Compensation for goods and services is not ethical? You still have some unusual opinions sollvax. Also, I've provide a solution that people want to deliberately ignore because it would solve their problems.

bugshu you don't need lock box ships to pvp, and if you ground pvp don't get a cat that's the opposite of a good idea.

There seems to be a lot of people either not wanting to earn, trade or buy their ships. That's fine you don't have to. You get a perfectly good and effective ship at level 40. If you play the game you can have enough ec, dil or fc to buy another ship but you're not required to. You could even run a race 25 times and get a good ship.

FYI some of the best fleet ships are T1/T3. The T5 ones are meh, to say the least.

Anyway, this whole starbase stuff is a huge vanity project. None of the reward is unique; lockbox ships and weapons can be found on the exchange and there is no EC cap but your intellecutal limits, and this gear is equivalent or superior to the fleet one. Of course this rewards people playing smartly instead of fat wallets but i'm ok with that.

I often stop contributing to starbases and I think i have a lot more fun doing that. Taking a break is also a valid option, and remember that as soon as you get frustrated about STO cryptic wins, because it means you'll likely do something not reasonable to make this stop.

Per day:

Turn in contraband 2000

Turn in prisoners: 1000

Colonist relocation 500

Various other 50-250dilithium quests: 250-750

Collect reputation turnin: 940


That's 5000 dilithium without even firing a shot, maybe 15-20 minutes work. You can easily do the contraband stuff 2 or 3x a day and exceed cap.

Now throw a 1800+ dilithium (with rep turnins) elite STF on it... Nobody should be having trouble earning dilithium. I can't refine my fast enough, I'm on a 300k surplus and it grows every day. There are a ton of sinks right now, but that will die down in a month or two and Starbase production will pick back up.

I'm not having issues earning dilithium anymore, most people shouldn't unless they want to remain ignorant, the real problem is the massive dilithium sinks in every part of the game. If it were reasonable that is one thing, but everything is taking several days worth of dilithium, which in Zen value is crazy expensive. So it doesn't make sense, it needs fixing to be more reasonable.

Hmm, I'll have to look up where you get those. I've gotten a small number on my Orion so far, but my Fed has yet to see one. Also a more reliable way/place to get colonists for the relocation quest.

It's from the same guy on Qonos that gives you the contraband mission. There are also other common but random ones that you can get in space that are more efficient (4 for 500 instead of 10 for 1000; plus a better chance of success).

Yeah, I'd seen those missions. I meant getting the actual prisoners for the turn-in.


....ah, I see. Crit successes on certain Esp & Military assignments. No wonder I haven't seen any prisoners Fed-side.

My KDF regularly hits this, but not my Feds.

I spent two weeks doing this with three KDF toons. I can count on one hand the number of times I hit the refining cap. Yet I still bought everything I wanted. Then I bought some fleet doff packs and sold them on the exchange for a big chunk of change that I use to equip my characters. I got bored of that and started playing the game again.

KDF remain Dil and contraband machines. As pointed out above the Dil sinks are only vanity items and don't need to be used. Anyone who claims Dil is scarce or hard to gain now is a fool. But their foolishness keeps Zen prices low, so let them remain fools.

This post has never really been about the acquisition of Dilithium, End Game players will not have a problem reaching the 8k cap and anyone can reach it if they are prepared to grind.

The actual issue is the new sinks, the effect that has on the exchange and the grind factor which puts off casual players (like my ex-fleetmates, who just cant be bothered with it all anymore).


And I have a fear is that as we the players home in on the best way to play the game to maximise out return (for the time we put in), there are Cryptic "bean counters" out there looking for what they see as the next "shortcut" to nerf!

I have another fear (whilst I am here) that they will see the (oh so boring, boring, boring, click slide, click, slide...) reputation system as a success and if we ever get a level cap raise or anything else for end gamers, yup, it is going to be the same reused (from the starbase projects) code. What would have been so hard about one single "pay (x EC, y Dil, z Exp) now" button?