Best Event for New Players to Rank

Nero84

When I first started I liked galaxy events because chronitons were not as easy to come by and by saving up and purchasing a bit you could make top 1000. Now that isn't the case. I would say Expedition but I didn't include them simply because they are so rare. If you were to advise a new player during an event who wanted to rank in top 3000 what event would you recommend?

V.

Galaxy

you could make top 3000 with about 3000 chronitons.

i did top 2000 with 4000 this past event and went in with basically no supplies.

Wundigore

Skirmish

Skirmish and galaxy require time and the crew requirements are nominal. Top 3000 is not that hard. Faction needs 4 shuttles and enough bonus crew to fill them.

Paladin 27

Galaxy

Depends on if you spend or not.

If not spending, it is galaxy. I started a complete ftp account August 25 and got top 2000 in the family tree rerun that ended September 24th and ended the event with 3000 chrons left (had 5-6k at the start of the event).

I’m pretty sure that short of spending a decent amount to get a maxed 5* ship and a few good ship skill golds skirmishes will not be easier than that. With the schematics got from free sources I had a hard time even finishing the lowest set of battles on skirmishes the week before the family tree rerun.

Banjo1012

Expedition

Seven of One

Think it's between a galaxy and a hybrid. I've attached a screenshot of my extremely technical record of my first few events so you can see how my rank increased each time. Clearly faction was much more difficult.
The new skirmish and new rewards may send a curveball out for new players now though, so my incredibly technical list may not even help.

Mr. Lincoln

It is futile for new players

For new players, not happening. If a moderately new player with some crew, probably your best bet would be to sit on the chrons until you accumulate enough for a galaxy. Once you get a decent ship, skirmish is the best path.

MirrorMartigan

Skirmish

I say skirmish.

DavideBooks

Galaxy

Banjo1012 wrote: »

Expedition

I respectfully disagree. Last Christmas was my first expedition event. It was horrible. I was a free to play guy then and only had a bit under 3 months. My next expedition was the last one whatever-it-was-called. I did very well, but was no longer free to play. My monthly card and constant playing had brought me up. To be mildly successful in an expedition event, you need lots of crew who are at high levels and have good stats. To be truly successful, you need a wide group of bonus crew and you need to have them all maxed out. With a beginner crew it just isn't possible.

For faction events, you need 4 shuttles to even hit all the thresholds. You need a good solid crew to do well. You need a bunch of bonus crew and an absurd amount of resources (boosts and merits) to even hope to make top 1000. I am at a point where I now like faction events, but cannot often get top 1000. I couldn't dream of that when even close to new.

Skirmish event thresholds are the easiest for anyone if you have one of the bonus crew st any level and a maxed out 5* ship. Success (top 1000) comes with a solid bridge crew, time, and chronitons. I had a maxed 5* after a few months from Dabo; the crew takes longer. Still, for new players, it would still be easy enough to hit thresholds.

Galaxy events are the simplist for any level of you have saved chronitons or pre-farmed. My very first galaxy event let me get thresholds (barely). Now I get them in practically no time.

Captain_Who

Galaxy

Only galaxy events provide any hope of new players ranking. And that's becoming harder and farther into the game as they have to hoard greater and greater numbers of chronitons.
Skirmishes are a distant second. You need good enough crew to win with the loser of an event crew or 2-4 times the hours clicking away, plus a level 9 or 10 5* ship.

The longer this game goes one, especially with such terrible reward tiers, the less friendly it becomes to new players. Especially if you get mehga crew like Minuet.

Dirk Gunderson

Skirmish

It was a coin flip for me between Skirmish and Galaxy events. Skirmish events require a decent ship but Galaxy events require a lot of resources. With enough schematics drops from Dabo, the Arena, community rewards 10-packs, and premium rewards pulls from event ranks and/or Gauntlet rewards, a 5* ship may be easier to acquire over time compared to the chronitons and/or resources required to win a Galaxy event.

V.

Galaxy

I don't know how it is for everyone but I used to get a LOT of schematics from dabo. Like most days.

