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Comparing Voyages Before and After 12/18 Changes - a.k.a. The Voyage Nerf
{DD} Capt Jello
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I posted most of this in one of the many Voyage "nerf" complaint threads going on, but felt it required it's own thread for discussion and comparison. I have added to the original post with more data and thoughts below. Take from it what you want as this is just one person's data thoroughly logged to make an accurate comparison, or at least a true observation...
Well, I'm here to somewhat defend Voyages again. I have logged 107 Voyages before the change on 12/18, and now have 7 Voyages after. I picked at random 7 matching times before the change that match up with the Voyages after the change. Here is the overall comparison of these 14 Voyages:
Note: I adjusted the credits to fit on the graph neatly, so multiply by 100 to get the correct credits (330,500 before and 431,700 after).
While there is a nerf of chrons by about 20%, an increase in credits by 25%, and an increase in trainers by 90%, it really is not as bad that all those threads are making it out to be. 1* crew seems to have all but disappeared, but 4* crew (for me) has increased, though I have not hit any of the Voyage-specific crew yet through Dilemmas. And a lot of what I get from this point isn't going to help much, but just be airlock fodder - these 114 Voyages along with 10x and 15x pack offers, I am down to 14 4* crew I don't have, 8 of which don't drop in Voyages. Trainers are subjective depending on who you're talking to - great for new players, junk for older players. Hopefully something will be done by DB to add a trading post or replicator muncher that we can convert useless trainers, schematics, and items we have more than 200 of into credits, merits, or even chrons.
So getting back to the chrons... yes chrons are what Voyages are all about for many. Anything additional is just that - additional items you didn't have before the Voyage. Extending a Voyage guarantees nothing but chrons, credits, and honor - and a varying ratio of them. People think they're "buying" 4* crew by paying for and using dilithium to extend a Voyage. If you're expecting 4* crew, you're deluding yourself. Don't expect it - but when it happens, be happy about it!
Since the 12/18 change, chrons have dropped by 20% or so, but still Voyages are more lucrative than anything else in the game to get chrons, and I believe still worth 1 or 2 revives (about 180-200 dil) for the extra chrons. I see people here saying "Well DB took the reason for doing Voyages away by nerfing chrons, so I won't be reviving anymore". On the 20h Voyage I show below, I ran out of AM at 7h 23m and had 225 chrons. I revived for 89 dil and at 9h 40m i had 537 chrons (312 for 89 dil). I revived for 117 dil and at 11h 56m I had 762 dil (225 for 117 dil). This is usually where I recall, so for this Voyage, 206 dil got me an extra 537 chrons - still much better than buying 2 ticket refresh on M/W/F for 300 dil to get only 300 chrons. If I do 1 Voyage with 2 revives a day for 1 week, that's about 1400 dil for 3,750 chrons (vs 1500 dil for 1350 chrons if you do 3 ticket refreshes on M/W/F for 150/150/200 dil 3 times a week).
You will also see diminishing returns on chrons after 2-3 revives as you spend more dil, but don't get more chrons in relation to the curve. As shown above, after the first 2 revives, for 206 dil I got 537 chrons (2.6:1). The next 4 revives I spent 740 dil and I got only 765 chrons (1.03:1). The only thing you do by extending past the first 2 revives is increase your chance ever-so-"slightly" to get a voyage-only crew drop from a Dilemma, and MAYBE some random 4* loot box drops - but again, don't expect this.
I haven't seen a free timer chron in awhile since I don't spend my Voyage chrons all the way down below 180, either saving for events or I'm not able to hit crew hard for items because I am low on credits. Anyway, the free chron timer gives you 1 chron every 6 minutes if you're not over your max. This is 10 per hour, or 240 over 24 hours if you use them accordingly before you max. This is 0.16 chrons per minute. Voyages before the change ranged from 0.74 to 1.62. Since the change the 7 voyages range from 0.91 to 1.2 chrons per minute - this is still 6 to 8 times more than waiting for the timer.
Also remember that chrons and honor will fluctuate depending on the Dilemmas you encounter. If you have 3 Dilemmas in a 7h voyage and they're all 30/30/2*, that's 90 chrons. If those 3 are 100/75/4*, that's 225 chrons - a BIG difference in both honor and chrons. You hope for the 4*, but there are 17 2* Dilemmas and only 8 4* Dilemmas (see this post for Dilemma stats)
I happened to do a 20h Voyage just before the change, mostly by accident as I kept missing the recall. I also just did a 20 hour Voyage for the achievement. So I can compare these two as well. After the 20h Voyage, I ended up with (8) 4* crew, 3 of which were from dilemmas. So having 5 drop from random loot boxes ( and 1 3* ), this has been the most crew dropped random for me since the change. I have seen (1) 1* crew in the last 8 Voyages - used to avg 2 or 3 per Voyage along with additional 2* and 3* crew. More than half my Voyage honor used to come from airlocked crew. Here's a comparison chart - I did not include credits on this, but the before dropped 74,900 and the after dropped 112,300.
