An interesting question that I haven't heard (I may have missed it) is what the real money cost for buying specific constellations and polestars will be. We all spend a lot of time on the forum debating what's a "deal" but the economy has mostly settled on a 10-pull is $1 and a 5* cit/specific card is $10 (a few other items have understood costs). Where do these fall? I'll be interested to see what the initial price points TP sets for both.
An interesting question that I haven't heard (I may have missed it) is what the real money cost for buying specific constellations and polestars will be. We all spend a lot of time on the forum debating what's a "deal" but the economy has mostly settled on a 10-pull is $1 and a 5* cit/specific card is $10 (a few other items have understood costs). Where do these fall? I'll be interested to see what the initial price points TP sets for both.
Hopefully not very high in general, though certain polestars will have more perceived value due to their ability to greatly filter the pool. Since you'll need 4 specific polestars just to filter the pool enough to create yourself a customized $5 million credit 'Tuesday-pack', they definitely shouldn't place too high a value on them.
A polestar my have no value to you but high value to me, if I'm trying to build a polestar combo for a particular crew member that you don't need/want.
Here's another idea- what if you could buy singles or a bundle of like polestars for events? Say during this mega, you could buy a five-pack of Scoundrel tokens for a set amount or we all got one or two in community rewards.
*How about adding polestars to the milestones of trait based collections? That would help with some of those hard to finish collections.
*How about using constellations, polestars, credits, and ISM&/quantum for rewards in a mini event during non Mega months?
*Could some of the more common polestars be added to basic portals?
W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
I have a question! We saw with Ben the amount of Creds or whatever increased to max with 4 polestars to target 1 crew. What if you only need 3 to target a specific crew, will the cost be the same?
“What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?”
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
I'm so tired of this complaining coming from players who have achieved so much that they are more bored than anything.
But we don't have to be bored. We're bored because DB/TP hasn't given us anything new to do with our crew for literally years. This new feature doesn't advance that either. It seems like they are just doubling down on this not really being a game but a picture collecting app. Why bother giving the cards stats at all at this point?
I have a question! We saw with Ben the amount of Creds or whatever increased to max with 4 polestars to target 1 crew. What if you only need 3 to target a specific crew, will the cost be the same?
Nope. He did one with only 1 polestar (I think), which left a pool of a single 3* crew, and I believe the credit cost was only something like 90,000.
It seems to depend on the narrower your filtering (number of polestars) and rarity of crew targeted. 1 polestar that targets a single 1* crew would be the cheapest (other than a total random pull with no polestars), while 4 polestars that targets a single 5* crew would be the most expensive @ $5 million credits.
I have a question! We saw with Ben the amount of Creds or whatever increased to max with 4 polestars to target 1 crew. What if you only need 3 to target a specific crew, will the cost be the same?
Nope. He did one with only 1 polestar (I think), which left a pool of a single 3* crew, and I believe the credit cost was only something like 90,000.
It seems to depend on the narrower your filtering (number of polestars) and rarity of crew targeted. 1 polestar that targets a single 1* crew would be the cheapest (other than a total random pull with no polestars), while 4 polestars that targets a single 5* crew would be the most expensive @ $5 million credits.
Good to know 🖖
“What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?”
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
After watching the demo on Timelines Talks, personally, I am excited for this new feature; although I can see where it has a decreasing value for those who already have a majority the crew FF or those who aren't interested in crew collecting. I do think that ultimately we are going to need some new gameplay options that allow us to use the crew we have collected.
Ben did say that the decision to develop this feature was based on player feedback from the survey they did a while back. It could be that this feature is going to meet a larger community need than what is represented here on the forum.
I have a question! We saw with Ben the amount of Creds or whatever increased to max with 4 polestars to target 1 crew. What if you only need 3 to target a specific crew, will the cost be the same?
Nope. He did one with only 1 polestar (I think), which left a pool of a single 3* crew, and I believe the credit cost was only something like 90,000.
It seems to depend on the narrower your filtering (number of polestars) and rarity of crew targeted. 1 polestar that targets a single 1* crew would be the cheapest (other than a total random pull with no polestars), while 4 polestars that targets a single 5* crew would be the most expensive @ $5 million credits.
