Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah. Frankly I don't even bother selling lockboxes, I just throw them into my account bank, which is a useful place to stick anything you want to keep but isn't useful enough to keep around. Rare provisions that you might need for unusual tasks, for example-- Saurian Brandy is necessary for one of the Caitian Doff missions, for example. Cardassian Kanar for a side-mission on DS9. The occasional Infinite-level item that you don't need but might like to pick up sometime. Souvenirs from past missions. Stuff like that. The lockboxes go in there on a vague basis of "well someday I might actually shell out for a pack of keys and take a shot at them".

[bilateralrope]

Lockboxes are totally worthless to anyone who isn't planning to open them with a key. Keys cost Zen (real money). You can buy keys with EC, as I recall, but the cost of each individual key in EC is really big. Which is understandable, since keys cost something like 100 Zen, and 1 Zen is worth something like 400 dilithium, and 1 dilithium is worth something like 100 energy credits.

True. But I've seen people buy 10 of them from me at a time from my single box listings. People who would have saved a lot of time if they used cheapest price per unit.

If you try the same thing with, say, shield batteries, or R&D materials, or other things that people actually have a reason to buy in bulk... it won't work as well. That's my prediction. Plus, of course, you'd be consuming a tremendous amount of your own time and energy.

True. It's a matter of finding the right item and stack size.

Which someone who enjoys that kind of thing probably has already done.

[Elheru Aran]

If you can sell them and you don't want to keep them... well by the gods knock yourself out. I guess the main point we're trying to make is they won't make you a lot of money compared to other items.

[mr friendly guy]

Lock box keys are going around 5 million EC. If one is willing to expend real money, you could spend around $11 for 10 keys and then sell them, say at 4.7 million for 47 million EC.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, that would be one way to pick up a ship without spending C-store prices.

[mr friendly guy]

That depends on your ship. A tier 6 ship costs around 3000 zen, so its around $30 if you buy directly from Cryptic. I think its the same with Steam and you only get bonus Zen from Cryptic when you spend $50 or more. At 3000 zen you buy a bit less than 30 keys, I think 10 keys go for 1125 zen, so around 24 keys. Even if you sell it at 5 million EC a pop that comes up to 120 million EC. A Narcine is going at around 170 million, and they are only level 5 ships which can be upgraded. So I think C-store prices are still cheaper than using the exchange for tier 6 ships.

The exchange however allows you to get ships which aren't available on C-store.

It also arguably allows you to get Lobi ships cheaper than if you purchased all the lock box keys and opened lock boxes to get lobi crystals. Just doing the maths, a paradox temporal dreadnought is going on the exchange between 310 to 320 million EC (I kind of have my eye on one of these so that's why I know the cost). It costs 900 lobi crystals. So assume 64 lock box keys and selling them for 5 million a key, should cover this ship. Now each lock box opens gives a mean of 5-6 lobi crystals, although the mode is 4 and you're more likely to get 4 per box unless you open a couple and get the higher number of lobi crystals to raise the average number. You would need to open 150 lock boxes to get the amount of lobi crystals needed for this ship. Again this will no doubt vary between ships, but I think these rough rule of thumb works.

[Simon_Jester]

Lockboxes are totally worthless to anyone who isn't planning to open them with a key. Keys cost Zen (real money). You can buy keys with EC, as I recall, but the cost of each individual key in EC is really big. Which is understandable, since keys cost something like 100 Zen, and 1 Zen is worth something like 400 dilithium, and 1 dilithium is worth something like 100 energy credits.

True. But I've seen people buy 10 of them from me at a time from my single box listings.

I bet what they were doing is exactly what I described: buy one lockbox, open it. Don't get desired result, buy another, open it. Repeat until you run out of keys. Alternatively, they're fools, you DO get fools now and then... and honestly I suspect that fools are over-represented among people who use lockboxes, although that's an unfair opinion of mine.

The catch is, lockboxes are almost the ideal case for "very high price retail for people who won't buy wholesale." Because for anyone who buys lockboxes, it genuinely does not matter what the lockbox costs. If they buy a lockbox for 1000 EC (far more than the going rate on the Exchange), that is still about one fiftieth of one percent of what the key costs on the Exchange. You could sell a single key on the exchange, buy a thousand lockboxes, and still have the vast majority of your EC left over.

So people will buy stupidly expensive lockboxes because it just plain does not matter to them, it's the difference between spending 1/10000 of a penny and spending 2/10000 of a penny. In a situation where they could never, never buy enough of the thing for those fractional pennies to add up.

If you try the same thing with, say, shield batteries, or R&D materials, or other things that people actually have a reason to buy in bulk... it won't work as well. That's my prediction. Plus, of course, you'd be consuming a tremendous amount of your own time and energy.

