USS Kelvin Reveal! | Saladin 2.0?! | Do Defiant & Talios say to skip it? | Upgrade Costs in STFC

Over three years ago we introduced @everyone to the USS Kelvin when 4* was first launched. (Thanks Grergor who was the first high level to pick up the ship and subsequently sent me video). Now, I've ground out STFC's Kelvin movie catalyst by hitting hostiles and it's time to go over it once again. Is it worth getting? Will it improve your gameplay? What are the costs? Let's discuss!
Topics covered:
1. Answering the question: Is it the Saladin 2.0? Why or why not
2. Upgrade costs (base) to Tier 5, Tier 7, & Tier 9
3. Discussing whether the Talios & Defiant should tell you to "skip" the Kelvin, or not.
4. If you have any game mechanic questions, feel free to drop those questions in the comments!
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[@climbtibet]

It’s crazy the parts demand is always my biggest concern.

[@SimonWitt]

My main problem with both the Saladin and the Kelvin is the design of both ships does absolutely nothing for me

[@jplacklan9593]

Kelvin was my first g4 ship. Love it. But NOW I would have chosen a different once because of Tally/Defiant

[@Serpens788987]

Kelvin's firing pattern actually works better than a front-loaded volley with Interceptor Strike team. Gul Dukat takes a turn to get going, so the turn 2 spike can end up quite savage

[@xbuzzii4839]

I would still get 42 ship these days. Even though talios/defiant take interceptor parts, the amount they take is tiny compared to faction ships. You can easily get kelvin to T5 (which will be more powerful than defiant/talios at 42), then you're free to focus all interceptor parts on talios/defiant, which is a great position to be in. Voyager, because it's not ops locked they made it cost a lot of gas/explorer parts. I wouldn't say valdore would interfere with that too much, since you only need it at T5 too, but its a slightly bigger worry. The bigger problems are the 46 ships, korinar is going to have to compete with voyager for upgrades, and pilum will compete with talios/defiant. The 46 ships you probably want to take to as high a tier as possible, so there is a bigger conflict there. Newton h as no speciality ships to take parts away from it at the moment, who knows the future.

[@nutznchocolates56]

The Pickle 🥒🍅

[@CCFONESOL]

Uncommon and rare ships are always worth getting

[@tomb427]

I hate this ship….never liked it and enjoyed the kornair so much better

[@tfawsam8980]

Ops 47..and all my rares are stuck for ship parts

[@sbrandt76]

My t10 kelvin is awesome. I love it. I also have a t7 valdore but I focused more on my kelvin and it is going to carry me to my 53 uc ship. My talios is level locked (ops 49) and only 16 mil power. My kelvin is 28 mil and not level locked.

[@RevDeuce]

Talios REALLY takes off in 5*!

[@vasishtakanthi4231]

Also , I have T7 Kelvin , my first g4 ship . It’s cracked bases and tears .I love it , regardless of how it is 😊

[@SithScorp]

I agree that the ship parts need to be sourced better. The refinery needs to be more productive. The scaling be level is ridiculously inadequate.

[@RevDeuce]

Agreed!

[@luskvideoproductions869]

Hey Rev Deuce, I want to build this ship, I have the lvl42 shipyard and 4 grade ship research, and I CAN buy the faction credits to build it soon, but..when I look at the Ships button and look it up, it sez "Requirements Not Met", then some comment about "Venture further into the galaxy to learn how to unlock this ship." What does this mean? Before I spend faction credits, is there something else I"m missing? Or is this a fluke in the game?

[@ryanbuxton1933]

ive just done this with my Auger +pmt for a free Kelvin and Ktinga, now working on Valdore at 98/150, lots of heavies were harmed in the making of this fleet, but saved as rev would say Mucho Dinero :D

[@markjones6557]

I never bothered with the pilum because Kelvin was my first G4 ship. I loved it and let me assure you, ktingas were fodder. I think I lost to a same level valdore once and then only because the player recrewed anti fed, anti interceptor after bouncing off me umpteen times. as for battles versus pilums, I won a lot more than I lost, beating 42mill pilums when Kelvin was at 30m.... Sadly, my Kelvin is just a garage relic now that I keep just to spend G4 on in events. It'll be a sad day tho when I scrap it....

[@docHOLLAday53]

I LOVE MY DEFIANT. I have never regretted getting it for one minute. It’s battleship tough, with the speed of an interceptor. Overpowered and can take a pounding.

[@GGLIHTC]

Defiant hits hard, but is not tough. Very weak on shields and hull health. I like it, but it has its limitations.

