This event, this card, and this mega has been in the workshop for alot longer than when you started this thread.
This is a 100% valid argument.
In the entire game concept skirmish is the newest event and the rest of us made it through somehow???? Without it.
Maybe you just need to put in your time like the rest of us and not have such high expectations. This process is a marathon not a sprint.
Making games easier to enable new players to catch up is a core instrument to be able to tease new players into the game in the first place. If this marathon was the same for everyone no matter if she started in time or 3 years later it would make no sense to start at all if you missed the starting whistle. So it is rather pointless to make fun of this and ask new players to just be patient. Btw this sounds like old people arguing about WWII and how bad everything was and how spoiled we are and that we should be confident with what we have. If noone ever had expressed progressive ideas we would still all be running through (intact) woods to hunt some deer and collect berries. Mother earth would appreciate this I assume.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
This event, this card, and this mega has been in the workshop for alot longer than when you started this thread.
This is a 100% valid argument.
In the entire game concept skirmish is the newest event and the rest of us made it through somehow???? Without it.
Maybe you just need to put in your time like the rest of us and not have such high expectations. This process is a marathon not a sprint.
Making games easier to enable new players to catch up is a core instrument to be able to tease new players into the game in the first place. If this marathon was the same for everyone no matter if she started in time or 3 years later it would make no sense to start at all if you missed the starting whistle. So it is rather pointless to make fun of this and ask new players to just be patient.
I would venture to guess that the campaigns, 4*drops amongst all free currencies and supplies in voyages, discounted packs, $10.00 crew offers, 400% offers, and “free bones thrown out” are all part of the process to entice new players and allow them to get up to a decent ability lvl faster.
As far as being patient i am NOT making fun of new players. When my high lvl fleet has openings (which is not often) we intentionally except newer players to help them succeed with veteran advice and strategy. The new players we have trained are doing just fine and increasing to a higher lvl of play throughout the entire aspect and all events of the game with some help direction. They are always very thankfull that our fleet would even accept low lvl players, and then surprised with overwhelming support and advice given to help them. You do not need focus on one aspect of the game to succeed, which i believe is the root problem to this suggestion/complaint starting this thread.
To use your analogy, i teach my new recruits how to hunt, find berries, as well as start a fire, find shelter, find water, and make tools.
Some of you guys seem to be missing the fact that events across the board are harder than they've ever been. When I started playing on my main account, I could rank in ANY galaxy event with 800 chrons or less. That's not even enough to clear thresholds for newer players now. And yes, we have voyages now which helps, but for newer players that can only run 2-4 hour voyages, it doesn't help enough. Skirmishes are a newer players best chance to rank and win a legendary. I mean, look at how ridiculously difficult it is to rank in a faction event now. I've got players level 60-70 in my fleet that have trouble ranking in a faction event now. To rank in a skirmish, a newer player needs a close to maxed 5* ship, 3 decent crew members, and the willingness to put in more time & effort to grind it out than most players are willing to put in. Skirmishes are a stepping stone for them. If you think I'm wrong, start a new account and see what it's really like for a newer player coming into the game now.
Some of you guys seem to be missing the fact that events across the board are harder than they've ever been. When I started playing on my main account, I could rank in ANY galaxy event with 800 chrons or less. That's not even enough to clear thresholds for newer players now. And yes, we have voyages now which helps, but for newer players that can only run 2-4 hour voyages, it doesn't help enough. Skirmishes are a newer players best chance to rank and win a legendary. I mean, look at how ridiculously difficult it is to rank in a faction event now. I've got players level 60-70 in my fleet that have trouble ranking in a faction event now. To rank in a skirmish, a newer player needs a close to maxed 5* ship, 3 decent crew members, and the willingness to put in more time & effort to grind it out than most players are willing to put in. Skirmishes are a stepping stone for them. If you think I'm wrong, start a new account and see what it's really like for a newer player coming into the game now.
I'm totally with you. I'm not upset about Amanda Rogers in particular, but I think the general idea would be good for DB to explore. It doesn't have to be a rotation of different primary skills, but getting three or four in there through the course of a year would help newer players in particular.
Some of you guys seem to be missing the fact that events across the board are harder than they've ever been. When I started playing on my main account, I could rank in ANY galaxy event with 800 chrons or less. That's not even enough to clear thresholds for newer players now. And yes, we have voyages now which helps, but for newer players that can only run 2-4 hour voyages, it doesn't help enough. Skirmishes are a newer players best chance to rank and win a legendary. I mean, look at how ridiculously difficult it is to rank in a faction event now. I've got players level 60-70 in my fleet that have trouble ranking in a faction event now. To rank in a skirmish, a newer player needs a close to maxed 5* ship, 3 decent crew members, and the willingness to put in more time & effort to grind it out than most players are willing to put in. Skirmishes are a stepping stone for them. If you think I'm wrong, start a new account and see what it's really like for a newer player coming into the game now.
I very much disagree that for new players Skirmish is the walk in the park you maintain. Skirmish is gruesome before you have a lot of stars on a decent 5* ship. In addition getting the crew to make Skirmish go quickly can take months. Skirmish is a doddle for well established players so saying skirmishes are the best chance for new players to rank is clearly not the case.
Galaxies are typically the event in which you can make an impact the earliest because so many people don't like them. Factions used to be easier, but the addition of campaigns and all of the shuttle boosts there means that you really have to be paying to stay competitive now. And the extra shuttle tokens give an added advantage to depth of roster. The only event that requires no real depth is Galaxy, you just need a pile of chrons and you can either buy them or stockpile them, which is something anyone can do.
Some of you guys seem to be missing the fact that events across the board are harder than they've ever been. When I started playing on my main account, I could rank in ANY galaxy event with 800 chrons or less. That's not even enough to clear thresholds for newer players now. And yes, we have voyages now which helps, but for newer players that can only run 2-4 hour voyages, it doesn't help enough. Skirmishes are a newer players best chance to rank and win a legendary. I mean, look at how ridiculously difficult it is to rank in a faction event now. I've got players level 60-70 in my fleet that have trouble ranking in a faction event now. To rank in a skirmish, a newer player needs a close to maxed 5* ship, 3 decent crew members, and the willingness to put in more time & effort to grind it out than most players are willing to put in. Skirmishes are a stepping stone for them. If you think I'm wrong, start a new account and see what it's really like for a newer player coming into the game now.
