Question about; Having Multiple Characters

Depends what you enjoy. I have about ten characters. Lhivera is my main, but there are about a half-dozen others that I play for change of pace or because I enjoy a particular concept she’s not suited for: a Ferengi in a D’Kora, a member of the Andorian Imperial Guard, a crusty old scientist coming out of retirement after the war and talking Admiral Quinn to give him a decommissioned Constellation-class ship for exploration, stuff like that. I don’t really care about role (it doesn’t matter a whole lot in this game), but I do care about character identity; I keep a given character in a single ship (though on occasion he or she will move from an old ship to a new one — but I don’t regularly swap between a set of ships), and I don’t respec characters unless I’m in the process of figuring them out (which happens less now that I know the system better). I don’t spec to min/max, I spec to reflect the character concept.

All these characters do come in handy for dilithium farming; on a dilithium weekend I stand to bring in some 300k-400k dilithium just by burning some mining claims, and there’s a steady trickle the rest of the time from admiralty and reputation climbing. But there are several I lay rarely (just tired of the concept), and others I maybe only log in briefly for a day but will play consistently for a weekend or a week if I’m in the mood to work on them.

Note that this all comes from the perspective of someone who doesn’t care about min/maxing. I enjoy knowing how the systems work, but I’m just not interested in using that knowledge to maximize numbers, except perhaps as a third or fourth priority behind other things I find more enjoyable and interesting. If your goal is to build a single character to be as strong as you possibly can, alts can serve to help feed that character resources, but you may not get as much enjoyment out of playing alts as many of us do. To each their own!

I currently run 13 toons. There are several benefits to having multiple toons. First, as everyone has said, dilithium farming. With KDF pulling in way more contraband than Fed you can of course turn in contraband for dilithium. Personally, I use contraband as a way to make more ec. I let my contraband add up until a dilithium weekend is announced. That makes the demand for contraband go up and I can sell each stack of contraband for approximately 12 million ec. Even with dilithium weekends coming significantly more frequently than they used to I tend to be able to accumulate 5 stacks (give or take a stack) between dilithium weekends.

This leads to my next point on why I prefer getting ec for contraband over dilithium. With 13 toons I can refine 8k dilithium per day on each of them. I don’t, mind you. But I do average 8k refinement per day on 7 of them. Another 3 average 4k refined per day. While the final 3 average 2k per day. So on a normal day I refine around 74k dilithium. With that much coming in I don’t need the dilithium that contraband turn ins would get me. With admiralty my average daily refinement has gone up but I prefer to err on the side of caution so I continue to quote my pre-admiralty numbers.

Outside of wealth generation there’s of course the bonus of always having another toon with a different playstyle available for those days when you’re bored of the same old same old of your main. I’d just make the suggestion that when upgrading gear you should focus on one toon at a time. Get one completely upgraded as you’d like before starting on another. As new gear comes out that you want to upgrade you can always revisit a toon to upgrade one or two more new pieces for them. Spreading out upgrades over multiple toons at the same time draws your resources too thin and doesn’t give you a feeling of progressing on any of them.

8 characters here; 3 Fed, 5 KDF. Before Delta Rising, I had distinct ships and flavors of builds for each of my characters. I had an alien running a sci spammy Recluse, a Klingon who commandeered an Adapted Destroyer, a Romulan dedicated to PvP, and more. But Delta Rising punished all that, and while things have gotten better, I’m still in the habit of focusing only on my main.

All of my characters farm. I log in with each, either on Ganalda or in sector space parked outside the Trimble System (this is my route for doffing as it hits 2 zones for doffing). I doff, turn in contraband, funnel R&D mats and Contraband to my main, transfer dil, rinse and repeat on my other characters. On my Feds I do Admiralty in addition to doffing since I have enough sci ships to actually do most of the stuff on there. Then my main takes in all the profits.

This is how I got everything I have in game. Multiple Lobi/Lockbox ships, Delta Rising pack, C-store ships, fleet ships galore, fleet items, hundreds of millions of ec and millions of refined dilithium. I do it all in less than an hour a day, so I don’t really call it grinding.

If I do anything else in the game it’s just for fun.

Hi Jalif, I’m a bit late to answering the question but quantity is a quality unto itself so I feel entitled :). I actually have 21 captains. I’m not 100% sure on the breakdown by faction but the number of KDF captains is about the same as the number of Fed captains. I don’t have quite as many Romulan captains as either but there aren’t as many racial choices within that faction to catch my interest.

I don’t play all of my characters at the same time. I usually play as a top 3 or 5 that rotates. As a result none of my captains are as capable as most of the other long playing members of the 44th. I hate grinding so I rarely use my characters for it. If I was hard up for dilithium I would rather waste real world money than diminish my play time. I lean toward tactical officers because I like fast ships that blow up enemies, themselves and go, “Pew! Pew!” but I have captains of all disciplines in my roster. I neglect my science officers; Especially my KDF and Rom ones because there aren’t any faction specific vessels at T6 :(.

I have silly stories in my head concerning all of my captains. At the minimum they have a rough personal history and personality. The more involved ones have complete biographies and bridge officers with the same. All of these crews tend to stick to a particular style of ship. Because a tac officer in a cruiser plays differently than a tac officer in an escort I can usually have enough diversity between captains that changing over feels fresh if I get bored with one.

My favorite captain is probably Ba’el my first KDF captain. She has the most spec points amongst my captains but is nowhere near filling out her trees. Usually she sits in the top three and everyone else cycles. The way I play don’t get many advantages from having so many captains. I do trade account bound stuff between them if someone has nice weapons that suit the theme of another.

Yes. KDF aligned Romulans can do the same marauding doff assignments as a KDF character.

If you travel from ESD to Ganalda you usually find some, possibly you had a cooldown. Avoid the usual social zones: no Tau Dewa, K7 or Qonos, you get the idea.

Make sure you look under Duty Officers / Department Heads / First Officer & Tactical Officer.