True. It's a matter of finding the right item and stack size.

Which someone who enjoys that kind of thing probably has already done.

Suffice to say, I don't think there are very many commodities for which it would work, and I don't think you'd make much of a profit margin on it. There are more cost-effective ways to game the Exchange, that involve much less annoying and repetitive uses of your time, if you really want to do that.

[bilateralrope]

I bet what they were doing is exactly what I described: buy one lockbox, open it. Don't get desired result, buy another, open it. Repeat until you run out of keys. Alternatively, they're fools, you DO get fools now and then... and honestly I suspect that fools are over-represented among people who use lockboxes, although that's an unfair opinion of mine.

I wouldn't be surprised about idiots with lockboxes. We are talking gambling here, and it's a pattern I've seen before in other MMOs.

[Simon_Jester]

Plus, the lockbox price is just so pathetically tiny that it's not even worth bothering from if you're already committed to paying for the key.

[mr friendly guy]

Ok so the temporal paradox destroyer is pretty neat even when using rainbow beams. Generally I find the beams are about 2/3 as powerful as if I used beams on a specialised beam boat with maximum boosters. The problem is that the game limits the number of omnidirectional beam arrays. I had thought when it said you can only have one per ship, I thought one of the same type. But its one period. However you can get around that by using Omega cutting beam. That however still leaves several gaps and I wasn't willing to use turrets. So I had to use the ancient anti proton weapon. Now I also have the tetryon and polaron omnidirectional beam array from the quests, and you can use that despite using a standard omnidirectional beam array. Unfortunately the omnidirectional arrays you get from quests are incompatible with each other, you use one and you can't use another. So I only have 3 omnidirectional beam arrays, used a standard phaser array, a standard polaron array, and gravitic torpedoes. Rounding it off is an epic mark 14 bioneural warhead, which has range of up to 15 km, so while I am waiting for my science powers to recharge, I fire off the warhead.

My science powers are pretty neat, although the recharge time for gravity well irritates me. What are the methods to speed up recharge time for science BOFFs?

Anyway, replaying the games at elite level is fun, because its actually a challenge.

[bilateralrope]

After a major increase in voice acting I did my first shuttle mission. That convinced me to subscribe.

[RogueIce]

The problem is that the game limits the number of omnidirectional beam arrays. I had thought when it said you can only have one per ship, I thought one of the same type. But its one period. However you can get around that by using Omega cutting beam. That however still leaves several gaps and I wasn't willing to use turrets. So I had to use the ancient anti proton weapon. Now I also have the tetryon and polaron omnidirectional beam array from the quests, and you can use that despite using a standard omnidirectional beam array. Unfortunately the omnidirectional arrays you get from quests are incompatible with each other, you use one and you can't use another.

That's WAD because let's face it: a cruiser with full Omni Arrays would be seriously OP.

The way it works is that there's two categories, three if you count the KCB which is its own thing:

• Crafted/Lockbox - The standard Omni Arrays from crafting. Lockbox weapon pack Omnis also go here, though AFAIK they only did it with the Terran lockbox and an Agony Phaser
• Missions Rewards - Ancient AP, and the Tetryon and Polaron ones from the Iconian War. I would imagine the other energy types will be represented sooner or later
• Kinetic Cutting Beam - really in a league of its own, but if you want three beam arrays firing 360-degrees this is what you get

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I used to go on the exchange and buy up a bunch of items that people were selling for 40% of their EC value (shields/deflectors/engines/warp cores), and offload them onto NPC vendors. It proves that a fool and his money are easily parted

[Lord Revan]

Anyone here who could craft me few AP +dmg consoles if I provide the mats (Mark X or higher preferbly)

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Anyone here who could craft me few AP +dmg consoles if I provide the mats (Mark X or higher preferbly)

My main is certainly capable of that, though it should be noted that mark for mark spire consoles offer both a greater damage increase and either a crit chance or crit severity, depending if you go for locators or exploiters. Those are character-bound however.

[Simon_Jester]

I used to go on the exchange and buy up a bunch of items that people were selling for 40% of their EC value (shields/deflectors/engines/warp cores), and offload them onto NPC vendors. It proves that a fool and his money are easily parted

You can occasionally find people selling for below 40%... O_o

[Lord Revan]

Anyone here who could craft me few AP +dmg consoles if I provide the mats (Mark X or higher preferbly)

My main is certainly capable of that, though it should be noted that mark for mark spire consoles offer both a greater damage increase and either a crit chance or crit severity, depending if you go for locators or exploiters. Those are character-bound however.

yeah I know but, I'd need the Fleet points to buy those, which can be issue (my fleet is rather large so there's few opportunities to dump marks) so the standard consoles are a decent enough stopgag method until I get the fleet consoles.

