Incline Official codex Star Trek Online topic :salute:

[Norfleet]

Our perpetrator STILL has not finished what they started.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well I'll just go even out the number myself when I log today.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Achtung, comrades! Time for a new glorious Five-Year Plan of gloriousness!

Okay, so even during holidays, we've managed to start picking up speed with our projects. The KDF Starbase is finally moving towards T2, and has a good chance of hitting T3 soon (I recommend we get the bragging rights of Elite Ground Weapons for the category upgrade we need to open T3 upgrade). Norfleet and his shadow army (there's apparently more of them now/soon) has been doing great (and insane) job moving the largely deserted place forward. Meanwhile, the Federation Embassy is moving forward, we've got the Recruitment T2 project almost running (should occur during next harvest), after which we upgrade the Embassy proper for faster access and discount commodity broker.

So, our current goals in my opinion should be:

1) Finish Recruitment T2.
2) Begin work on Embassy T2.
3) Start work on Diplomacy T2.
4) Slowly move the KDF Starbase forward.
5) Decide which Fed Starbase proper category should be raised to T4. Some people have expressed interest in just owning a Destroyer, Elite Space Shields have been mentioned, and there's a distant (very distant) chance to move towards Elite Space Weapons.


Now, reports otherwise:

I've recently switched Valkar back to an Odyssey, using only three Tac boff slots (Tac Team with doff boost, two Overloads). Results have been great. The LtCmdr universal is used either for Engineers for moar tanking or Science for tactical utility (and a bit of extra tanking). I tested the full Romulan weapon set. Very unimpressive on part of the beam, and it does suffer from the fact that plasma types in space are among the weakest of weapons due to resistances against them being everywhere both PvE and PvP. On the other hand, the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo is an amazing weapon, though it remains to be seen if its doff functions get changed (the Omega launcher at least is bound to get some serious changes in this front, due to "critical mass" glitch), but I'd say even with them it'd be a solid weapon though obviously not as good as the rapid fire it is capable of right now. The Romulan console is great all-around, a universal that provides +1.8% crit chance (this is the important part) and +1.8 to all power levels. I don't know if the Romulan/Reman space sets can enhance the Hyper-Plasma torps, but it's something worth considering if they do.

EDIT: Also, Norfleet has found out that CXP boosters also boost the CXP returned to you if you cancel the turn-in assignment. This could be of use to us, if Norfleet could barter for them in bulk somehow.

EDIT2: Completing the T5 Romulan cutscene mission (found in the T4 volcano mission's final room after the fight, on a console) nets you 750 Romulan Marks and 32,000 Dilithium.

 

[Norfleet]

5) Decide which Fed Starbase proper category should be raised to T4. Some people have expressed interest in just owning a Destroyer, Elite Space Shields have been mentioned, and there's a distant (very distant) chance to move towards Elite Space Weapons.

Elite Fleet Shields are the way to go. T4 Space brings us...the Fleet Failaxy. No one really wants this. T4 Fagricator brings us, well, not a hell of a lot, except a slight discount on Embassy provisions. I don't forsee this expense being bankbreaking anytime soon, especially since to meet the increased mineral demands I've started converting my doffships into Dil mules as they can be concurrently farmed without much additional time cost, and their dil is only suitable for Fleet Contrib, which produces surplus fleet credits unsuitable for anything except more fleet contrib. As I expand on this, we should be seeing a roughly 50% increase in net dil flow from here. WE REQUIRE MORE MINERALS!

Worth noting, however, is that I have heard that it is possible to purchase items, but not ships, ahead of one's own fleet rank by visiting another fleet's base, without the need to become a member. This is not quite a reliable supply, but worth keeping in mind. Ultimately, though, I'd say the best option is to take a measured and balanced pace towards upgrades to avoid overdrawing anyone side, but with priority given towards Sci. Otherwise I get an overdraw on one particular dofftype. Speaking of which, we're at least partly doffstalled, so work your Vaarna doffy magic.

I tested the full Romulan weapon set. Very unimpressive on part of the beam, and it does suffer from the fact that plasma types in space are among the weakest of weapons due to resistances against them being everywhere both PvE and PvP.

There are no specifically known plasma-resists in PvE. In fact, those weapons destroy PvE. PvP, plasma resist is endemic due to widespread use of STF shields, but this issue becomes less of an issue as people move towards Elite Fleet Shields, which render all weapons equally useless. Also, Plasma Cannot Be Half-assed. If you want to use plasma, you have to go with LOTS OF PLASMA. BURN! BURN EVERYTHING!

