Quick tips for new players
Seven of One
✭✭✭✭✭
in Ready Room
I'm trying to compile a short bullet type point list of tips for newer players. Theres been some discussion about 'human males'. Anyone here have any thoughts or suggestions?
Quick Tips For New Players
1. If you spend money save your dilithium for the 3rd and 4th shuttles. Then crew slots. The premium campaign track and monthly dilithium are the best value for money spent in game.
2. Work on maximum of three crew at a time.
3. Cadets are really important. Focus on female aliens if in doubt which ones to start first.
4. Honor is best saved for legendary citations. In your early game you may wish to spend a little on trainers to get helpful crew levelled.
5. Airlock all common crew and any uncommon or rare crew that are human males. They are quite useless and can be finished further on in your game when you have more resources.
6. Run voyages and shuttles all the time. Both give fantastic rewards like chrons and trainers for voyages and trainers and rarer items from shuttles. Both are absolutely essential to improving your game.
7. Point 7 depended on where I posted. This is my fleet chat:
Your fleet is your family. We are here to help. No question is stupid. We've a dedicated Noob channel or ask in your private squad chat.
And this is timelines chat:
7. Find a good fleet. Check #fleet-central to find a few that advertise here.
Quick Tips For New Players
1. If you spend money save your dilithium for the 3rd and 4th shuttles. Then crew slots. The premium campaign track and monthly dilithium are the best value for money spent in game.
2. Work on maximum of three crew at a time.
3. Cadets are really important. Focus on female aliens if in doubt which ones to start first.
4. Honor is best saved for legendary citations. In your early game you may wish to spend a little on trainers to get helpful crew levelled.
5. Airlock all common crew and any uncommon or rare crew that are human males. They are quite useless and can be finished further on in your game when you have more resources.
6. Run voyages and shuttles all the time. Both give fantastic rewards like chrons and trainers for voyages and trainers and rarer items from shuttles. Both are absolutely essential to improving your game.
7. Point 7 depended on where I posted. This is my fleet chat:
Your fleet is your family. We are here to help. No question is stupid. We've a dedicated Noob channel or ask in your private squad chat.
And this is timelines chat:
7. Find a good fleet. Check #fleet-central to find a few that advertise here.
Ten Forward Loungers - Give Your Best, Get Our Best!
Check out our website to find out more:
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Comments
Noob Quick Start
suitable for 2, 3 or 4 shuttle bays
Open all 24 shuttles
Run 24 shuttles (you can claim them as you go to use your best crew)
Congrats, you're now at 1800 VP
Think this is worth adding or too confusing for brand new players?
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
I call that the "lazy quick start" and it is a good strat to learn the idea behind the quick start while still developing a crew that can pass 4K shuttles reliably.
It is generally a good idea to limit the crew a new player works on, and only switch to anouther when bottlenecked by trainers or chrons or replicator uses. However I dont know if recommending a hard number like three is the best way to communicate this recommendation.
Participate in gauntlet even if you dont have the crew to be competitive and you'll be a punching bag. Every round played, win or lose, gets you closer to Locutus achievement.
Do not be afraid to airlock! All the 1*s, 2*s, 3*s and even 4*s will all come back around again.
If you do spend, make sure to evaluate the offers beforehand to minimize potentintial emotional and financial trauma. The forum is helpful for this as experienced players will weigh in shortly after the offer goes live. Campaign and monthly card offers are the best, TPs new "three-drop" packs are the worst.
Holoemitters drop from ship battles amd are the rarest and most valuable starbase component. They are the bottleneck item for most starbase progress. Your fleet should have at least one recommended room to feed parts to. Avoid the "reclimation units" unless all other rooms are maxxed or if they are the only options to put daily donations towards. They will consume the componets and just give replicator rations (same replication energy as if you dumped them into the repilcator directly, only averaged out across the fleet). Just dont.
