9. Encourage your fleet mates to run less-efficient ship battles for their farming purposes over away missions
9A. Encourage your fleet mates to start looking wiki because many down the list ship battles are actually best chron-wise.
Yeah, this sounds awesome. I would love to help my fleet out by suggesting the best missions to run for items. Boo, that this advice seems vague because I had no idea this was possible. Through trial and error at stt.wiki page I discovered you can type something like "science experiment" into the search bar and by clinking the links find a drop test chart which shows most chrono/cost per item dropped. For the more common items like "clothing pattern" I had to click a link to something that contained the item then click the item in an ingredient chart but the drop test info was there so thank you. If there are more efficient ways to do it please let me know.
PS best drop chance on "basic clothing pattern" is listed as "On Their Heels" Fleet battle at 2.4 chrono/unit which I did not know.
Current Starbase Components:
Transparent Aluminum : 31,921 Nanopolymer : 32,767 Tritanium : 32,767 Holoemitter : 8
Yep No Problems here
But is no one seeing the whole picture? Every fleet has to go through this. Every fleet. So it is the same for everyone.
Trista
Its the same for everyone but its still an issue that DB could change or make easier for everyone.
If they make it easier, then the ones being punished are the higher Starbases. Because they have already gone through what some are going through now.
The gradual nerfing of content is par for the course in this kind of game. There will always be ways for high powered/spending players to rise above the rest, but it also doesn't make sense for those in small or new fleets to be permanently stuck at a 10% disadvantage.
But is no one seeing the whole picture? Every fleet has to go through this. Every fleet. So it is the same for everyone.
Trista
Its the same for everyone but its still an issue that DB could change or make easier for everyone.
If they make it easier, then the ones being punished are the higher Starbases. Because they have already gone through what some are going through now.
The gradual nerfing of content is par for the course in this kind of game. There will always be ways for high powered/spending players to rise above the rest, but it also doesn't make sense for those in small fleets to be permanently stuck at a 10% disadvantage.
Agreed. The implication that things should never change because the more active, possibly more whale-y fleets had to endure through the mess is a tad outlandish.
My fleet is level 53. And we were a fleet before starbases ever came out, so it has taken us months upon months to reach our current level now.
Our highest base stat increase is lv. 6. We only have one at that level, the rest are 4 and 5.
Our highest proficiency increase is 4%. We only have one at that level, one at 3%, the rest at 2%.
Our transporter room for chrons is still lv. 3.
Our mess hall is at 6% credit reduction cost.
And our industrial replicator is at 2 extra uses.
I don't think we've done bad, but we also are mostly a F2P fleet. And I know not all of our fleet members donate the max items, because they don't have them and I can't make them. We have never once met the daily target you get 100 chrons for by donating starbase components. We usually pass 30 chrons and that's about it. And I'm not going to turn my fleet into a fleet where people get kicked out for not paying a certain amount monthly or have to log so many hours a day, that's not fun for me or anyone in my fleet. Additionally, my fleet is full, but we've had some recruitment error for some time. Our fleet used to have 50/50 members, but now we can't go past 49/50. While 1 person won't likely make all the difference, it is still a setback. I've emailed support about it a few times but never have gotten a response. So my fleet is bugged in a disadvantageous way.
Regardless, the holoemitter drop rate needs tweaking. Especially in this situation where these superfleets keep maxing everything because they have the most intense players ever, so DB keeps having to raise starbase levels just to meet their needs. It simply means my fleet will never catch up because of that plus the holoemitter bottleneck. If DB actually puts their minds to an endgame with starbases, then we will all be fine, but they haven't and to my knowledge haven't bothered to try to come up with one either. So until they do, fleets like mine or non-superfleets need the encouragement and ability to function better than the system is allowing us at the current moment. I'm more than certain DB could actually come up with something for the superfleets which does not continually widen the gap between them and the smaller, newer, or less advanced fleets.
Sorry if y'all mucked through the pain, but you had the resources and manpower to do so, not everyone has that and as the gaps get widened more and more, we won't ever be able to attain what you've attained in the time you've attained it. You'll continually grow stronger and we'll continually do our best but always will end up left in the dust. DB fixing drop rate issues does not punish you in any way, it simply lets us be able to have any modicum of an edge to possibly compete at all.
