Good day, Joe and STOers! The previous post was literally looking at the ships and items of this Bundle. Today, we get into the boring aspect of this series…THE MATH!
Yes, you heard that right, sometimes this game is referred to as “SpreadsheeTs Online” for a reason! (But then again…what MMOs aren’t if you’re trying to min/max almost literally everything? Hmm?).
It just makes good sense, right? You don’t want to spend $200+ on a ship (I hope no one’s doing that unless they have a ton of disposable income…) just to find you could have gotten it and more for ~$140 on a decent day (Bundle sale but no Zen Charge Bonus/Discount), right?
…Did anyone just say they’d rather spend the $200 on a single ship? If so, just get on out of here. The rest of us will try to watch our pennies here in a moment.
CAVEATS
AHEM…now that that’s settled!…below, I’ll be looking at pricing for ships and different items from a Zen-equivalent valuation. What this means is I take the Energy Credit price I’ve either found or am assuming (because not all ships/items are on the Exchange), convert it into the number of Master Keys or Promo Boxes you’d need to buy to make that EC, and then apply certain discount percents so you could theoretically try to get items at the best available prices. I also assume no Zen Charge Bonus/Discounts are available since those only come around every so often and not too frequently. The Zen prices wouldn’t change, anyway, so you could go the extra step yourself to figure out cheaper cash prices.
The prices I’m working with were taken Friday, August 18th, 2023, to get an idea of what this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle would have cost prior to the Bundle releasing. As best I’ve understood from Spencer (“CasualSAB”), prices of ships that end up in an account-unlocked way don’t tend to fluctuate too much in the long-run, so while these ships’ prices may go up or down in the short term, you’ll ultimately be changing estimated values from fluctuating Key and Promo Box prices.
My pricing on Master Keys, R&D Promo Boxes, and Delta Alliance Duty Officer Promo Boxes were:
- Keys: 10,900,000 EC
- R&D Promo Boxes: 27,750,000 EC
- Delta Alliance Duty Officer Boxes: 35,300,000 EC
And finally, this all assumes you’d have wanted something that’s in this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle to begin with. Even if the ships/items are worth the 14,750 Zen/30,000 Zen (~$140/~$270, respectively), if you hadn’t planned on getting any of this, you’re not saving anything. You’d be spending money/ground-out Zen you hadn’t planned on spending. But if you had wanted something out of this, perhaps seeing the pricings here can help you determine if this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle will save you some money from what you were expecting to pay or lets you see if going a bit higher in your original budget would be best.
DISCLAIMERS
A few things I feel I should disclaim before we start:
1) Never go into debt or break a tight budget to afford anything in this game. Ultimately, it’s still a game, a hobby. You can’t sell anything here to others for real cash (and if you do, that’s a Terms of Service violation). Cash spent here is sunk, so think wisely before breaking your budget or going into debt to get this (or any) digital item(s).
2) All ships here are available via the Premium Ship choice of the Event Campaign main prize. If you’ve been doing that, have few/1 character(s), and hadn’t planned on spending any cash for any of these ships, then feel free to use your Event Campaign choice on one of these.
CONVERSELY…if you’re avoiding account-unlock-able ships as your Event Campaign choice, consider this an update to a list of ships to avoid from Event Campaigns. I can’t see the future of what Cryptic could release, but I can tell the past, and it’s to refer to the “Bundles” section of STOWiki.net’s Mudd’s Market page to see most of the ships that have gone account-wide (as best I recall, 4 other exceptions exist currently: Miradorn Theta Heavy Raider from the Captain Picard Bundle; Mirror Strike Wing Escort from the 12th Anniversary Terran Bundle; Mirror Crossfield Science Destroyer and Styx Terran Dreadnought Cruiser from the 13th Anniversary Terran Bundle).
3) Most of these ships have a Legendary version:
*Legendary Miracle Worker Light Cruiser
*Legendary D7 Intel Battlecruiser
*Legendary Light Intel Warbird (the T’Liss with Picard‘s graphical update)
*Legendary Walker Light Battlecruiser
As Legendaries, they give access to all Consoles, Traits, skins, and special equipment that came with all their previous versions (from the time of the Legendary’s release) in that lineage (e.g.: “The Ruin of Our Enemies” Starship Trait doesn’t come with the Legendary D7 as the trait is from the Discovery-era D7, which doesn’t share a skeleton with the Legendary D7).
Getting a ship(s) from this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle for which you already have its/their Legendaries means you’re only getting these specific versions because you prefer the specific ship platform(s) (e.g.: many looking at the meta will say the Temporal-spec’d Constitution is better than the Legendary’s Miracle Worker setup).