Good to know 🖖
As this new store (not a feature) will likely be used by most to acquire 5* crew, I'd budget for using at least $4 million credits. If you can filter it down to a single crew, in order to avoid it becoming nothing more than a personalized 'Tuesday pack', then you're looking at $5 million credits.
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
I was thinking of something like 5*, Brutal, and Counselor to get Dark Empath Troi, a guaranteed drop with only 3 polestars so less cost Hopefully my plan isn’t flawed....
“What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?”
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
From what I read (from Shan) and watched (from Timelines Talks), there are 3 types of Constellations: Rarity, Skill, and Crew. Rarity and Skill Constellations contain Rarity and Skill Polestars, but are only obtained via future event ranked rewards.
Now Crew Constellations, which are discoverable via scanning, contain Trait Polestars. While there are over 700 unique traits, drops of Trait Polestars will be weighted by whichever traits are most common among all crew. So unfortunately, I would expect to see Polestars like Human, Federation, and Starfleet come up most often...
I'm so tired of this complaining coming from players who have achieved so much that they are more bored than anything.
But we don't have to be bored. We're bored because DB/TP hasn't given us anything new to do with our crew for literally years. This new feature doesn't advance that either. It seems like they are just doubling down on this not really being a game but a picture collecting app. Why bother giving the cards stats at all at this point?
Yeah i mean, the true disappointment can also be directly observed by watching bens responses to the questions that the players asked after the demo. My question in particular made me lol at his response:
Part one of my question (feature genesis, development, etc):
Ben said it was a result of player feedback.
As its been mentioned already, there is some confusion over “what player feedback” he is referring to. This feature, with the appropriate amount of saving/hoarding, will theoretically give you a better shot at targeting specific crew, provided that a long enough period of time spent saving/hoarding and getting lucky with rng has occurred. Thats it. I mean this feature is more of a means for them to attempt to tweak the economy than it is to give the players anything worthwhile.
Part two of my question (honor debt)
Ben’s snarky response was about as hilarious as I could have imagined. “Do we understand the catalog value of our game? Of course!”
But he missed the boat entirely and it wasnt until auto and idol explained the millions in honor debt that their accounts carry that he started to understand. Then he replied with “well this new feature should help with that”.
How? How will it help? Getting a copy of a 5* crew every 1 - 2 months helps in what way? One less cite required every 2 months? In a game that introduces ~500,000 honor debt each week???? ......yeah ok. Big help there. Thanks. But, you also have to keep in mind that those newly released crew that just injected half a million honor debt into your economy wont be available in crew retrieval, or portal, for 6 months or more.
Third part of my question (power creep in top tier crew)
Again, a snarky response from ben basically mocking why we would want power creep at the top tiers.
Ill try to explain it, f.o. burnham and braxton have been top five voyagers since release YEARS ago. What that means to a new player, is that no newly released crew will hold up to them, and they are the gold standard. For established rosters there is less and less of a reason for new crew acquisition, because once you have the best they are not going to be outperformed.
Autos suggestion about making squad rewards more relevant to encourage teamwork was a great suggestion. And Ben’s response was very telling of wrg/tp’s stance on things. Ben again tried to indicate that the economy tweaking that they are doing with this new feature will make credits more valuable, and therefore increase the relevancy of existing squad rewards. But, its very obvious that he again missed the main point of the suggestion, which was to encourage teamwork among fleet mates. The current value of credits in squad rewards for a top 10 squad is comical when you look at what can be done with one ad doubled cadet mission on saturday. There is ZERO incentive for competition at the squad level. But according to ben, this feature will help that.
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
From what I read (from Shan) and watched (from Timelines Talks), there are 3 types of Constellations: Rarity, Skill, and Crew. Rarity and Skill Constellations contain Rarity and Skill Polestars, but are only obtained via future event ranked rewards.
I may have imagined it, but I believe that was corrected in the video - ie rarity constellations can drop through scans.
