TL;DR: It's Valkyrie today. (20th)
EDIT: Terrapin today (21st)
EDIT2: Vanguard Sentinel (22nd)
EDIT3: Retaliator Bomber (23rd)
EDIT4: Taurus and Scorpius (24th)
EDIT5: 325A (25th)
EDIT6: C2 Hercules (26th)
EDIT7: Starfarer Gemini (27th)
EDIT8: Vulture (28th)
EDIT9: Herald (29th)
...
Table courtesy of @Brictoria
More in-depth version here!
| Date | Ship | Warbond CCU Price | Normal price |
|---|
| 20th | Valkyrie | 350 | 375 |
| 21st | Terrapin | 210 | 220 |
| 22nd | Vanguard Sentinel | | 275 |
| 23rd | Retaliator Bomber | | 275 |
| 24th | Constellation Taurus | 180 | 190 |
| 24th | Scorpius (Release) | 220 | 240 |
| 25th | 325a | 65 | 70 |
| 26th | C2 Hercules | 370 | 400 |
| 27th | Starfarer Gemini | 320 | 340 |
| 28th | Mule (Release) | (No warbond CCU, Standalone LTI WB $40) | 45 |
| 28th | Vulture | 130 | 140 |
| 29th | Herald | 80 | 85 |
----
Long version:
Alright, so it's the first day of Invictus, and the first warbond CCU of the event is out. All the veteran wallet warriors probably know how that deal works already, but since the glorious expansion of our Aurora fleet has not ceased this year either, I'll explain it briefly.
So, as even our new members might already know, a Warbond price is a fresh-money discount. Usually, you have to buy a whole ship at once to get it, and the discount is usually just like $10-$20. So if you were to buy a $120 ship with a warbond discount, it'd likely be $110 or $100. So you'd need to drop a hundred dollars of fresh money to get that $10-20 discount. But with warbond CCUs, you can get that same $10-20 discount, but with only $5-$10 fresh money. Then the rest can be store credit or even just a plan to buy the missing part of the CCU chain at a later date (though in that case you're obviously not going to be flying the ship).
So, a more concrete example, today we have Valkyrie on offer. Now, I've not yet checked how much the discount is, so I'll talk you, dear reader, through the process of figuring that out.
1. Go to
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge
2. On the "From" side, change the radiobutton selection to "All ships"
3. I like to pick Aurora ES, since it's the cheapest, I'll see all the current offers. Once you select Aurora ES, you'll get a list of currently possible CCUs from Aurora ES on the right.
4. You can easily find warbond CCUs by just scrolling through the list until you see a text "2 options available," like it says on Valkyrie at the moment.
5. Select Valkyrie.
6. Select "Warbond Edition"
7. Now, you don't want to buy an Aurora ES to Valkyrie CCU. That'd be a bit pointless. I mean, you might as well buy a whole Valkyrie at that point. But you can click the X on the Aurora ES to remove it. This changes the list on the left so, that it now ends at the last ship you can CCU from. So just scroll all the way down.
8. The last one is Starfarer Gemini, and upon selecting it, the price gets updated to $10 (+ tax.) So with quick mental math, we're buying a $35 CCU from Gemini to Valkyrie for $10, saving $25.
So, why do you want to do it like this, and not just buy the standalone Valkyrie and save $25 anyhow? Well, there will be more warbond CCUs coming every other day during Invictus, so if you were to get, say, a Warbond CCU to redeemer later, you can then buy the missing CCU from Redeemer to Gemini and combine those two warbond CCU discounts for more savings greater than just that $25 you can currently get.
And maybe you don't want a Valkyrie, that's alright, maybe you actually want a Redeemer. Then you just need to wait for redeemer to come back on sale (since Invictus is more Military orientated, you might need to wait for IAE in the winter) and you can get a CCU from Valkyrie to Redeemer.
Couple things to note:
1. If you apply your CCUs and later melt the whole thing, you only get the pledge you started your CCU chain from in your buybacks, you don't get the CCUs in your buybacks, those are gone. So if you're trying to get something like a -75% discount chain, that's gonna take a good long while and that money is tied to the CCUs you can't apply on the interim. If you just want some nice -25% to maybe at most -50% discount, that you might manage to get that during a single event. Depends on luck and the target ship. But if you're going for reclaimer, for example, well it doesn't have its functionality in game anyhow, so you're not really losing anything. And if you got even loftier targets, like BMM, well, that's not even flyable yet.
2. I said couple... I'm sure I had a second one. I just started thinking of BMM and got sidetracked. Ah well.
Okey, screw the numbering, I'm going to crash this thread like an Aurora.
So if you melt an applied CCU chain, you're going to get the amount you paid back as store credits, you're not losing money. Though you're not getting the tax back, so it might seem like it's less, but since you don't pay tax on store credit purchase (or the store credit portion of a mixed purchase), it's +/- 0. As it should be.
So, what's the end goal here? However much you want to optimize. I've managed to cultivate chains like
Aurora LN (Game package) -> Avenger -> 315p -> Nomad -> Hull B (melt value $90 at that point, it's where that CCU chain is currently applied at) -> Razor (+$5) -> Taurus (+$5, that is $40 discount as the ship went up in price) -> Hurricane (+$5) -> Corsair (+$5, warbond $15 discount) -> Santokyai (+$5) -> Mercury (+$5, $35 discount from warbond and concept to flyable) -> Harbinger (+$10, $20 warbond discount) -> Caterpillar (+$5, $35 pre-announced price bump discount) -> Gemini (+$10) -> Banu Merchantman (+$10, $200 'I waited for so long for this' discount)
So in the end, the BMM will have melt value of $155. Not bad for a $550 (currently) ship. Honestly, I've kinda enjoyed cultivating that CCU chain, it's a bit like growing a Bonsai. Takes years, and every year it is a bit more how you like it. Well, that's not for everyone. But I hope this helps you maybe grab a 25-50% discount during this Invictus. A weeks worth of patience, that's doable for anyone, right?
Oh, how should you spend the money you save? Buy another ship, of course. I'm not doing this to back less, I'm doing this to get more
