test content
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options

Why do the plots of some episodes become the basis for entire expansions? Kobali, Vaadwaur, etc.

13»

Comments

  • Options
    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    I think the challenge for Cryptic is that they hesistate to introduce new species, they prefer to latch onto existing ones. The Deferi weren't that great. The Lukari worked a lot better, which I think is mostly because they are more interesting and more relatable thanks to the voice actress and writing for Kumaarke.

    The Deferi were written into the basement from the start. They're literally an entire people of "damsels in distress" due to their flawed view of "balance", as whenever they're getting attacked they will just not defend themselves. Whoever came up with their concept didn't understand that being neutral actually requires being very (pro-)active rather than completely passive about everything.

    The Lukari on the other hand do not have that issue. They're curious and thus natural explorers, which makes them perfect ideologic partners for the federation. They're also good at stirring into the hornet's nest here and there due to their naive disregard of danger, which makes them handy for setting up missions. All in all they just feel more genuinely like actual characters than the deferi ever could.
    Or, in other words, the deferi are an extreme planet of hats, a race of soulless stereotypes with nothing to say but babble around the word "balance." Whereas the lukari are actually pretty much normal people.

    I totally like the lukari, though I do get annoyed sometimes at Kuumarke's habit of being an undeservedly bossy know-it-all in the missions. :D
  • Options
    echattyechatty Member Posts: 5,914 Arc User
    edited November 2019
    warpangel wrote: »

    The Lukari on the other hand do not have that issue. They're curious and thus natural explorers, which makes them perfect ideologic partners for the federation. They're also good at stirring into the hornet's nest here and there due to their naive disregard of danger, which makes them handy for setting up missions. All in all they just feel more genuinely like actual characters than the deferi ever could.
    Or, in other words, the deferi are an extreme planet of hats, a race of soulless stereotypes with nothing to say but babble around the word "balance." Whereas the lukari are actually pretty much normal people.

    I totally like the lukari, though I do get annoyed sometimes at Kuumarke's habit of being an undeservedly bossy know-it-all in the missions. :D

    Oh, this annoys the bejeebus out of me.

    "Oh, I see! They followed the waterfall!"

    Well duh! They didn't just tube over the falls, y'know.
    Now a LTS and loving it.
    Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
    I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything. :D
  • Options
    legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,280 Arc User
    if there is a path alongside that waterfall, i don't know where it is, so i just jump off it​​
    Like special weapons from other Star Trek games? Wondering if they can be replicated in STO even a little bit? Check this out: https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1262277/a-mostly-comprehensive-guide-to-star-trek-videogame-special-weapons-and-their-sto-equivalents

    #LegalizeAwoo

    A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
    An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
    A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
    A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"


    "It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
    "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
    Passion and Serenity are one.
    I gain power by understanding both.
    In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
    I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
    The Force is united within me.
  • Options
    echattyechatty Member Posts: 5,914 Arc User
    if there is a path alongside that waterfall, i don't know where it is, so i just jump off it​​

    To your left, a dirt path.
    Now a LTS and loving it.
    Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
    I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything. :D
  • Options
    ucgsquawk#5883 ucgsquawk Member Posts: 279 Arc User
    How about that gritty and hard nosed species the other side of the Borg that has been fighting them to a standstill for a century. Aggressively taking over any ship or race they find in their almost maddened drive to find weapons and tech to use against the Borg.
    All of their ships self destruct when badly damaged to avoid assimilation of their tech.
    They capture a Borg transwarp gateway and discover the alliance Alliance and their vast resources?

    Easy way to throw in another aggressive species with good tech levels, and a very aggressive attitude.
  • Options
    rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 58,040 Community Moderator
    Don't remember a species like that...
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
  • Options
    markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    How about that gritty and hard nosed species the other side of the Borg that has been fighting them to a standstill for a century. Aggressively taking over any ship or race they find in their almost maddened drive to find weapons and tech to use against the Borg.
    All of their ships self destruct when badly damaged to avoid assimilation of their tech.
    They capture a Borg transwarp gateway and discover the alliance Alliance and their vast resources?

    Easy way to throw in another aggressive species with good tech levels, and a very aggressive attitude.
    I mean, that's pretty much the Voth conflict we have in-game already.

    The Voth are a super ancient race, with powerful technology, that have been fighting a stalemated war with the Borg for a long time. They find an Iconian Gateway which leads into the Dyson Sphere, and the Voth, in their desperation, want to use the power of the Omega Molecules in the Dyson Sphere to fight the Borg, and get into a fight with the Alliance who thinks that's too extreme of a means to fight the Borg.
    Also the Voth plan might not even work...
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • Options
    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    How about that gritty and hard nosed species the other side of the Borg that has been fighting them to a standstill for a century. Aggressively taking over any ship or race they find in their almost maddened drive to find weapons and tech to use against the Borg.
    All of their ships self destruct when badly damaged to avoid assimilation of their tech.
    They capture a Borg transwarp gateway and discover the alliance Alliance and their vast resources?

