[STO] Buying Zen with Energy Credits

UPDATE: I was told about the Exchange bug! Yay! That completely threw off the value of A. As such, its probably one of the most attractive options you have.

UPDATE: There's a revisiting of this with more current numbers.

I’ve been going on about buying Energy Credits using Dilithium and Zen for a while now. And, honestly, its great! Those with an abundance of Dilithium or Zen can use their resources to get things they want from the Exchange, contribute to their Fleets, and more. Its very useful, relatively simple, and pretty straight forward.
But, what if you wanted to do the opposite?
Turns out, there is a way! But, so far, I’ve only found a way to do it via Duty Officer missions. Are there others? Possibly, and hopefully we’ll find some more to share.

This hinges on two things: high reward Duty Officer missions, and purchasing/obtaining the required commodities or Duty Officers to complete the missions. We have here:

• Assignment: Turn Over Confiscated Contraband – A
• Assignment: Forced Labor Requisition (KDF only) – B
• Consign Prisoners to Labor Battalion (KDF only) – C

	A	B	C
Z:D Rate	Contraband	Prisoner	Prisoner
160	40,000	12,000	12,000
	5 Contra band	10 Prisoners	4 Prisoners
	200,000	120,000	48,000
	Dilithium	Dilithium	Dilithium
	2,000	1,000	500
	Zen	Zen	Zen
	12	6	3
	EC cost per Zen	EC cost per Zen	EC cost per Zen
	16,667	20,000	16,000
	Million EC = Zen	Million EC = Zen	Million EC = Zen
	60	48	60

Now, all these numbers are contingent on what I saw tonight as I was writing this up. The key variables are highlighted/bolded above: the price of the items on the Exchange, and Zen:Dilithium exchange rate.
What I went through is first the price per unit, then how much the required batch would be. That’s followed by the Dilithium Reward, and how much Zen its worth when exchanged. The last two things are pretty important for your cost analysis, which is how many credits you’re spending to get a single Zen, and how many Zen a million credits will get you. Now, this is looking at complete batches rather than a pure “per million” view of things, so keep that in mind.

Its worth noting that assignment A is available via Security Officers, whereas B is only available for Klingons via their Security Officer. Assignment C is a DOFF mission you’ll find in various sectors as a Common Military assignment. And while all assignments have a chance to fail, B and C have not only a chance to fail, but also to have a disaster! If that happens, you’ll lose your investment in both Energy Credits and time. I strongly recommend doing these assignments with both the Success and Critical criteria met, and none of the Failure or Disaster criteria. Preferably, use Uncommon or better Duty Officers to help minimize your chances of Failure/Disaster.

One last note is assignments A and B can only be done one at a time per character. Assignment C can have multiple assignments being done per character. This is one of those times when having multiple Klingon characters is very useful.

Now then, if you want to buy Zen with Energy Credits, there’s a way to do it. Its doesn’t work out as well as buying Energy Credits with Zen or Dilithium, but its possible.