The duty officer system is the admiral gameplay, the space missions captain, and the ground missions the rest of the ranks from ensign to commander. It evens out.
I honestly haven't done any of the New Romulus ground missions, for these very reasons...
I beamed down for about 15 minutes, ran around, saw what was being asked of me, and decided I had more fun doing the space patrol missions only. Flying around blowing up enemies to keep people safe is something a Captain would be tasked with.
This kind of ties back into one of the longer-standing nitpicks of the game... namely, that the current Starfleet regulations seem to dictate that any ship's CO must do all the dirty work.
They really should have tailored the missions to each specialization. Science captains would realistically still like taking samples and doing field work; it's why they entered the Science division. Similarly, Engineering captains would have missions where they help repair equipment, like that one Romulan shuttle sitting out in the open in the staging area that's throwing off sparks. Tactical captains would best help by training Romulan and Reman citizens in self defense, and the use of weaponry, as well as taking a look at the colony defense systems or something.
I just don't feel like the current missions realistically take my captain's expertise and experience into account, which is what all missions should do.
this ..
I have always wondered why they don't utilize the professions better - they try in older content - in so much that a science VA wouldn't only collect samples but analyze them too !Engineers wouldn't only conduct repairs they would oversee repair crews ( delegate ) and tacticals would oversee training of new recruits I haven't really bothered all that much with the ground stuff of New Romulus either because it's just not very immersive .The space stuff is much more fun ...
My own VA does the ground missions on Romulus because her opinion is that she'd rather be there and helping than stuck onboard the U.S.S. Grace and bored out of her mind doing the paperwork and watching others work. It also helps to imagine that most of the low rank Federation NPCs are your ships crew helping out.
If you don't like this then do what someone else said they did and RP that it's an Ensign doing all the dirty work instead of your VA.
As for the reason why the main storyline is hidden behind the Rep missions, it's an attempt to get you to keep playing. It's been 2 weeks since the launch of Season 7 and despite the lack of Dilthium people are still playing New Romulus daily missions.
Why?
Because they're pushing for the Romulan Rep items and to see the next bit of the New Romulus story.
If the Devs had just introduced the 5 missions, people would have blown through them within a few hours of S7 going up then complained their was nothing too do. By putting it behind a month or 2s worth of grind they're effectively spacing them out so people can't gulp all the new story content at once.
Hell after this weeks patch if everything Dan wants to put in goes in, I'll be dropping the 2000 RXP missions for the 800 ones to increase the amount of time I have to unlock stores and items and to increase the amount of Dilithium I earn.
So long as I keep at it I should make R5 by the time Season 8 launches.
What about a real admiral job? I'm not sure i'd enjoy bureaucracy online, where you have to manage daily tasks, order such sub-element of starfleet to do something, and watch the job when it's done, flying on 120 year-old excelsior to make sure all your captains don't do TRIBBLE in the galaxy.
Starfleet Admiral: "Focus! The work you do here is critical."
Romulan Worker: "You are right. This is important." *walks away*
Starfleet Admiral: *sighs* *gets to work repairing three broken gravsleds*
Makes me glad I'm still playing my Vulcan as a Commander rather than adapting my RP to what the game keeps throwing at me in terms of promotions and positions. If only the game would address me by my title rather than the mechanical rank.
Still love the new zone anyways. So much to discover, so much variety, and it just looks stunningly beautiful. Ground-based Red Alerts with site-to-site transports are sweet. Bonus points for Subcommander Khiana, whose cinematic I just unlocked. Cool character, great visual design and a suitably dark voice somewhere between threatening and alluring. Hope to see more of her in the future even beyond this season.
My duty officers should chase the rabbits instead of me doing so.
Come to think of it, that might be a cool idea for some time in the far future:
Beam down playing as one of your BOs directly, rather than having them accompany you.
Could play as your Chief of Security or as your Chief Science Officer, all depending on what the individual mission calls for. Perhaps even with a bunch of DOs as redshirts. The episodes in the show were not always focused on the captains either, after all...
