And I thought the last XP bonus event was silly.R'Mukka, my Ferasan tac captain, managed to just trip over the line to level 40 thanks to me going a bit nuts over Junior Officer Unappreciation Weekend. Then, before I even got over to First City to pick up my starter T5 ship, another couple of doff missions pushed me to level 41.
I go ahead and pick it up (went with the raider, rather than any of the heavier ships, since I tend towards space whales on my established VAs), and, after looking at the gear in the previous ship and realizing how out of date it was, wind up finishing the mission I was on using the stock Tier VIII kit (save for the Bio-Neural Warhead from the SoQub), and no devices or consoles.
That turns out to be a bit slow, but not too horrible.
After I wrap up that mission, I head back to Qo'noS, then alt-hop so I can transfer some EC through my account bank, and afford to do a bit of shopping. Average price for most pieces is about 6K for green Tier X kit (the relatively expensive bits were the impulse engines, deflector dish, and shield). Then it's back to the missions... and four missions later, maybe two hours of play time, she's level 50.
And still stupidly overpowered, even with scaling... save for that one D'deridex that holds me down with a tractor beam, strips off my shields, and pounds me with a trio of heavy plasma torps. Need to figure out how to deal with that.
"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding