I think y'all need to bring this thread back around, because it seems to be going off the rails.
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I'm still kinda NOT wanting a new Borg arc. I mean, isn't the general assumption that releasing the ACTUAL Borg (i.e. unbeatable) would be STO's swan song?
I totally support just fixing the Borg ships though. Why can't they adapt? The drones on the ground do, but apparently the ships can't now? In canon, we know they CAN modulate ships weapons to a limited range....or give the Borg a crazy high 99% all damage resistance rating?
I mean the Borg on screen wipe out FLEETS with one ship, and here we are in less than 5 min, taking out 4 small attack groups AND a freaking Unimatrix. That's more than just power creep. So I'm for buffing the Borg defense to make those missions a bit longer....but am genuinely hesitant against a full on Borg Arc since wouldn't that herald the end of what we all love?
> @nixboox said:
> somtaawkhar wrote: »
>
> zerokillcf2011 wrote: »
>
> I'm still kinda NOT wanting a new Borg arc. I mean, isn't the general assumption that releasing the ACTUAL Borg (i.e. unbeatable) would be STO's swan song?
>
>
>
> The Borg were never unbeatable.
>
> But, STO has been going on for over 9 years now, we can go to every quadrant, we have interacted with basically every major galactic government, we have seen the return of several "extinct" species, we can talk to the Guardian of Forever, get visions from the Prophets, we have helped the Kuvah'Magh fulfill her destiny, and Al Rivera said last November that they were pretty close to being out of idea for new stories(at least major story arcs)
>
> It would make sense to end the game out with the Borg, just like the game began with the return of the Borg.
>
>
>
>
> The point was that there is NO way to "run out of ideas" for Star Trek. Its been running for 60 years and has no shortage of new material.
50 years, well 53, and many would and have argued that they ran out of ideas during Voyager, I don't agree, I'm just saying.
Oh, I didn't say there wasn't a lack of imagination by the writers just not a lack of ideas for the Star Trek universe. There was a Voyager episode of The Truman show, remember? Talk about lack of imagination... In this thread alone we've offered five years of potential content...and that wasn't even scraping the surface.
I think it's more about them running out of ideas that they WANT to do, as opposed as having a lack of imagination for the star trek universe. I mean, look at what the devs have done through the game. The entire premise of the game's story for the first 5 years of the game essentially developed into the idea that the Iconians were behind everything that transpired with the game, such as:
- The Klingon-Federation War being the result of the Federation refusing to believe that the Undine were doing infiltrations on the the Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers. It took them actually impersonating a Federation Ambassador to finally understand that the Klingons were telling the truth.
- The Reman Freedom arc (For the Feds, Klingons, and the ending for the Romulans) was about uncovering the truth about the Tal Shiar and their connection to the Iconians, ending with the subsequent capturing of Sela by the Iconians.
- We get an idea of what was driving the Borg vs. Undine conflict, and it turns out the Iconians were once again behind that in order to destablize the galaxy.
- When we finally explore the Iconian gateway under New Romulus, we find out that they were responsible for not only the Dyson Sphere, but also the Jenolan Dyson Sphere. The opening of the gateways and the swapping of the Jenolan Sphere allow us to finally have travel between 3 quadrants reliably.
- Returning to the Delta Quadrant reveals to us that Gaul of the Vaadwaur has essentially aligned his species with the Iconians and is further destabilizing the delta quadrant, upon the conclusion of the arc in which Gaul is defeated, we discover Sela whom essentially becomes our guide into what the Iconians plan.
- The Iconian arc comes to a conclusion once we learn about the fact that they were treated poorly simply because they refused to share their technology with other species simply because they felt that others weren't ready for the technology, resulting in neighboring species to bomb them. We also learn that it was Sela that caused them to target Romulus in the first place.
With the Iconian arc completed, they turned their attention to doing more isolated arcs, diving into lore they felt would be good to connect to, such as the Vorgons, the Sphere builders, the Na'khul and and the some of the Krenim all being aligned with each other in a Temporal war arc.
Following that, we launched into the new arc featuring the first actual appearance of the Tzenkethi in the game and their quest to stop the Hur'q, a campaign started by the Female founder in order to try and prevent something that she didn't want to happen, which was yet another conflict.