I have other individual graphs comparing other like-time Voyages - one for a 13½ hour and 5 in the 11 hour range. I haven't done any non-revive Voyages. However, Peachtree stated in the other nerf thread that all my comparison Voyages have revives and averaged 13 hours which is not a true representation for the non-revival Voyage Runners. Thankfully I keep all screenshots of my revives to keep track of dilithium spent. I make sure to show the chrons in the shot so I can compare chrons vs dilithium spent later. So, here's a comparison chart of equal time Voyages at the revival with the chron count... sorry, I don't have honor, credits, or crew in this data:
And here's the combined total of the data above:
This shows that the decrease is "slightly" bigger [catch what I'm saying?] at 25% if you do not revive your Voyage. But this is still 0.74 chrons/min vs the 0.16 for the free timer chrons - 4.5x more (or in addition to).
Another useful item to remember is to utilize supply kits which will give you an added 25% bonus to all your chrons!
Bottom line, while this change can be considered a nerf and the difference will add up over time with losing 20% of the chrons (or 25% with no revives), it will still add up over time to give you more chrons than you'll ever get by other means. Also for revivers, consider the increase in 2* items after reviving - my data shows a 35% increase (202 more). These 2* components would cost you chrons to get. While many will build up and not get used so often, others will be needed all the time (2* casings, databases, alcohol, etc). Even a low-ball average of 5 chrons per 2* item would be a savings of 1010 chrons that you don't have to spend. The one thing I would have liked to see was a bigger increase in credits (at least double, not just 25%), but again this is a personal issue as everyone's situation is different. Some people are sitting on 15 million credits while others don't have enough to build the 4*/5* items that can cost as much as 120k to build with all the sub-items.
I will continue to track my Voyages and share more data in the future. As always, you can see the raw data in my GDocs Sheet.
Happy New Year!
Well, I'm here to somewhat defend Voyages again. I have logged 107 Voyages before the change on 12/18, and now have 7 Voyages after. I picked at random 7 matching times before the change that match up with the Voyages after the change. Here is the overall comparison of these 14 Voyages:
Note: I adjusted the credits to fit on the graph neatly, so multiply by 100 to get the correct credits (330,500 before and 431,700 after).
While there is a nerf of chrons by about 20%, an increase in credits by 25%, and an increase in trainers by 90%, it really is not as bad that all those threads are making it out to be. 1* crew seems to have all but disappeared, but 4* crew (for me) has increased, though I have not hit any of the Voyage-specific crew yet through Dilemmas. And a lot of what I get from this point isn't going to help much, but just be airlock fodder - these 114 Voyages along with 10x and 15x pack offers, I am down to 14 4* crew I don't have, 8 of which don't drop in Voyages. Trainers are subjective depending on who you're talking to - great for new players, junk for older players. Hopefully something will be done by DB to add a trading post or replicator muncher that we can convert useless trainers, schematics, and items we have more than 200 of into credits, merits, or even chrons.
So getting back to the chrons... yes chrons are what Voyages are all about for many. Anything additional is just that - additional items you didn't have before the Voyage. Extending a Voyage guarantees nothing but chrons, credits, and honor - and a varying ratio of them. People think they're "buying" 4* crew by paying for and using dilithium to extend a Voyage. If you're expecting 4* crew, you're deluding yourself. Don't expect it - but when it happens, be happy about it!
Since the 12/18 change, chrons have dropped by 20% or so, but still Voyages are more lucrative than anything else in the game to get chrons, and I believe still worth 1 or 2 revives (about 180-200 dil) for the extra chrons. I see people here saying "Well DB took the reason for doing Voyages away by nerfing chrons, so I won't be reviving anymore". On the 20h Voyage I show below, I ran out of AM at 7h 23m and had 225 chrons. I revived for 89 dil and at 9h 40m i had 537 chrons (312 for 89 dil). I revived for 117 dil and at 11h 56m I had 762 dil (225 for 117 dil). This is usually where I recall, so for this Voyage, 206 dil got me an extra 537 chrons - still much better than buying 2 ticket refresh on M/W/F for 300 dil to get only 300 chrons. If I do 1 Voyage with 2 revives a day for 1 week, that's about 1400 dil for 3,750 chrons (vs 1500 dil for 1350 chrons if you do 3 ticket refreshes on M/W/F for 150/150/200 dil 3 times a week).
