Thoughts on Omicrons
So we've talked about raid Omis costing too much before, and we've suggested 10-omi mat Raid Omis before. I was thinking about that, and also thinking about how they're valued much less in TB than GAC or TW. I was musing about that and thought I'd put a couple things down.
One thought on Omis is that they're worth what you get back in rewards. Another thought is that they're worth more if you can use them more often.
Based on the fact that there are multiple ways of valuing these things, there won't be any perfectly objective answer to their value. But there are some things we can say.
CG has the game on a 4-week cycle. I'm going to call that a month, but it's really 28 days.
During the game month, you fight 2xTB, 4x Raid, 4xTW, and 9x GAC. But the TBs include 6 different days of battles, so you get to use an Omi up to 12 times.
So use case, these are the ones that get the least use:
4x Raid
4x TW
GAC gets more than 2x the use at 9/month
TB gets 3x the use at 12/month.
The rewards are clearly best for GAC, but also an Omi used in 3v3 means that Omi has a chance to make a difference in 1/18 battles (up to 15 squad and 3 fleet total battles).
For raids, TW, and TB, if your whole guild invests that can make a difference, but as an individual what your own personal Omi expenditure is worth is diluted b/c your rewards are dependent on cooperative efforts from most or all of the guild.
Not only do these three get lesser rewards than GAC, but the difference that your spent Omi can make is almost trivial when considered alone. A guild with 49 players with a TW Omi but one player without isn't going to win more TWs than a guild with 50 players with that TW Omi.
The difference that a single Omi can make in TB is likewise very dependent on your guild and strategy, but in the best case they can (as they do in GAC) allow you to save a GL that you would otherwise have to spend.
Finally there's Raid Omis. Raids provide rewards at least as good as TW and probably better. Whether the rewards are better than TB depends on what you're currently looking for, but I would place them as vaguely comparable, leaning towards Raid rewards being worth more -- at least for where I'm at in the game. If you don't have everyone at g12, that would, I think, tilt the calculation even farther in favour of Raid rewards.
Your personal raid rewards depend on 8 attempts with the Omi applying to only 1 of them. This is better than GAC. However your guild rewards, which are the bulk of what you get, are dependent on 400 attempts, with your Omi applying to only 1 of them. This is, curiously, not that far off from the impact on TWs where the total battles to be won = 240-400, and the total attempts are somewhat more b/c of losses. So the effects are diluted, but not much more diluted than TW and probably less diluted than TB.
So Raid Omis seem to have a value based on Uses/Month that is quite low, and lower still b/c the raids sunset. But its impact on your rewards is at least as good as a TW Omi if not better. Meanwhile the TB Omis get much, much more use, but the value of such an Omi is difficult to calculate b/c no one ever gets exactly the points needed for a given star. That wastage is necessary, though, as insurance when a guild mate gets unexpectedly busy and misses missions or deployments, etc. The trick with valuing TB Omis is that they mean next to nothing if you can't get platoons filled. Deployment and Platoons are simply more valuable than winning battles.
So overall, I think it depends on how you value the fun of playing with your Omicron ability on. Just calculating by rewards Raid Omis are probably fair without considering the sunset of raids and thus a particular Omicron's utility. But the relatively rare opportunities to use them cuts down on the fun by quite a lot, and again the sunset of a raid hurts the # of uses argument as well, not just the rewards argument.
TB Omis are probably the worst in the game considering rewards, but the best in the game in opportunities to use them.
Honestly what is most surprising to me about thinking all this through carefully is that TW Omicrons are probably the worst in the game before considering raid sunsets. But in TW you likewise have sunsets as the meta changes. it's not as easy to define as with raids where the new raid simply bans the use of previous toons, but meta shifts are there and do prevent indefinite use of TW Omis.
