If I understand the scanning table shared in this thread, there is a 98.47% chance that I should have succeeded by the time this image was snapped.
This is the third such time I have managed to get to 37% without a success. The exceptionally long droughts (my results do not appear typical thankfully) I have experienced combined with the significantly likely chance that the Polestar I eventually acquire being effectively useless has completely soured me on this entire process.
As you can see, I have over 78,000 ISM currently. I have stopped caring/trying and do 4 scans a day just to do them, but I find I do not care if they succeed or not. At 4 scans a day it has been over 4 days since I hit a Constellation and that should bother me, but it doesn't, because I know from experience that the Constellation I eventually get won't be useful ("proud" owner of TWO Bynar Polestars on my alt!). At this point I've burned through the good Polestars we all got at the start and they have been slowly replaced by the same handful of Polestars I already have multiple copies of, the handful of cards I would actually care to chase copies of are very difficult to isolate, and none of the retrieval options I currently have interest me at all.
And I know you must be saying to yourself right now, but why not just use up all that ISM, it isn't useful for anything else, you may as well just use it on a bunch more scans? I know you are thinking that because others have asked me that exact question and my answer is simple: using ISM to fuel this enterprise has a hidden cost, hope. Spending a resource increases expectations that something good/fun will result. I've effectively blown off the entire system, have a corresponding hope factor of 0, and that has allowed me to remain blissfully ambivalent about the entire thing. I am thankful I can complete my daily scans quicker now, and that is where I stop caring. Increasing my scanning will only increase the frustration when my next 37%+ drought occurs in a few days or when that scan finally yields a Constellation only to magically turn an additional 1,000 ISM into another Human/Starfleet/Federation/Resourceful Polestar.
I find my ISM has more value to me as something to hoard. I actually find that more interesting than stressing myself about maximizing scans, chasing Constellations, or trying to stay ahead of my quantum before it hits 1,000 and stops accumulating. I'm out of useful combinations and I look forward to seeing my quantum hitting 1,000 sometime next week, for me seeing that will feel like a win, and I'll revive my hoarding thread with a screenshot when I hit 250,000 ISM, that will definitely feel like a win.
So my updated feedback is pretty simple: I think TP monetized the wrong part of this thing. I really want to be able to use it, but the only thing I can spend on is quantum, which is useless without Polestars to feed into the retrieval mechanism, and the process of acquiring Polestars is so incredibly difficult I find I do not care to participate. I would welcome some way to use dilithium to re-roll Polestars, trade in existing Polestars for better ones, sell packs of Polestars in the Time Portal, something, ANYTHING!
As you can see above, I had similar issues pre odds increase (and still only getting 2 from my last 3 days scanned). It is doubley brutal when you finally get one, and it's one of the common ones to boot!
Thinking about it more, I think not focusing on the percent helps. I noticed I happened to be at 37% last night, but usually I just pay attention to the ISM, do the scan, do an ad scan, and then move on. When I get a constellation I'm happy, when I don't I figure I'll get it later. I usually do the 800 ISM + free scan as my last of the day or the 2100 + free scan depending on how much extra ISM I have. I couldn't even tell you what percent I'm usually at. All I know is I get enough constellations to earn crew I want.
I was skeptical of the new feature when it was released, and still think it was over-hyped, but I've had pretty good results so far. I use the scan/ad-scan combo until I reach the 2100 cost every day and have tried to do a retrieval as soon as my quantum fills up (seems like a waste to leave it sitting full).
- Laborer Spock - 5th star (from original polestars)
- Saboteur Garak - 3rd star
- Talas - 5th star (had an Andorian polestar)
- Abraham Lincoln - 5th star (had a politician polestar)
- Delta Flyer Torres - 5th star
- Stranded Quark - 1st star
and have tried to do a retrieval as soon as my quantum fills up (seems like a waste to leave it sitting full).
This thinking seems backwards to me. Quantum regenerates naturally and is guaranteed to do so, Polestars on the other hand are much more rare and harder to get, plus the credit costs involved. I would recommend waiting until you have the Polestars to retrieve a card worthy of the expenditure of resources.
At least that is what I would do, were I using this. I decided this morning that I'm just going to be doing the 1 free scan for dailies from now on. I may change my mind when the perpetual 1,000/1,000 quantum alert on the Manifest icon gets to be too annoying, but otherwise I am done with this entire process If they make changes to it I will reassess, but the current process requires way too much mental energy for so little benefit.
and have tried to do a retrieval as soon as my quantum fills up (seems like a waste to leave it sitting full).
