@Shan Before giving feedback, I'd like to know more about how this event compares to what you have in mind for mini events going forward. Can we expect the same reward structure? Also, are they always going to be skirmish events or are they going to rotate through the various event types we have (i.e. galaxies, expeditions, hybrids, factions as well)?
If the mini-events are going to all be skirmish type events how about allowing us to keep intel. And acquire intel even when an event isn’t going on perhaps at a slower rate say 2/1 instead of the 1/1 during an event. Then cap the regen at 10k but let us build a stockpile by doing battles/away missions.
I like skirmishes. I like this mini-event. I will agree with everyone who says 5k Intel buy in is steep, but the threshold rewards balance it out. I will also agree with everyone who thinks the Intel rewards possible from winning individual battles are insultingly small. I haven't had any chron rewards from individual battles. I've been awarded 57 honor a few times, and that also seems piddling.
I will play, and enjoy, this mini-event; but I don't believe the reward table could possibly motivate me to try for rank. I don't know what would.
I'm curious. How are the VIP0 folks liking this? A chance to score some dilithium. After all the sales, I like to see the devs throwing our VIP0 friends a bone to even the playing field in some small way.
Some initial feedback:
1) Interesting twist on skirmish economy.
2) I wonder if I can find 4 crew that get a bonus each round so I don't have to switch.
3) Interesting twist on skirmish mechanics.
A) More battles per round Swapping out crew - might like this if I succeed on #2.
Hope to dig deeper into this and see if any of the initial sentiments change.
I'm not VIP0, but I'm low VIP. I have over 100 messages sitting in my inbox. Mostly saved chrons. They keep piling up because I've never had a need for them for anything. I am happy to finally have an occasion to start cashing them in. The DIL looks awesome and may even convince me to try some recap packs as a result.
I am TBD on ranked rewards depending on how the competition looks.
@Shan Before giving feedback, I'd like to know more about how this event compares to what you have in mind for mini events going forward. Can we expect the same reward structure? Also, are they always going to be skirmish events or are they going to rotate through the various event types we have (i.e. galaxies, expeditions, hybrids, factions as well)?
I do not have any other details to share, so please provide feedback on how this event felt for you, within the context of this specific event.
I like the dil rewards. I don't like the idea of being wedded to a 7 day event cycle. You're going to burn everyone out unless it's coupled with flashbacks/reruns where not everyone wants to play.
I think the net result of that was a net conversion of 5000 chronitons and 3.5 hours of my time, into 8000 dilithium and 2000 honour.
You know, I think that's a damn good trade.
Bonus +1 from me.
I think that the intel cost needs to reflect the quality of the rewards - yes, 5000 intel is high but just about right for dilithium. If future minis have different rewards, the intel cost should reflect that.
Fleet Admiral of NCC UK Midlands."Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge." - J.T. Kirk, 2266
2) I wonder if I can find 4 crew that get a bonus each round so I don't have to switch.
Saboteur, Jury Rigger, 600 - North Star Tucker DIP/ENG/SEC
Survivalist, Cyberneticist, 750 - Musketeer La Forge SEC/ENG/CMD
Telepath, Maverick, 900 - Musketeer La Forge Terran Empire, Villain, 1050 - your free pick to fit your preferred ship. Android, Scoundrel, 1200 - Age of Sail Data CMD/ENG/DIP
Bajoran, Innovator, 1350 - Musketeer La Forge Explorer, inspiring. 1500 - Age of Sail Data Musician, Desperate 1650 - Age of Sail Data
Tactician, Hologram 1800 - Musketeer La Forge
Duelist, Gambler 1950 - North Star Tucker
EDIT - the 5* ships that fit this crew (Data requires Position) ... Kumari, Proton's ship, ISS Defiant, Jem'Hadar Flagship, NX-01, Discovery and Shenzhou.
I'm not thrilled that such a chrono heavy mini-event is happening just before a chrono heavy regular event. And this is after only having a week's breather after two chrono heavy other events (ie: the hybrid event two weeks ago and the galaxy event last week).