[@Davidka83]

Kelvin is a good ship mine "stucked" at tier7 22M average power (by crew differences). Stucked because no worthy overbuild because tier8 tailos 22M too, im op51 now (2 days ago was 49 :D) so better build tailos and defiant highest possible. My flagship still newton 36M. So on Federwtion line Kelvin worthy but when tailos can be bigger, Kelvin power building waste of materials.

[@raccotton5692]

Just got ship 10/14/23 been some time geting,now have 30 build time lift and lvl 42 TIME TO GET SOME THAT SEMPER FI

[@weaponx26]

I've unlocked the hydra a while ago and it's a great miner

[@chris0101chris]

If you go explorer…..you will/should…..not run out of parts. I am f2p and have a t4 valdore and t6 korinar and t5 cerritos and still have 300k uncommon ship parts. Why? Dailies you tend to hit explorers, they are the easiest. Jf brawl. Cerritos event. Not much work to do 2 chests each time for explorer parts. Have to do a little work to always do a single chest of battleship or interceptor. Ops 49 with no interceptor or battleship yet, and have slightly more parts, but not many. Maybe 350k unco parts, versus 300k for explorer and like I said, have built three explorers, but only a t5 apex grinder whatever that’s called (gone from memory) and defiant and tally to not high level yet

[@geoffh784]

IMO it's better to grind Romulan and get the Valdor because the events for the ISS Jellyfish free parts can be used to upgrade the Valdor for free (and quicker than the other G4 unc ships), and then for a second ship the K'Tinga which is better for armadas than the Kelvin (which was a dissapointment after the Saladin).

[@deanking2350]

Parts parts parts.... my ktinga and valdore are hungry and need feeding... please scopely don't let a f2p G4 ship go hungry, please donate ship parts to my account 😂

[@soundtuner1]

hip parts for kelvin ,keep scrapping d3's up to tier 6/7 kelvin was okish , a pain but 7k per upgrade slot weapons 2/3k cargo warp drive ish ... tier 8 -- warp 10k cargo 4k weapons twice 16k 1 12k shield and engine both 10 k ish ,d3 gives scrapped 6 or 7k parts this is with the new prime at level 5 with most of all the other cost mitigation research done ..refinery gives between the 42 and 400 ish twice a day or none refinery slotmachine ,can get a few hundred from the voyager refinery ,so how much of a pain is it .... even been fucked by a dry pineapple ,me neither but i think it would be close to that

[@jonathanmueller9062]

Parts4uc are the single largest bottleneck in the game. You think it was bad in G3 when you needed mats3uc? You will be swimming in mats4uc you can't spend on ships because you don't have the parts4uc.

[@mcalleja68]

I noticed your pilum was significantly stronger about 1.5m same level 3 same upgrades , what research do you recommend to focus on? Maybe worthy of a video ?

[@nsanerydah]

Uncommon ship parts is a massive bottleneck at G4 (Lv44)…… The primes are just a bandaid…

[@rivaltheeminent2553]

Since Talios the uncommon 42's are unneeded again. It's not even a debate imho 😊 wish I had access to it in my early 40's, did everything with a t3 Jelly

[@BonnKialStevens]

Both my Kelvin and my Newton are bottlenecked by ship parts.

[@Gractan]

With the constant Jellyfish Brawls, I think the Valdore can get a great number of parts from that event... something the Kelvin doesn't have.

[@richardbego8799]

Now you have to pay more for less. I'm not giving it any more money. Then I will just sit and wait

[@therkyn]

At L44, I had not really experienced the ship part problem, so I split my $200 equally between material prime and parts prime... but I just hit the parts wall in the latest SLB for Janeway... next investment will be focused on ship parts.

[@jeffreyalanwong]

Sigh… I like my Kelvin, but would have skipped it had I known

[@climbtibet]

Made my day getting it free to play; great feeling try it.

[@tcpiha]

Will never ever have rom ships as they are scum Klingon all the way so getting the Kelvin as she is sexy. Won’t be getting any epics have the ktinga at t7 and love it will take Kelvin there as well as being f2 p I’m no longer keeping pace with the rest of the guys that started four years ago crazy really

[@johandeklein5253]

hard to gain parts indeed.. takes fore-ever to get my K`tinga moved up.....

[@twittertwatter5892]

I started having a lot more fun,,,,,,,,,,,,by finally walking away from this dreadful game, run by dreadfully evil people.

