I have no problem with adding a way to buy these ships with Dilithium, but as someone who runs a number of Alts (I prefer to start a new character for each profession or timeline I'm doing) I am upset with losing the ability to just buy them for the account as a whole. Even if the overall price might still be cheaper going…
The Enhanced Plasma Manifold from the Oberth Light Science Vessel is incredibly useful, I slot it on pretty much every Fed ship I own. The Enhanced Induction Coils from the B'Rotlh Bird-of-Prey does the same for KDF. I wouldn't call the Twin Phaser Beam Arrays from the Constitution Light Cruiser a must, but they're…
Those aren't comparable prices, since the Zen purchase unlocked it for every character on the account. Which I definitely did for some of the consoles. Technically I still come out ahead total dilithium equivalent wise even across my multiple characters, but when you consider the time investment it takes to get all that…
I am running into the same problem. It patched Arc, which patched the STO launcher, and the first time it got to 25.7% and stalled. Since then... nothing. Manually set patch server to US, and still nothing.
I recently returned as well. And dang do they need a Crafting tutorial for returning players! I spent days researching what the heck to do, and I still haven't made anything. I've just figured out how to get crafting XP so maybe later I can make something. As you said, the hardest thing getting started is knowing you need…