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
From what I read (from Shan) and watched (from Timelines Talks), there are 3 types of Constellations: Rarity, Skill, and Crew. Rarity and Skill Constellations contain Rarity and Skill Polestars, but are only obtained via future event ranked rewards.
I may have imagined it, but I believe that was corrected in the video - ie rarity constellations can drop through scans.
Yes, I believe we have about a 1/900 chance of the constellation providing a rarity or skill polestar. Of course, the scan needs to be successful first, if we are lucky enough to get any constellation at all!
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
From what I read (from Shan) and watched (from Timelines Talks), there are 3 types of Constellations: Rarity, Skill, and Crew. Rarity and Skill Constellations contain Rarity and Skill Polestars, but are only obtained via future event ranked rewards.
I may have imagined it, but I believe that was corrected in the video - ie rarity constellations can drop through scans.
Yes, I believe we have about a 1/900 chance of the constellation providing a rarity or skill polestar. Of course, the scan needs to be successful first, if we are lucky enough to get any constellation at all!
Feels like the odds of a Tuesday pack on top of a Tuesday pack on top of a Tuesday pack.
The key will to be to find good combos of traits. For example, if you want Captain Braxton you might try to wait for "Temporal Agent" to pop up. However, it has a drop chance of 0.14%, which means even if you manage a Constellation a day (unlikely) you'll probably be waiting almost two years.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
From what I read (from Shan) and watched (from Timelines Talks), there are 3 types of Constellations: Rarity, Skill, and Crew. Rarity and Skill Constellations contain Rarity and Skill Polestars, but are only obtained via future event ranked rewards.
I may have imagined it, but I believe that was corrected in the video - ie rarity constellations can drop through scans.
Yes, I believe we have about a 1/900 chance of the constellation providing a rarity or skill polestar. Of course, the scan needs to be successful first, if we are lucky enough to get any constellation at all!
Feels like the odds of a Tuesday pack on top of a Tuesday pack on top of a Tuesday pack.
No you are just misunderstanding things. This new feature is the best thing since voyages and you must worship its creator. /sarcasm
Seems like we are replacing the uncertainty of portal which has way too many players to get what you want with constellations that have way too many polestars to get what you want.
Seems like we are replacing the uncertainty of portal which has way too many players to get what you want with constellations that have way too many polestars to get what you want.
Yeah. Exactly. I LOL’ed when Ben said they were considering removing the portal behold from the package offering of citations+begold for 40k honor during the honor sale “because crew retrieval will be in place”.
Kind of admitting outright that crew retrieval is a fancy dancy behold. Thats it and thats all.
Since polestars drop out of constellations and each one of them is based on a specific card, 1* polestars should be quite rare, given that there aren't many 1* in the game.
But I guess it will still be a huge disappointment for whoever pulls one of those
I'm willing to give this a shot to see how it works in practice, but my initial 2 cents:
This feels overly complicated. My have to scan for constellations, which drop at random, to then convert the constellation into a polestar which will also be random from a more limited set. Then we can use the polestar to narrow the crew list. Why not just eliminate constellations? Let the scan yield polestars directly. It removes a step and an item type that serves no purpose but to get from A to C.
I would have also used merits rather than creating ISM. Did the game need a new currency just to pay to scan and convert constellations to polestars. Why not use merits and then add merits to the targets/rewards as needed to balance using this?
The requirement of 40 fleet members completing all daily tasks is really going to put a squeeze on fleets. Requiring 40 members to complete vs a total amount target means some members can't cover for others. If a fleet isn't exactly 50 and then has a couple people away for vacation it's going to risk missing the target. Right now fleets can cover for members and they don't need strict rules about playing every day and completing all targets. This is going to push fleets to start ejecting more players.
I'm willing to give this a shot to see how it works in practice, but my initial 2 cents:
This feels overly complicated. My have to scan for constellations, which drop at random, to then convert the constellation into a polestar which will also be random from a more limited set. Then we can use the polestar to narrow the crew list. Why not just eliminate constellations? Let the scan yield polestars directly. It removes a step and an item type that serves no purpose but to get from A to C.