[@davidwolfe5313]

Kelvin has been the big reason I haven't had the dreaded parts issue as a 42 player (now 44).... having a t5 Kelvin and a t7 valdore punching up on jem solo madas has greatly eased my parts grind.... the first time I ran into a shortage was actually trying to upgrade my valdore t8 warp engine and I was short 250k on commons 😂

[@00KOC]

Just about to make the jump from lvl39, so your timing couldn’t have been better Rev. The video, however, will have to wait, I have some TNG to watch!

[@RevDeuce]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@johnwilliamson7081]

Ship parts makes me crazy. The bottle neck is unreal.

[@bluegrasstravelers8195]

Huge bottle neck on uncommon ship parts and uncommon materials 3 star is bad but 4 star is worse

[@WouterVerbruggen]

Not sure if I want to get it, got a valdore and the specialties. Was planning to stay at 42 for a long time tho, so the specialties are locked at a relatively low power. Long term goal is pilum and newton.

[@RevDeuce]

Seems like a great goal! Also leaves room for Kelvin

[@stevehollins-fk4wc]

Yeah getting parts for 4* sucks...not enough ways to get them.

[@justmousinaround]

The parts demands are unreasonable for the refinery they give us and gets me thinking its time to find another game... Yet here I am...

[@tonypolito6307]

Thank you for another excellent video. Would love to see rundowns on every G4 ship.

[@jamesofield8937]

I like my kelvin it a glass cannon feel like getting my new ton but yes all 4* star ships cost a bundle but worth when level them up

[@MrRashad9001]

What's the best system to get romulan centurion BP?

[@spartanology4695]

It’s time Rev! Best Ops50+ Ships Tier List video! With the specialty ships, it’s a little more nuanced now.

[@RevDeuce]

Indeed it is!

[@XHunter442]

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! i got my free hydra already sadly only T3 atm like my klingon and romulan g4 miners! 13 bp to kelvin and got 60+ Newton bp! Grinding the Klingon Rep just got commended and working on buy ktinga and got a valdore and getting Pilum Bps too only need the Pilum! =P I hope to get a billion klingon in a month or so... im taking it slower then romulan billion! Cant wait for the second lock cause third lock will be easiest of the 3 lock all the time be it first 10million or billion or even 15billion! Just so excited! Ty for the video and LLAP Rev Deuce!

[@XHunter442]

I want the uncommon g4 to grind the rep easier with the skin to 1billion and rare for free only if i get the bp and earn and buy the epics for reading to G5!

[@vassagood]

I don't plan on building one of these any time soon. My brother built one and has a lot of fun with it.

[@chungus3707]

I am federation ships only , kelvin is my dream ship

[@HugoBolzer]

i really like my Tier 7 Kelvin, it is a very good ship but i have to mention the G4 repair costs at that tier 130 million for each full repair is pretty brutal if you use get destroyed too often ... billions of Tritanium will melt away really quickly if you are not careful a maxed enterprise , Augur , D4 repair costs only around 0.6 million

[@vinnyb.6524]

Does the base raiding trick still work for the 010 OVERIDE event?

[@RevDeuce]

No they removed it

[@Luciant007]

The bottleneck for Ship Parts is making me consider quitting at Ops 44. Its just not worth it knowing it just gets worse as you get into G5.

[@RevDeuce]

Why I'm in no rush for the 50s!

[@jefferymccullough2306]

Guess I'm missed that video on the free primes

[@beng7845]

And 3 years later I am still grinding for mine 😫

[@mishaelbush-bn2eq]

Im on my 9th d3 for parts scraping

[@GGLIHTC]

The best reason to use the Kelvin over a specialty ship is that it will get the Federation Reputation bonuses when grinding. These can significantly speed up gaining reputation.

[@beng7845]

Or simply use the Enterprise... It can hit Romulus/Kronos hostiles just fine

[@frig0ff843]

I'm a 42 and Revs RIGHT! All those parts are a hard bottle neck!

[@RevDeuce]

Gotta get better ways to get them! Bonus refinery for ship parts when?!

[@markhealy3595]

Game has completely lost its way. 😢.

[@cameronsweeney6297]

How long did it take to grind out those BPs?

[@jrtubb]

I'm waiting on parts all the time

[@chefjefe68]

Thanks for this update on the Kelvin. I went Fed, so my first G4 is the Kelvin. I did also grind out the Defiant and the Talios. Free to play, you know it. That all said my Kelvin, Defiant and Talios are all Tier 6, so UC Parts are a huge bottleneck for me. My Kelvin needs 73281 UC parts for Tier 7, I currently have 6283.

