Hello, Joe and STOers! Today, we found out about a new Mudd Bundle coming to PC (and maybe all platforms?) on November 22nd, 2022.
You all know what that means…a 2-part Value Series post!
This is the first part: the show-off part! Here, I’ll link you to videos about the ships in question and give you some background info on them.
The second part comes shortly after: the valuation post! That’s where I take the EC values of the ships in question (estimated values on anything not available) and show you what the cash-equivalent cost of the ship could be at the high end and low end, considering both full-price purchases and discounts on Master Keys and “Promotion!”-style boxes.
Before we start, a few things to keep in mind:
1) I’m staying away from Augmented Dictator Games’ videos. They’ll only be available until October 2023 (due to the expectation that information from them will be well out of date by then), and he may choose to de-list those videos at any moment prior to that. While any content creator may do that at their leisure, I’m trying to go with creators who either are active or I’m unsure of their status but they still have videos up for now.
2) Gear and traits may have been re-balanced since these videos were uploaded, and/or newer and better equipment and traits may have come along to replace any gear and traits seen in these videos. Use these videos as a general guide, not as a proxy Wish List for your equipment- and ship-buying needs.
3) As always, anywhere I say “I feel” or “I think” is an opinion based on either lack of knowledge or trying to understand current meta trends. Do not take what I say as definitive “gospel”/truth unless it’s backed by a linked quote.
THE SHIPS
Original Acquisition Method: Infinity Promo packs: R&D and DOFF (chance drop of a [Special Requisition Choice Pack – Tier 6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack] choice box)
Original Release Date: May 7, 2020
Time Between Original Release and Account-Wide Availability: 2 Years, 6 Months, 16 Days (+/- 1 Day)
Claims to Fame: Hero ship from Star Trek: Picard Season 1; Confederation version was effectively the hero ship of Picard Season 2.
Meta-wise, I’m unsure if this fits anywhere, and I’m mainly judging that from it being a 6-weapon ship (even if 5 are in the front) plus its Experimental Weapon. It’s a great front-end hitter, and it’s extremely versatile (of the 4 seats, the only forced career seat is a Command Tactical/Pilot).
In my experience with it (I have it on a Picard-era themed character), it’s a tough ship and, once you get used to a mostly forward-facing attack stance, it’s quite serviceable at Normal difficulty. You won’t be doing much Area of Effect (“AoE”) weapon attacks with it I don’t think, perhaps outside of Cannon: Scatter Volley attacks, but I feel that’s not its role.
Perfectly Unscientific showed an Exotic Damage build using La Sirena, coming in at a respectable 250,000 (“250k”) Damage per Second (“DPS”) in a bit over 2 years ago (September 2020).
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Original Acquisition Method: Infinity Lock Box (chance drop of a [Infinity Prize Pack – T6 Ship] choice box)
Original Release Date: December 8, 2020
Time Between Original Release and Account-Wide Availability: 1 Year, 11 Months, 15 Days (+/- 1 Day)
Claims to Fame: Combined with the Crossfield Science Spearhead Refit‘s “Universal Designs” starship trait, the Deimos’ Immolating Phaser Lance is a quick way to gain stacks of Critical Chance (“CrtH”) and Critical Severity (“CrtD”, AKA “damage bonus on a critical hit”). Plus, the console does its fair share of damage for such a quick “cooldown”.
The Deimos is a fun stealth bomber-like ship, probably the closest we’d get to real-life fighter ships in STO. Because of that, I’ve found it makes for a good stand-in for Stargate’s F-302 space fighter-interceptor. I may do a singular post on that at some point…hmm…
But yeah, you don’t tend to see the Deimos around much on its own because of the Immolating Phaser Lance console. Players will tend to get the Deimos and immediately strip it of its console. Spencer with some perspective on potential numbers:
(And there’s a little preview of the worth on the Cheirax. 😉 )
It’s not a bad ship on its own! It’s a 5/2 with an Experimental Weapon slot (so effectively 8 weapon slots, but very few Experimental Weapons are high-end worthy). It has a Lieutenant Commander Intel-speced seat, so you can do Energy Weapon shenanigans with it. If you need the feel of being a fighter pilot, I’d say this is the closest you’ll get to feeling like you’ve taken a modern craft and traveled into the early 25th century.
Here’s 1800BrokenSoul with a 254k DPS run using the Deimos from January of last year (2021…so it’s almost 2 years old at this point, so viewer beware!):
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Original Acquisition Method: Infinity Lock Box (chance drop of a [Infinity Prize Pack – T6 Ship] choice box)
Original Release Date: May 4, 2021
Time Between Original Release and Account-Wide Availability: 1 Year, 6 Months, 19 Days (+/- 1 Day)
Claims to Fame: The secondary hero ship of Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, among the first 32nd Century vessels we see in the premiere. Transformation technology combined with built-in Pilot Maneuvers makes for fun piloting.
Book’s ship was, I believe, revolutionary for both Pilot Ship and 32nd Century ship design. All of its Pilot Maneuvers, its Console, and its inherent Morph Reversal transform the ship in some way. I showed off some of those transformations in an earlier video for Fleet Week.