Because it's a game and you are the player. If you want realism go sit in Quinn's office and advise new recruits to STO as they enter, occasionally have a captain friend invite you to a diplomatic conference on his ship, and in the meantime make charts and graphs and calculate departmental spend for your fleet. Put your phaser back in the weapon locker and get out your biro.
That's all well and good, but at the end of the day, the extra RP doesn't get me any closer to progressing through the Reputation system the developers have created to act as "end-game progression". Not that I mind helping players, but doing *only* that wouldn't help me character's progression.
My own VA does the ground missions on Romulus because her opinion is that she'd rather be there and helping than stuck onboard the U.S.S. Grace and bored out of her mind doing the paperwork and watching others work. It also helps to imagine that most of the low rank Federation NPCs are your ships crew helping out.
If you don't like this then do what someone else said they did and RP that it's an Ensign doing all the dirty work instead of your VA.
As for the reason why the main storyline is hidden behind the Rep missions, it's an attempt to get you to keep playing. It's been 2 weeks since the launch of Season 7 and despite the lack of Dilthium people are still playing New Romulus daily missions.
Why?
Because they're pushing for the Romulan Rep items and to see the next bit of the New Romulus story.
If the Devs had just introduced the 5 missions, people would have blown through them within a few hours of S7 going up then complained their was nothing too do. By putting it behind a month or 2s worth of grind they're effectively spacing them out so people can't gulp all the new story content at once.
Hell after this weeks patch if everything Dan wants to put in goes in, I'll be dropping the 2000 RXP missions for the 800 ones to increase the amount of time I have to unlock stores and items and to increase the amount of Dilithium I earn.
So long as I keep at it I should make R5 by the time Season 8 launches.
Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, we can "pretend" to play ensigns... for end-game content... and forget that the mission design (if it were based around Rear Admirals and Lieutenant Generals) was ludicrous at best. Certainly, I could just push through the rep system and *hope* that the next thing will be better.
My questions are:
* Could the mission design and writing have been better, if more consideration were taken into the character's actual rank by this time in the story? My thought is: definitely. There are interesting things you can have a VA do beyond DOffing and lvl 1 fetch quests (I've cited some examples previously).
* Is the carrot big enough (for ground missions) for me to be interested on what happens when I reach the next Reputation rank? I'm not so sure. If I have to fetch 10 water samples, and multiply that by X number of missions, how much of a grind will it be?
At this point, I'll just put some inputs into the Rep system by getting Romulan Marks from space missions (a lot of which are better written around a high-ranking player character than the ground missions, IMPO), get the next rank, go back to New Romulus, and see if what I unlock is actually worth an Admiral's time.
Certainly, in RP land, my character is inclined to want to help the "New Romulans", but without putting shutters over my eyes and pretending that Cryptic wrote this for an Ensign as opposed to a Vice Admiral (which wasn't their intention, supposedly), my character is going to do those activities which have the most benefit for those people. He isn't going to waste time collecting water samples.
After all, why catch a Romulan a fish when you could teach a Romulan how to fish for himself? In other words, why is there a mission to collect water samples, and not mission that has you gathering up a group of Romulan and Starfleet (or Klingon) scientists and leading that team to collect samples? It sounds like a minor difference, but even that small difference would make the mission more plausible towards being applied to a VA or LG.
I could pretend that's exactly what I'm doing, but why didn't Cryptic's writers do that for me? And that's my whole point. We're bascialy saying that we can pretend that the missions were better written, or written for a lower-rank character. Lamentably, neither are true. IMPO, beyond personal RP, they're still badly-written and badly-designed VA/LG missions. And not to use a drawn-out idiom, but if someone doesn't constructively criticize such things, badly-written and badly-design missions will remain the status quo.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
New Romulus is some of the best artwork in the game, it's a beautiful map...a gorgeous map...and that's the extent of the nice things I have to say about it.
content-wise, the old Nagus Dailies were more interesting, and required less reinforcement be applied to the suspension of disbelief, esp. that a KDF-aligned officer would actually do much of ANYTHING related to chasing cute animals, collecting flowers, etc. etc.
