(See what I did there? Capitalized the “N” and “X” in “next” because this has an NX-class ship? Bah, you’re no fun…onto what you came here for!)

Hello, all, and welcome back to Joe and STO! Today, we got news of a new Choice Pack hitting Mudd’s Market, the “Faith of the Heart,” Choice Pack!

It shares a similar setup to Mudd’s “Stealing Time” Choice Pack: For 29,500 Zen (or 14,750 at its 50% off introductory sale price), you can make 3 picks from among 6 items.

Among your 6 options this time are the following:

As always, we’ll look at what’s included, their alternative costs & pricing in Zen for those alternative costs, and an overall look at the Bundle itself.

As always, only you can determine if this Bundle is worth it to you. You may love the Enterprise era and hop on this super quickly. You may find the Ultimate Tech Upgrades to be well more than worth the purchase price of this Choice Pack. You may hate it and quit STO!…Okay, please don’t quit STO, but just don’t buy this Choice Pack.

Now, onto the evaluations!

PORTHOS’ OLD(ish) DOG, NEW TRICKS

This Choice Pack will do something “Stealing Time” didn’t get to do: offer the same option(s) multiple times per Choice Pack purchase!

Let’s say you want 150 Master Keys. You can now pick the “50x Master Keys” option 3 times in a row and ta-da! You have 150 Master Keys.

If you want 100 Master Keys and 300 Lobi, you can pick “50x Master Keys” twice and “300 Lobi” once. It’s your call.

This is a great change that I hope we see in future Choice Packs.

T’POL’S OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS

Let’s get right to it, shall we? We’ll consider the ships and the other options (Keys, Lobi, and Ultimate Tech Upgrades) in separate sections. Why? Because STO’s about ships, didn’t you know that? (…not really, but they’re a big draw!)

SHIPS

We have on tap 3 account-unlock ships that were previously only single-character purchases.

  • NX Escort Refit [T6] – Lobi
  • Xindi-Reptilian Sistruus Escort [T6] – Lobi
  • Elachi S’ateth Escort [T6] – Lockbox

The semi-exception to this is the NX Escort Refit which had a Temporal-based version in the Legendary Starship Bundle…but I’ll digress on that for now.

@KyuuContinuum helped me get the lowest EC values of those 3 ships when I was too busy to get them, so you can thank him for this part of the blog entry!

Here we go, then. What are the rough equivalent Zen values of these 3 ships if we use either Keys or Promo Boxes (exclusively, no mixing) at current Exchange prices?

Value in Keys

My apologies, but in my haste I forgot to mention the last line is the totals of each column.

Assuming you sell keys at 6,500,000 EC each, depending on whether the sale is 20% off or 25% off (there have been 15% and 30% sales, but 20% seems the most common), the ships alone can be obtained for as little as 20,822 Zen or as much as 27,750 Zen worth of Keys.

Value in Promo Boxes

Again, the bottom prices are the totals of each column. This also has more varied sales so got an extra column for 30% off sales.

Assuming you can sell promo boxes at 16,000,000 EC each (current lowest is 16,300,000), your lowest price is 17,780 Zen at the highest discount (which we just had this weekend) and 25,400 Zen at the highest pricing.

OTHER ITEMS

I’m going to lump these into one section to save space and time (no, I’m not saving Doctor Who!).

Here, you’ll see the value of buying 50x Keys using normal Key C-Store listings, of getting 300 Lobi through just Keys and just Promo Pack, and of getting 10x Ultimate Tech Upgrades (rounded to 2,000 Zen per Upgrade as that’s roughly the average between full-price listings and sales prices, and when Mudd’s Market items hit 75% off that’s what those old Event items sell at). You’ll also see what picking 3 of the same option would cost getting these items through normal C-Store listings.

Master Keys

150 Master Keys will not be worth this pack unless you can get it at 50% off. Even then, we’re comparing to the normal price of 5 packs of ten Keys each. Unless this gets down to 60% off (11,800 Zen), you’re better off waiting for at least 25% off Keys and just buying the always-available Master Keys from the C-Store (and every so often you’ll also catch Key Ring Bundles that include an Ultimate Tech Upgrade, so you’d buy 2 Key Ring Bundles, scoring 2 Ultimate Tech Upgrades along with 40 Keys, needing only one more ten-Key pack to get 50 Keys).

Lobi

It’s no contest that at the 14,750 Zen sale price, you’d come out ahead on objective Zen value if you pick 900 Lobi. At the Choice Pack’s full price, though, just buy the Keys or Promo Boxes you need and enjoy seeing what you get (may even be a ship!) along with your Lobi.