I very much disagree that for new players Skirmish is the walk in the park you maintain. Skirmish is gruesome before you have a lot of stars on a decent 5* ship. In addition getting the crew to make Skirmish go quickly can take months. Skirmish is a doddle for well established players so saying skirmishes are the best chance for new players to rank is clearly not the case.
Galaxies are typically the event in which you can make an impact the earliest because so many people don't like them. Factions used to be easier, but the addition of campaigns and all of the shuttle boosts there means that you really have to be paying to stay competitive now. And the extra shuttle tokens give an added advantage to depth of roster. The only event that requires no real depth is Galaxy, you just need a pile of chrons and you can either buy them or stockpile them, which is something anyone can do.
Completely agree here. My ftp alt account started about a year ago, only got to the point of reliable epic skirmishes about 2-3 months ago. If the account hadn't been able to pick up the good 4* ardra and o'brien along with the duras sisters, I'd still be running elites. Probably took about 10 months to be able to reasonably (<10 hours play) top 1500 skirmishes and about as long to be able to top 1500 a faction going all out. Galaxies you can get top 1500s in almost immediately (maybe 2-3 months in on a ftp account). You, just need to stockpile chrons from voyages and not go past the 130k thresholds the other weeks.
I very much disagree that for new players Skirmish is the walk in the park you maintain. Skirmish is gruesome before you have a lot of stars on a decent 5* ship. In addition getting the crew to make Skirmish go quickly can take months. Skirmish is a doddle for well established players so saying skirmishes are the best chance for new players to rank is clearly not the case.
Galaxies are typically the event in which you can make an impact the earliest because so many people don't like them. Factions used to be easier, but the addition of campaigns and all of the shuttle boosts there means that you really have to be paying to stay competitive now. And the extra shuttle tokens give an added advantage to depth of roster. The only event that requires no real depth is Galaxy, you just need a pile of chrons and you can either buy them or stockpile them, which is something anyone can do.
The opposite is true. So far I have won these legendaries from events:
In Galaxies I rank around 2500th but it costs me a lot while the Skirmishes do not, and Faction does not either. Galaxies are the worst for newer players unless they spend a lot of cash for chrons.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
I very much disagree that for new players Skirmish is the walk in the park you maintain. Skirmish is gruesome before you have a lot of stars on a decent 5* ship. In addition getting the crew to make Skirmish go quickly can take months. Skirmish is a doddle for well established players so saying skirmishes are the best chance for new players to rank is clearly not the case.
Galaxies are typically the event in which you can make an impact the earliest because so many people don't like them. Factions used to be easier, but the addition of campaigns and all of the shuttle boosts there means that you really have to be paying to stay competitive now. And the extra shuttle tokens give an added advantage to depth of roster. The only event that requires no real depth is Galaxy, you just need a pile of chrons and you can either buy them or stockpile them, which is something anyone can do.
The opposite is true. So far I have won these legendaries from events:
In Galaxies I rank around 2500th but it costs me a lot while the Skirmishes do not, and Faction does not either. Galaxies are the worst for newer players unless they spend a lot of cash for chrons.
But you don't have to buy the chrons. Just hoard them.
Skirmishes are entirely dependent on luck getting the right schematics and crew drops in order to have a decent crew. It sounds like you got really lucky getting the right crew dropping. It took me a LONG time to get Ardra.
You can even compete in galaxies if you have only event variants and zero event crew, you just need a little more hoarding.
I realize this might mean you lose an opportunity to freeze some crew or might need to airlock extra 1/4's, but for an early player getting new SR event crew 4/4 is super valuable and will make a lot more difference than keeping more 1/4 consuming slots.
Perhaps you are choosing not to hoard chrons at all, so that's why you are unable to rank in galaxy events? 2 weeks hoarding when you know next week were to be a faction event for example would be good potential depending on your crew variants and amount of common equipment built up.
Has @Mirror Cartman weighed in? He has a pretty good thread about starting a new account. I would tend to think that new players do better to use chronitons to equip crew, not do galaxy events. And since you can equip during a skirmish, it seems a little more ideal. I'm starting to think it comes down to personal preference and play style.
Has @Mirror Cartman weighed in? He has a pretty good thread about starting a new account. I would tend to think that new players do better to use chronitons to equip crew, not do galaxy events. And since you can equip during a skirmish, it seems a little more ideal. I'm starting to think it comes down to personal preference and play style.
Equip what crew though? Older weaker SR crew? I realize not every event's SR is a new power creep crew, but lots of them are compared to older cards.
I very much disagree that for new players Skirmish is the walk in the park you maintain. Skirmish is gruesome before you have a lot of stars on a decent 5* ship. In addition getting the crew to make Skirmish go quickly can take months. Skirmish is a doddle for well established players so saying skirmishes are the best chance for new players to rank is clearly not the case.
Galaxies are typically the event in which you can make an impact the earliest because so many people don't like them. Factions used to be easier, but the addition of campaigns and all of the shuttle boosts there means that you really have to be paying to stay competitive now. And the extra shuttle tokens give an added advantage to depth of roster. The only event that requires no real depth is Galaxy, you just need a pile of chrons and you can either buy them or stockpile them, which is something anyone can do.
The opposite is true. So far I have won these legendaries from events:
In Galaxies I rank around 2500th but it costs me a lot while the Skirmishes do not, and Faction does not either. Galaxies are the worst for newer players unless they spend a lot of cash for chrons.
But you don't have to buy the chrons. Just hoard them.
Skirmishes are entirely dependent on luck getting the right schematics and crew drops in order to have a decent crew. It sounds like you got really lucky getting the right crew dropping. It took me a LONG time to get Ardra.
You can even compete in galaxies if you have only event variants and zero event crew, you just need a little more hoarding.
I realize this might mean you lose an opportunity to freeze some crew or might need to airlock extra 1/4's, but for an early player getting new SR event crew 4/4 is super valuable and will make a lot more difference than keeping more 1/4 consuming slots.
Perhaps you are choosing not to hoard chrons at all, so that's why you are unable to rank in galaxy events? 2 weeks hoarding when you know next week were to be a faction event for example would be good potential depending on your crew variants and amount of common equipment built up.
