Heya folks, it's been a while since we've changed much philosophically about how we rank crew, but a couple things to note;
Some great work by @NoNameNamer to produce this sheet, among many others, based on historical data which has given us a better idea of how long you can expect a return on investment for voyage pieces. This has resulted in a rise of value for certain top voyagers and will influence rankings going forward.
We're also proceeding as though regular Discovery blanket bonus megas are a thing of the past. This won't affect most Discovery bridge crew, but certain one-off names will drop for the aforementioned reason and a ballooning of the bonus pool in general which makes such crew less essential.
Thank you to the readers for being patient with the release of crew notes and tiers - with our show on Wednesdays and the prep that goes into it, we're not often in a position to get the Big Book stuff out ASAP and are not going to rush it.
Is Lady Sirella’s T4 rating a typo? She strikes me as more like a t7 or somewhere in that range. And the write up attached to her seems kinda apologetic as well, which makes me think her t4 rating must be a typo...
Is Lady Sirella’s T4 rating a typo? She strikes me as more like a t7 or somewhere in that range. And the write up attached to her seems kinda apologetic as well, which makes me think her t4 rating must be a typo...
When dealing with common skill sets you have to take the line of "Yeah this is common and you'll have a thousand like her...but still..."
Her use is compared to all other crew in her skill set and bearing in a mind Klingon collection plus top 100 voyager means she has to be due higher than that. No doubt she'll drop over time but for now Tier 4 sits her well in terms of usefulness.
I wouldn't say the note is apologetic, more accomodating towards people's expectations when either gunning for the card or considering her as a cite choice. Look in the Tier 4 rankings and you will find other crew in very similar situations. Strong but common, or non main cast but strong. Lady Sirella sits alongside Klingon K'Ehleyr, Rescue Team Uhura, Mother L'Rell...all crew that excel at what they do but don't stand out enough to push up to Tier 3. Yet strong enough that they stand above the crew in Tier 5, who are less useful but more specific depending on the roster.
Is Lady Sirella’s T4 rating a typo? She strikes me as more like a t7 or somewhere in that range. And the write up attached to her seems kinda apologetic as well, which makes me think her t4 rating must be a typo...
When dealing with common skill sets you have to take the line of "Yeah this is common and you'll have a thousand like her...but still..."
Her use is compared to all other crew in her skill set and bearing in a mind Klingon collection plus top 100 voyager means she has to be due higher than that. No doubt she'll drop over time but for now Tier 4 sits her well in terms of usefulness.
I wouldn't say the note is apologetic, more accomodating towards people's expectations when either gunning for the card or considering her as a cite choice. Look in the Tier 4 rankings and you will find other crew in very similar situations. Strong but common, or non main cast but strong. Lady Sirella sits alongside Klingon K'Ehleyr, Rescue Team Uhura, Mother L'Rell...all crew that excel at what they do but don't stand out enough to push up to Tier 3. Yet strong enough that they stand above the crew in Tier 5, who are less useful but more specific depending on the roster.
Fair. I don’t agree, but that is the flavor of life, I guess.
Is Lady Sirella’s T4 rating a typo? She strikes me as more like a t7 or somewhere in that range. And the write up attached to her seems kinda apologetic as well, which makes me think her t4 rating must be a typo...
There's a note that's been pinned in our tiering channel for a few days; 'Sirella 4>5' which will probably happen soon. With a potentially huge collection on the horizon, we wanted to err on the side of encouraging players to pick her up while she was still available (for 'free') and we'd evaluate all the Klingons then, as we had reason to believe the thresholds would go up to 80.
Certainly the skill set is orders of magnitude more bloated than any other, but t7 would be harsh. Her base would rank 6th of 58 in that tier and voyage power 1st of 58, not to mention a collection which requires 29 legendary crew. Ranking top 10 for Klingon voyagers and top 5 for Klingon bases should keep her as one of the better crew to immortalize for that collection for the foreseeable future.