There's a lot less difficulty in the idea of a StarFleet officer doing the kinds of tasks that pass for content there, than a KDF officer, just on account of Starfleet's history as "Explorers with guns" as opposed to the KDF, which is more "A military force that occasionally explores before/between conquests."
but it IS a lovely map.
I'm just imagine trying to play these missions with my KFD character. I think my KDF captain would sooner disembowel himself than be subjugated to picking flowers for the nice Romulans, especially after Khitomer. Are there any differences in mission design between KDF and Federation characters? If not, chalk that up as another strike against badly-written and badly-designed "end-game content".
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
I'm just imagine trying to play these missions with my KFD character. I think my KDF captain would sooner disembowel himself than be subjugated to picking flowers for the nice Romulans, especially after Khitomer. Are there any differences in mission design between KDF and Federation characters? If not, chalk that up as another strike against badly-written and badly-designed "end-game content".
Despite what the game mechanics say, my toon only acknowledges being a captain. As for why be on the ground? Well, one, I'm a vanity pet nut, so the opportunity to gather more is awesome. Second, before New Romulus was even on the map, I'd written a background for him with a xenoarcheology degree at the center of it, so running around the ruins collecting artifacts is like a working vacation after spending the last couple years running and gunning since he was unplugged from the Borg Collective.
Now, earlier in the thread someone mentioned that ensigns and lieutenants don't command ships in the real world. That's not entirely true. Smaller naval vessels in service can be commanded by officers all the way down to Lieutenant JGs. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, and other support craft don't warrant the need for an officer as senior as a captain or admiral to run them.
For me, I hit New Romulus, do the daily missions that interest me (the Epohh fields, the Ruins, and the Atlai, also the New Romulus research) then I head for space, do that daily, then throw in some fleet actions to round it out.
1) I'm using a general Klingon stereotype of all Romulans (RP)
2) Strawman argument. Let's stay on topic.
I've said this before but I think that's an inaccurate representation drawn by the fan community.
Worf and Klingons who liked Worf hated Romulans. Worf himself was supposed to be an unusually racist Klingon where Romulans were concerned.
Many Klingons who disliked Worf and the Federation seemed to be eager to work with Romulans. (K'Dan, Duras, etc.) In fact, these Klingons are the ones running the Empire now and the ones friendly to Worf have been stripped of almost all power.
I don't think Khitomer was such an outrage to the average Klingon. It was to Worf because he lived there.
Why are you doing "ensign" work on New Romulus? Because you volunteered to, that's why. I don't recall Starfleet Command ordering me there to do this stuff. The Romulan ambassador asked me to go help out and I chose to go. I'm a Starfleet admiral and Starfleet helps those in need. The Romulans are in need. I'm not so stuck up that I'd refuse to do work that's "beneath" me. If all you want to do is fly around and blow stuff up, well I'm sure the Klingons would love to have you on their side :P
___________________________________________________
I didn't ask to be President of the Balloon Enterprises! The Balloon Enterprises demanded it!
You guys ever see, you know, the TV shows? Where the captain is constantly beaming down to planets and getting elbows deep in every ground mission, even when realistically captains would never do that?
It not only makes sense from a game perspective, it's appropriate to the precedent of Star Trek.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Why are you doing "ensign" work on New Romulus? Because you volunteered to, that's why. I don't recall Starfleet Command ordering me there to do this stuff. The Romulan ambassador asked me to go help out and I chose to go. I'm a Starfleet admiral and Starfleet helps those in need. The Romulans are in need. I'm not so stuck up that I'd refuse to do work that's "beneath" me. If all you want to do is fly around and blow stuff up, well I'm sure the Klingons would love to have you on their side :P
If I was D'Tan, and I needed help to rebuild my whole civilization, I wouldn't ask an admiral to collect flowers. Especially an admiral as important as we are ingame. We are expert in Borg fight, part of the MACO and Omega elite force, and we have done a lot of things accross the galaxy.
Makes you wonder what ensigns do in New Romulus, training Romulan officers and leading fleets ?
I wouldn't mind doing that if it was the only things to do, but they are rebuilding the Romulan Star Empire, and I'm sure there is more to do than collecting flowers and sampling water.
