Hello, Joe and STOers! Cryptic chose violence today…to our wallets! They announced the Mudd’s “Disco Inferno” Choice Pack and MEGA Bundle, focusing on ships from Star Trek: Discovery.
It’s a Choice Pack that spans about 900 years (…give or take…) and 2 of the show’s (current) 4 seasons.
And it’s another pack that has a multiple choice ship pack listed as a single item. Yay!
…
What if I told you it was the Discovery-era Constitution and the Discovery-era D7?
(Can visualize Klingon players’ ears perking up over the D7 bit.)
It’s true! There are 4 ships, all covered by 3 choices, so if you wanted, you could buy just 1 Choice Pack and get all the ships available.
But this isn’t quite the proper Value Series valuation post. It’s the traditional lead-up that I (usually) do before I post valuations.
Why? Maybe you want to see how a ship looks. Maybe you want to see its weapons/console at work (sorry, I don’t have time to level up traits. :( ). Or maybe you just like seeing what ships can do with their default gear.
Regardless, let’s take a look at the history of each ship, what they’re best known for, and get some looks at the ships as they stand in their stock setups.
Forgive the low-quality mid-combat picture previews of each ship. I set up DemoRecord files on Tribble (I only have 2 of these ships on Holodeck), and STO crashes while STO Demo Launcher tells me all my “.demo” files are essentially invalid.
THE SHIPS
1. (Constitution) Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier/D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier
Original Release Method: Special Requisition Choice Pack – Tier 6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack
Initial Release Date: July 20, 2019
Account-Wide Availability Date: January 11, 2024
Gap Between Initial Release to Account-Wide Availability: 4 Years, 5 Months, 22 Days
Claim(s) to Fame:
- BOTH: Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays/Advanced Disruptor Beam Arrays were meta choices (and the Phaser version was 2nd best among Phaser weapons in CasualSAB’s testing in 2023 [though he’s lately seen flaws in that testing]); a 2-hangar Constitution/D7 variant as a Miracle Worker primary spec (meaning an additional Console slot as a Universal slot), a 5/3 weapons setup, and great stats meant these were, for a time, the go-to ships for Directed Energy Weapon (“DEW”) Beam builds.
- CONSTITUTION: If you like your Constitution-class ships, this one offers a very handy survival trait in “Polarized Lattice-Optimized Tritanium Armor,” or PLOT Armor (a literary device where certain characters/settings are protected from whatever’s going on in the plot of the story). If you’re more recent with the Prodigy Lock Box, this is basically a Starship Trait version of “Whole Lotta Xs” (though now, “Whole Lotta Xs” is probably a better choice as your Starship Trait slots are a lot more precious than your Personal Space Trait slots).
- D7: “The Ruin of Our Enemies” is essentially a meta Starship Trait for Area-of-Effect (“AoE”) builds. You get BONUS damage (meaning it’s the ever-desirable “Cat2” damage boost, which multiplies in or very near the final step of damage calculation) for each enemy you defeat for 20 seconds, and it can stack to a maximum of 300% Bonus Damage. It also has a “set it and forget it” Bridge Officer recharge reduction ability on every 5th kill. A big note, though, is that the stacks are lost if you fall out of combat, so be sure you have those Deuterium Surpluses, Evasive Maneuvers, and your Prevailing Innervated Impulse Engine ready to get to targets quickly.
VISUAL OVERVIEW(S)
- Constitution-class Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier
DPS EXAMPLE
Here’s a 100k DPS “Miracle Worker tank” in Infected: The Conduit on Advanced difficulty from Perfectly Unscientific (who unfortunately hasn’t uploaded new videos in a bit over 2 years).
Why am I showing an ISA (rather than ISE) that’s barely above 100k? Well…for one, I use too much of Augmented Dictator Games’ (“Auggie’s”) videos below, so I wanted to spread the love out a bit. And two, ~100k DPS in Advanced difficulty is the start of being Elite-viable in Space queues (I didn’t say record-breaking viable, just, “I’m able to complete an Elite-difficulty TFO”-viable). If I can’t find an Elite map that’s parsed, at least I can show a near-viable ISA.
- D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier
NOTE: I have this ship on my main account, and either its T6-X status copied over to Tribble, or I have a T6-X’d copy on Tribble. Either way, this ship does not unbox as a T6-X. You’ll still need 1 Experimental Ship Upgrade Token to get to T6-X (and more recently, 2 more of those “T6-X” tokens to get to T6-X2).
DPS EXAMPLE
Here’s Kenobi624 with a 392k DPS run in this style of D7 using Zhat Vash Disruptors. Unfortunately, he’s not posted a new video in over a year, and this build is from nearly 3 years ago, but aside from the specific enemies in the Borg space maps, this build should still hold up (if not be improved by more ship and gear releases since then).
I’ll remind those who’ve not read a section like this of mine that the point for me is not to show the best builds or the highest DPS but to show that these ships can pull numbers that are high enough to do Elite-level content (even if not in record-breaking fashion). You’re looking at spending good money on these ships. You need to know you can do Elite-level content if the need arose (and you have the proper gear, traits, piloting, activation timings, cooldown reductions, etc.).