Personally I passed on her, even assuming that the collection would go to 80 crew and my #1 goal being to complete all the collections. I just don't want or need what she offers outside of the collection. Yet we've also gotten comments that we shouldn't be considering skill sets on voyages, only power, or that we don't value bases highly enough (along with the opposite at times )
The balancing act will always leave room for disagreements and discussion, which is as it should be. Like the intro says, "If you think a crew deserves to be ranked higher or lower, go with your gut. Everybody values differently all the components that make up crew." The crew notes are meant to be the main course and I think Sirella's captures her value, though I didn't write it.
As an aside, if Caldos IV Crusher is signaling a Romantic mega as some are speculating, Sirella will be the top CMD for Februrary. That'd be handy...
As I mentioned in another thread, I look at pair, primary and traits when evaluating a crew’s voyage propensity. And for a one-off crew, voyage is pretty much the only thing that should be taken into account for the play-value of a card (collections and “cool factor” should be adjusters after the heavy lifting is complete). Main cast, of course, SHOULD be rated higher, generally, since there is a MUCH greater chance of getting faction work.
IMHO, weekend trait value should essentially be ignored because a card might get 1 (or 2 at the max) weeks of faction play based on it. That is rare enough to ignore.
I don’t mean to pick nits. You guys do a GREAT service to the community with your rankings. And as you state on the list itself, everyone would and should have their own ratings. You are offering YOUR opinions. And we can disagree on opinions while still respecting how the other arrived at theirs.
Just wanted to give a big shout out to one of the best entries ever in the Big Book: Captain Tribble! Really well done; loved it. Whoever wrote it should get a raise...or whatever it is you all do for good writing...digital high-fives, maybe?
Agreed, while my personal crew priorities didn't always align with the Big Book, since the BBBA's priorities were clearly stated it was easy to re-frame your assessments.
But mostly, I enjoyed reading the fun descriptions!
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
Thanks for all the effort that went into the Big Book. It vastly improved my experience of the game. Given the number of crew, it is amazing you kept it going this long!
I noticed the new crew are still being added to Datacore without a tier and write-up, but including voyage rank. Is Datacore still active even though the big book is shut down? I never used the ‘real’ big book because it doesn’t work well on my phone, that’s why Datacore was my go-to. Just curious
“What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?”
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
There is now a lengthy note from Automaton_2000 and Captain Idol atop the Big Book in Datacore that says it's been discontinued. I'll add their comments below. From Automaton:
Years ago, I started the Big Book to teach both myself and others what to look for in crew. The aim was to produce a quality product that looked at characters holistically and their dozens of attributes so that we could learn together the best way to build our rosters and our game. Now, as the number of crew considered is more than tenfold what it was when the Big Book began, the choice between sacrificing quality or hanging it up has become an easy one.
Thank you to StarsAndGarters for being with this resource the longest as my right arm. You've put countless hours into strengthening the Big Book and our treasured friendship.
Thank you to BigMcLargeHuge for giving an abundance of time and energy when you had the least to spare of any of us. I trust your opinion on crew more than anyone's, including my own.
Thank you to Captain Idol for maintaining the Big Book's infrastructure and offering your insight along the way. No one in our community has a greater passion for this game or for Star Trek.
Thank you to everyone else who has worked directly with this resource. The Big Book has benefited so much from your keen insights and generously volunteered time.
And from Idol:
I don't think in culmination of resources devoted to this game has there been anything has influential as the Big Book in terms of the games Meta. People quote ""oh yeah Tier 1"" like it's baked into the game, whole events are unearthed by what metric is set on a Wednesday night bender, six shots down trying to make sense of why Erika Hernandez exists. Hours poured over 3 points of difference in voyage score to determined whether Tier 4 or 5 made sense for FTP Spock. It wasn't necessary, but it was fun!
I came on in Jan 2020 the first time the Book shut down in my small attempt to keep the resource going lest we all perish at the thought of an untiered crew. As I sat among their ranks talking about things like ""event usability"" and ""Art that would make a Kai Cry"" and often felt like the lesser man to the interplay but no one opened up more to my stupid ideas than these guys, and since then moved on to become good friends.
As the game racks up over thousands of crew, it's nigh impossible for this small rag tag band of mercenaries to keep track of all the collection changes, voyage metrics and one skill meta-upsetters. Anyway they'll all just drop to Tier 9 eventually, as the great band Toto once sung ""You can cite for love, baby!"