But soon after I started a free account they dried up and I see them maybe once a month now on either account. So my free account still doesn't have bounty or cube. So skirmish is a pain. But yeah if you have a cube especially that would be the way to go. Even without heavy hitter crew you can still complete it and push for top 1000 if you can take the brutal reps.

Banjo1012

DavideBooks wrote: »

Banjo1012 wrote: »

Expedition

I respectfully disagree. Last Christmas was my first expedition event. It was horrible. I was a free to play guy then and only had a bit under 3 months. My next expedition was the last one whatever-it-was-called. I did very well, but was no longer free to play. My monthly card and constant playing had brought me up. To be mildly successful in an expedition event, you need lots of crew who are at high levels and have good stats. To be truly successful, you need a wide group of bonus crew and you need to have them all maxed out. With a beginner crew it just isn't possible.

For faction events, you need 4 shuttles to even hit all the thresholds. You need a good solid crew to do well. You need a bunch of bonus crew and an absurd amount of resources (boosts and merits) to even hope to make top 1000. I am at a point where I now like faction events, but cannot often get top 1000. I couldn't dream of that when even close to new.

Skirmish event thresholds are the easiest for anyone if you have one of the bonus crew st any level and a maxed out 5* ship. Success (top 1000) comes with a solid bridge crew, time, and chronitons. I had a maxed 5* after a few months from Dabo; the crew takes longer. Still, for new players, it would still be easy enough to hit thresholds.

Galaxy events are the simplist for any level of you have saved chronitons or pre-farmed. My very first galaxy event let me get thresholds (barely). Now I get them in practically no time.

The first event I ever participated in was Quadrilateral, an expedition. I was really new and had nothing of a crew yet I was able to clear everything and keep going for as many tickets as I bought. That certainly could not be said for the others. Faction events, I’m failing tons of missions at that stage of my game. Didn’t have squat for chrons to keep anything at all going for a Galaxy or skirmish. Expedition is by far the easiest for a newer player to compete in. I was racking up points for as long as I wanted whereas in shuttles (especially before points for failing came about) I was wasting 3 hours only to come back with zero points. Galaxies and now Skirmishes too, didn’t have nearly enough resources to even clear thresholds

Sisko's Self-Sealing Stembolaya [FF]

Skirmish

My best event ranks have been with skirmish. Save up some chronitons, maybe 10K, spend 5K and go through the ship battles. After the bonus rewards, you’ll have close to 5K chronitons back and then just do it one more time and you’ll land well above 1000

Data1001

I would say that Skirmishes are now the easiest event format for a new player to rank decently in. I have played them with 3 different accounts: 1) my main acct with many maxed 5* ships and great crew; 2) an alt acct where I've bought the monthly card but still didn't have 5* ships completely maxed out; and 3) an alt acct which was F2P. #2 acct could only barely get through Epic, so I stuck to Elite — and even so, did pretty well. #2 acct could only get through the Normal difficulty, but still ended top 5000 (and surely could've done a lot better if I hadn't also been playing two other accounts that same weekend). The only thing holding one back from a decent rank is the amount of time you put in.

So it's the 3 difficulty levels in that event type which make it most favorable for new (and intermediate) players, imo.

Jim Steele

Galaxy

Galaxy, Skirmish you need a set of legendary schematics and the right crew to hit the bonuses, plus enough time to sink into the event.

Galaxy you just need to stockpile chronos to rank though admittedly this is more difficult for the newer player on account of the voyages being more difficult for them.

Jim

Emperor Borg Drone (SC)

Skirmish

If by a new player we mean someone around level 30 who has plenty of time and some money to invest into the game, I'd say Skirmishes.
If it's a level 20 f2p player, I think they wouldn't stand a chance with any type of event.

AMDG

Galaxy

For a new f2p galaxy is easiest, because for skirmish one needs a legendary ship and decent crew. From my own experience as a f2p I was able to score top 1000 in a galaxy half a year earlier.