EDIT: Also, Norfleet has found out that CXP boosters also boost the CXP returned to you if you cancel the turn-in assignment. This could be of use to us, if Norfleet could barter for them in bulk somehow.

Alas, they are not really things acquirable in bulk: Just stuff that gets added to the table to round off trades.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Achtung, comrades! Time for a new glorious Five-Year Plan of gloriousness!

Okay, so even during holidays, we've managed to start picking up speed with our projects. The KDF Starbase is finally moving towards T2, and has a good chance of hitting T3 soon

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Doffstalled in Fed or KDF? And I do point out, right now I'm focusing my doff pack purchases around the Embassy.

 

[Norfleet]

Doffstall is doffstall. Since Starbase Food is universal and doesn't matter what faction the doffs are, if we're doffstalled ANYWHERE, it's because you're slacking in your doffiness! You're supposed to be the one magically producing doffs somewhere! I've never entirely figured out where you get this stuff, but clearly it's your thing, just as I focus on increasing our output of MINERALS.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Just saying Norfleet, if there's a doff problem I haven't gotten around to fixing, you can just transwarp to SB with the Dil donor and grab several hundred packs of the type needed. Due to 1:1 ratio of Dilithium -> Fleet Cred, you're probably even better equipped for doff-devilry than I am.

 

[Cool name]

What Doffs do you guys need? I did manage to recover several of my old accounts so I will soon have more Doffs than I care to sell.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, we just kinda need in bulk.

Also, I've still got that D'Kora.

 

[Cool name]

So just white doffs regardless of department? Ok. Give me a couple of days to get back in the game and I will send you more than you will know what to do with. Which was your username?

And I have not been entering a lot with my health, the holidays, and going to visit my family so I did not get any richer. I do not even know if I will be able to get the Breen Ship even with the Lobi from all the keys I did receive as a gift from a couple of "friends." D:

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Username was Vaarna_Aarne.

 

[Norfleet]

Arright, harvest time. Embassy is go. Recommend we do NOT bother building the Transwarp Conduit upgrade at this time: It only gives Science XP, but at high cost, and since each tier of Science XP booster is more expensive than the last, not building it allows us to milk cheaper projects for longer. Besides, it's useless: Does anyone actually ever use that thing? It doesn't go anywhere anyone would give a shit about, plus you'd have to use transwarp to access it in the first place. It doesn't give us loot and it doesn't offer Starbase XP to help us tier up, so...pass.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The Transwarp Conduit doesn't make any projects more expensive, it just adds the new destinations. It's like the Tailor and other such projects.

And I do sometimes use the Conduit when I leave the Starbase, it is handy.

However, my efforts are largely focused on the Embassy, and I'll be saving up my Mark income for the T2 upgrade for it.

 

[Norfleet]

It doesn't DIRECTLY make projects more expensive. But what happens is that it adds XP to the relevant category. This causes that category to level up sooner, which means you must now pay the new-tier level expenses. The cost of purchasing the same amount of XP at a lower tier is less than purchasing that same XP at a higher tier. But the project provides a fixed amount, it isn't required to level up, and its cost does not increase with tier.

Here's an example: Purchasing 1K XP costs A. You need 10K XP. Therefore, you can purchase 10 (technically 11) A packages. At teh next tier, you must pay, say, 2A for the same 1K XP (it's not quite that bad, but that's not important). Purchasing the Item gives you, say, 2K. That's 2 fewer packages of A you are allowed to purchase because you reached that 10K through the item's given XP instead of purchasing the 1K A package. You must now pay 2A for every package. This project has indirectly made everything somewhat more expensive. Perhaps not a huge difference, and worth ignoring if you gain some actual benefit out of it...but since there is practically no benefit to be had, why not just sit on it?

Bottom line: I am a professional miser. If there's a penny to be pinched, I know how to pinch it. This is one of those things.

However, my efforts are largely focused on the Embassy, and I'll be saving up my Mark income for the T2 upgrade for it.

I concur with this priority: The Embassy has no direct impact on any penny-pinching baseside, and will provide a return on investment faster...there doesn't appear to be as pressing a reason to rush anywhere with the base. The Elite Shields are being nerfed to death soon anyway, as complaints have brought the matter to official dev attention.