Admiral of the Haus of GaghGagh, Starbase level 94, we are not accepting members at this time.
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.
I don't think we've done bad, but we also are mostly a F2P fleet. And I know not all of our fleet members donate the max items, because they don't have them and I can't make them.
Not sure if you would have this information, but can you elaborate on the situations of layers who can't donate max "because they don't have them"? I'd guess some combination of new/not a daily player, but not being able to collect 700 of any combination of starbase components in a day seems like a very foreign concept.
Through trial and error at stt.wiki page I discovered you can type something like "science experiment" into the search bar and by clinking the links find a drop test chart which shows most chrono/cost per item dropped. For the more common items like "clothing pattern" I had to click a link to something that contained the item then click the item in an ingredient chart but the drop test info was there so thank you. If there are more efficient ways to do it please let me know.
the search function works in a wierd way sometimes, clothing pattern is the biggest offender I've found so far, it just doesnt like to prioritize the actuall page for it in the results listings. The other way is just to type it (the name of the item) straight into the link itself https://stt.wiki/wiki/Clothing_Pattern , notice the formating, capitalize each word, underscore for spaces in between, otherwise it freaks out... And at least proper browsers remember the links youve been to so it gets faster after a while...
Omega Molecules base is at lvl82
Captain Lvl 99; Vip0; 552 Unique Immortals; Fleet: Omega Molecules; Base Lvl 134 (MAX); Playing Since March 2016.
I don't think we've done bad, but we also are mostly a F2P fleet. And I know not all of our fleet members donate the max items, because they don't have them and I can't make them.
Not sure if you would have this information, but can you elaborate on the situations of layers who can't donate max "because they don't have them"? I'd guess some combination of new/not a daily player, but not being able to collect 700 of any combination of starbase components in a day seems like a very foreign concept.
I'm not sure how to answer as I'm not sure what information can tell me that. But I also presume as you do that it is the combo of new-ish and non-daily players. When it comes to daily targets, that information doesn't tell me who devoted what to what. I can't tell how much of someone's daily target is starbase donation vs ship battles vs away-team missions vs faction missions.
Even if I look at my own daily target information, I have no clue and I am someone who donates the 700 max starbase components daily as well as always meets the 11 daily missions. For example, my daily target readout says 140 right now and that is with all 700 components donated, all 20+ ship battles done, all 20+ away-team missions done, and 7+ faction missions done. Can you help me interpret any of that?
Admiral of the Haus of GaghGagh, Starbase level 94, we are not accepting members at this time.
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.
Even if I look at my own daily target information, I have no clue and I am someone who donates the 700 max starbase components daily as well as always meets the 11 daily missions. For example, my daily target readout says 140 right now and that is with all 700 components donated, all 20+ ship battles done, all 20+ away-team missions done, and 7+ faction missions done. Can you help me interpret any of that?
20 starbase items counts as 1 daily target, so 35 for full donations. Then 1 point each for missions, shuttles etc
Captain Lvl 99; Vip0; 552 Unique Immortals; Fleet: Omega Molecules; Base Lvl 134 (MAX); Playing Since March 2016.
Even if I look at my own daily target information, I have no clue and I am someone who donates the 700 max starbase components daily as well as always meets the 11 daily missions. For example, my daily target readout says 140 right now and that is with all 700 components donated, all 20+ ship battles done, all 20+ away-team missions done, and 7+ faction missions done. Can you help me interpret any of that?
20 starbase items counts as 1 daily target, so 35 for full donations. Then 1 point each for missions, shuttles etc
Thanks for breaking this down. The issue still stands though, I can't sift through that blanket number and find out how much of what each person in my fleet is doing.
Admiral of the Haus of GaghGagh, Starbase level 94, we are not accepting members at this time.
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.
Using Chrome on ny Andriod phone, I leave one tab permanently open on the item's page and when I search for the next item, that item's page automatically opens. If I back out, or go elsewhere om the wiki, then I have to to select the link again when I search.