I would have also used merits rather than creating ISM. Did the game need a new currency just to pay to scan and convert constellations to polestars. Why not use merits and then add merits to the targets/rewards as needed to balance using this?
The requirement of 40 fleet members completing all daily tasks is really going to put a squeeze on fleets. Requiring 40 members to complete vs a total amount target means some members can't cover for others. If a fleet isn't exactly 50 and then has a couple people away for vacation it's going to risk missing the target. Right now fleets can cover for members and they don't need strict rules about playing every day and completing all targets. This is going to push fleets to start ejecting more players.
And instead of ISM/quantum or whatever, just cap it to 1 crew retrieval per month or something like that, if that whole other new currency was introduced just to be a gateway of sorts. Even then, more often that not, we'll be using 4 polestars and spending ~$5 million credits on a customized 'Tuesday pack' that will rely on RNG (after relying on RNG for scans, constellations and polestars) to actually acquire the 1 specific crew we are targeting. It might be crazy difficult to filter the pool down to a guaranteed choice of a single crew member.
I'm willing to give this a shot to see how it works in practice, but my initial 2 cents:
This feels overly complicated. My have to scan for constellations, which drop at random, to then convert the constellation into a polestar which will also be random from a more limited set. Then we can use the polestar to narrow the crew list. Why not just eliminate constellations? Let the scan yield polestars directly. It removes a step and an item type that serves no purpose but to get from A to C.
I would have also used merits rather than creating ISM. Did the game need a new currency just to pay to scan and convert constellations to polestars. Why not use merits and then add merits to the targets/rewards as needed to balance using this?
The requirement of 40 fleet members completing all daily tasks is really going to put a squeeze on fleets. Requiring 40 members to complete vs a total amount target means some members can't cover for others. If a fleet isn't exactly 50 and then has a couple people away for vacation it's going to risk missing the target. Right now fleets can cover for members and they don't need strict rules about playing every day and completing all targets. This is going to push fleets to start ejecting more players.
And instead of ISM/quantum or whatever, just cap it to 1 crew retrieval per month or something like that, if that whole other new currency was introduced just to be a gateway of sorts. Even then, more often that not, we'll be using 4 polestars and spending ~$5 million credits on a customized 'Tuesday pack' that will rely on RNG (after relying on RNG for scans, constellations and polestars) to actually acquire the 1 specific crew we are targeting. It might be crazy difficult to filter the pool down to a guaranteed choice of a single crew member.
All great ideas/insights.
The beauty of it, is they could have added a reroll feature to portal beholds that had one free re-roll then charged 100 dilithium, and could only be done 2x per behold (1 free, 2 @ 100dil each) and they could have made everyone happy, and accomplished more than this new “feature” does, for example:
their programmers would have been free to avoid adiragate (1.0 and 2.0), they could have qa/qc’ed the new 8.0 client (which requires a workaround to exit the event menu, and has gauntlet display issues) , they could have worked on the distress call that they have written but not designed, etc etc etc.
I mean the list goes on and on. Why they chose the seemingly most convoluted mess that they possibly could have just lacks all logic.
As it is, whoever made the call to go “all in” on crew retrieval effectively wasted all of their programmers time, and managed to cause a lot of irritation with the players. I dont have much faith in the people steering this ship.
Since polestars drop out of constellations and each one of them is based on a specific card, 1* polestars should be quite rare, given that there aren't many 1* in the game.
But I guess it will still be a huge disappointment for whoever pulls one of those
Not quite. Rarity polestars only drop from rarity constellations, never from crew constellations. So if you get a constellation based on a 1* crew you won't have any chance of getting a Common polestar.
But if you get a rarity constellation you're just as likely to get a Common as the Legendary that you actually need. In fact, the odds of getting a Legendary polestar from a rarity constellation would seem to be 20%.
Comments
Hopefully not very high in general, though certain polestars will have more perceived value due to their ability to greatly filter the pool. Since you'll need 4 specific polestars just to filter the pool enough to create yourself a customized $5 million credit 'Tuesday-pack', they definitely shouldn't place too high a value on them.
A polestar my have no value to you but high value to me, if I'm trying to build a polestar combo for a particular crew member that you don't need/want.
