To start off, I don't like the dilithium changes with S7, but I'm not going to speculate about the motivations.

A large part of my game play involved buying and selling DOFF's, and I'm uncertain of how that will play out in the future. I'm picturing an eventual glut of common and uncommon officers on the exchange due to them not being worth grinding or dismissing. They will have no real value in game, and no one will really want them for anything other than starbases.

So I have to ask why the lower tiers of DOFF grinding saw a 5000% price increase while the very rare tier saw only a 2000% increase?

5 commons --> 1 uncommon = 500 dilithium (5000% of original cost of 10 dilithium)
5 uncommons --> 1 rare = 2500 dilithium (5000% of original cost of 50 dilithium)
5 rare --> 1 very rare = 5000 dilithium (2000% of original cost of 250 dilithium)

I think it's because someone realized that a 12500 dilithium cost (5000% increase) for the very rare tier would be absolutely unpalatable for most players. I just don't understand why that wasn't recognized for the lower tiers as well. Why not keep the pricing consistent with each tier being 20% of the cost of the next tier? The pricing should be 200, 1000, 5000 not 500, 2500, 5000. It would at least making grinding at the lower tiers somewhat more palatable and keep the pricing consistent.

At the current prices, I don't think I'll ever grind a DOFF again. My dilithium is too valuable.

Actually... you're looking for a pattern in the wrong place.

Look at the compactor prices as a percentage of Ferra's prices. both blue and purple are 5/12 of Ferra's price. green is close 6/12, but that's probably the result of making it the nearest round number.

Except you know EXACTLY what you're getting from Ferra.

The grinder is a gamble. I routinely upgrind then down convert until I get something useful.

I would not spend 62.5% of the daily refining cap on chance.

You're right, I've never looked at his prices as the duty officers are bound on purchase. With the grinding, you do need to account for the officers you are trading in as well. So assuming you ground 25 commons into 5 uncommons and ground them into a rare, you've spent 5000 dilithium, which is 5/6 of Ferra's price. If you take that a step further, you end up spending 30000 to grind a very rare, which is 2.5x the cost of a very rare from Ferra. The math is bad for grinding any way you look at it.

In my opinion, Ferra's pricing is bad to start. If they were to match the dilithium costs of grinding to it, the uncommon and rare grinds would cost 1000 dilithium each, and the very rare grind wouldn't cost any dilithium and only require 2 rares.

Assuming you are grinding to each level and commons are free, this is total dilithium cost per officer per system:

uncommon - rare - very rare - system

1000 - 6000 - 12,000 - Lt. Ferra

10 - 100 - 750 - old grind

500 - 5000 - 30,000 - new grind

200 - 2000 - 15,000 - my original suggestion

uh, you factoring in the full cost to buy materials from Ferra skews things. The prices don't use the "full" price.

Just passing by...

I'd pay 1000 dil (maybe 1500 dil, under some circumstances) max to get one random purple from 5 blues. (--> that might result in around 100 dil/500 dil max respectively for white to green/green to blue)

Currently, no chance for me to use the grinder unless I magically end up with millions worth of refined dilithium.

You have to factor in the full cost of materials if you want to compare grinding a very rare vs. purchasing one from Lt. Ferra.

You're lucky I didn't include labor. It's a lot of clicking and waiting 5-10 seconds for each of the 31 missions required to turn 125 commons into a 1 very rare.

I can't believe they raised the prices so high and there's way less ways to make dilithium now and you can't make as much as before.... I just can't believe how imbalanced this season is Is it wrong to hope someone somewhere gets fired for this pure stupidity/greed? Tell me how to grind 1000 doffs with the current system without having to sell my organs for dilithium.... serious wtf here. I'm frustrated and I'd be surprised if my post has any effect on anyone else feeling the same way since it's obliviously obvious how frustrating this should be for people.