This thinking seems backwards to me. Quantum regenerates naturally and is guaranteed to do so, Polestars on the other hand are much more rare and harder to get, plus the credit costs involved. I would recommend waiting until you have the Polestars to retrieve a card worthy of the expenditure of resources.
At least that is what I would do, were I using this. I decided this morning that I'm just going to be doing the 1 free scan for dailies from now on. I may change my mind when the perpetual 1,000/1,000 quantum alert on the Manifest icon gets to be too annoying, but otherwise I am done with this entire process If they make changes to it I will reassess, but the current process requires way too much mental energy for so little benefit.
Quantum may generate naturally, but since we can't go over the cap (as we can for chrons), every day it sits full is essentially wasted quantum. Initially both ISM and polestars were limiting factors, but that was always going to change in time. Scanning up to the 2100 ISM level every day (scan + video), I've managed to stockpile almost 100k ISM and about 50 different polestars (a quarter of them have multiples).
So far I have retrieved a combination of good crew and crew that utilized polestars strategically, to avoid the risk you suggested that would be the feeling of wasting good polestars. On the strategic side, several of my early retrievals used a combination of relatively useless polestars (ie: Andorian - the only crew needed were the final star for Talas or the unowned Lissan, and I have since gained another Andorian polestar) and duplicate polestars.
If you can avoid using rare or useful polestars on weak crew, than I see no reason why you shouldn't take advantage of retrieving a crew as soon as your quantum reaches 900.
As for credits, I have consistently been able to regain at least the 5 million credits between retrievals, so that my overall credit balance has continued to grow slowly even with me retrieving crew as soon as my quantum reaches 900.
If I understand the scanning table shared in this thread, there is a 98.47% chance that I should have succeeded by the time this image was snapped.
This is the third such time I have managed to get to 37% without a success. The exceptionally long droughts (my results do not appear typical thankfully) I have experienced combined with the significantly likely chance that the Polestar I eventually acquire being effectively useless has completely soured me on this entire process.
As you can see, I have over 78,000 ISM currently. I have stopped caring/trying and do 4 scans a day just to do them, but I find I do not care if they succeed or not. At 4 scans a day it has been over 4 days since I hit a Constellation and that should bother me, but it doesn't, because I know from experience that the Constellation I eventually get won't be useful ("proud" owner of TWO Bynar Polestars on my alt!). At this point I've burned through the good Polestars we all got at the start and they have been slowly replaced by the same handful of Polestars I already have multiple copies of, the handful of cards I would actually care to chase copies of are very difficult to isolate, and none of the retrieval options I currently have interest me at all.
And I know you must be saying to yourself right now, but why not just use up all that ISM, it isn't useful for anything else, you may as well just use it on a bunch more scans? I know you are thinking that because others have asked me that exact question and my answer is simple: using ISM to fuel this enterprise has a hidden cost, hope. Spending a resource increases expectations that something good/fun will result. I've effectively blown off the entire system, have a corresponding hope factor of 0, and that has allowed me to remain blissfully ambivalent about the entire thing. I am thankful I can complete my daily scans quicker now, and that is where I stop caring. Increasing my scanning will only increase the frustration when my next 37%+ drought occurs in a few days or when that scan finally yields a Constellation only to magically turn an additional 1,000 ISM into another Human/Starfleet/Federation/Resourceful Polestar.
I find my ISM has more value to me as something to hoard. I actually find that more interesting than stressing myself about maximizing scans, chasing Constellations, or trying to stay ahead of my quantum before it hits 1,000 and stops accumulating. I'm out of useful combinations and I look forward to seeing my quantum hitting 1,000 sometime next week, for me seeing that will feel like a win, and I'll revive my hoarding thread with a screenshot when I hit 250,000 ISM, that will definitely feel like a win.
So my updated feedback is pretty simple: I think TP monetized the wrong part of this thing. I really want to be able to use it, but the only thing I can spend on is quantum, which is useless without Polestars to feed into the retrieval mechanism, and the process of acquiring Polestars is so incredibly difficult I find I do not care to participate. I would welcome some way to use dilithium to re-roll Polestars, trade in existing Polestars for better ones, sell packs of Polestars in the Time Portal, something, ANYTHING!
I agree that being able to target specific polestars or even constellations would be great. I would be a lot more likely to spend dilithium on those than to spend it on quantum.
While it's true that at some point it becomes possible to use duplicate polestars or "useless" polestars to retrieve someone and avoid wasting quantum, there's the issue of crew slots and future portal updates/new crew that will use currently useless polestars. So I generally don't use polestars with less than 80 existing crew, because I might never see them again. And I don't retrieve crew that I have no immediate use for, unless I really want them.