[mr friendly guy]

The problem is that the game limits the number of omnidirectional beam arrays. I had thought when it said you can only have one per ship, I thought one of the same type. But its one period. However you can get around that by using Omega cutting beam. That however still leaves several gaps and I wasn't willing to use turrets. So I had to use the ancient anti proton weapon. Now I also have the tetryon and polaron omnidirectional beam array from the quests, and you can use that despite using a standard omnidirectional beam array. Unfortunately the omnidirectional arrays you get from quests are incompatible with each other, you use one and you can't use another.

That's WAD because let's face it: a cruiser with full Omni Arrays would be seriously OP.

The way it works is that there's two categories, three if you count the KCB which is its own thing:

• Crafted/Lockbox - The standard Omni Arrays from crafting. Lockbox weapon pack Omnis also go here, though AFAIK they only did it with the Terran lockbox and an Agony Phaser
• Missions Rewards - Ancient AP, and the Tetryon and Polaron ones from the Iconian War. I would imagine the other energy types will be represented sooner or later
• Kinetic Cutting Beam - really in a league of its own, but if you want three beam arrays firing 360-degrees this is what you get

You certainly have more beams hitting at once, but that's somewhat offset by the fact the final beams would have less power due to the energy drain and the fact the beams are off different types, so you can't use a specific booster for an energy type.

************************************

Made some adjustments to my temporal ship, including upgrading all the chronometric calculations set and equipping it.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Chronometric_Calculations_Set
Once you have 3 in the set you get an exotic damage boost. For me its 31% boost damage, so my gravity wells and subspace vortex increase. Also one of the devices at epic level give you an extra 37.5 exotic skill points, which in turns boosts the damage my unstable anomalies trait give for the gravity well when it collapses.

On the downside I needed to have 2 polaron arrays for the set to work, so less rainbow coloured beams. It kind of encourages me to switch out for another omnidirectional polaron array and have even less colours, as they give a bonus to polaron damage, but I haven't done so yet.

On the downside I really should craft my own superior beam upgrades. Buying all the upgrades off the exchange has reduced me to 17.6 million EC and dilithium to 160,000. That was just to upgrade 3 of those 4 items. I don't have the fourth item, which is the krenim chronometric torpedo, which I really want. Unfortunately, and this is what I hate about Cryptic, some items I want are only on special events. The thing is, the items are part of a set, so you can never complete the set if you weren't playing STO at the time of the event. Uggh.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. It is massively more cost-effective to craft your own, and conversely it is quite profitable to sell your own.

[Simon_Jester]

Anyone here who could craft me few AP +dmg consoles if I provide the mats (Mark X or higher preferbly)

My main is certainly capable of that, though it should be noted that mark for mark spire consoles offer both a greater damage increase and either a crit chance or crit severity, depending if you go for locators or exploiters. Those are character-bound however.

yeah I know but, I'd need the Fleet points to buy those, which can be issue (my fleet is rather large so there's few opportunities to dump marks) so the standard consoles are a decent enough stopgag method until I get the fleet consoles.

You can buy adequate consoles (that boost damage by 25-30% each) on the Exchange for pocket change, though. The return on investment doesn't justify paying for a Very Rare Mk XII that costs hundreds or thousands of dilithium to craft, when you can buy something on the exchange that boosts damage by only 2% or so less for something like 10-20 thousand EC.

[Lord Revan]

oh? I heard decent AP ones went for 14 mil EC (aka 4 mil above my cap even if I had reached the EC cap) or so.

[bilateralrope]

I used to go on the exchange and buy up a bunch of items that people were selling for 40% of their EC value (shields/deflectors/engines/warp cores), and offload them onto NPC vendors. It proves that a fool and his money are easily parted

You can occasionally find people selling for below 40%... O_o

No surprise there. If people don't want an item in an MMO, its price drops. Then you get people who don't compare it with the vendor price.

I saw the same thing in the GW2 beta, and that had the vendor price displayed on the item. The only reason that stopped after release is that ANET set a minimum price at the trading post.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, 40% isn't the vendor price, it's the discard price. If an item is rated as worth 5000 EC by the computer (not the Exchange), you can discard it for 2000 EC at any time. Selling it on the Exchange for less than that is just pure stupidity. Because you don't even need to interact with a vendor to get the 2000 EC, you just click 'discard.'

[Simon_Jester]

oh? I heard decent AP ones went for 14 mil EC (aka 4 mil above my cap even if I had reached the EC cap) or so.

Er... are we talking about antiproton mag regulators or antiproton weapons?