If I was D'Tan, and I needed help to rebuild my whole civilization, I wouldn't ask an admiral to collect flowers. Especially an admiral as important as we are ingame. We are expert in Borg fight, part of the MACO and Omega elite force, and we have done a lot of things accross the galaxy.
Makes you wonder what ensigns do in New Romulus, training Romulan officers and leading fleets ?
And if the Borg attack New Romulus I'd expect to be up there fighting and not doing the ground stuff. But there's no need for military action from us in building a colony/new homeworld, except for fighting the Tal'shiar. But even that I'd suspect is a bit of a grey area. The people on New Romulus and the Tal'shiar are Romulans (and Remans). Meaning it's technically a civil war just like the Klingon civil war. And just like the Klingon civil war, the Federation can't interfere because of the Prime Directive. I'd guess we can kill Tal'shiar in self defense and in defense of civilians. But if the Federation was serious about protecting New Romulus from the Tal'shiar things would be very different. We'd have a large army there, transport inhibitors everywhere, ships constantly scanning the surface etc. We're there to build a colony, not fight their war.
I wouldn't mind doing that if it was the only things to do, but they are rebuilding the Romulan Star Empire, and I'm sure there is more to do than collecting flowers and sampling water.
Like what exactly? They aren't rebuilding the Romulan Empire. There's no way Starfleet or the Klingons would allow them to go back to what they were. They're creating a new Romulan society on a new planet. In order to build a society like the Federation, Klingons or Romulans they'd have to have knowledge of the planet they're living on. You'd have to know what plants are medicinal, poisonous etc. You'd have to get rid of the lethal insects, drive off hostile predators from where you're building your city, tag wildlife that can be beneficial to your society. You need to build structures (houses, factories, farms). Obviously we can't build things like that in the game. But that kind of work would be done by people with experience in building, Starfleet Corps of Engineers and the Klingon equivalent.
We're doing "ensign work" because that's what needs to be done. And again, we aren't sent there by Starfleet. We volunteered to go. No one is forcing an Admiral to do "ensign work". We're free to leave anytime we want to.
___________________________________________________
I didn't ask to be President of the Balloon Enterprises! The Balloon Enterprises demanded it!
And if the Borg attack New Romulus I'd expect to be up there fighting and not doing the ground stuff. But there's no need for military action from us in building a colony/new homeworld, except for fighting the Tal'shiar. But even that I'd suspect is a bit of a grey area. The people on New Romulus and the Tal'shiar are Romulans (and Remans). Meaning it's technically a civil war just like the Klingon civil war. And just like the Klingon civil war, the Federation can't interfere because of the Prime Directive. I'd guess we can kill Tal'shiar in self defense and in defense of civilians. But if the Federation was serious about protecting New Romulus from the Tal'shiar things would be very different. We'd have a large army there, transport inhibitors everywhere, ships constantly scanning the surface etc. We're there to build a colony, not fight their war.
We already attacked the Tal Shiar. Remember Hakeev ? There was a complete explanation about it : Tal Shiar are Iconians agents, and the Iconians are the enemy. So we are fighting them.
There is plenty of danger, both in New Romulus and both outside the planet. The Federation can help them train people for defense.Train them to fight the borgs, the undine, or any Federation/Klingon and Romulan enemy. Just like we do in the patrol daily.
Also, if we are Starfleet, we are diplomats. Don't tell me they don't need diplomats.
For the Klingons, I don't even know why they are there, it seems they want to give flowers to romulans.
You are saying the Romulan don't need an Admiral, but Ensigns. That's fine. I give you a DOFF, you give me my marks.
Like what exactly? They aren't rebuilding the Romulan Empire. There's no way Starfleet or the Klingons would allow them to go back to what they were. They're creating a new Romulan society on a new planet. In order to build a society like the Federation, Klingons or Romulans they'd have to have knowledge of the planet they're living on. You'd have to know what plants are medicinal, poisonous etc. You'd have to get rid of the lethal insects, drive off hostile predators from where you're building your city, tag wildlife that can be beneficial to your society. You need to build structures (houses, factories, farms). Obviously we can't build things like that in the game. But that kind of work would be done by people with experience in building, Starfleet Corps of Engineers and the Klingon equivalent.