Which means that, as soon as I get a polestar that allows me to target a crew that I really want, I don't have to wait. It already takes weeks and months of waiting and RNG to get the needed polestars, so I don't see why I should also wait for quantum to refill.
That being said, I wish I had as many Resourceful polestars as you seem to have, as it's the only one that allows me to narrow down the options to 3 or 4 for a chance at Arachnia. I would happily trade you some of my 4 Crafty, 3 Musician and 3 Cultural Figure for them
Unless I'm mistaken, we've only gotten the foundation of a planned multi-part system. I am hoping we get additional options for polestars we have no use for. Even if it's just burning them for quantum/ISM, although that would carry more weight if we could buy specific polestars or constellations with quantum/ISM as well.
Very cool. I see autocorrect got you unless you are saying Saru is a Viking.
"Valhalla Saru" seems like a great STT original!
It's a shame Beowulf Kim was added in an Expedition, it would be fun to re-run the event with Valhalla Saru as the new legendary, and maybe an armed (pun intended) Doctor Schweitzer as the new SR.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
Unless I'm mistaken, we've only gotten the foundation of a planned multi-part system.
I thought so too, but on another thread someone said that from what they understood WRG plans to tweak the feature rather than add significant new parts to it. To be honest, I don't remember much about the interview where crew retrival was introduced. But I hope that you're right and there will be more
Honestly wish I could buy some polestars
RNG is giving me the polestars to get some of the best crew in the game but still nothing for my favourite card xD
Honestly wish I could buy some polestars
RNG is giving me the polestars to get some of the best crew in the game but still nothing for my favourite card xD
Yep, like 50 dilithium for a good polestar u need.
and have tried to do a retrieval as soon as my quantum fills up (seems like a waste to leave it sitting full).
This thinking seems backwards to me. Quantum regenerates naturally and is guaranteed to do so, Polestars on the other hand are much more rare and harder to get, plus the credit costs involved. I would recommend waiting until you have the Polestars to retrieve a card worthy of the expenditure of resources.
At least that is what I would do, were I using this. I decided this morning that I'm just going to be doing the 1 free scan for dailies from now on. I may change my mind when the perpetual 1,000/1,000 quantum alert on the Manifest icon gets to be too annoying, but otherwise I am done with this entire process If they make changes to it I will reassess, but the current process requires way too much mental energy for so little benefit.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You can get a lot of solid crew that will help with collections or events and just not use the polestars u want to save for the special crew you want later.
If I understand the scanning table shared in this thread, there is a 98.47% chance that I should have succeeded by the time this image was snapped.
This is the third such time I have managed to get to 37% without a success. The exceptionally long droughts (my results do not appear typical thankfully) I have experienced combined with the significantly likely chance that the Polestar I eventually acquire being effectively useless has completely soured me on this entire process.
As you can see, I have over 78,000 ISM currently. I have stopped caring/trying and do 4 scans a day just to do them, but I find I do not care if they succeed or not. At 4 scans a day it has been over 4 days since I hit a Constellation and that should bother me, but it doesn't, because I know from experience that the Constellation I eventually get won't be useful ("proud" owner of TWO Bynar Polestars on my alt!). At this point I've burned through the good Polestars we all got at the start and they have been slowly replaced by the same handful of Polestars I already have multiple copies of, the handful of cards I would actually care to chase copies of are very difficult to isolate, and none of the retrieval options I currently have interest me at all.
And I know you must be saying to yourself right now, but why not just use up all that ISM, it isn't useful for anything else, you may as well just use it on a bunch more scans? I know you are thinking that because others have asked me that exact question and my answer is simple: using ISM to fuel this enterprise has a hidden cost, hope. Spending a resource increases expectations that something good/fun will result. I've effectively blown off the entire system, have a corresponding hope factor of 0, and that has allowed me to remain blissfully ambivalent about the entire thing. I am thankful I can complete my daily scans quicker now, and that is where I stop caring. Increasing my scanning will only increase the frustration when my next 37%+ drought occurs in a few days or when that scan finally yields a Constellation only to magically turn an additional 1,000 ISM into another Human/Starfleet/Federation/Resourceful Polestar.
I find my ISM has more value to me as something to hoard. I actually find that more interesting than stressing myself about maximizing scans, chasing Constellations, or trying to stay ahead of my quantum before it hits 1,000 and stops accumulating. I'm out of useful combinations and I look forward to seeing my quantum hitting 1,000 sometime next week, for me seeing that will feel like a win, and I'll revive my hoarding thread with a screenshot when I hit 250,000 ISM, that will definitely feel like a win.
