December 2017 Production Update
Admiral Prince
✭✭✭
Hello again, Captains,
It’s almost the end of the year, so I wanted to catch up with all of you. So what’s been going on over at Disruptor Beam?
Version 3.1 has just been released. It includes a bunch of improvements covering everything from Voyages (recalling Voyages with antimatter remaining will no longer fail), to UI fixes (no more phantom notification for ranking in Gauntlet) and loads a LOT faster!. You’ll be seeing even more fixes and enhancements in our next major client update.
Also, as part of the 3.1 update, STAR TREK TIMELINES is now available on the Amazon Appstore! This means if you’ve got a Kindle, or the Amazon Appstore loaded on your Android device, you can now install and play the game through Amazon.
Okay, now to the news you REALLY care about.
Extended Events
Other Improvements and Changes
There’s even more coming up for Timelines in the near future. Keep an eye out for more updates in January – that’s when we’ll hold the next Q&A, catch the mid-season premiere Star Trek: Discovery – and oh yeah... we have our second anniversary coming up! January’s going to be awesome.
Thank you for being the best players out there. Happy Holidays.
Admiral Prince,
Game Director, STAR TREK TIMELINES
It’s almost the end of the year, so I wanted to catch up with all of you. So what’s been going on over at Disruptor Beam?
Version 3.1 has just been released. It includes a bunch of improvements covering everything from Voyages (recalling Voyages with antimatter remaining will no longer fail), to UI fixes (no more phantom notification for ranking in Gauntlet) and loads a LOT faster!. You’ll be seeing even more fixes and enhancements in our next major client update.
Also, as part of the 3.1 update, STAR TREK TIMELINES is now available on the Amazon Appstore! This means if you’ve got a Kindle, or the Amazon Appstore loaded on your Android device, you can now install and play the game through Amazon.
Okay, now to the news you REALLY care about.
Extended Events
- We heard your feedback regarding extended events over holidays. They can feel extra grindy and you’re not getting additional rewards. So we’re going to try something new. We’re not changing the schedule, but what we can do is give you additional threshold rewards you can unlock. What this means is that while it will take a little longer to unlock rewards, you’ll also have more rewards to unlock along the way. This will only apply to the last 2 events during the Mirror Universe Mega-Event. Try it out and let us know what you think.
Other Improvements and Changes
- We’re still working on an overhaul of Cryostasis which includes the ability to sort and search for crew. I was hoping to be able to get it out to you before the end of the year, but there’s still more UI work we need to do. We’re targeting the next major client update for this upgrade.
- Heads up -- we’re going to be rebalancing the Voyages loot table. This will be the first change since the feature launched. We’ll have more details about this later, but these are small adjustments and not drastic changes. You’ll earn slightly fewer Chronitons and Trainers, but you’ll earn a little more Credits, and have a greater chance of getting crew (including all-new Voyages-exclusive crew). Stay tuned.
- We will be updating the Gauntlet-exclusive crew sometime after the New Year. Although I won’t name the new crew now, we did take a forum suggestion for this one.
- Kahless will be leaving the Honor Hall to make room for a new crew member that many of you have been asking for. This will also take place sometime after the New Year, and we’ll be sure to give you at least a week’s notice before making the change.
There’s even more coming up for Timelines in the near future. Keep an eye out for more updates in January – that’s when we’ll hold the next Q&A, catch the mid-season premiere Star Trek: Discovery – and oh yeah... we have our second anniversary coming up! January’s going to be awesome.
Thank you for being the best players out there. Happy Holidays.
Admiral Prince,
Game Director, STAR TREK TIMELINES
7
Comments
1000 times THANK YOU! A lot of us end up grinding WAY past the threshold rewards to rank higher and it can feel like a waste. I love this!
Other Improvements and Changes:
"You’ll earn slightly fewer Chronitons and Trainers, but you’ll earn a little more Credits, and have a greater chance of getting crew (including all-new Voyages-exclusive crew)"
I thought you said IMPROVEMENTS? Less Chronitons is not a good thing at all...
*** Sidenote: Thank you for giving a rough timeline regarding Gauntlet Character/Honor Hall changes!
Can't ever have anything nice here without the nerf bat coming along.
The threshold sounds like addressing a different concern rather than the actual event length and though a welcome change even temporarily, comes off as tone-deaf. (threshold reward extensions beyond what we get now has been a request for a while but not in this context)
Some of the rest sounds great (cryostats sort), probably time for the new character in the honor hall, etc.
Now the easier chance at the Voyage specific crew sounds intriguing but with my experience of how rare it can be now, you can improve the odds a good deal and it will still not be worth dilithium to extend on that chance alone.
Thanks for adding the additional thresholds this will be a nice change. It would be great if you could do both (add the thresholds and shorten the schedule but at least a positive change is being made).
Less chrons on voyages isn't great unless the extra crew are super rare or better. If it is additional one and 2 star crew this won't really be an improvement IMO.
Any chance we will see the stats for the new Honor Hall character before Kahless leaves? I'd love to be able to have the info so I can decide if I want to push for him or the new character.
Second Star to the Right - Join Today!
I know right! I only run voyages for Chrons. Everything else is just icing on the cake. Reducing the chrons reduces my willingness to extend voyages.
If you didn't see this nerf coming from a mile away, you weren't paying attention.
