How to: Populating CMD/MED and ENG/MED (the difficult ones) Voyages
RaraRacing
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With the recent addition of Nona to the crew pool, there was some oh-ah-ing for her potential use in CMD/MED voyages ... because hey look, she has those two skills. Without going into too much detail (i.e. none) ... she's not worth investing in for that voyage combo ...
So, let's do an experiment ... hey, look ... a CMD/MED voyage ... let's populate it with 5*s who do not have both CMD and MED as a skill, no Pollard, no Warship EMA, no AoS Crusher etc. etc. and see how far we get.
This will also give us an indication of where we need to improve our crew and hence why crew like Nona are not worth the investment when looking at CMD/MED voyage use ... here goes (it took me a while to get this voyage skill combo - I wrote the intro a long time ago).
MED/CMD - A base case for all players
CMD - Tenavik, Mirror Picard;
DIP - Borg Queen*, Cornwell;
SEC - Garth, Tactical Officer Neelix*;
ENG - Assimilated La Forge, AoS Data*;
SCI - Soji, Twilight T'Pol*;
MED - Chief Medical Reno*, Indulgent Seven*.
Ship - Proton's ship*.
Starting AM - 2800.
* indicates AM bonus.
The crew in bold have been/are available to all ... I've tried to use as many of those as possible, 9 of 12 seems pretty decent and it could have been higher with Qod for T'Pol and La Forge with Ru'afo without much difference to estimated voyage time (I only realised the possible subs later, oops).
Granted, Seven you need to be lucky for and Data you needed to put €10 into the game (or be lucky through a pull).
Notes
- Using the voyage estimator, it gives over 9 1/2 hrs at 90% probability ... but 10 hrs is 3% ... that's massive and should make everyone smile, because basically I've used crew available to all, so even you can get this no problem.
- So, how to improve this base voyage? I'd normally run the likes of Pollard, Warship EA and Reverend Phlox or Prince Bashir and slide into an easy 10 hrs.
The crew that don't have either MED or CMD as their main but are in there to boost total stats are La Forge and Neelix ...
a) For Neelix I could sub in Warship EMA, which would improve MED by about 400 and CMD substantially (700), with a slight reduction in SEC (about 400) and in DIP (about 700). That would get both MED and CMD to almost 11k.
b) I can't actually sub out La Forge! Because I don't have anyone better ... I don't own any crew that have CMD, ENG and MED, so adding in a crew with better CMD (Braxton 2/5) would lopside the voyage slightly to the second featured skill, so I'd have to shuffle rather than straight swap.
--> I could shuffle and put the Borg Queen in the ENG seat, which would open up a DIP slot I could easily fill, or move Seven/Reno over and put Pollard in her MED seat ... this second option would lopside my voyage even more to MED, but together with (a) would get MED over 11k by a bunch, CMD would be at 11k, ENG would drop substantially, and SCI would remain equal.
For that reason, in this set-up, I might go for ...
The DIP options are many, but the point there is I'd like the MED and CMD scores to be close for that crew because there are already well balanced ... so if I put a MED main and CMD tertiary (or other way around) in, I'm making my scores too lopsided, so I need someone like Reverend Phlox or Captain Beverly or maybe an option like Merry Men Troi or Gloria or Humbled Archer? For those last three, the higher the tertiary skill score the better, which means Humbled Archer would get the first choice if I had him immortal (have him 1/5).
And so ... we kinda start to see how the likes of Nona are not that much of an improvement to a crew selection that you can already almost get 10 hrs for. A player is better off investing citations into crew like Pollard or Reverend Phlox (or Captain Beverly and Warship EMA) to fill a specific gap.
So, again ... I've tried to use crew who have been (readily) available to all, though I did miss a couple of easy subs (oops) ... to give an indication of what a base-case voyage for CMD/MED for a good portion of players could be. I'll do the same for ENG/MED when that combo comes up.
So, let's do an experiment ... hey, look ... a CMD/MED voyage ... let's populate it with 5*s who do not have both CMD and MED as a skill, no Pollard, no Warship EMA, no AoS Crusher etc. etc. and see how far we get.
This will also give us an indication of where we need to improve our crew and hence why crew like Nona are not worth the investment when looking at CMD/MED voyage use ... here goes (it took me a while to get this voyage skill combo - I wrote the intro a long time ago).
MED/CMD - A base case for all players
CMD - Tenavik, Mirror Picard;
DIP - Borg Queen*, Cornwell;
SEC - Garth, Tactical Officer Neelix*;
ENG - Assimilated La Forge, AoS Data*;
SCI - Soji, Twilight T'Pol*;
MED - Chief Medical Reno*, Indulgent Seven*.
