New Mission: The Trafalgar Paradox

zebgodwin · June 2018

Just published, my latest mission, The Trafalgar Paradox.

Mission Title: The Trafalgar Paradox
Faction: Federation
Level: 16+
ID: ST-HGXR23YAN

Starfleet has detected a distress signal from the USS Trafalgar, missing in the Briar Patch for the past thirteen years. Your orders are to locate it and determine what happened to its crew. The truth leads to a mind-bending temporal paradox that threatens to disrupt the entire sector.

A mission for Starfleet captains levels 16 and higher. A story-centric mission with a moderate amount of ground combat.

Part one of the Eternity Chronicles, a three-part (at least) series about time travel. Comments and reviews are welcome.

ashstorm1 · June 2018

I just played your mission minutes ago, and it's very good. Like i said in the online review, it gave me the feeling of an actual TNG episode. I'm also glad it was featuring an enemy species that we do not get to fight very often on STO's official content, so that was a good point too.

All in all, i thoroughly enjoyed it, and will look forward to Part II.

zebgodwin · June 2018

Thanks! And thanks to everyone who has played this mission so far. It is now out of review and available for everyone to play.

duncanidaho11 · August 2018

Just gave it a run, good mission! See. comments in the review (good flow, felt like a very well constructed mission, solid officer dialog [I liked the disobedience], interesting moral dilemma), but I came out of it feeling a little disconnected with the player character, as written, and the take on [spoilers] here versus past examples (took an opposing approach by the relevant directive, though I understand the complication.)

As I was approaching that initial confrontation, I was personally opposed to the course of action we tried to take (because of what I thought of the situation and of my character's perspective on events.) Its a complex moral issue,

with players potentially having FED characters with personal experience (ie. TOS characters and those who RP as being displaced from other time periods) that lends to a more sympathetic view of the crew and potential reluctance to subject others to displacement without dire cause [not simply avoiding interference, which by the letter would be simply removing the dividians from the picture and accepting whatever reversion to "natural time" that caused]

. I think for that confrontation, two dialog paths through (presenting a yes/no choice which either fails or is overridden) would allow that complexity to be explored without forcing the player into a line of dialog which they may have a significant disagreement with (with the next map allowing for context and consequences to be established for those who chose the "well, if we leave this we'll probably be okay.")

But that's the kind of issue that prompts discussion and self examination (on the part of the player, proceeding through) which, even though there is feedback to give, ultimately shows that as an author you're exploring questions of substance and connecting that directly to the player's experience of your mission. I enjoyed this and I look forward to the continuations.

One point of dialog:

I think it's natural that the Dividians don't respect the temporal prime directive, it's a FED construct. Its effective shorthand, to an STO player, for what's at stake but in story context it might be more fair to state the core issue that they don't appreciate the consequences their actions have on the timeline and other species. Same idea, just steers clear of the implication that our goal is to simply enforce an internal directive on species which has chosen not to follow it.