It’s been many months since I switched from pre-farming to hoarding and the difference is quite noticeable - trying to anticipate what items will be pinch points and farming them in advance just doesn’t work as well as hoarding chrons and spending them during the event. Even when I tried to compete in a Galaxy while pre-farming, I would come up short because the couple thousand chrons I could accumulate during the event from thresholds, daily missions, and voyages ended up being spent on the one or three items I didn’t have a good stockpile of, leaving me on the outside looking in when it came to trying to make a surge in rank. That’s why I had to buy the $50 deal to get Warship Tuvok (a personal favorite), because I ended up not having anything left to make the final push to maintain rank.
With hoarding, you still have the option to slow-play events you’re not interested in while gaining the option to dump the required resources in to secure any 5* you want or need. Smart usage of supply kits negates the lost benefit of accumulating chrons simply by waiting, and you can dip into your stash whenever you need to power level someone.
I’ll also say that Skirmish events are the ones where most people in my fleet do very well. Aside from myself and one or two others, most end up somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 in Galaxy, Faction, and Hybrid events and can get inside the top 8,000 in Skirmishes. These are casual players who have been around long enough to have a good pile of 5* ships but lack the crew and/or time to push for rank in other event types.
Has @Mirror Cartman weighed in? He has a pretty good thread about starting a new account. I would tend to think that new players do better to use chronitons to equip crew, not do galaxy events. And since you can equip during a skirmish, it seems a little more ideal. I'm starting to think it comes down to personal preference and play style.
It's definitely not the same for everyone, not sure though that its a true preference or something driven by necessity by $ and time investment amounts.
If you invest absolutely no cash and a lot of time, you are going to be accumulating chrons a lot faster than you do trainers to level crew. If you take it slow trying to force level people after you get through the cadet's you need to make those warpable, you can start getting 1-2 ff purples every galaxy and hybrid event with 1-2 months of starting. Those become the backbone of your voyages and move you up to 6-8 hour voyages with time, which leads to more purples dropping.
If you start adding cash investment you have more gold and ff purple crew to level and more trainers from extra shuttles sooner. If you start lowering time it results in less chrons and items from frequent voyages and ad warps. Both are going to make it harder to save up resources for galaxies and push you toward other event types.
Well, speaking as someone who does have a newer account that I only started playing seriously 25 weeks ago, I can tell you that skirmishes are absolutely the way to get ahead for newer players. Galaxies are brutal on the same account. There are no shortage of options when it comes to good (or at least usable) 4* crew for skirmishes. Like I said, you only need 3 decent crew members and a mostly maxed 5* ship. And if you're a newer player, imo, it is absolutely worth citing up a good skirmish crew ASAP to get the ball rolling. I ranked 103 this event with a 9/10 5* ship on that account. Captain level 53 at the start of the event. I ranked 252 10 weeks back in a skirmish with the same account, using an 8/10 5* ship. Captain level somewhere under 50 at the time. If you've been playing for 25 weeks, you have a crew that will work, whether you realize it or not. I'd estimate I've helped no less than 150 players figure out what their best skirmish options are at this point. Not a single one of them did not have a usable skirmish team somewhere in their crew quarters.
For F2P it is different, I am sure. My first two Skirmishes I did on Elite also but then I could switch to Epic with the 7/10 Bounty. But of course the ships do not come for free. The crew is rather secondary - you could run it with rare crew too (I mostly did), it just takes longer. Leland helped a lot later on.
Yes, I could save up chrons for Galaxies over weeks but I consider this as a waste of ressources which I rather use on my crew and collections. I am VIP12 so there is no lack of good 1/5s and 2/5s let alone the Campaign crew each month. I prefer to put my chrons into that over pushing to aquire another 1/5 which I have plenty sitting around already.
I always try to finish off the Galaxy event ranked SR to satisfy the collector in me. If I lack all 4 of them that means to rank better than 2500, and that costs me around 5000 chrons (which is more or less the entire week's outcome after dailies) as I do not hoard ressources upfront. That is sick already but I am not willing to invest even more chrons (2x? 3x? 4x?) and time to rank above 1500. With all the last minute turn ins it is actually hard to estimate the VP/chrons needed.
I hate Galaxies so much... it is hard to put in words how much actually. Why can't they give a similar small rewards like Skirmishes do? Or demand the exceeding stuff you hardly ever need for your crew? Instead they consume exactly the components you have to farm for all the time anyway. They are simply painful - every build beyond threshold feels WRONG. The only good thing about them is the 4/4 instead of a 3/4.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
Well, speaking as someone who does Like I said, you only need 3 decent crew members and a mostly maxed 5* ship.
The ship is the important part of this depending on your spend level. Not a big deal if you are a moderate spender, but this took me forever on my ftp alt. A year in I still only have a 9/10 krayton. Getting one of the other ships to 10/10 or the krayton to 9/10 was critical for surviving on epic with 2nd tier arena crew.
This is even worse now for ftp players since they added some additional 5* ships to dabo. It might sound nice to have more ships with free schematics but it actually delays competitiveness in this area of the game, since it takes longer to get ships up to 9/10.
Well, speaking as someone who does Like I said, you only need 3 decent crew members and a mostly maxed 5* ship.
The ship is the important part of this depending on your spend level. Not a big deal if you are a moderate spender, but this took me forever on my ftp alt. A year in I still only have a 9/10 krayton. Getting one of the other ships to 10/10 or the krayton to 9/10 was critical for surviving on epic with 2nd tier arena crew.
This is even worse now for ftp players since they added some additional 5* ships to dabo. It might sound nice to have more ships with free schematics but it actually delays competitiveness in this area of the game, since it takes longer to get ships up to 9/10.
I absolutely agree with you. When I started playing on my main account, the same ships were in Arena for many months in a row, so within 2-3 months, even if you didn't get lucky on the dabo wheel, you'd still end up having at least one maxed out 5* ship. It is much more difficult to get a maxed 5* ship now, especially with limited/no spending. This is something that I really wish DB would re-evaluate for the sake of people coming into the game now.
Btw, congrats on your victory. 10 million+ points in a skirmish is an impressive feat.
Has @Mirror Cartman weighed in? He has a pretty good thread about starting a new account. I would tend to think that new players do better to use chronitons to equip crew, not do galaxy events. And since you can equip during a skirmish, it seems a little more ideal. I'm starting to think it comes down to personal preference and play style.
The last line, personal preference and play style. My new account is now six weeks old, and I struggled in this skirmish, I could only manage the medium difficulty, which awards less chrons when you win them. I hit 60k VP, I could have made it to 130k but I did not have the time to grind.