Thank you, this is really helpful 🙌
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
I'm Borg so same thing
Check out our website to find out more:
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Ha! She does want to assimilate everyone to her life
I have a parenthetical to add to your number 5. If you are free to play, then you want to use those common and uncommon crew to boost your immortalized number which will give you the much needed dilithium for your 4th shuttle. I didn't spend anything at the beginning and this is what got me the 4th shuttle.
Early on, you will be losing almost every gauntlet match. So spending merits to refresh is probably a waste.
And you really have to pick and choose the events you participate in. Skirmishes are great for newbies. But galaxies should wait (do at least get 10 points to get the community rewards though). Use the chrons to level your crew first. And I would recommend saving shuttle boosts and rental tokens until they can really help you reach a significant threshold or better rank rewards.
As a newer player myself, I've got several game topics still fresh in my mind that could be worth mentioning. Anything I say here is obviously my own perspective and might not be relevant to other players, so it's cool if you take it or leave it...
First of all, it can be risky using too many technical game terms or slang, unless you also take the time to explain what they mean. Veteran players use a lot of shorthand or acronyms, that leave a new player clueless. And honestly, if I'm browsing the forums and don't understand the game jargon used by experienced players, I'm probably going to skip right past that topic/post. Hopefully without sounding critical, let's look at a few of the current bullet points through the eyes of a newb. What does "working on" crew mean...using them in missions, leveling them, upgrading them, giving them equipment, etc? What are cadets and why are they important...is this about the challenges, the crew used for challenges, or both? Although I understand the meanings, not every new player will. Maybe a small glossary could be added after your list, explaining the key points being talked about. You could even provide links that lead to helpful forum resources or wiki pages, to improve your readers' comprehension.
Secondly, it might be wise to leave out most references to fleets and starbases. Many players are either too new to have joined a fleet, or purposely choose not to be in a fleet (for various reasons). It's fine to educate new players about the existence and potential value of fleets/starbases, but extra details could become distracting or wasted information. Bottom line is, if a player takes the plunge and joins a fleet, the other members will help fill them in on on all that other stuff.
Finally, a few random items that come to mind. Telling a beginner how to recognize items that are equippable or used to build equippable items, the yellow and green markers. But also warning them about the glitch, that sometimes those markers can be wrong. Another game quirk has to do with buying new shuttles, this has tripped up so many beginners. Open up an individual faction mission to add a shuttle, because it can't be done from the usual faction/shuttle screen. One last thing, at the risk of sounding like the PC police...be careful not to use the word "noob" when you mean "newb." I know, I know, a lot of people use them interchangeably and don't care about (or aren't aware of) the difference. But there are a number of people out there who do take offense at the word "noob," and assume it's meant to be derogatory. I personally don't care too much about the differences described in the urban dictionary, lol...but you don't want to accidentally insult somebody before they ever get a chance to read your advice.
"The eyes...are the groin...of the face." ~ Dwight K. Schrute III
1: the crew needed to clear cadet challenges are numb 1 priority. The resources you get are absolutely vital to newbies
2: fleets are essential!!! Don’t waste time pumping resources into a crappy fleet. If the majority of your fleet areNot playing at least as often as you, leave. It may take a few fleets to land where you ultimately want but the bonuses, chrons and honor are essential to newbies
3: buy the campaign every month. Those crew will be your mvps for a long time
4: leveling crew is only viable through trainers after level 20.
5: learn the most freq used missions for items and crit those nodes 1st. Btw: the drop probabilities lie. Some 1* prob drop way more frequently and some 5* prob drop as if they are 1*
6: use the resources listed here to find those good voyage crew and always be running voyages (if you weren’t aware, time “stops” at the dilemma so as long as your confident you can reach the next one you don’t have to actually check in every 2 hours)
7: don’t worry about building ships & don’t put resources into getting schematics. I’ve found that the bounty (my 1st maxed 5*) is the ship I used the most in my early games & those schematics will come naturally
8: in the beginning I tried to level my crew equally (get everyone to 10 then 20 etc) huge mistake. Focus on getting those you can immortalize or are essential crew
9: play the gauntlet every day
10: ignore the event leader board. You got no chance of cracking those upper tiers but the resources you get are always helpful so play every event
11: shuttles should be running non stop, spending merits on transmissions are your priority for those
12: cash comes easily so buy those early crew slots and don’t worry about getting low
13: any offers that come with chrons should be heavily considered as that’s the numb resource you need early game
14: imho buying any crew pack is a waste unless you have money to burn.