As Somtaakhar has stated before, we've also encountered essentially all of the major groups that star trek had left rather open ended threads throughout Trek for the most part:
- The Elachi (aka the mysterious aliens in Enterprise) became connected to the Iconians as servitors and serving as an atagonist for the Romulan Republic.
- The Solanogen based lifeforms became another connected species to the Iconians after being left ambiguous as to where they came from.
- The parasites from TNG's Conspiracy episode turning out to be an engineered construct of the Iconians and a means of additionally causing destablizing the alliance, where the use of the Undine failed.
- Expansion of the Hur'q which ended up being a Dominion experiment long before the Jem'hadar.
To me, I kinda feel like how the devs feel. There's not a lot of big groups that could really be devoted to having a full episode arc around. I know for one I'd like to get back to seeing the devs have in store for Mirror Leeta (and especially if Mirror Tilly plays apart in that), along with the eventual return to the Borg. However, there is one more group that I feel is still rather open ended in even this game.
The Tholians. I feel that we honestly do not understand what it is that they are looking to do. I mean, look at what our experiences with them have been like:
- Tholian Incursion of Nukara: The Tholians seem to be holding Terran Empire officers captive, seemingly confused about why they seem to be different compared to regular Starfleet. This would seem to suggest that the Tholians may not realize that there is a difference and that they see themselves as one species across a universe.
- New Romulus: We know that the Tholians were interested in Dewa III/New Romulus and we find out that they are mainly interested in the Iconian technology that exists on the planet, but for what is unknown.
- Sunrise and Stormbound: We know that the Tholians dislike the Na'khul and use the Tox Uthat to destroy their sun. It's only in the mission Tangled Webs that we learn that it was because of the Na'khul that the Tholians went postal on them, since the Na'khul attacked them in retaliation for the attack in the 25th century on their start, creating a pre-destination paradox.
- Temporal protection: In Time and Tide, we know that the Tholians are present at the Temporal Accords, but because of the prior dealings with time travel, they wanted the accords to be stricter to the point time travel would never be used at all, in order to prevent situations like their past from happening again.
- Crystalline Catastrophe/Cataclysm: We know that they seem to share some kind of kinship with the Crystalline Entity, and thus do their best to impede in our attempts to blow it up.
The Tholians in essence are still as mysterious as ever and it seems that there seems to be little distinction for them between the prime universe and the mirror universe as two separate universes, so they act as an antagonist for both. It's clear that they also are attracted to technology that vastly is foreign to them, but we don't know for what exactly. Do they want to use it against us? Just something to think about.
> @baddmoonrizin said: > I think y'all need to bring this thread back around, because it seems to be going off the rails.
Off the rails? This Thread has moved into the territory of a Doctoral Thesis written by Hari Seldon.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Easy there, sparky, the entire Iconian idea was retconned into those first five years. When Sela's Scimitar was abducted by Iconians in the first draft it was NOT an Iconian - it was the Fek'Ihri.
This is 100% incorrect. The original vessel that abducted Sela was originally unnamed and unidentified, but later called the Obex, and labeled as an Iconian dreadnought https://sto.gamepedia.com/Iconian_Dreadnought
The Iconians have been the game's big bad since the game came out. Cryptic even released early concept art of the Iconians back in 2010 in Star Trek Magazine Issue 27. https://sto.gamepedia.com/Iconian#Notes
I don't know where you got this idea that the Fek'Ihri abducted Sela, or that the Iconians were retconed in, but its dead wrong. The Iconians have been the villain since the game came out, and the vessel that abducted Sela was always Iconian since that mission first came out in 2011.
Now you can imagine if Cryptic gets an email telling them that all their new content has to be Discovery or that the Picard series is going to ignore or undermine everything they've spent 9 years doing and I am sure it would be soul crushing.
Except
A. No one told them to do Discovery content, they chose to do it because they got a great chance to snag some VAs for it.
B. Nothing has been stated about the Picard show that would undermine STO in any way. In fact, it seems to be basing itself off of STO in many ways with the Romulan situation.
No, really. The ship that took Sela was the firey Fek'Ihri Kar'Fi. I've never seen an Obex ship in the game. Iconians weren't in the game until the end of New Romulus. They weren't hinted at, they weren't mentioned and they weren't any kind of a theme. All of that was retconned into the game after. Maybe you didn't play the game from the very beginning but I did and there was no hint of an Iconian at all until Season 7/8. The rest of what you said was nonsensical.
