I've had a few that I had to pull back earlier than I expected recently. I thought it was my inexperience. Perhaos we need to consider recalibrating voyage length projections?
Things that make a difference:
- Skill points in PRI/SEC
- Hazard RNG for PRI/SEC
- Additional AM for matching traits
The crew skill association doesn't matter, just the total skill points. While you have 33k total skill points which is nice, what was your AM? 2550 vs 2850 can make a difference too. It will make enough of a difference even if you don't revive, but has more advantages after reviving. If you're that high with MED/SCI, I would guess that you went max skills and there were few trait match ups to increase your AM. Also it's not a guarantee that you pass the hazard, especially when you're that high up in time vs skill points. As with everything else in the game, there is some RNG to it as well.
There is also the percentage of hits on the PRI/SEC skills. Since the change on 12/18, I've seen a broader range of hazard checks for PRI/SEC from 54% to 66% (vs 57% to 64% prior) - still averaging out to about 60% overall, but you could have been struck with a low hit ratio on the PRI/SEC skills so a lot of the hazards failed with the lower skills.
There are a lot of variables and it can be hard to balance. After over 120 Voyages, I am on my very first 8h without revive Voyage! I've come close: 7h 56m being my prior best. This one went 8h 14m, and my skill points were lower than yours, yet the highest I've ever had with 32,600 total. I had CMD/SEC as pri/sec so it was easier to find trait matches. I started with 2825 AM which included the +150 ship bonus.
Last, if this is the first that you've seen it, chalk it up to bad RNG. If you log your Voyages and it becomes recurring, then there may have been a change. I see a lot of one off posts of "My Voyage did this today" or "Voyages are rigged to fail". Speculation that this is now the norm isn't actual fact. I'd put the RNG of Voyages up against the RNG of Gauntlet any day and choose Voyages hands down for it's occasional RNG flux vs Gauntlet's total imbalance (but save this debate for other threads out there already). And to point out, the Voyage Estimator is usually spot on by +/-5%! Use it as a guide to maybe making some changes to your Voyage before sending it out. Put in some "what if's" by changing the AM or adjusting the skill points to see what actually will make a difference.
Entering your numbers in the STT Voyage Estimator actually results in about 7,5 hours, depending a little on the initial AM. So, what's the surprise?
I’m not talking about my voyage length here. I know it wouldn’t go past 8 hours for sure. I’m saying that a skill with 9500 shouldn’t start failing hazards at the 7h15 minutes mark like it did.
@Captain Jello, yeah perhaps extremely unlucky RNG. Last two failed, first at 7h15 and the second on that screenshot. Too bad I ran out of antimatter before I could see anothe one.
I never saw a 9.5 fail before 8h before. Two in a row just looked like a nerf to me. I’ll keep looking.
Based on the latest info I've seen, hazard checks go up 1250 per hour, so the 8hr skill check would be 10k. That said, there is some variance that the community has yet to tease out. I have seen checks fail and the start passing again for a few hazards before finally failing for the rest of the voyage. To my knowledge, this behavior hasn't been really adequately quantified.
Based on the latest info I've seen, hazard checks go up 1250 per hour, so the 8hr skill check would be 10k. That said, there is some variance that the community has yet to tease out. I have seen checks fail and the start passing again for a few hazards before finally failing for the rest of the voyage. To my knowledge, this behavior hasn't been really adequately quantified.
Our Fleet has noticed this too. Where we used to get 7-1/2 to 8 hours without dil refresh (pre-nerf/"upgrade"), now only gets us 5-1/2 to 6 hours. You would think with our Starbase improvements, and me personally getting 5 more Legendary crew to lvl 100 to use, that would improve, not degrade.
I haven't noticed anything different. My voyage lengths have continued to match the prediction of my estimator.
My current (and long-standing) theory is that the RNG component is the actual proficiency skill of the crew involved. Daystrom in particular has a very large SCI proficiency spread, so that's going to impact how early SCI checks start failing.
I don't see anything unusual from the examples in this thread.
I still have a form for reporting voyage lengths (please report all of them, not just the outliers). If something substantial did change, we should see a pattern with more recent reports differing from older reports.
Based on the latest info I've seen, hazard checks go up 1250 per hour, so the 8hr skill check would be 10k. That said, there is some variance that the community has yet to tease out. I have seen checks fail and the start passing again for a few hazards before finally failing for the rest of the voyage. To my knowledge, this behavior hasn't been really adequately quantified.
Our Fleet has noticed this too. Where we used to get 7-1/2 to 8 hours without dil refresh (pre-nerf/"upgrade"), now only gets us 5-1/2 to 6 hours. You would think with our Starbase improvements, and me personally getting 5 more Legendary crew to lvl 100 to use, that would improve, not degrade.
Very frustrating.
I wasn't claiming anything has changed. Other people have also reported the "shorter duration with better crew" issue, and I think it has to do with how you're balancing skills.