Current Starbase Components:
Transparent Aluminum : 31,921 Nanopolymer : 32,767 Tritanium : 32,767 Holoemitter : 8
Yep No Problems here
You're missing out on a lot of free replicator fuel. 32,767 is the highest items can stack in inventory.
Good to know, I don't really need more replicator fuel per day but I hate being wasteful. Still seems like a balance issue to me. Maybe only for casual fleets like mine based on the threads I am seeing. I have enjoyed the fact people are giving useful hints though so thanks Peachtree Rex and everyone who commented. This is one of my favorite threads in awhile.
I brought this same issue up months ago. And they same replies were given from the top tryhard fleets and/or cliques of dedicated players. With the additions of starbase rooms and cryo collections that boost skill proficiency the gap is starting to become very noticeable in gauntlets especially.
And this above all supremely **tsk tsk**. In a game mode that is all RNG having a 60 pt deficit or more in a mirror (most noticeably Kahless) in addition to the defender bias many feel and some have done data sets to prove, is extremely discouraging to new and middle of the road fleets and players.
Let's be real about this holoemitters bottleneck. It is going to become a long term player retention issue for you DB. If you keep pandering to the top 10% and ignoring the other 90% your bottom line will suffer.
I brought this same issue up months ago. And they same replies were given from the top tryhard fleets and/or cliques of dedicated players. With the additions of starbase rooms and cryo collections that boost skill proficiency the gap is starting to become very noticeable in gauntlets especially.
And this above all supremely *marinating tofu*. In a game mode that is all RNG having a 60 pt deficit or more in a mirror (most noticeably Kahless) in addition to the defender bias many feel and some have done data sets to prove, is extremely discouraging to new and middle of the road fleets and players.
Let's be real about this holoemitters bottleneck. It is going to become a long term player retention issue for you DB. If you keep pandering to the top 10% and ignoring the other 90% your bottom line will suffer.
Just as a devils advocate, if they are pandering to the paying players, they are then pandering to their bottom line.
That being said, I find the nano situation annoying. It should not be easy, but i feel like DB made nanos a little too hard to accumulate. Just a little.
And Lady GG, I feel for you, I was in a non-daily player fleet for a while. Eventually drove me nuts for several reasons, but I've been there and I understand. However, at some point, some minimums like daily play most of the time isn't outrageous to expect from some of the game goals and progressions.
I brought this same issue up months ago. And they same replies were given from the top tryhard fleets and/or cliques of dedicated players. With the additions of starbase rooms and cryo collections that boost skill proficiency the gap is starting to become very noticeable in gauntlets especially.
And this above all supremely *marinating tofu*. In a game mode that is all RNG having a 60 pt deficit or more in a mirror (most noticeably Kahless) in addition to the defender bias many feel and some have done data sets to prove, is extremely discouraging to new and middle of the road fleets and players.
Let's be real about this holoemitters bottleneck. It is going to become a long term player retention issue for you DB. If you keep pandering to the top 10% and ignoring the other 90% your bottom line will suffer.
Just as a devils advocate, if they are pandering to the paying players, they are then pandering to their bottom line.
That being said, I find the nano situation annoying. It should not be easy, but i feel like DB made nanos a little too hard to accumulate. Just a little.
And Lady GG, I feel for you, I was in a non-daily player fleet for a while. Eventually drove me nuts for several reasons, but I've been there and I understand. However, at some point, some minimums like daily play most of the time isn't outrageous to expect from some of the game goals and progressions.
While I respect your position of being devils advocate if the numerous studies that say 2% or thereabouts of players spend 50% of a games revenues that's still 50% of the rest of the revenue made by the other 98% of players.
It just seems like bad business to me to do things that constantly increase the power gap and make the game unfriendly to new players like constantly feeding the rich at the expense of balance and continuity of the game for most players.
I brought this same issue up months ago. And they same replies were given from the top tryhard fleets and/or cliques of dedicated players. With the additions of starbase rooms and cryo collections that boost skill proficiency the gap is starting to become very noticeable in gauntlets especially.
And this above all supremely *marinating tofu*. In a game mode that is all RNG having a 60 pt deficit or more in a mirror (most noticeably Kahless) in addition to the defender bias many feel and some have done data sets to prove, is extremely discouraging to new and middle of the road fleets and players.