If this came out a year ago, I would have sat down with pen and paper to figure out if I could come out ahead in this mini and be ready to place where I want to in the upcoming event. Even with being a top-ish player now, I'm not sure how much I want to sacrifice for this. I do feel the 5K cost for a ticket is too much; maybe if that comes down, the rewards would need to go down too? I'm unsure. I'm just not sure this adds a fun, new feature to the game or not.
As things turn out today, I'm only planning on a threshold and out in this week's event, and I have 30K+ chronos saved up, so I could spend away and get a bunch of dilithium. But I'm still scratching my head to figure out if it's worth the effort (yes, it is objectively be worth the dilithium, but I'm not sure I want to spend the time). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You could always look at the recipes for the upcoming weekend on the wiki was it’s a flashback and farm them ahead of time.
If you do that you don’t lose any chrons for the Galaxy event.
so far what i have seen is it is possible for vip0 players to gain dilithium without the grind of immortalizing they crew. even a little bit can help. i know those vip0 players are salivating the sweet tasty easy dilithium.
@Shan
So I had an idea.
What if this mini event replaced the Arena.
It could run for a month for rankings and we got Intel to for 1 run per day with the option to buy more.
We could collect schemes based on daily progress up the reward tree.
So much as it is now but in place of arena and longer.
My second account has accrued 1315 intel in 6 hours. This works out to be 10520 over two days, so we are supplied with enough intel for 3 free skirmishes, or at least 680 free dil at epic level. Spending another 1000 chrons (800 with supply pack) will give another two skirmishes netting 1220 dil. This is doable with voyages and general chron gathering playing at a normal rate.
@Shan This is an excellent price of 5000 intel per skirmish for the rewards given. 1220 free dil over two days for just a bit more than normal play is good. The 5000 intel per skirmish would be too expensive for a normal weekend event.
Either the crew selector needs improving, or there needs to be an option to remember different crew for different battles. At the moment the "default sort" puts the crew with the highest base skill first in the list. The base skill is not used in ship battles, so sorting this way only provides an approximation of who is good for the seat, but not who is best, has the bonus abilities, and bonus traits.
@Shan instead of (or as well as) having the six buttons to choose base skill have a different set of six buttons. Three buttons to choose which ability to sort by, evasion, accuracy and damage. Another three toggle buttons to choose the sort priority. One would choose if the crew has a matching skill for the seat, turn it off and all crew are shown. The second would show favourite crew first. The third would show matching traits first. If both the second and third are selected, then favourite crew with match traits would be first in the list. If the toggle buttons could be implemented, then the code could be used in expeditions as well.
(edit: forth button for abilities, don't sort by ability and show all crew)
It might be nice to have a warning if there are no matching traits displayed before a battle, but I could see this being annoying to those with suitable bonus crew.
Ten battles per skirmishing is interesting, more crew and combinations needed, more free stuff, but it might be harder for newer players, lose an early battle, and they have wasted 5000 intel.
I know this sounds critical, but treat it as constructive criticism, I like skirmishes (but they do burn me out)
2) I wonder if I can find 4 crew that get a bonus each round so I don't have to switch.
Saboteur, Jury Rigger, 600 - North Star Tucker DIP/ENG/SEC
Survivalist, Cyberneticist, 750 - Musketeer La Forge SEC/ENG/CMD
Telepath, Maverick, 900 - Musketeer La Forge Terran Empire, Villain, 1050 - your free pick to fit your preferred ship. Android, Scoundrel, 1200 - Age of Sail Data CMD/ENG/DIP
Bajoran, Innovator, 1350 - Musketeer La Forge Explorer, inspiring. 1500 - Age of Sail Data Musician, Desperate 1650 - Age of Sail Data
Tactician, Hologram 1800 - Musketeer La Forge
Duelist, Gambler 1950 - North Star Tucker
EDIT - the 5* ships that fit this crew (Data requires Position) ... Kumari, Proton's ship, ISS Defiant, Jem'Hadar Flagship, NX-01, Discovery and Shenzhou.
