Skirmish Events - First Impression Pros and Cons
Althea Biermont
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I was cautiously optimistic about the new Skirmish Events. Now that I've tried it, these are the pros and cons that I've taken away from it.
PROS
Holo-Emitters - Since you earn Intel from running ship missions you gain more holo-emitters than you normally would. I've accumulated enough holo-emitters today to donate 700 to the Starbase with 700 left over for tomorrow.
Drops - You get to keep your drops. You don't have to feed all your drops to the carnivorous event maw. You get to keep them for leveling your crew.
Learning Curve - By using the same mechanics are regular ship battle, it made the learning curve almost non-existent. I was a bit worried that it might be too complex.
Crew/Ship Selection - I'm happy that both the ship selection and crew selection carry over from run to run so you don't have to re-select unless you want to make changes
Crew Usage - Crew aren't locked. You can still use Skirmish crew for Voyages and Faction missions, so that's good.
Cost - The Intel cost caps at 1,200. I was afraid that it was going to keep escalating to the point where after a couple hours you would be done until the phase 2 reset.
Difficulty - I think the difficulty is spot on. For whales, it's not really challenging, but to make it truly challenging for the top whales would make it impossible for the vast majority of the players to do well and compete.
Galaxy Event - It's not a galaxy event. 'nuff said
CONS
Tedium - It's a huge time sink. More so than any other event. At first it's interesting, but it quickly becomes extremely tedious to the point where you start to think that a thermonuclear war might be a more appealing option. Especially if you start to imagine a Skirmish/Galaxy hybrid. Slit my wrists now please.
Chroniton Sink - It's a huge chroniton hog, just like galaxy events. I can't imagine how horrible a Skirmish/Galaxy hybrid event would be when it comes to chronitons.
Zonning Out - It's so hard not to zone out doing battle after battle. I've caught myself zoning out after initiating the skirmish and snapping back just in time to avert disaster. That's the only point where it becomes challenging to a whale, trying to stay away during a string of skirmishes.
Exchange Rate - At the end of each segment when you can select hull repair or your prize, you can purchase 4 more rolls on the prize table. At least make the prizes have a similar exchange rate to what you can outright purchase. I can purchase 36,000 credits for 10 dilithium. Why would I ever take the chance of spending dilthium to get 1,000 credits? Either remove credits from the prize pool (if dilithium is being spent) or increase the amount of credits by at least a factor of 30.
Additional Rolls - The button is so close that I selected it once without meaning to and there is no confirmation on if you really want to do it. It just takes your dilthium. Either add a confirmation or move the buttons much farther apart.
TIPS
Chronitons - Save them up before the event, just like a galaxy
Supply Kits - Use them. They lower the ship battle costs but you still get Intel based on the non-discounted cost
Spread Them Out - Do a few, take a break, do a few more. Seriously, it will make you crazy if you just keep going and going and going.
PROS
Holo-Emitters - Since you earn Intel from running ship missions you gain more holo-emitters than you normally would. I've accumulated enough holo-emitters today to donate 700 to the Starbase with 700 left over for tomorrow.
Drops - You get to keep your drops. You don't have to feed all your drops to the carnivorous event maw. You get to keep them for leveling your crew.
Learning Curve - By using the same mechanics are regular ship battle, it made the learning curve almost non-existent. I was a bit worried that it might be too complex.
Crew/Ship Selection - I'm happy that both the ship selection and crew selection carry over from run to run so you don't have to re-select unless you want to make changes
Crew Usage - Crew aren't locked. You can still use Skirmish crew for Voyages and Faction missions, so that's good.
Cost - The Intel cost caps at 1,200. I was afraid that it was going to keep escalating to the point where after a couple hours you would be done until the phase 2 reset.
Difficulty - I think the difficulty is spot on. For whales, it's not really challenging, but to make it truly challenging for the top whales would make it impossible for the vast majority of the players to do well and compete.
