I see you're making the Dilithium issue even worse.

1. Unlimited Dilithium Processing per day is a necessity.
2. Do not make exploration missions a daily. It already takes 756 Mission Runs to get 1 Tier 5 Ship + Mark X Blue equipment, Making us do them once per day is going to drive players away. Both paying and free to play players.
3. No one should have to grind more in their lower tier ship to get their current tier ship at rank up. Additional ships of that tier yes, but the initial ship should always be free. That is the nature of the game you have created. Stick to it.

i knew getting bought by the chinese would ruin this game, cryptic didn't just sell their soul, they sold star treks soul as well. an economy this vile having anything to do with the star trek universe is blasphemy

The ship tokens should not have been changed. It worked don't mess with it. Heck I even like to buy more than one ship type at any given rank to see what ship I liked. That is gone now, THIS IS THE BIGGEST MESS UP SO FAR.

The thing is, we're not Gold Players during the testing phase, we are silver players.

Quit calling people apologists. Just because he/she has a different outlook then you doesn't make them an apologist. You sound silly and it makes you look rigid and intolerant of other opinions.

Now, having said that....

There better be one H of a multiplier from the refining process or I'm going to have Mk V gear forever.

No, but the devs have told us a lot about some of the stuff.
And a lot of it is about screwing us subscribers over in effect by their own words.

Here is an Energy Credit sink idea:

1. Lift the Dilithium refinement limit to limtless.

2. Move the Limitless Refinement process to Starbases. (Starships are NOT mass Refinement Facilities!...)
2a. Keep the small limit of Refinement (8000) on Starships, but Star bases Refinement is limitless.

3. Starbases charge a small fee (EC ) of like 3 per unit. "Wanna refine 50,000 ore? Cost ya 150,000 EC".

Hey lets face it! There is a HUGE amount of EC floating around.

Keeping a small production amount on Starships, for FREE, and the majority of it being handle at Base, where they would actually have the mass facilities to do so, makes more sense I.M.O.
This would free up the production limit people are showing to be a ligitimate problem, AND finally provide that much needed EC sink the game economy as needed.

(Pssst. Earth Space Dock could FINALLY have some use for that lower useless level...)
Feds would have theirs at ESD, and KDF of have theirs at the Facility on Praxis.
Feds could run down stairs to refine their stuff, and KDF flys over to Praxis for theirs.

So what if it ways 6 oz in todays economy that 6 oz is worth 3000 dollars. The value of that gold nuggest cost to mine and smelt is far less. You trade size for value. Refined dillithium is valuable so you have to assume cryptic understandst that basic princile. There is a differenc between absolute numbers and value.

I like this idea.

No, we are all gold. They changed their minds and went gold for F2P testing.