So my updated feedback is pretty simple: I think TP monetized the wrong part of this thing. I really want to be able to use it, but the only thing I can spend on is quantum, which is useless without Polestars to feed into the retrieval mechanism, and the process of acquiring Polestars is so incredibly difficult I find I do not care to participate. I would welcome some way to use dilithium to re-roll Polestars, trade in existing Polestars for better ones, sell packs of Polestars in the Time Portal, something, ANYTHING!
Ouch. That's rough. RNG can **tsk tsk**. But keep at it and hopefully things will turn around.
So far I've been able to retrieve Mycelial Culber, Stranded Quark, Captain Braxton, and I just got the hero polestar to let me retrieve Gay Seven next. It's a great feature if you keep scanning to find more constellations.
Is Gay Seven a new Seven of Nine variant based on the final episode of Picard or a Gary Seven typo?
Honestly wish I could buy some polestars
RNG is giving me the polestars to get some of the best crew in the game but still nothing for my favourite card xD
Yes, exactly. The pay component of this system (buying quantum) is currently shielded by a convoluted scanning system that seems almost determined to prevent useful Polestars from generating, I would welcome a better/new way of acquiring Polestars so that I would be able to pay to use the retrieval system.
I have 43 polestars, and have used 13 (56 total). I scanned 6 times a day the first week, and have averaged 8 scans a day at least (6 earlier, but usually 8, and 10 more recently due to excess ISM).
Now, my memory is hazy, but I thought we got around 27 polestars/constellations at the start through various means, so I'd have needed to get 29 constellations from around 330 scans.
I may be discounting something somewhere, but I do seem to be getting one every day and a half. I'd note that I'm still getting enough polestars to be using the tool perfectly well, it's just another case where medium-term use of RNG seems to be not adding-up.
So I had 43 polestars 18 days ago. I now have 46. I used 4 on a retrieval, so I've gained 7 polestars in that time frame, despite scanning 8 times a day, or 10 with the increased odds, which is over 150 scans with only 7 successes. I could have all 10 of tomorrow's scans return a constellation, and still be "unlucky".
Unless I'm mistaken, we've only gotten the foundation of a planned multi-part system.
I thought so too, but on another thread someone said that from what they understood WRG plans to tweak the feature rather than add significant new parts to it. To be honest, I don't remember much about the interview where crew retrival was introduced. But I hope that you're right and there will be more
I wasn't thinking of anything elaborate, just iteration, but looking back I wasn't very clear.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
So from my current drought of scan success, combined with an awful mix of polestars (8 successes in 160 scans, 2 of them not human/starfleet/federation) I had a brainwave on improvements. It would be great if we could use an existing polestar we own to suppress it in a constellation. I had Soji Asha constellation, and there's literally no bad outcome aside from human (which I got). It would make such polestars useful if I could sacrifice one of my existing human polestars before opening the constellation, in order to ensure I didn't get human (giving me a better chance at android etc.)
+1 for this idea Arnie... it feels like the right kind of modest benefit rather than being able to just swap them or cash them in for quantum etc.
Human etc polestars can be useful on occasion, but you don’t need them to be 30% of your stock. So this could be the marginal tweak that makes the process more appealing and engaging.
Overall, Crew Retrieval is working ok for me and I’ve pulled cards I’m very happy with. But as I still have a lot of crew to FE, I need my Credits for that... so Credits are soon going to become my bottleneck. I think I’ll manage one or maybe two more retrievals over the next 6ish weeks before that happens!
Today I did an audit of my polestars, and I currently have six crew retrievals lined up with polestars I have, plus the Kaelon and Prophet polestars as backups. Given my current quantum, it'll take 4.5 months to complete all of these, assuming higher priority ones don't crop up. I imagine they will, and I don't know if Charles Emerson Winchester 3rd will ever get that seconds star.
I can thank a few rare polestars, but it's neat to see how many simply uncommon ones combine in useful ways.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
Comments
As you can see above, I had similar issues pre odds increase (and still only getting 2 from my last 3 days scanned). It is doubley brutal when you finally get one, and it's one of the common ones to boot!
- Laborer Spock - 5th star (from original polestars)
- Saboteur Garak - 3rd star
- Talas - 5th star (had an Andorian polestar)
- Abraham Lincoln - 5th star (had a politician polestar)
- Delta Flyer Torres - 5th star
- Stranded Quark - 1st star
This thinking seems backwards to me. Quantum regenerates naturally and is guaranteed to do so, Polestars on the other hand are much more rare and harder to get, plus the credit costs involved. I would recommend waiting until you have the Polestars to retrieve a card worthy of the expenditure of resources.