Let's be real about this holoemitters bottleneck. It is going to become a long term player retention issue for you DB. If you keep pandering to the top 10% and ignoring the other 90% your bottom line will suffer.
Just as a devils advocate, if they are pandering to the paying players, they are then pandering to their bottom line.
That being said, I find the nano situation annoying. It should not be easy, but i feel like DB made nanos a little too hard to accumulate. Just a little.
And Lady GG, I feel for you, I was in a non-daily player fleet for a while. Eventually drove me nuts for several reasons, but I've been there and I understand. However, at some point, some minimums like daily play most of the time isn't outrageous to expect from some of the game goals and progressions.
While I respect your position of being devils advocate if the numerous studies that say 2% or thereabouts of players spend 50% of a games revenues that's still 50% of the rest of the revenue made by the other 98% of players.
It just seems like bad business to me to do things that constantly increase the power gap and make the game unfriendly to new players like constantly feeding the rich at the expense of balance and continuity of the game for most players.
Some analysis shows 70% of purchases by 10% of the playerbase. It **tsk tsk**, but the statement was one of the bottom line.. which is money.
Again not saying its good for the playerbase, but if they are pandering to that crowd then they are pandering to their bottom line.
I brought this same issue up months ago. And they same replies were given from the top tryhard fleets and/or cliques of dedicated players. With the additions of starbase rooms and cryo collections that boost skill proficiency the gap is starting to become very noticeable in gauntlets especially.
And this above all supremely *marinating tofu*. In a game mode that is all RNG having a 60 pt deficit or more in a mirror (most noticeably Kahless) in addition to the defender bias many feel and some have done data sets to prove, is extremely discouraging to new and middle of the road fleets and players.
Let's be real about this holoemitters bottleneck. It is going to become a long term player retention issue for you DB. If you keep pandering to the top 10% and ignoring the other 90% your bottom line will suffer.
The difficulty for DB is finding a balance that keeps both long term and new players spending.
I’m sorry if your fleet wasn’t formed before starbases were introduced or if you’re having issues collecting holoemitters, but you have to appreciate that many players have been hitting timelines hard for over 2 years, building friendships and fleets around that.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve hit a holoemitters wall once or twice before, but we’ve learnt to adapt and manage donations around that. I feel that advantage shouldn’t be diminished so easily.
There’s a lot of ‘power creep’ going on at the moment that favours new players over old and I think the Starbase complaints, for me, are the line that mustn’t be crossed. Eg:
1- Kahless (of smaller benefit now, but still a potential gauntlet winner) is still available. Some of us saved honor for months to get him on the basis he would be exclusive and time limited - now he is not.
2- New super powerful 4 and 5* crew with higher base and proficiency rolls than ever before.
3- Voyages giving new players the same chrons in one day that older players would take a week to earn.
So please DB, if there’s one thing that should be left to individual fleets to strive towards, don’t make things too easy for new players to catch up on Starbases.
PS - We are starbase lvl 85 and accepting applicants that are willing to contribute daily and follow our strategy (and banter) using the Line app. Wink ;-) it’s not like it’s impossible to get in on ‘the action’ for those that bother to look for it.
9. Encourage your fleet mates to run less-efficient ship battles for their farming purposes over away missions
9A. Encourage your fleet mates to start looking wiki because many down the list ship battles are actually best chron-wise.
Apologies, Peachtree, I replied to the wrong post.
AL103... can you give us a link to what you're talking about? I can't find a chrons per holoemitter list anywhere.
I mathed this out when they first came out. "Uncommon (holoemitters, transparent aluminum) starbase components" drop at a 1:3 rate vs "common components". Uncommons also drop half as many as the chron cost of a mission, and commons twice as many as the chron cost.
Meaning a 24 chron space battle will drop 12 holoemitters at a time every fourth time or so, and 48 tritanium the other 3 times. There's about a 15% over/under per individual drop, but it averages out precisely 1/2 and double very quickly.
That's the first half of where you imbalance comes out.
The second half of the imbalance comes from the items that are needed to actually level crew. It is true that many times the space battles are actually a better chron cost per item average. The trick is the actual items and volumes crew need overall tend to favor away team missions for best average cost, or only available option. This further exacerbates the problem, and could easily be fixed by DB by fixing the drop rates on those.