Galaxy Event - It's not a galaxy event. 'nuff said
CONS
Tedium - It's a huge time sink. More so than any other event. At first it's interesting, but it quickly becomes extremely tedious to the point where you start to think that a thermonuclear war might be a more appealing option. Especially if you start to imagine a Skirmish/Galaxy hybrid. Slit my wrists now please.
Chroniton Sink - It's a huge chroniton hog, just like galaxy events. I can't imagine how horrible a Skirmish/Galaxy hybrid event would be when it comes to chronitons.
Zonning Out - It's so hard not to zone out doing battle after battle. I've caught myself zoning out after initiating the skirmish and snapping back just in time to avert disaster. That's the only point where it becomes challenging to a whale, trying to stay away during a string of skirmishes.
Exchange Rate - At the end of each segment when you can select hull repair or your prize, you can purchase 4 more rolls on the prize table. At least make the prizes have a similar exchange rate to what you can outright purchase. I can purchase 36,000 credits for 10 dilithium. Why would I ever take the chance of spending dilthium to get 1,000 credits? Either remove credits from the prize pool (if dilithium is being spent) or increase the amount of credits by at least a factor of 30.
Additional Rolls - The button is so close that I selected it once without meaning to and there is no confirmation on if you really want to do it. It just takes your dilthium. Either add a confirmation or move the buttons much farther apart.
TIPS
Chronitons - Save them up before the event, just like a galaxy
Supply Kits - Use them. They lower the ship battle costs but you still get Intel based on the non-discounted cost
Spread Them Out - Do a few, take a break, do a few more. Seriously, it will make you crazy if you just keep going and going and going.
9
Comments
Nope, not really. At least if RNG is a lil on your side. I had many drops of 76 and 150 Chron as after battle rewards. To generate Intel I ran the space missions needed to equip Young Khan and Darth Bashir (aka something we do anyway, not specifically for Skirmish. Hence levelling up crew and gaining the resources for this new game mode goes hand in hand). Both are at 100 now, all thresholds cleared. After that a minus of only 400 chrons. Which my Voyage will bring in later.
The biggest problem for me is that it's just too cumbersome to change crew every battle in order to maximize your VP. (Assuming you don't have a full set of bonus crew that are ideal, which I don't.) Since each ship battle is exactly the same for every individual skirmish, the game should remember what crew you used for *each battle* from the last skirmish, rather than just remembering the last crew you used for the *most recent* battle.
If you have more than a 20 crew its hard to find specific folks in your list.
Wait, am I playing a different event to everyone else? It hasn't charged me a single chron.
I almost want to say that the event would be more interesting if the ships you faced and the traits you had to match were random selections each time. However, that would make it a lot more time-consuming, so I dunno.
You can farm intel using ship missions. So these cost chrons (mission chrons * 10 = intel), but they don't go exclusively to the event. You can actually farm items you need, while earning intel.
Yups, same for me.
Partially correct. Away missions don't give Intel, just ship missions.
All you need is one event crew. The event crew maxes bonus. Traits and other bonus are then useless. Pick one event crew(the young khan you got), select your best crew for everything else, and keep the crew constant.
Yap, thats what I been saying, its easier to just have one core crew guy that gives bonus to all types, and then use who you want in the other slots so you dont have to keep switching.
Definitely going to pop a Supply Kit later and farm some items that I'm running low on (2* Database I've somehow run through my stockpile without realizing)
I do wish Bonus Event Ships did more. I wish they let you earn Epic VIP at lower levels so we'd have more variety. It'd be cool to try a run with Miranda, but if the VIP is so low, why bother?
That is good... but 3-and-a-half more days of this??? Where's the nearest bridge...
Of course, I want Sisko so I find this a huge drag. I don't mind spending chronitrons but time is another thing.
As far as character selection goes, I never change them anymore. Since bonuses are not cumulative, there is no point. Use the HMS bounty with 4 crew slots and you will always have at least two with bonuses.