Thanks for this. I had painstakingly put together my own lineup to hit all the traits, which included Locutus — but what hurt was, I had nobody to do that massive damage that Killy/Garth/RP Cmdnt can do. So losing Locutus but regaining Killy made a big difference in how fast the battles go. Still a bit nasty on the final battle, but being the final battle, it's no big deal, really.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
My issue is i just dived straight in and blew the free 5000 Intel for little return as i did not know what was involved. True i should have checked up etc but for a trial event i would have thought at least try and get me interested. As for now i am not really wanting to chase my mistake spending Chrons. Maybe a few cheaper trial runs to get me interested might have been the way to go rather than the all or nothing approach.
I am VIP0 so the Chrons are probably more important to me since i only really use Dil for the occasional Voyage extend if a SR is needed or the extra crew slots.
Being able to obtain intel from both space battles and away missions.
More level playing field, the rewards for each level are closer in VP than regular Skirmishes, giving the VIP0 players the ability to compete.
Dil spending for rewards does not give you a huge edge over other players
10 battles per Cataclysm run makes sense for the amount of Intel and allows you to step away from the game more as needed.
Cons:
Needs more diversity in rewards tables, both threshold and Ranked.
Requiring switching a/some crew out almost every single battle to maximize the reward VP.
Requires a huge amount of chrons to earn enough Intel to compete
If you are currently out of crew to build, you would be filling your storage inventory by adding a bunch of potentially non-needed items, which you would have to sort through if you are close to the inventory cap. e.g. More work than it's worth.
If the intention of this is to truly introduce a mid week Event to cover the gap between other events, then it is a huge draw on resources, (you lose more than you gain, other than crew building.) I am still reeling from the last galaxy and have not had time to recover most of my chrons from it. Now I am kind of "forced" to do several long extended Voyages to try to make up for it a little, if I want to continue in this Cataclysm Mini.
It would be great to see this mini Event type as a 24 hour event type, offered Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, so you have the option to compete when you are comfortable doing so.
Interesting event. Was quite surprised about so much Dil was rewarded when I woke up this morning. So I did a first run to see how it plays out and then did the math. Heres what I got
Per run
- 8,500VP (or 12,750VP if you are doing 50% on all which shouldn't be hard to do)
- 5000 Intel - 500 Chron (or 375 chron with a supply kit which I assume isnt a difficulty for most of you)
To clear thresholds, you need 297,500 VP which equates to 24 rounds (rounded up with full bonus per round). In addition, you will get about 5,760 intel per day free anyway so you only need 22 rounds.
Thats gonna cost you 8,000 Chron (with supply kit + the 250 free chrons in the reward table) and returns you 7,620 Dil. Thats a conversion rate of 1.05 chrons/dil.
In my opinion thats a pretty phenomenal exchange rate between a pretty easily available (free?) resource and a pretty rare (if you aren't buying it) resource.
In addition, you have a bunch of stuff going in your favour which werent accounted for in the above
- Free chron and honor from skirmish fights (the free intel and VP is pretty meaningless)
- Free honor for ranking (potentially even free dil too if top 10)
- Pre-farming mats for upcoming galaxy event
I think overall, you could probably get to a 1:1 ratio for chron/dil. The only 'sucky' thing is that you can only run ship battles for intel which doesnt really help as much for galaxy mats. **- perhaps this could be an improvement? To allow away battles to earn intel for mid week events? -** Oh wow! Just found out you get intel from away missions too! In which case its pretty much a no brainer to farm mats
Im running the Krayton as usual with Garth, Commandant, Ardra as anchor + any bonus crew. None of the battles has gotten past my shields yet
FWIW, these rewards are not going to stick. They're here for one time only to get accelerated data and responses.
First, it's a beta Second, we have a long history of rewards diminishing with time. And third, the beta for campaigns was free with easier to reach rewards than it's current form.
I would love to have dil remain in some sorry of event though.