There's also a third problem. You actually can not make 700 holoemitters a day without paying for extra chrons. Daily missions, Cadet Missions, 240 chrons regenerated, and voyages, still don't give enough chrons running only space battles. No amount of optimizing can completely make up for this shortcoming, so you see the well coordinated whale fleets being the only ones that can keep up full speed starbase leveling.
However, as others have mentioned, there are some coordination and communication issues keeping fleets established before starbases in the 40s and 50s. Simple things like if you don't check the wiki, then scroll down and see if you have the same number of pips on a ship battle vs away mission, then that is likely as or more efficient for farming. Focus on suggesting rooms that need holoemitters, and only have one room at most suggested that doesn't need them.
Why would you need to make 700 holo per day? You only need to make the relative "holo:other stuff" ratio to keep up. Personally, I make about 300 holos per day when I am really trying. I probably get more chrons than average from voyages, but I don't spend any DIL on extras.
At the moment, I have 3500 in my inventory because we have been primarily building non holo rooms so I've been accumulating, but still trying to farm them normally.
As you can see, in the newer Proficiency rooms, they increased the number of required common items by 5-10k on all tiers relative to the Core rooms. This, effectively, reduces the demand for the Uncommon items relative to the Common items. You can also see that the lvl9 Core Room is even edging back closer to a 3:1 ratio.
Obviously, this isn't the huge, sweeping, obvious change that some here would like to see, but it's how I would expect software development to happen. When things are out of balance (like clearly is the case of Holoemitters) I would expect them to take smaller steps (making better balance in the recipes) to try to improve conditions it while working on the harder-to-fix things (drop rates, mission sorting, arrangement of drops in equitable locations).
Comments
SSR's is 88 right now, will be 89 tomorrow with normal donations. ZQ's fleet capped out ahead of us, so I imagine they're still there.
Yeah, this sounds awesome. I would love to help my fleet out by suggesting the best missions to run for items. Boo, that this advice seems vague because I had no idea this was possible. Through trial and error at stt.wiki page I discovered you can type something like "science experiment" into the search bar and by clinking the links find a drop test chart which shows most chrono/cost per item dropped. For the more common items like "clothing pattern" I had to click a link to something that contained the item then click the item in an ingredient chart but the drop test info was there so thank you. If there are more efficient ways to do it please let me know.
PS best drop chance on "basic clothing pattern" is listed as "On Their Heels" Fleet battle at 2.4 chrono/unit which I did not know.
Current Starbase Components:
Transparent Aluminum : 31,921 Nanopolymer : 32,767 Tritanium : 32,767 Holoemitter : 8
Yep No Problems here
Trista
Its the same for everyone but its still an issue that DB could change or make easier for everyone.
You're missing out on a lot of free replicator fuel. 32,767 is the highest items can stack in inventory.
It’s difficult like this intentionally. Why would DB want to make it easier?
If they make it easier, then the ones being punished are the higher Starbases. Because they have already gone through what some are going through now.
The gradual nerfing of content is par for the course in this kind of game. There will always be ways for high powered/spending players to rise above the rest, but it also doesn't make sense for those in small or new fleets to be permanently stuck at a 10% disadvantage.
Agreed. The implication that things should never change because the more active, possibly more whale-y fleets had to endure through the mess is a tad outlandish.
My fleet is level 53. And we were a fleet before starbases ever came out, so it has taken us months upon months to reach our current level now.
Our highest base stat increase is lv. 6. We only have one at that level, the rest are 4 and 5.
Our highest proficiency increase is 4%. We only have one at that level, one at 3%, the rest at 2%.
Our transporter room for chrons is still lv. 3.
Our mess hall is at 6% credit reduction cost.
And our industrial replicator is at 2 extra uses.
