Welcome to March, and part two of the Rules of Acquisition arc. It’s not the meatiest arc we’ve ever seen, and I’m sure there will be grumbling.
There are some interesting things here. There are two officers, Rom and Cath, who will be useful. There are cross-server events, and three new prime researches that you’ll eventually be able to get free-to-play.
At the end of the day, the success of this month’s arc will come down to how well the cross-server events go.
New Officers
From mining officers last month, now we’ve got two very different ones this month.
Rom
Quark‘s bumbling brother Rom, who’s terrible at running a bar, but is an engineering savant, is an epic engineering officer in STFC. His focus is on attacking stations. Odd since in DS9 his focus was on defending stations, but that’s neither here nor there.
His captain’s maneuver will delay all weapons fire from defense platforms and ships for one round when attacking stations. It’s the first captain’s maneuver that has no synergy at all (excepting Jaylah, but only because she has no crew.)
His officer ability will increase the number of shots each of your weapons will fire when each round when attacking a station.
Rom’s an epic officer, and I can see players using him to try to chop at stronger stations, as you’ll be able to get that free round of damage in each time. So chopping at a station with billions now becomes an easier proposition, and more rewarding if you’ve got an Amalgam.
There will be three Recruit Rom events this month, and you’ll get Rom shards in both the basic and free Battle Pass tracks. The good news is that these Recruiting events aren’t pure spend events. The bad news is that there’s an armada component. (I may be a little burned out on the armada events.) But there’s also mining, swarm, hostiles, and mining.
Cath
So we’ve got an original Ferengi female. Her captain’s maneuver reduces repair costs, so it’s on the useless side. But you’ll still want her because her officer ability is a replacement for T’Laan. For most players level 20 or so, and above, T’Laan may have been the only common officer still in regular use.
But now we’ve got Cath. Like T’Laan she reduces kinetic weapon damage from hostiles (below level 51.) And she does so a little bit better than T’Laan. Though not as much as you might expect. Where T’Laan maxes out at a 20% reduction in damage, Cath maxes out at 25%. By comparison, Grace Chen maxes out at 30% against energy weapons.
There is the difference that Cath is a rare officer, so she’ll give you more in terms of officer stats, attack in particular. So she’ll be better. But is this an officer who’s going to make a huge difference in the way you play the game? Probably not.
Again, as with every new officer added to the game, it feels like a missed opportunity. Feels like Pel would have fit in here perfectly. Oh well. Also seems like a misstep giving her a name that starts with C, as now we’ll have two PMC crews. Maybe PMC2.
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Coming Events
If you liked the War and Business events for your D’Vor Feesha last month, they’re back this month. This is also true if you didn’t like those events.
There will also be some Ferengi-themed St. Patrick’s Day events, that will grant you “St. Pat’s Tokens.”
In addition, you’ll see a rewards chest that will give you Ferengi officer shards.
Cross Server Events
So we’ve had cross-server events before. We’ve had one massive leaderboard event. And we’ve had server vs. server events leading up to mergers. But this is different. These will be solo and alliance leaderboard events that will update in real-time, in-game. So you won’t have to go out to a website that updates every few hours.
It will be one server vs. another server, so you’re not competing against every server. We’ll see how this one goes, but I’m optimistic about this one. It’s different. And to quote Groundhog Day, “anything different is good.”
Or could be good.
New St. Patrick’s Projectile
This epic projectile, here in time for St. Patrick’s Day, is officially called the “Triskelion Torpedo.”
If you’re looking to combine an Irish theme, with Star Trek, then this one kinda works. The episode, The Gamesters of Triskelion isn’t particularly Irish. (Not that Trek really pre-DS9 ever really did Irish well. See here. And here.) But the “triskelion” is a Celtic symbol, or kinda Celtic, even if the word has Greek origins.
The odd thing here is that this is a very useful projectile.
It’s just not useful in any way as a projectile. It instead increases the protected cargo of all of your ships by 20% once you get it. So in that way, it’s really useful.
And of course, it is green.
Three New Prime Research Nodes
Maybe the most useful thing in this update are these three new prime research nodes. Two of them are in the galaxy tree. Prime Vi’Dar Cargo will increase your Vi’Dar’s max cargo by 100%. Prime Stella Cargo will up your Stella cargo by 400%.
In the station tree, you’ll find Prime Ship Repairs, which will give you a 100% increase to the base Cost Efficiency in repairing ships. And while this might not be that big a deal if you’re primarily using G3 ships, the costs for G4 and G5 ships border on obscene.
The amount of titanium that I’ve got to spend on my Kelvin is insane. If I’ve raided you in the past few months, it’s all to pay for Kelvin repairs. (And also because I just like raiding. Now I just need to get Prime Gas Research for my car.)
The other good news (I guess,) is that these primes don’t require any special currency to unlock. They do cost rare 5* materials (ore for the Vi’Dar, gas for the other two,) and you can eventually earn these for free.
Eventually.
Miscellany
There will be an Away Teams Battlepass event, so prepare accordingly.
The Dabo table will be back this month, but it’s supposed to be more high risk/reward than last month. Also, it will require new tokens to play, so any tokens you’ve got from last month won’t work.
And there will be other things released this month that haven’t been announced yet.