    Easy way to throw in another aggressive species with good tech levels, and a very aggressive attitude.
    I mean, that's pretty much the Voth conflict we have in-game already.

    The Voth are a super ancient race, with powerful technology, that have been fighting a stalemated war with the Borg for a long time. They find an Iconian Gateway which leads into the Dyson Sphere, and the Voth, in their desperation, want to use the power of the Omega Molecules in the Dyson Sphere to fight the Borg, and get into a fight with the Alliance who thinks that's too extreme of a means to fight the Borg.
    Also the Voth plan might not even work...
    Of course it wouldn't. Especially since they were so fixated on the borg, they got themselves wasted by the undine and the vaadwaur.

    They should've asked help from the Invincible Player Character instead. :D
  • Options
    ucgsquawk#5883 ucgsquawk Member Posts: 279 Arc User
    True the Voth are like that, but who's to say there aren't others out there checking the expansion of the Borg further into the quadrant. Another species that's become cutthroat about taking technology and pressing other worlds into the fight, ships that are somewhat haphazard with the new technology being slapped on as fast as they can find/develop it.

    There's a lot they could do with all that extra space out there in that quadrant.

    Heck even coming back to the alpha...step up interactions with the tholians, the sheliak.

    I wonder if there was a mirror first federation and if they're still around.

    Could there be something more to the tholians research/hatred or time travel? Maybe some threat they fear from beyond their space slips around them up against alliance space on the Klingon side.

    Tons of space out there to develop new threats if they need to.
  • Options
    kayajaykayajay Member Posts: 1,990 Arc User
    I do wish Enterprise had reused the 29th Century, with the Relativity and expanded it more, like the game did with the Pastak.
  • Options
    jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,367 Arc User
    If the Mirror Universe had a First Federation, the Terran Empire would have tasked itself with their utter eradication as a potential threat to the Empire's future. (For that matter, we have no canon information about the state of the Romulan Star Empire; I would be unsurprised to find that the Terran Empire either eliminated or subjugated them after first contact.)
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
  • Options
    phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,519 Arc User
    edited November 2019
    jonsills wrote: »
    If the Mirror Universe had a First Federation, the Terran Empire would have tasked itself with their utter eradication as a potential threat to the Empire's future. (For that matter, we have no canon information about the state of the Romulan Star Empire; I would be unsurprised to find that the Terran Empire either eliminated or subjugated them after first contact.)

    The most coherent "fanon" answer to the mirror Romulan question seems to be that the "mirror" phenomenon made them, in essence, the Vulcans and the imperial Vulcans in essence the equivalent of prime Romulans. Or at least it used to anyway, I am not sure if the DS9 stuff changed that since they seemed to go with the "mirror" only effecting Terra instead of it being a universal thing (I have been out of the Trek fanfic scene for quite a while).

    Some stories assume it was the followers of Surak who lost and fled Vulcan, others that Surak was a logic-obsessed schemer who systematically corrupted or destroying all who apposed him until the last few fled, but either way the mirror Romulans are often depicted as having lost the war and fled Vulcan, then developed the cloak to avoid conflict or at least as a sort of passive-aggressive weapon/force multiplier fit for a (relatively) peaceful intellectual society, much like the prime Vulcans, who just want to be left alone.

    Personally I find that approach rather intriguing, more so than the idea that it was only Terra that was "mirrored" and that it took over everything else on its own, not to mention that it fits the original mirror universe concept better.
  • Options
    markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    The idea of having Reunification occur in a different way amuses me. IE the Terrans took all the pointy eared aliens with green blood and dumped them in the same slave pens. :p
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • Options
    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    edited November 2019
    jonsills wrote: »
    If the Mirror Universe had a First Federation, the Terran Empire would have tasked itself with their utter eradication as a potential threat to the Empire's future. (For that matter, we have no canon information about the state of the Romulan Star Empire; I would be unsurprised to find that the Terran Empire either eliminated or subjugated them after first contact.)

    Says the Mirror Incursion Research Assignments:
    "Your team successfully made contact with a Romulan mining camp. The destruction of Romulus left the Romulans in disarray and much of their territory as easy prey for the Terrans. Sadly, the Romulans of the Mirror Universe are a hollow shadow of their former glory, with no dream of a Republic to rise from the ashes."
  • Options
    mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    How about that gritty and hard nosed species the other side of the Borg that has been fighting them to a standstill for a century. Aggressively taking over any ship or race they find in their almost maddened drive to find weapons and tech to use against the Borg.
    All of their ships self destruct when badly damaged to avoid assimilation of their tech.
    They capture a Borg transwarp gateway and discover the alliance Alliance and their vast resources?

    Easy way to throw in another aggressive species with good tech levels, and a very aggressive attitude.
    I mean, that's pretty much the Voth conflict we have in-game already.

    The Voth are a super ancient race, with powerful technology, that have been fighting a stalemated war with the Borg for a long time. They find an Iconian Gateway which leads into the Dyson Sphere, and the Voth, in their desperation, want to use the power of the Omega Molecules in the Dyson Sphere to fight the Borg, and get into a fight with the Alliance who thinks that's too extreme of a means to fight the Borg.

