[STO] You may now open your OMEGA Box.

You received 1,500 Omega Marks
You received 1,000 Dilithium Ore
Items acquired: Borg Neural Processor x 8
Thank you for your dedication!

Additionally, with today's patch, anyone working the OMEGA Reputation System can now access the Ongoing War Efforts assignment. For 50 Omega Marks, you will receive 500 Dilithium and 5 OMEGA Reputation points. So, that alone will earn me 15,000 Dilithium!

[STO] A few hours later... and goal progress.

First off, its amazing what a few hours can do. I checked back in for lunch, and the Z:D was at 1:115, even touching 1:114 for a few moments. WOW! I'm very curious to see the impact of tomorrow's patch on the game economy as a result. The two notables?

• Reputation XP projects now reward a small amount of Dilithium upon completion .
• 340 for the 2000 XP projects
• 140 for the 800 XP projects
• Removed Tier requirements on Mark-to-Dilithium conversion projects. 
• These projects can now be slotted immediately upon reaching level 50 and unlocking the Reputation system.

Which is fine by me. I'm enjoying the Romulan content, so chances are I'll be earning a lot of Dilithium off it via XP projects. The Omega stuff? Not so much, so all my marks from that will likely be converted to Dilithium, period. We'll see.

Additionally, I managed to get enough Zen for yet another Master Key. As such, I'm now at 104 Lobi, so 1/4 of the way to my goal of 400 Lobi. This is actually a big one for me, but more for earning Fleet Marks. Why? Because I want to complete the Ferengi Maurader set. The set bonuses are the important thing here.

• Set 2
• Sector Space Tycoon
• Passive
• Reduces EC prices by 20% at Sector Space vendors
• Set 3:
• A Lifetime of Experience
• Passive
• +10% Commendation XP Bonus
• Friends In High Places
• Targets Self
• 0.5 sec activate
• 120 min recharge
• Summoned freighter allows access to unique Duty Officer Assignments. (**Only usable while in the Ferengi D'Kora)

The discount on Commodities will be a big thing for me, since my main contribution to my fleets are via Commodity purchases, not Fleet Marks or Dilithium. Additionally, the Commedation XP bonus is my main way of getting Fleet Marks, and getting more Duty Officer assignments means more Commendation XP for me in general. I'm currently at Tier 4 for Diplomacy, Development and Engineering, but am also working on Trade right now.

Weekend is looking good, if not exciting! :D

[STO] Dilithium Tracking 11/29/12

EDIT: I got the date wrong. How did I think it was 11/21 when it was 11/29? *sigh*

Its almost the end of the month! Practically the end of the month, really. And, what a month its been! Without further ado…



Now, this is two graphs in one. The Blue area is the Zen|Dilithium Exchange as normal. The other lines are just a snapshot of the volumes of Zen being offered/traded on the Exchange, using the Buying and Selling pools. While this does not measure total amount of traffic throughout the day, nor does it show successful transactions, hopefully it’ll still be able to offer us some insight.

Important dates include: November 13th (Season 7 launched), and November 23th (first set of adjustments to increase Dilithium availability). Next week, we’ll want to keep an eye on how November 30th as there’ll be another adjustment.

Now, for the rest.

[STO] Z:D Exchange Traffic

Update: Chart revised! Took out period where I wasn’t tracking everything, and managed to add the Z:D price chart into it. Its showing the trends/movement of the price, and is there for reference.

Season 7 has been out for a while now, and I felt it was a good idea to bring out another chart. What is it this time? The overall volume of the market!

What is this? When I get the daily Z:D prices, I also record the top 5 buying and selling lots. Now, this does not show the value of the Z:D market, just how much is flowing through it. For instance, Tuesday, October 30th had a tremendous spike in traffic, with prices around 1:158. Thursday, September 27, was a incredibly low volume day when prices were 1:165.

The obvious question is, is this due to price?

[STO] Dilithium at 1:135!

On Tuesday Dan Stahl said that the devs would be monitoring the Dilithium economy. More to the point:

Not everything is sunshine and roses, though. As we mentioned in previous posts, we continue to monitor the Dilithium economy reaction to the changes in Season 7 and as previously stated, we will be making some additional adjustments which we feel will address issues that have been discussed. Some of those changes are going to happen in an update tomorrow (Wednesday Nov 21) and some of them are going to happen in the following week's update on Nov 29. If we feel more changes are necessary after that, we will certainly make them because our goal is to keep the game balanced while ensuring that players are having fun. Even though we've managed to get more Dilithium into more players hands, we agree that STF runs and Dilithium have been a challenging change that needs to be addressed and we are going to continue to do so.

 Hopefully the changes for November 29 will have a positive influence. Right now the Zen:Dilithium exchange rate is the lowest I've seen it, and I'm really not sure that's good. Possible factors?

• With all the players coming back for Season 7, Fleet projects have begun again in earnest, meaning less Dilithium for the Exchange.
• With all the players coming back for Season 7, Fleet projects have begun again in earnest, causing a very high premium to be placed on Dilithium.
• Exploitation of the Foundry and player created missions accounted for more of the Dilithium being sold that I ever dreamed of. From the sounds of forum complaints, the exploits made it trivially easy to max out Dilithium per character in minutes, thus making farming Dilithium via alts a very viable proposition. 8,000 Refined Dilithium per character times how ever many characters? Maybe 10 minutes per character? Geez.

Just off the top of my head, of course.

My main concern is that the market is going too Zen heavy. Why does this matter? Isn't that good for PWE? I'm afraid that buying Dilithium will become such a poor  proposition that fewer players will do it. While prices might become more equitable in time, there's no telling if players will continue buying Dilithium. If they opt to earn it themselves or drop out of the game? That affects players like me who earn Dilithium for the purpose of selling it.

