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Crew slots
Peets
✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
I notice that a lot of players are having issues with the crew slots.
I thought I would share my view on how I handle the limited crew slots.
I actually enjoy the game more because of it but I doubt that I will have many followers.
Note: I spend money in the game. If you are not a spender for example the monthly dilithium then I fear this not for you. I agree it is a heavy burden then.
I keep track of the amount crew I have.
What I did first was complete the common, uncommon and rare crew.
Then when I got a few strong SR & Legends I started to freeze all my lower ones.
At the moment I have 325 crew slots and waiting for one more crew sale which will give me 65 more slots.
What I do now:
I keep my 50 strongest crew for voyages, arena, shuttles and gauntlet.
I have 329 SR + Legends (Meaning I have 325 slots, I have had to freeze 4 SR.)
At the moment I have 64 SR + Legends done, which means I have 14 slots free.
At the moment I am upgrading 52 crew which I have max stars. Which means in the future 52 extra crew slots.
When the next crew slot happens I'm going to upgrade my strongest crew from 50 to 100.
Since my free spots are low, I'm now going to airlock all my SR I receive from voyage which I don't have a star yet.
All the crew I receive from events and from the campaign, I keep. I also never airlock a legend.
So I have almost 5 weeks left now without problems. But I will probably complete a few of my 52 upgrading crew.
I also stopped opening Premium awards and merit pulls until the next crew slot sales or when my free slots get to 20. That's my 'magic' number.
I thought I would share my view on how I handle the limited crew slots.
I actually enjoy the game more because of it but I doubt that I will have many followers.
Note: I spend money in the game. If you are not a spender for example the monthly dilithium then I fear this not for you. I agree it is a heavy burden then.
I keep track of the amount crew I have.
What I did first was complete the common, uncommon and rare crew.
Then when I got a few strong SR & Legends I started to freeze all my lower ones.
At the moment I have 325 crew slots and waiting for one more crew sale which will give me 65 more slots.
What I do now:
I keep my 50 strongest crew for voyages, arena, shuttles and gauntlet.
I have 329 SR + Legends (Meaning I have 325 slots, I have had to freeze 4 SR.)
At the moment I have 64 SR + Legends done, which means I have 14 slots free.
At the moment I am upgrading 52 crew which I have max stars. Which means in the future 52 extra crew slots.
When the next crew slot happens I'm going to upgrade my strongest crew from 50 to 100.
Since my free spots are low, I'm now going to airlock all my SR I receive from voyage which I don't have a star yet.
All the crew I receive from events and from the campaign, I keep. I also never airlock a legend.
So I have almost 5 weeks left now without problems. But I will probably complete a few of my 52 upgrading crew.
I also stopped opening Premium awards and merit pulls until the next crew slot sales or when my free slots get to 20. That's my 'magic' number.
2
Comments
All 4* crew automatically go to the freezer once IMed.
All to keep just a few open clots in the crew quarters.
I think a good compromise would be do decrease the merit cost of thawing crew from the Vault.
Better yet would be to permanently reduce the cost of crew slots by 50%.
I've used so many cites on crap crew just to freeze them
195? Wow! That's huge bad luck with beholds.
You'll hard choice to pick which crew to retrieve.
Crew management has always been part of the game to me, one I enjoy. Whether it makes financial sense for DB to limit crew space is another matter entirely.
I = Peets. I was summarizing your own post. That 195 is what you have given the numbers you mentioned. Maybe I misinterpreted your number, but the general point is you're carrying more non-ff crew than most people have crew slots, and you're still struggling. Your entire post read like a #FirstWorldProblem. Your advise is nice, but doesn't even touch on the scale of the issue the rest of us have.
That is not a lot, but if you don't have the space, then it is fine.
The best crew for gauntlet are not the best crew for shuttles and voyages.
For voyages you want a minimum of 36 crew, all three skillers. You want one of each primary/secondary skill combo (30 crew) plus one extra of each primary skill. Try and choose at least two of these to have a 400% instantaneous damage bonus for use in arena and skirmish events.
Outside of shuttle events, put your best crew into voyages, and then crew your shuttles.
But I'm not struggling, I'm actually enjoying the limited crew spots.
I'll never have any issues if I keep following my system.
I'm going to 100 soon when I have my extra crew slots with the next sale
At the moment my top gauntlet crew can be use for voyage and shuttles but that will indeed change in the future. But then I'll have 100 slots for my strongest crew.
When I'm going to freeze a crew, I check if I don't use it for Arena and the voyage/gauntlet ranking in the Idol Datacore analysis.