I don't think we've done bad, but we also are mostly a F2P fleet. And I know not all of our fleet members donate the max items, because they don't have them and I can't make them. We have never once met the daily target you get 100 chrons for by donating starbase components. We usually pass 30 chrons and that's about it. And I'm not going to turn my fleet into a fleet where people get kicked out for not paying a certain amount monthly or have to log so many hours a day, that's not fun for me or anyone in my fleet. Additionally, my fleet is full, but we've had some recruitment error for some time. Our fleet used to have 50/50 members, but now we can't go past 49/50. While 1 person won't likely make all the difference, it is still a setback. I've emailed support about it a few times but never have gotten a response. So my fleet is bugged in a disadvantageous way.
Regardless, the holoemitter drop rate needs tweaking. Especially in this situation where these superfleets keep maxing everything because they have the most intense players ever, so DB keeps having to raise starbase levels just to meet their needs. It simply means my fleet will never catch up because of that plus the holoemitter bottleneck. If DB actually puts their minds to an endgame with starbases, then we will all be fine, but they haven't and to my knowledge haven't bothered to try to come up with one either. So until they do, fleets like mine or non-superfleets need the encouragement and ability to function better than the system is allowing us at the current moment. I'm more than certain DB could actually come up with something for the superfleets which does not continually widen the gap between them and the smaller, newer, or less advanced fleets.
Sorry if y'all mucked through the pain, but you had the resources and manpower to do so, not everyone has that and as the gaps get widened more and more, we won't ever be able to attain what you've attained in the time you've attained it. You'll continually grow stronger and we'll continually do our best but always will end up left in the dust. DB fixing drop rate issues does not punish you in any way, it simply lets us be able to have any modicum of an edge to possibly compete at all.
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.
Not sure if you would have this information, but can you elaborate on the situations of layers who can't donate max "because they don't have them"? I'd guess some combination of new/not a daily player, but not being able to collect 700 of any combination of starbase components in a day seems like a very foreign concept.
the search function works in a wierd way sometimes, clothing pattern is the biggest offender I've found so far, it just doesnt like to prioritize the actuall page for it in the results listings. The other way is just to type it (the name of the item) straight into the link itself https://stt.wiki/wiki/Clothing_Pattern , notice the formating, capitalize each word, underscore for spaces in between, otherwise it freaks out... And at least proper browsers remember the links youve been to so it gets faster after a while...
Omega Molecules base is at lvl82
I'm not sure how to answer as I'm not sure what information can tell me that. But I also presume as you do that it is the combo of new-ish and non-daily players. When it comes to daily targets, that information doesn't tell me who devoted what to what. I can't tell how much of someone's daily target is starbase donation vs ship battles vs away-team missions vs faction missions.
Even if I look at my own daily target information, I have no clue and I am someone who donates the 700 max starbase components daily as well as always meets the 11 daily missions. For example, my daily target readout says 140 right now and that is with all 700 components donated, all 20+ ship battles done, all 20+ away-team missions done, and 7+ faction missions done. Can you help me interpret any of that?
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.
20 starbase items counts as 1 daily target, so 35 for full donations. Then 1 point each for missions, shuttles etc
Thanks for breaking this down. The issue still stands though, I can't sift through that blanket number and find out how much of what each person in my fleet is doing.
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.
Good to know, I don't really need more replicator fuel per day but I hate being wasteful. Still seems like a balance issue to me. Maybe only for casual fleets like mine based on the threads I am seeing. I have enjoyed the fact people are giving useful hints though so thanks Peachtree Rex and everyone who commented. This is one of my favorite threads in awhile.
And this above all supremely **tsk tsk**. In a game mode that is all RNG having a 60 pt deficit or more in a mirror (most noticeably Kahless) in addition to the defender bias many feel and some have done data sets to prove, is extremely discouraging to new and middle of the road fleets and players.
Let's be real about this holoemitters bottleneck. It is going to become a long term player retention issue for you DB. If you keep pandering to the top 10% and ignoring the other 90% your bottom line will suffer.
Just as a devils advocate, if they are pandering to the paying players, they are then pandering to their bottom line.
That being said, I find the nano situation annoying. It should not be easy, but i feel like DB made nanos a little too hard to accumulate. Just a little.
And Lady GG, I feel for you, I was in a non-daily player fleet for a while. Eventually drove me nuts for several reasons, but I've been there and I understand. However, at some point, some minimums like daily play most of the time isn't outrageous to expect from some of the game goals and progressions.