Of course they aren't rebuilding the superpower it was before. But they are rebuilding a civilization. And the Romulan are still powerful. We know they have ships and armies. Obisek may still have some Thalaron device. Also, everyone knows the Iconians are preparing a full scale invasion of our galaxy, and we'll face them together or die. We knows that because Obisek helped us fight Hakeev. We know that because we faced Taris. So the Romulans know that to.
Also, Starfleet Corps of Engineers ? Guess what is my character ? An engineer. If my job is to pick flowers while others Engineers can build things, I pick the wrong job offer at the academy. Even if we can't build houses, supervising construction, or work adapted to your character class would be better than picking flowers.
We're doing "ensign work" because that's what needs to be done. And again, we aren't sent there by Starfleet. We volunteered to go. No one is forcing an Admiral to do "ensign work". We're free to leave anytime we want to.
That's not my point. I know I volunteered. I was saying the Romulan uses Admiral to do Ensign work, and it's stupid. There are better use for an experimented Admiral than picking flowers.
The special mission we do each time we earn 1rank in the Romulan reputation ? They are closer to what an Star Trek Admiral would do.
It would be more interesting if, during the missions there were already Starfleet officers scanning, some pinned down in combat, tagging wildlife...
Then you as a commanding officer come to assist them. For example, you as the captain go around inspecting the area...you can simply inspect the area turn it in quickly and get a minimal amount of reward...OR as you are doing these inspections you have an optional objective to assist the officer in need.
By assisting, your final turn in reward is brought up for each optional objective you complete.
The ground content in this game would be more interesting if there were more members of Starfleet in an area that we supposedly are securing. It would give the feel of being a commanding officer and the opportunity to improve the immersion of the repeatable quest lines.
This is the thing I would like to see more in ground PvE. In space you command your ship but right now on the ground you are trying to be the heroic junior officer. It could use an immersion bump.
These kind of tasks are why I have made different costumes for various characters, like, my first officer, so I can switch between them when tasks not befitting my rank arise.
Comments
this ..
I have always wondered why they don't utilize the professions better - they try in older content - in so much that a science VA wouldn't only collect samples but analyze them too !Engineers wouldn't only conduct repairs they would oversee repair crews ( delegate ) and tacticals would oversee training of new recruits I haven't really bothered all that much with the ground stuff of New Romulus either because it's just not very immersive .The space stuff is much more fun ...
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If you don't like this then do what someone else said they did and RP that it's an Ensign doing all the dirty work instead of your VA.
As for the reason why the main storyline is hidden behind the Rep missions, it's an attempt to get you to keep playing. It's been 2 weeks since the launch of Season 7 and despite the lack of Dilthium people are still playing New Romulus daily missions.
Why?
Because they're pushing for the Romulan Rep items and to see the next bit of the New Romulus story.
If the Devs had just introduced the 5 missions, people would have blown through them within a few hours of S7 going up then complained their was nothing too do. By putting it behind a month or 2s worth of grind they're effectively spacing them out so people can't gulp all the new story content at once.
Hell after this weeks patch if everything Dan wants to put in goes in, I'll be dropping the 2000 RXP missions for the 800 ones to increase the amount of time I have to unlock stores and items and to increase the amount of Dilithium I earn.
So long as I keep at it I should make R5 by the time Season 8 launches.
Season 8 last I heard was schedueled for next summer...
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Other than the rep system Tier unlock missions, there's nothing to do there that's any kind of fun
my science BOFF could do this for me while im enjoying a little holodeck episode
A Captain has better things to do than squash bugs and chase bunnies.
Starfleet Admiral: "Focus! The work you do here is critical."
Romulan Worker: "You are right. This is important." *walks away*
Starfleet Admiral: *sighs* *gets to work repairing three broken gravsleds*
Makes me glad I'm still playing my Vulcan as a Commander rather than adapting my RP to what the game keeps throwing at me in terms of promotions and positions. If only the game would address me by my title rather than the mechanical rank.
