and be rammed into things without breaking a sweat (once again, still a great thing, but the game isn't designed to have "ramming enemies" as an effective way of winning a fight).
The number of C-Store sales and Promotions is higher than normal. They have also brought back Infinity Lockboxes a few times out of band as well.
I believe that SWOTOR made a change a couple of years ago that increases the odds of getting a 'Purple' Item from their equivalent of a Lockbox the more of them you open.
I mentioned something about kicking themselves in relation to putting the Vengeance (and NX) into the Lobi Store earlier in the Thread. Notice the lack of a Lobi Ship in that Store with this Divergence Lockbox. It has been a trend recently of not putting ships there except for the T6 upgrades to T5 Lobi Ships.
So it might be that the initial intention for the Franklin was to go to the Lobi Store but all the slobbering about it here caused the change to the R&D Infinity
'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.'
FYI, you can get any lock box or R&D pack ship with a 100% chance for success by buying it from the Exchange using energy credits, but that is going to be expensive too. Buy R&D promo packs (not regular ones!) for Zen, sell the packs on the exchange, get the ship. The cost will be as high as $200, but less if you get Zen on sale and buy promo R&D packs on sale.
I've asked this question before and no one has ever answered it...
If literally nobody opens the R&D packs (or uses keys to open lockboxes), how would you be able to buy ships off the exchange? Unless Cryptic seeds the exchange, my guess would be you couldn't.
I agree with your method of obtaining the ships, and if I were to go for such ships it would be the way I'd go. I just find this advice somewhat (potentially?) self-defeating as without people opening packs, there are no ships to sell.
Now, I know that the chances of absolutely not one single player opening packs/lockboxes is essentially zero, but if it were to happen, then you would not be able to buy ships off the exchange. So for every ship on the exchange, there was at least one player who actually opened a pack/lockbox. And likely not just a single player who only opens one single pack, either.
I suppose my question is more curiosity than real world application since there will almost always be someone opening packs/lockboxes. Am I wrong in my line of thinking?
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
Comments
Zero if you buy them from the exchange for credits.
For lock boxes, the odds are 1 in 250. For promo packs the odds are 1 in 100.
That does NOT mean if you open 100 packs you get a ship. Random chance is random. If you have 100 unopened packs the odds of getting a ship, before you open any packs is 67%. ( 1.0 - (0.99 ^ 100) ) . If instead you sell those packs on the exchange you will have 1.5 - 1.6 billion credits and can buy the ship with enough left over for a second lobi ship of your choice and a stack of lock box weapons.
They're probably kicking themselves for putting the T6 NX and Kelvin Dreadnought in there.
Actually, I have three unopened T6 Promotion Ship Selection Boxes. Since Infinities of any flavor started, I have gotten 6 T6 Promotion Selection Boxes to 2 T6 Lockbox Selection Boxes. I have purchased and opened or sold quite a few ships from the Exchange.
The Character I currently play most of the time, a Discovery Tac, runs around in the Discovery Constitution.
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.'
Will the Console/Trait be made available as a lobi set for KDF/Allies like you did with the Mirror Crossfield?
Dave already pointed the maths out. From my personal experience, the promo-boxes do in fact drop a grand-prize more reliably. Last time I opened less than 30 boxes and got two (!) infinity-promo-choice-packs.
(Response to moderated comments removed. - BMR)
It doesn't work like that. The chance to get a ship is exactly the same in EVERY box.
Most certainly not a Promo level ship. Compared to them this one stands out in a bad way. Seems more like a Lobi ship if that... maybe not even a good zen ship.
Just by the trait and console alone i can see why people would call this a naked money grab. it most certainly looks like they are trying to snag players that simply want the ship for nostalgia and nothing else.
Hard pass for me.
Also the timing lends credence to their theory as well. A Promo after a flash promo after an upgrade / pheonix weekend in which most players would have poured all their Dil into it and leaving them exposed to this, kinda forcing them to pony up cash to participate.
Not a good look
And we get something other than R&D boxes? Those materials are near worthless now they you get them everywhere. Do a good % of players even buy these unless there's a promo?
Commander ENG, but 5 TAC consoles? A typo or you just want this ship OP vs other small engineering ships? Very BoP like with the plethora of UNI slots.