If you have these Legendary versions, you may or may not want these specific versions. To help you decide, I’ll link to Spencer‘s breakdown of the Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle as he talks about the performance pros and cons of each ship:
With all that out of the way, let’s get into the numbers!
THE SHIPS
- 23rd Century Ships (Constitution – Temporal Light Cruiser /D7 Temporal Battlecruiser/T’Liss Temporal Warbird)
We start with 3 Promotional-level ships (“Promo ships”), which are the rarest (and usually most popular) versions of ships in STO. Because of this combination of low supply and generally high demand, Promo ships command an Energy Credit price above the 1.5 billion EC (1,500,000,000) maximum listing price on the Exchange (exceptions do happen, as in a few ships that have seen re-release in the Lobi Store). This means most Promo ships are offered or requested in private chat channels or in Zone chat or Fleet chat channels.
I tried to get a price quote on any of these 3 ships, but I was unable to do so. Therefore, I’m using the 1.5 billion EC minimum as our base price. Usually, I’ll split this up into 3 individual listings, but since we’re using the same price for each ship, I just included the note that this is for individual ship purchases.
You can see here, our best scenario is ~$80 per ship if you buy Delta Alliance promotional packs at 30% off. If you just want the Constitution, just the D7, or just the T’Liss, that may be your best option if you only care about having the ship on a single character.
But remember, Mudd Choice Pack-purchased ships are account-wide unlocks. If you wanted, say, a Constitution on 1 character and a D7 on another, or a T’Liss on 2 characters, you’re looking at 14,840 Zen to get 1 of each or the 2 T’Lisses. Mudd Choice Packs are 14,750 Zen when on sale. This works out to the same cash price ($140 = 11,000 + 2,000 + 2,000 = 15,000 Zen), so if you wanted 2 of these ships, you’d likely have been better off with buying this Choice Pack, choosing the 23rd Century ships, and having about 90 more Zen left over for other needs (like converting it into Dilithium via the Dilithium Exchange) plus having the ships on-hand should you get the itch to use one on a previously unplanned character.
But we’re not getting 1 ship or 2, we’re getting all 3 in one purchase. Over 3 ships, this is 22,260 Zen, normally requiring $200 even ($200 = 20,000 base Zen + 3,000 normal Bonus Zen = 23,000 Zen total).
In the absolute worst case (but the most likely case if you’re not patient with Promo packs and discounts), these are $150 per ship ($150 = 11,000 + 5,300 = 16,300 Zen). In this worst-case scenario, if you’d just wanted 1 ship, you’d have been better off buying the Choice Pack and saving $10 in the process.
2. Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser
The Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser came from the Deep Space Nine Lock Box and is currently an option from the Infinity Lock Box‘s [Infinity Prize Pack – T6 Ship] reward box. Lately (past 3-4 years at least), Lock Box ships tend to go for slightly below or slightly above the 1.5 billion EC price cap depending on their meta uses and general popularity (or lack thereof, so price is inflated by low demand). Anecdotally, the average seems to be ~1.2 billion EC.
Here, the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser (which only had 2 listings when I checked prices) costs anywhere from ~6,510 equivalent Zen to a whopping 13,500 equivalent Zen, coming to a best- and worst-case cash price of $70 – $130. Depending on your view of the worth of this ship, this could be anywhere from 50% – ~87% of this Choice Pack alone.
3. Walker-class Light Exploration Cruiser
The Walker-class ship here comes from the Lobi Store, costing 900 Lobi. As these ships are available for a fixed price, and the players who open Lock Boxes/Promo Boxes hunting for the T6 ship reward likely use the Lobi to buy a ship to sell on the Exchange, these ships generally go for a fraction of what Lock Box and Promo Box ships can get. The usual neighborhood is ~300-400 million EC.
The Walker is no exception.
Lobi Store ships are fairly cheap, relatively speaking. Here, the worst case of the Walker is still cheaper than the best case of the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser. The Walker comprises a 1,400 – 3,250 equivalent Zen value, “cashing in” at $20-$40 in value. It’s safe to say, if you were wanting this Walker in particular, you’ll need to pick two others items that are more expensive on a per-item basis.
I’ve said a time or two, you need an average value of 4,917 Zen per choice you make to get the 14,750 Zen price tag of the Choice Pack. With the Walker coming in at 1,400 Zen under the best case scenario for a potential buyer, you’d need to average 6,675 Zen per choice for the remaining 2 choices. At this point of the valuation, the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser doesn’t even do that. (Though the 23rd Century ships on their own would, so with that as 1 of your choices it’s a moot point.)