Ultimate Tech Upgrade

Since this is roughed out to a flat 2,000 Zen, I’ll just say you come out way ahead on value picking 30 Ultimate Tech Upgrades. If you needed to fully Epic a ship and some of your Ground gear, here ya go!

TRIP’S SUBJECTIVE VALUATION

Let’s take a closer look at what exactly you can choose from and what value these items may hold other than their objective number-based pricings above.

SHIPS

  • NX Escort Refit….oooooh, this is a doozy!
    • This ship’s console, Point Defense Bombardment Warhead, is almost meta alongside the Dynamic Power Redistributor Module to help boost Phaser, Disruptor, and Plasma damage (from a set bonus) along with being a decent clickable ability on its own.
    • The ship’s trait is being tested for possibly being a consideration on Elite builds. Thanks to the changes to Beams: Overload last year, Overload shots hit like a truck! (that is to say, very hard and very quickly) Imagine, then, if you mix in some Fire at Will with the new Ba’ul Antiproton weapons. I don’t know how the math works out, but 100% on even base damage of, say, 900 is a HUGE boost just for being willing to do Area of Effect (“AoE”) damage alongside your Overload. (The same holds true for Cannon: Rapid Fire being affected by Cannon: Scatter Volley).
    • HOWEVER…however…twice now we’ve had the Legendary Starship Bundle available at 19,500 Zen. For 4,750 Zen more, when it’s available you get an NX Escort that already has this equipment PLUS 9 other ships in a wider variety. “Faith of the Heart” offers at most 3, and they’re all Escorts.
    • The NX Escort Refit lacks any innate ship abilities, instead having two different specialist BOFF seats: Pilot and Temporal.
    • The NX Escort Refit has a slightly better turn rate at the expense of slightly worse Hull and Shield modifiers compared to the Legendary version. The NX Refit focuses its consoles more on Tactical (5) and Engineering (4) whereas the Legendary version goes Tactical (5) and Science (4).
    • For the average player, I don’t see a difference between the NX Refit and the Legendary NX. Therefore, I’d say the following with 90% confidence: Unless you plan on running Elite content in the best NX version that exists (and that may be questionable as to which is technically better), you can skip the NX Escort Refit if you have the Legendary NX. If you don’t have the Legendary NX, I’d wait for the next time the Legendary Bundle becomes available and be willing to pony up nearly $50 USD more to grab the Legendary NX and 9 other (more varied) ships, all of which have account-wide trait unlocks and come with their ships’ previous versions’ equipment and traits.
  • Xindi-Reptilian Sistruus Escort [T6]
    • I can’t say this is on the radar of, “most important ships in the game.” In fact, I had to look this one up. Its most famous cousin is usually the Xindi-Primate Ateleth Dreadnought, which I used the T5 version of for a while as it was a sleek, maneuverable carrier. The T6 of the Dreadnought, though, claims its fame with its trait, extending Beams: Overload’s duration. That…is about all that’s going for the Sistruus, unfortunately, is a relationship with the current king of Xindi ships.
    • The console from this ship is the superweapon used against Earth in “The Expanse.” While it helps with Tactical ability cooldown and grants higher weapon power, it’s only usable on Xindi ships.
    • I’ve unfortunately never seen anyone use the trait to profitable means. That doesn’t mean someone somewhere isn’t making good use of it, just that I’ve not seen it (and I see a decent bit).
    • A Lietuenant Commander Science seat lets you slot Gravity Well, giving this a slight Science lean and perhaps the makings of a “SciScort” (Science + Escort).
    • Temporal Operative seating in the Lieutenant Commander Engineering slot may let you slot Recursive Shearing 1, giving you a source of Physical Damage in Space.
    • You do get a unique Experimental Weapon with this ship, but I’ve never heard it among the top 3-4 Experimental Weapons in the game. That doesn’t mean it’s not good; it’s just not among the best as far as I’m aware.
  • Elachi S’ateth Escort [T6]
    • This is one ship I’d wanted for my alt account since not long into the Mycelial Crisis. Partway through it, I’d decided I wanted an Elachi-themed character. The one hangup was the S’ateth. It was going for over 600 million EC. Time moves on, and it’s not gotten any better…it’s gotten much worse. Kyuu’s 1 billion EC price tag he found was the only S’ateth on the market (at the time, anyway)! If you’d reallllllyyyyy been wanting an S’ateth, this may just need to be the way you get it (and account unlocked, too!).
    • For anyone else, like the Sistruus, the console for this ship is locked to Elachi ships. That wouldn’t have been a problem for me as I was going for all 3 that made the set (Ornash in the Lobi store, I won a Promotional Ship Choice box over the Winter for the Sheshar, so all I needed was the S’ateth Escort to round out the console set). If this is your first/only Elachi ship, think carefully about that.
    • It has 2 Lieutenant Commander seats, one of which must be Science. The other is Pilot spec’d. Along with a Commander Tactical focus, this could also be considered a “SciScort.” With both this and the Sistruus, though, be aware you won’t get Gravity Well III since there’s no Commander seat that can take on Science abilities.
    • This ship also has no innate ship abilities; instead, it’s Pilot based with 2 Pilot BOFF seats.
    • This has no unique Experimental Weapon and has a 4/3 weapon setup, usually suboptimal as you’d prefer keeping as many weapons firing forward as possible.