At least that is what I would do, were I using this. I decided this morning that I'm just going to be doing the 1 free scan for dailies from now on. I may change my mind when the perpetual 1,000/1,000 quantum alert on the Manifest icon gets to be too annoying, but otherwise I am done with this entire process
Quantum may generate naturally, but since we can't go over the cap (as we can for chrons), every day it sits full is essentially wasted quantum. Initially both ISM and polestars were limiting factors, but that was always going to change in time. Scanning up to the 2100 ISM level every day (scan + video), I've managed to stockpile almost 100k ISM and about 50 different polestars (a quarter of them have multiples).
So far I have retrieved a combination of good crew and crew that utilized polestars strategically, to avoid the risk you suggested that would be the feeling of wasting good polestars. On the strategic side, several of my early retrievals used a combination of relatively useless polestars (ie: Andorian - the only crew needed were the final star for Talas or the unowned Lissan, and I have since gained another Andorian polestar) and duplicate polestars.
If you can avoid using rare or useful polestars on weak crew, than I see no reason why you shouldn't take advantage of retrieving a crew as soon as your quantum reaches 900.
As for credits, I have consistently been able to regain at least the 5 million credits between retrievals, so that my overall credit balance has continued to grow slowly even with me retrieving crew as soon as my quantum reaches 900.
I agree that being able to target specific polestars or even constellations would be great. I would be a lot more likely to spend dilithium on those than to spend it on quantum.
While it's true that at some point it becomes possible to use duplicate polestars or "useless" polestars to retrieve someone and avoid wasting quantum, there's the issue of crew slots and future portal updates/new crew that will use currently useless polestars. So I generally don't use polestars with less than 80 existing crew, because I might never see them again. And I don't retrieve crew that I have no immediate use for, unless I really want them.
Which means that, as soon as I get a polestar that allows me to target a crew that I really want, I don't have to wait. It already takes weeks and months of waiting and RNG to get the needed polestars, so I don't see why I should also wait for quantum to refill.
That being said, I wish I had as many Resourceful polestars as you seem to have, as it's the only one that allows me to narrow down the options to 3 or 4 for a chance at Arachnia. I would happily trade you some of my 4 Crafty, 3 Musician and 3 Cultural Figure for them
"Valhalla Saru" seems like a great STT original!
It's a shame Beowulf Kim was added in an Expedition, it would be fun to re-run the event with Valhalla Saru as the new legendary, and maybe an armed (pun intended) Doctor Schweitzer as the new SR.
Starport
At any rate, I have added stars to crew that I like & crew that are useful to me, so I will keep using it. YMMV
I thought so too, but on another thread someone said that from what they understood WRG plans to tweak the feature rather than add significant new parts to it. To be honest, I don't remember much about the interview where crew retrival was introduced. But I hope that you're right and there will be more
I d drop some money for Skill Constellations. 🤗
RNG is giving me the polestars to get some of the best crew in the game but still nothing for my favourite card xD
Yep, like 50 dilithium for a good polestar u need.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You can get a lot of solid crew that will help with collections or events and just not use the polestars u want to save for the special crew you want later.
Is Gay Seven a new Seven of Nine variant based on the final episode of Picard or a Gary Seven typo?
Yes, exactly. The pay component of this system (buying quantum) is currently shielded by a convoluted scanning system that seems almost determined to prevent useful Polestars from generating, I would welcome a better/new way of acquiring Polestars so that I would be able to pay to use the retrieval system.
So I had 43 polestars 18 days ago. I now have 46. I used 4 on a retrieval, so I've gained 7 polestars in that time frame, despite scanning 8 times a day, or 10 with the increased odds, which is over 150 scans with only 7 successes. I could have all 10 of tomorrow's scans return a constellation, and still be "unlucky".
That is so cool looking you may want to just keep it so u can look at it.
I wasn't thinking of anything elaborate, just iteration, but looking back I wasn't very clear.
Starport
Human etc polestars can be useful on occasion, but you don’t need them to be 30% of your stock. So this could be the marginal tweak that makes the process more appealing and engaging.
Overall, Crew Retrieval is working ok for me and I’ve pulled cards I’m very happy with. But as I still have a lot of crew to FE, I need my Credits for that... so Credits are soon going to become my bottleneck. I think I’ll manage one or maybe two more retrievals over the next 6ish weeks before that happens!
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I can thank a few rare polestars, but it's neat to see how many simply uncommon ones combine in useful ways.
Starport
Darn you Pulaski!
No, and not for that price. Make it 200 quantum and then maybe. But not at half the cost of a guaranteed legendary.