You will also see diminishing returns on chrons after 2-3 revives as you spend more dil, but don't get more chrons in relation to the curve. As shown above, after the first 2 revives, for 206 dil I got 537 chrons (2.6:1). The next 4 revives I spent 740 dil and I got only 765 chrons (1.03:1). The only thing you do by extending past the first 2 revives is increase your chance ever-so-"slightly" to get a voyage-only crew drop from a Dilemma, and MAYBE some random 4* loot box drops - but again, don't expect this.
I haven't seen a free timer chron in awhile since I don't spend my Voyage chrons all the way down below 180, either saving for events or I'm not able to hit crew hard for items because I am low on credits. Anyway, the free chron timer gives you 1 chron every 6 minutes if you're not over your max. This is 10 per hour, or 240 over 24 hours if you use them accordingly before you max. This is 0.16 chrons per minute. Voyages before the change ranged from 0.74 to 1.62. Since the change the 7 voyages range from 0.91 to 1.2 chrons per minute - this is still 6 to 8 times more than waiting for the timer.
Also remember that chrons and honor will fluctuate depending on the Dilemmas you encounter. If you have 3 Dilemmas in a 7h voyage and they're all 30/30/2*, that's 90 chrons. If those 3 are 100/75/4*, that's 225 chrons - a BIG difference in both honor and chrons. You hope for the 4*, but there are 17 2* Dilemmas and only 8 4* Dilemmas (see this post for Dilemma stats)
I happened to do a 20h Voyage just before the change, mostly by accident as I kept missing the recall. I also just did a 20 hour Voyage for the achievement. So I can compare these two as well. After the 20h Voyage, I ended up with (8) 4* crew, 3 of which were from dilemmas. So having 5 drop from random loot boxes ( and 1 3* ), this has been the most crew dropped random for me since the change. I have seen (1) 1* crew in the last 8 Voyages - used to avg 2 or 3 per Voyage along with additional 2* and 3* crew. More than half my Voyage honor used to come from airlocked crew. Here's a comparison chart - I did not include credits on this, but the before dropped 74,900 and the after dropped 112,300.
I have other individual graphs comparing other like-time Voyages - one for a 13½ hour and 5 in the 11 hour range. I haven't done any non-revive Voyages. However, Peachtree stated in the other nerf thread that all my comparison Voyages have revives and averaged 13 hours which is not a true representation for the non-revival Voyage Runners. Thankfully I keep all screenshots of my revives to keep track of dilithium spent. I make sure to show the chrons in the shot so I can compare chrons vs dilithium spent later. So, here's a comparison chart of equal time Voyages at the revival with the chron count... sorry, I don't have honor, credits, or crew in this data:
And here's the combined total of the data above:
This shows that the decrease is "slightly" bigger [catch what I'm saying?] at 25% if you do not revive your Voyage. But this is still 0.74 chrons/min vs the 0.16 for the free timer chrons - 4.5x more (or in addition to).
Another useful item to remember is to utilize supply kits which will give you an added 25% bonus to all your chrons!
Bottom line, while this change can be considered a nerf and the difference will add up over time with losing 20% of the chrons (or 25% with no revives), it will still add up over time to give you more chrons than you'll ever get by other means. Also for revivers, consider the increase in 2* items after reviving - my data shows a 35% increase (202 more). These 2* components would cost you chrons to get. While many will build up and not get used so often, others will be needed all the time (2* casings, databases, alcohol, etc). Even a low-ball average of 5 chrons per 2* item would be a savings of 1010 chrons that you don't have to spend. The one thing I would have liked to see was a bigger increase in credits (at least double, not just 25%), but again this is a personal issue as everyone's situation is different. Some people are sitting on 15 million credits while others don't have enough to build the 4*/5* items that can cost as much as 120k to build with all the sub-items.
I will continue to track my Voyages and share more data in the future. As always, you can see the raw data in my GDocs Sheet.
Happy New Year!
20
Comments
There were very limited options to acquire 4* crew before Voyages - pretty much events, free premium portal pulls from events or the gauntlet, or the ultra rare chance from a basic portal pull. Am I missing something?
Now there's not only what appears to be a random chance after ~6hrs, there's also dilemmas that drop 4* crew AND unique dilemma 4* crew. I seem to be picking up about one, maybe two a week with my usual 6-8 hour voyages - both before and after. Like all things RNG, some weeks are better than others.
