Dilithium Mining

There’s a new fleet holding coming to STO. Now, in addition to a starbase and embassy, fleets will have access to their very own dilithium mine. Some cool new things are coming available as part of the mine.

• New Very Rare Armor consoles
• New Very Rare RCS consoles
• New Very Rare Warp/Singularity Cores
• Daily Dilithium mining missions
• Discounts on future fleet projects

The first three will be great. Finally move past the rare Mk XI armor/RCS consoles I’m using, since anything higher than that is ridiculously expensive. Getting some RCS and armor benefits from both looks great. If you use both, you can get great armor and great turn. If you use just one, you save a console and still get a little benefit from both.

New daily dilithium events should be cool, if they are anything like the VIP token you could get in a lock box. The dilithium mining mechanic is kind of annoying but for 3-5k dilithium in just a few minutes, it’s worth it. Especially to do on a multiple alts. Finally bring in more dilithium. Though, I expect it won’t be that good.

The final bit is the sticking point. Cryptic has been talking about reducing the cost of fleet projects to help smaller fleets for awhile now.  If you completely rank of the dilithium mine you’ll end up with discounts to all inputs (except maybe DOFFs). That’s great.  Less fleet marks, less dilithium and less commodities will be awesome.

The problem is that it is a measly 9% discount. For leveling the mine to maximum. The amount you’ll spend doing that will overshadow the savings by an astronomical amount. While it’s still a reduction and you do get other things for building the mine, its in no way going to help small fleets. The resources needed to get to that 9% reduction are still outside their ability to achieve.

So over all, a nice addition. But it doesn’t achieve the goal they’ve been bragging about doing.

Update: After this post was written, an update on the test server changed the max discount to  15%. Definite improvement.