Cataclysm is designed for those users that have chrons and need dilithium, and are willing to trade off for it. I am running Epic level, Borg Cube, and I am averaging 11K points per run. One run costs 5000 intel, which, with a supply kit, equates to spending about 375 chrons (or a little more, with rounding) on ship warps. Based on that, and looking at the reward levels and payouts, my overall average is about a 4:3 ratio - for every 4 chron spent, I get 3 dilithium. To get to the end, I would need to run about 26 cycles, spend about 10K chrons, and get back about 7,600 dilithium. Now, that's okay if you have chron to burn, but if I do that, I could be short changed for the next event.
At about 85K points, the ratios stay fairly average, so its not like the more you invest, the better the return. For those who don't play at the Epic level, these ratios get linearly worse. I might drop about 3.5K chrons or so to get to the 105K mark - that would give me back over 2K dilithium, which is 3 10-pack event portal pulls I can use (if needed) at the end of the week.
And for the love of all that is Vulcan, do NOT buy the"500 chrons for 500 dilithium" deal - that's a sucker bet! As I said, I'm getting about a .75 return on chron to dilithium; others will be doing worse. So you'd buy 500 chron for 500 dilithium, play, and then get back maybe 360 dilithium! Not worth it.
The cost per cycle is too high. The regular skirmish is 1200 intel per a 5-combat cycle. This is a 10-combat cycle, so maybe 2500 intel per cycle would be appropriate.
Also, it is not clear what ships have what bonuses, and as for the crew, as many had mentioned, you can't sort to show bonus-enabled crew at the top / first screen.
Finally, other than stockpiling dilithium and honor (not bad, by the way) if you don't want to feature a bonus crew, how about either 4* or 5* commendations or 4* / 5* beholds for the top 1500 users?
Overall, I'd give this event a C+ : decent dilithium farming if you have the chrons (and the time). Good for those F2P players, where dilithium is a hard currency to get - but they best have saved up some chrons for a rainy day. As for the rest of us, it could use some work. Just my thoughts, though...
500 Chron for 500 dil. Is not awful.
Number one run a kit. So 375 Chron to get 5000 intel.
Number two you farm items you need either for galaxy or leveling crew.
Things that you would do anyhow. Because of the inclusion of away missions to get intel, you can now chose the best return for the item you are after, rather then running a ship battle mission where the return of item could be worse.
The only thing is you would really want to take advantage of adwarp for cadet missions too to help out with Chron. And also, make use of winning faction in previous event. But here, you need to have brought your shuttle return time down, with repeated failures before today. My federation return time is 30 minutes. So this is instantaneous when they are the winning faction.
One more point, you will get some Chron back. I did a calculation above. Compared to skirmish the return on Chron, will be 40% of what you would get during a skirmish but you can do away missions for intel.
I'm curious. How are the VIP0 folks liking this? A chance to score some dilithium. After all the sales, I like to see the devs throwing our VIP0 friends a bone to even the playing field in some small way.
.
I'm loving it. I already have more DIL than I ever had in my 2 years of playing. 6k chrons got me enough intel to reach threshold (2/3rd of the way already), and since the last few legendaries weren't all that spectacular, I've been saving up, so I still have plenty to go.
I do expect to be threshold and out - while the rewards for top 10 are phenomenal, the difference between top 5000 and top 50 isn't that big.
It's not all that different from skirmishes, where my crew is the same every time:
1 Ardra
2 Duras Sisters (recently replaced with Killy)
3 Saboteur Garak
4 whoever gets me the bonus; it's annoying to swap out every few battles, but I got a pattern going where I only need 3 other crew to complete my run.
The increased intel cost is a plus for me - I've been struggling motivationally with skirmishes for a while, and I'm assuming the increased intel is a tradeoff for less runs.
Comments
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
I will play, and enjoy, this mini-event; but I don't believe the reward table could possibly motivate me to try for rank. I don't know what would.
I'm not VIP0, but I'm low VIP. I have over 100 messages sitting in my inbox. Mostly saved chrons. They keep piling up because I've never had a need for them for anything. I am happy to finally have an occasion to start cashing them in. The DIL looks awesome and may even convince me to try some recap packs as a result.
I am TBD on ranked rewards depending on how the competition looks.