15: ignore those honor crew buys. You’ll be far better served saving up for citations and early game trainers
16: the various forums, discord, Reddit etc are vital resources. Visit often.
Check the faction stores daily. Some items are worth the merits to snag a guaranteed one when you get the chance. They may be worth credits, depending on your circumstances:
0* Ancient Films - Borg, Federation
2* Bloodwine - Klingon-Cardassian Alliance
0* Holoprograms - Borg, Section 31
2* Science Experiments - Augments
2* Security Codes - Section 31
The Bloodwine and Science Experiments are exclusive to those factions and cannot be acquired anywhere else. The others can be found in specific cadet missions.
Also, I understandably recommend my guide to crew dismissal decisions thread, linked in my signature below.
And regarding "work on only a few crew members"... I tend to disagree for the first weeks of playing. Trainers are too scarce and you need several skill sets and a solid base of somewhat levelled crew to man shuttles and voyages. 3 lvl 30 crew are more useful than 1 lvl 40 with similar trainer investment.
Interesting thing was it is possible not to have enough MED crew to man a voyage yes I only had Crusher spent about 2 days pulling as many packs as I could earn through credits to get a second medical crew.
Regarding: Airlocking all males green or blue, your first choice is Picard, Kirk or Sisko all of which have the benefit of unlocking/completing nodes in the campaign episodes. You're also likely to be able to fully fuse them sooner. If you have poured resources into them keep them. Secondly there are blue crew such as Boxer Chakotay who has a lot of good traits survivalist and costumed, has a good voyage score and is the best SEC base for blues. Also if I recall correctly Captain Kirk has the best chance to crit a specific Epic CMD node I forget which one but I'm pretty sure it's on the M/W/F challenges.
I'd also like to point out skirmishes is not actually that newbie friendly Normal and Elite don't offer nearly as good rewards as Epic and even if a new player has unlocked a 5* ship a 1/10 is not going to cut it let alone having decent enough crew to man it and be effective enough on epic level. If anything galaxy is the most newbie friendly most items are farmable from Episodes 1-3 up to elite level. So unlocking and completing these missions should be the priority for the newer players and thus levelling any crew helping this end should be deemed a priority. Once you have a 5* ship from dabo complete all space battles unlocked at Epic level. It will give you loads of Captain level XP/chronitons and access to some of the harder more rarer items in recipes.
You will come away with a FF super rare who even half leveled will be miles better than any of your other crew for voyages to begin with. I was able to get 130k for Grebnedlog with a day and a half to spare having run back to back voyages. As opposed to my 2* Vagrant Braxton.
Regarding working on crew, 3 is not a bad number because you need three for away team missions it's probably best to focus on Cadets/Episode missions and Voyage crew to begin with, That being said working on faction bonus crew is worthwhile because you will get a good return of badly needed gold trainers thus reducing honor spending and bottleneck time. Getting the third shuttle is the most important it means your trainer production becomes 150% makes daily tasks easier to complete and will help during faction events So doing dailies for campaign dilithium and immortalising greens for the achievement dilithiums is paramount, I wouldn't advise immortalising greys they may be easier to immortalise but trainers are a bottleneck and they are significantly weaker for voyages.
Why is that benificial?
example: if you manually build a 3* blue novel (which requires 2x 2* green Novels) together you get left with a spare 2* Novel there are many other cases this applies to as well. Whereas quick build would leave you with no spare items.
I did not know this. Thank you.
Do you know why this is? I’ve always wondering if there was a reason behind it or if it was just a bug.
I suspect it may have been some kind of bug yes, i'm afraid I don't know why it is, it just is.
If I am honest I just see it as a reward for manually building the items rather than hitting the quick build (lazy option).
