Options
Faction events just not worth it any more
starkjudo
✭✭
in The Bridge
Anyone else feel this way? I'm not F2P, but I'm not a whale either. About 5 immortal legendary. I used to be able to hit 1000 - 1500, now I'm doing good around 3000. Thank Q for supply missions that I can save up chronitons for.
0
Comments
Other than that, yeah, having lots of boosts (thank god for the thursday challenge) is the way to go. Everyone who manages top 50 is using tons of time boosters. Between 150 and 1000, people use only skill boosts. I have developed a strategy where I try all my shuttles to be within 75 and 80% chance of success on events where I have good event crew and 66 and 75% for poor crew. Usually this evens out at 3/4 successes on the average and easily puts me between 250 and 650.
Hope this helps, best thing to do is not get disheartened
I feel exactly the same way.
Oh, what Kapitan Dobchan says is all correct but ultimately doesn't matter. The problem, for me, is that there are ~3000 players who have better crew than I do and who will just catch up with me even if I use kickstarting and boosts (besides, most of them will use kickstarting and all of them will use boosts - strategy doesn't make a difference if everyone is using the optimum strategy anyway). There's very little that I can do: even at the best of my strategy I end up with 200K VP, and that's not enough.
So yeah. That's the reason I prefer Galaxy events. Much fairer on low-VIP players.
I've got all the mirror characters right now except Mirror Kirk (except the new crew from the event as I don't buy event packs if at all possible), and all that I've got are FE.
Galaxies are better for lower invested players, as you can compensate for not having a deep crew by just hoarding chrons for an extended period.
I have zero immortal legendaries and I'm sitting in 400th, so your are obviously doing something seriously wrong or you are not putting in the required effort to succeed. Try adopting some of the new strategies and sending shuttles overnight, you may have more success.
Absolutely not joking.
I agree that the chroniton offer is the pay-to-win option, but you can pay to win during shuttle events, so we there's no way shuttle events are more fair than galaxy.
As for the 3K chronitons... yeah. Last time I seriously tried I used 7000+ and ended up with a Legendary crew. Without buying chronitons, without spending money.
Agreed. There are things you can do if you just think about it
I personally find that Galaxy is way more pay-to-win than Faction. On faction, you can farm the thursdays with a bit of dilthium, while on Galaxy, it's all about dumping cash for the 5xChroniton offers. I honestly don't know how DB hasn't forced us to do 2xGalaxy and 2xFaction instead of the usual 3xFaction, 1xGalaxy per month (and mask it as "giving VIP0 players more chance"). I always skip Galaxy and do the bare minumum for the freebies. My hard-earned chronitons have better use... So many people to immortalize in the pipeline.
THIS! My alt account had zero 5/5 legendaries as well(until 3 weeks ago) and is making at least Top 300 every shuttle event(best was rank 61), with no money or dilithium use(not for packs, extra cadet tickets, boosts or anything).
Unfortunately this skews the results so DB thinks they're getting another sucker with the galaxy events, and more reason to push them ore, and push rewards out farther and add another day to the event.
I am however, glad you can manage to take advantage of the chron offer.
I'd say that chasing ranked rewards is what's really not worth it anymore, regardless of event format. As a non-whale, non-large fleet player, unfused Legendary & Super Rare cards are more burden than reward for me at this point. Getting new cards is nice but very rarely do they improve my crew in any significant way.
It's really a game of diminishing returns. Adjusting play style and expectations is key.
I like faction event since I in general don't have to spend resources/times as much as galaxy/expedition. Although galaxy events have its own problem:
1. You must check the game every 3 hours. The less shuttles you send, the less point you get.
2. Booster becoming a problem esp with certain skills like DIP/CMD/SEC. OTOH most players don't have good MED crews and having events with many MED skills prob bad.
2. Some people may need less or no sleep and can send shuttles every 3 hours
I don't complain here. I only explain. Those who pay make it so those who don't pay can play. I understand that it is biased to those who pay, but the supply missions make everyone closer to equal.
I've only just picked up 4 shuttles so I'll see how well I rank, if I can grab the top 1500 this might be worthwhile, depending on the crew. Top 1000 is likely out of reach for a while yet, even then it's only 1/5 so that's a difficult choice to make, whether to keep or not anyway.
Galaxy events do, on the other hand, provide at least one fully fused 4* crew, thus saving honor for other needed crew (heads up DB: all my spare honor is going on Med crew because I've only had ONE I've been able to fully fuse since I started playing - Bridge Officer Troi. One. That's one Med crew in the last 5 or 6 months. That **tsk tsk** DB that **tsk tsk**. That's a lot of new players suffering because you can't be bothered to add Med crew once every couple of months.
