Apparently I have too much honor. Help me spend some
cmdrworf
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Looking for suggestion son who to cite. (I need to spend a bunch). Sato is probably my first choice. Just got her this week. I'd focus on Voyage crew first. Not too concerned with collections.
Sir, I protest! I am NOT a merry man!
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Right off the top, FO Burnham, Gary Seven, Surak, and Cornwell are absolute no-brainers. I would prioritize all of them over Sato, who has the biggest base of them all but is a pretty mediocre voyager.
The last star on High Roller Sisko is also a good one, though his skill set will not have quite the same punch even if his voyage total is strong. After that, Reverend Phlox, Dr Pollard, White Rabbit, Temporal Prisoner Chakotay, Away Team Saru and Amanda Rogers all have key voyage combos that will really help round out your crew.
FO Burnham is one of the best cards in the game, very useful for Voyages and also of course for coming Discovery/Burnham events. As Mr Huge said: High Roller Sisko, Temporal Prisoner Chakotay and some of your other options also have their merits in different ways.
Sato has very few events, so she's really a filler for shuttles in events when you don't have dip crew... there are so many dip crew, that does not happen very often with the number of crew you have. If she gives you a few % more in a single shuttle seat than a SR dip crew, that's not going to win an event. I think her value is overrated personally.
I entirely agree with McLargeHuge's recommendations. Those are all crew that give you a good balance of skills. If you are one of those who avoids citing to 5/5 in fear of all FF begolds, be warned that will make it a LOT harder for you to hit 10 hour voyages with a whole voyage full of 4/5 crew.
Thank you. Gary will be my first focus and I'll probably finish Sisko off then too. actually I will do surak first. forgot he was 4* already
Not opposed to going to 5/5. if/when I get ffe begold, oh well. then I start on a second one. Thats my mirror picard now. one 5/5, one 4/5.
Getting these crew finished will go a long way toward that. As will claiming your collection rewards, if any of them are from stat-boosting collections.
Not really. Number 1 base DIP is number 1 base DIP - that is a hard fact. I saw in another thread that you were sad to not get Stranded Quark (whom I immortalized yd) in one of your Premium pulls. In an earlier Voyage I had to chose between him and Sato. And while Quark had a slight advantage (and of course the more unique skillset) the numbers were quite similar really. The "Big Book of Behold Advice" summarizes her strengths (and weaknesses) quite well:
"Meet the woman responsible for single-handedly annihilating the Diplomacy skill. Before her appearance, the gaps between #1 and the base ranks below were 6, 9, 6, 4, and 2. Her lead over then-#1 Odo is 238. Her DIP base at 1/5 would rank top 40 among 5/5 crew and beat out former dependables like Arachnia or Smitten/Meme Picard. There’s never been such a huge domination of the ranks like that before and if she were Professors Data, Dax, or Burnham, then she would be among the most valuable crew in the game.
Luckily for those who don’t have her, she sits at three total events with few traits likely to trigger a bonus. But the rest of the time, she is the quintessential shuttle anchor and will frequently find work for faction events that feature more SCI/ENG focused crew whose variants lack DIP options. Sato’s voyage work is serviceable and a dash of SCI will help break up any CMD/DIP/SEC logjams ahead of her."
You have a far better memory than I sir, to recall disappointing pulls of others. I wish I had your excellent memory (not sarcasm, seriously!).
I get what you're saying that her base dip number is impressively high. The problem is it's almost never doubled, which means the difference between her contribution in a faction event shuttle and a dip skill variant of the event crew (especially a highly fused legendary) is unlikely to be too large, because there are SO MANY dip crew variants since it's the most common skill in the game. Thus, her most important contribution in shuttles does not make as big difference as you might expect.
Let's put this in perspective, a variant crew needs 873 DIP (after bonuses) to top sato's 1745 (after bonuses) base when the variant is doubled and she is not. The "latest crew lvl 100 stats" only shows me the top 150 dip base crew, but at #150 Pel would beat her dip base (966pts x 2 = 1932). Even Borg Queen's secondary skill dip would beat Sato, but also comes with a great cmd base and FAR more events and a collection.
Particularly since lately shuttle seats have many single skill slots, the single dip stat comes up more than it used to. Sato would certainly show her strength in faction events with very few variants where you want to compete for top 100, but that's a pretty specific scenario. Nobody with a large crew needs Sato to rank top 1500.
Like anything else I think she has a place depending on your phase of the game and spending level. To a player with a small crew and who is FTP or spends sparingly, a 5/5 Sato would be a massive contributor. Someone very late game with a highly fused crew could also use her to help chase top 25 in events with very few variants as well. I personally think most people somewhere between those 2 scenarios could better invest elsewhere.
All that said, she is not at the top of my list for citations, but she does not deserve to be demeaned.
Also, I really like Sato and Enterprise.
After that, DF Paris (who is still useful for me even though his skills are somewhat weak), Sato (for her excellent base), Amanda Rogers, and even Dr. Pulaski wouldn’t be bad options. Really though, once the easy choices are made I recommend taking a second look at your crew and figuring out which areas you want or need to improve upon - if you aren’t there already, guaranteeing at least 8 hours on any voyage type is a good goal, and if you can do that even during a Faction event then choosing one or two combos to hit 10 hours consistently is another good goal.
The "I use them every day" explanation doesn't carry much water if the benefit is either in something less useful like faction items vs event VP or if their advantage is slim over the next option, as @Synthetic Commander detailed in describing Faction bonus crew situations.
