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.
Alright I’ll reference an account I started on Saturday August 25th 2018, no spend on anything (not even monthly card).
In the 4th full event on the account I was able to rank top 2000 on the family tree rerun.
Today, 7 weeks from the start of the account, it has 40 immortals including army chaplain odo, disguised tuvok, lieutenant valeris, Lady Beverly, and commander barclay. All 5 of those purples have come from galaxies or hybrids.
To suggest anything other than galaxies are the best events and easiest to rank top 3000 for new ftp players (first 3 months) is not taking into account the resources provided by voyages correctly.
For players with more aged accounts, maybe 4-6 months in I can see it being a closer call with skirmishes due to the reward boxes. But for accounts in months 1-2 the ability to rank and get ff purples is much higher in galaxy events.
I used to love Galaxies when I first started the game. All you need is chronitons and time, and through brute force you can move up pretty easily. I absolutely hated faction events - until my crew started to deepen, I couldn't even get the third star for the threshold character. When I compared that to the two free characters AND community pull from galaxies, there was no competition.
I do think Skirmishes have probably overtaken them, just because of how fantastically rewarding they are. But the game has changed a lot in the last year, so maybe there are disadvantages I'm not thinking of.
I'm still new enough that I remember the first event I was actually not terrible at, and it was a Galaxy event. I saved up my daily card dilithium, stopped using it on dabo, and managed to scrape together enough to buy a 10x event pack, got that event crew leveled up halfway, and used all of the thousand or so chronitons I had saved up at that time to place high enough to FF the crew I picked up in the event pack and whatever else came with finishing 4.5K in rank (at that point, the multiple copies of a rare crew were HUGELY valuable to me).
At that point I focused ALL my efforts on farming chronitons so I'd be ready for future galaxy events. I was lucky that the following week was another galaxy event which I also did fairly well at, and the week after was a hybrid event, so for three straight weeks I bought a single 10x event pull, spent all my chrons, and built up a small stable of FF super rares, and as I got them up to 100 I suddenly had crew that were consistently getting my voyages to the 2 hour mark without refilling, my shuttles were starting to actually succeed, and honestly I've built up steadily ever since.
Faction events are simply hopeless for new players. Even if like me you bought the third shuttle immediately you simply have no crew worthy of sitting in that third shuttle. You can do OK at skirmishes, but when you are new your ships are all garbage, you don' have enough experience to even really know battle strats, and your crew abilities are not going to be there. The only event a new player has a chance at is galaxy and even then have to commit 100%, but it is possible, and a path to sustained success.
ALL that being said, that may be from an old playbook. Perhaps it was just a one-time thing but last week it was MUCH harder to place higher efficiently as everyone was spending far more than usual to place high to try for a copy of Gloria. I dumped 1.5K chrons more than normal and still only managed to finish in 3,018th place. A month ago those same chrons would have gotten me sub 2K.
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.
Alright I’ll reference an account I started on Saturday August 25th 2018, no spend on anything (not even monthly card).
In the 4th full event on the account I was able to rank top 2000 on the family tree rerun.
Today, 7 weeks from the start of the account, it has 40 immortals including army chaplain odo, disguised tuvok, lieutenant valeris, Lady Beverly, and commander barclay. All 5 of those purples have come from galaxies or hybrids.
To suggest anything other than galaxies are the best events and easiest to rank top 3000 for new ftp players (first 3 months) is not taking into account the resources provided by voyages correctly.
For players with more aged accounts, maybe 4-6 months in I can see it being a closer call with skirmishes due to the reward boxes. But for accounts in months 1-2 the ability to rank and get ff purples is much higher in galaxy events.
Also take into account you know what you’re doing. A new player is stumbling through learning as they go. When I was new I airlocked people because I couldn’t fuse them only to discover later all I had to do was wait for their shuttle to come in.
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.
This. Once my ships hit level 7, it is like pulling teeth to get ship schematics. Yet another skirmish arriving where i play Elite.
Galaxy if I had to choose as to the answer to the OP but in reality a top 1k for a new player (<6 mo?) Is futile.
