Maybe it's not the most popular choice, but I love the Kazon!! (Even if the borg didn't!!)
Love the ship designs, the tribal culture and I would love for there to be a Kazon faction. But I'm also aware that's very very unlikely, they are not the first choice for a lot of people and wouldn't be that much of a money spinner.
Since Quantum Slipstream and Transwarp is available to each of the main Factions (Fed/KDF/RRF), why not utilize a similar idea to what was done at the beginning of thee Romulan faction. What I'm trying to suggest is, say drop a small Fleet into the Delta Quadrant to set up a FoB like an Outpost and a Transwarp gate (like in the Gamma Orionis, a gate going back and forth). The player is a part of the Fleet that was sent and early missions revolve around scouting and securing nearby systems whilst the bulk of the Fleet work on setting up the Outpost and Gate. The player cannot return to the Alpha or Beta Quadrants until the Gate is complete (like in the Romulan storyline, players cannot visit New Romulus Command until the end of the first set of missions).
Another option is the FoB could perhaps double as a Fleet Holding, Fleets set up their own Outposts in the Delta Quadrant to aid in increasing faction influence into new territories.
Delta quadrant should showcase some key things here:
Starship adaptability. Just like voyager adapted to meet the needs of the Delta quadrant, we should be able to 'adjust' a console slot or perform a doff mission to attempt 1 slot addition to the area of your ship of choice.
Borg transwarp core, let us craft something epic.
What about those strange space stations for trading etc?
back in the Voyager Ep. the 47's there is a thriving human colony in the Delta Quadrant so I would think that Voyager shared Federation tech with them before they left so it is possible to use that as a way to get human in the Delta Quadrant and in ships that are very Unique almost a hybrid between federation and other Ships seen in that area of the Delta Quadrant.
and by now I am sure Starfleet found away to talk to them using the same method they used to contact Voyager back in Session 6 so there could be a Starfleet Delta that started right on that planet.
You know that whatever race gets selected here we are almost certainly going to have a lockbox for....
It is obvious to me that after the S8 release with the Voth we will see a Voth lockbox and a Delta Quadrant reputation system (possibly called Voth reputation) with the tribble reward being that we get 1 mark for it per hour. Or seeing that we will be in a space adventure zone within a Dyson Sphere (I hope it is fairly large inside and exploits the full 3D effect of spaceflight) it might be the equivalent of a tribble for a spaceship with the side power of 1 mark per hour.
i think being a bit of a borg fanboy that they should make a liberated borg faction, taking from what happend in voyager with unimatrix 0 and the drones who got there freewill back they could do a lib borg faction that is reaching out to the federation and klingons for aid, and because have borg techology have set up a transwarp gate between the delta and alpha/beta quadrants to explain how to get there, and also lets the fed/klingon and romulans have reason to send research teams to delta to find out about iconian or other races techology that has been uncoverd in delta quadrant, its a idea and would work and would give reason for the borg faction to pick a side, much like romulans had to
A trip to the Delta Quadrant is really the best opportunity to make the game evolve toward something more well-rounded.
To better understand those new adventures, I'm going to explain my ideas below :
Key words : choice - lenghtly - Effort - exploration - randomness
Those key words are the elements that are the most missing in the great game that is Star Trek Online.
The Delta Quadrant offers the opportunity to use them in a splendid way :
Lenghtly
Once the exploration trip launched, the players (at the account level, so all this player's characters) will not be able to play in any other quadrant. It's a sacrifice, yes, but he will be rewarded with many useful rewards for the fleet but will not be able to farm the usual farming stuff (dilithium, reputation rewards...).
The length of the trip must be long and those who attempt it should be prepared for any eventuallities (how many healers ? How many engineers ? And so on...).
One week should be a good length.
Choices will be even more important that way.
Why a lenghty period ?
So the "price" is important, so we stop having 10 minutes lenght mission that we have been fed since a while, so the Delta Quadrant is a challenge.
War effort
The way to reach the Delta Quadrant as no importance, but it must be a strategic choice at the fleet level. A wormhole or a gateway, it doesn't matter. What matter is this access shouldn't be automatic but that you have to play to get it, that it should be a reward. The access should be something like what was done for New Romulus, but for a fleet (so more by fleet project than by a reputation). A discovery step by step, with levels.
Example :
T1 : missions to gain access to the trip.
T2 : missions during the trip (scanning, fixing...)