2. Jovian Intel Heavy Raider [T6]
Original Release Method: Infinity Prize Pack – T6 Ship
Initial Release Date: April 15, 2021
Account-Wide Availability Date: January 11, 2024
Gap Between Initial Release to Account-Wide Availability: 2 Years, 8 Months, 27 Days
Claim(s) to Fame:
Uhm…it’s the first non-Federation 32nd Century ship to come to the game? Otherwise…I’ve got nothing. It’s a 5/1/1 Raider, and it has an animation on using the Console’s ability. I don’t think the Jovian ever hit anyone’s radar for meta use, and being a Lockbox ship I’d say players tended to buy/pick other, more useful ships (Content Creators notwithstanding, because in all seriousness, how can you give a fully informed review if you don’t have it?).
Also, this ship has a confusing front and rear end to tell apart. The “claw” aspect of the ship is the aft section, while the arrow head-like point is the front.
The ship does have a transformation on use of the Harvester Mode console to bring the claw forward, so for a few seconds the front and rear visuals align in the forward arc.
VISUAL OVERVIEW
DPS EXAMPLE
Here’s a video from Auggie almost 3 years ago now showing the Jovian Intel Heady Raider pulling just shy of 400k DPS in an Infected: The Conduit on Elite difficulty.
- NOTE: While this isn’t named in a normal fashion (we’ve not had another “Sentry Vessel” for comparison), it has a 4/3 weapons layout with a Secondary Deflector. That’s usually the definition of a Science Spearhead-style ship.
Original Release Method: Angel’s Wake Lock Box
Initial Release Date: June 30, 2020
Account-Wide Availability Date: January 11, 2024
Gap Between Initial Release to Account-Wide Availability: 3 Years, 6 Months, 12 Days
Claim(s) to Fame:
I’ll just post a video here, because otherwise there’s not a lot the Ba’ul ship itself does that another Science Spearhead couldn’t do (and likely better).
VISUAL OVERVIEW(S)
DPS EXAMPLE
It’s Auggie again to the rescue! He has a ~517k DPS parse on an Exotic Particle Generator (“EPG”) style build. The only potential hiccup may be if Kemocite-Laced Weaponry proc’d off the Sentry Mode at the end. If it did, there was a hit to Ba’ul Antiproton weaponry to limit how much Kemocite-Laced Weaponry proc’d off the Ba’ul beams. If it didn’t, then this parse should roughly still hold up even after about three and a half years.
THE OTHER ITEMS
WARNING: The contents below tend to be “Bound to Account” when you get them from Mudd Choice Packs/MEGA Bundles. Do not expect to sell any of these items; you’d only pick them to use them on your character/account.
Images and descriptions used here are likely copy-and-pastes from previous Visual Overview posts.
1. Master Key (x50)
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 most any other Lock Box ship you’d like.
2. Epic Phoenix Prize Token (x1)
Needing that D.O.M.I.N.O. console to boost your overall DPS? Need the healing power of a Protomatter Field Projector? This is probably a valid option to consider since getting those tokens feels like it’s the same odds as a getting a T6 Lock Box ship. Estimates put the “Expected Value” (how long it’d take before we could expect to see an Epic-level token) at ~$70 worth of Dilithium on average to buy the boxes you’d need to open to on average see 1 Epic Token. Remember, you may see 0, 1, or multiples. Sometimes, it’s better to take the guarantee here.
To help a little bit with your choices, here’s a video JeSter made nearly 2 years ago going over his top picks for use of an Epic Phoenix Prize Token.
3. Elite Captain Training Token (x6)
(Image from Cryptic’s announcement blog for the Mudd’s “In Command” Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle.)
These tokens give your character an extra Kit Module slot, Device slot, Personal Space Trait, and Personal Ground Trait. This may be quite a decent option at some point for your more serious characters as that extra Personal Space Trait could be used for anything you’d had to cut in the past due to not having enough room to slot that one last helpful trait.
4. Ultimate Tech Upgrade (x10)
If you’re lazy or extremely conscious of your Dilithium supply and not wanting to use other upgrade types, this may not be a bad option. The ability to go straight to Mk XV Epic with a single upgrade is quite tempting!
Will This “Inferno” Burn a Hole In Your Pocket?
Of course, everyone wants to know…”Is this even worth the asking price?” And to that I say…tune in next time!
I’ll go ahead and tease that it’ll be a shorter post than usual. Why? Just wait. You’ll see. 🙂
Want to Support the Blog?
If you like what you see here and in other posts I make, please consider giving to my Ko-Fi page. I’m looking to do a review series for the 14th Anniversary Bundle’s ships similar to what I did for the 13th Anniversary Bundle (except a lot faster this time, now that the character I want to do these on is more properly set up for the various builds I’d likely do and I’ve got a bit of experience on that variety). Every dollar counts, and there will be giveaways to random donators (that I’ll announce details for later), so don’t feel like you have to be a top donator to have a better chance at anything. It won’t be anything fancy (likely some desireable Ground and Space Personal Traits), but it’s a small way for me to say, “THANK YOU,” for anything you can give. 🙂
Until next time, everyone, continue enjoying Star Trek Online!
Joe and STO 