5000 Quatloos

Galaxy

I would say Galaxy is easiest because the barriers to entry (chrons) are overcome-able with patient advanced planning and hoarding, because crit bumps require only a small number of the right crew rather than a deep bench of many crew, and because newer players may not yet have the max shuttle slots that give a built-in edge to more senior players in Faction. Skirmish next because the barriers are overcomeable with patience in the Arena and focus on building up a small number of good ship crew.

That said, I would *NEVER* advise new players to focus on a Galaxy or even Hybrid to rank. It's obviously the worst possible from a return on investment perspective, not just because it consumes resources, but because it consumes some of the resources new players need most, without sufficient payoff, when they should be focused on building their bench. Unless there's a killer gold at the end of the rainbow (and they are able and willing to spend time and likely money in the last hours), I just see it as a terrible sink for new players.

My advice would be to focus on building up the crew/ships needed to place in Skirmish. Provides massive quantities of honor and chrons, both of which newer players need badly. And for those willing to spend a little, +10 dil rewards are both comparatively "cheap" and, by my math, yield about a 3:1 to 4:1 positive ROI on average, depending on how you monetize the value of honor and chrons. A single obsessive-compulsively-grinded Skirmish can be worth something like several weeks' worth of unextended Voyage honor and chron accumulation. To me there's no way that's not the right answer for new players to grind on ...

Paladin 27

Galaxy

For anyone starting as a ftp or monthly card player it’s galaxies. I don’t get how there is so much credit being given to skirmishes here.

There is a huge bottleneck on honor and trainers for new players. Because of that if you are logging in a lot and keeping your voyages going you are going to be over-run with chrons.

You can level as many cadets as you have trainers for and still have 2-3k chrons extra coming in per week, plus building up inventories of lots of 0/1 star components.

There is nothing to do with the chrons and components other than spend them to rank top 2000 in galaxies to get ff purples.

To rank in skirmishes you have to have gotten some good purples plus accumulated a lot of schematics, the pre-requisites for those being either money, time, or already ranking in galaxies.

Data1001

Paladin 27 wrote: »

For anyone starting as a ftp or monthly card player it’s galaxies. I don’t get how there is so much credit being given to skirmishes here.

There is a huge bottleneck on honor and trainers for new players. Because of that if you are logging in a lot and keeping your voyages going you are going to be over-run with chrons.

You can level as many cadets as you have trainers for and still have 2-3k chrons extra coming in per week, plus building up inventories of lots of 0/1 star components.

There is nothing to do with the chrons and components other than spend them to rank top 2000 in galaxies to get ff purples.

To rank in skirmishes you have to have gotten some good purples plus accumulated a lot of schematics, the pre-requisites for those being either money, time, or already ranking in galaxies.

I think that's awfully generous to claim that new players have that many surplus or extra chronitons each week. Once I got to level 50 or so with my alternate accounts, then I started occasionally dealing with surpluses of as many as 1000 or 1500 chrons — but that was usually short-lived, since I'd get new crew that needed leveling and subsequently ate those up.

And the other thing that several folks are claiming, specifically that you can't play Skirmishes unless you have a really good ship that's preferably maxed, is also not my experience. As I mentioned above, I was able to get top 5000 in a Skirmish on my F2P account, despite my best ship being an unmaxed 2* Bird-of-Prey. (And as I also mentioned, I have no doubt I could've done much better had I not been spending the majority of my time that weekend on my main account and my other alt account.) Yes, of course it takes longer to build up VP when you're playing at Normal rather than Epic (or even Elite), but it's perfectly doable to get a decent rank (for a new player) with sub-optimal ships and crew.

By comparison, although Expeditions are also set up with 3 difficulty levels, I found them far more challenging with those newer alt accounts.

As you say, Honor is always in short supply for newer players (I quite often had to spend every last bit of mine on trainers and rations, at least until I got to a certain point where shuttles and Voyages begain paying off and I could start building up a small reserve), so that's another fabulous bonus for doing Skirmishes. On my main account, I play Skirmishes mainly to build up Honor — ofttimes the end rank is a secondary consideration — so it's certainly helpful to get those and some extra credits rolling in during these events.

Paladin 27

Galaxy

Data1001 wrote: »

Paladin 27 wrote: »

For anyone starting as a ftp or monthly card player it’s galaxies. I don’t get how there is so much credit being given to skirmishes here.

There is a huge bottleneck on honor and trainers for new players. Because of that if you are logging in a lot and keeping your voyages going you are going to be over-run with chrons.

You can level as many cadets as you have trainers for and still have 2-3k chrons extra coming in per week, plus building up inventories of lots of 0/1 star components.

There is nothing to do with the chrons and components other than spend them to rank top 2000 in galaxies to get ff purples.

To rank in skirmishes you have to have gotten some good purples plus accumulated a lot of schematics, the pre-requisites for those being either money, time, or already ranking in galaxies.

I think that's awfully generous to claim that new players have that many surplus or extra chronitons each week. Once I got to level 50 or so with my alternate accounts, then I started occasionally dealing with surpluses of as many as 1000 or 1500 chrons — but that was usually short-lived, since I'd get new crew that needed leveling and subsequently ate those up.

And the other thing that several folks are claiming, specifically that you can't play Skirmishes unless you have a really good ship that's preferably maxed, is also not my experience. As I mentioned above, I was able to get top 5000 in a Skirmish on my F2P account, despite my best ship being an unmaxed 2* Bird-of-Prey. (And as I also mentioned, I have no doubt I could've done much better had I not been spending the majority of my time that weekend on my main account and my other alt account.) Yes, of course it takes longer to build up VP when you're playing at Normal rather than Epic (or even Elite), but it's perfectly doable to get a decent rank (for a new player) with sub-optimal ships and crew.

By comparison, although Expeditions are also set up with 3 difficulty levels, I found them far more challenging with those newer alt accounts.

As you say, Honor is always in short supply for newer players (I quite often had to spend every last bit of mine on trainers and rations, at least until I got to a certain point where shuttles and Voyages begain paying off and I could start building up a small reserve), so that's another fabulous bonus for doing Skirmishes. On my main account, I play Skirmishes mainly to build up Honor — ofttimes the end rank is a secondary consideration — so it's certainly helpful to get those and some extra credits rolling in during these events.

So from my experience starting a new account 7 weeks ago.

Near end of week 1, unlocked a 5* ship from dabo which allowed for clearing a lot of ship battles and 2 hour voyages.

Weeks 1-2 I was constantly out of everything, chrons, honor trainers. There were always missions to clear to be able to 3* if I had extra chrons.

Starting toward the end of week 2, I started getting chrons much more quickly than I could spend them on leveling crew due to trainer bottleneck and they fact I was still working only on 2* crew.

At the end of the third full event was a skirmish (A Valdore Too Far). I went in thinking I'll grind through these on normal and get through the thresholds. Went in with about 3K chrons saved over the prior week. Phase 1 I could barely get through the missions and had to use at least 1 repair each skirmish. If i had had extra time during Phase 1 I could have cleared thresholds then, however due to rl constraints I had to defer to phase 2. The phase 2 battles were noticeably more difficult for a new account and had to use 2-3 hull repairs for each skirmish. At that point and with only 1-2 prize boxes per skirmish I gave up on finishing thresholds completely and decided to save chrons for the following week. Even if I had kept going on the skirmish, I wouldn't have wound up with any ff purples from it, which is critical to build a new account (more so than minor honor drops from a skirmish).

Continued to save chrons through the next week and had 6k going into the Family Tree rerun galaxy event at the end of week 4. Was able to get top 2000 and get two fully fused purples and have 2-3k chrons left at the end. For a new account there is nothing more important than the ff purples. No other event other than galaxies (and hybrids) rewards them. Getting an ff purples for a new account outweighs just about everything else you could possibly get from the other event types.

Now that I'm getting a few more blues and purples fused enough to be worth leveling, the 3k chrons a week is a little harder to save, more like 1500-2500 recently. But you can get 400-600 chrons from voyages daily, 100 from daily tasks. and 300 from cadets MWF with the ad warps.

Maybe the next skirmish will be easier, I know now that the account has a few purples (namely Valeris and Tuvok from the galaxy event) ship battles have been easier, but the fact remains you have to get ff purples somehow for a lot of things in game skirmishes included, and savings chrons for galaxies are the easiest way to do this that doesn't involve $$.

Dirk Gunderson

Skirmish

Paladin 27 wrote: »

For anyone starting as a ftp or monthly card player it’s galaxies. I don’t get how there is so much credit being given to skirmishes here.

There is a huge bottleneck on honor and trainers for new players. Because of that if you are logging in a lot and keeping your voyages going you are going to be over-run with chrons.

You can level as many cadets as you have trainers for and still have 2-3k chrons extra coming in per week, plus building up inventories of lots of 0/1 star components.

There is nothing to do with the chrons and components other than spend them to rank top 2000 in galaxies to get ff purples.

To rank in skirmishes you have to have gotten some good purples plus accumulated a lot of schematics, the pre-requisites for those being either money, time, or already ranking in galaxies.

With honor being a bottleneck for people buying trainers, that just makes Skirmish events more favorable than Galaxy events. The only time I've gotten more honor in a four day span than Skirmish events was when I cashed in all those single and 10x premium packs after the last portal update. And if said players have so many chrons they don’t know what to do with them all, Skirmish events are still a good idea because intel farming can be used to stock up on useful components like 0* translation algorithms, 0* sensors, 0* expansion modules, 0* science experiments, 0* clothing patterns, holoemitters, and many more if maximizing drop rates isn’t a concern.

Data1001

Dirk Gunderson wrote: »

And if said players have so many chrons they don’t know what to do with them all, Skirmish events are still a good idea because intel farming can be used to stock up on useful components like 0* translation algorithms, 0* sensors, 0* expansion modules, 0* science experiments, 0* clothing patterns, holoemitters, and many more if maximizing drop rates isn’t a concern.

Yep. And unlike Galaxies, where you're getting rid of many of the same items you need to level crew, with Skirmishes, you finish the weekend with more resources than you had before: more items, more credits, more Honor. And with the bonus reward chron drops, your chronitons also go a lot further.

Ironagedave

Skirmish

I think skirmishes is the easiest one to rank sub 1000, however perhaps even HOWEVER it does depend on a few criteria and does depend how "new" a player we are talking here.

Firstly a maxed 5* ship (or close to max) would probably be essential as well as a half decent arena crew not to mention at least 1 event (big) bonus crew. So we are talking a good couple of months in solid gameplay here.

Secondly ample supply of chrons and 2 to 3 supply kits to kick start intel farming and let skirmish chron rewards perpetuate your chroniton top up whilst still under the 24 hour supply kit.

Then its a case of tap tap tap tap until your index finger gets that shin splint feeling, note if this happens switch to a pad pen implement or something similar. This is the closest event you would get to a level playing field (theoretically anyway).

Paladin 27

Galaxy

Dirk Gunderson wrote: »

Paladin 27 wrote: »

For anyone starting as a ftp or monthly card player it’s galaxies. I don’t get how there is so much credit being given to skirmishes here.

There is a huge bottleneck on honor and trainers for new players. Because of that if you are logging in a lot and keeping your voyages going you are going to be over-run with chrons.

You can level as many cadets as you have trainers for and still have 2-3k chrons extra coming in per week, plus building up inventories of lots of 0/1 star components.

There is nothing to do with the chrons and components other than spend them to rank top 2000 in galaxies to get ff purples.

To rank in skirmishes you have to have gotten some good purples plus accumulated a lot of schematics, the pre-requisites for those being either money, time, or already ranking in galaxies.