T3 : discovery and exploration of the arrival zone.
T4 : difficult missions.
T5 : pinnacle fight.
Exploration and randomness
It would be an adequate moment to remake the exploration mission.
The Delta Quadrant is filled with systems to explore, and the key word should be "Randomness" or "surprise".
If the number of missions are indeed limited (limited ressources to create them), we should never expect them to be exactly what we expect them to be.
For that, I suggest to create modulary missions with random events.
Explanations :
The team start a mission, and get on a map.
The modulary system immediatly start. A first part (as a map with one or more objective) starts.
At the same time, the random system starts, foes, equipment, attitude are selected by the system, randomly.
Once this step is done, other maps will be created and so on...
Every element would be random, like the number of enemy ships the wave will be made of ?
When starting a mission, you'll never know what sort of foes you'll face, the lenght of the mission (1,2,3 or even 10 maps), and what type of action to do ?
Every mission will be unique that way and the final reward will be linked to this (the more difficult, the better reward it'll be).
In addition to the random mission, it would be good to create a type of random loot ultra-rare (like the way youn used to get the borg sets at the start of the STF).
The joy of an useful loot is missing from STO since a while.
It's really possible, since all what is required already exist in the game (random enemies in incursion or no-win scenario, random creation of exploration missions...)
To support my suggestion, here is an example based on a known STF :
STF Khitomer space (the plan is not to replay old missions at random, but I'll use it to show how much randomness I believe is necessary).
We will suppose that the first mission started exactly like a Khitomar space elite (the random system selected it like that : one map module with borg enemies).
You then move to another mission, and here, the random system will choose another configuration. Even if it draw the same starting map, enemies will have changed, their strength increased many times, this time you have to make sure nothing ever pass the central gate (instead of up to 10 for the first map), the number of spawned foes at been lowered, but there is now 3 gates, a big flagship spawn at the center and time is limited. After many efforts, you get through (after totally rethinking your usual strategy) and then another map is launched with new elements (space or ground).
The result : the pleasure of playing is always renexed, failing will be the most common result of the mission (after all you have to rethink everything for each mission as the enemy or the objective may be too hard or the players will not have the time to adapt quick enough to the changes).
Problem with the size of fleets :
When looking at the others systems of fleet projects that the principal problem will be to adjust to the differences between fleets members roosters.
To take care of this problem, I suggest :
1) To limit the numbers of players that can be sent to explore one week, like 5 or 10. Like this, the number of points and ressources will be limited to the numbers of games played and not to the number of players of the fleet.
A secondary problem is then created : everyone should be able to try to new content, even in the biggest fleets. They could be multiple teams of 5 or 10 sent to explore the same zone, but inside the fleet, only the team with the most ressources will be able to use it in the fleet project. The other teams' ressources will be destroyed.
This way the number of teams sent allows everyone to play the same content but do not increase the ressources, just increase the chances of earning more ressources.
2) Limit to one exploration zone by given period.
The fleet will have to decide with exploration zone of the Delta Quadrant for a given period (like 2 months). That way, a fleet can only have one exploration project at a time that will give it one type of reward. Even if the fleet goes really fast, they'll be rewards that it will not get immediatly, giving something to the small fleets, even if moving slower than big ones, stuff big fleets will not have for a while.
Once the 2 months period will end, every fleet will be able to select a new exploration zone or/and decide to stay in the old one to get new rewards. To avoid the fact to join and leave fleets to get the rewards of every explored zone, the fact of leaving a fleet should lead to a loss of explorations ressources and rewards.
To synthetize :
We would have a quadrant to explore, divided in many zones (and many fleet projects to go through). Fleets will have to make choice, to know who to sent, the others would be buzy with tier 1 missions (on this side of the wormhole or gateway) while others will be isolated on the other side, doing a "trip in the unknown" for a long period of time (1 week). They'll have the chance to bring rewards and ressouces for everyone, through the fleet projects, for which rewards will be available to everyone in the fleet. The exploration and the discorety and the randomness should be the determining factors of the new missions that will reveal themselves step by step as the tiers will be achieved and a common storyline will slowly be highlighted.
I like very much the idea of expanding into the other quadrants. And completely agree on the "problems" that expansion could bring to a multiplayer game as well as to Star Trek "history".