Dude, he literally linked you a picture of the ship that was the previous stand-in for an Iconian ship. The Fek'lhri didn't even have anything to do with the Iconian storyline or the Romulans, so they had no reason to go after Sela. Iconians have always been in the game, if only in name, as the puppet masters behind everything.
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The Tholians. I feel that we honestly do not understand what it is that they are looking to do. I mean, look at what our experiences with them have been like:
- Tholian Incursion of Nukara: The Tholians seem to be holding Terran Empire officers captive, seemingly confused about why they seem to be different compared to regular Starfleet. This would seem to suggest that the Tholians may not realize that there is a difference and that they see themselves as one species across a universe.
- New Romulus: We know that the Tholians were interested in Dewa III/New Romulus and we find out that they are mainly interested in the Iconian technology that exists on the planet, but for what is unknown.
- Sunrise and Stormbound: We know that the Tholians dislike the Na'khul and use the Tox Uthat to destroy their sun. It's only in the mission Tangled Webs that we learn that it was because of the Na'khul that the Tholians went postal on them, since the Na'khul attacked them in retaliation for the attack in the 25th century on their start, creating a pre-destination paradox.
- Temporal protection: In Time and Tide, we know that the Tholians are present at the Temporal Accords, but because of the prior dealings with time travel, they wanted the accords to be stricter to the point time travel would never be used at all, in order to prevent situations like their past from happening again.
- Crystalline Catastrophe/Cataclysm: We know that they seem to share some kind of kinship with the Crystalline Entity, and thus do their best to impede in our attempts to blow it up.
The Tholians in essence are still as mysterious as ever and it seems that there seems to be little distinction for them between the prime universe and the mirror universe as two separate universes, so they act as an antagonist for both. It's clear that they also are attracted to technology that vastly is foreign to them, but we don't know for what exactly. Do they want to use it against us? Just something to think about.
IMO the Tholians are unfortunately under-used in STO's story. The closest they have to a story arc is the New Romulus ground missions, but they only show up in two of those missions. IMO there needs to be an arc that expands and elaborates on their shenanigans.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Ok. And which of those missions fills in the details of what the Tholians are doing with their experiments on Nukara, why they're so interested in New Romulus and the Azure Nebula, what their overall agenda is, and who is driving it? A handful of missions and TFOs does not make a story arc. Especially when they're all part of other story arcs.
How about the Borg assimilate the APUs....that would make for some interesting games.
The Borg only assimilate technology they believe will bring them closer to perfection. APUs weren't useful technology, the Borg would have simply scrapped them for parts.
Well, the Borg also assimilate tech/knowledge they want to study. This won't necessarily require them to assimilate an entire race, perhaps just 2-or 3 ships
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I totally support just fixing the Borg ships though. Why can't they adapt? The drones on the ground do, but apparently the ships can't now? In canon, we know they CAN modulate ships weapons to a limited range....or give the Borg a crazy high 99% all damage resistance rating?
I mean the Borg on screen wipe out FLEETS with one ship, and here we are in less than 5 min, taking out 4 small attack groups AND a freaking Unimatrix. That's more than just power creep. So I'm for buffing the Borg defense to make those missions a bit longer....but am genuinely hesitant against a full on Borg Arc since wouldn't that herald the end of what we all love?
I think it's more about them running out of ideas that they WANT to do, as opposed as having a lack of imagination for the star trek universe. I mean, look at what the devs have done through the game. The entire premise of the game's story for the first 5 years of the game essentially developed into the idea that the Iconians were behind everything that transpired with the game, such as:
- The Klingon-Federation War being the result of the Federation refusing to believe that the Undine were doing infiltrations on the the Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers. It took them actually impersonating a Federation Ambassador to finally understand that the Klingons were telling the truth.
- The Reman Freedom arc (For the Feds, Klingons, and the ending for the Romulans) was about uncovering the truth about the Tal Shiar and their connection to the Iconians, ending with the subsequent capturing of Sela by the Iconians.
- We get an idea of what was driving the Borg vs. Undine conflict, and it turns out the Iconians were once again behind that in order to destablize the galaxy.
- When we finally explore the Iconian gateway under New Romulus, we find out that they were responsible for not only the Dyson Sphere, but also the Jenolan Dyson Sphere. The opening of the gateways and the swapping of the Jenolan Sphere allow us to finally have travel between 3 quadrants reliably.