THE OTHER ITEMS
As always, Mudd Choice Packs/MEGA Bundles come with non-ship items in case one/two/all of the ship choices aren’t to your liking. (Or if you see enough value in the total contents to do a MEGA Bundle.)
Keep in mind a couple things here:
- You can pick multiples of these items. For example, you could pick 3 of the “Master Keys (x50)” to get 150 Master Keys from this Choice Pack. If we got with the 25% off valuation, you’d be getting 12,657 Zen worth of Keys for 14,750 Zen. Very roughly, you’d be buying Keys at an equivalent ~13% off (14,750/16,875=~.8741 = 87.41% of the full price).
- All items here are Bound to Account. You can’t sell the Master Keys or BOFF Training Tokens. However, most anything you get from the Lobi Store (except Space/Ground gear) or opening Lock Boxes are not Bound to Account and can be sold/mailed/traded freely.
Instead of giving the values of everything on their own, I’ll just list the items, their worst-case (usually full price, low luck) Zen pricing and their best-case (usually 25%-30% off, most likely case) Zen pricing.
A few notes:
| * Lobi calculated as “Keys at Worst Luck” vs. “Promo Boxes’ best pricing.” |
| * Ultimate Tech Upgrades are valued only as a time-saver vs. valued for the ~$20 it takes per Key Ring Bundle/Mudd non-ship item. |
| * Elite Bridge Officer Training Tokens are 1,200 Zen per 4-pack; I don’t recall 30% discounts on these so I went 25% to be a bit safer. |
Remember above, you ideally need an average value of 4,917 Zen per choice to make any choice seem fine (with higher other averages helping you to accept lower-priced alternatives to stay at/above that 4,917 average).
Unfortunately here, none of the extra items come out to the 4,917 Zen average if you look exclusively into the extra items of the Choice Pack.
CHOICE PACK CHOICES
So, considering what our average needs to be, we’re left with a few options for our 3 choices:
- If you pick the 23rd Century ships, you clock in at 22,260 equivalent Zen value minimum (7,420 Zen per ship x 3 ships). Since that already exceeds the 14,750 Zen price tag (and is only 7,240 Zen off the full 29,500 price), you could pick any other 2 options and still come out ahead on value at the 50% off, 14,750 Zen price.
- If you don’t pick the 23rd Century ships, the highest-valued item using the best-case scenario pricing is the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser at 6,510 Zen. That leaves 8,240 Zen of value to add, averaging 4,120 Zen per item. At best-case scenario pricing, only 2 other options come up to that value: the 300 Lobi at 4,270 Zen per time you choose it, and/or the 50x Master Keys at ~4,219 per time you choose it. So, without the 23rd Century ships, your only workable choices are the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser and either 100 Keys, 300 Lobi + 50 Keys, or 600 Lobi.
That being said, as Keys give a community-calculated average of 5 Lobi per Key used/Lock Box opened, 100 Keys could average 500 Lobi but likely more. The question really becomes: are you willing to give up 300-600 guaranteed Lobi in order to open Lock Boxes that will get most (if not all) that Lobi anyway and 50-100 Keys’ worth of Lock Box items on top of that (maybe including a T6 Lock Box-specific ship or a T6 Infinity Lock Box ship choice)?
What’s interesting here is that, aside from choosing the 23rd Century ships, you can’t use best-case scenario pricing to justify getting this version of the Walker. If we take the Jem’Hadar ship as our first choice, we’d need 8,240 Zen of value to mae up the difference. The best-case of the Walker is 1,400 Zen, leaving 6,840 Zen of value to recoup. No other options give that much value under best-case pricing…except the 23rd Century ships (which, again, is moot as that set of ships alone makes up the value of the Bundle at the 50% discount).
MEGA Bundle = MEGA Deal?
So let’s say you’re a big spender. You’re looking at that 25,000 Zen on-sale price and going, “Hmm…you know, that’s a maybe. It’s ‘only’ 10,250 Zen more, and I can get all the options instead of just 3.”
So, I’m not one to tell you how to live your life, but I feel you could get a lot more use out of 10,250 Zen than picking up some leftovers you’d be leaving on the table by doing the Choice Pack. BUT let’s look at the math!
The cost of everything in this Bundle, using both worst-case pricing and best-case pricing, is as follows:
As you can see, depending on how you value everything, you could be saving between 40.84% and 75% by buying the MEGA Bundle. A great deal!…right?
Consider a couple things here:
1) The 23rd Century Ships alone make up nearly or well over the cost of the MEGA Bundle. At 22,260 Zen, the cheapest option lands us just 2,740 Zen off the break-even point. With that in mind, even the Elite BOFF Training Tokens would put us over the top (sadly, the Walker and the Ultimate Tech Upgrades would do nothing for us. ha ha!).