If CG went to different pricing for different types of Omicrons the way that they have done for Omega mats on zeta abilities, a price cut on both Raid Omis and TW Omis would seem to be justified. The TB Omis give much better use value, so I wouldn't recommend that they be cut in price but I would expect that people who are more concerned with reward value than play value would continue to not activate TB Omi abilities.
I had in the past endorsed 10 Omi-mat raid abilities, but looking at things as a whole, I think I like it better this way:
12 Omi Mats = 1 Raid Omicron ability
16 Omi Mats = 1 TW Omicron ability
20 Omi Mats = 1 GAC or TB Omicron ability.
One thought on Omis is that they're worth what you get back in rewards. Another thought is that they're worth more if you can use them more often.
Based on the fact that there are multiple ways of valuing these things, there won't be any perfectly objective answer to their value. But there are some things we can say.
CG has the game on a 4-week cycle. I'm going to call that a month, but it's really 28 days.
During the game month, you fight 2xTB, 4x Raid, 4xTW, and 9x GAC. But the TBs include 6 different days of battles, so you get to use an Omi up to 12 times.
So use case, these are the ones that get the least use:
4x Raid
4x TW
GAC gets more than 2x the use at 9/month
TB gets 3x the use at 12/month.
The rewards are clearly best for GAC, but also an Omi used in 3v3 means that Omi has a chance to make a difference in 1/18 battles (up to 15 squad and 3 fleet total battles).
For raids, TW, and TB, if your whole guild invests that can make a difference, but as an individual what your own personal Omi expenditure is worth is diluted b/c your rewards are dependent on cooperative efforts from most or all of the guild.
Not only do these three get lesser rewards than GAC, but the difference that your spent Omi can make is almost trivial when considered alone. A guild with 49 players with a TW Omi but one player without isn't going to win more TWs than a guild with 50 players with that TW Omi.
The difference that a single Omi can make in TB is likewise very dependent on your guild and strategy, but in the best case they can (as they do in GAC) allow you to save a GL that you would otherwise have to spend.
Finally there's Raid Omis. Raids provide rewards at least as good as TW and probably better. Whether the rewards are better than TB depends on what you're currently looking for, but I would place them as vaguely comparable, leaning towards Raid rewards being worth more -- at least for where I'm at in the game. If you don't have everyone at g12, that would, I think, tilt the calculation even farther in favour of Raid rewards.
Your personal raid rewards depend on 8 attempts with the Omi applying to only 1 of them. This is better than GAC. However your guild rewards, which are the bulk of what you get, are dependent on 400 attempts, with your Omi applying to only 1 of them. This is, curiously, not that far off from the impact on TWs where the total battles to be won = 240-400, and the total attempts are somewhat more b/c of losses. So the effects are diluted, but not much more diluted than TW and probably less diluted than TB.
So Raid Omis seem to have a value based on Uses/Month that is quite low, and lower still b/c the raids sunset. But its impact on your rewards is at least as good as a TW Omi if not better. Meanwhile the TB Omis get much, much more use, but the value of such an Omi is difficult to calculate b/c no one ever gets exactly the points needed for a given star. That wastage is necessary, though, as insurance when a guild mate gets unexpectedly busy and misses missions or deployments, etc. The trick with valuing TB Omis is that they mean next to nothing if you can't get platoons filled. Deployment and Platoons are simply more valuable than winning battles.
So overall, I think it depends on how you value the fun of playing with your Omicron ability on. Just calculating by rewards Raid Omis are probably fair without considering the sunset of raids and thus a particular Omicron's utility. But the relatively rare opportunities to use them cuts down on the fun by quite a lot, and again the sunset of a raid hurts the # of uses argument as well, not just the rewards argument.
TB Omis are probably the worst in the game considering rewards, but the best in the game in opportunities to use them.
Honestly what is most surprising to me about thinking all this through carefully is that TW Omicrons are probably the worst in the game before considering raid sunsets. But in TW you likewise have sunsets as the meta changes. it's not as easy to define as with raids where the new raid simply bans the use of previous toons, but meta shifts are there and do prevent indefinite use of TW Omis.