So, galaxy events have been a winner for me, especially since voyages. I sincerely hope they don't get nerfed too badly because the game will just become frustrating again. No Med crew and no way to get them.
But yeah. I don't like faction events because I need my honor elsewhere. There's just no easy way to get ahead in this game without spending vast quantities of cash, and that's a bit sad. I have computer games that have lasted me well for years, and I don't have to spend oodles of money to win them.
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
And yet, the reward structure remains the same. Even if you account for when DB took out the incentive to "tank" to get the 4/4, rather than the 1/5 (thus theoretically increasing the number of capable players going for the top 1000), that was over a year ago, and today there are certainly "X * 2" players than at the outset. Ergo, it's easily time to fix things so that what is currently a Top 1000 reward goes to the top 2000; what is top 1500 (FF 4/4 crew) goes to the top 3000; and so on, down the line.
DB has shown a willingness to "balance" elements of the game -- sometimes for the good, sometimes for their own pockets -- but their silence is deafening on the issue of getting rank rewards back in line with player participation levels. And it's not like it hasn't been brought up a ton, either.
Per usual, when DB is silent about something that's widely discussed, you can probably just assume it's because if they DID answer, it would be "Nope, nothing's changing." Boo.
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
I feel like faction favors the players that have spend a lot of time building and collecting crew. Galaxy someone could start tmrw buy the packs buy the chrons and rank very well. Faction they would have to buy 2 shuttles, event crew, and take a bunch of pulls off the portal. Then level the crew.
I also have just 5 immortal legendary but always rank top 1000. It took me 9 months of play as a moderate spender to rank consistently.
Event bonus crew is waaay more important than legendary. With bonus a rare crew member has the potential to beat a legendary for usefulness. I usually have at least 8 per event. Last couple events I had the event crew done before event.
Love how I can still develop new crew during event because I’m not using all my chrons. Only have to log on 6 times a day for 5 mins, so nice and easy.
You have 4 more immortal legendaries than I have. I am slightly annoyed that I have to work to maintain a top 650 finish. I guess I should've thawed out EV Tucker but I didn't.
Well it's a real catch-22, isn't it? Once you stop collecting crew, your rank is obviously going to drop in future events. I don't have much in the way of 5*s in this event, just a 1/5 North Star Tucker, Mirror Spock, and Mirror Bashir. I do, however, have all 16 4* event crew and I use all of them on shuttles other than Mirror Jadzia, who is just 1/4. Faction events are all about event crew. Keep them and level them because they will be useful some day.
I have Mirror Tucker immortalized and 26 other bonus crew. They are mostly Mirror crew with a few Data’s, Tucker’s, and Vic tossed in. All the 4* are immortalized. I’m currently sitting at 650. My shuttles are 100% bonus crew. I even have some that have not made it onto a shuttle. 1/5 FE Mirror Kirk and 4/4 Mirror Sisko for example.
After two years the game just has large number of players with lots of immortalized event crew. If you do not keep up it will be hard to crack the top 1000 unless the change the event format.
I'd love to know how you manage this if you don't use dilithium at all or boosts, like I really want to know. Because I have a lot of immortal legendaries, at least 10, and I don't break 1000 in faction events. Granted I don't try in many of them because they don't have crew I want. But even a few weeks back when Leo came out, I pushed my hardest for it but I couldn't make the top 1000. And I don't use dilithium for speed-ups either, I also very rarely use boosts.
So what is it that you do differently than I do?
Captain of the voyage vessels: Queen of Bashir, Landsknecht, and Sunspear, the first luxury starship cruiseliners.
Amenities include wifi, fully-functioning holodecks, a full-service bar, 3 party decks, a Trill spa, and a business centre.
Fun fact: The ships are propelled by bouncy castle technology.
Well I must say that I use a boost on almost every shuttle, but you don't need to pay anything to do that. This event is a nice opportunity to use a big stockpile of eng boosts. I sometimes run out of dip/cmd/sec boosts, but not this week.
For starters, I use the quick start to get to 4000 VP immediately. You probably do that. I also discard any 5 crew shuttles and some 4 crew shuttles. I look for ones where my boost is used on a primary skill multiple times. I've been getting about 85% success by doing that. Most importantly, I set alarms every 3 hours and don't miss any shuttles. There is no substitution for that, you have to do it if you want top 1000 in my opinion.
I'm not interested in the current week's event. But I definitely want a Mirror Bev from the next event, she's one of my fave ST characters (Bev, not specifically Mirror Bev). However next week is only a little faction, the other half is expedition.