In short, I hope they don't accidentally kill the "golden goose."

Now, we're still over 1:100, which is relieving. If it were to drop to 1:99 or lower? I'd really begin to worry. 1 Zen for 25 Dilithium means 250 Dilithium per dollar. That's really a poor value, in my opinion, especially when you consider not only how easy it is to get 250 Dilithium, but how little that much actually gets you. In theory these wild market extremes ought to correct themselves, but I guess I'm more worried about perceptual issues. Also, the exchange needs to be win/win, in my opinion. 1:25 is no more win/win than 1:500. If they narrowed it down to 1:100 and 1:400 being the ranges, I might be a bit happier.

[STO] Contraband for Z:D or EC?

Contraband is a wonderful item that is a common reward for Marauding Duty Officer assignments with the Klingons Defense Force. When combined with my favorite Duty Officer assignment – Turn Over Confiscated Contraband – it’s a very steady way to earn Dilithium in game, and thus Zen. In turn Zen can be used to buy things in the Zen Store that can be sold for Energy Credits.

I’ve got a very small and decently run operation set up with three characters; 1 Federation and 2 Klingon. The two Klingons earn virtually all my Contraband, and all three characters turn it in. But, given the market changes recently, would turning in Contraband for Dilithium then Zen be the best way to buy Energy Credits? Or would it be better to sell the Contraband itself? What offers the better return right now?

Excel to the rescue!

[STO] I'll be getting 11 free Duty Officers.

More than a few people have been lamenting the General Recruitment Duty Officer assignment now requires 1,000 Dilithium to complete. While a nice pack of DOFFs, its not the only way to get more Duty Officers. What you're paying for is convenience and relative speed to obtain; the two go hand in hand.

• Buying Duty Officer Packs in the Zen Store is the fastest (practically instant), but most expensive route.
• General Recruitment costs 1,000 Dilithium, but takes a day to get the reward. Also has a cooldown.
• Departmental Recruitment and Cultural Exchange Duty Officer assignments take two days, but are free. There is a cooldown for those as well.

If you're not in a rush, you can recruit 11 free Duty Officers at Star Fleet Academy. Should you get a critical success on the Cultural Exchanges, you can get two more per critical. For those on a budget, not interested in spending additional money, or whatever, this represents a great means to get Duty Officers for use on your ship, to donate to your Fleet, and more.

Federation players will find this useful resource at Star Fleet Academy, whereas Klingon players will go to the Klingon Academy. You'll find three different species at each offering Cultural Exchanges, and a personnel officer who can do the various departmental recruitment.

[STO] Dilithium Tracking 11/21/12. Day early!

Ah, Thanksgiving. Since I’ll hopefully be busy cooking, eating and sleeping tomorrow with friends and family, I’m doing the tracking a day early. And, well, its still been a busy week!

Yeah, YOWZA. And things aren’t done yet. Dan Stahl posted on the boards there will be more changes coming, and they’ll be increasing Dilithium earnings while decreasing a few Dilithium costs. There’s a lot more to it than just that, so read up!

[STO] Dilithium tracking 11/15/2012

Overall History

With Season 7: New Romulus having launched on Tuesday, looks like we’ve got movement again! Obviously, its too soon to tell if it because of the new update (although that’s definitely a factor), or a return to weekends being a low price period. Just off the top of my head, however, I’m wondering if the relatively flat period represents people taking a break until the new update. Certainly, when I played City of Heroes, there was something called “the mid-issue blues” (or “blahs”).

If you haven’t read the patch notes, now would be a great time to do so. One of the changes since test was they removed the Refined Dilithium requirements from the Reputation system. Previously, it would serve as another Dilithium sink, which made it unattractive to casual and alt-heavy players. I’m not sure how they compensated for that, as one of the purposes of that was to slow down the speed at which players could progress through the system. While the Reputation system was made to eliminate the random nature of the end-game’s progression (making it an unfair, and sometimes extreme time sink), they didn’t want people to go through it in a week, either.

Anymore, more on Season 7 later. More charts after the jump. From here on out I’ll simply present the data, and let you decide what to make of it.

[STO] Looking at the Z:D history another way.

I had a thought, and drew up another graph in Excel. While things have been relatively flat for the past while, I wondered how much variability was there?

Looking back, there were four weeks where the market fluctuated tremendously during the course of a week. Two of those were wild fluctuations, followed by two lesser weeks each before returning to normal. I’m going to have to start doing some research if I’m going to speculate what caused these wild swings, though!

Times like this I really wish I had more of a history for the market. It’d be really interesting to see how often this sort of thing happens.

[STO] Dilithium tracking 11/8/12

We’re finally seeing some movement again!

Really not much to say at this point. Season 7 is coming soon, people are getting ready, and that’s about that.

[STO] Dilithium Tracking 11/1/12

Not quite the 11th hour, but late, and I do apologize!

 

	FMonday	Tuesday	Wed	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
8/27/2012			160	165	161	156	158
9/3/2012	157	157	157	156	153	152	153
9/10/2012	154	153	154	154	154	154	154
9/17/2012	155	156	155	155	155	154	155
9/24/2012	154	155	159	165	163	158	160
10/1/2012	161	159	160	159	156	157	157
10/8/2012	157	157	158	159	158	158	158
10/15/2012	160	159	160	160	159	158	158
10/22/2012	158	158	158	158	158	158	157
10/29/2012	157	158	157	157

 

Finally! Some more movement!