Galaxy events are good for new players because they award the player a copy of the threshold 4* crew from the community rewards. This means if they hit 40k VP they can get two copies from thresholds, and have a 3/4 crew, which I managed with Aleek-Om after playing for just under two weeks, and still completed the dailies. I also have a 3/4 Riker Q and a 3/4 Ambassador spock from hitting 40k VP.
In the hybrid event in two weeks, I plan on hitting 130k VP, and fully forming the threshold crew. This will be my first fully formed 4* from an event. My only other FF 4* is Waitress Ezri from the campaign.
Contrast this with shuttle events. My first shuttle event the week after I won 3/4 Aleek-Om, I only managed a 2/4 Young T'Pau. The only other shuttle event so far, I did not have the crew to compete, and I still only have 3 shuttles.
The only reason I expect to do well in the coming shuttle event, is that it is in a mega event, and I have several Qs including a fully equipped Qod, who will get his forth star that week.
Whilst new players would need to spend a lot of chrons to do galaxy events, getting 4/4 crew is vital for voyages, which are the chron mine in game. So it is a short term loss for a long term gain. Once I start hitting real crew slot problems, I can start to freeze the less useful ones, and agonise over the 3/4 crew from shuttle events.
Has @Mirror Cartman weighed in? He has a pretty good thread about starting a new account. I would tend to think that new players do better to use chronitons to equip crew, not do galaxy events. And since you can equip during a skirmish, it seems a little more ideal. I'm starting to think it comes down to personal preference and play style.
The last line, personal preference and play style. My new account is now six weeks old, and I struggled in this skirmish, I could only manage the medium difficulty, which awards less chrons when you win them. I hit 60k VP, I could have made it to 130k but I did not have the time to grind.
Galaxy events are good for new players because they award the player a copy of the threshold 4* crew from the community rewards. This means if they hit 40k VP they can get two copies from thresholds, and have a 3/4 crew, which I managed with Aleek-Om after playing for just under two weeks, and still completed the dailies. I also have a 3/4 Riker Q and a 3/4 Ambassador spock from hitting 40k VP.
In the hybrid event in two weeks, I plan on hitting 130k VP, and fully forming the threshold crew. This will be my first fully formed 4* from an event. My only other FF 4* is Waitress Ezri from the campaign.
Contrast this with shuttle events. My first shuttle event the week after I won 3/4 Aleek-Om, I only managed a 2/4 Young T'Pau. The only other shuttle event so far, I did not have the crew to compete, and I still only have 3 shuttles.
The only reason I expect to do well in the coming shuttle event, is that it is in a mega event, and I have several Qs including a fully equipped Qod, who will get his forth star that week.
Whilst new players would need to spend a lot of chrons to do galaxy events, getting 4/4 crew is vital for voyages, which are the chron mine in game. So it is a short term loss for a long term gain. Once I start hitting real crew slot problems, I can start to freeze the less useful ones, and agonise over the 3/4 crew from shuttle events.
Thank you for the perspective. I can see that I could have been more successful when I started if I had put more emphasis on 4/4 for voyage crew.
Well, speaking as someone who does Like I said, you only need 3 decent crew members and a mostly maxed 5* ship.
The ship is the important part of this depending on your spend level. Not a big deal if you are a moderate spender, but this took me forever on my ftp alt. A year in I still only have a 9/10 krayton. Getting one of the other ships to 10/10 or the krayton to 9/10 was critical for surviving on epic with 2nd tier arena crew.
This is even worse now for ftp players since they added some additional 5* ships to dabo. It might sound nice to have more ships with free schematics but it actually delays competitiveness in this area of the game, since it takes longer to get ships up to 9/10.
Excellent point. I started off FTP, so that's a big part of why it took forever to have a viable 9/10 ship. Spending level has a drastic affect on your available options when starting the game.
It would be interesting to know how many really new players religiously are FTP. I think alt-accounts are not really any sort of measure and should not be the baseline for the game design and business model as they generate the least income for DB.
If someone really starts the game anew she probably at least buys the monthly dil-card which gives quite some opportunity to gather ships and some legendary crew via packs and Dabo. Many also buy the Campaigns I suppose so the need for 4/4s decreases as well plus everyone gets a 4/4 each month for free there. Almost everyone can manage to get the Mega crew after a few weeks.
I never had to focus on 4/4s as I spent 20 dollar on 2x10x10 packs after a couple of days of playing and had 5 legendaries from that. 4 of them were superior to 4/4s from the start regarding voyages. I just did not have the chrons and trainers to level them up quickly.^^
But when I refer to newer players I do not speak of 6 weeks old accounts but rather a few months olds. To aquire a legendary via Galaxy or Galaxy hybrid is the very most painful among all kinds of events. There are always 1500 people above you that have less pain with throwing out additional chrons than you have after a few months of playing. And this gets worse every week as even more players reach a level where chrons are no harsh bottleneck ressource any more.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
Some really really great comments here. Obviously money is the single biggest factor. I have an alt I've been playing since October, so quite a while now. Its VIP 6 mainly due to the monthly card (shuttle and crew slots) with a couple of the campaigns. Because I haven't bought any 10x10 packs my ships are still very low. This last skirmish I could fnally play on epic with a 9/10 Krayton but with only mediocre crew I dropped back to elite after the phase change because I would routinely lose a skirmish in every 4 or 5 and had to repair my hull at least once and I felt it was better to drop and get all the reward boxes and also not waste any intel.
To compare, my 10F account could play on epic from the second skirmish event. The first was a learning curve..... I was able to compete in arena for T'Ong schmetics and as I had Killy the second skirmish was much much easier.
The training fleet we have picks up a lot of new accounts and while not everyone discusses their spending habits we have only one real F2P. He came over from GoT and is hestitant to spend money on a game that can be cancelled at any time. He has chosen to spend his resources on levelling crew, so he can claim achievement dilithium and obtain extra shuttles and crew slots rather than rank in events.
I have always maintained that galaxy events are easier for new players to rank in. Even when I first started (skirmish weren't around then) they were a fantastic way to get a 4/4 crew to help with my voyages. You had galaxy for great new crew and faction events for trainers. Hybrids were easiest for me to rank in, a lot of the veteran players then would threshold with factions and not spend chrons at all.
While skirmish are an excellent event to build up an extra little honor and a very cost efficient, they're difficult and demoralising to compete in when you dont have the crew and ship. The galaxy map gives new players a false sense of security so they happily fly through all the ship battles with their half levelled legendary ship they won off dabo and believe theyll have a good shot at epic on skirmish. Skirmish events are actually the reason i set up my alt. I was trying to help a new player run her skirmish and honestly couldn't understand why she was having such a hard time. So I started a new account and figured after a couple of months playing I'd be swanning around on epic because I'm so good at skirmish. Boy was I mistaken! It's been a definite learning curve for me and I think has made me a more helpful player. I understand the frustration experienced by newer players who think you just need a high damage crew and a level 7 legend ship and you're all set. When really, it's more difficult than you think.
I have “browsed” not fully read all above comments so excuse me if i am repeating someone.
I think it is also valid to consider simply that with a growing number of players more ppl are competing in events, and advancing players are ranking better. So in that sense of course maintaining rank is going to be more difficult when we have double or triple the amount of ppl who have joined the game and advanced enough to give serious competition in events than what we were used to.
I agree with others that faction/shuttle events have increased in difficulty but that has been somewhat balanced with shuttle tokens and 2x reward boosts, some of which you can get free in campaigns. Also trait bonus has been added many times in addition to the event crew/variant to all events.
Skirmish is a great way for all lvl players to compete.
I see no difference in galaxy other than increased competition, or when glitches dont give proper bonus.
We rarely see an expedition anymore, it was horribly time consuming and i blv skirmish is just the space battle version instead of missions. That is why expedition has mostly replaced by skirmish.
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
If an account isn't spending much and is running 6 voyage dilemma's a day, I'm at a loss as to how you aren't piling up chrons, regardless of skirmishing or not. Eventually you reach the point where there is nothing to do but farm items in skrimishes and spend them in galaxies runs for multiple stars on 1/5s.
My year old (started last august) VIP0 account is at 145 slots, 85k chrons banked, 236 unique immortals (88 purple and 3 golds), with a bunch of other non ff golds and 3/4 purples leveled. I haven't skirmished a lot on that account, but do put in some hours to get past at least the 350k thresholds. One of the first things I did while I was trainer starved was build up a chron bank of 10k+ so that I could go for rank in any galaxy I wanted the rank purple ff or the gold 1/5 to improve voyages. I've had all my ff purple crew and useful golds leveled within an hour of getting them for the last 6-8 months or so and have just been growing the chron balance from there.
Ideally I would be skirmishing it all away to farm honor and items for galaxies since it pulls in enough chrons to level the drip of new crew I get, but as its an alt I don't have the time for that there.
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
Why are you using yourself as an example though? You are not a newer player when you have all common, uncommon and rare crew finished essentially. That's easily mid-game if not late game, as you've got piles of trainers and faction equipment coming in to build 10 crew during a skirmish.
A newer player imo should focus on maxium benefit for their limited trainers, which is cadet and SR power creep crew to maximize cadet warping and voyage length until you have built up legends (which you've already done).
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
If an account isn't spending much and is running 6 voyage dilemma's a day, I'm at a loss as to how you aren't piling up chrons, regardless of skirmishing or not. Eventually you reach the point where there is nothing to do but farm items in skrimishes and spend them in galaxies runs for multiple stars on 1/5s.
My year old (started last august) VIP0 account is at 145 slots, 85k chrons banked, 236 unique immortals (88 purple and 3 golds), with a bunch of other non ff golds and 3/4 purples leveled. I haven't skirmished a lot on that account, but do put in some hours to get past at least the 350k thresholds. One of the first things I did while I was trainer starved was build up a chron bank of 10k+ so that I could go for rank in any galaxy I wanted the rank purple ff or the gold 1/5 to improve voyages. I've had all my ff purple crew and useful golds leveled within an hour of getting them for the last 6-8 months or so and have just been growing the chron balance from there.
Ideally I would be skirmishing it all away to farm honor and items for galaxies since it pulls in enough chrons to level the drip of new crew I get, but as its an alt I don't have the time for that there.
I bolded the key word in your statement. My focus has been to turn "eventually" into "ASAP". I was also pointing out that at 25 weeks of daily play, my alt account is finally at that stage that chrons will pile up, because from here on out, I only have to level and/or freeze any incoming legendarys or FF chars I pick up.
This is just the method I utilized to get to myself into this position, and I'm not suggesting there aren't other, equally effective ways to get there. I chose this method because I knew crew slots were going to be a bigger headache on my alt account than on my main account. I focused on those 1-3* chars early for the collection bonuses, and because I didn't want to have to chase them down one at a time later, once my crew slots were full of chars that I didn't want to airlock.
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
Why are you using yourself as an example though? You are not a newer player when you have all common, uncommon and rare crew finished essentially. That's easily mid-game if not late game, as you've got piles of trainers and faction equipment coming in to build 10 crew during a skirmish.
A newer player imo should focus on maxium benefit for their limited trainers, which is cadet and SR power creep crew to maximize cadet warping and voyage length until you have built up legends (which you've already done).
I used myself as an example because I've only been playing that account daily for 25 weeks, which imo, is still relatively new. I only maxed out my first 5* ship about a week ago. And had I not used one month of daily card dil specifficaly to use for extra dabo spins, I wouldn't even be close to having a maxed 5* ship. But maybe you disagree that 25 weeks is still early, and if so, that's fine too.
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
If an account isn't spending much and is running 6 voyage dilemma's a day, I'm at a loss as to how you aren't piling up chrons, regardless of skirmishing or not. Eventually you reach the point where there is nothing to do but farm items in skrimishes and spend them in galaxies runs for multiple stars on 1/5s.
My year old (started last august) VIP0 account is at 145 slots, 85k chrons banked, 236 unique immortals (88 purple and 3 golds), with a bunch of other non ff golds and 3/4 purples leveled. I haven't skirmished a lot on that account, but do put in some hours to get past at least the 350k thresholds. One of the first things I did while I was trainer starved was build up a chron bank of 10k+ so that I could go for rank in any galaxy I wanted the rank purple ff or the gold 1/5 to improve voyages. I've had all my ff purple crew and useful golds leveled within an hour of getting them for the last 6-8 months or so and have just been growing the chron balance from there.
Ideally I would be skirmishing it all away to farm honor and items for galaxies since it pulls in enough chrons to level the drip of new crew I get, but as its an alt I don't have the time for that there.