*How about adding polestars to the milestones of trait based collections? That would help with some of those hard to finish collections.
*How about using constellations, polestars, credits, and ISM&/quantum for rewards in a mini event during non Mega months?
*Could some of the more common polestars be added to basic portals?
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
But we don't have to be bored. We're bored because DB/TP hasn't given us anything new to do with our crew for literally years. This new feature doesn't advance that either. It seems like they are just doubling down on this not really being a game but a picture collecting app. Why bother giving the cards stats at all at this point?
Nope. He did one with only 1 polestar (I think), which left a pool of a single 3* crew, and I believe the credit cost was only something like 90,000.
It seems to depend on the narrower your filtering (number of polestars) and rarity of crew targeted. 1 polestar that targets a single 1* crew would be the cheapest (other than a total random pull with no polestars), while 4 polestars that targets a single 5* crew would be the most expensive @ $5 million credits.
Good to know 🖖
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
Ben did say that the decision to develop this feature was based on player feedback from the survey they did a while back. It could be that this feature is going to meet a larger community need than what is represented here on the forum.
As this new store (not a feature) will likely be used by most to acquire 5* crew, I'd budget for using at least $4 million credits. If you can filter it down to a single crew, in order to avoid it becoming nothing more than a personalized 'Tuesday pack', then you're looking at $5 million credits.
Instead, if you combine "Pilot" and "Saboteur" (1.39% and 0.86 drop chances with one guaranteed at the start) then add "Human" which will be dropping like rain and you get him for the low low price of 5000000 Credits and 900 Quantum. (At least, according to my sources which I kept me awake hacking for the past 24 hours).
I was thinking of something like 5*, Brutal, and Counselor to get Dark Empath Troi, a guaranteed drop with only 3 polestars so less cost
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
Like grains of sand upon a beach.......
😄
From what I read (from Shan) and watched (from Timelines Talks), there are 3 types of Constellations: Rarity, Skill, and Crew. Rarity and Skill Constellations contain Rarity and Skill Polestars, but are only obtained via future event ranked rewards.
Now Crew Constellations, which are discoverable via scanning, contain Trait Polestars. While there are over 700 unique traits, drops of Trait Polestars will be weighted by whichever traits are most common among all crew. So unfortunately, I would expect to see Polestars like Human, Federation, and Starfleet come up most often...
Yeah i mean, the true disappointment can also be directly observed by watching bens responses to the questions that the players asked after the demo. My question in particular made me lol at his response:
Part one of my question (feature genesis, development, etc):
Ben said it was a result of player feedback.
As its been mentioned already, there is some confusion over “what player feedback” he is referring to. This feature, with the appropriate amount of saving/hoarding, will theoretically give you a better shot at targeting specific crew, provided that a long enough period of time spent saving/hoarding and getting lucky with rng has occurred. Thats it. I mean this feature is more of a means for them to attempt to tweak the economy than it is to give the players anything worthwhile.
Part two of my question (honor debt)
Ben’s snarky response was about as hilarious as I could have imagined. “Do we understand the catalog value of our game? Of course!”
But he missed the boat entirely and it wasnt until auto and idol explained the millions in honor debt that their accounts carry that he started to understand. Then he replied with “well this new feature should help with that”.
How? How will it help? Getting a copy of a 5* crew every 1 - 2 months helps in what way? One less cite required every 2 months? In a game that introduces ~500,000 honor debt each week???? ......yeah ok. Big help there. Thanks. But, you also have to keep in mind that those newly released crew that just injected half a million honor debt into your economy wont be available in crew retrieval, or portal, for 6 months or more.
Third part of my question (power creep in top tier crew)
Again, a snarky response from ben basically mocking why we would want power creep at the top tiers.
Ill try to explain it, f.o. burnham and braxton have been top five voyagers since release YEARS ago. What that means to a new player, is that no newly released crew will hold up to them, and they are the gold standard. For established rosters there is less and less of a reason for new crew acquisition, because once you have the best they are not going to be outperformed.
