Crew Mastery Upgrades for mastery 4+. Scaling delay bonuses, are they worth it?

[Dragon]

So i have been putting my mastery 4 points into the Mastery and State scaling delays and i think they Mastery Delay is worth it, but i'm not sold on the Scaling delay on the stat type. pri/sec. Once you reach your maximum XP gain your crew stat level is going to reach equilibrium and the stat delay will help for sure reach a higher maximum, but by the time we get Mastery 4 everyone is already capped out on the gains from rank/stat bonuses and it only gives a marginal 90 stat levels for 4 Mastery Upgrade Points (that is +25 Primary, +25 attribute, +15 sec, +25 secondary attribute so 4 points for a 50 primary stat and 40 secondary stat delay gain). making a few more assumptions lets say your total attribute level on a crew member is 2900-3000 that is only a 3% gain in mastery points? rough paper math to just ball park their usefulness. I don't feel it's very effective even when going for mastery 5's and lucky if it shaves more then 1 or 2 crew bio sleeves going for the other mastery 4's.

Anyone else think they are a little weak for the mastery upgrade or am i missing something?

At this point i am just going to continue with the trend and see if i'm wrong and finish the other 4 crew mastery 4's and then do a respec as i don't know when i will reach mastery 5 (currently 300+ bio sleeves with my progress on sector 92). i think i would be better off with 4 2point talents base, overdrive, fixture, research upgrades and push on those ends before attempting mastery 5. i don't see those 6 points helping much in the long run, maybe worth another mastery upgrade respec before attempting mastery 5's and capping the other 4 features out.

[best bulliet target]

i agree that when you/we are going to push for m5 we need to use a respec to do some power build up, befor we respec back and go for those extra points.

but that can also be said about syth. You really want it until you do not need it. making that one talent usefull and then suddenly it's not. It should hav merged with the fixture one and hav some other thing there.

But all of this is just meant to slow us down. the game has gone really fast for an idle in my opion, and we're been very foturnate about the speed of our progress.

[Dragon]

I think the synth one could be handled with fixtures/overdrive/base combo as much like the first one it really wasn't needed. i'm stuck in the Mid T11 synth as my synth speed is not too slow to really gain more then combat enhancer. Synth has many many places to gain speed from so i wasn't too worried and put that one low on the list.

Ideally I don't mind the slow down, i just don't even want to respec if possible and just looking for the best path to finish the 2nd set of stuff without using the consumable and plan out the process. I do have 4 to use so i will when i have too but i think it should be there is you mess something up. As i don't see getting Mastery 5 for a long time, those stat delays feels under powered for 6 mastery points.

I like the idea of Synth speed/Fixture speed rolling into one talent though.

[Elgareth]

I'm not quite there yet (Reinforce 3, Sector 90 atm) and currently getting the crew warp upgrades (would need 96 sleeves for my ET to Mastery 4 currently).
But I can see that even the Rank Scaling Delay would have mediocre results in the grand scheme of things.
I personally plan to go for the Second Overcharge Charging first, as currently that is the one real timegate for pretty much all other things.
Since getting one sleeve takes ~30 minutes with the Reconstitution Specialist who increases the rate by more than x6 (which took a me a bit by surprise in mid-Reinforce 2, because it was so weak in Reinforce 0), shaving off 1-2 sleeves per Mastery doesn't seem worth the points, and since there are no skill threshold upgrades left, the increase of bonuses will be miniscule as well.
But I still got 4 Mastery Resets left from the Reinforces, so maybe it'll be worth it when going for Mastery 5, as target said, first going for power upgrades, and after bursting each other thing, then doing a crew mastery round with the scaling delays.

[Dragon]

I'm in Sector 93 now, but maybe this is the intended "super slow" period where it turns into an idle.

Right now i think the Base and Overdrive and mandatory for any kind of advancement.

Base 5 is not moving at all with 50min on even bases 1-4 and 5+ hours on base 5 for a single building bump, thats with all base links and crew. (4 spaces, 1 special still locked on base 5).

Trying to use spacemas for a final bump on overdrive charge with a higher T3 reactor/fixtures but it's still going to be close to an hour per charge. so 4days per overdrive to hit T4.

Fixtures even with synth vdevice link is 16+ hours (only 11/50 for most fixtures and cleared 1st half of T11 synth and T3 overdrive) and still don't think the extra E1 gained from the synth x 5 mastery upgrade will help me hit the next 1/2 yet without bases/fixtures/T4 overdrive.

With the 7 points in the delay stats it might bring the crew 5 mastery to around 6 instead of days. per crew member.

Maybe the data core exponent will help more then it looks? I see it as just grabing the next tier of research but i'm not 100% sure what it means by exponent +1, i'm guessing it adds a free core of gives a free E1 boost to research gained which is a lot different in the research gained.