Certainly not the end of the world...
Captain Jello wrote: »
On the 20h Voyage I show below, I ran out of AM at 7h 23m and had 225 chrons. I revived for 89 dil and at 9h 40m i had 537 chrons (312 for 89 dil). I revived for 117 dil and at 11h 56m I had 762 dil (225 for 117 dil). This is usually where I recall, so for this Voyage, 206 dil got me an extra 537 chrons - still much better than buying 2 ticket refresh on M/W/F for 300 dil to get only 300 chrons. If I do 1 Voyage with 2 revives a day for 1 week, that's about 1400 dil for 3,750 chrons (vs 1500 dil for 1500 chrons if you do 3 ticket refreshes on M/W/F for 150/150/200 dil 3 times a week).
Point of detail, based on your figures your 206 Dil got you approximately 400 more chrons. You see, if you recalled your voyage at 7h23mins you could have spent the extra time on a free voyage. For example, five 8 hour voyages can be done in the same time as four 10 hour voyages. So if you were working out how much extra you got by extending an 8 hour voyage to a 10 hour one, you would need to compare the expected gains of five 8 hour voyages to four ten hour ones (or the rewards from a ten hour voyage minus 1.25* the rewards from an 8 hour one). A 11h56min voyage is 1.616*the length of a 7h23m voyage. The 225 chrons you got from the 7h23 voyage multiplied by 1.616 = 363 chrons. The 11h56m voyage got you 762 chrons or approximately 400 more. If your figures are representative that is still better than buying extra tickets (which I never do - I would only consider using dil to extend voyages for the 4* crew, I already have more chrons than I need) but it is worth bearing in mind that the true calculation is a bit more complicated. For those of us using dil to "buy" a better chance of a 4*, I think the comparison between what we can get from just running more unextended voyages versus spending Dil to extend them is less favourable! It all depends on whether you have a use (or desire) for particular types of voyage reward.
Question: Do the supply kits increase your chronitons in voyages? That is new to me.
No, but they make the chrons you get from the voyage last longer.
Incidentally, you don't mention 3* crew drops. I feel there's a dramatic decrease in their drops since the change. Do you have data on this?
I have resigned myself to minimal voyages, with a week of voyage chrons being about equal to 12 ticket (in one day) Ex Astris Scientia cadet challenge during the week. It all balances out, IMHO.
1. pre-nerf
2. post-nerf
2 - Sometimes an extension will net you two extra dilemma's.
3 - Gambling on Voyage only crew. On the weekend I got the two first parts for Guinan on the first two dilemma's. I took a gamble and extended past the 5th dilemma. Didn't get her unfortunately.
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I have as well though only 2 max purples so far. But I'm extending a lot less.
I hope there is a plan to rotate or refresh these as well. Otherwise we'll all be saying "we're tired of seeing clowns every voyage".
They only drop once. So you never get tired of them -- you also can't FF them without honor.
That's the rate I expect them out of Voyage random drops.
Dilemmas? Was just as random before.
Is it a new way to get 4* crew? Yup, and I've fused/collected some characters as a result. I've also airlocked a few, but c'est la vie when it comes to something driven by a random number generator...
And FFS, the dang clumping not really random DBNG needs to be fixed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion
You can hit high chron dilemmas at 4 and 6 hours and get 4* crew.
150 dil on m/w/f nets faction items.
Some voyages aren't meant to be, like the med/eng/sci combos. Best to bring those home and start on a new cycle.
The best recall is when you hit ~7h50m. That should net 2 more dilemmas and is an efficient use of dil.
A high chron voyage with monday cadets and unclaimed event dil and a kit can be huge.
There is a lot to consider beyond the graphs, but these graphs are damn useful. Thanks jello
Did you mean to say recall there or refresh with Dil?
Before you would have been about 800-850 by now, but also depends on your 5 Dilemmas - all 30 chron or have you had a 50 or 75 chron? Either way, you have 660 chrons after 11 hours... vs 110 chrons from the ticker - 6x more. Assuming you've revived twice by now so that's about 200 dil. Still a great ratio compared to any other way to get chrons in the game. The 20-25% drop is annoying, and as we saw didn't make a hill of beans difference in last week's event! Those that spend dil for chrons are still going to spend. DB saw a hit in their wallet because even the low-end buyers weren't buying much because Voyages doled out an exorbitant amount of chrons basically for free.
This is the only Rations on this voyage so far.