Okay, mag regulators are more expensive than the corresponding consoles of other damage types, true- probably because so many people covet antiproton weapons as damage dealers. Here's the catch, though.

Each increase in rarity or mark on a mag regulator increases its damage bonus by roughly 2%. Thus, for instance, a Rare Mk XII mag regulator boosts 28.1%, while an Uncommon Mk XI regulator boosts damage by 24.4%.

So the question you have to ask yourself is, how much is the damage boost worth? If I bought the four cheapest mag regulators on the Exchange at this very moment, I'd spend a total of 185000 EC for two common and two uncommon Mk XII consoles, with total damage boost of 101.2%.

Or I could pay 50k for another two Uncommon Mk XIIs instead of 40k and 45k for two Commons. Total damage boost is now 104.8%, and I paid an extra 15000 energy credits for it. Total cost is 200000 EC. Paying 15000 EC for an extra 3.6% damage seems reasonable.

But to do better than THAT, I need to either buy Rare Mk XIIs, or Uncommon Mk XIIIs.

...

If I swap out a Rare Mk XII for one of the Uncommons, total price of the set of four goes from 200k to 350k EC, while the damage boost only increases from 104.8% to 106.7%. Paying 15k EC for an extra 4% damage sounded good... does paying 150k for another 2%?

Buying four Rare Mk XIIs to replace the four Uncommons will set me back 950k EC. So going from four Uncommon Mk XIIs to one step up from there costs me an extra three quarters of a million EC. And in exchange, my damage bonus from tactical consoles goes from 104.8% to a whopping 112.4%.

Buying four Ultra Rare Mk XIIs would cost me 3590k EC for a damage bonus of 120%. Compared to that relatively cheap set of Uncommons, I've shelled out an additional three point four million EC in exchange for a damage output increase of roughly 15% over my base damage.

And let's not even talk about Mk XIII regulators. As I write this there are two Ultra Rare Mk XIIIs for sale at five million EC apiece. There are also some Rare Mk XIVs on sale for 4.45 to 4.5 million. Either way they provide a damage bonus of a whopping 31.9%...

In other words, they perform about 6.3% better in relative terms than the Ultra Rare Mk XII that costs roughly 85% less. And the Ultra Rare in turn performs about 6.7% better than the Rare Mk XII that costs about 78% less, and the Rare performs 6.8% better than the Uncommon that costs about 75% less.

...

And if we start thinking in terms of dilithium costs, well... the closest way I know to equating EC and dilithium costs is to look at how both convert to Fleet credits, or to assess them in terms of contraband prices (since in effect you can buy 2000 dilithium ore for five units of contraband, and you can buy five contraband on the Exchange). Fleet credit prices indicate that 1 dilithium is worth 100 EC. Contraband prices have been down since they quintupled the cooldown on the Turn In Contraband duty officer mission, and you can get 2000 dilithium for just over 150000 EC at the moment, indicating a market value of 77.5 EC/dilithium.

Being generous, then, the cost of that massive array of Ultra Rare Mk XII mag regulators measured in equivalent dilithium is going to be something like 36000 dil. Almost all of which is spent buying that last extra 8% of damage output.

Clearly, pursuing the highest possible damage bonuses results in you hitting the point of diminishing returns.

...

Now, there are a lot of situations where this makes sense.

Say, if you're a person with leveled-up captains that have good crafting skills who can make up three million EC in a few days of selling Superior upgrade kits.

Or if you're a person who actually spends significant money on the game, in which case that three million EC corresponds to roughly sixty or seventy cents of real money as soon as you start selling keys on the Exchange.

Or if you are desperately struggling to raise your DPS because it's a penis length substitute for you.

...

But by and large, in my honest opinion it is just not worth it to invest in the most powerful possible tactical consoles, unless you are already in a maxed-out endgame condition and are deliberately trying to 'optimize' your damage output beyond the already-formidable levels your ship can probably achieve on its own.

So I say, buy second-best, use a battery of Rare Mk XIIs on the Exchange. It costs so very, very much less and gives you results that are almost as impressive.

[mr friendly guy]

Thing is, 40% isn't the vendor price, it's the discard price. If an item is rated as worth 5000 EC by the computer (not the Exchange), you can discard it for 2000 EC at any time. Selling it on the Exchange for less than that is just pure stupidity. Because you don't even need to interact with a vendor to get the 2000 EC, you just click 'discard.'

I decided to try this trick and there were a few things being sold at 1000 EC with a value of 10000 -20000 EC, so a healthy profit. Unfortunately there wasn't that many items so I only made around 60000 EC profit. A few were kind of borderline and I didn't think it was worth the effort to buy and then sell those.