- Returning to the Delta Quadrant reveals to us that Gaul of the Vaadwaur has essentially aligned his species with the Iconians and is further destabilizing the delta quadrant, upon the conclusion of the arc in which Gaul is defeated, we discover Sela whom essentially becomes our guide into what the Iconians plan.
- The Iconian arc comes to a conclusion once we learn about the fact that they were treated poorly simply because they refused to share their technology with other species simply because they felt that others weren't ready for the technology, resulting in neighboring species to bomb them. We also learn that it was Sela that caused them to target Romulus in the first place.
With the Iconian arc completed, they turned their attention to doing more isolated arcs, diving into lore they felt would be good to connect to, such as the Vorgons, the Sphere builders, the Na'khul and and the some of the Krenim all being aligned with each other in a Temporal war arc.
Following that, we launched into the new arc featuring the first actual appearance of the Tzenkethi in the game and their quest to stop the Hur'q, a campaign started by the Female founder in order to try and prevent something that she didn't want to happen, which was yet another conflict.
As Somtaakhar has stated before, we've also encountered essentially all of the major groups that star trek had left rather open ended threads throughout Trek for the most part:
- The Elachi (aka the mysterious aliens in Enterprise) became connected to the Iconians as servitors and serving as an atagonist for the Romulan Republic.
- The Solanogen based lifeforms became another connected species to the Iconians after being left ambiguous as to where they came from.
- The parasites from TNG's Conspiracy episode turning out to be an engineered construct of the Iconians and a means of additionally causing destablizing the alliance, where the use of the Undine failed.
- Expansion of the Hur'q which ended up being a Dominion experiment long before the Jem'hadar.
To me, I kinda feel like how the devs feel. There's not a lot of big groups that could really be devoted to having a full episode arc around. I know for one I'd like to get back to seeing the devs have in store for Mirror Leeta (and especially if Mirror Tilly plays apart in that), along with the eventual return to the Borg. However, there is one more group that I feel is still rather open ended in even this game.
The Tholians. I feel that we honestly do not understand what it is that they are looking to do. I mean, look at what our experiences with them have been like:
- Tholian Incursion of Nukara: The Tholians seem to be holding Terran Empire officers captive, seemingly confused about why they seem to be different compared to regular Starfleet. This would seem to suggest that the Tholians may not realize that there is a difference and that they see themselves as one species across a universe.
- New Romulus: We know that the Tholians were interested in Dewa III/New Romulus and we find out that they are mainly interested in the Iconian technology that exists on the planet, but for what is unknown.
- Sunrise and Stormbound: We know that the Tholians dislike the Na'khul and use the Tox Uthat to destroy their sun. It's only in the mission Tangled Webs that we learn that it was because of the Na'khul that the Tholians went postal on them, since the Na'khul attacked them in retaliation for the attack in the 25th century on their start, creating a pre-destination paradox.
- Temporal protection: In Time and Tide, we know that the Tholians are present at the Temporal Accords, but because of the prior dealings with time travel, they wanted the accords to be stricter to the point time travel would never be used at all, in order to prevent situations like their past from happening again.
- Crystalline Catastrophe/Cataclysm: We know that they seem to share some kind of kinship with the Crystalline Entity, and thus do their best to impede in our attempts to blow it up.
The Tholians in essence are still as mysterious as ever and it seems that there seems to be little distinction for them between the prime universe and the mirror universe as two separate universes, so they act as an antagonist for both. It's clear that they also are attracted to technology that vastly is foreign to them, but we don't know for what exactly. Do they want to use it against us? Just something to think about.
> I think y'all need to bring this thread back around, because it seems to be going off the rails.
Off the rails? This Thread has moved into the territory of a Doctoral Thesis written by Hari Seldon.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Dude, he literally linked you a picture of the ship that was the previous stand-in for an Iconian ship. The Fek'lhri didn't even have anything to do with the Iconian storyline or the Romulans, so they had no reason to go after Sela. Iconians have always been in the game, if only in name, as the puppet masters behind everything.
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l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Ok. And which of those missions fills in the details of what the Tholians are doing with their experiments on Nukara, why they're so interested in New Romulus and the Azure Nebula, what their overall agenda is, and who is driving it? A handful of missions and TFOs does not make a story arc. Especially when they're all part of other story arcs.
My character Tsin'xing
What the hell does that mean?
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