The Experimental Ship Upgrade path has opened even further. Now you can apply more tokens to your ships, and get even more device, console, and trait slots!

copypasta below. Edited slightly for clarity and sanity’s sake

Upgrade Your Ship Even Further!
By Ambassador Kael | Mon 04 Sep 2023 08:00:00 AM PDT

Experimental technology has long been one of Starfleet’s greatest strengths. Recently, they extended their Experimental Ship Upgrade technology to the rest of the Khitomer Alliance, and now that has paid off in spades. Federation, Romulan, Klingon and Dominion scientists working in concert have expanded these Experimental Ship Upgrades to double their power, and when Star Trek Online: Incursion launches, you’ll be able to take advantage.

Ships can now be upgraded one level past the previous T6-X. In addition to the upgrades that came with applying an Experimental Ship Upgrade token) the first time, applying the T6-X to T6-X2 upgrade adds an additional:

Cost breakdown:

  • Upgrading a T6 ship to T6-X requires 1 Experimental Ship Upgrade Token
  • Upgrading a T6-X ship to T6-X2 requires 2 Experimental Ship Upgrade Tokens

In other words, upgrading a stock T6 ship to T6-X2 will cost a total of 3 Experimental Ship Upgrade Tokens. The full upgrade gives you a total of 2 ship devices, 2 universal consoles, and 2 starship traits.

Enjoy having even more versatile ships to explore the cosmos, Captains! We’ll see you in game.

  • Redhotkurt@kbin.socialOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    DillaZirk posted the total cost of his 500k ISA energy build, and it was sobering $1200 total for traits, consoles, upgrades etc. I have (had?) several high end builds, with top shelf traits for pets, EPG and energy. Not all of that was bought at sticker, but even with lifetime stipend and grinding I’m still in far more $ and time than I care to think about.

    That’s a crazy high amount to drop in a game, but it’s not at all surprising if you’ve played for a while (nobodyspecial, Perrin, Indy, I’m counting all you guys in that). Still crappy, though. I mean, let’s say you want the Universal Designs trait that comes with the Crossfield Science Spearhead Refit, you’re gonna have to drop real world money on it, right? It’s a lockbox ship, so you gotta drop real cash to spend on the keys to open the lock boxes (gamble) in hopes that you’ll get it. If you wanna open 100 boxes, you need 100 keys at 12,500 zen (when not on sale), which is the equivalent of $125 USD. That’s just one ship! And you’re not guaranteed to get a ship that way. It’s nuts.

    There’s a free option, but it’s just as shitty. You could grind dilithium to convert to Zen and buy the ship that way, but how long would that take? If you grind dilithium with two toons, you can earn 16,000 dilithium, the equivalent of 32 zen, every day (dilithium:zen exchange rate is about 500:1). At that rate it would take you 390 days logging in every single day to save up for those keys, and you’re still not guaranteed to get one because it’s an RNG loot box! So yeah, it certainly is possible to acquire it for “free,” but at what personal cost? Over a year’s worth of grinding just for the chance to get that ship, and you wouldn’t be able to spend dilithium on any of the other pay-gated stuff they dangle in front of us, or it would take longer. I mean… you could always grind four toons instead of two, but again, at what personal cost? You’d have to log in and earn and refine dilithium for those fuckin toons every single day for 195 days, which is still a lot of time! Frick, that’s over half a year. At that point, it sounds really appealing to just drop the money on zen to acquire the keys.

    I mean, you guys already know it’s exploitative. I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Just venting. It’s just…ugh, I love the game, love Trek, but the way Cryptic manipulates and exploits their player base (for the thing they love, at that!) is really shitty. This is not in the spirit of Trek.

    • nobodyspecial@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m with you on the exploitative and shitty if you want to git gud, but I have to say this game doesn’t require top shelf gear or traits to do well. I have a completely F2P, grind-free alt with just reputation gear and weapons upgraded to Mk XV using Romulan rep upgrades from admiralty, using the fleet ship module bought Fleet JHV temporal warship and no exchange traits – it absolutely tears stuff up. Over 100k DPS in ISA, 120k on a really good day. That’s enough to carry most teams through advanced TFOs.

      I did this to show what was possible with zero cash investment, just 70 days wait to get reps to tier 6. Polaron weapons from the starter bug ship (JH toon, not even Romulan), fleet deflector, Discovery 3 piece, crafted weapon damage batteries and RS3, Morphogenic 3 piece, fleet damage locators. Other slots filled mostly with mission, +polaron damage rep gear and whatever Bellum stuff dropped while leveling disco rep.

      If I were to buy Emergency Weapon Cycle and Calm Before the Storm (to go with Withering fire extension trait from the free KDF recruit BoP) for something like $30 stacking zen charge bonus and end of the year Mudd’s 3 c-store coupons for 4500 zen I could push that much higher. Would blow the 3rd coupon on the Lexington or Gagarin.

      Yes, DOMINO, DPRM, immolating phaser lance, go down fighting, etc etc all add and add. But they each add 20% or so. The spend to get to 100-200k, still in the top 10% of all players is much smaller.

      Now, the spend for space barbie… That can get insane. Still, a free account can have 9 toons. That’s a lot of daily dilzen, and tons of EC from the summer and winter events. Can be done, but is grindier than most Korean titles.