2) In the “Most Expensive Case,” I value the Ultimate Tech Upgrades at 20,000 Zen only because most of the Bundles you’d need to buy to get Ultimate Tech Upgrades come out to ~2,000 Zen per purchase to get 1 Ultimate Tech Upgrade (Anniversary Bundles notwithstanding). One could easily argue those are worth 0 as they merely save time in Upgrading rather than being an essential token type to unlock anything.
So let’s do this valuation again, but this time we’ll take out the 23rd Century Ships and value the Ultimate Tech Upgrades at 0 Zen across the board.
Now it’s a lot rougher. In the most expensive case, you’re still saving ~24.53% over the 25,000 Zen discounted price.
But what’s more interesting is the least expensive/most reasonable cases. The only change there was eliminating the 23rd Century ships. Let’s say you value those at 0 Zen because you have some/all of their Legendaries. In this case, the MEGA Bundle actually winds up more expensive than buying everything on its own, clocking in at a 25% overpay. Of course, keep in mind, you do get all the ships and they’re account-wide unlocked, so even if you don’t want them, you do get them and effectively in infinite multiples (up to your character limit, anyway).
FINAL VERDICT
So…should you pick up this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle?
I feel the value lies almost solely in the 23rd Century Ships bundle. If you didn’t want that, this Choice Pack and MEGA Bundle are not for you. You’d still come out a bit above break-even on the Choice Pack if you did the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser and a combination of Keys and Lobi for the other 2 options, but that’s it. In all cases, the Walker adds so little value to the Choice Pack and MEGA Bundle as to effectively be nonexistent (unless you’re trying to accumulate as many account-unlocked Lock Box/Lobi/Promo ships as possible, at which point it’s not about money but collections).
The only extra consideration I’d give here is to look at how many times you’d use any/all of these ships. For the number of times you’d use it/them, you could consider it that much extra value you’re getting. For example, if you have a couple Jem’Hadar characters and you’ve really wanted to give each one a Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser, then that’s no longer 6,510 Zen of value but rather 13,020 Zen. On 14,750 Zen, you’d only be shy 1,730 Zen of value to break even. In this scenario, then, the Walker could be a tempting choice if you also didn’t want the 23rd Century ships.
PERSONAL DECISION
So, I’ll preface this by saying I’ve been wanting to do a Jack Crusher, “I’m definitely a Constitution-class man,” character. To do that properly, I’d need, among other ships, two Tier 6 TOS/TMP-era Constitutions (1 for the TOS skin, the other for the TMP skin). I only have 1 account-unlocked, the Legendary Miracle Worker version. I’d need to pick up a Temporal Light Cruiser along with 2-3 other Lock Box/Promo ships. And as you’ve seen, in the best case, that’s very roughly half of what this Choice Pack would cost.
As you may have also seen earlier this year, I did a challenge to earn enough Zen by a mix of Dilithium grinding and my Lifetime Sub stipend to afford a Mudd’s Choice Pack by the end of the year.
So likely, this is my Choice Pack choice for it. BUT…had I not been needing the Temporal Light Cruiser, I likely would have stayed away. For one, I already have the Legendary TOS-era Constitution. And two, if that Fleet Museum scene had never existed, this character idea would have never existed, meaning I’d have been fine to let this go. And third, one character of mine that was trying to be in the meta a few years ago already has one, so it’s not like I’d have been getting anything that’s “new to me.” While the Jem’Hadar Light Battlecruiser’s trait is nice to have for newer alts, I don’t see it as justification enough outside of themed characters to get this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle. The Walker, while maybe nice as a 5/3 version of the Legendary version, just doesn’t bring enough value to the table to be a tempting choice on its own.
AND THAT’S A KO!
That knocks out this set of Value Series post. I hope this has given you some perspective on the values of the ships, the performance comparisons, some nice visuals to “ooh” and “ahh” over, and that you’ve come to a decision that’s right for you.
I’m hoping to have an update on my 3rd account’s F2P status. I see AllThingsTrek47 already has a 2nd update (that I still need to watch/listen to! Sorry!). I’ll get my next update out by the end of this week.
Next week, I’ll focus my content attention on here to the next-to-last 13th Anniversary Bundle ship, the Terran Styx Dreadnought Cruiser, while my Twitter…*AHEM*…X postings will cover anything I find I need to update for the F2P account.
And if you like what you see on this blog, consider giving to my Ko-Fi page. I’m using proceeds now for Event Campaign’s event buyouts on my main PC account so I can focus on the F2P account. Any bit helps!
Until then, take care and continue enjoying Star Trek Online!
Joe and STO 