Otherwise, I don’t believe this ship was extraordinary in any way for high-end builds. While a fun ship and potentially dangerous due to having a couple Cruiser Commands and Raider Flanking, I personally believe it was too fragile and had too bad a specialization seating (Pilot is not a top-tier spec, and the Command seat is too low for Torpedo-based builds to use effectively) to be seriously considered at or anywhere near the highest ranks of DPS chasing. However, having a 5/3 layout lets it do a ton of forward-arc attacks (8 beams firing if you count 2 Energy-based Omni-Directional Beam Arrays plus the Kinetic Cutting Beam from the Borg/”Task Force Omega” Reputation all in the aft slots.).
Here’s 1800BrokenSoul again, this time with a 172k Tetryon run in the Pilot Frigate from the middle of last year (May 2021):
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Original Acquisition Method:
* Tier 5 (Undine Nicor Bio-Warship): Undine Lock Box
* Tier 6: Infinity Lock Box (chance drop of a [Infinity Prize Pack – T6 Ship] choice box)
Original Release Date:
* Tier 5 original: April 22, 2014
* Tier 6 current: June 4, 2020
Time Between T6 Release and Account-Wide Availability: 2 Years, 5 Months, 19 Days (+/- 1 Day)
Claims to Fame: The T6 version has an upgraded version of the Species 8472 multi-ship planet destroyer attack as its console.
A fair warning, I know very little about the Undine T6 ships. I wasn’t even aware the Kiwavi, put into an earlier Mudd’s Bundle, was a possible Tank. I do recall how the Nicor (and later, this ship) had a console that basically called in a multi-ship large attack on a target, similar to the Undine attack on a Borg planet in “Scorpion.” Spencer suggests the “Omega Bond” starship trait may be decent for a Support build as it gives +10% Bonus All Damage on use of Pilot abilities or Attack Pattern: Omega. Might as well get some team-wide use out of those Pilot abilities, right? 😉
As stated above by Spencer, the Cheirax’s trait could be a usable Support trait for its “Cat2” damage boost (since it states it’s a “+ Bonus All Damage” effect), so perhaps combine that with the Kiwavi for some Undine-style Support runs?
While I don’t notice a parsed PvE run with the Cheirax on YouTube, I see Bret’s Gaming Channel (devoted to PvP in STO) used the Cheirax about 7 months ago.
THE OTHER ITEMS
WARNING: Unless confirmed otherwise, assume all items in this section to be Bound to Account. You are meant to use these items, not to sell them.
Also, pics below are mostly taken from previous Cryptic blog entries where the same prizes were used in the past. I’ve added the Elite Bridge Officer Training Token pic from today’s blog (and perhaps updated the Epic Phoenix pic from the blog, as well.)
1. 50x Master Keys
The primary way of obtaining Lobi is using Master Keys to open various Lock Boxes, minimum 4 per box with a community-calculated average of around 5-6 per box over a long run of openings. That could be anywhere from 200-300 Lobi if you’re needing a piece of Lobi gear.
And who knows? You may open an [Infinity Prize Pack – T6 Ship] and can pick any other ship you’d like. That’s what happened with me on the Primary Faction Choice Pack: I needed the Dhailkhina for the Picard-themed character, picked 50 Master Keys as one of my 3 options, and opened 50 Infinity Lock Boxes. I got lucky (notice that emphasis?) with a T6 ship box, which let me get the Deimos I also needed at the time!
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2. 16x Elite Bridge Officer Training Tokens
These are a recent addition to the game; PC accounts got 1 for free, while PlayStation and XBox got 2 (thanks to an apology bundle given to accounts on PlayStation and XBox versions).
These will allow a Bridge Officer to upgrade their upgradeable traits to the “Superior” version, the most famous example being the “Romulan Operative” trait available on Romulan Bridge Officers to be upgraded to “Superior Romulan Operative.”
These also open up a Kit Frame slot and the use of most any Personal Ground Trait as if they were a Captain themselves.
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3. 1x Epic Prize Token – Phoenix Prize Pack
If you’re not a long-time player, you may be wanting a ship from the Epic level of the Phoenix Prize Box offerings. Just keep in mind that any ship you get is a boxed item, Bound to Character, and not sellable or tradeable.
To help a little bit with your choices, here’s a video JeSter made about 5-6 months ago going over his top picks for use of an Epic Phoenix Prize Token.
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4. 10x Ultimate Tech Upgrades
The fastest way to upgrade any item to Mk XV Epic. Personal suggestion is to avoid these unless you really need Upgrades (as normally it takes ~$20 to get 1, so here you’re paying ~$15 each). This is more a time saver than an essential asset in upgrading gear. Only pick this if your time and in-game resources mean more than your money.
“SHOW-MEs” DONE, MATH NEXT!
The 2nd part of this is where we get into the thing most people hated about school: MATH!
Can hear the collective *GROAN*s of his readers.
Oh, come on! How will you know what kind of value you’re getting if you don’t see how many Keys or Promo boxes you’d need, which translates into Zen needed into Cash needed, to see if your desired picks are even worth grabbing?
Until next time (hopefully early next week!), have fun and enjoy!
Joe and STO 