I don't know why WRG lets this stand. It affects so many areas of my gameplay - I don't care to compete in events because it will just saddle me with another 5* crew that's stuck on my roster and taking up a slot, I don't care to buy most weekly LTO's again for the same reason, etc.
It really needs to be looked at...I've long suggested that they begin putting older (year 1 and 2) 5* crew into voyages so that people can start immortalizing them and moving them into the freezer. Heck, a lot of these older crew are probably no better than the modern 4* crew being released, so what's the big deal?
Making crew slots so limited makes players desperate to freeze crew which encourages buying offers, packs, citations, etc. Before they overwhelmed us with collections there was really no reason to fuse up a bad card other than to get them out of your active roster, if you had infinite slots you'd just keep those 3/5 around indefinitely.
Now that most crew are in a collection there's more of a reason to immortalize them, but there still seem to be a lot of players who aren't chasing every collection, but also don't want to airlock a gold they've already put resources into acquiring and possibly leveling.
That's true, but it also causes other issues that I noted...people not wanting to compete in events (probably the most interesting thing left in this game for long term players), people not wanting to collect new crew (ie. buy LTOs or other special offers) and just general frustration with the game. I guess it's a constant balance for WRG what drives people to keeping paying but not get so frustrated that they leave.
Unfortunately, Ben's last Q+A on Timelines Talks pretty resolutely put this idea to rest.
Historically the explanation we have been given is that crew slots are limited because of the server load when looking up crew stats.
So my suggestion is to bake immortalised stats client side (but ensure that the server won't rely on these anyway when sending shuttles, for example) and then make it so that immortalised crew do not take up a slot.
What happens with existing slots? Either keep them as they are, or reduce the base number people have. However, don't want to create an additional bottleneck for newbies, so maybe best to leave it as it is.
What happens to cryo? It can still exist, some people will still use up all of their slots, or put decrepit cards on ice permanently (looking at you Shinzon!)
I personally refuse to spend money (dilithium) on crew slots, beyond the few initial discounted tiers of slots.
From WRG's perspective, I actually think trying to milk players to spend on crew slots is counter-intuitive. Buying crew slots is a single purchase via a process that frustrates players, devalues crew, and demotivates players from participating in the game. If players were regularly given additional free crew slots to house a much higher percentage of crew, I think it would improve the gaming experience and build goodwill with players. Beyond that, I think having more crew slots to work with would actually wind up enticing players to spend more money in the long-run, whether it's buying crew packs, buying citations, spending to speed up crew retrieval, buying various packs to help improve event ranking, buying weekly featured crew, buying crew double-up packs, etc...
People have paid real world money for extra slots, buying and spending dilithium, and increasing their VIP status. If WRG get rid on slots, it will make Picard Gate look like a day on Risa. The people it will upset the most, are those that have paid the most money.
Hence WRG are tied into the current model.
For the past two years, I've maintained a pretty good equilibrium of new crew obtained to purples completed to free slots. I'm slowly creeping up, but at a rate that would take years to close.
Thing is, I have a low rate of acquiring citations, so I only go after legendaries I really want. If I played harder I'd start closing my gap much faster.
Getting to the point I could dump all blue/green/gray cards helped a lot. But the real lift was having enough FF and 4/5 legendaries that I could freeze most of my purples.
Starport
Unfortunately there is no easy way for them to go and make crew slots unlimited now without pissing off way too many people. It would be a classic unforced error that the same people asking for crew slots would complain about in any other context.
I suspect this is a moot point though and they're not making any changes.
My voyages are full but rarely with FF/FE crew. Same with the arena, I have zero two or three star crew in my roster, all are frozen.
As my main purpose is collecting I won’t airlock anything except duplicates. I have very rarely tried new pulls nor bought the offers because I lack the space to put them.
I would love to see crew slots in the dabo wheel and as prizes in events, voyages and gauntlet or just made less expensive.
I still love the game but the enjoyment of it is much less for me because of this bottleneck that should not be a problem in a game that has been around this long.
Provided they do not have an issue with slots anymore.
IIRC i've suggested this before, but what if we could take *just* 1/5 crew and send them off somewhere that acts like the vault, but gives some small amount of a resource? like, if you send a 1/5 off to that place - let's just call it "rura penthe" - you get, say, 1 more quantum per day for each one sent off, in exchange for not being able to use the crew until you recall them?
For 1-3/5 crew it's not that you lose access to them, it's that you free the crew slot from a crew that is never being used.
I just started rewatching DS9 and it reminded me I have Kai Opaka on my crew. I've had her for years. But I never use her and don't even think about her sitting there in a sea of 1/5.
Just in time. My project of finishing the 3* Crew was getting me dancing right around the cap on my Quarters.