What is "quick start?" is that the use of the time boosts to get through the beginning shuttles? If so, I don't always do that. I don't seem to get a lot of time boosts. I haven't tried the shuttle discard, but I will try that out and look for multi-hit shuttles where a boost can really amp things up.
The whole every three hour thing though, isn't so feasible when you're not alone. I'll be spending most of next week with my bf and his family, I can't be waking everyone up at my whim through alarms to play the game. Hopefully I can supplement what I can't make in the shuttles with the expedition part.
Thanks for the insight.
Captain of the voyage vessels: Queen of Bashir, Landsknecht, and Sunspear, the first luxury starship cruiseliners.
Amenities include wifi, fully-functioning holodecks, a full-service bar, 3 party decks, a Trill spa, and a business centre.
Fun fact: The ships are propelled by bouncy castle technology.
As a consideration for future Mirror Faction events ...
1/4 Mirror Jadzia Dax has a higher SEC base than 4/4 Mirror K'Ehleyr for example ... I'd consider putting Jadzia in a SEC slot and then getting a SEC boost onto that shuttle ... e.g. I've been using Jadzia each time (but only have 10 mirror crew) and she pairs really well with e.g. Mirror Tucker in a ENG/SEC slot, Jazdia in SEC and then a SEC boost.
As for event types:
Faction
My crew is pretty meh, but I manage to do okay during these events. My main hurdle to ranking high is that usually I'll have 1.5 days during the event where I cannot send shuttles out on the dot every 3 hours (so sending out 2-3 batches and not 5-6). Also, I send shuttles out for 9 hrs overnight and do not wake up every 3 hours ... I'm sure this hurts my final ranking but I'm okay with it.
I might make top 1500 this time around but am usually top 2500.
I enjoy this event type as it does not require too much attention and I can usually pick up the threshold rewards I want.
Galaxy
I do not like playing them, but I love the reward structure where we get the community rewards ... as a non-paying player this is one of the very limited sources I have to getting 10x premium packs ... and it allows me to FF one 4* (at least).
As far as ditching 1/4 event crew ... I used to do it, but I wouldn't anymore now. Not only will they be of benefit the next time the event comes around, but there are now a lot more sources to get 4* crew (Merit buys, Voyages) and they will eventually be added to the crew pool for those.
The kick start is opening 10 missions for each faction right off then run 10 missions from faction terran empire open 10 more from terran empire run those with 3 star time boost those are instant complete shuttles
And run the last 20 the display will read 1 he 30 minutes but when you hit send it'll be those 1 minute shuttles you opened at the start. Congrats you are now at 4k co shuttles running with the big dogs now
I had a few boosts left over so I am hoping to stay above top 1000.
It does **tsk tsk** tbh how one bad shuttle runs can ruin the whole weekend!!
NB: I have a pretty decent crew (5/5 Mirror Data (being Shared by my squad leader), 2/5* Mirror Data FE, 3/5 Mirror Picard FE, Mirror Tucker, FFFE, Mirror Jadzia FFFE, Mirror Sato FFFE, Mirror Spock FFFE Detecitve Data 1/5* FE, Romulan Data 1/5* FE etc.
I am just reliant heavily on the RNDjesus being kind.
Jim
I know that was directed at someone else, but I hope you don't mind me chiming in, as I'm in the same boat as him in the results area.
When you know you are going to not be able to check into the game for a while the 9 hour double reward boosts are very handy. I did those over a weekend when I was in the woods for 1 1/2 days of a 4 day event at my in-laws cabin that I could only get signal when I walked out onto the ridge up the path, and managed to salvage that event with a barely under the wire 1000 ranking.
Really it doesn't matter how many legendaries you have, if you have enough 4* bonus/event crew. And 1/5 bonus legendary will beat some 5/5 non bonus legendaries.
That's why for a long time my dil went to crew slots, back when I was monthly card only. (And of course I got some more slots when the super deals came out and I got packs on sale etc from VIP). But it has allowed me to recruit an indepth crew where I'm at least partially prepared for any event crew combination. Also when getting a behold, I always favor main crew unless there is someone I REALLY want, 'cause I know its going to be helpful in an event someday. (Unless its poor Archer, Kes or Scotty who haven't had one.)
The gold events for me are Sisko, Kira and Dax as I am so so so stacked on those characters. I'm usually screwed on Data and Riker events unless there are other mitigating factors like other bonus crew I'm stacked on, or like this mega, Mirrors counting, but I'm working on him.
This leads to a lot of chron spending, however, to increase my frozen count to be able to keep the 1/5, 1/4 and 2/4s that I picked up. Also meant for a while I did really really bad in galaxies. It's only recently that I've been able to get crew slot room enough to really devote time to hoarding chrons or pre-farming when a galaxy is announced.