Also, in addition to increased credits (meh) there are increased crew drops means more honor which I value MUCH more highly than Chrons.
We don't want extended events during holidays because we want to enjoy the holidays, not grind STT. So you keep the extended events and alter the reward structure so we have to play even longer. Yeah, the person who came up with that should have the good graces to immediately resign.
Reducing chrons in Voyages... well, there goes my reason for even doing Voyages.
Sorting the Cryostasis vault... why couldn't you have gotten that right in the first place? Why are crew randomly thrown in? Why not something soooo simple like, um, arranged by series?
All I can say is... you just keep getting it wrong and bank on being the only Star Trek game in town.
What a wonderful Christmas present, Aunt Erin! I'm constantly short of trainers and chrons, and I've been soooooo worried the same might happen to my credits. I'm already down to 26 million credits as it is since voyages were released. It is so comforting this time of year to know that downhill spiral will soon come to an end.
Is bad news.
Hi. Thanks for demonstrating what a troll you are. Thanks for calling. Have a nice day.
Please, all of you understand that everyone in this game is facing their own bottleneck. That's part of what makes it fun.
We're in the middle of a Terran Mega-Event, this is neither the time nor the place for civility!!
(Sorry, trying to inject humour is how I deal with conflict)
Captain level 50, approaching 100 immortals
All you need to know about Disruptor Beam
I remember when people used to clamor for the 1000-chron pack before a Galaxy event to get a boost, and now those same people who would pay cold hard cash for the pack can just knock that out in a day or two of Voyages. The amount of chrons people can get on a voyage has to be cutting into their sale of chron packs, and that's not good for the bottom line.
I agree, but I'd inject a small note; with increased crew chance more chrons will be required for levelling. This would have alleviated the bottom line delta whilst encouraging more use of Voyages.
Captain level 50, approaching 100 immortals
All you need to know about Disruptor Beam
- More threshold rewards on extended events. This is a good move. I like shorter events overall (especially when there's a galaxy component!) but I understand DB has some scheduling realities around the holidays too. More rewards are a nice way to compensate for extra effort.
- Cryostasis improvements. It's a shame this is delayed, but it's good that it's coming.
- Re-balancing voyages. Wait and see, because the devil is in the details here. In theory, an increase in credits and a decrease in chrons makes sense (he says as a credit-poor player). I like a bunch of chrons as much as the next guy, but the balance has always been a little bit goofy here and I understand the desire to adjust it. One thing, though: the idea that this is the first re-balancing is not at all consistent with my personal experience as a player or the experience of any player I've discussed this with; at launch I got way more crew from Voyages than I do now. If this re-balance results in more crew dropping, that will be a nice bonus.
- Gauntlet crew update. Awesome, we're about due.
- Honour Hall crew update. Also awesome. We've had a long window of opportunity to land Kahless now, and it would be cool to see someone else pop up there. Looking forward to it. Also: the week's notice is a good thing, and this advance notice is a very good thing. Gives holdouts a chance to get him before he's gone.
(I also never understand how people can run out of credits... I can only assume it's through overuse of the replicator or buying too many packs or something.)
Voyage-exclusive crew also don't excite me as they're far too hard to get, and any 1/4 is seldom worth keeping anyway.
Less chronitons is bad
More chronitons are good.
More credits are good.
So.. I'm with the apparent majority here, please don't Nerf chroniton drops.
However !
Constructive suggestion if you do ignore the pleas of the people, And you do as you say your going to I think the people could live with these changes IF you ALSO..
A) Reduce the return / recall time by a triple percent versus chroniton reduction percent.
So if you reduce chronitons by 5% then recall time should be 15% lowered.
Literally no one has come on the forums asking for more casings or basic databases in the Voyages. Swap in faction only items to the random part drops. 2* science, blood wine and Holo programs. These again should only replace -existing part drops-
I think, if you made these changes as well it could be something everyone could give a fair shot to.
In it's stead,
Please leave or raise the chronitons, leave the credits and reduce the basic item drops.
I think losing those in exchange for raised odds on characters would be something everyone could live with, but this is just my opinion and I claim to speak for no one but myself. (And my wife who also plays)
For what it's worth, if it adds weight
We're both vip 11
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I do like the idea of more character drops.
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I think if you were specific with the people about percentages for raises and lowerings you may get a better reaction.
(Lol or a far worse one pending how bad your gonna gash us)
Yeah, thanx. The extra time MIGHT have given me a chance to finish the ORIGINAL threshold. Adding stuff kind of is a big slap in the face to the people the extended time was originally meant to help.....
Scott
Not sure I like the idea of reduced chronitons from Voyages but if the other things increase to somehow balance it out, worth a shot.
Disappointed the events schedule isn't getting any changes. DB really needs to do away with these extended events, tho I welcome added gameplay rewards. Instead of making events stretch out over an extra day whenever a major US holiday hits, or having so many week after week, try having 2 a month and give us time to work on existing crew.
IIRC you have like 200+ crew slots?
You'll soon be carving through events like many of the rest of us, then you'll be glad of the extra thresholds.
Also the extra time on the event wasn't for you (although I'm delighted it was helpful to you!), it was so DB staff could have a day off, lazy Ferengi that they are!
Captain level 50, approaching 100 immortals
All you need to know about Disruptor Beam
Keep your additional credits, and leave the chrons alone. K thanks bye.