Ship - Proton's ship*.
Starting AM - 2800.
* indicates AM bonus.
The crew in bold have been/are available to all ... I've tried to use as many of those as possible, 9 of 12 seems pretty decent and it could have been higher with Qod for T'Pol and La Forge with Ru'afo without much difference to estimated voyage time (I only realised the possible subs later, oops).
Granted, Seven you need to be lucky for and Data you needed to put €10 into the game (or be lucky through a pull).
Notes
- Using the voyage estimator, it gives over 9 1/2 hrs at 90% probability ... but 10 hrs is 3% ... that's massive and should make everyone smile, because basically I've used crew available to all, so even you can get this no problem.
- So, how to improve this base voyage? I'd normally run the likes of Pollard, Warship EA and Reverend Phlox or Prince Bashir and slide into an easy 10 hrs.
The crew that don't have either MED or CMD as their main but are in there to boost total stats are La Forge and Neelix ...
a) For Neelix I could sub in Warship EMA, which would improve MED by about 400 and CMD substantially (700), with a slight reduction in SEC (about 400) and in DIP (about 700). That would get both MED and CMD to almost 11k.
b) I can't actually sub out La Forge! Because I don't have anyone better ... I don't own any crew that have CMD, ENG and MED, so adding in a crew with better CMD (Braxton 2/5) would lopside the voyage slightly to the second featured skill, so I'd have to shuffle rather than straight swap.
--> I could shuffle and put the Borg Queen in the ENG seat, which would open up a DIP slot I could easily fill, or move Seven/Reno over and put Pollard in her MED seat ... this second option would lopside my voyage even more to MED, but together with (a) would get MED over 11k by a bunch, CMD would be at 11k, ENG would drop substantially, and SCI would remain equal.
For that reason, in this set-up, I might go for ...
The DIP options are many, but the point there is I'd like the MED and CMD scores to be close for that crew because there are already well balanced ... so if I put a MED main and CMD tertiary (or other way around) in, I'm making my scores too lopsided, so I need someone like Reverend Phlox or Captain Beverly or maybe an option like Merry Men Troi or Gloria or Humbled Archer? For those last three, the higher the tertiary skill score the better, which means Humbled Archer would get the first choice if I had him immortal (have him 1/5).
And so ... we kinda start to see how the likes of Nona are not that much of an improvement to a crew selection that you can already almost get 10 hrs for. A player is better off investing citations into crew like Pollard or Reverend Phlox (or Captain Beverly and Warship EMA) to fill a specific gap.
So, again ... I've tried to use crew who have been (readily) available to all, though I did miss a couple of easy subs (oops) ... to give an indication of what a base-case voyage for CMD/MED for a good portion of players could be. I'll do the same for ENG/MED when that combo comes up.
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Comments
1) Choose crew with the featured skills as their primary/secondary skills.
2) Choose crew who excel at either skill, but not both.
Notably missing is the “choose crew with the featured skills as a tertiary” approach. Why? You can’t hit 10 hours reliably relying just on tertiary stats to fill up a featured skill. Ever since I started tracking crew used on 10-hour voyages, my crew usage for MED/COM has worked out like this:
-Only Dr. Pollard, my twin copies of Reverend Phlox, and Mycelial Culber have made every single one.
-My twin copies of the Warship EMA have joined Laborer Kirk on the majority but not all such voyages.
-Soji Asha, the Borg Queen, Admiral Forrest, and Resilient Tuvok have been on about half of them.
Culber and the EMA are strong voyagers who do happen to have have tertiary COM. The rest other than Tuvok are strong in either one of those featured skills, while Tuvok helps boost the non-featured skills (as is the case for many of the one-off members of my 10-hour MED/COM voyages). Notably absent from the lists are crew like AoS Crusher, Gloria, or Prince Bashir (and his MED tertiary).
What Nona could help with is to reach 8 hours for MED/COM or to provide a little extra COM on a MED/DIP voyage - if you slot the likes of Queen Po or Surak into your COM slots while Cornwell and Darth Bashir are holding down DIP slots, you’ll need to come up with more COM from somewhere and Nona can do that from a MED slot.
Here's what the voyage looked like at 8 hrs ... still well over 90% to reach 9:30 hrs ... that's what a fairly equal spread of voyage stats brings, consistency.
Remember ... 11.5k on the two main stats and a solid spread of around 6k on the other stats (possible here with this setup, and minor changes mentioned above), coupled with an AM of 2800 at the start will almost certainly get you 10 hrs (about 85% of the time) ...