Way to listen to your customers! *said dripping with sarcasm*
Privileged to be Admiral of the Great Fleet
Dilithium Causes Cancer, maxed Starbase level 134
Featuring photonic flee free holodecks and
All you can drink Neelix's Even Better Than Coffee Substitute!
Further I used my normal arena setup, only replaced dr. Crusher with Darth Bashir (2/5 lvl 80 now, stuck at med. experiments) for the bonus. I win every battle easily and in this rate I can play on continuously because I'm never running out of chronitons. Do some usefull farming like 4* casings in the meantime.
I agree. That’s why I listed that mechanic under both pros and cons
I’ve faced the wrath of RNGesus when it comes to chroniton drops. I’m getting Chronitons about 1/12 of the time. Every 3 full runs I’ve been getting it split as 8 drops of credits, 2 drops of Intel and 1 drop each of honor and chronitons. I’m glad others are doing better.
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.
This event also complements the other game play vs hindering it. You can level any crew you want and send whatever voyage/shuttles you want. Then comeback every so often to use the intel you gained leveling your crew to play a few ship battles. Rinse and repeat.
@DB, The only thing that could optimize this is rebalancing the items that drop from ship battles. We need more space battles to pick from when farming for common items.
Well it's at least a minority of two then.
I really like that you can play mostly at your own pace, use your intel when you have the time and still compete. I think this structure goes a long way to eliminating the worst aspects of galaxy events. You are using chrons to build intel, but they are on the missions you choose for drops you need to level crew, which you would likely be doing anyway, with intel and holoemitters almost as a bonus. I also really like that you can get honor and chrons from the bonus boxes. If you don't like the ship battle mechanic to begin with, yeah, it's tedious, but that was almost certainly going to be the case no matter what.
Well said, I think they did a lot of things right here, as far as making the event actually useful in development with other aspects of the game, instead of like galaxy which is a complete waste of both chrotons and equipment.
I do think they could improve things thou, making the battles a bit more challenging or dynamic, and like one poster said maybe with an option to increase difficulty and cost and hence reward, reducing the time and tediousness.
- At first glance the reward structure looked terrible. I mean, you can't even get the first level of the 5* ship as a f2p player ... this should be attainable in the Threshold/Squadron (add it in for this type of event!) rewards.
For the rest the Thresholds, Squad and Ranked rewards are the same as always. Meh. (but see pros)
- The crew selection screen is so tedious I just pick 4 and stick with them, this strategy has been doing wonders.
It also makes me feel ... what in the world are bonus crew useful for? I'm using Young Khan and Noah and I'm sure they're helping out in some way, but I don't "see it" ... T'Kuvma does just as well I feel. So any preparation done for the event is like ... meh ... for hybrids and Factions it actually feels like that has made a difference (Galaxies depends).
Pros
- The loot boxes after each battle are quite nice ... Honor is always welcome (just spent 50k on Bashir, ouch) ... so are credits ... and the Chronitons are a sweet bonus.
Overal a nice change of pace ... not sure how this'll feel on Monday, but I've obtained all but 1 Threshold reward and have never done it this fast, which is pleasant.
Pro: The rewards, especially chrons and honor; the novelty; ship battles are pretty; a solid attempt at changing the status quo and improving ship battles; can play at my own schedule (only had time for a few runs today, but i'll hit up more and at least get my Bashir tonight)
Con: The new abilities for AI ships have super lame names and replace the existing ships abilites rather than add to them...the idea of giving a ship that doesn't normally have cloak or boarding that ability is intersting, but the abilites that make each ship unique are gone; like ship battles in the main game it's too easy once you have a maxed out 5* ship; no real strategy (for the same reasons); crew selection screen is still a nightmare
TBD: The Grind (I don't normally mind it, but even I have limits. At least I need to run ship battles anyway for holoemitters.)
They increase the VP you earn from each battle. But you only need one, so you can drop Noah. (Young Khan is higher bonus).
Pros
Cons
All that having been said, it's far preferable to doing an Expedition event.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"