First, depending on how "new" the player is, the answer is -- you are NOT going to rank in the top 3000, so don't concern yourself with it. My first event was "Ghost in the Machine" (the first run of it) - finished 44,000-ish. Nine weeks later, I came close in "Merry Men" (3100-ish) but didn't get there. It wasn't until "Captain's Oath" in my 16th event that I finished in the top 3000 (2200-ish). Three events later, I finished in the top 1000 for the first time ("The Whole Truth"), winning Grand Nagus Rom. As @Travis S McClain noted, many things have changed since then, but I doubt a new player (as opposed to an experienced player that opens a new VIP0 account just for fun) could reasonably expect a top 3000 finish before their 3rd month.
With the current availability of chronitons, I still think galaxy is the easiest one for a newer player to compete in. Chronitons become items, items become recipes - so it's just a matter of saving up for a while and then committing time to the event. There are no other barriers to participation, not even crew (obviously the chance of getting the rare items improves with crew, but you don't need the rare items to earn points).
Skirmish - like galaxy, it's mostly a matter of time commitment, but... you still need a pre-event chroniton stash, a decent ship (not necessarily a 5*, but it needs to be near maxed for the shield & hull protection), and a solid selection of crew with decent ship abilities. Those are more barriers than exist for galaxy.
Faction - don't even think about it. You need crew depth, both in terms of number of bonus crew and their strength (FF and FE). And at least a 3rd shuttle for top 3000. To get these things requires a lot of time-in-game, roster building (skill diversity and character variants), dilithium (which can be earned even at VIP0, but to do so requires doing things like immortalizing crew, which requires time-in-game), and probably extra crew slots (more dilithium). This is the marathon event for a new player. As noted in many threads, the actual time commitment to the event is less than the others (which is why many players like it), to succeed in it requires the most long-term preparation.
I think it is worth mentioning here that every month it gets harder for new players to achieve success. If you were new two years ago there were a lot fewer players to compete against and a HECK of a lot fewer established players to compete against.
At this point, if you started tomorrow the ONLY way you are going to compete in an event is if thousands and thousands of established players either do not participate or else only hit threshold and stop. So to echo what @Ishmael Marx just said above here, the definition of "compete" needs to be on a sliding scale, because new people now realistically cannot actually compete.
I'm still not sure I'm happy with my answer, as it's pretty fluid.
Galaxy is probably the LEAST futile for a new player. With enough scrimping and prefarming, they probably could rank very.
However, it would likely be at a cost, as the effort spent prefarming will cut greatly into the progress a player will want to make in leveling characters for general usage and other events.
Once you get a good enough ship and bridge crew, Skirmish is the way to go as Chroniton costs are greatly offset (sure, you can't bounce chronitons forever, but unlike galaxy you aren't spending credits *or* items on getting rank) and rank is a factor of starting chronitons and time.
Skirmish are a waste of chronitons for new players, specially if they don't have a Full Bounty or T'Ong ship, and decent crew to populate it's battle stations. Faction events are almost impossible to me have a lot of crew and finally, with a little saving and strategy Galaxy events are a good option for a new player to Top 1k and that's it.
I think it is worth mentioning here that every month it gets harder for new players to achieve success. If you were new two years ago there were a lot fewer players to compete against and a HECK of a lot fewer established players to compete against.
At this point, if you started tomorrow the ONLY way you are going to compete in an event is if thousands and thousands of established players either do not participate or else only hit threshold and stop. So to echo what @Ishmael Marx just said above here, the definition of "compete" needs to be on a sliding scale, because new people now realistically cannot actually compete.
However, with db being...db, the possibility of the player base not competing is always a possibility considering how it seems db LIKES to goof up
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.
I disagree on skirmish, unless you have gotten really lucky on schematics, cause if you dont have a good ship its a pain in the you know what, I know that from trying it with a new acct.
My first events were all about Galaxies. My first 4/4 came from Galaxies, and Advocate Kolos was my first SR at 2/4 from events and it took me almost a year to FE and FF and pit in the freezer. Those 2/4s from early games and the 3/4s from Factions sat in my crew for ages being quickly overtaken by Galaxy crew. My first ever legendary won from an event was Cadet Tilly, from a galaxy. I had four shuttles by then. It wasn't until later that I started getting a few legendaries from Factions, but I had to plan them and save boosts.
I have lots of fond memories of getting 4/4s every time there was a galaxy.
Skirmishes are great, however my arena ability sucked even harder until later than I started doing well in factions. Skirmishes are easier than the arena though, and I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to hit threshold with a lesser ship. The only issue there is that it's a 3/4 SR reward. I was stuffed early in the game because I had no medical crew for six months (yes DB didn't produce an SR Med primary in an event for 6 months after I started playing) so all my honor went on one's I picked up on Voyages. That stopped me from FFing all the 3/4s I had for ages. That's why I don't whinge when DB throws everyone a decent engineer as a mega event legendary because Engineering is even harder to build up than Medicine!
Therefore my vote goes towards galaxies, without question. Chronitons for threshold are easy enough to attain now with voyages and I have to make a genuine effort to deplete my stocks nowadays. Not so when I started. They were like hens teeth then.
@Nero84 , I can remember participating in the last two Skirmishes. In the first one, I could only beat the middle difficulty. I also was unable to use all the Intel that I gathered. In the end, I ranked high enough to get both of the Super Rares. It just took a time investment.
The last skirmish went swimmingly well. I bought Killy, did all my dabo spins, got the Krayton to 10/10, and made the top 600 in the event. I don't know if you plan to spend, but if you do, spend it wisely and it can go a long way.
@Nero84 , I can remember participating in the last two Skirmishes. In the first one, I could only beat the middle difficulty. I also was unable to use all the Intel that I gathered. In the end, I ranked high enough to get both of the Super Rares. It just took a time investment.
The last skirmish went swimmingly well. I bought Killy, did all my dabo spins, got the Krayton to 10/10, and made the top 600 in the event. I don't know if you plan to spend, but if you do, spend it wisely and it can go a long way.
Oh just to clarify I am not new but thinking about new players to the Fleet I am in. Giving advise and such and things have changed so much since I started over a year ago.
The arguments being made here are starting to convince me to lean Skirmish assuming they consistently doing Dabo and using the extra free spin now provided by DB.
@Nero84 , I can remember participating in the last two Skirmishes. In the first one, I could only beat the middle difficulty. I also was unable to use all the Intel that I gathered. In the end, I ranked high enough to get both of the Super Rares. It just took a time investment.
The last skirmish went swimmingly well. I bought Killy, did all my dabo spins, got the Krayton to 10/10, and made the top 600 in the event. I don't know if you plan to spend, but if you do, spend it wisely and it can go a long way.
Oh just to clarify I am not new but thinking about new players to the Fleet I am in. Giving advise and such and things have changed so much since I started over a year ago.
The arguments being made here are starting to convince me to lean Skirmish assuming they consistently doing Dabo and using the extra free spin now provided by DB.
I must have garbage luck at Dabo because since I returned to the game after a 2 year hiatus (returned last 2 events of the darth Bashir mega) and i still have only a 7/10 ship. I guess this is very random or more likely needs to have a caveat about buying/opening loads of premium pulls. I was careful to not open packs when crew slots were full, but even after I cleared my pulls out still 7/10. Next skirmish i still will be using a 4* ship. Even if I had the 10/10 ship needed, I'm not sure I could properly crew it...
Just for a little historical context, here's how long it took for me to crack the top 3000 of an event.
04-21-2016 #95445 Faction The Trouble with Klingons
05-12-2016 #37748 Faction Blood and Circuses
06-02-2016 #35339 Faction A Brute Squad
06-16-2016 #11438 Galaxy Contingency Plan
06-30-2016 #16008 Faction Season of Love 07-15-2016 #3569 Expedition The Game's Afoot
07-21-2016 #10019 Galaxy Liberty for All
07-28-2016 #31384 Faction They Came from the Holodeck! 2 08-12-2016 #2150 Expedition Quadrilateral
Notes
I began playing 4/24/16, less than 24 hours before the end of "The Trouble with Klingons". It's amazing I even cracked the top 100,000!
I was strictly F2P/VIP 0 throughout all this, and I played without the luxuries I listed earlier in this thread.
Though this spanned nine events, it also spanned four months, as it wasn't until the sixth (the Expedition "The Game's Afoot) that events became weekly.
I must have garbage luck at Dabo because since I returned to the game after a 2 year hiatus (returned last 2 events of the darth Bashir mega) and i still have only a 7/10 ship. I guess this is very random or more likely needs to have a caveat about buying/opening loads of premium pulls. I was careful to not open packs when crew slots were full, but even after I cleared my pulls out still 7/10. Next skirmish i still will be using a 4* ship. Even if I had the 10/10 ship needed, I'm not sure I could properly crew it...
It is not hard to "properly" crew a 5* ship and win all 5 battles with ease ...
- 1 copy of the 4* event crew (whatever level and fuse level) for max VP bonus, hope it is an accuracy crew.
- various 4*s to fill out your ship ... think instant damage like Mirror Phlox, Dr. Hippocrates Noah, Ba'ku Worf (and a host of other Klingons), Kal-if-fee Spock or generally good ship crew like Rura Penthe Reed ... add in some accuracy for good measure and voila.
- sub out any 4*s with appropriate 5*s (e.g. T'Kuvma) to make the battles go faster.
I have the NX-01 Enterprise at 7/10 and will use that next Skirmish to see how well I can do, up to now I've used a 10/10 Borg Cube (the hull repair is a nice touch at the start of each battle, but I rarely really need it).
I think timing will be key instead of my current tactic of "mash all buttons when they pop up".
I must have garbage luck at Dabo because since I returned to the game after a 2 year hiatus (returned last 2 events of the darth Bashir mega) and i still have only a 7/10 ship. I guess this is very random or more likely needs to have a caveat about buying/opening loads of premium pulls. I was careful to not open packs when crew slots were full, but even after I cleared my pulls out still 7/10. Next skirmish i still will be using a 4* ship. Even if I had the 10/10 ship needed, I'm not sure I could properly crew it...
It is not hard to "properly" crew a 5* ship and win all 5 battles with ease ...
- 1 copy of the 4* event crew (whatever level and fuse level) for max VP bonus, hope it is an accuracy crew.
- various 4*s to fill out your ship ... think instant damage like Mirror Phlox, Dr. Hippocrates Noah, Ba'ku Worf (and a host of other Klingons), Kal-if-fee Spock or generally good ship crew like Rura Penthe Reed ... add in some accuracy for good measure and voila.
- sub out any 4*s with appropriate 5*s (e.g. T'Kuvma) to make the battles go faster.
I have the NX-01 Enterprise at 7/10 and will use that next Skirmish to see how well I can do, up to now I've used a 10/10 Borg Cube (the hull repair is a nice touch at the start of each battle, but I rarely really need it).
I think timing will be key instead of my current tactic of "mash all buttons when they pop up".
good luck!
Why don’t you try it without all the 4* crew you mentioned as well as this was a poll regarding new players and they aren’t likely to have any good fused purples unless they’ve already done well in galaxies or spent a lot.
I must have garbage luck at Dabo because since I returned to the game after a 2 year hiatus (returned last 2 events of the darth Bashir mega) and i still have only a 7/10 ship. I guess this is very random or more likely needs to have a caveat about buying/opening loads of premium pulls. I was careful to not open packs when crew slots were full, but even after I cleared my pulls out still 7/10. Next skirmish i still will be using a 4* ship. Even if I had the 10/10 ship needed, I'm not sure I could properly crew it...
It is not hard to "properly" crew a 5* ship and win all 5 battles with ease ...
- 1 copy of the 4* event crew (whatever level and fuse level) for max VP bonus, hope it is an accuracy crew.
- various 4*s to fill out your ship ... think instant damage like Mirror Phlox, Dr. Hippocrates Noah, Ba'ku Worf (and a host of other Klingons), Kal-if-fee Spock or generally good ship crew like Rura Penthe Reed ... add in some accuracy for good measure and voila.
- sub out any 4*s with appropriate 5*s (e.g. T'Kuvma) to make the battles go faster.
I have the NX-01 Enterprise at 7/10 and will use that next Skirmish to see how well I can do, up to now I've used a 10/10 Borg Cube (the hull repair is a nice touch at the start of each battle, but I rarely really need it).
I think timing will be key instead of my current tactic of "mash all buttons when they pop up".
good luck!
Why don’t you try it without all the 4* crew you mentioned as well as this was a poll regarding new players and they aren’t likely to have any good fused purples unless they’ve already done well in galaxies or spent a lot.
They are my fleetmate ... was giving them personal advice, I have a reasonable overview of their crew ... hence me wishing them good luck at the end.
Comments
Alright I’ll reference an account I started on Saturday August 25th 2018, no spend on anything (not even monthly card).
In the 4th full event on the account I was able to rank top 2000 on the family tree rerun.
Today, 7 weeks from the start of the account, it has 40 immortals including army chaplain odo, disguised tuvok, lieutenant valeris, Lady Beverly, and commander barclay. All 5 of those purples have come from galaxies or hybrids.
To suggest anything other than galaxies are the best events and easiest to rank top 3000 for new ftp players (first 3 months) is not taking into account the resources provided by voyages correctly.
For players with more aged accounts, maybe 4-6 months in I can see it being a closer call with skirmishes due to the reward boxes. But for accounts in months 1-2 the ability to rank and get ff purples is much higher in galaxy events.
I do think Skirmishes have probably overtaken them, just because of how fantastically rewarding they are. But the game has changed a lot in the last year, so maybe there are disadvantages I'm not thinking of.
At that point I focused ALL my efforts on farming chronitons so I'd be ready for future galaxy events. I was lucky that the following week was another galaxy event which I also did fairly well at, and the week after was a hybrid event, so for three straight weeks I bought a single 10x event pull, spent all my chrons, and built up a small stable of FF super rares, and as I got them up to 100 I suddenly had crew that were consistently getting my voyages to the 2 hour mark without refilling, my shuttles were starting to actually succeed, and honestly I've built up steadily ever since.
Faction events are simply hopeless for new players. Even if like me you bought the third shuttle immediately you simply have no crew worthy of sitting in that third shuttle. You can do OK at skirmishes, but when you are new your ships are all garbage, you don' have enough experience to even really know battle strats, and your crew abilities are not going to be there. The only event a new player has a chance at is galaxy and even then have to commit 100%, but it is possible, and a path to sustained success.
ALL that being said, that may be from an old playbook. Perhaps it was just a one-time thing but last week it was MUCH harder to place higher efficiently as everyone was spending far more than usual to place high to try for a copy of Gloria. I dumped 1.5K chrons more than normal and still only managed to finish in 3,018th place. A month ago those same chrons would have gotten me sub 2K.
Also take into account you know what you’re doing. A new player is stumbling through learning as they go. When I was new I airlocked people because I couldn’t fuse them only to discover later all I had to do was wait for their shuttle to come in.
This. Once my ships hit level 7, it is like pulling teeth to get ship schematics. Yet another skirmish arriving where i play Elite.
Galaxy if I had to choose as to the answer to the OP but in reality a top 1k for a new player (<6 mo?) Is futile.
First, depending on how "new" the player is, the answer is -- you are NOT going to rank in the top 3000, so don't concern yourself with it. My first event was "Ghost in the Machine" (the first run of it) - finished 44,000-ish. Nine weeks later, I came close in "Merry Men" (3100-ish) but didn't get there. It wasn't until "Captain's Oath" in my 16th event that I finished in the top 3000 (2200-ish). Three events later, I finished in the top 1000 for the first time ("The Whole Truth"), winning Grand Nagus Rom. As @Travis S McClain noted, many things have changed since then, but I doubt a new player (as opposed to an experienced player that opens a new VIP0 account just for fun) could reasonably expect a top 3000 finish before their 3rd month.
With the current availability of chronitons, I still think galaxy is the easiest one for a newer player to compete in. Chronitons become items, items become recipes - so it's just a matter of saving up for a while and then committing time to the event. There are no other barriers to participation, not even crew (obviously the chance of getting the rare items improves with crew, but you don't need the rare items to earn points).
Skirmish - like galaxy, it's mostly a matter of time commitment, but... you still need a pre-event chroniton stash, a decent ship (not necessarily a 5*, but it needs to be near maxed for the shield & hull protection), and a solid selection of crew with decent ship abilities. Those are more barriers than exist for galaxy.
Faction - don't even think about it. You need crew depth, both in terms of number of bonus crew and their strength (FF and FE). And at least a 3rd shuttle for top 3000. To get these things requires a lot of time-in-game, roster building (skill diversity and character variants), dilithium (which can be earned even at VIP0, but to do so requires doing things like immortalizing crew, which requires time-in-game), and probably extra crew slots (more dilithium). This is the marathon event for a new player. As noted in many threads, the actual time commitment to the event is less than the others (which is why many players like it), to succeed in it requires the most long-term preparation.
At this point, if you started tomorrow the ONLY way you are going to compete in an event is if thousands and thousands of established players either do not participate or else only hit threshold and stop. So to echo what @Ishmael Marx just said above here, the definition of "compete" needs to be on a sliding scale, because new people now realistically cannot actually compete.
Galaxy is probably the LEAST futile for a new player. With enough scrimping and prefarming, they probably could rank very.