The Compute one might be required to hit higher sectors as i assume the content goes to sector 100 right now, but fighters are already falling behind so that one might be low key mandatory for progression and thats T3 Overdrive, with warp essence done for fighters.

anyways, i really can't see a clear cut path right now except to finish mastery 4's then play around with mastery respecs and upgrades, but i think i will just focus on foundational upgrades (overdrive,base,fixture,synth?) then swap again for stuff to push sectors higher (research/Compute/Crew/MasteryDelay/PrimaryDelay) then again to try try put everything into mastery 5 gains (crew/mastery delays) and see where that ends up.

Can try and do base/overdrive at the same time and swap between fixture/synth for 1-2 weeks, then push sectors and research for maybe a few days to weeks (with new shards?) while trying to push that extra into Mastery 5's and the extra delays. but maybe looks like a month of idle(ish) stuff. Anyone see extra links that would help avoid respecing with consumables?

[best bulliet target]

oh fighters are getting a bump from that special aswell as from t4 OD + warp skill.
But it's farming that silly shard and trying to get more void matter for base crew skill of 2,45-2,55 or higher that's driving me mental.

but i'll say take syth, base and OD, and once you've finshed of crafting OD, research and fixture. Computer is okey. but the figthers are going to out preform even without the crew skill.

then we're more or less got the eternal stuggle with crew lvls..

[Dragon]

i don't think i've bumped by crew skill in a while. it's sitting at 3.15 total though. might see if i can hit a new high when i finish these Mastery 4's

The OD for fighters doesn't seem to really give them a huge passive damage benefit because it was changed to efficiency and i'm already capped on Warp Essence for fighters but i'm already having a hard time in the end of sector 93 boss. the compute becomes less and less effective the higher your tier and there really isn't a lot of bonus damage buffs so i was looking at just better compute to try and compensate. I don't think relying on the "active" fighter OD is going to be very useful in later sector unless that Tier benefit shoots up a lot higher.

[Huillam]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Maybe the data core exponent will help more then it looks? I see it as just grabing the next tier of research but i'm not 100% sure what it means by exponent +1, i'm guessing it adds a free core of gives a free E1 boost to research gained which is a lot different in the research gained.

Based on the description it should mean you research bonus/multiplier/speed/whathever is core^3 instead of core^2. Basically it should multiply your research speed by the amount of data core you have. At sector 93 that should be almost 30 times faster. Enough for one more research tier but not for two.

As for the compute score (still based on description) it's a multiplier to delay. Except if I missed an upgrade somewhere right now that should translate into 4 more levels into damage/durability. It will probably turn much more powerful as more tier scaling reduction upgrades are made available but right now it seems really weak.

[Elgareth]

I think the currently last implemented sector is sector 94 (reading through the updates, it nowhere mentions anything above 94). So yeah, you are pretty much at the EoC currently, so all upgrades will be a slow crawl.
I think when new sectors are added, so are new crew skill upgrades that then boost all other areas to be able to get farther.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Elgareth:

I think the currently last implemented sector is sector 94 (reading through the updates, it nowhere mentions anything above 94). So yeah, you are pretty much at the EoC currently, so all upgrades will be a slow crawl.
I think when new sectors are added, so are new crew skill upgrades that then boost all other areas to be able to get farther.

Yea i was wondering if that was the case as my research is at 1e20 (capital) but already nearing a what feels like a soft limit but goes up to E30. The crew section was really bare and i long passed the milestones provided for stats/rank. which doesn't line up well. I assumed Sector 100 would be the top because the achievement to beat 130 unique sectors i'm at 120/130 which leave room for a 3x2 block or 2x2 blocks. could just be room for expansion though so it would make sense if we got stopped at 95. in which case most of this is just a holding pattern anyways. Might be the reason it feels there are some off gaps in progression at sector 92+. I will know regardless if i run into invincible barriers again like last time!

[Huillam]

I just realized that all three warps cap at 94.5. As Machai is unlocked much later than the other two that's a good hint that you're right and that 94 is the actual end of content. And that follows the trend of having the reinforce every five sectors.

[Dragon]

I am still in sector 93 (warp 94's x3 complete) but that is good to know the sector cap.

Anyways i tried respeced and tried out research/base/synth/overdrive
should have done Mastery/Pri stat delay/Synth/Base/Overdrive. the Mastery delay is about 3 stat point gains which is pretty important for RS/ME/CS crew members so it's a minor slow down. and research jumped from like 750ish to 1.97E4 with 27 cores as i put one on the other side. For your info the other side lags by only E3 from 1:27 core ratio so it's very easy to only pick a single side if you don't prestige.