I can't recall many Factions which were short on DIP bonus crew (the Exobiology events off the top of my head) and those that are, generally have their seating tailored to the available crew skills. I've found, almost without exception, that when I'm using Sato in a Faction event, it's as an option only a few percent better than the next 2x DIP super rare or legendary secondary skill. Quite often she doesn't get used at all.
If you're someone who buys shuttle tokens or does their events in waves where you might be sending out double digit shuttles concurrently, her value is much higher to you. I've personally found her impact on my roster to be merely average, especially since I farm tanked shuttles and never utilize base skills outside of Faction events.
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OP, you say you're looking for voyage help. If we break down the primary and secondary skills of your 4/5 or better crew (including Qod), we get this;
This is a fairly typical roster breakdown; we've had a lot of CMD/DIP/SEC crew from megas and campaigns (sans the big DIP primary) and three MED, three ENG megas, of which you have them all. If you want to address a weakness, SCI, ENG, and DIP primary or MED in that order would seem to be the priorities.
From your roster, the ones that stand out for skill fit would be 4/5 Surak, 4/5 Qod, 4/5 Cornwell, 3/5 Rev Phlox, 2/5 Amanda Rogers, 2/5 Barclay, 2/5 Guinan (gauntlet crew - possible ignore, but fits skill set need), 2/5 Borgway (relatively poor power, but SCI primary with non-voyage use), 1/5 Pulaski, 1/5 White Rabbit, 1/5 Honey Bare, 1/5 Pollard, 1/5 Sato (middling voyage power, but a good skill set fit and you're considering her for elsewhere), and since you're relatively thin on ENG, 3/5 Tempted Data and 2/5 RAF O'Brien are considerations.
Crew who stand out as particularly great voyage options in a vacuum because of a blend of raw score and/or skill set include 4/5 Cornwell, 4/5 Surak, 4/5 Qod, 3/5 Rev Phlox, 1/5 FO Burnham, 1/5 Gary Seven, 1/5 White Rabbit, 1/5 Pollard.
Names who fit both criteria; Cornwell, Surak, Qod, Rev Phlox, Gary Seven, White Rabbit, Pollard.
As someone who prefers to FF the best options available regardless of star count or (in most cases) portal status, the short list of crew I'd personally cite for voyages in rough order; FO Burnham/G7... Surak/Cornwell... Rev
There's also the option of leaning into your strengths (CMD/SEC...Kahless, Roller Sisko) to solidify your 10 hour voyages. That's a whole other (valid) can of worms which would add some value to crew like Burnham and G7 who hit the trifecta of strength on strength (CMD/SEC), skill need fit (SCI), and massive raw voyage score.
Thank you everyone. I was just not confident in who to burn my honor on. On to Burnham I go.
You’re making great choices that you will not regret. Well done!
Next Phlox Rabbit or Chakotay? Thoughts?
That's a tough call. All three are very rare voyage combos, and none have big event counts that would break a tie. I think the order you have them listed is the order I would complete them. MED/COM is a combo I find comes in handy often in voyages, either as a primary/secondary skill or as a means to boost non-featured skills to save antimatter. On top of that, Phlox has the biggest raw voyage total, which is always relevant in these discussions. The Rabbit has a completely unique skill order, and adding significant MED in an ENG slot is a huge boost to certain combos. Beyond that, I don't think he finds too many uses. And Chakotay, as great as he is and has been, does not quite pack the same punch as the other two.
I’d agree with that. There are few to no normal shuttle seats that feature ENG/MED or MED/ENG for the Rabbit, though voyage utility is off the charts for any combination of his three skills and even other voyages where you’re trying to boost non-featured skills to improve success rates in the early hours. The Rabbit’s base ENG is also stout enough to be useful in Faction events that have lots of ENG seats and few ENG bonus crew (such as last week).
TP Chakotay is a little closer to DF Paris, where the raw power would be a little light if it weren’t for the rare skill combo.
There were several ENG-SEC crew released recently including a mega recurring. Chakotay can be a help here as he can sit in a med slot, or give you some MED support for that voyage, and also has some event potential. I don't see delta flyer torres or garak in your crew though and laforge is only 1/5, so Chakotay won't likely get you near 10 hour voyages yet (I'd prioritize him otherwise). I really like his card, but I think based on your crew composition you might be better off investing in Kahless or High Roller Sisko if you want to stretch to reach for a 10 hour voyage sooner.
Phlox is a very exclusive card, as there are also very few CMD-MED cards with a decent voyage score, one of which requires a huge honor investment (crusher). He's absolutely worth investing in, as he helps with all MED related voyages as well as MED-CMD specifically. You've also got him 3/5 so get a big benefit with a smaller investment, so personally I'd go with him next. As a bonus he'd even be a help in that 10 hour CMD-SEC voyage potential I mentioned in the chakotay paragraph.
Indeed. Good call on that. Does anyone know when that should be?
Should be soon. It seems to me it is usually about a week or so before the current one ends.
Yeah, I figured before the weekend we should hear.
Wow, no kidding. And she was the top of my list before I posted here. At least now I'll still FFE her. just without using honor. :-)
and now to finish FO burnham that I can do it safely. And.... She's done. :-) I'll FFE Sisko with the free citation from the current campaign. then 399k honor left. Phlox is next in queue and he needs 100k
Nice work. I could never bring myself to save up that much honour. I usually have a 4/5 from a Mega Event or high priority card to fuse so every 4-6 weeks, someone gets a citation. Your crew will skyrocket with all these new FF/FE cards on your roster.