Particles, Particles, Particles – The Particles Event is here.

So the particles event you’ve been waiting for to get the particles you need to unlock the research you want to do is finally here.

The three events are exactly the same. You’re either going to mine one unit of resources or 1* Isogen in order to get either Surax Particles, Phantom Particles, or Quantum Particles.

And you have to do so from one of the following systems in this, the first session of this event on November 24th, 2020.

Now you may have noticed that all of these are 1* Isogen systems. The word on the street is that the higher level systems will come into play later on in this event.

From a game-balance perspective, I suppose I like this. I mean, I think I’d have liked it better had my alliance been able to unlock two of the particle types – but this does mean that it’s spread out pretty evenly. My alliance, which is the largest on the server, can only unlock one.

And with the way things are spread out now, this will allow a lot of alliances to unlock at least one, with none being able to unlock more than two.

Doing the Particles Event

The event itself should take you all of about a minute. Just the time it takes to travel to one of the systems your alliance owns, mine one resource (gas, ore, crystal) or one unit of 1* Isogen, and you’re all done.

Particle Research

In your territory research tree, you’ll see three branches that have heretofore been unavailable to players who haven’t purchased the particles. You’ll need to have at least level 30 R&D to complete these researches.

As you can see, the top branch uses Quantum particles, the middle branch requires Phantom particles, and the bottom branch needs Surax particles.

The other rub is that for your trouble today, you’ll only be able to unlock one level of research. You’ll get 100 particles, and level 1 of each costs 90. (Full credit to the amazing team at LCARS for the following info, if you’re not in LCARS yet, here’s an invite. Go in there right now. Thank me later.)

Here’s the rundown for “Efficient Construction,” which gives you a bonus to material efficiency when building up your station. Notice that the R&D level goes up pretty quickly, and that in order to get to level 7, you’re going to need to be at level 40.

Level	Particles	R&D Lvl	Bonus
1	90	30	5%
2	150	32	9%
3	150	33	13%
4	170	34	17%
5	220	36	21%
6	290	38	25%
7	350	40	30%
8	440	42	35%
9	510	44	40%
10	590	46	46%
11	670	48	53%
12	750	50	60%

Still, it’s a good bonus to have. Would’ve been nice when I was grinding out all of those drydocks and

Contractual Obligation Asides

There’s no such thing as Phantom particles, Surax particles, or Quantum particles in Star Trek. Although if there were to be Quantum particles in Star Trek, they’d have to have something to do with Scott Bakula, right?

Lastly, if you haven’t been listening to the Delta Flyers podcast with Robert Duncan MacNeill and Garrett Wong, I highly recommend it. They give pretty frank and funny reviews of all the Star Trek: Voyager episodes.

And the best particles line from Voyager is the random shouting of Warp Particles from this episode.

I think this is my first official Star Trek: Voyager reference in any article yet. And of course, give how many of my readers clicked on the Carol Marcus article, I’m really looking forward to the release of Voyager into the game, so I can write my Seven of Nine article, and retire.