Update: There’s a thread on the Star Trek Online forums tracking this. Apparently the percentage for winning a ship from a red box is 0.65%,…
Update: There’s a thread on the Star Trek Online forums tracking this. Apparently the percentage for winning a ship from a red box is 0.65%, making the average number of boxes to open (and hence dollars to pay) 153.
The Jem’Hadar assault ship is one of the most desired ships in Star Trek Online. It has pretty awesome stats for an assault ship, has a unique exterior and interior. The Dominion War was fought on the bridge of ships like these.
You can win one by running a race during the STO winter event. You can win one race a day, but you can try as many times as you like until you win. They have even parked the ship on a cliff above the event just to give you a glimpse of what might be yours one day.
The red box in which the keys to the ship are contained is very rare. Further, the red box only very rarely gets you the ship. Someone talking in zone chat this evening said she’d opened thousands of red boxes on the test server and only gotten four ships; she estimated the chances of getting a ship were 1 in 200. And she guessed the odds of getting a red box for winning the race would be about that.
With those odds, the expected number of red boxes to open for a 50% chance at the ship would be 138 (0.5 = 1-(1/200)^n, solve for n). You can buy red boxes in the C-Store; they cost 80 points each. The best rate to buy Cryptic points is 5000 for $62.50, which works out to 80 points for a dollar. Each chance at the ship, then, costs you a dollar. $138 gets you a 50% chance at the ship. $459 gets you a 90% chance at the ship.
But you can get a chance for free. If the figures discussed were correct (and only Cryptic knows), then running 27,725 races will get you a 50% chance at the ship. I bought some Cryptic points and spent them all buying red boxes. No ship.
I wrote and ran a simulation, by the way. The average number of races that needed running at the given odds to win a ship was 41,348. At one try per character per day, well… I’ll let you work that one out.
This sort of cash-fueled lotto machine is very common in Asian free to play games. People spend thousands of dollars buying chances to spin the wheel for awesome loot. Everyone points the finger at Cryptic’s new owners. Perfect World Entertainment. Publisher of F2P grinding games worldwide.
You absolutely do not need to pay money in this lotto to play Star Trek Online. To quote the wise Admiral Akbar; it’s a trap. And the thing is, by putting these sort of cash money sinks into the game, they are just going to end up driving people away because nobody can actually afford to get caught up in this sort of thing. Making a game that will tempt people into putting themselves in financial ruin is… well, it’s pretty sick.
This is the face of Star Trek Online on the eve of its free-to-playness.
The Prometheus Multi-Vector Advanced Escort
I am absolutely willing to give money to a F2P game that plays honestly by me. After spending $25 on worthless red boxes, I went back to the cash shop and spent money on the Prometheus Multi-Vector Advanced Escort for my latest max level character, Vice Admiral T’Pral. It separates into three sections; you choose which one to command, and the others follow behind and attack what you attack. Each section has different capabilities; the Alpha section is balanced; the Beta section focuses on weapon power; the Gamma section focuses on auxiliary effects – buffs and debuffs in MMO lingo.
It’s great fun, and Longasc, Talyn and I tore through some space-based Special Task Forces (STFs) and a couple runs of the Mirror Universe invasion event. It was absolutely worth the cash. I spend $X, I get Y. That’s what I want from my F2P cash shops. I spend money and I get what I expected. Ship cost $9 or so.
I could have gotten this for free. All STFs pay out unrefined dilithium ore. This can be refined (for free) and traded for Cryptic points in the Dilithium exchange (or used to buy non-cash shop ships and the best equipment). The exchange rate varies between 370 and 450 dilithium per Cryptic point. So you can eventually earn an elite ship with a lot of grinding – or pay cash to get it now.
Remember that you will get every ship you need for free as you level. The whole cash shop thing is only for special ships or if you decide to change tracks . Energy credits (the in-game gold) used to buy ordinary ships, but now trying a cruiser after you chose a science ship for your free ship will cost you dilithium or Cryptic points exchanged for same.
I wanted to write about the new leveling path (where the old Feature Episodes have been worked into the leveling path so that now every mission you run is a story mission, with no randomly-generated missions required at all). It was a lot of fun, and the duty officer/cow clicking mechanic helped out a great deal. Of my three characters, T’pral finished leveling with the best gear and skills, and I didn’t spend a dime until the end. (Well, scratch that – I bought the NX Enterprise months and months ago, but it was pure vanity as it only replaced her starter ship).
The Free-metheus
T’pral was previously in the free version of the Prometheus; nearly identical to the cash shop one, except it doesn’t split apart. She’s doing a victory flyby of a destroyed Borg mother ship from one of the random Borg incursion events. You get good dilithium for the victory.
There aren’t that many space combat MMOs that let you decorate your ship and play dress-up with your crew. I think STO is pretty much alone in that space. So to speak. Cryptic has a good game going here, and the new leveling path brings you through the very best of the content while making the dull parts entirely optional.
Greedy lottos could bring the whole thing down.
(Python code for the simulation included!)
`from random import random
redChance = 1.0/200.0
shipChance = 1.0/200.0
winChance = redChance * shipChance
runningCount = 0
numTries = 1000
for i in range(numTries):
count = 0
won = False
while not won:
count += 1
won = random() <= winChance
runningCount += count
print “Average # tries was %d” % (runningCount/numTries)
`