For much the same reasons I previously mentioned, it may be worth holding off on purchasing the actual Tier 2 embassy upgrade until we hit Diplo 2: We can put off having to pay T3 costs for awhile that way, and honestly, do we really NEED the things offered? It offers Exchange Access inside the embassy, but I'm told that exchange access can also be had right outside the door anyway. It will not take much longer to hit T2 Diplo, whereupon we'll have to eat the T3 costs anyway. As a professional miser, I therefore recommend waiting until that point.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Diplo costs will hop to T3 only after Diplo is upgraded. Upgrading the Embassy itself does nothing, so we should do it while we work on the Diplo XP. It's the fastest method.

I'm going to conserve Valkar's turn-in for the Embassy upgrade proper, the alts will still provide the daily Marks for the Diplo projects (meaning 180 Marks per day).

 

[Drakron]

But what happens is that it adds XP to the relevant category. This causes that category to level up sooner, which means you must now pay the new-tier level expenses.

Yes but I dont think we are going to level to T4 Starbase using Science, we are likely to use Engineering that is the one with most XP in the category so its only a concern to level to T5 that is the grind to end all grinds since you have to get everything to T5.

Oh we actually need to build the damn thing if we want Science projects to be available, Cryptic developers are certainly not the sharpest around but they are also not that blunt to not realize people would never upgrade anything and just run T1 projects until they were at T5 to cut costs, the moment you hit the tier XP you need to run the upgrade project in order for that category projects to even be available for normal XP projects to show up.

Also slotting or not is a moot point since its not as if takes a slot we can actually use and since nothing is close to need to be upgraded its irrelevant until we actually need to upgrade some section of the Starbase and it will be months before that is going to happen.

 

[Norfleet]

Diplo costs will hop to T3 only after Diplo is upgraded. Upgrading the Embassy itself does nothing, so we should do it while we work on the Diplo XP. It's the fastest method.

Not quite: Diplo costs will only hop to T3 after diplo is upgraded....BUT, upgrading the embassy doesn't quite do "nothing". It gives Diplo XP (and recruitment, but we already are T3 for that). This means that it accelerates the point at which we begin paying T3 costs to get the same XP. If you buy the upgrade while Diplo is still T2, you are buying T2 XP. If you wait until T3 to finish that project, you are buying T3 XP, which costs more.

As for "faster"...well, technically, the speed is also about the same, since that particular slot being left unfilled is not going to cause the holdup. So, from my perspective as a PROFESSIONAL MISER, the speed at which we reach the destination is the same, but the COST with which we do so is less to do it my way.

Oh we actually need to build the damn thing if we want Science projects to be available, Cryptic developers are certainly not the sharpest around but they are also not that blunt to not realize people would never upgrade anything and just run T1 projects until they were at T5 to cut costs, the moment you hit the tier XP you need to run the upgrade project in order for that category projects to even be available for normal XP projects to show up.

That's true of Communications Array. It is NOT true of things like the Transwarp and other "side" projects. THOSE can be skipped and returned to later when their returns are worth comparatively more as a result.

Just take my word for it. Professional Miser here.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The Embassy upgrade takes a long time to finish. From an organizational perspective, these things should take priority.

 

[Norfleet]

We'll be able to see the construction time when it's available. If we plan and budget it accordingly, we can launch it in advance and have it finish right after we launch the required Diplo project, thus satisfying both requirements.

In any event we need about 8 more iterations of Diplo project...at our present rate of progress, it is likely that this will be a moot point anyway: With 4 days of waiting, minimum, before the topic even comes up again, plus the aforementioned upgrade time, it's likely that this has already been set for us.

I definitely recommend we follow this kind of plan for the KDF starbase, though: It does not look like the starbase itself is going to offer us anything useful until T4, based on our experiences Fedside, and so if we skip the optional "upgrades" and main hull upgrade, we'll save a fair chunk and be able to use the XP from those towards T4 or even T5 XP, instead of blowing them on cheap T2/3 XP. As we've seen, the costs get rather high and the savings can be significant. Obviously, we can't sidestep the mainline upgrades which are required to tier up, but it doesn't look like anything requires us to ACTUALLY upgrade the physical base itself. Because do we REALLY care about access to worthless Blue doffs, or the tailor? We saw what huge flop that was...also, it's not actually even necessary. You can actually sponge the uniform just by visiting some other base.

 

[Drakron]

The things I think we really want are actual projects, that is Shuttle so no more flying to New Romulus as we can just get there by Starbase and more importantly the discount vendor.