I bolded the key word in your statement. My focus has been to turn "eventually" into "ASAP". I was also pointing out that at 25 weeks of daily play, my alt account is finally at that stage that chrons will pile up, because from here on out, I only have to level and/or freeze any incoming legendarys or FF chars I pick up.
This is just the method I utilized to get to myself into this position, and I'm not suggesting there aren't other, equally effective ways to get there. I chose this method because I knew crew slots were going to be a bigger headache on my alt account than on my main account. I focused on those 1-3* chars early for the collection bonuses, and because I didn't want to have to chase them down one at a time later, once my crew slots were full of chars that I didn't want to airlock.
I understand why so many people think galaxy events are the optimal path for newer players to advance. And before all event thresholds were extended to 350k VP, I would have agreed. Before the threshold extensions, they were the optimal path for newer players to advance. It's the path I pursued on my main account, with great success. But galaxy events use a lot of the same components newer players need to level pretty much every crew in the game. On my alt account ({DD} Baby Smelly), I have to farm way more items than I do on my main account. So newer players have to spend a lot more chrons on a galaxy event than more established players. In a skirmish event, newer players can level up their chars while competing in the event. It's not at all uncommon to be able to FE 10+ chars during a skirmish, using a fraction of the chrons that you would need to do that at any other time.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
Why are you using yourself as an example though? You are not a newer player when you have all common, uncommon and rare crew finished essentially. That's easily mid-game if not late game, as you've got piles of trainers and faction equipment coming in to build 10 crew during a skirmish.
A newer player imo should focus on maxium benefit for their limited trainers, which is cadet and SR power creep crew to maximize cadet warping and voyage length until you have built up legends (which you've already done).
I used myself as an example because I've only been playing that account daily for 25 weeks, which imo, is still relatively new. I only maxed out my first 5* ship about a week ago. And had I not used one month of daily card dil specifficaly to use for extra dabo spins, I wouldn't even be close to having a maxed 5* ship. But maybe you disagree that 25 weeks is still early, and if so, that's fine too.
It's your doggedness that's the problem. Despite admitting that there's more than one way you keep coming on here and behaving as if skirmishes are the be all and end all, to the point of complaining that the crew from skirmishes are very similar. Skirmishes are not the fastest way to get ranked legendaries. Galaxies are for certain, as you can rank in Galaxy the week you start playing if you want. If you focus on one event type as you have done, then you should be able to rank in every Galaxy by just saving chrons and being extremely focussed on which crew to level. It also takes considerably less actual weekend *time* to rank in Galaxy than it does in Skirmish.
Skirmishes are a great event and if you are into collecting the crew too then they are more efficient. But the idea that they are the *best* way to do things is clearly silly and more importantly runs completely contrary to the actual experience of most of the players here.
Edited to add that of course they both work really well together, once you have the chron engine running, with skirmishes being used to prep for your Galaxy events, so that Galaxies are costless.
Comments
Making games easier to enable new players to catch up is a core instrument to be able to tease new players into the game in the first place. If this marathon was the same for everyone no matter if she started in time or 3 years later it would make no sense to start at all if you missed the starting whistle. So it is rather pointless to make fun of this and ask new players to just be patient. Btw this sounds like old people arguing about WWII and how bad everything was and how spoiled we are and that we should be confident with what we have. If noone ever had expressed progressive ideas we would still all be running through (intact) woods to hunt some deer and collect berries. Mother earth would appreciate this I assume.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But thanks.
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends
I'm totally with you. I'm not upset about Amanda Rogers in particular, but I think the general idea would be good for DB to explore. It doesn't have to be a rotation of different primary skills, but getting three or four in there through the course of a year would help newer players in particular.
I very much disagree that for new players Skirmish is the walk in the park you maintain. Skirmish is gruesome before you have a lot of stars on a decent 5* ship. In addition getting the crew to make Skirmish go quickly can take months. Skirmish is a doddle for well established players so saying skirmishes are the best chance for new players to rank is clearly not the case.
Galaxies are typically the event in which you can make an impact the earliest because so many people don't like them. Factions used to be easier, but the addition of campaigns and all of the shuttle boosts there means that you really have to be paying to stay competitive now. And the extra shuttle tokens give an added advantage to depth of roster. The only event that requires no real depth is Galaxy, you just need a pile of chrons and you can either buy them or stockpile them, which is something anyone can do.
Completely agree here. My ftp alt account started about a year ago, only got to the point of reliable epic skirmishes about 2-3 months ago. If the account hadn't been able to pick up the good 4* ardra and o'brien along with the duras sisters, I'd still be running elites. Probably took about 10 months to be able to reasonably (<10 hours play) top 1500 skirmishes and about as long to be able to top 1500 a faction going all out. Galaxies you can get top 1500s in almost immediately (maybe 2-3 months in on a ftp account). You, just need to stockpile chrons from voyages and not go past the 130k thresholds the other weeks.
Science Officer Spock (Skirmish)
Beloved Annorax (Skirmish)
Owosekun (Skirmish)
Loken (Faction)
Amanda (Skirmish)
In Galaxies I rank around 2500th but it costs me a lot while the Skirmishes do not, and Faction does not either. Galaxies are the worst for newer players unless they spend a lot of cash for chrons.
But you don't have to buy the chrons. Just hoard them.
Skirmishes are entirely dependent on luck getting the right schematics and crew drops in order to have a decent crew. It sounds like you got really lucky getting the right crew dropping. It took me a LONG time to get Ardra.
You can even compete in galaxies if you have only event variants and zero event crew, you just need a little more hoarding.
I realize this might mean you lose an opportunity to freeze some crew or might need to airlock extra 1/4's, but for an early player getting new SR event crew 4/4 is super valuable and will make a lot more difference than keeping more 1/4 consuming slots.
Perhaps you are choosing not to hoard chrons at all, so that's why you are unable to rank in galaxy events? 2 weeks hoarding when you know next week were to be a faction event for example would be good potential depending on your crew variants and amount of common equipment built up.
Equip what crew though? Older weaker SR crew? I realize not every event's SR is a new power creep crew, but lots of them are compared to older cards.
