That’s really key, hope for the future. Cryptic dug their heels in on the 11th bundle, and its permanent availability is a testament to poor sales of that. This bundle is actually worse than the 11th. So high hopes for next year’s bundle having something I might want. If the game lasts that long. There are definite signs of things worsening for the game, even by our rock bottom standards.

Been looking at the bundle for a bit now. Hot take: there’s absolutely nothing in there I want. I’m sure various traits and consoles in this could be a big boost to organized record DPS runs for channel members. But as far as making the carrying of elite random TFOs on my own? Nothing stands out. The four ships are mechanically poor compared to other alternatives, and the traits and consoles are laser focused on a support play style.

If the carrier was an FDC it’d be a must buy for me. As is, another MW 3/3 carrier? Hard pass, even though the pets look interesting for DPS support. It’s a shame, the model looks fantastic. Maybe they’ll do a Terran version that doesn’t suck.

IMO the only way they’ll sell this turd of a bundle is if the exclusive hangar pets are more OP than drone ships. And even then I’m not going to buy it.

Just 4 new c-store grade ships. The Lafayette has next to zero value, being an underwhelming, not nearly good enough to be mediocre partial spec 4/3/1 ship with filler grade trait and console. “Bundle selling” box ship is ancient, obsolete, and a lesser platform than the event ship we just got. Ugh.

This has enormous potential to be even more underwhelming than the 11th bundle. Also known as the bundle that killed my enthusiasm for STO, and stopped my spending. I expect filler. Lots and lots of filler. Maybe even something as extreme as a holo Locutus as a bundle exclusive. It’s not a good sign that we know nearly nothing of this bundle two days before it drops. There’s also zero time to incorporate any player feedback. Yeah, nearly certain I’ll be skipping this one.

I would have bought this when it was first released if the tommygun was account unlocked. But now I have more gear than I can use, especially with 4 piece sets like the Kuumaarke one, and borg now adapting to physical damage. The ship is decent, having 5 forward weapons and two specs (even though the secondary is only Lt.) Overall, in 2024 the value in the bundle doesn’t justify the big fat bundle price, even with an account tommygun. I’ll continue to give this one a pass, even at the 35% off it’ll be next bundle sale. With all seven trait slots filled with premium traits and most console slots filled with advanced consoles I can see spending even less than usual in the future. And that’s saying something, I only spent stipend and dilzen last year.

Very generous, and very needed. Anyone starting in 2024 will have missed out on just too many events and giveaways, getting 2 c-store traits, one lockbox trait and a bunch of lobi gear after a year of play should go a long way to catching new players up with the multi-year vets. I wonder how many new players just give up and move on after realizing just how much money they’d have to spend before they can meaningfully contribute to team play.

I’m once again underwhelmed. I have all the fluff, and the LBort is… The LScimitar, but worse. Much worse. I can’t see ever flying that ship. So at the end of the day it’s $84 (will likely be 78 in two weeks) for a slightly better account wide Inquiry, a new quad weapon with a gimmick and one decent enough looking account trait. Cannons will be great on a BO Intel or MW ship, for sure.

Thing is, I already have the Inquiry and… I don’t love it or fly it. Got it pretty cheap when it showed up in the lobi store. Even though I have it I prefer the LD7 and even the Lexington. Once the bundle goes on 35% off sale I may get it for my F2P account which I’ve neglected ever since the LScimitar. Definitely nothing here that’s a day 1 must buy for me, especially as I get the sneaking feeling a Terran Inquiry will be in the 15th bundle. Next!

The trait looks potentially useful for space wizardry, depending on numbers. However, when I space wizard, I end up tanking ALL room aggro. Which typically means 0 shields. Reaching 60k shield capacity will take some investment, taking away from damage clickies, EPG and CtrlX. Minus another 2 console slots lost to the valdore and voth consoles that are required to have any hope of non-zero shields. Oh, and RSP and the doff to extend it as well. It might be of more use on a SS3 or BO3 build; those have a bit more room to substitute out some critd consoles.

Ship itself looks less than great for pure EPG yet not quite as optimal for dewsci as an intel boat. That lt. cmdr engineering seat is a big drawback for SIA spamming, and getting close and personal for NSB will get hairy with only a 1.0 hull multiplier. No specialist firing mode worth using since ERL I is a whole bunch of nope. Very much a neither fish nor fowl specialization choice, IMO.