Dip II can wait since I dont think there is anything we actually want from it and since Embassy III requires everything at T3 its really not much a priority until the push for T3, as for the KDF I kinda disagree as T3 seems to be useful tier as T4 is as meh as Fed, the only thing on the T4 Shipyard is the Fleet Negh'Var and the Hoh'Sus and we already have access to the Fleet Vor'cha and considering the no-discount until T5 Shipyard its not as there is actual hurry for T4 shipyard.

Oh and we need the tailor, KDF uniforms suck and NON-SPIKY BOOTS! are on the KDF Fleet uniform, besides the massive XP requirements for T4 make it so its pointless to even try and I am not exactly sure if those unlock projects dont have T5 level costs.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, you and your shadow cabinet seem to be doing most of the work on KDF side, so you can freely organize this.


And no, we're going to get the KDF Tailor purely to show off our massive e-dongs.

 

[Drakron]

I just said that because lets see costs.

Tailor: 2,700 Marks, 160k Dilithium, 50 Civilian DOFFs, 180k Expertise and 2,500 Entertainment Provisions.
Tier IV projects: 960 Marks + various shit

Sure the Tailor gives 1,250 XP to Eng but its hideous expensive, does not take a slot and at two Tier IV projects are not going to reach 2k marks and the other costs seem lower too (except DOFF costs) so its a expensive project that is not saying us any if we run it at T5 upgrade time because I believe Tier V 1500 XP will cost less that the Tailor, the only savings is 2 projects that cost less and that is total because moment we start to work on Tier V we have to slot then or gain nothing.

I agree with a few things, Conduit is worthless KDF because everything is near Leonis anyway unlike Fed that have to hoop around all over the place and Chef and Bartender dont even gives us anything we dont have aboard our ships, same with the Ship Tailor that does not even give us a Fleet Material (how I regret asking for it) were the Tailor at least give us something, if you want to press "no, wait until we start on T5" than I will respect that decision because I have the HG option for tailor that I can use and prefer in some ways but I do think the Tailor at least is a option because at least give us something even if its a total ripoff and overall costs it does not set us back much because of the hilarious 100k XP requirement for T4 and it gets even worst for T5.

 

[Norfleet]

And no, we're going to get the KDF Tailor purely to show off our massive e-dongs.

Fair 'nuff. I bet it's going to be a disappointment, though.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And no, we're going to get the KDF Tailor purely to show off our massive e-dongs.

Fair 'nuff. I bet it's going to be a disappointment, though.

It probably is, but it's still a question of honor.

 

[Norfleet]

Dip II can wait since I dont think there is anything we actually want from it and since Embassy III requires everything at T3 its really not much a priority until the push for T3, as for the KDF I kinda disagree as T3 seems to be useful tier as T4 is as meh as Fed, the only thing on the T4 Shipyard is the Fleet Negh'Var and the Hoh'Sus and we already have access to the Fleet Vor'cha and considering the no-discount until T5 Shipyard its not as there is actual hurry for T4 shipyard.

I think you're conflating issues here: T4 shipyard is bleh on the Fedside. The T4 Neggy isn't actually bad, since it has none of the deficiencies of the Fed Failaxy and makes a decent Engi Cruiser. T3 has Fleet Varanus. The Fleet Version of the only freaking Science Ship in the game. Being that I happen to have a Varanus, I wouldn't mind being able to upgrade it.

But I am not in a hurry or anything. However, you can't actually AVOID the tier upgrades for Shipyard/Fab/Comm, since you cannot progress further until you upgrade them. You CAN, however, avoid upgrading the main starbase itself, as it is possible to continue to advance the different categories, and thus use the Starbase Upgrade XP in those categories to pay for higher-tier XP in those.

Tier 4 *STARBASE*, however, DOES offer something useful: The ability to actually buy useful doffs with your FC, instead of just food, since at that level you can buy purples which are capable of doing stuff on your ship...this is sort of important now that there is no other way to get purples without paying an arm and a leg, with the doffgrinder dead: All the other doff-related sources of purples only provide very specific purples. This is fine when those are the exact traits and specialties you want, but not so great if you want something other than that specific set of about 20 or so different purples. This is even more critical KDF-side: Feds can spam asylums, but Klinks don't have this option because there is no real source of refugees to trade in. My doffroster is basically populated with S6 leftovers and Supports and their ilk.