No difference between them, still 1:10 ratio of chron:Intel. 🖖
P.S.A.: Don’t forget to open a Supply Kit!
I do not have any other details to share, so please provide feedback on how this event felt for you, within the context of this specific event.
As stated in the announcement, this mini-event has started today at 12:31pm ET (17:31 UTC), and it will last until Wednesday 11:59am ET (16:59 UTC).
If you are not seeing the event please restart the game, thank you
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
Just hit threshold so I'm done.
I think the net result of that was a net conversion of 5000 chronitons and 3.5 hours of my time, into 8000 dilithium and 2000 honour.
You know, I think that's a damn good trade.
Bonus +1 from me.
I think that the intel cost needs to reflect the quality of the rewards - yes, 5000 intel is high but just about right for dilithium. If future minis have different rewards, the intel cost should reflect that.
Saboteur, Jury Rigger, 600 - North Star Tucker DIP/ENG/SEC
Survivalist, Cyberneticist, 750 - Musketeer La Forge SEC/ENG/CMD
Telepath, Maverick, 900 - Musketeer La Forge
Terran Empire, Villain, 1050 - your free pick to fit your preferred ship.
Android, Scoundrel, 1200 - Age of Sail Data CMD/ENG/DIP
Bajoran, Innovator, 1350 - Musketeer La Forge
Explorer, inspiring. 1500 - Age of Sail Data
Musician, Desperate 1650 - Age of Sail Data
Tactician, Hologram 1800 - Musketeer La Forge
Duelist, Gambler 1950 - North Star Tucker
EDIT - the 5* ships that fit this crew (Data requires Position) ... Kumari, Proton's ship, ISS Defiant, Jem'Hadar Flagship, NX-01, Discovery and Shenzhou.
You could always look at the recipes for the upcoming weekend on the wiki was it’s a flashback and farm them ahead of time.
If you do that you don’t lose any chrons for the Galaxy event.
So I had an idea.
What if this mini event replaced the Arena.
It could run for a month for rankings and we got Intel to for 1 run per day with the option to buy more.
We could collect schemes based on daily progress up the reward tree.
So much as it is now but in place of arena and longer.
It's only my opinion but....
@Shan This is an excellent price of 5000 intel per skirmish for the rewards given. 1220 free dil over two days for just a bit more than normal play is good. The 5000 intel per skirmish would be too expensive for a normal weekend event.
Either the crew selector needs improving, or there needs to be an option to remember different crew for different battles. At the moment the "default sort" puts the crew with the highest base skill first in the list. The base skill is not used in ship battles, so sorting this way only provides an approximation of who is good for the seat, but not who is best, has the bonus abilities, and bonus traits.
@Shan instead of (or as well as) having the six buttons to choose base skill have a different set of six buttons. Three buttons to choose which ability to sort by, evasion, accuracy and damage. Another three toggle buttons to choose the sort priority. One would choose if the crew has a matching skill for the seat, turn it off and all crew are shown. The second would show favourite crew first. The third would show matching traits first. If both the second and third are selected, then favourite crew with match traits would be first in the list. If the toggle buttons could be implemented, then the code could be used in expeditions as well.
(edit: forth button for abilities, don't sort by ability and show all crew)
It might be nice to have a warning if there are no matching traits displayed before a battle, but I could see this being annoying to those with suitable bonus crew.
Ten battles per skirmishing is interesting, more crew and combinations needed, more free stuff, but it might be harder for newer players, lose an early battle, and they have wasted 5000 intel.
I know this sounds critical, but treat it as constructive criticism, I like skirmishes (but they do burn me out)
Or
If this treatment was given to all event types.
Then we could have 4 versions in rotation.
It's only my opinion but....
Thanks for this. I had painstakingly put together my own lineup to hit all the traits, which included Locutus — but what hurt was, I had nobody to do that massive damage that Killy/Garth/RP Cmdnt can do. So losing Locutus but regaining Killy made a big difference in how fast the battles go. Still a bit nasty on the final battle, but being the final battle, it's no big deal, really.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I am VIP0 so the Chrons are probably more important to me since i only really use Dil for the occasional Voyage extend if a SR is needed or the extra crew slots.
