While lockboxes themselves are providing a better conversion rate at this moment the typical conversion rate is around 15-16k ec/zen, (and that's what everything except lockboxes themselves are trading at) so you normally need ~5500 zen to get 85 million EC. That's a more like 50 dollars than 30.

Either way, I'm getting really annoyed at this stuff being per character unlocks. To get a fully buffed up dreadnought carrier means 3 ships... 2 of which I can't fly at the moment. They really need to start making these things account wide unlocks. I'm not likely to spend 50 dollars on a ship I'm not going to fly.

You know, while I love the exotic ships, it's... pretty noncanon to have SO many Starfleet folks flying them.

IMO, those ships should have been funky/cool boutique items that were, at best, equal to SF ships, or even worse.

They belong in some sort of hodge-podge 'unaffiliated' or Independent faction, not the major fleets of UFP and the Empire.

Current price of Keys on the exchange is 1,400,000 per. Current cost of Ships on the exchange aprox 80 mil. Do the math. Its prob going to cost you $40 or so. That is if you have a little EC, ZEN, or DIL already saved up. I couldent iimagine a player that didnt have at least 20mil in his bank already unless you just dont play much. So selling keys on exchange will get you the sip faster and for alot less than opening 100's of boxes.

Threads like this always amuse me. Especially all the "cryptic is gouging the playerbase of money," or "all Cryptic cares about is how much money they can get from us." It all comes down to this, no one is holding a gun to our head forcing us to buy keys for these lockboxes. We have free will, choose to buy or not. Apparently some people have 100 or 200 dollars they can throw at Cryptic for keys.

Clearly some of you saying that the ships are not rare don't remember the 2nd anniversary...so get ready for the Ambassador, and you will really see how a ship looks when everyone gets if for free and fast no hoops or effort.

last year there was just Odysseys in space and STF no other ships for a good amount of time every pug in STFs and there were many threads complaining that there were to many cruisers in the STFs and the rage in ZONE chat my god.


yea lots of players have the lock box ship, but not everyone and not all STFs are filled with lockbox ships.

When the Ambassador ship comes out and STFs are filled with just Ambassadors, you will be begging for lockbox escorts and ships to appear.

More amusing than the gouging argument is the inevitable gun to head rebuttal. May this thread continue its predictable march into obscurity.

Why is it amusing? It's just as correct as the gouging argument if not more so.

When Cryptic puts out mission content that requires a lockbox ship to complete then, and only then, does the gun to the head rebuttal fall short.

Until then, no one is forced to buy keys and open the lockboxes for the contents, it's just that people are willing to spend the money and open them for the goodies.