Greetings 44th !

First weekend of August, here is your Monthly State of the Fleet. As usual, first a welcome aboard to our newest fleet-members from July:

@Bizmaky (Aaron) from the UK
@jucyred#7315 (Stjepan) from Croatia
@dr_neir (Marcus) from the Eastern US
@Tagadin (aka SparkyTWS) (Dan) from Green Bay, WI
@TheDodger987 (Matt) from the UK
@salohcin38564#6613 (Nicholas) from the UK
@lordchappington (Daniel) from the UK
@ccthrawn0702 (Jon) from the East Coast, USA

And we have said goodbye to our longtime fleet-mate @Elvis441, who decided it was time to sail different seas. All the best on your future endeavours Elvis ! You will be missed.

This is unfortunate for us, but as we all know (and keep repeating) STO is a game and when it turns into nothing more than a daily grind, then it may be time to take a break and play something else. We prefer to see you return refreshed and engaged again instead of burn out and never return.

Never-Star-Winter-Citizen

The Mighty 44th is diversifying ! Besides in STO, we now have an official presence on Cryptic’s other game Neverwinter. The “44th Magistrate Council” consists of some leading 44th members who are speed-leveling their toons by raiding, looting and generally having a merry time bashing skeletons. Try it out if you want to take a step back and go from the future to a fantasy past. Contact your fleet-members Akula, Balthazar, Beta or Paradoxical if you want to venture down the deepest dungeons.
Our 44th-diplo channel is not just Fed/KDF cross-faction in STO, but also multi-game, and that’s why you will sometimes see some unlikely fantasy items linked in STO chat.

If you prefer to stick with scifi and spaceships, the 44th is also starting a fleet in Star Citizen ! Still in testing, the game is however ramping up and we have some eager senior 44th-members like Stompar, Nayoko and Damix creating the “44th Defense and trading Company” with an interesting backstory.

Obviously, carrying the 44th “brand” name means that the usual rules also apply and are upheld for both Neverwinter and Star Citizen – an easy going, no politics/religion, no drama play-style is encouraged that has been core to our succesfull STO Fleet for many years now.

The best way to contact or find more info about both our Neverwinter and Star Citizen activities is via our 44th Fleet Discord server. It’s free and multi-platform and we keep encouraging you to try it out. Don’t worry if you may think your English is not good enough, we are patient and our Universal Translators are fully charged. You can also just tune in and just listen as well.

Ofcourse I am also on Discord often, however I will stick with STO and – together with Sargon – continue to run the 44th Star Trek Fleet. Afterall, somebody has to feed the tribbles and entertain the Orion dancing girls on our starbases !

Phoenix Boo-boo, Upgrade weekend

So I made a boo-boo, sending out a fleet mail telling that you could upgrade the Phoenix awards. Obviously, you could only Downgrade them from epic/Ultra Rare all the way to common. I blame the Orion girls distracting me (#blamebeta ?) 🙂

I hope this reaches you still in time before the upgrade weekend ends, but we strongly suggest that you guys convert the Phoenix drops into those ultimate phoenix upgrades; they do not cost any dilithium and combined with the upgrade weekend it’s a dynamite opportunity to get your gear up to Epic level. This once a year event is something most of us look forward to.
If you have the dilithium to spare, buy those Phoenix boxes.
If you have even more dilithium to spare, convert it to zen as the exchange is super-low for a few days.

44th Armada

Within the 44th Armada we have said goodbye to two fleets; MARSOG moved from their Gamma position to a Beta one in another fleet, and the dormant Trancendent Empire fleet was removed due to inactivity. This means we have two Gamma Fleet positions available for which we are already interviewing candidates. We are looking for active fleets for improved cross-donations so you can earn (more) fleet credits quick and easy. Having a ‘large’, that is a high level and high membership Armada, gives a bonus to you as a player, such as:

A Dilithium Discount (every 35 Armada levels an additional 0.25% for Alpha, 0.5% for Beta, 1% for Gamma)
A Skill Point bonus (every 35 Armada levels an additional 1% for Alpha, 0.5% for Beta, 0.25% for Gamma)

Both your 44th Fleet (Fed) and 44th Assault Squadron (KDF) are Alpha, And the 44th Delta Fleet is Beta.
We hope to have the two Federation spots filled before the end of the month.

Fleet Celebration

Founded in 2010, this August your fleet will celebrate its official 7th anniversary. That is a feat by itself for any gaming clan. However due to scheduling (Holiday season for many) we decided to move the celebrations to September, and instead of a single day we are going to spread the activities over several weekends to allow as many of you to join in. There will be prizes and give-aways, so keep an eye out for a detailed post on this forum by Paradoxical soon.

Star Trek Las Vegas Convention

This weekend the Star Trek Las Vegas convention will be happening, and the STO Developers will be present as every year with news, demos and panels about the game. Of special interest was a big announcement about the game during a special STO panel, which turned out to be (drumroll) – LeVar Burton ! Besides that, the beloved (by me) Galaxy class gets a much deserved revamp, there will be two more new Fleet Actions (one a shuttle map ?), we will see revival of the Dominion and perhaps the long-awaited map revamp of Deep Space 9…?

Instead of repeating it all, see the official blog and video here. We will get into Season 14 when it goes live. You will notice a down-turn in the ‘place-holder’ fleet projects so we can save up resources for the new Fleet holding,

44th Fleet

Back to your fleet, we are doing very well: we keep attracting new members, our fleet stores are full with enough fleet provisions for ships, weapons, Boffs and goodies for everybody, and fleet runs are often and smooth. Obviously the latter depends on your own timezone, but we have a lot of players on both the US and Euro side to be pretty active around the more common playing hours. Still, as an MMO we keep encouraging you to shout-out in 44th-diplo chat if you want to (re-)play Episodes, run STFs or even foundry missions – having a wingman does reduce the grind and a fleet run beats a PUG any day.
Remember that you can see who is online via your friend tab (sent out invites!) and the Armada Tab if it seems quiet.

Speaking of, even though many of you have fleet invite permission, we do not allow “blind” invites. Every potential member needs to submit an official application on our forum. It only takes a minute and we use that for a quick background check and for future promotions and store unlock. So if some random person asks for a fleet invite, direct them to this forum and the big Join button. Without a proper app form nobody gets promoted and eventually removed from the fleet.

Ribbons !

If you haven’t already, submit your ship(s) for the 44th ships registry, and earn the Reported for Duty ribbon . We are compiling a long list of the current ships in the fleet here *link* as a quick overview of the 44th’s armada. This list may be updated once a year and act as a “snapshot” of favorite ships in the fleet – this topic will remain open.

You can earn another ribbon by signing up on Discord – there’s a special “Search for Soolin” running all of August earning you the usual 10x Tech Upgrades if you post your picture on Discord. It’s quick and easy. Besides this one regular weekly Searches will be up as well.
Suggested by fellow fleet-mate Novellus Caine, there is a new one which will be awarded for the amount of in-game accolades you have earned. Submit your screenshot here and win the Accolade ribbon. That particular topic will remain open as well.

As always, if you have any questions – ask ! There is a lot of knowledge in the fleet which we are all more than willing to share, so take advantage of that.

Zen/dili rate – 270 due to Phoenix event, will be back up to +300 in the coming weeks.
Calendar
Aug 1 – 7: Item Upgrade Weekend
Aug 1 – 10: Brush fire
Aug 17 – Sept 7: Arena of Sompek
Aug 17 – 21: Research & Development weekend
Pic of the Month: Stompar, Paradoxical, Sargon, Marcase;

Previous State of the Fleet – July 2017.

That’s it Captains ! See you, out there.
Marcase