- Being able to obtain intel from both space battles and away missions.
- More level playing field, the rewards for each level are closer in VP than regular Skirmishes, giving the VIP0 players the ability to compete.
- Dil spending for rewards does not give you a huge edge over other players
- 10 battles per Cataclysm run makes sense for the amount of Intel and allows you to step away from the game more as needed.
Cons:If the intention of this is to truly introduce a mid week Event to cover the gap between other events, then it is a huge draw on resources, (you lose more than you gain, other than crew building.) I am still reeling from the last galaxy and have not had time to recover most of my chrons from it. Now I am kind of "forced" to do several long extended Voyages to try to make up for it a little, if I want to continue in this Cataclysm Mini.
It would be great to see this mini Event type as a 24 hour event type, offered Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, so you have the option to compete when you are comfortable doing so.
No it's 100k at rank 7, not 10k, and 7,500 at rank 8.
Per run
- 8,500VP (or 12,750VP if you are doing 50% on all which shouldn't be hard to do)
- 5000 Intel - 500 Chron (or 375 chron with a supply kit which I assume isnt a difficulty for most of you)
To clear thresholds, you need 297,500 VP which equates to 24 rounds (rounded up with full bonus per round). In addition, you will get about 5,760 intel per day free anyway so you only need 22 rounds.
Thats gonna cost you 8,000 Chron (with supply kit + the 250 free chrons in the reward table) and returns you 7,620 Dil. Thats a conversion rate of 1.05 chrons/dil.
In my opinion thats a pretty phenomenal exchange rate between a pretty easily available (free?) resource and a pretty rare (if you aren't buying it) resource.
In addition, you have a bunch of stuff going in your favour which werent accounted for in the above
- Free chron and honor from skirmish fights (the free intel and VP is pretty meaningless)
- Free honor for ranking (potentially even free dil too if top 10)
- Pre-farming mats for upcoming galaxy event
I think overall, you could probably get to a 1:1 ratio for chron/dil. The only 'sucky' thing is that you can only run ship battles for intel which doesnt really help as much for galaxy mats. **- perhaps this could be an improvement? To allow away battles to earn intel for mid week events? -** Oh wow! Just found out you get intel from away missions too! In which case its pretty much a no brainer to farm mats
Im running the Krayton as usual with Garth, Commandant, Ardra as anchor + any bonus crew. None of the battles has gotten past my shields yet
First, it's a beta Second, we have a long history of rewards diminishing with time. And third, the beta for campaigns was free with easier to reach rewards than it's current form.
I would love to have dil remain in some sorry of event though.
What are "mats"?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Materials. Really just items which are really common in crew equipment and galaxy events.
500 Chron for 500 dil. Is not awful.
Number one run a kit. So 375 Chron to get 5000 intel.
Number two you farm items you need either for galaxy or leveling crew.
Things that you would do anyhow. Because of the inclusion of away missions to get intel, you can now chose the best return for the item you are after, rather then running a ship battle mission where the return of item could be worse.
The only thing is you would really want to take advantage of adwarp for cadet missions too to help out with Chron. And also, make use of winning faction in previous event. But here, you need to have brought your shuttle return time down, with repeated failures before today. My federation return time is 30 minutes. So this is instantaneous when they are the winning faction.
One more point, you will get some Chron back. I did a calculation above. Compared to skirmish the return on Chron, will be 40% of what you would get during a skirmish but you can do away missions for intel.
I do expect to be threshold and out - while the rewards for top 10 are phenomenal, the difference between top 5000 and top 50 isn't that big.
It's not all that different from skirmishes, where my crew is the same every time:
1 Ardra
2 Duras Sisters (recently replaced with Killy)
3 Saboteur Garak
4 whoever gets me the bonus; it's annoying to swap out every few battles, but I got a pattern going where I only need 3 other crew to complete my run.
The increased intel cost is a plus for me - I've been struggling motivationally with skirmishes for a while, and I'm assuming the increased intel is a tradeoff for less runs.