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One of the limitations you face as a lonely, fleetless, solo player is you won't have access to the pool of knowledge within a fleet/armada. That's not to imply that google can't provide the answers you seek, but having a lot of different players who have been playing, experimenting, and learning is a tremendous benefit you wouldn't otherwise have access to.
For ships you can always convince a fleet to let you join temporarily. But not being in a fleet I would consider the loss of passive boosts a disadvantage.
Extremely limited. You'll be forced to grind excessive Dilithium (for ZEN exchange) or pay real cash out of pocket for endgame ships and gear. Whether this prevents you doing endgame content depends on your skill level with a T5-U. I can do Advanced endgame content into the Galaxy X Dreadnought Cruiser T5-U from the Galaxy Pack, but not Elite (yet, gear needs upgrading still).
In other words, get a Fleet. No downside (especially with tier six reps now giving you fleet modules), and it is almost essential to play the game properly at 65+. Plus it's Star Trek, it's supposed to be all about teamwork anyway so I don't have a problem with this way of things. Not having a fleet will considerably increase the grind and the difficulty. Now if you like a Korean style grindfest this won't be a problem for you, but most prefer otherwise lol.
The short answer is "results will vary". You can pretty happily play the game without ever joining a fleet, and probably skipping most group content. It will limit you, though, from access to quality gear available from the various fleet holdings, specialist duty officers for high-level crafting (these *can* be got elsewhere, but it is much more direct from fleet t3 research), access to fleet knowledge pool, and the fleet holding mini-game which does give global bonuses.
Not necessary, but certainly more good than ill.
***
Nemesis,
You do almost nothing but come around and call people liars and idiots. Then you respond with more insults when they call you out.
You've no good will left here. I doubt that means anything to you, but you have gotten to the point where just posting will derail a thread. Given what I have seen from you, I would surmise that you get some sort of sick validation from your behaviour.
Take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and come to grips with the fact that you will probably be shunned at this point no matter what you say.
You are certainly free to express your opinions, just try to do it without stirring the pot intentionally, and try to explain yourself better maybe.
I mean, maybe if Craptic had done a balancing pass tom ensure difficulty-reward-ratios are in the same ballpark, or at least on the same continent, for all queues, maybe this'd be a good change that'd make the game more varied and fun.
Bloody wankers didn't do even as much as a pretend balancing pass, so their new Red Alert free system is going to cost them players when more casuals notice how utter crap the TFO balance is.
EDIT: Not that the Red Alerts are well balanced against each other, mind; it's just an infinitely better balance than, say, Crystalline Catastrophe vs. Counterpoint vs. Infected: Manus vs. Days of Doom.
While I complained about the removal of RAs at first, I've come to actually like the changes. Honestly, I love the Random TFOs. If it weren't for this feature, I doubt I ever would have seen many of them. And while not all of them have proper reward ratios (I won't start another rant on the Tzenkethi or Days of Doom, and obviously a lot of the ground content is not rewarding enough), I find that most of them are pretty balanced. There is definitely room for improvement, but I don't think this is a botch job. Not now that I've had time to play with it. The BS TFOs don't pop all that often, and more mark choices were added to a good number of them. And truth be told, Defense of Starbase One pops frequently and is one of the most rewarding by far. I actually mcuh prefer this to RAs, more diversity in content.
Some things definitely need fixing, but I'm cautiously optimistic. I think you might be being just a tad too harsh here. Also, not sure how this related to the topic at hand.
Truth be told, though, I think the best way to answer the OP at this point is "Don't. Just, don't even. Go get yourself a Fleet STAT." Literally no downside.
For starters, they didn't do a balancing pass, which would've been optimal. So n advanced, people leaving the garbage queues on sight has already sarted (which is completely unsurprising, given experienced players can just go do stuff on an alt).
This will start tricking down to normal difficulty before long, as less experienced players will also start insta-leaving garbage TFOs in favor of doing something actually fun on a different character.
This will broadly exposes that Craptic was too lazy/stupid/ncompetent to code TFOs so replacement players get assigned (probaby too lazy; they'd need to fix ground queues to make sure such a player can actually enter the playfield, which on some maps currently doesn't even work for original team members being "late" due to transition crashes). Still, if they could get their act together on this, that would be an acceptable fix.
Admittedly, on advanced, that doesn't really matter; everyone else can just leave and switch to an alt themselves. But on normal?
The ones getting the short end of the stick will be newer players actually needing to run normal queues on their main, as they will have to suffer through garbage queues a person or two short.
Well, or take the leaver penalty and suffer lockout themselves. Because Craptic won't acknowledge that as long as they're too lazy/incompetent/stupid to do a balancing and/or assign replacement teammates, they really need to let people who got deserted then leave queues without a penalty.
Which would be the simplest, lamest problem mitigator, but Craptic devs apparently lack the character to implement even as little that.
Hahaha, true. I'm guilty of that myself, I don't even bother with the Tzenkethi crap, Days of Doom, or Khitomer in Stasis these days. Thankfully that only happens maybe once a day. Problem? Yes. Big? eh, medium-small I'd say.