Speaking about races like Undine or Borg, we should note that we already fight them playing a FED or KLI faction. Maybe, a solution could be to create a new storyline for a Borg character (very much like the Romulan's, with an episode that requires the allegiance with one of the two main factions), a sort of "renegade" that becomes free from the collective and tries to find a new home within FED or KLI space.
That would allow great episodes and great story-line, starting from the Delta Quadrant and going toward the Alpha Quadrant (much like the Voyager's trip, but without the non-sense of having those thousands of ships lost in space and striving to get back home :P).
And, besides everything, we already have ships fitted with Borg Tech..a few more renegade Borg Spheres in Alpha Quadrant space, commandeered by FED or KLI captains shouldn't be that bad
So, we're going to have a Voyager themed season. Fine by me. Featurig the Krenim? Logical choice, after all those timetravel ships all over in the game. Beside that, i kina liked the Krenim.
However, I like the idea of having the Vos as the major badies around. The simple extistence of the humans is the proof against their doctrine. This has to be wiped away. ...if you understand the idea.
Geting to the Delta Quadrant ain't so hard, after having Slipstream engines and Transwarp Gates. But after the Voyager featured Season, it should be time to flesh out the Alpha and Beta Quadrant. There a tons of great and interesting "old" species, we actually not even met in STO. By the way, what the heck is happened to the rest of the foundig races of the Federation? They are playable, but else? We got a Vulcan storyline and nothig else. Same idea should be fleshed out for the Klingon allies.
Bottom line is, we really don't need to go to the Delta or Gamma Quadrant to find more things to do. Get the two Quadrants as some featured episode lines with some goodies, like uniforms, maybe some playable races and good old special drops. It would keep the storylines interesting. IMHO the FE were one of the greatest ideas in the game. I would even go so far to buy them as a F2P.
And talking about the Borg. Gee, dstahl, what happend to you? It's almost a year or more since your statement, you don't think having borg as playble faction would be such a wise idea. You where right then. The Borg are a force of nature, they shouldn't be seen as simple enemies, and especially not as a playable faction. They are the worst that could happen to any individuum, period. Borg = bad = game over.
I think that we should destroy the borg in delta quadrent, like in the book Star Trek Voyager: Children of the storm. U should make something like that to give it a twist. :cool:
Personally I think that having the Borg as a playable faction would be quite cool. Playing around with all the cybernetic augmentations would make for some interesting character creation.
For those who are saying that it wouldn't make sense then why not have them as Unimatrix 0 Borg. You could also have them based in the Delta Quadrant and whilst the Collective are attempting to invade the Alpha Quadrant, they could be attacking the Collective from the Delta Quadrant liberating more drones and capturing more Borg vessels. The player character could be one of those newly liberated Borg who agrees to help Unimatrix 0 in their fight against the Collective. Also, it would allow for the Borg faction characters to align with either the Federation or the Klingons (if you wanted to go down that route) and then they would share the full extent of Borg transwarp technology with their allies giving them the ability to go to the Delta Quadrant.
As for the ships, I would love to pilot a Borg Cube but if it can't be balanced properly or it doesn't scale size wise then just don't add it. There are different ways of sorting out the ships for each tier such as using some the ships we know and filling in the gaps with newly designed Borg looking ships (as there ships are usually just simple shapes). We also know that Unimatrix 0 Borg are capable of piloting Borg ships as they were seen using a sphere perfectly well at the end of Unimatrix 0 part 2.
The ships for each tier I was thinking of something along these lines if the cube could not be reasonably to the game:
tier 1 - Borg Probe
tier 2 - New Design
tier 3 - Borg Sphere
tier 4 - New Design
tier 5 - Borg Diamond
I believe that the Borg Queen's Diamond would be a good final ship as it is still quite large in size and yet smaller than a cube.
And talking about the Borg. Gee, dstahl, what happend to you? It's almost a year or more since your statement, you don't think having borg as playble faction would be such a wise idea. You where right then. The Borg are a force of nature, they shouldn't be seen as simple enemies, and especially not as a playable faction. They are the worst that could happen to any individuum, period. Borg = bad = game over.