    I think that might actually be the Octanti the OP is referring to. They might not have been given a name in the episode they appeared to, only referred to by the Borg designation Species 6339. They haven't really fought the Borg to a stand still, though - but they still had a few ships left and still some plans to get back at the Borg, with which Voyager interfered with.
    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • Options
    markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    the sheliak.
    If the Sheliak appeared in-game, I suspect they would be more of an enemy in a one off patrol or mission, like the Son'a were in Brushfire.

    From what we are told about the Sheliak in TNG, they fought a brief border conflict with the Federation, signed a treaty, and then no one saw or heard for them for over 100 years. The Sheliak didn't spend a century trying to find loopholes in the treaty to annex more territory, they didn't try to find ways to keep fighting the Federation over it, they just went away. Even when they did show up that one time in TNG, they were completely right about the Federation colony being in their space, and were well within their rights to remove it by force. Even after Picard outmaneuvered the Sheliak, by claiming third party arbitration form the Grizelas, the Sheliak didn't leave with a "I'll get you next time Picard!" attitude. They accepted their loss, and left. The Sheliak may not like the Federation, but they are shown to not be aggressive over it.

    This in comparison to like the Tzenkethi, who we know from canon fought multiple wars with the Federation, lost all of them, and seemed ok with trying to do so YET AGAIN.

    Its unlikely we would find the Sheliak in the kind of situation necessary to have a big fight over something like we do in-game with our enemies. Large scale wars isn't the Sheliak's style.
    I could see them as part of the Tzenkethi war. Not as an ally of the Tzenkethi, but as one of the races attacked by them.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • Options
    ucgsquawk#5883 ucgsquawk Member Posts: 279 Arc User
    With the sheliak, they are pretty picky about the letter of the rules...if the rules were violated openly by the Federation (or terrans or whomever made it convincing) a war could easily start.
    And from that episode I definitely got the feeling that they were at least on a par technology wise.
    The series of episodes would be the prelude and open war with the sheliak while your captain goes on a number of combat missions where they discover evidence of a Terran ship at a battle...then you are directed to follow up until you track down the Terran base in our universe and bring the sheliak in at the end to witness that it wasn't the federation.

    The final 12 featured episodes are about renegotiating the treaty.
  • Options
    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    With the sheliak, they are pretty picky about the letter of the rules...if the rules were violated openly by the Federation (or terrans or whomever made it convincing) a war could easily start.
    And from that episode I definitely got the feeling that they were at least on a par technology wise.
    The series of episodes would be the prelude and open war with the sheliak while your captain goes on a number of combat missions where they discover evidence of a Terran ship at a battle...then you are directed to follow up until you track down the Terran base in our universe and bring the sheliak in at the end to witness that it wasn't the federation.

    The final 12 featured episodes are about renegotiating the treaty.
    Why would the Terrans go through such an unnecessary diversion instead of just, you know,acting like Terrans and using their more advanced technology to invade us?
    Because their allegedly more advanced technology doesn't stop them from being curbstomped by us every time they try?
  • Options
    ucgsquawk#5883 ucgsquawk Member Posts: 279 Arc User
    > @somtaawkhar said:
    > (Quote)
    > Except this has never happened once in the game's narrative. All our wins against the Terrans have been shown to be close calls/narrow victories.
    >
    > Even if this was the case, that still wouldn't explain why they would go through the trouble of tricking the Sheliak instead of, you know, doing something useful like developing new technology/tactics to counter our technology and tactics.

    Really, we keep beating them...every time. You don't think that getting someone else to beat up the federation for them for relatively little effort then coming and stomping us would appeal to the terrans? That would seem to be right up their alley.
  • Options
    ucgsquawk#5883 ucgsquawk Member Posts: 279 Arc User
    Okay...so a faction of the Terran empire then. And why not? Perhaps they knew of the sheliak that were defeated in the mirror universe and decided they would make good tools against the Federation.

    You know, it's easy to pick holes in every plot line, nothing is going to be perfect, but I'm not paid to lay out the grand scheme here. I took a minute to come up with some possible threads that would make for what I thought would be good extended stories to pursue. It's certainly no worse than magic mushrooms and century out if date Klingon and her fleet coming to the future and suddenly building up to be a threat to anyone.
  • Options
    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    warpangel wrote: »
    Because their allegedly more advanced technology doesn't stop them from being curbstomped by us every time they try?
    Except this has never happened once in the game's narrative. All our wins against the Terrans have been shown to be close calls/narrow victories.
    I've certainly never seen any close calls against the Terrans.
    Even if this was the case, that still wouldn't explain why they would go through the trouble of tricking the Sheliak instead of, you know, doing something useful like developing new technology/tactics to counter our technology and tactics.
    Getting someone else to die in their place is a better tactic than coming to die themselves.

    Also, because the Terrans have never been good at actually developing anything. Every single rise of their power has come by stealing from someone else.
This discussion has been closed.