Not sure how many people will chose this ship vs a Connie/D7. You do a disservice to all the non-Connie/D7 ships by making them compete in the same promo box. I'd have 2 different promos, one Connie/D7 and the other promo the other ships.
Between 1 and infinite. That's the joy of RNG.
Nope, R&D boxes have close to zero value aside from the lobi when they are promo boxes.
The expected / average cost of lock box and R&D ships are about the game: R&D boxes cost more but have much better odds.
The Exchange prices are wildly different between ships because the lock boxes also include other things people will buy. Traits, weapons, vanity shields, etc. while R&D packs include mats that sell for 5 credits. If you open 250 lock boxes per ship and sell everything, you'll get far more credits from the other 249 than for the other 99 R&D packs.
If they want to keep the zen prices the same, it would seem more fair to bump up the lobi in R&D packs or at least include more tech boosters and very rare components.
Jesus, dude. Paragraphs much? I went cross eyed trying to read that wall of text at 1:00 AM
This one is an easy pass.. I can't imagine many people buying up packs to get this ship.
This is how I feel too. The ship is neither a heavily sought after bit of space fashion, nor does it hold a unique, interesting, or particularly powerful console or trait, and it doesn't have some impressive layout. It's just... a ship... and in that it doesn't warrant being a promo box ship.
Complete pass from me.
Please cite that official Cryptic 1% statement if any, otherwise not fact & at best an educated guess. "On average through massive testing on the Tribble server ...". Since we, as players, have no way of knowing if the odds are different on Tribble compared to Holodeck, again, an educated guess at best no matter how many times tested. Holodeck is apples & Tribble is oranges or vice versa.
"However the correct answer is 0, as thats how many I open and I always get the ships I want. I just buy the ship on the exchange, quite easy." Absolutely correct & I kick myself every time I break-down & gamble lol.
I wish Cryptic would implement some sort of progressive gambling odds so the more you gamble & lose the better you next percentage would rise till you win whether it be .5% or 1%, but I doubt that benefit would be considered.
Cryptic does not release the exact odds.. I am sure you can imagine why.
That being the case, given a large enough sample size, the testing on Tribble by the Player Base is absolutely a definitive method of determining drop rates. It's not about defending or admonishing Cryptic it's about basic mathematics.
These things are not difficult to find, 1% is an accurate figure, the tests have been conducted multiple times over the years.
Reality has a probabilistic bias.
You really can determine odds within a narrow confidence range with enough experimentation.
People have opened large numbers of packs and lock boxes on Holodeck over the last 7 years too, not just on Tribble.
Yes, there's a very slight chance that Cryptic chose odds of 1 in 98 or 1 in 102 instead of a nice round 1:100, despite that going against human nature. Even if true, the real odds are close enough to 1:100 that it offers a very useful approximation.
Packs are 1:100 +/- some negligible offset, and lock boxes are 1:250.
In the end, that's the big problem with this release.
Lets say I decide to play the R&D Box Lottery and I am lucky enough to win the Grand Prize T6 ship pack.
I now have a choice.. I can pick 1 ship from a list of the most highly desired ships in the game. I have the Discovery Connie sitting there.. the Tzenkethi Tzen-Tar, The Juggernaut.. etc. With these options sitting there.. why would I pick this?
It's not a bad ship.. not at all. It has descent stats, a nice layout and the look will appeal to some people. It's not that the ship is bad, but it's not 'R&D Grand Prize' desirable. If this was the prize ship in a normal lockbox.. sure.. it would probably be fairly popular.
When I look at my options for winning the R&D Lottery, I just don't see why anyone would pick this ship given the list of other options. It just feels like a Lock Box ship put into an R&D Box.. for some reason.
I pointed this out way earlier in the thread that this is really what this feels like.
Like they wanted to capitalize on their assumed or perceived value of the ship.
The ship most certainly is not on par with the other promo ships. It's not really a good lobi ship and should have probably been a zen ship.
I just don't see how this particular ship was placed in that particular box with those particular ships other then for financial reasoning's.