A voyage with Primary and Secondary skills at 20,000 and "other" skills at 0 will hit only 5:30 with 2650 AM. When you get better (and more) crew, you are increasingly able to create an imbalanced crew. To a certain degree, this is a good thing. Being able to stack more skills in the Primary/Secondary is preferable to stacking "other" skills.
My general rule of thumb is a 3.5 : 2.5 : 1 ratio in terms of skill (primary : secondary : other). My current voyage has:
The other thing you start running into when you are able to imbalance your crew like that is variance. When you stack more in Primary/Secondary, you are relying on the fact you will see those skills more frequently. Sometimes, that simply doesn't happen and those voyages end up being shorter. To date, I don't think anyone has built a Monte Carlo simulator for voyages to calculate the standard deviation of how widely we should expect a voyage duration to vary, but that information would be extremely useful to know. At least it would help in terms of what is (and is not) actually an outlier.
Comments
- Skill points in PRI/SEC
- Hazard RNG for PRI/SEC
- Additional AM for matching traits
The crew skill association doesn't matter, just the total skill points. While you have 33k total skill points which is nice, what was your AM? 2550 vs 2850 can make a difference too. It will make enough of a difference even if you don't revive, but has more advantages after reviving. If you're that high with MED/SCI, I would guess that you went max skills and there were few trait match ups to increase your AM. Also it's not a guarantee that you pass the hazard, especially when you're that high up in time vs skill points. As with everything else in the game, there is some RNG to it as well.
There is also the percentage of hits on the PRI/SEC skills. Since the change on 12/18, I've seen a broader range of hazard checks for PRI/SEC from 54% to 66% (vs 57% to 64% prior) - still averaging out to about 60% overall, but you could have been struck with a low hit ratio on the PRI/SEC skills so a lot of the hazards failed with the lower skills.
There are a lot of variables and it can be hard to balance. After over 120 Voyages, I am on my very first 8h without revive Voyage! I've come close: 7h 56m being my prior best. This one went 8h 14m, and my skill points were lower than yours, yet the highest I've ever had with 32,600 total. I had CMD/SEC as pri/sec so it was easier to find trait matches. I started with 2825 AM which included the +150 ship bonus.
Last, if this is the first that you've seen it, chalk it up to bad RNG. If you log your Voyages and it becomes recurring, then there may have been a change. I see a lot of one off posts of "My Voyage did this today" or "Voyages are rigged to fail". Speculation that this is now the norm isn't actual fact. I'd put the RNG of Voyages up against the RNG of Gauntlet any day and choose Voyages hands down for it's occasional RNG flux vs Gauntlet's total imbalance (but save this debate for other threads out there already). And to point out, the Voyage Estimator is usually spot on by +/-5%! Use it as a guide to maybe making some changes to your Voyage before sending it out. Put in some "what if's" by changing the AM or adjusting the skill points to see what actually will make a difference.
I’m not talking about my voyage length here. I know it wouldn’t go past 8 hours for sure. I’m saying that a skill with 9500 shouldn’t start failing hazards at the 7h15 minutes mark like it did.
I never saw a 9.5 fail before 8h before. Two in a row just looked like a nerf to me. I’ll keep looking.
Our Fleet has noticed this too. Where we used to get 7-1/2 to 8 hours without dil refresh (pre-nerf/"upgrade"), now only gets us 5-1/2 to 6 hours. You would think with our Starbase improvements, and me personally getting 5 more Legendary crew to lvl 100 to use, that would improve, not degrade.
Very frustrating.
My current (and long-standing) theory is that the RNG component is the actual proficiency skill of the crew involved. Daystrom in particular has a very large SCI proficiency spread, so that's going to impact how early SCI checks start failing.
I don't see anything unusual from the examples in this thread.
I still have a form for reporting voyage lengths (please report all of them, not just the outliers). If something substantial did change, we should see a pattern with more recent reports differing from older reports.
Main thread: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/175/tool-voyage-estimator-help-us-gather-data/
Voyage Estimator Tool thread
I wasn't claiming anything has changed. Other people have also reported the "shorter duration with better crew" issue, and I think it has to do with how you're balancing skills.
A voyage with Primary and Secondary skills at 20,000 and "other" skills at 0 will hit only 5:30 with 2650 AM. When you get better (and more) crew, you are increasingly able to create an imbalanced crew. To a certain degree, this is a good thing. Being able to stack more skills in the Primary/Secondary is preferable to stacking "other" skills.
My general rule of thumb is a 3.5 : 2.5 : 1 ratio in terms of skill (primary : secondary : other). My current voyage has:
10097 primary : 8946 secondary : 3488 "other average"
or (in terms of ratios):
2.89 : 2.56 : 1
The other thing you start running into when you are able to imbalance your crew like that is variance. When you stack more in Primary/Secondary, you are relying on the fact you will see those skills more frequently. Sometimes, that simply doesn't happen and those voyages end up being shorter. To date, I don't think anyone has built a Monte Carlo simulator for voyages to calculate the standard deviation of how widely we should expect a voyage duration to vary, but that information would be extremely useful to know. At least it would help in terms of what is (and is not) actually an outlier.