It may have been an intended "hack" for that reason alone. I suspect the quick build just immediately removes required number of items in the recipe and replaces with the crew equipment item.
I was told that it was that way even before quickbuilding was introduced.
Most of them don't matter too much, but I think 1-2 have a choice that gives a space battle instead of a away team mission. That can be mildly useful for skirmishes and Starbase part farming.
One example is Episode 7 and you should choose Romulan there. Don't remember if there are others, but this can be a useful mission.
1) Abandon crew. If you get stuck on a crew at level 50 and cannot progress, move to a different crew. Come back to that crew in a month or two.
2) Play the dabo every day for 5* ship schematics, do one credit spin, and if you can one ad spin. You need at least one 5* ship for voyages.
3) Agree on cadet missions. Injured Torres is the best 2* crew available.
4) forget factions events for the first month or two, unless they are part of a mega.
5) galaxy events are you friend, they will give you a 4/4*
6) during a mega, make sure your get 4/5* on the mega event crew, this will be your best crew until the next mega. Prioritise this crew, even if you only get it to level 60, it will be fantastic.
7) Ignore point 4 in the original post. Use honor to buy trainers until you are self sufficient. This will pay off in better crew for shuttle missions and voyages, and the additional honor will then make up for the early honor spent on trainers. Only once you are self sufficient on trainers should you save for 5* cites.
8) Prioritise voyages over shuttles. Run both, but use the best crew for voyages.
9) Concentrate on one faction at a time. Ignore the smaller factions, and concentrate on Federation, Augments, Section 31 and Borg (the last will be controversial.)
10) Airlock 1* crew. These are a waste of trainers. Only start on them once you are self sufficient on trainers.
I first played this game a year or so ago. I rapidly got to the point where progress, without financial investment, became virtually impossible. I came to a standstill. So, I put the game away for a while. I came back to it recently with "fresh" eyes and with the knowledge that I had gotten the first time around.
This time I have approached it in a completely different manner, especially given all the negativity that was being put about. I would like to share, specifically for "first timers" what I have found this time around.
I am enjoying a steady, if somewhat slow, build up now. I am laying the groundwork first and I am doing this by utilising "Voyages" and "Shuttle Missions". My previous mistake was trying to get all, or as many as possible, of the actual "Away Team" missions completed to get all the "Special Rewards".
I have made much better progress, from very early on, by deploying Voyages and Shuttle Missions.
This approach allows for the collection of much greater quantities of assets that are vital to building your basic crew.
Secondly, I have established a small fleet of ships. The Voyages, in themselves, need you to be able to maintain a minimum of 2 hours and the way to do this is by getting the earliest available ships (ISS Defiant and the Orion Syndicate Interceptor) that will have an anti-matter capacity in excess of 2000 units.
With these I have found that you can set up a voyage and, quite literally, walk away. At the 2 hour mark in the voyage a "Dilemma" will be presented and effectively pause the voyage. When you answer the dilemma the voyage will resume and then, based on anti-matter gains and losses you can decide whether to sit on it another half hour or so before recalling it. Me, I recall it immediately.
Thirdly, focus your shuttle missions on single races until you get enough neutral to friendly reputations. Making yourself "aligned" with the various factions can, and does lead to better rewards.
Fourth, when an "Event" comes up throw everything you can muster at it. The events are designed to give you better and higher level rewards.
This may sound even more basic than the basic tips and hints but this is the strategy I am employing this time around and I am getting much more from the game and thus enjoying it much more.
Captains Log: Admiral T.T. Turk
Stardate 110122
I wanted to expand on one of the points I put in the above comment, it's to do with the "Away Team" missions in the "Galactic Map" -
I held back on trying too many of these missions until I had a respectable ship with some good crew to boost it's ship performance in combat. The ship that came along first, for me, was the I.S.S. Defiant and I built up a "Battle Stations" crew to give it around a 13 to 15 max ability in battle abilities.
When I had it ready I went to the Galactic map and I did every single ship vs. ship combat mission I could access. I skipped the Away Team missions and used the Rewards from the battles to get a serious leg up in assets to promote and enhance crew member abilities.