With honor being a bottleneck for people buying trainers, that just makes Skirmish events more favorable than Galaxy events. The only time I've gotten more honor in a four day span than Skirmish events was when I cashed in all those single and 10x premium packs after the last portal update. And if said players have so many chrons they don’t know what to do with them all, Skirmish events are still a good idea because intel farming can be used to stock up on useful components like 0* translation algorithms, 0* sensors, 0* expansion modules, 0* science experiments, 0* clothing patterns, holoemitters, and many more if maximizing drop rates isn’t a concern.

Getting decent amounts of honor in a skirmish assumes you have skirmish crew capable of winning battles and not needing the hull repair instead of loot boxes, Good luck with that the first month on a new account.

Also what exactly does a couple thousand honor get you in a skirmish that’s better than a fully fused purple? You don’t event get enough for a purple cite to fully fuse the skirmish threshold purple.

DavideBooks

Galaxy

It is wonderful that we all have such different experiences. I think it is helpful to new players to see all.the different advice. I would advise new players to assume everyone is honest. The differences come from play style and how well new players understand the details of how the game works (which DB keeps as vague as possible). If I were to start again, there would be so many changes I would make that I would probably have a better crew sooner like Banjo or extra chronitons like Data points out is uncommon. That was not me when new. However, I would point out to any new people that @Banjo1012 and @Data1001 are two very good players whose advice it is not wise to dismiss out of hand.

We all post based on our experience. Personally, I liked galaxy events best when new. Now I like skirmishes best due to honor build-up, but faction events or faction-hybrid events are currently the most relaxing to me if I am not going for top 1000.

RaraRacing

Skirmish

I'm also going for Skirmish here ... but I do echo the sentiment that Expedition is really the way to go for a f2p player. I also played that Quadrilateral event eons ago and it sticks out as being my best ranked event in the early days of playing this game, and not by a little, but a ton. I also did really well (relatively) in Holograms are Forever.

Skirmish
I think that the one thing that has not been said about Skirmish events is:

- You hardly need any crew!
When you get one of the event crew in through thresholds you can slot them in as a lvl1 ... there is no need to equip or level them in order to get max VP for a round ... sure they won't contribute much, but your other crew should and it isn't too difficult to get some decent low rarity crew for ship battles.
Just grinding away on Normal should get you ranked pretty well ... it just takes a lot of time (as would a Galaxy event).

EDIT: What I mean is that if you have just one of the specific event crew then you always get max bonus to VP ... there is no element of chance (such as getting a super rare when crafting, or shuttle success rate) ... this means that there is a very strong and steady stream of VP coming in even if you are playing at Normal difficulty.
Furthermore, once you get started the event becomes self sustainable with regards to resources, so you can come in with next to nothing (say 100 chronitons), just make sure you can always get some intel at the start.
This in turn means that a starting player can basically do what such a player wants to do prior to the event ... that is level their crew and make them better. You don't have to hoard chronitons for a couple of weeks and basically leave crew levelling to a bare minimum. You don't have to hoard common items, you don't have to make sure to build up lots of shuttle boosts etc. etc.

Dirk Gunderson

Skirmish

Paladin 27 wrote: »

Dirk Gunderson wrote: »

Paladin 27 wrote: »

For anyone starting as a ftp or monthly card player it’s galaxies. I don’t get how there is so much credit being given to skirmishes here.

There is a huge bottleneck on honor and trainers for new players. Because of that if you are logging in a lot and keeping your voyages going you are going to be over-run with chrons.

You can level as many cadets as you have trainers for and still have 2-3k chrons extra coming in per week, plus building up inventories of lots of 0/1 star components.

There is nothing to do with the chrons and components other than spend them to rank top 2000 in galaxies to get ff purples.

To rank in skirmishes you have to have gotten some good purples plus accumulated a lot of schematics, the pre-requisites for those being either money, time, or already ranking in galaxies.