Still love the new zone anyways. So much to discover, so much variety, and it just looks stunningly beautiful. Ground-based Red Alerts with site-to-site transports are sweet. Bonus points for Subcommander Khiana, whose cinematic I just unlocked. Cool character, great visual design and a suitably dark voice somewhere between threatening and alluring. Hope to see more of her in the future even beyond this season.
Come to think of it, that might be a cool idea for some time in the far future:
Beam down playing as one of your BOs directly, rather than having them accompany you.
Could play as your Chief of Security or as your Chief Science Officer, all depending on what the individual mission calls for. Perhaps even with a bunch of DOs as redshirts. The episodes in the show were not always focused on the captains either, after all...
Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, we can "pretend" to play ensigns... for end-game content... and forget that the mission design (if it were based around Rear Admirals and Lieutenant Generals) was ludicrous at best. Certainly, I could just push through the rep system and *hope* that the next thing will be better.
My questions are:
* Could the mission design and writing have been better, if more consideration were taken into the character's actual rank by this time in the story? My thought is: definitely. There are interesting things you can have a VA do beyond DOffing and lvl 1 fetch quests (I've cited some examples previously).
* Is the carrot big enough (for ground missions) for me to be interested on what happens when I reach the next Reputation rank? I'm not so sure. If I have to fetch 10 water samples, and multiply that by X number of missions, how much of a grind will it be?
At this point, I'll just put some inputs into the Rep system by getting Romulan Marks from space missions (a lot of which are better written around a high-ranking player character than the ground missions, IMPO), get the next rank, go back to New Romulus, and see if what I unlock is actually worth an Admiral's time.
Certainly, in RP land, my character is inclined to want to help the "New Romulans", but without putting shutters over my eyes and pretending that Cryptic wrote this for an Ensign as opposed to a Vice Admiral (which wasn't their intention, supposedly), my character is going to do those activities which have the most benefit for those people. He isn't going to waste time collecting water samples.
After all, why catch a Romulan a fish when you could teach a Romulan how to fish for himself? In other words, why is there a mission to collect water samples, and not mission that has you gathering up a group of Romulan and Starfleet (or Klingon) scientists and leading that team to collect samples? It sounds like a minor difference, but even that small difference would make the mission more plausible towards being applied to a VA or LG.
I could pretend that's exactly what I'm doing, but why didn't Cryptic's writers do that for me? And that's my whole point. We're bascialy saying that we can pretend that the missions were better written, or written for a lower-rank character. Lamentably, neither are true. IMPO, beyond personal RP, they're still badly-written and badly-designed VA/LG missions. And not to use a drawn-out idiom, but if someone doesn't constructively criticize such things, badly-written and badly-design missions will remain the status quo.
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
What did these Romulans have to do with Khitomer?
Now, earlier in the thread someone mentioned that ensigns and lieutenants don't command ships in the real world. That's not entirely true. Smaller naval vessels in service can be commanded by officers all the way down to Lieutenant JGs. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, and other support craft don't warrant the need for an officer as senior as a captain or admiral to run them.
For me, I hit New Romulus, do the daily missions that interest me (the Epohh fields, the Ruins, and the Atlai, also the New Romulus research) then I head for space, do that daily, then throw in some fleet actions to round it out.
1) I'm using a general Klingon stereotype of all Romulans (RP)
2) Strawman argument. Let's stay on topic.
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
I've said this before but I think that's an inaccurate representation drawn by the fan community.
Worf and Klingons who liked Worf hated Romulans. Worf himself was supposed to be an unusually racist Klingon where Romulans were concerned.
Many Klingons who disliked Worf and the Federation seemed to be eager to work with Romulans. (K'Dan, Duras, etc.) In fact, these Klingons are the ones running the Empire now and the ones friendly to Worf have been stripped of almost all power.
I don't think Khitomer was such an outrage to the average Klingon. It was to Worf because he lived there.
I didn't ask to be President of the Balloon Enterprises! The Balloon Enterprises demanded it!
You guys ever see, you know, the TV shows? Where the captain is constantly beaming down to planets and getting elbows deep in every ground mission, even when realistically captains would never do that?
