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...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.
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They increase the VP you earn from each battle. But you only need one, so you can drop Noah. (Young Khan is higher bonus).
Yes I know ... but what I meen by "I don't see it" is that for Factions you can see the bar really shoot up when you slot in Bonus crew (or give them a shuttle boost) ... in Galaxy events the same ... even for Expedition events you can see that your crew is not fatiguing as fast and that they (individually) get more VP per node.
Here I see a selection screen with a ton of "Bonus" tags (most of the time half my crew has Bonus (e.g. Starfleet) ... for about 75% of the battles T'Kuvma has one too, as does Mirror Picard (those are the 4 crew I use on a maxed ISS Enterprise) ... I feel there's no difference between having 1 or 4 Bonus crew ... so there's no real selection process, which is the complete opposite to Faction and Expedition events.
Will keep Noah, because he's just really good with burst damage alongside T'Kuvma.
More Pros
- You can rank up at your own pace ... kinda like Expedition (why I enjoy that format) ... and at the same time it doesn't feel like you are handicapping your crew (as is the case for Galaxies).
- It is great to have crew available to do all games aspects during the event ... I'm sending my top crew on Shuttles, Voyages and still able to use them for the ship battles. Very nice, makes them feel useful.
Even in the couple of longer battles I had, there was never a smidgen of doubt that I would win. Mostly, I won the battles in a matter of seconds. I know to some players, I'm considered a whale, but I certainly don't consider myself one. I mean, I do have a good solid crew roster, but I'd still like this to be more of a challenge. It never crossed my mind to take the hull repair option rather than the reward.
Been playing less than four months - have spent some money, though. My crew roster is mostly purple, not gold. I have four of the five standard-issue five-star ships maxed. Experiencing the same, however. No possibility of failing. Perhaps we need another difficulty level above Epic?
Here I see a selection screen with a ton of "Bonus" tags (most of the time half my crew has Bonus (e.g. Starfleet) ... for about 75% of the battles T'Kuvma has one too, as does Mirror Picard (those are the 4 crew I use on a maxed ISS Enterprise) ... I feel there's no difference between having 1 or 4 Bonus crew ... so there's no real selection process, which is the complete opposite to Faction and Expedition events.
There is a difference. The VP outcome from battles on Epic difficulty could be 500, 625, 750, 875 or 1000 VP, depending on what you select. But one single featured event crew is enough to get you to 1000, so yes, in that sense, the rest of the crew labeled with "BONUS" doesn't make any difference. If you only went with Noah, or only T'Kuvma, though, you'd see a difference.
Battles are repetitive. It's the same 5 ships each time. There is so much RNG in this game, how about making the ships selected based on RNG, that way each skirmish is different.
Traits are pointless. Once you put an event crew on your ship you're getting max VP, so the other slots can just be constant. Traits should provide ability boosts combined with much harder missions, that way I'm forced to chose new crew each time because if I don't have the right traits I might lose the battle.
Alternatively, traits should continue to stack VP improvements. So again, each battle I'm debating between matching traits for best VP vs having better crew to guarantee a victory.
Traits could be randomly selected from pre-selected lists too, so each battle I have to think about my crew selection and it's not just a repeat of the last skirmish.
Make the battles like voyages with continuously increasing difficulty and rewards rather than a fixed end with a bonus vp for finishing. This will make the final battles more interesting as they become a challenge and provide more variation in player VP. With a 6k max per skirmish, the winning player is the player who starts the most skirmishes. If the VP increases in the skirmish, the winning player is the player who can go the longest accruing more VP.
Tweak the perpetual motion nature of intel. Skirmish -> Chrons -> Ship battle for intel -> Skirmish ->... Each skirmish on epic is really only costing 300-600 intel once you factor in the chron drops. At this rate my limiting factor this event will be time not intel. That will help make it less of a grind.
Increase the intel reward drop. At 1200 intel/skirmish, getting 30-60 intel means 20-40 drops before you get a single extra skirmish. Compare that with 75-150 chrons which can be converted to 1000-2000 intel.
Comments
Yes I know ... but what I meen by "I don't see it" is that for Factions you can see the bar really shoot up when you slot in Bonus crew (or give them a shuttle boost) ... in Galaxy events the same ... even for Expedition events you can see that your crew is not fatiguing as fast and that they (individually) get more VP per node.
Here I see a selection screen with a ton of "Bonus" tags (most of the time half my crew has Bonus (e.g. Starfleet) ... for about 75% of the battles T'Kuvma has one too, as does Mirror Picard (those are the 4 crew I use on a maxed ISS Enterprise) ... I feel there's no difference between having 1 or 4 Bonus crew ... so there's no real selection process, which is the complete opposite to Faction and Expedition events.
Will keep Noah, because he's just really good with burst damage alongside T'Kuvma.
More Pros
- You can rank up at your own pace ... kinda like Expedition (why I enjoy that format) ... and at the same time it doesn't feel like you are handicapping your crew (as is the case for Galaxies).
- It is great to have crew available to do all games aspects during the event ... I'm sending my top crew on Shuttles, Voyages and still able to use them for the ship battles. Very nice, makes them feel useful.
Been playing less than four months - have spent some money, though. My crew roster is mostly purple, not gold. I have four of the five standard-issue five-star ships maxed. Experiencing the same, however. No possibility of failing. Perhaps we need another difficulty level above Epic?
There is a difference. The VP outcome from battles on Epic difficulty could be 500, 625, 750, 875 or 1000 VP, depending on what you select. But one single featured event crew is enough to get you to 1000, so yes, in that sense, the rest of the crew labeled with "BONUS" doesn't make any difference. If you only went with Noah, or only T'Kuvma, though, you'd see a difference.