With honor being a bottleneck for people buying trainers, that just makes Skirmish events more favorable than Galaxy events. The only time I've gotten more honor in a four day span than Skirmish events was when I cashed in all those single and 10x premium packs after the last portal update. And if said players have so many chrons they don’t know what to do with them all, Skirmish events are still a good idea because intel farming can be used to stock up on useful components like 0* translation algorithms, 0* sensors, 0* expansion modules, 0* science experiments, 0* clothing patterns, holoemitters, and many more if maximizing drop rates isn’t a concern.

Getting decent amounts of honor in a skirmish assumes you have skirmish crew capable of winning battles and not needing the hull repair instead of loot boxes, Good luck with that the first month on a new account.

Also what exactly does a couple thousand honor get you in a skirmish that’s better than a fully fused purple? You don’t event get enough for a purple cite to fully fuse the skirmish threshold purple.

A new account with a month of playing time affords no opportunities to stock up chrons or resources to make a run at ranking in a Galaxy event without a serious amount of spending. Such an account will have a far easier time winning battles on Normal difficulty without needing repairs than it ever will at cracking the top 10,000 in a Galaxy event. Such an account also will not be getting a fully-fused purple crew, it will get a 1/4* that is a challenge to level and eats a crew slot for 6-12 months before the portal is updated - or is converted into 200 honor that could have been collected from less than an hour of playing a Skirmish event. And if you are on a new account that spends money, the honor from Skirmish battles will be of higher value for funding the purchase of trainers anyway.

Where you are unquestionably right is for VIP0/F2P/monthly-card-only players who have been around for more than 6-9 months. People who have decent crews, are maybe working on completing a 5* ship, and have the chrons and time to spend pre-farming for weeks or months prior to an event. Such a player has a better chance at getting a high Galaxy rank than they do at getting a high Skirmish rank because of the VP disparity between Normal, Elite, and Epic Skirmish difficulties.

Nero84

It is futile for new players

So this has been fun so far. Basically the community is split pretty evenly between Galaxy, Skirmish, and Futile with not 1 person going Faction.

After reading through everyone's thoughts I still am in the original futile camp. I am going to assume that people are monthly card but not big spenders. This is the issue I have with Galaxy and Skirmish.

With Galaxy people assume that getting 4000+ Chronitons is easy. Yes it is a lot easier now that it use to be but you need crew for a 6+ hour voyage to really start getting the rewards for Chronitons. At the same time more and more people don't need to pump a lot of Chronitons in new crew so they can horde more making the cost for Galaxy Events increase steadily overtime. Galaxy events you really only need a couple crew which makes it extremely easy for newer players to compete in.

With Skirmish events you need a ship and time to rank high. Getting a maxed level epic ship isn't easy even with Dabo but the problem is getting a good enough crew to survive through all the rounds. You need someone with good hull repair and someone who can generate a decent amount of damage. While this isn't impossible it is still very tough. The only benefit is that if the player has a decent stockpile of chronitons and an event crew they can compete for a long time, but if they had a stockpile of chronitons then Galaxy would probably be easier.

Travis S McClain

I honestly can't answer this because so much has changed since I was a new player. For perspective, here are the key advantages new players have that weren't there for me:

Achievements
Arena
Boosts
Cadet Challenges on Tuesday, Thursday, and the weekend
Collections
Crew Slots - base maximum increased
Cryostasis Vault
Daily Missions
Event Schedule - When I started, they were monthly. Today's schedule puts rewards in circulation weekly.
Gauntlet
Honor Hall/Citations
Mega-Events (read: free 4/5 crew)
Replicator
Starbase
Supply Kits
Voyages

Chief advantages to Faction Events: Even F2P players can now acquire enough dilithium for a third shuttle. Vault and Honor make it easier to develop a crew and hold onto them, whereas I had to sacrifice even a 3/4 at times because I had nowhere to put them. This, in turn, allows for new players to have access to more bonus crew than I did.

Chief advantages to Galaxy Events: Chronitons are a lot more accessible, and Supply Kits help them go even farther. Plus, unlike Faction Events where other players can load four shuttles full of x2 bonus crew, we're all restricted to using just one crew member at a time to craft each item.

So...¯\_(ツ)_/¯