However, it would likely be at a cost, as the effort spent prefarming will cut greatly into the progress a player will want to make in leveling characters for general usage and other events.
Once you get a good enough ship and bridge crew, Skirmish is the way to go as Chroniton costs are greatly offset (sure, you can't bounce chronitons forever, but unlike galaxy you aren't spending credits *or* items on getting rank) and rank is a factor of starting chronitons and time.
However, with db being...db, the possibility of the player base not competing is always a possibility considering how it seems db LIKES to goof up
I disagree on skirmish, unless you have gotten really lucky on schematics, cause if you dont have a good ship its a pain in the you know what, I know that from trying it with a new acct.
I have lots of fond memories of getting 4/4s every time there was a galaxy.
Skirmishes are great, however my arena ability sucked even harder until later than I started doing well in factions. Skirmishes are easier than the arena though, and I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to hit threshold with a lesser ship. The only issue there is that it's a 3/4 SR reward. I was stuffed early in the game because I had no medical crew for six months (yes DB didn't produce an SR Med primary in an event for 6 months after I started playing) so all my honor went on one's I picked up on Voyages. That stopped me from FFing all the 3/4s I had for ages. That's why I don't whinge when DB throws everyone a decent engineer as a mega event legendary because Engineering is even harder to build up than Medicine!
Therefore my vote goes towards galaxies, without question. Chronitons for threshold are easy enough to attain now with voyages and I have to make a genuine effort to deplete my stocks nowadays. Not so when I started. They were like hens teeth then.
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The last skirmish went swimmingly well. I bought Killy, did all my dabo spins, got the Krayton to 10/10, and made the top 600 in the event. I don't know if you plan to spend, but if you do, spend it wisely and it can go a long way.
Oh just to clarify I am not new
The arguments being made here are starting to convince me to lean Skirmish assuming they consistently doing Dabo and using the extra free spin now provided by DB.
I must have garbage luck at Dabo because since I returned to the game after a 2 year hiatus (returned last 2 events of the darth Bashir mega) and i still have only a 7/10 ship. I guess this is very random or more likely needs to have a caveat about buying/opening loads of premium pulls. I was careful to not open packs when crew slots were full, but even after I cleared my pulls out still 7/10. Next skirmish i still will be using a 4* ship. Even if I had the 10/10 ship needed, I'm not sure I could properly crew it...
04-21-2016 #95445 Faction The Trouble with Klingons
05-12-2016 #37748 Faction Blood and Circuses
06-02-2016 #35339 Faction A Brute Squad
06-16-2016 #11438 Galaxy Contingency Plan
06-30-2016 #16008 Faction Season of Love
07-15-2016 #3569 Expedition The Game's Afoot
07-21-2016 #10019 Galaxy Liberty for All
07-28-2016 #31384 Faction They Came from the Holodeck! 2
08-12-2016 #2150 Expedition Quadrilateral
Notes
I began playing 4/24/16, less than 24 hours before the end of "The Trouble with Klingons". It's amazing I even cracked the top 100,000!
I was strictly F2P/VIP 0 throughout all this, and I played without the luxuries I listed earlier in this thread.
Though this spanned nine events, it also spanned four months, as it wasn't until the sixth (the Expedition "The Game's Afoot) that events became weekly.
It is not hard to "properly" crew a 5* ship and win all 5 battles with ease ...
- 1 copy of the 4* event crew (whatever level and fuse level) for max VP bonus, hope it is an accuracy crew.
- various 4*s to fill out your ship ... think instant damage like Mirror Phlox, Dr. Hippocrates Noah, Ba'ku Worf (and a host of other Klingons), Kal-if-fee Spock or generally good ship crew like Rura Penthe Reed ... add in some accuracy for good measure and voila.
- sub out any 4*s with appropriate 5*s (e.g. T'Kuvma) to make the battles go faster.
I have the NX-01 Enterprise at 7/10 and will use that next Skirmish to see how well I can do, up to now I've used a 10/10 Borg Cube (the hull repair is a nice touch at the start of each battle, but I rarely really need it).
I think timing will be key instead of my current tactic of "mash all buttons when they pop up".
good luck!
Why don’t you try it without all the 4* crew you mentioned as well as this was a poll regarding new players and they aren’t likely to have any good fused purples unless they’ve already done well in galaxies or spent a lot.
They are my fleetmate ... was giving them personal advice, I have a reasonable overview of their crew ... hence me wishing them good luck at the end.