The research gain is kinda minimal and i'm still working on SynthT3/RxT3 pushing them to T4 which will take a while anyways so the research gains can just be grabbed later when i hit sector 94.

Base was a good one to grab as its helping with the final tiles (if you turn off auto buy) and i won't need to redo it even after hitting sector 94 until they give us the Base shard 8. I think the compute 8 is the last one they drop with the content.

Synth in early T3 with the 5x buff gives me enough reach 1e69 (3e142 research, 1.5e7 base bonus, 10/50 fixture, warp essence done, and all V Device maxed 3.36 crew skill) which got me up to T2 Resistant Relay unlocked (only missing Warp/research upgrades in T11) so i can finish that out when i get T4 synth overdrive.

Figured while working on overdrive good time to just stock up bio sleeves (~300 for T5) as i found a small trick, don't reprint your RS crew and they keep the same rank and stats even without the Delay bonuses from crew mastery upgrades.

I think skipping the delay stats (other then mastery/pri) is the right way to go next time we have to reinforce. after saving maybe 1.2k biosleeves we can just swap to them and grab new mastery upgrades as we finish Base/Overdrive/Synth and need the delays.

[Huillam]

I've been thinking of going for fixture instead of synth myself.
It should be enough to reach sector 94 (if reinforce 4 was a thing I would most likely go for synth as it definitly won't be enough to reach sector 95) which for now is the best place to farm Compute Shard VIII and that's one of the few things that will have an impact on the next reinforce.

[Dragon]

I want fixture as well, but thought i would just bang out synth first to maximize fixture gains and just lock my fixture on synth speed until synth T11 is inf. i'm guessing you just need a combination of Overdrive T3 synth, Fixture, base 3, research, crew, and the mastery upgrade to complete it. That means there should be a lot of extra wiggle room from so many sources so cutting out faster fixture times in the early parts and pushing the other areas should be enough.

I agree if the next Reinforce was available we could cut corners and just push up to Sector 95 early by focusing on T3 overdrive combat as the synth is really a low impact in the last 3rd of T11 (research/warp modules) without a lot of buildup to feed back into combat. although i'm not sure if we can hit sector 95 without the capital ship damage boosts from Warp Essence final node. maybe they will add another damage modifier with the next content update to make that transition easier.

Edit: I just sit in sector 93 and one shot the capital ship and figure that is faster then trying to push into sector 94 for just the compute shard. although i could probably push it if i just built a T3 charge for the combat stuff.

[best bulliet target]

i'd say get to sector 94 and if you can sit there and farm. new shard..

But the 2 new quest i'm adventaging on is finsh OD t4 and crew m5.
base1-5 is roughly done!. Went hard on research and got fundemental too e23 and stopped that and reset, back to a 50%-50% split.

Took 34 mins to get to my spot on 94, but is going to take 4-5 days of farming void matter to get my crew skill back. And during those days (23m on sleeve) waiting for my next m5,
and the points hav been reset to od-delay-pri-sec-ing-acu(next is ether P and then E) i had em on OD-delay-base-synth.

I can see my self going for fixture and then research, because they just lower the timer for more power, well not on fundemental, but applied has more fixture speed at e22 so :D.

Computer is just not really a thing i'd say, OD4 figthers with max warp is just 1 shotting all 3 on area 94 for me. (47-47-22-14-9-7) might do a new push when OD4, but m5 crew skill, is a nope from me.

Plus the 6th spot is a luxy so i wont hav to switch Xeno so crew can get more xp. RS is fixed need that sleeve speed.
the crew increases has me at about 123-126 skill points, yet it's still slug feast to m5 270-315 sleeves per crew(xp reset because of prestage lost the m4 xp, but that was only from 274ish sleeves then).

As for OD4 5hs at 1700 speec per t4 charge (got 1 achvements left and 1 warpupgrade) might get 1 more oom for void power, so i might get 1-2 increase too the speed, but spacemass boost really set that bar high.
But an OD4 reactor well deffenly set my speed up.
so just alot of waiting now.

[Dragon]

I'm in a similar spot for most of that, i really need to get a prestige in for the research stuff but i will just hold off to keep the 11-15% most of crew has in mastery points to Mastery 5.

I did miss out on the timing for the spacemass reactor buff with a T4 overdrive reactor, but i'm also at just short of 1700 charge speed now (still missing the 5/5 overdrive warp essence talent though) and started focusing on the foundation stuff like synth/research/warp overdrives. at this point i think fixture might be better then synth. i think we can just ignore the synth one completely unless you plan on spending more then a week or 2 synthing nonstop.

so yea, when another reinforce opens up i will def do the mastery stuff different. but overdrive and base seems the bigger ones to start with