Sad to see these guys step down from their roles, but I'm grateful for all they've done and really impressed they kept it going this long. I've played a lot of mobile games over the years and this was by the most impressive community-led guide for one that I've ever seen. Everyone who worked on it should be immensely proud.
Thanks for setting the standard in crew comparisons! Others may follow, but you guys blazed the trail, set the standard, and made the book an entertaining must read to boot!
Comments
Some great work by @NoNameNamer to produce this sheet, among many others, based on historical data which has given us a better idea of how long you can expect a return on investment for voyage pieces. This has resulted in a rise of value for certain top voyagers and will influence rankings going forward.
We're also proceeding as though regular Discovery blanket bonus megas are a thing of the past. This won't affect most Discovery bridge crew, but certain one-off names will drop for the aforementioned reason and a ballooning of the bonus pool in general which makes such crew less essential.
Thank you to the readers for being patient with the release of crew notes and tiers - with our show on Wednesdays and the prep that goes into it, we're not often in a position to get the Big Book stuff out ASAP and are not going to rush it.
When dealing with common skill sets you have to take the line of "Yeah this is common and you'll have a thousand like her...but still..."
Her use is compared to all other crew in her skill set and bearing in a mind Klingon collection plus top 100 voyager means she has to be due higher than that. No doubt she'll drop over time but for now Tier 4 sits her well in terms of usefulness.
I wouldn't say the note is apologetic, more accomodating towards people's expectations when either gunning for the card or considering her as a cite choice. Look in the Tier 4 rankings and you will find other crew in very similar situations. Strong but common, or non main cast but strong. Lady Sirella sits alongside Klingon K'Ehleyr, Rescue Team Uhura, Mother L'Rell...all crew that excel at what they do but don't stand out enough to push up to Tier 3. Yet strong enough that they stand above the crew in Tier 5, who are less useful but more specific depending on the roster.
Fair. I don’t agree, but that is the flavor of life, I guess.
LLAP
There's a note that's been pinned in our tiering channel for a few days; 'Sirella 4>5' which will probably happen soon. With a potentially huge collection on the horizon, we wanted to err on the side of encouraging players to pick her up while she was still available (for 'free') and we'd evaluate all the Klingons then, as we had reason to believe the thresholds would go up to 80.
Certainly the skill set is orders of magnitude more bloated than any other, but t7 would be harsh. Her base would rank 6th of 58 in that tier and voyage power 1st of 58, not to mention a collection which requires 29 legendary crew. Ranking top 10 for Klingon voyagers and top 5 for Klingon bases should keep her as one of the better crew to immortalize for that collection for the foreseeable future.
Personally I passed on her, even assuming that the collection would go to 80 crew and my #1 goal being to complete all the collections. I just don't want or need what she offers outside of the collection. Yet we've also gotten comments that we shouldn't be considering skill sets on voyages, only power, or that we don't value bases highly enough (along with the opposite at times
The balancing act will always leave room for disagreements and discussion, which is as it should be. Like the intro says, "If you think a crew deserves to be ranked higher or lower, go with your gut. Everybody values differently all the components that make up crew." The crew notes are meant to be the main course and I think Sirella's captures her value, though I didn't write it.
As an aside, if Caldos IV Crusher is signaling a Romantic mega as some are speculating, Sirella will be the top CMD for Februrary. That'd be handy...
IMHO, weekend trait value should essentially be ignored because a card might get 1 (or 2 at the max) weeks of faction play based on it. That is rare enough to ignore.
I don’t mean to pick nits. You guys do a GREAT service to the community with your rankings. And as you state on the list itself, everyone would and should have their own ratings. You are offering YOUR opinions. And we can disagree on opinions while still respecting how the other arrived at theirs.
But mostly, I enjoyed reading the fun descriptions!
Starport
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
And from Idol:
Sad to see these guys step down from their roles, but I'm grateful for all they've done and really impressed they kept it going this long. I've played a lot of mobile games over the years and this was by the most impressive community-led guide for one that I've ever seen. Everyone who worked on it should be immensely proud.