"Mageduckey;825725" wrote:
What are the star levels opponents' ships around you? There isn't a huge difference in 1-4*, but once you get to 5-6* the multiplier goes up more (.1 instead of .05). So a lot of people who aren't noticing a stat difference now are going to feel the struggle when enemies are 5-6-7* and they're only 3-4-5*.
Mine are all 3*-4* (GS is my only 5*), while my opponents are getting the 4*-5* range. I don't think I've seen a 6* ship yet, let alone a 7*. I'm also not spending Cantina Shipment points on ship levels, so my power suffers from that as well.
"Mageduckey;825725" wrote:
You should gear Boba anyway - if you're going to be running Slave I, he needs to be geared to have good stats (around 1/3rd of his crew rating comes from gear, same as every other crew member).
I do plan on gearing Boba eventually anyways, but I'm concerned that he's low on that list. Thanks to a pretty drastic arena team change (I had incorrectly, really bull-headedly, tried to make an older team work and finally gave in to switch to something more meta-appropriate), I'm now trying to get:
Yoda G10 -> G11
EP G10 -> G11
TFP G8 -> G11
I could do Boba after those I suppose, but G10->G11 for Yoda/EP seem especially long.
"Mageduckey;825725" wrote:
People do seem "distracted" by characters, gear, and zetas, allowing you to stay top 50ish. But what happens when they start caring more about ships because their rank slips a little (as new people start popping into the top 50-100)? Personally, I'd want to be on the leading edge of that transition than trying to play catch up. Getting the zeta helped your arena rank, which is great, but now I think you should switch over to ships to be prepared for where your shard goes. And, if they don't match your ship growth, you'll increase your ranking. It isn't much of an increase in ship credits and fleet tokens, but it does add up if you could move into top 20 or even catch a top 10 at payout some of the time.
Remember when you predicated that a month ago? How'd that work out? ;)
Snark aside, I think with the lack of a strong Zeta option that you are correct, I should pick something else to spend on.
"Mageduckey;825725" wrote:
I will admit, I'm surprised you stayed top 50ish. I figured people would have actually cared about ships and invested in them. In my shard, if I hadn't been investing in ships the entire time I would have dropped from top 10 (at payout) to top 50, maybe even top 100; bit more competitive shard over here, so the decision to go one way or another is pretty situational. Had your shard been more competitive the 100-200 would have been the most accurate estimate, I think, and if you only hit top 50 on a 5/5 day I suspect you could slowly wind up there if you don't start doing much with your ships.
I don't think you can really measure competitiveness, or certainly, you and I don't have the same definition for it. Since you and I are different ranks, saying that your shard is more competitive because you have to invest more heavily in ships is misleading - I expect that I've had to invest heavily into ships to stay in the top 10 on my shard as well. Now if I was staying in the top 10 with my current strategy, I would give you that you have a more competitive shard, but instead I think it's that your rank is more competitive, not shard. I don't think you can really draw any conclusions about the competitiveness of the shard if you're comparing players of different ranks (which we are).
My concern with investing in ships at this point is that if it doesn't net me a rewards bump, it's largely wasted - right now I'm ending up basically between 40-60 at payout time. Investing all of my fleet shipments to get to sub 50 regularly seems wasteful (I'd get a tiny amount of extra fleet points, yet I'm spending many, many more just to get those few). I'd have to invest enough that I hit sub 20, I think, to really make the difference. Yet even this will only net me an extra 50 fleet shipment points a day, which seems... lackluster.
"Mageduckey;825725" wrote:
Especially since you can start working toward getting zetas from challenges, speeding up the process for your next one when you finally find one you want to chase, I recommend investing your fleet tokens in ship blueprints (with the odd gear here and there if it's toward the end of a piece and you want the bump for arena or raid).
I think this is really the key here. Investing in fleet shipments for the purpose of getting more fleet shipments doesn't make much sense math-wise considering the piddly amount of extra points I get per prize tier I improve. Getting those zeta challenges unlocked, however, means I can start comfortably getting a pool of zeta mats while waiting for a second useful upgrade to show itself.