--> so basically we're looking for minor tweaks of a couple of impactful crew. In this case, a Reverend Phlox (available through a campaign) and Warship EMA would do it.
(As a side note ... you, therefore, don't need a massive crew of 100+ immortal 5*s to reach one of the toughest "goals" in the game ... you don't need duplicates ... you don't need every single crew with a "unique" skill combo etc. etc. ... the only thing you need is to have a feel for what the strengths and weaknesses are of the crew you own.
Massive crews are needed to be able to juggle Faction events and run difficult voyage combos at the same time ... but how often to those coincide.)
Now just to wait for that ENG/MED combo and we'll see how that goes with mostly crew that have been available to all ...
Cheers.
I kinda agree with your 2 approaches, but I actually do think tertiary skill matters ...
- EMA is a strong voyager because of his overall skill set. I only know of a Troi variant that combines SEC with MED/CMD ... so he brings something extra to the table.
That is the problem with many of the CMD/MED crew ... their third skill is usually DIP (I own 6 with those 3 skills!).
- I'd still prefer to focus/use better crew than Nona for DIP/MED voyages to provide a tad extra CMD ... Warship EMA in a SEC slot ... I mean, you're looking to get him for CMD/MED voyages (see above example), so why not try him out here too?
Example: DIP/MED is my #4 voyage combo ... so I usually slot in some of the regulars (Homesteader Janeway, Soji, Cornwell, Bartender Guinan, TO Neelix, IC Sisko, Queen Po, Xindi Insectoid etc.) and then have to take care not to overload my DIP score! ... I've usually got too much DIP, so for the CMD slot I'd probably not go Surak but someone like RAF O'Brien/Tenavik (less DIP)/Mirror Picard or Braxton just to even out the other scores.
Tertiary Skills
The conversation around tertiary skills in for a separate topic really, but I'm a bit fan of them under certain conditions and actually pick/cite my crew based on that.
The main arguments are around the flexibility of use and around how I approach 10 hr voyages ... a more "balanced-score" approach to provide more certainty than a "throw it all on three" approach (the Banjo approach, which works very well for him) ... the balanced approach means I actually require a lower number of active crew to reach 10 hrs because crew can double-hat for voyage duties (e.g. Warship EMA), which is handy because I'm not a big spender so don't own a large selection of decent (immortalised) crew.
If I only really care about primary and secondary scores I'd take 2-skill crew into consideration (as I know some forum regulars do to hit monster voyages of close to 11 hrs). For example, Gabrielle Burnham has a massive ENG/SCI number, where if she had any semblance of a third skill she would be considered a stellar voyager along the lines of Red Angel (the voyage total difference is a mere 591 pts on DIP).
But would I cite my 1/5 G. Burnham for ENG/SCI voyages? No.
Tertiary skills will probably be covered more in the ENG/MED voyage, just because there are so few crew with those skills.
By the numbers, I have actually sent more 10-hour ENG/MED voyages than any other combo...since I started recording crew used on successful 10-hour voyages, I’ve had 10 of those against 9 for SCI/MED and 8 each of DIP/SEC and COM/DIP. And while a few names make sense with their primary/secondary skills, tertiaries do show up in many ENG/MED voyages:
10 - White Rabbit, Imprinted Archer
9 - Medic Reno, Torpedo Surgeon McCoy
7 - Prisoner Cornwell, Leonardo
6 - Tactical Officer Neelix
5 - Amelia Earhart, Stranded Quark
4 - Amanda Rogers, The Caretaker
3 - Darth Bashir, HR Sisko, Laborer Kirk, Borg Queen, Wrathful Kirk, Indulgent Seven
2 - Musketeer La Forge, Braxton, Kol, Rev Phlox, Covert Operative Leland, Queen Po, Rescue Team Uhura
1 - DF Paris, Loken, Determined Janeway, Talas, Mycelial Culber, RAF O’Brien, Garth, Forrest, Tuxedo Nog, BO#1, Warship EMA, Nanoprobe Phlox
Reno, Archer, and the Rabbit have certainly been central to my success in these voyages (Nanoprobe Phlox is still too new to have made much of a dent), and there are certainly also a selection of strong doctors without ENG and engineers without MED. However, there are also plenty of crew with either ENG or MED as tertiaries. McCoy, Leo, Quark, Amanda, the Banjoman, Cheesecake, Wrathful Kirk, Loken, and Forrest all have either skill as their tertiary.
Yes ... he's in the portal ... but what I mean by "available to all" is crew who are in Gauntlet, mega-event crew, campaign crew, Honor Hall crew, crew that was given away for free (e.g. Reno), fuse crew ... i.e. crew that can basically be obtained without too much "luck".