It just doesn't fit. it doesn't have mass appeal or massive fire power or even a trait or console that wows you enough. The ship is bad in comparison, the timing is bad, and even the wording for the introduction of the ship is bad. So cringy just reading it makes you think... money grab. I personally was thinking.... "You built a ship for nostalgia... made it this bad and thought people would be so enamored with its showing on TV and such that they would ignore the fact its a bad ship? At least all the constitutions have great traits and consoles that made them even more desirable... this ship is going to flop. Why would i waste a pick on this when i could get any of those or any of the other ships? This was a waste of resources by the company."
It's not anywhere near the other ships. Not one its far removed. They will either need to buff this ship up or just admit they messed up and put it in the lobi or zen store or this ship will more then likely be a total flop.
Not a good look Cryptic... not a good look.
For me, the Vengeance being a lobi ship is a anomaly because back then, they weren't sure people would be willing to give the Kelvin timeline a chance considering the bile Into Darkness (mostly rightfully, but YMMV) got. So they didn't take the risk and they put it there.
And unfortunately for them, they greatly underestimated it'd get as much love. Because while Into Darkness is divisive for its plot, the Vengeance has gotten a lot of love for the "big, evil, badass ship" value and because it still is a great ship in-game for many reasons: the trait is great, the pets are some of the best the game can offer, its console is part of a set that can be applied on any ship, it has many choices of hull materials and unlock 1 (now 2) for other ships, it has a unique (with the Konnie's) warp VFX, a solid Boff layout, access to the Intel abilities, and recently got even more customizations.
And despite all this, it's still one of the cheapest "high-tier" ships you can find on the exchange, because it's a lobi ship, so you're guaranteed to get it if you have enough lobis (even more when there is a lobi sale) or around 200M EC which is basically nothing compared to other "high-tier" ships.
I'm pretty sure somewhere someone is still kicking themself for putting it as a lobi, had they known it'd be that desirable.
So, IMHO, they tried to avoid this mistake with the Franklin... but they only focused on "hey it's a great-looking replica of the Franklin, which was a badass ship in Beyond!" and forgot that unlike the Vengeance that was a state-of-the-art ship filled with power, designed by Khan, with unique and devastating abilities, and that easily squashed the Enterprise by itself, the Franklin in the movie is an old ship with its main interest being that it looks cool (YMMV), is a walking/flying reference to the series Enterprise, is a tough little ship due to being built during the time Starfleet hasn't made deflector shields and gives some pretty cool shots when it navigates through Yorktown Station.
And that's it.
It only wins because of a tech unrelated to its design, because the enemy has a specific weakness and that weakness causes a chain reaction.The only time it fires something is to attract the enemy. The rest of the time, the Franklin's main interest is to ram and be rammed into things without breaking a sweat (once again, still a great thing, but the game isn't designed to have "ramming enemies" as an effective way of winning a fight).
Seems like barely any time at all since they last tried to milk wallets with one.
I believe that SWOTOR made a change a couple of years ago that increases the odds of getting a 'Purple' Item from their equivalent of a Lockbox the more of them you open.
I mentioned something about kicking themselves in relation to putting the Vengeance (and NX) into the Lobi Store earlier in the Thread. Notice the lack of a Lobi Ship in that Store with this Divergence Lockbox. It has been a trend recently of not putting ships there except for the T6 upgrades to T5 Lobi Ships.
So it might be that the initial intention for the Franklin was to go to the Lobi Store but all the slobbering about it here caused the change to the R&D Infinity
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've asked this question before and no one has ever answered it...
If literally nobody opens the R&D packs (or uses keys to open lockboxes), how would you be able to buy ships off the exchange? Unless Cryptic seeds the exchange, my guess would be you couldn't.
I agree with your method of obtaining the ships, and if I were to go for such ships it would be the way I'd go. I just find this advice somewhat (potentially?) self-defeating as without people opening packs, there are no ships to sell.
Now, I know that the chances of absolutely not one single player opening packs/lockboxes is essentially zero, but if it were to happen, then you would not be able to buy ships off the exchange. So for every ship on the exchange, there was at least one player who actually opened a pack/lockbox. And likely not just a single player who only opens one single pack, either.
I suppose my question is more curiosity than real world application since there will almost always be someone opening packs/lockboxes. Am I wrong in my line of thinking?
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.