[@reecepayne4765]

Does anyone know roughly how many sol trader he hit to get it. I k ow it can vary on drop rate but a gestimate would be a good base to start with. Thanks

[@RevDeuce]

I was getting 4-7 blueprints of a kelvin per 100 boxes

[@robertderamo8943]

A free ship…4 ops levels too late. That’s really the issue. Fortunately it’s an outlier since you’re technically not supposed to even have it with 10mil rep. I’m using the away teams store which I suspect is much faster. About 200 days give or take. Depends on how often I get the credits.

[@majorsam1400]

Ooooh, she purtyyyyy *heart eyes*

[@martinmiedl121]

Hi Rev, thanks for the review! Quick question on SNW crew: I have recently swapped Hemmer (T2) with Una (T1) for the impulse boost (as synergy boost is the same). Who would you take and why?

[@NCC-2893]

As long as we're contending with the 4* parts bottleneck, the Kelvin just seems dreadful. The Talios consistently outdoes it in PVP with the Cardassian crew thanks to a firing pattern that seems tailor-made for Dukat, and the difference in the parts issue between the Kelvin and the Valdore is that the Valdore competes with the Cerritos and Titan (and now Voyager) which don't benefit from being kept at max tier for level nearly as much as the Talios and Defiant (refinery/bonus Bajoran medals). The Valdore also cloaks, so you can pick and choose fights you can win in a crowded PVP environment. The K'Tinga seems like a no-brainer to me since it only competes with the Mantis, which has comparatively modest parts and mats costs (and also doesn't really need to be pushed hard since the best part of the refinery, SNW officer sourcing, doesn't change). I think there's arguably a trade-off equation to weigh for the Valdore and how far you take it, for the Kelvin it's just a Nope.

[@nickm9102]

So now the push should be for the Specialty ships to benefit from the faction research. While they are at it they can copy/paste the code for the 28 faction ships into the augment ship folders and just leave the skin coding

[@NCC-2893]

@@nickm9102 adding faction markers to the specialty ships sounds great on its face, but then that creates a development rabbit-hole of balancing specialty ship releases among the factions (and there's not a single Klingon specialty ship at this time). What we really do need more of is more viable choices within ship tiers, and specialty ships that aren't just painfully weak level-locked loop-feeders. The power of the Titan-A relative to, well, everything is pretty sad and backwards.

[@nickm9102]

@@NCC-2893 they have enough arbitrarily mechanics that they can take the specialty ships and tie them to faction research based on the type of ship. Romulan/Battleship, Federation/Explorer, Klingon/Interceptor. Or create a research tree that links specialty ships to faction research. I also wouldn't mind more Klingon ships than the Sarcophagus. Or give me a Captain's ability that ties faction to a specialty ship. Hell, make that Captain Q and make one for each faction, maybe a Judge Q, Admiral Q, and Marshall Q. Then this leaves Q from Picard to be made the fleet commander. I agree that if they just tie faction to specialty we need more Klingon ships or at the very least non Fed/Rom ships. I have a few Ideas for scrap/scaling ships also.

[@Markus-London]

Faster capping reveared

[@thomaszambito4705]

Rev Lower the MUSIC

[@paulofilho6304]

On a Star Trek game based on KELVIN timeline HOLY SMOKS SURE IT IS!!!

[@vasishtakanthi4231]

Oh no you are absolutely right . I got myself those efficiency primes and still it’s not enough. Ship parts is the biggest bottle neck in the 40s ( I’m lvl 46 with korinar ) . It’s probably worse for the 50s :(

[@albertzapalski5287]

Nice, congrats. I'm at 90/150 on the Kelvin. Would have been more if they didn't break hostile spawn in Sol as part of this arc. I'm starting to think to think it was deliberate move from Scopley to screw over those farming BPs in Sol and other capital systems.

[@jlems56]

Yes, parts, parts and more parts in the 40s. It gets a little ridiculous. Go all in on the talios and the defiant. Build to Kelvin if you have some kind of nostalgic love for the federation, but that's about it in my opinion.

[@jeffdetrick]

As a Lvl 44 the UNC parts bottleneck, in addition to the ridiculous amounts of unc. ore to upgrade my station, has me shelving any immediate plans to upgrade my K.T'inga and instead going to stay focused on getting to level 45. I can see my progression slowing to a crawl in the near future without any decent sourcing and refinery options for a bunch of this stuff. In the meantime, I'm sitting on half a trillion steel I can't do anything with other than wait for an evening when I forget to shield before I pass out for the night and end up drained. ...it's a game that seems designed to collapse in on itself sometime around the mid-40's without some serious spending or it becomes an almost unbearable waiting game.