Overall on the ships, there’s no synergy. Okay, they’re from Enterprise…but that’s it. Even “Stealing Time” had 2 Temporal ships based off the time ship Relativity from the Star Trek: Voyager episode…well, “Relativity.”

Better Enterprise ship choices to me would have been:

  • Ateleth + Sistruus + Freedom-class Exploration Frigate
    • Ateleth and Sistruus can at least share consoles.
    • Ateleth has a meta Beams: Overload trait, helping spur sales.
    • Freedom-class gives a Promo option and would have been in service during Jonathan Archer’s time in Enterprise.
  • Sistruus + S’ateth + Elachi Ornash Battlecruiser
    • S’ateth and Ornash share consoles.
    • Still has the 2 Lobi ships + 1 Lockbox ship setup

OTHER ITEMS

  • 50 Master Keys: There’s no real subjective look at this. During the 50% off sale (or higher), this option is worth doing as a 3-of. At normal price, just buy your Keys from the normal C-Store listings.
  • 300 Lobi: Whooo, boy…uh…considering a Tier 6 Lobi ship is 900 Lobi, this is worse than the “Stealing Time” version.
    • “Stealing Time” gave an Epic Prize Token, good for 1 ship in the Epic rarity of the Phoenix Prize Box store, while letting you choose 2 of the remaining 5 options, 4 of which gave at least 1 account-unlocked ship.
    • If you do the 300 Lobi option three times here (perhaps to get a Lobi ship), you’re coming out way worse if you’re wanting a Lobi ship. Why?
    • Guess the average cost of a Lobi ship on the Exchange.
    • I’ll wait.
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • Still waiting…
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • Ready?
    • The average Lobi ship on the Exchange (adding up all the lowest listings and dividing by 24, the number of T6 Lobi ships we have) costs almost the same as the Sistruus by itself: 288,820,665 EC. Round that up, that’s 289 million EC. Now look at the Sistruus’ Key and Promo Box Zen price equivalents. It’s as low as 3,220 Zen and as high as 5,125 Zen.
    • I feel I can objectively say that you should not use your 3x choice picks on all Lobi for a Lobi ship.
    • HOWEVER, if you need the Lobi spread around for Lobi Store gear for other characters, that’s a different story. At cheapest, it’d take 5,700 Zen to get 300 Lobi. At its most expensive, it’s 8,500 Zen. Expanding that out to 900 Lobi would make 17,100 Zen at the cheapest and 25,500 Zen at its worst. If this is part of your choice pack, it may be worth getting. Just note that a piece of space gear is 200 Lobi, so you’d need 600 Lobi to buy 1 full Space Gear set when the Lobi Store isn’t on sale.
  • 10x Ultimate Tech Upgrades: The subjectivity here comes from your level of patience with upgrading gear to Mk XV Epic. If you must have everything Mk XV Gold, maybe it’s worth it to get at least a 10-count of Ultimate Tech Upgrades as one of your 3 options.

REED’S TACTICAL (FINANCIAL) ANALYSIS

Looking at all the above factors, when or is “Faith of the Heart” worth the money?