Obviously I’ll skip it. While there are worse premium ship choices there are also many better choices. I can see this hitting a Mudd box before too long, especially with pressure for Cryptic to make big bucks fast so Embracer can offload them.

Embracer is cutting other dev studios to the bone, but STO has already been a skeleton crew ever since the Magic disaster. Even before that.

It’s pretty obvious this is game is in “Maintenance Mode Plus.” Not quite completely abandoned, but definitely minimum effort to keep the lights on and milk whales tethered by the sunk cost fallacy. Inertia is a powerful force.

Me, I’m spending more on my (well, I guess it’s not mine any more, it’s my kid’s) Jeep instead. Factory still has to finish building mine.

Key kids! You like cartoons? Well, here’s your chance to get addicted to gambling!

This is the plan, but it’s always a bad one. The people hopping jobs are the top performers, ones with marketable resumes that get snapped up even in a weak market. The ones forced to remain either feel less marketable or are less marketable for a number of reasons.

It’s extreme short term thinking that leads to both morale and performance issues sooner than leadership expects.

Being in the same location at the same time certainly seems like it’d make organizing and meeting with union reps easier. And with more motivation to do so due to crappier working conditions. I’d say it’s more likely the remainder will unionize, yeah. And then have the union push for WFH.

I’d love for it to be a reskin of SB1. That’ll be an attention-free grind, about the same level of effort as was expended in creating yet another useless ground set. Just park the jellyship not far from the starbase, activate the F-U field and wait for the timer to tick down.

I’m a bit disappointed, last two years the 4th grind was an event ship. Looks like nothing to look forward to for the rest of this year’s mandogrinds.

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.

I have the shotgun, and it’s really cheap from the phoenix store for anyone that doesn’t. Unfortunately, I still get the “don’t forget to equip a frequency remodulator” whine from Seven on the Bozeman ground patrol.

The 10 or so seconds it takes to remodulate every 2-3 shots (feels like) makes the DPS loss feel worse than just stabbing things or throwing knives otherwise.

I missed the tommygun by mere days, and I’m still salty AF about that. And Cryptic’s decision to single toon lock it in a $150 awful bundle.

This is my biggest quibble with STO, and the reason I’ve kept my udders hidden since the 11th anniv pack, the terrible value of which shocked me back to reality. I pre-bought zen for that pack and STILL have more than that due to stipend in spite of buying high priced stuff over the years.

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.

But I’ve pretty much kicked the sunk cost mindset. I play STO as a side MMO, if that. With only 2 episodes a year I can keep it as a back burner game. The grind doesn’t demand big buck spend.

Not gonna lie, I’m going to buy the X2 upgrade. I’d say “regardless of cost”, but you know Cryptic and their ridiculous pricing.

I want it for my Verne and Temporal FDC both. The Verne because I can always use 7 top tier space magic traits, and the FDC because I think I can now pull off a full on pet+ctrlx+DHC build. One more console and trait will be HUGE for that ship, right now I’m just short of having enough ctrlx.

They are definitely milking the cash cow hard, but doing a minimum of feeding.

Me, I like red alerts. Fast in and out, a few seconds and it’s easy marks and some mastery xp. I’ll be finishing up a few more masteries this time around. I do wish they’d switch the prizes up a bit and offer something other than ship x-tokens. I have a huge stack of those, between the legendary packs and constant events.

Just did a PUG parse run with my Surgical Strikes Konnie while running the 3 piece. Dark Matter Dissolution damage increase is imperceptible in advanced, but on paper might be worth a K or so in elite. The bonus torp DoT is right up there with Improvised Waste Disposal and Shall We Not Revenge, IMO. I still think the 3 piece is never worth running except possibly on a beam overload World Razer or maybe some ERL 5/3 fun build.

I was looking for the firing mode scaling comparison but couldn’t find it. IIRC, like other specialist firing modes, only III is “good.” There’s just too much drop-off going from III to I on surgical strikes – a 40% crit severity and 100% cat1 reduction. I’m fairly sure BO3 will handily outperform SS1.

Still not even a tiny bit tempted. Maybe it’d be fun to play with SS1+RS3 in elite content, but not $150 worth of fun. My resolve might crumble if they do a 75% off sale on this bundle though.

Thanks for the tips! I got an “error 50” both times, so was quite surprised anything posted at all. I’ll remember to use “add a new link” next time, this will have to do for now.