[@seansappok1141]

I literally just got into 4* stuff and I'm already short ship parts, plenty of mats but like zero parts, there's ways to get them but you'd have to do so much to get them daily

[@Jason-fd6jn]

Lvl 46 with tier 5 Kelvin. I use it daily. 233 mill rep neeed until the Pilum. You don’t set yourself back in a game sense to much if you get the Kelvin early and buy with Fed credits. Thx for the video Rev.

[@rfdekwant3627]

biggest bottleneck in the game when it comes to ships: is the amount of special ships that are one time ponies. it costs a lot of resources, except for some you can only use most of it for specific things, and you don't have enough docks for that many ships. You had a time 3.5 years ago where you only used Kumari and Sally and that was more than enough..

[@RevDeuce]

"thankfully" the Talios/Defiant/Voyager scale decently well. But so many that do not.

[@rfdekwant3627]

@@RevDeuce I don't use most special ships (the only ones I use are Talios and Stella). Valdore tier 8 and tier 7 Kelvin, maxout Augur and Enterprise can do most of it.. Have most special ships on the sweet spot tier 4/5..

[@DoctorZeKrunk]

🤣🤣🤣🤣 What a joke 🤡

[@gregorygriffin7803]

SHIP PARTS SUUUUUCK

[@timmylangenberg]

I do feel that a lot of the good ships are interceptors and the parts bill gets really high. I have a Kelvin and wanted to go Pilum. I am seriously considering going battleship now. And they could remap the Kelvin to get a better firing pattern making it much more viable. Won't even overtake the Pilum but it should outclass 3-star epics at least across the board.

[@TheDedman25]

One upgrade for my Valdore to get it to tier 7 is 16k in uncommon ship parts, and my K’tinga needs 2 upgrades to get to tier 7 is going to cost 31k in uncommon ship parts

[@carlwilliams3488]

One of my biggeat issues for upgrading explorers is gas, the lack of it and the fact that loads of buildings and research at my ops44 level need it. Ive been atixk at ops 44 for months now while i upgrade my buildings and turrets, if id have gone rom and needed gas for a valdore id be stuck for a year.

[@ordsman2003]

I’m number 1!

[@johnyavornitzky5006]

Im getting the primes enough to level 5 and thinking tier 10 seems like a good stopping point. Get that extra lower deck.

[@Tzarlo]

Something needs to be done about the mining grind. 😢

[@RevDeuce]

Mining grind?

[@steventaylor6727]

Hey Rev, do you think it might be possible to mention to the developers to put in either ultra pull recruit or transport patterns strike team Laan, Dukat, or Weyoun?

[@Markus-London]

Slow mo fo

[@warpmill]

I was going to ask about this topic during one of your streams, so timing is perfect.

[@jonathanmueller9062]

Kelvin was my 1st G4 ship. Great work horse ship.

[@mermaidomi5142]

Congratulations on the Kelvin!!!🎉🎉🎉

[@steverobinson2389]

I have had a Kelvin for a few weeks, Plan to take it to T6 then focus of the Pilum

[@briancrowder8003]

You should do a comparision video of those bigger ahips vs today on upgrading due to new research trees and then also with the new primes added to it

[@jforbes116]

should be noted that isolytic dmg plus hull breech and the specialty ships are sexy

[@johnnybeyens8864]

Congrats on the kelvin 👍👏

[@RevDeuce]

Thank you! Really am proud of myself for grinding it out!

[@richardleehanson]

You need only 1 x lv42 ship to get you to lv46 or it gets expensive

[@davidlengel7373]

unc ship parts are more of a bottle neck than unc mats

[@justQthx]

I’m going to get it, just for the Star Trek Fan in me!

[@timrodgers8551]

Kelvin with valdor works great on solo armadas.

[@Gracklef1int]

Anyone know where I can grind the Valdore?

[@RevDeuce]

Romulus

[@Gracklef1int]

@@RevDeuce Thanks!

[@charlesjohnmcclarrie]

Rev your the best

[@RevDeuce]

Thank Charles I really appreciate the kind words

[@vikroy3777]

Told you capital traders are worth it

[@RevDeuce]

Um... that's like...a known thing. lol.

[@vikroy3777]

@@RevDeuce you previously had an issue with capital traders as the drop rate had been reduced, preferring other high level hostiles is all 😉