  • On the ships alone, I have to give this a, “Meh.”
    • A version of the NX with the Refit’s equipment and trait is in the Legendary Bundle, so some players may buy this and not even pick it. For those who don’t have it, we’ve already seen one re-listing at 19,500 Zen, ~$50 USD more than this Choice Pack.
    • I’d suggest not getting the NX Refit unless you need to keep costs in mind and can’t go the extra ~$50 on the Legendary Bundle when it’s eventually relisted again.
    • The other 2 ships have no synergy, unlike the Temporal Science Vessel and Temporal Destroyer of the “Stealing Time” Choice Pack. You can’t swap consoles around; they’re effectively locked to their respective ships. At least 2 ships also share similar roles in being light “SciScorts.”
    • Refer to the above valuations if you’ve been wanting the Sistruus and/or S’ateth and need to see if you can piece together 14,750 Zen’s worth of value.
    • Purely objectively, the S’ateth and any other 2 options would make up the value of this at sale price and a majority of the full price.
    • If you don’t get the NX but do get the Sistruus and S’ateth, any of the other options will make up the price difference. Perhaps you can get the Sistruus, S’ateth, and with 300 Lobi get a Tachyokinetic Converter to help their turn rates even more? Perhaps instead get some much-needed help against Viral Impulse Burst in the current Event (or even some of the older Patrols from the end of last year)?
    • If you can’t wait on a Legendary Bundle relist, or you have the Legendary NX and want the Refit version, choosing all 3 ships is worth the 14,750 asking price, currently sitting at a ~17% discount at the cheapest and ~47% savings at its most expensive.
  • One positive is the ability to make the same non-ship choice 3 times instead of having to pick 3 different options. Again, if you didn’t need the NX or already have the Legendary version, you could pick 300 Lobi and still get value (even though the Lobi goes for mostly single-character items).
  • Remember that 1 Zen = $.01 USD, or 100 Zen = $1 USD (same values, different perspectives). When you see, “14,750 Zen,” you’re very roughly (not counting Zen Charge Bonusse) looking at $147.50, probably needing $140 in Zen Charge with the 1,000 Zen extra you get for buying the $100 tier of Zen.

DR. PHLOX’S DIAGNOSIS

The Choice Pack is almost strictly worse when compared side-by-side with the Stealing Time version looking at account-unlock options.

  • “Stealing Time” had 4 account-wide unlock options, and one of those had 2 T6 C-Store Coupons. At only one option at a time, and if we count the Temporal Science Vessel and Temporal Destroyer as a single ship each instead of 3, a single purchase could have unlocked up to 4 ships on your account. It also had a direct single-character ship option with the Epic Phoenix Token, still allowing you to account-unlock 3 more ships (The 2 T6 C-Store tokens + one of the other 3 ship options, again counting the Temporal Science Vessel and Temporal Destroyer as 1 ship each just broken into 3 variants for the 3 factions).
  • With “Faith of the Heart,” if you go for the Lobi and want a Lobi Ship, that’s it. That’s all you get. No account-unlocked ship.

This new Choice Pack is not without its redeeming qualities.

  • If you don’t need a certain ship, another option will usually fill out the rest of the value.
  • You can pick non-ship items repeatedly for your 3 picks. You can mix-and-match what you’d like more freely than with “Stealing Time.”
  • Directly purchasable Lobi isn’t the worst option, especially if you’re needing to finish off a Lobi set or start on one, or if you’re needing to equip yourself and BOFFs with a ground set or two.
  • For those who missed out on the Legendary Bundle or have a hard cap of 15,000 Zen, this gives you an NX so you can have Point Defense Bombardment Warhead and the Preferential Targeting starship trait.

Like “Stealing Time,” it’s hard to recommend this at full price. I personally can’t recommend it at 50% off unless you can make use of practically everything you pick. I feel I could safely recommend the Legendary Bundle because it had something for everybody and a ton of value in ships you no longer needed to purchase (unless you needed a specific BOFF setup for Specialization seating). I can’t say the same here.

Also, watch your budget. We’ve had a number of high-priced items hit the C-Store lately. Even if this is tempting to you, unless you’ve specially laid out in your budget something for entertainment and will/can have the money while this is on sale, don’t get it. Take care of yourself. This is just a game, after all. 😉

“COMPUTER, FREEZE PROGRAM!….SWITCH TO OBJECTIVE MODE.”

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself to get something in from arguably the least-liked series finale in Trek history. I’ll be interested in seeing how this Bundle goes over in actual sales.

Will we see more Sistruuses flying around?

Will Elachi ships get more popular?

More Keys available on the Exchange, bringing their price down a bit?

We’ll see. I want this concept to be well received, but personally I need to see better value out of this. If you see the value, fantastic!

This just isn’t for me, and I doubt it’ll be for a lot of players.

Thanks for reading this long, hopefully accurately detailed piece of writing. Thanks to @KyuuContinuum for helping me grab some data. Oh, and @AstroAlligator has his take on the value prospect of this Choice Pack. Be sure to head over to his Twitter and get his take. I need not be the only voice to which you listen. 🙂

I’ll be back later this week or early next, hopefully with either some Short STOs or a Risa strategy guide for those new to the Summer Event (which I hit right on the nose being August 4th to start!). Until then, take care and enjoy!

*Credits to CBS for the Enterprise opening montage shot and Cryptic for the “Faith of the Heart” preview pic I grabbed from their announcement blog.

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  1. Pingback: Why Mudd’s Choice Packs Are a Steal…For Now (Ends 12/24 @ 1:00 PM Eastern) – Joe and STO
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