Already happening. But again, most of the TFOs are decent to great, only about a half dozen are truly garbage. I frequently get good ones like Defense of Starbase One, Swarm, Counterpoint, and Gates of Grethor.
Too lazy, agreed. Won't debate that one for sure. Lots of stuff they haven't fixed. Like why haven't they removed all the missions relating to the TFOs that were removed like Big Dig? Why do I transport from my bridge into outer space?
Hmmm... That could lead to problems as well, though. I don't think Normal will have as many troubles (outside the Tzenkethi crap and Days of Doom). Thing is, if you remove the leaver penalty, that opens a dark door. Perhaps a compromise: if a person leaves a TFO within the first minute of arriving, no leaver penalty. I'm actually a bit more concerned with people going to Advanced when they're not ready, I've left TFOs just because of an incompetent group before. Unsure if there is a fix for that though.
I think the simplest solution, easiest to implement, and best policy would just be to have people in the Random Que replace those who have left. Also, make the leaver penalty 15 minutes. It needs to exist, but it needs to be tweaked.
The limitations you mentioned are there. From that extra console slot/stats in a fleet ship to the bit of different aesthetics they can add to customizing a favored ship model.
But also the extra trait slots,active doff/rep slots you unlock, that all adds up to a fleet member being able to use more "clickies" than a non-fleet, and having more offensive/defensive capabilities at your disposal. And fleet stores offer bridge officers and equipment that provides more varied branches to builds.
* As in never joined anyones fleet. But always playing with others in events/TFO's and friend list so it's not actually solo.
Did make my own fleets(FED,KDF) for storage. But ended up contributing to both for all the perks. I don't have all the bells and whistles of a full running fleet yet. but over time i've managed two complete dill mines, a tier 3(kdf) and working on tier 4(fed) starbase solo, So every bulk head and stembolt of those fleets i own. And all my characters fed or kdf gets to benefit from having a fleet.
That has become apart of the game experience for me. Since being here from the get-go and having lifetime and the resources to do this. I do not recommend solo fleets to anyone. The ingame cost has been staggering albeit fulfilling.
You mentioned having fleet credits but no where to use them. I have no idea how other fleets work so can't give you specifics. But there are various channels that offer different services. If you shout in zone chat with a few details..like you are looking to buy a certain fleet ship, you may get directed somewhere. Just be careful not to get exploited. To be clear, can't say for sure what happens out there, and have only heard from others how it is.
You don't need a fleet, however you don't need to be active in most fleets to reap the benefits. MOST fleets will promote you to a point where you can use the fleet services once you donate enough resources for them. The most prized is Dilithium but Fleet Credits, Energy Credits, and Duty Officers will make up a large portion of your average donations.
But if you won't have access to some of the top tier equipment if you don't join a fleet, granted it is more than just possible to get by with normal equipment (non-fleet damage consoles might not do as much but they are far from anemic), mission rewards, and Reputation projects.
With ships you have a horde of choices. Yes, when it comes to Faction Specific ships the T6 Fleet ships are top dog.
T6 Zen Store ships they might be less hardy than their Fleet counterparts but they do have abilities and equipment not found on their free counterparts (most of these abilites and equipment can be used on other ships, see the ship's descriptions for limitations if they have any).
Thanks to RNG there are quite a few T5 ships on the Exchange that you can buy for a reasonable price that will prove their worth time and time again. On top of that many get a free upgrade to T5U. Avoid Mirror ships as you cannot upgrade them. Personally I loved the Tholian Meshweaver, Voth Bastion Flight-Deck Cruiser, the Ferengi D'Kora, and the Lukari N'kaam Scout ship.
Save your dilithium for Pheonix Lockbox events as not only do you have a snowball's chance in hell to get a ship like with normal lockboxes but you can also get some pretty neat stuff as a consolation prize (anti-proton energy torpedoes, a shotgun, a surf board, etc) as you normally would but these lockboxes are paid with dilithium and do not require a key to open.
Finally there are time specific ships, these can range from tied to a promotion (meaning you have to pay for them, hopefully without the RNG) to events. Event ships are T6 that do not have a Fleet version but will often come equiped with neat little gadgets and have special abilites not found elsewhere so it's good to go after these even if you have your dream ship.
Anyways, this thread's a bit focused on the ship side of things, when one of the bigger things you're missing out on without a fleet is all the other stuff fleets get in their stores.
My Fed chars ar in a not that super active fleet, and one that definitely doesn't require taking part in weird hazing rituals, weekly PvE queue dps parsing ego wankfests, or anything else that might put some players off. Still, little by little, even that's got everything but the colony world maxed out and I wouldn't miss shopping for certain consoles, boffs, doffs and other ameneties for the world.
None of it is truly essential, mind, but much adds to the game in some ways. Hey, one of my characters just wouldn't be the same without that Dyson Spire costume unlock!
(My KDF chars, as it were, probably do need a less super inactive home, all things considered, or they'll never be able to shop for my favorite shinies.)