Autos suggestion about making squad rewards more relevant to encourage teamwork was a great suggestion. And Ben’s response was very telling of wrg/tp’s stance on things. Ben again tried to indicate that the economy tweaking that they are doing with this new feature will make credits more valuable, and therefore increase the relevancy of existing squad rewards. But, its very obvious that he again missed the main point of the suggestion, which was to encourage teamwork among fleet mates. The current value of credits in squad rewards for a top 10 squad is comical when you look at what can be done with one ad doubled cadet mission on saturday. There is ZERO incentive for competition at the squad level. But according to ben, this feature will help that.
One for each Trait currently in the game, one for each skill and one for each rarity.
I may have imagined it, but I believe that was corrected in the video - ie rarity constellations can drop through scans.
Yes, I believe we have about a 1/900 chance of the constellation providing a rarity or skill polestar. Of course, the scan needs to be successful first, if we are lucky enough to get any constellation at all!
I am not sure if I would laugh or throw something if I got a grey common polestar.
Feels like the odds of a Tuesday pack on top of a Tuesday pack on top of a Tuesday pack.
No you are just misunderstanding things. This new feature is the best thing since voyages and you must worship its creator. /sarcasm
The intro pack gives you an uncommon and rare polestar, which aren't going to see much use.
Yeah. Exactly. I LOL’ed when Ben said they were considering removing the portal behold from the package offering of citations+begold for 40k honor during the honor sale “because crew retrieval will be in place”.
Kind of admitting outright that crew retrieval is a fancy dancy behold. Thats it and thats all.
I have a feeling we are all going to find out. Over and over and over.......
But I guess it will still be a huge disappointment for whoever pulls one of those
This feels overly complicated. My have to scan for constellations, which drop at random, to then convert the constellation into a polestar which will also be random from a more limited set. Then we can use the polestar to narrow the crew list. Why not just eliminate constellations? Let the scan yield polestars directly. It removes a step and an item type that serves no purpose but to get from A to C.
I would have also used merits rather than creating ISM. Did the game need a new currency just to pay to scan and convert constellations to polestars. Why not use merits and then add merits to the targets/rewards as needed to balance using this?
The requirement of 40 fleet members completing all daily tasks is really going to put a squeeze on fleets. Requiring 40 members to complete vs a total amount target means some members can't cover for others. If a fleet isn't exactly 50 and then has a couple people away for vacation it's going to risk missing the target. Right now fleets can cover for members and they don't need strict rules about playing every day and completing all targets. This is going to push fleets to start ejecting more players.
And instead of ISM/quantum or whatever, just cap it to 1 crew retrieval per month or something like that, if that whole other new currency was introduced just to be a gateway of sorts. Even then, more often that not, we'll be using 4 polestars and spending ~$5 million credits on a customized 'Tuesday pack' that will rely on RNG (after relying on RNG for scans, constellations and polestars) to actually acquire the 1 specific crew we are targeting. It might be crazy difficult to filter the pool down to a guaranteed choice of a single crew member.
All great ideas/insights.
The beauty of it, is they could have added a reroll feature to portal beholds that had one free re-roll then charged 100 dilithium, and could only be done 2x per behold (1 free, 2 @ 100dil each) and they could have made everyone happy, and accomplished more than this new “feature” does, for example:
their programmers would have been free to avoid adiragate (1.0 and 2.0), they could have qa/qc’ed the new 8.0 client (which requires a workaround to exit the event menu, and has gauntlet display issues) , they could have worked on the distress call that they have written but not designed, etc etc etc.
I mean the list goes on and on. Why they chose the seemingly most convoluted mess that they possibly could have just lacks all logic.
As it is, whoever made the call to go “all in” on crew retrieval effectively wasted all of their programmers time, and managed to cause a lot of irritation with the players. I dont have much faith in the people steering this ship.
Not quite. Rarity polestars only drop from rarity constellations, never from crew constellations. So if you get a constellation based on a 1* crew you won't have any chance of getting a Common polestar.
But if you get a rarity constellation you're just as likely to get a Common as the Legendary that you actually need. In fact, the odds of getting a Legendary polestar from a rarity constellation would seem to be 20%.