While I respect your position of being devils advocate if the numerous studies that say 2% or thereabouts of players spend 50% of a games revenues that's still 50% of the rest of the revenue made by the other 98% of players.
It just seems like bad business to me to do things that constantly increase the power gap and make the game unfriendly to new players like constantly feeding the rich at the expense of balance and continuity of the game for most players.
Some analysis shows 70% of purchases by 10% of the playerbase. It **tsk tsk**, but the statement was one of the bottom line.. which is money.
Again not saying its good for the playerbase, but if they are pandering to that crowd then they are pandering to their bottom line.
The difficulty for DB is finding a balance that keeps both long term and new players spending.
I’m sorry if your fleet wasn’t formed before starbases were introduced or if you’re having issues collecting holoemitters, but you have to appreciate that many players have been hitting timelines hard for over 2 years, building friendships and fleets around that.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve hit a holoemitters wall once or twice before, but we’ve learnt to adapt and manage donations around that. I feel that advantage shouldn’t be diminished so easily.
There’s a lot of ‘power creep’ going on at the moment that favours new players over old and I think the Starbase complaints, for me, are the line that mustn’t be crossed. Eg:
1- Kahless (of smaller benefit now, but still a potential gauntlet winner) is still available. Some of us saved honor for months to get him on the basis he would be exclusive and time limited - now he is not.
2- New super powerful 4 and 5* crew with higher base and proficiency rolls than ever before.
3- Voyages giving new players the same chrons in one day that older players would take a week to earn.
So please DB, if there’s one thing that should be left to individual fleets to strive towards, don’t make things too easy for new players to catch up on Starbases.
PS - We are starbase lvl 85 and accepting applicants that are willing to contribute daily and follow our strategy (and banter) using the Line app. Wink ;-) it’s not like it’s impossible to get in on ‘the action’ for those that bother to look for it.
I mathed this out when they first came out. "Uncommon (holoemitters, transparent aluminum) starbase components" drop at a 1:3 rate vs "common components". Uncommons also drop half as many as the chron cost of a mission, and commons twice as many as the chron cost.
Meaning a 24 chron space battle will drop 12 holoemitters at a time every fourth time or so, and 48 tritanium the other 3 times. There's about a 15% over/under per individual drop, but it averages out precisely 1/2 and double very quickly.
That's the first half of where you imbalance comes out.
The second half of the imbalance comes from the items that are needed to actually level crew. It is true that many times the space battles are actually a better chron cost per item average. The trick is the actual items and volumes crew need overall tend to favor away team missions for best average cost, or only available option. This further exacerbates the problem, and could easily be fixed by DB by fixing the drop rates on those.
There's also a third problem. You actually can not make 700 holoemitters a day without paying for extra chrons. Daily missions, Cadet Missions, 240 chrons regenerated, and voyages, still don't give enough chrons running only space battles. No amount of optimizing can completely make up for this shortcoming, so you see the well coordinated whale fleets being the only ones that can keep up full speed starbase leveling.
However, as others have mentioned, there are some coordination and communication issues keeping fleets established before starbases in the 40s and 50s. Simple things like if you don't check the wiki, then scroll down and see if you have the same number of pips on a ship battle vs away mission, then that is likely as or more efficient for farming. Focus on suggesting rooms that need holoemitters, and only have one room at most suggested that doesn't need them.
At the moment, I have 3500 in my inventory because we have been primarily building non holo rooms so I've been accumulating, but still trying to farm them normally.
Room build costs from the wiki (https://stt.wiki/wiki/Starbase):
As you can see, in the newer Proficiency rooms, they increased the number of required common items by 5-10k on all tiers relative to the Core rooms. This, effectively, reduces the demand for the Uncommon items relative to the Common items. You can also see that the lvl9 Core Room is even edging back closer to a 3:1 ratio.
Obviously, this isn't the huge, sweeping, obvious change that some here would like to see, but it's how I would expect software development to happen. When things are out of balance (like clearly is the case of Holoemitters) I would expect them to take smaller steps (making better balance in the recipes) to try to improve conditions it while working on the harder-to-fix things (drop rates, mission sorting, arrangement of drops in equitable locations).