Basically, these are crew that can be brought to 5/5 without much "work" ... I have made a distinction for campaign crew before just to stay on the side of the f2p players (it is the only money I put into the game) ... also, Seven doesn't quite fall in that category because you need one Mobile Doc to come your way through a behold.
A player may not have them immortalised yet ... but at least they have a realistic opportunity to do so.
So, crew like Warship EMA and Tactical Officer Neelix, are great ... but you need to have been lucky in a begold to get one ... for example, I've never seen Gary Seven or First Officer Burnham in a behold so I still do not own either of those two cards ... I can't expect others to either.
My example had:
- 6 mega-event crew (should have been 8 with Ru'afo for La Forge and Qod for T'Pol)
- 1 Campaign crew (Data)
- 1 free crew (Reno)
- 1 fuse crew (Seven)
- 3 "difficult/luck/begold to get" crew ... but should have been 1 (Neelix).
I'll try to do better next time.
I did one on ENG/MED here ... https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/14834/ray-s-law-of-ten-hour-voyages/p4 ... somewhere mid-page ... but I wanted to start with the same idea as that I did above for CMD/MED ... so not include crew with both skills (e.g. no Chakotay or Leo or Caretaker) and to include as many "available to all" crew as I could, but it will be difficult because I lean on those dual crew a lot.
Funny enough ... the only skill combos where I don't hit 10 hrs each time ... because I've not been writing down who I send out on good ones and I don't seem to have clear auto-picks apparently ... have been DIP/ENG and SEC/ENG ... go figure.
So, I finally had an ENG/MED voyage roll around again ... just during an event with key crew off on shuttle duty, but hey, we have to make do with what we have ...
CMD - RAF O'Brien, Queen Po;
DIP - Bartender Guinan, Cornwell;
SEC - Protomorphosis Barclay, Ishan Chaye Sisko;
ENG - Etana Jol, Ru'afo;
SCI - Q as God, Soji;
MED - Bell Riots Bashir, Reverend Phlox*.
Ship - Orion ship*.
Starting AM - 2700.
Notes
So again, starting from mostly crew that have been available to all:
- 1 Gauntlet crew;
- 6 Mega-event crew;
- 3 campaign crew;
- 2 "special" crew - where Determined Janeway could have slotted in for either ... but she's on shuttles.
Again, I didn't use any crew who have both MED and ENG as skills ... in my case that includes:
- Indulgent Seven 5/5 - fuse crew
- Medic Jett Reno 5/5 - free for all
- The Caretaker 5/5 - gauntlet crew
- Temporal Prisoner Chakotay 5/5
- Leonardo Da Vinci - 3/5 (soon to be 4/5), busy with shuttles.
- Loken 3/5
- Ba'ul 3/5
- Doctor Van Gogh 2/5
- Phlox, Au Naturel 1/5 - free for all - well, the one I chose from the behold (easy choice).
- Amanda Rogers 1/5
- Mirror Stamets 1/5.
With the above setup, the voyage estimator puts 90% at 9:26 ... a side note, this should show that MED/DIP is one of the easiest combos to do well in with free crew.
Minimal to no chance to hit 10 hrs.
With the setup below, the voyage estimator puts 90% at 9:45 ... but again not with optimal crew ... like this 20% chance to hit 10 hrs.
So also here, plenty of options that most/all players could already own ... below is a stat distribution with a couple of those crew added in and what has a better chance to hit 10 hrs. I was in a bit of a rush so wasn't able to optimise seating with traits and Seven was away, as well as Janeway, who are both standards for this skill combo ... as is Leo, he even was as a 1/5 so a 3/5 for sure.
Again ... when the voyage hits 8 hrs I'll post a screenshot with a bit of a conclusion ...
This is 8 hrs and at 9 I had 350 AM left.
Comments
Here we can see that with just one, maybe 2 adjustments, we can start hitting 10 hrs (not every time though) ... and two great options have been made available for all; The Caretaker and Medic Reno.
What helps in this skill combo is getting good AM at the start, so crew like Assimilated La Forge are actually better options than Ru'afo, where La Forge has a ton of good traits to give you just that little bit extra. Aim for 2750-2800 AM.
Most of the ENG/MED crew I listed in the previous post are kinda average actually ... it is because of how their skill scores are spread out.
- The likes of Loken, Amanda Rogers and Mirror Stamets are just not really top-notch crew. They are fine if you have nothing else, but we can see that the free crew are just better.