It’s been many months since I switched from pre-farming to hoarding and the difference is quite noticeable - trying to anticipate what items will be pinch points and farming them in advance just doesn’t work as well as hoarding chrons and spending them during the event. Even when I tried to compete in a Galaxy while pre-farming, I would come up short because the couple thousand chrons I could accumulate during the event from thresholds, daily missions, and voyages ended up being spent on the one or three items I didn’t have a good stockpile of, leaving me on the outside looking in when it came to trying to make a surge in rank. That’s why I had to buy the $50 deal to get Warship Tuvok (a personal favorite), because I ended up not having anything left to make the final push to maintain rank.
With hoarding, you still have the option to slow-play events you’re not interested in while gaining the option to dump the required resources in to secure any 5* you want or need. Smart usage of supply kits negates the lost benefit of accumulating chrons simply by waiting, and you can dip into your stash whenever you need to power level someone.
I’ll also say that Skirmish events are the ones where most people in my fleet do very well. Aside from myself and one or two others, most end up somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 in Galaxy, Faction, and Hybrid events and can get inside the top 8,000 in Skirmishes. These are casual players who have been around long enough to have a good pile of 5* ships but lack the crew and/or time to push for rank in other event types.
It's definitely not the same for everyone, not sure though that its a true preference or something driven by necessity by $ and time investment amounts.
If you invest absolutely no cash and a lot of time, you are going to be accumulating chrons a lot faster than you do trainers to level crew. If you take it slow trying to force level people after you get through the cadet's you need to make those warpable, you can start getting 1-2 ff purples every galaxy and hybrid event with 1-2 months of starting. Those become the backbone of your voyages and move you up to 6-8 hour voyages with time, which leads to more purples dropping.
If you start adding cash investment you have more gold and ff purple crew to level and more trainers from extra shuttles sooner. If you start lowering time it results in less chrons and items from frequent voyages and ad warps. Both are going to make it harder to save up resources for galaxies and push you toward other event types.
Yes, I could save up chrons for Galaxies over weeks but I consider this as a waste of ressources which I rather use on my crew and collections. I am VIP12 so there is no lack of good 1/5s and 2/5s let alone the Campaign crew each month. I prefer to put my chrons into that over pushing to aquire another 1/5 which I have plenty sitting around already.
I always try to finish off the Galaxy event ranked SR to satisfy the collector in me. If I lack all 4 of them that means to rank better than 2500, and that costs me around 5000 chrons (which is more or less the entire week's outcome after dailies) as I do not hoard ressources upfront. That is sick already but I am not willing to invest even more chrons (2x? 3x? 4x?) and time to rank above 1500. With all the last minute turn ins it is actually hard to estimate the VP/chrons needed.
I hate Galaxies so much... it is hard to put in words how much actually. Why can't they give a similar small rewards like Skirmishes do? Or demand the exceeding stuff you hardly ever need for your crew? Instead they consume exactly the components you have to farm for all the time anyway. They are simply painful - every build beyond threshold feels WRONG. The only good thing about them is the 4/4 instead of a 3/4.
The ship is the important part of this depending on your spend level. Not a big deal if you are a moderate spender, but this took me forever on my ftp alt. A year in I still only have a 9/10 krayton. Getting one of the other ships to 10/10 or the krayton to 9/10 was critical for surviving on epic with 2nd tier arena crew.
This is even worse now for ftp players since they added some additional 5* ships to dabo. It might sound nice to have more ships with free schematics but it actually delays competitiveness in this area of the game, since it takes longer to get ships up to 9/10.
I absolutely agree with you. When I started playing on my main account, the same ships were in Arena for many months in a row, so within 2-3 months, even if you didn't get lucky on the dabo wheel, you'd still end up having at least one maxed out 5* ship. It is much more difficult to get a maxed 5* ship now, especially with limited/no spending. This is something that I really wish DB would re-evaluate for the sake of people coming into the game now.
Btw, congrats on your victory. 10 million+ points in a skirmish is an impressive feat.
The last line, personal preference and play style. My new account is now six weeks old, and I struggled in this skirmish, I could only manage the medium difficulty, which awards less chrons when you win them. I hit 60k VP, I could have made it to 130k but I did not have the time to grind.
Galaxy events are good for new players because they award the player a copy of the threshold 4* crew from the community rewards. This means if they hit 40k VP they can get two copies from thresholds, and have a 3/4 crew, which I managed with Aleek-Om after playing for just under two weeks, and still completed the dailies. I also have a 3/4 Riker Q and a 3/4 Ambassador spock from hitting 40k VP.
In the hybrid event in two weeks, I plan on hitting 130k VP, and fully forming the threshold crew. This will be my first fully formed 4* from an event. My only other FF 4* is Waitress Ezri from the campaign.
Contrast this with shuttle events. My first shuttle event the week after I won 3/4 Aleek-Om, I only managed a 2/4 Young T'Pau. The only other shuttle event so far, I did not have the crew to compete, and I still only have 3 shuttles.
The only reason I expect to do well in the coming shuttle event, is that it is in a mega event, and I have several Qs including a fully equipped Qod, who will get his forth star that week.
Whilst new players would need to spend a lot of chrons to do galaxy events, getting 4/4 crew is vital for voyages, which are the chron mine in game. So it is a short term loss for a long term gain. Once I start hitting real crew slot problems, I can start to freeze the less useful ones, and agonise over the 3/4 crew from shuttle events.
Thank you for the perspective. I can see that I could have been more successful when I started if I had put more emphasis on 4/4 for voyage crew.
Excellent point. I started off FTP, so that's a big part of why it took forever to have a viable 9/10 ship. Spending level has a drastic affect on your available options when starting the game.
If someone really starts the game anew she probably at least buys the monthly dil-card which gives quite some opportunity to gather ships and some legendary crew via packs and Dabo. Many also buy the Campaigns I suppose so the need for 4/4s decreases as well plus everyone gets a 4/4 each month for free there. Almost everyone can manage to get the Mega crew after a few weeks.
I never had to focus on 4/4s as I spent 20 dollar on 2x10x10 packs after a couple of days of playing and had 5 legendaries from that. 4 of them were superior to 4/4s from the start regarding voyages. I just did not have the chrons and trainers to level them up quickly.^^
But when I refer to newer players I do not speak of 6 weeks old accounts but rather a few months olds. To aquire a legendary via Galaxy or Galaxy hybrid is the very most painful among all kinds of events. There are always 1500 people above you that have less pain with throwing out additional chrons than you have after a few months of playing. And this gets worse every week as even more players reach a level where chrons are no harsh bottleneck ressource any more.