If CG went to different pricing for different types of Omicrons the way that they have done for Omega mats on zeta abilities, a price cut on both Raid Omis and TW Omis would seem to be justified. The TB Omis give much better use value, so I wouldn't recommend that they be cut in price but I would expect that people who are more concerned with reward value than play value would continue to not activate TB Omi abilities.
I had in the past endorsed 10 Omi-mat raid abilities, but looking at things as a whole, I think I like it better this way:
12 Omi Mats = 1 Raid Omicron ability
16 Omi Mats = 1 TW Omicron ability
20 Omi Mats = 1 GAC or TB Omicron ability.
1
Replies
I’d argue that having an entire guild apply one TW omi can have a much greater beneficial impact than all members applying a TB omi. For one TB omi you might get everyone to do one more CM, or one more wave of a CM, but particularly in the first few waves their worth towards earning another star is negligible, and the rewards for an extra star are fairly small. In comparison if a wall of TW omis makes the difference between win or loss, and (only in my limited experience) that can make the difference between win or loss which has a much bigger impact on rewards than a star in TB. Perhaps for guilds still running Geo or Hoth TB the omicrons still have value in adding a lot to TB rewards, but I’d argue that for RotE the benefit is very minimal, and that’s directly related to the devaluing of CMs. YMMV
If I'm running Hoth or Geo, this doesn't apply - but I think it's safe to say that a significant enough portion of players are primarily focusing on RotE that it should be a factor. In RotE, we have relic requirements per phase - so not only do I have to apply the omi to use it, but how many times I get to use it in that event is directly tied to what relic level that toon is, and is the supporting team also at the appropriate relic level.
I'm personally seeing this now with the Finn omicron. I can use that one in phase 1 and it remains a full-auto 2/2 team in the mixed zone. Unfortunately the ideal team to accompany him is all at relic 5 as well - so I'll need to bring 5 characters from 5 to 6 in order to get a second battle out of that team. Then I'll need to bring them from 6 to 7 for a third use and so on.
This is the only situation in the game that I can think of where the omicron is limited not only by the game mode, but relic levels as well. I suppose we see a bit of this in the raids - where higher relics directly corelate to higher scores, thus increasing the impact of the omi - but at least in the raids there is never a situation where the omi is utterly useless. At relic 5, my Finn omi can't give me any more value after day 1 in TB, reducing it's usage to twice a month.
I would think that's got to factor into weighing the cost vs. return on these omis, considering that the cost is actually greater than just omi mats - but also badly needed signal data and relic mats.
Thank you for bringing this up. I thought about including this in the analysis, but I wasn't sure how to do so. While it's a hard requirement in TB, it's also true that even with an Omi QGJ the Omi doesn't actually do any good without decent relic levels on certain toons.
I definitely think the barriers to effective use are higher in TB, but I'm not sure how to reflect that in the analysis. (So I left it out for now, not having much intelligent to say on that point.)
And this is absolutely this is the traditional analysis. One of the things I'm pointing out here is that if you think of Omi resources as a chance to purchase other resources (an investment here gets me X more territory points which yields Y more rewards), then the traditional view makes perfect sense.
However, there are different play styles, and some people may choose to value actually getting to USE the Omicron, because it's fun and games are meant to be fun.
This makes establishing a single value very difficult. As you say, TB Omis provide little benefit in actual rewards until you're facing r9 planets where you're required to put so many of your GLs in platoons and have to find a different way to get through what can be very difficult battles without your most reliable and powerful toons. BUT if you're valuing play time, you have the possibility of using that TB Omi in 12 battles per month, while the TW Omi can only be used in 4 (and if it's a team you use on defense, you might never have the fun of playing with that Omi active).
Investment/rewards is traditional, but emphasizing fun and opportunity to play is a valid alternate play style and it leads to a different valuation.
I'm attempting here to compromise between the two different ways of looking at the game.