- Doctor Van Gogh, Phlox AN, TP Chakotay and Ba'ul are pretty decent actually because they either have good stats or bring something extra ... SEC in the case of Chakotay and Ba'ul, with the second, just being a better option in all situations (aside from traits).
- Da Vinci, Caretaker, Reno and Seven are standouts ... with two being available to all.
Da Vinci
He even made 10 hrs ENG/MED voyages as a 1/5 for me ... his main plus is the really smooth and even spread across his skills, with over 20% on his third skill ... he still is one of the best voyagers out there (great traits too) and if you don't own him, go for 400k VP this event.
Caretaker
Free to get ... though you have to hit the gauntlet (ugh) ... but basically another Da Vinci.
Reno
She's good ... but not as good as some might have you believe ... she will instantly help most rosters get to 10 hrs if they were hovering like the above example, but she does have her downsides ... but most people would forgive that atrocious third skill (SCI) ... so who's "better" then (see below).
Seven
See Da Vinci and the Caretaker.
So, who is better than Reno for 10 hr MED/ENG voyages? Look no further than recent Honor Hall addition Nanoprobe Phlox ... but he has a lower voyage total? Yup. And less of that total is on MED and ENG?! Yup.
It is all about balance of scores across the three skills ... see Da Vinci ... so, if you didn't get Reno for free, don't fret, head on over to the Honor Hall and all will be solved.
The main takeaway from this thread is ... head on over to the Honor Hall for your CMD/MED and ENG/MED voyage issues ... there are two good crew there ... Beverly and Phlox.
There's no need to wait for the perfect begold or event crew to come along ...
You make a great point about other crew, and it’s one that loops into a separate discussion I’ve had about the distribution of skills in the entire list of MED/ENG/x crew, irrespective of skill order. SCI is represented quite heavily:
-All of my MED/ENG primary crew have it as their tertiary, and I believe I have all such crew in the game.
-ENG/SCI and SCI/ENG monsters like Leonardo, Loken, The Caretaker, Mirror Stamets, and Doctor Van Gogh all have tertiary MED.
-SCI/MED crew like Indulgent Seven, Torpedo Surgeon McCoy, Amanda Rogers, and Nude Phlox all have ENG tertiaries.
Crew with skills other than SCI joining their MED and ENG are drastically outnumbered:
COM: DF Paris, Mountain Climber May weather
DIP: Stranded Quark
SEC: TP Chakotay, Ba’ul
I might be forgetting someone, but even if I forgot one or two that’s at least 13 crew with some kind of SCI versus 5ish with another skill, none of which have that other skill as their tertiary. If you have access to the top ENG/MED/SCI crew of any skill order, having some stout COM/SEC/DIP crew to balance them out is a necessity.
Anyway, I got along fine without Reno, and yes, she makes life easier for me, especially during events when other regulars might be required there (e.g. this weekend).
As for the last part ... yeah, Quark still is my white whale. I'd love to see him in a behold/campaign.
Don't own either of the CMD crew, but they aren't high on my list anymore for voyages. Although solid additions to my crew for voyages, I can see them being power crept in the near future ... I'd like Paris for his collection ... and for power creep crew to be like Paris but with 100 pts extra on each skill (keeping that strong tertiary score compared to Mayweather).
Your overview shows the key impact of tertiary skills ... which is why I really like the likes of Da Vinci, a strong voyager with balanced main skill stats and a high tertiary.
The crew that I probably would like to have most for voyages (aside from Quark) is Prisoner Kim (ENG/SEC/MED) ... he was a recent 6-pack release and I would insta-cite if I got him.
Braxton is my next citation project (currently 3/5) for voyages ... and then I'm switching to collections ... the push to 11-12 hrs doesn't interest me ... I have a bunch of nice collection crew who aren't immortal ... Merry Men Troi, Niners Ezri, Gunslinger Uhura, Suus Mahna Sarek ...
Anyway, this thread was to provide a bit of a different perspective on two of the voyage combos often considered most difficult to deal with.
- How can I create a base case for myself?
- What are some important things I might want to focus on?
- Where are improvements to be had?
- Are there crew available (for "free") who can provide a direct impact?
--> If I've got CMD/MED then the spread of stats across all the other 4 skills is fairly equal (see the first post), so a crew who has CMD/MED as their main two skills would be impactful (second-last paragraph first post).
--> If I've got ENG/MED then the spread is kinda all over the place ... so maybe it might be more beneficial to get someone like Ba'ul or Prisoner Kim in, combined with changing out someone else to get more balance (11.5k in top two and a fairly equal rest ... see the picture showing Polland and RAF O'Brien).