To compare, my 10F account could play on epic from the second skirmish event. The first was a learning curve..... I was able to compete in arena for T'Ong schmetics and as I had Killy the second skirmish was much much easier.
The training fleet we have picks up a lot of new accounts and while not everyone discusses their spending habits we have only one real F2P. He came over from GoT and is hestitant to spend money on a game that can be cancelled at any time. He has chosen to spend his resources on levelling crew, so he can claim achievement dilithium and obtain extra shuttles and crew slots rather than rank in events.
I have always maintained that galaxy events are easier for new players to rank in. Even when I first started (skirmish weren't around then) they were a fantastic way to get a 4/4 crew to help with my voyages. You had galaxy for great new crew and faction events for trainers. Hybrids were easiest for me to rank in, a lot of the veteran players then would threshold with factions and not spend chrons at all.
While skirmish are an excellent event to build up an extra little honor and a very cost efficient, they're difficult and demoralising to compete in when you dont have the crew and ship. The galaxy map gives new players a false sense of security so they happily fly through all the ship battles with their half levelled legendary ship they won off dabo and believe theyll have a good shot at epic on skirmish. Skirmish events are actually the reason i set up my alt. I was trying to help a new player run her skirmish and honestly couldn't understand why she was having such a hard time. So I started a new account and figured after a couple of months playing I'd be swanning around on epic because I'm so good at skirmish. Boy was I mistaken! It's been a definite learning curve for me and I think has made me a more helpful player. I understand the frustration experienced by newer players who think you just need a high damage crew and a level 7 legend ship and you're all set. When really, it's more difficult than you think.
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I think it is also valid to consider simply that with a growing number of players more ppl are competing in events, and advancing players are ranking better. So in that sense of course maintaining rank is going to be more difficult when we have double or triple the amount of ppl who have joined the game and advanced enough to give serious competition in events than what we were used to.
I agree with others that faction/shuttle events have increased in difficulty but that has been somewhat balanced with shuttle tokens and 2x reward boosts, some of which you can get free in campaigns. Also trait bonus has been added many times in addition to the event crew/variant to all events.
Skirmish is a great way for all lvl players to compete.
I see no difference in galaxy other than increased competition, or when glitches dont give proper bonus.
We rarely see an expedition anymore, it was horribly time consuming and i blv skirmish is just the space battle version instead of missions. That is why expedition has mostly replaced by skirmish.
And I'll add one more tidbit of evidence to support that claim... at the conclusion of this last skirmish, {DD} Baby Smelly is level 55.
Collections
Common 26/27 Immortalized (missing only Stargazer Picard)
Uncommon 48/51 Immortalized (missing L'Rell, Off-Duty Stamets, & Honor Doc)
Rare 78/79 Immortalized (missing 1 star on Commander Chekov)
In addition to those, all my FF chars are now FE.
My 2/4 Liason Torres is FE.
I have 24/34 legendarys FE.
And with only 140 crew slots at my disposal, I won't be equipping any non-legendary chars that aren't FF, since the odds are too high that I may have to airlock some of them in the future. This is a vastly different situation than my main account was in at level 55.
If an account isn't spending much and is running 6 voyage dilemma's a day, I'm at a loss as to how you aren't piling up chrons, regardless of skirmishing or not. Eventually you reach the point where there is nothing to do but farm items in skrimishes and spend them in galaxies runs for multiple stars on 1/5s.
My year old (started last august) VIP0 account is at 145 slots, 85k chrons banked, 236 unique immortals (88 purple and 3 golds), with a bunch of other non ff golds and 3/4 purples leveled. I haven't skirmished a lot on that account, but do put in some hours to get past at least the 350k thresholds. One of the first things I did while I was trainer starved was build up a chron bank of 10k+ so that I could go for rank in any galaxy I wanted the rank purple ff or the gold 1/5 to improve voyages. I've had all my ff purple crew and useful golds leveled within an hour of getting them for the last 6-8 months or so and have just been growing the chron balance from there.
Ideally I would be skirmishing it all away to farm honor and items for galaxies since it pulls in enough chrons to level the drip of new crew I get, but as its an alt I don't have the time for that there.
Why are you using yourself as an example though? You are not a newer player when you have all common, uncommon and rare crew finished essentially. That's easily mid-game if not late game, as you've got piles of trainers and faction equipment coming in to build 10 crew during a skirmish.
A newer player imo should focus on maxium benefit for their limited trainers, which is cadet and SR power creep crew to maximize cadet warping and voyage length until you have built up legends (which you've already done).
I bolded the key word in your statement. My focus has been to turn "eventually" into "ASAP". I was also pointing out that at 25 weeks of daily play, my alt account is finally at that stage that chrons will pile up, because from here on out, I only have to level and/or freeze any incoming legendarys or FF chars I pick up.
This is just the method I utilized to get to myself into this position, and I'm not suggesting there aren't other, equally effective ways to get there. I chose this method because I knew crew slots were going to be a bigger headache on my alt account than on my main account. I focused on those 1-3* chars early for the collection bonuses, and because I didn't want to have to chase them down one at a time later, once my crew slots were full of chars that I didn't want to airlock.
I used myself as an example because I've only been playing that account daily for 25 weeks, which imo, is still relatively new. I only maxed out my first 5* ship about a week ago. And had I not used one month of daily card dil specifficaly to use for extra dabo spins, I wouldn't even be close to having a maxed 5* ship. But maybe you disagree that 25 weeks is still early, and if so, that's fine too.
It's your doggedness that's the problem. Despite admitting that there's more than one way you keep coming on here and behaving as if skirmishes are the be all and end all, to the point of complaining that the crew from skirmishes are very similar. Skirmishes are not the fastest way to get ranked legendaries. Galaxies are for certain, as you can rank in Galaxy the week you start playing if you want. If you focus on one event type as you have done, then you should be able to rank in every Galaxy by just saving chrons and being extremely focussed on which crew to level. It also takes considerably less actual weekend *time* to rank in Galaxy than it does in Skirmish.
Skirmishes are a great event and if you are into collecting the crew too then they are more efficient. But the idea that they are the *best* way to do things is clearly silly and more importantly runs completely contrary to the actual experience of most of the players here.
Edited to add that of course they both work really well together, once you have the chron engine running, with skirmishes being used to prep for your Galaxy events, so that Galaxies are costless.