I currently have achieved 2 "Immortalised" crew persons.
I thought I'd share that as a good tactic to "fast track", in some respects, when you're starting out.
Good luck, and Live Long and Prosper.
T.
Good evening again. I wanted to offer another little insight, of the most basic kind, for newbies to the game.
When you are in your "Crew" inventory and looking at your collected crew members I would make the following suggestions.
1) The best crew members to accumulate are those who have THREE attributes (e.g. Command, Science and Security; Diplomacy, Medical and Security etc) They are more likely to be of use to you in covering different situations during "Away Missions" than a crew member with only one, or two attributes. Cultivate and develop your 3 attribute crew and don't be afraid to sacrifice your single attribute crew to gain Honour points.
2) Ideally, where possible, aim for promoting your crew members who have three or more stars as part of their "crew level" development. As you progress through the game you will discover that basing your activity on crew members with three stars or more will attract crew members with even more "stars" for promotion and soon you will be picking up crew members with four and five star ratings.
3) Keep in mind, the cost in credits to be able to develop the crew members with three star ratings and above increases over one and two star crew members so keep working those shuttle missions and voyages to pad out your bank balance.
4) When you choose to go after specific items that your crew members need to advance, where possible, pick the items that can be obtained through space battles. The chances of obtaining the item you need via a space battle is better than running through an away mission where the results tend to be completely random beyond a certain point. Yes, the space battles are much like rolling a one armed bandit BUT you can perform (with a good ship as I have previously mentioned) three space battles, or more, in the time it takes to do ONE away mission. Therefore, you have a much better chance of capturing your development items.
Just passing on some advice I have been watching and using.
Good luck Captains.
Live Long and Prosper
I do hope that these "Extremely Basic Suggestions" have been of some use to newcomers/first-timers. "Timelines" is, and can remain, an amazingly entertaining game and you have, as always, the choice of strategy to get out of it as much as you put in.
Using the strategy and tips I have been putting in as a "diary of a beginner" I have come to a place in the game where I am very happy, entertained and going along well in my own l'il quiet corner of the universe.
I have accumulated, so far, Level 32 as a Captain (not outstanding but quite respectable) My own Level 1 Starbase call "Carpe Noctem", I have an active (Fully private - just me) Fleet, with one squadron thus far - "Nox Mortiferum" (Deadly Nights) which has 8 vessels ranging from a 1 star, level 4 Exploration vessel to a couple of 5 star, level 5 Warships.
I also have 5 immortalised Crew members out of a total crew of 114 souls (NO Ferengi on board LOL)
I have a bank balance that drifts between 200,000 and 600,000 credits (with careful management) so I can buy/redeem when needed. I have around 1900 Honour... haven't spent any in a while but I'm off to the store to redeem some upgrade items soon. I have 57 dilithium left from around 300 because I did go "shopping" (redeeming) earlier.
Okay, so what's the point?
If you have been following Captain T.T.Turk's "Exceptionally Basic Early Strategy Guide" then you should be in about the same position as I am. Now we have the choice of choices to make,
Do we buy into the game OR do we hang loose and just keep rollin' along?
That, dear Captains, I can't answer for you. If you feel like you wanna put your hard earned dollars into the game then set your account, buy in and head for the dizzying heights where you can. Just be aware, I did that last time out and putting money in is a way to get ahead somewhat quicker but there's no instant power, wealth and stardom to be had here.
The flip-side of the coin, like me, you may choose to just keep wanderin' along through the universe picking up surprises and bits and pieces along the way without getting overly ambitious and/or power hungry. (in my mind being up there in lights on the "Leader Boards" isn't really why I'm here)
I find this game to be entertaining, relaxing, trouble free, easy to play... it's a good relaxer, that's why I'm here.
As I said, I hope my little "Diary" has helped some.
As always, "Live Long and Prosper".
T.
P.S. There are lot's of good guides at the top of the forum on detailed development and progression in the game if y'all gonna get serious... check 'em out, a little reading is well worth it. Cheers