It not only makes sense from a game perspective, it's appropriate to the precedent of Star Trek.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Makes you wonder what ensigns do in New Romulus, training Romulan officers and leading fleets ?
I wouldn't mind doing that if it was the only things to do, but they are rebuilding the Romulan Star Empire, and I'm sure there is more to do than collecting flowers and sampling water.
And if the Borg attack New Romulus I'd expect to be up there fighting and not doing the ground stuff. But there's no need for military action from us in building a colony/new homeworld, except for fighting the Tal'shiar. But even that I'd suspect is a bit of a grey area. The people on New Romulus and the Tal'shiar are Romulans (and Remans). Meaning it's technically a civil war just like the Klingon civil war. And just like the Klingon civil war, the Federation can't interfere because of the Prime Directive. I'd guess we can kill Tal'shiar in self defense and in defense of civilians. But if the Federation was serious about protecting New Romulus from the Tal'shiar things would be very different. We'd have a large army there, transport inhibitors everywhere, ships constantly scanning the surface etc. We're there to build a colony, not fight their war.
Like what exactly? They aren't rebuilding the Romulan Empire. There's no way Starfleet or the Klingons would allow them to go back to what they were. They're creating a new Romulan society on a new planet. In order to build a society like the Federation, Klingons or Romulans they'd have to have knowledge of the planet they're living on. You'd have to know what plants are medicinal, poisonous etc. You'd have to get rid of the lethal insects, drive off hostile predators from where you're building your city, tag wildlife that can be beneficial to your society. You need to build structures (houses, factories, farms). Obviously we can't build things like that in the game. But that kind of work would be done by people with experience in building, Starfleet Corps of Engineers and the Klingon equivalent.
We're doing "ensign work" because that's what needs to be done. And again, we aren't sent there by Starfleet. We volunteered to go. No one is forcing an Admiral to do "ensign work". We're free to leave anytime we want to.
I didn't ask to be President of the Balloon Enterprises! The Balloon Enterprises demanded it!
There is plenty of danger, both in New Romulus and both outside the planet. The Federation can help them train people for defense.Train them to fight the borgs, the undine, or any Federation/Klingon and Romulan enemy. Just like we do in the patrol daily.
Also, if we are Starfleet, we are diplomats. Don't tell me they don't need diplomats.
For the Klingons, I don't even know why they are there, it seems they want to give flowers to romulans.
You are saying the Romulan don't need an Admiral, but Ensigns. That's fine. I give you a DOFF, you give me my marks.
Of course they aren't rebuilding the superpower it was before. But they are rebuilding a civilization. And the Romulan are still powerful. We know they have ships and armies. Obisek may still have some Thalaron device. Also, everyone knows the Iconians are preparing a full scale invasion of our galaxy, and we'll face them together or die. We knows that because Obisek helped us fight Hakeev. We know that because we faced Taris. So the Romulans know that to.
Also, Starfleet Corps of Engineers ? Guess what is my character ? An engineer. If my job is to pick flowers while others Engineers can build things, I pick the wrong job offer at the academy. Even if we can't build houses, supervising construction, or work adapted to your character class would be better than picking flowers. That's not my point. I know I volunteered. I was saying the Romulan uses Admiral to do Ensign work, and it's stupid. There are better use for an experimented Admiral than picking flowers.
The special mission we do each time we earn 1rank in the Romulan reputation ? They are closer to what an Star Trek Admiral would do.
It would be more interesting if, during the missions there were already Starfleet officers scanning, some pinned down in combat, tagging wildlife...
Then you as a commanding officer come to assist them. For example, you as the captain go around inspecting the area...you can simply inspect the area turn it in quickly and get a minimal amount of reward...OR as you are doing these inspections you have an optional objective to assist the officer in need.
By assisting, your final turn in reward is brought up for each optional objective you complete.
The ground content in this game would be more interesting if there were more members of Starfleet in an area that we supposedly are securing. It would give the feel of being a commanding officer and the opportunity to improve the immersion of the repeatable quest lines.
This is the thing I would like to see more in ground PvE. In space you command your ship but right now on the ground you are trying to be the heroic junior officer. It could use an immersion bump.