Honestly after reading that part in Stahl's post, I feel that they've completely lost the compass and have no good idea of STO's direction in the future.
well people think of the borg as this unstoppable force but the fact is.. for one we arnt talking about a BORG faction we talking about a rebal/liberated borg faction so they wont be as powerfull and have same resources as the collective they be more like romulans with no home and need to scavange resources from the collective and other species, and when comes to ships.. the borg arnt powerfull iv seen people destroy a tactical cube with a escort... dont seem that powerfull in this incarnantion so i think its peoples imaginations of borg being overpowerd instead of it being the fact that they arnt as powerfull as people think
While the Phage might have been cured there are those that still continued to harvest organs because they got used to it.
What? Why would they be harvesting organs if they don't need them anymore? Do they have really bad cravings for liver and onions and Q's Offal Surprise or something?
lol come on! Even a freshman psychology student knows you can't undo that kind of behavior in one day. It'll stay with them for at least two generations. Like one of the Vidians said they "used to have art.. etc". He said it in a manner that implied that they have somehow forgotten their artistic roots.
First off they didn't say they used to have art, they said they used to be a peaceful race of artists and such. they didn't say they don't have art anymore. That aside, they only did what they did because of desperation - they needed organs or they would die out. Take away the reason for needing them and there is no reason to continue killing people for their organs. Even if they remained hostile, it would certainly not be for that reason
And besides, do you think their offspring would want to learn art from individuals who had become so maniacal, and horrible, sadistic people in their effort to find a cure? I think the answer is obvious.
The whole stealing organs thing was kept rather hush hush on their homeworld. They made that very clear. and I wouldn't call it sadistic. Nobody said they liked having to do it. They did it because they were desperate and had no other options
How utter depressing that the community would overwhelmingly vote to expand on the stories of what is categorically the worst of all the star trek series
Actually they didn't. If you do the math, more people voted for all of the other choices combined than voyager. Its just that they decided to play number games and go by the single most voted for instead of what was actually voted for
The final shot of the episode also saw Annorax working on the very same temporal calculations that led him to build the temporal ship in the first place. I'd imagine Voyager's interactions just delayed the exact time which it'd have been built.
Actually what we saw is him doing the opposite. He stopped to spend time with his wife, rather than bury himself in his work - the opposite of what he did the first time around. It was a rather subtle nod to what he said earlier in the episode about regretting having not done so
Although I think my favorite explanation might be the Cult of Flesh, who have made it part of their racial/social/religious identity that they have to harvest parts from other species, and have rejected the cure. That gives you a division not terribly dissimilar from that between the Cardassians and the True Way, or the Romulan Republic and the Tal Shiar. Only a lot creepier.
That might be interesting. Though that might lead to a featured episode where the rewards include a plate of liver and onions, some fava beans and a bottle of chianti
As for the poll, I'd like to encounter the Krenim and/or the Devore the most.
I've always had trouble taking the Kazon seriously. They'd have to be somewhat reimagined to fit in STO.
The Malon could be interesting in that they're not necessarily n adversary, could be made into ally for purely practical trade reasons.
As for Dstahl's post, I'm still strongly opposed to playable Borg, that is playable non-liberated Borg. The Collective should remain the universal foe that brings all other factions together to face it.
When I think about endgame in STO, for me it is still an alliance of FEDs, KDF and the Romulan Republic fighting against the Borg in STFs. They fight together despite a 'cold war' going on between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
And the symbol of this universal enemy, of the Collective, are Borg Cubes. So please don't ever make anything like Borg Cubes playable.
On the other hand, I can imagine the Undine playable (as long as you feel you actually need any Delta Quadrant playable faction).
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Hi, one species I notice you didn't mention was the Ocompa. I know they may be a little bit irrelevant, but they were majorly mentioned in the 1st Episode Caretaker. When the crew of Voyager was thrown 75 thousand light years away from the Alpha Quadrent
One thing I noticed, is that they never went back to them. Only when they found the Caretakers mate.. But we never knew what ships they had might be a hard possibility to put them in game, but they never focused on their homeworld, did they ever get to the surface? Did they ever survive? How did they live their lives once the Caretaker died and the array was destroyed.. What happened to them. Now all i'm doing is a "what if" post per say. But I would like for some people to put some thought into this.
I would love to hear y'all's opinions on this thank you!
I feel like the game already has a very robust time travel based collection of missions and play elements and don't feel that adding another time traveling race to the mix would be a strong addition to the game. That niche feels well saturated to me.
I favor the Devore because we have a set of Telepathic traits and we've been clamoring for Betazed long enough and I think that a Devore expeditionary force attempting to invade Betazed would make for an awesome adventure zone along the lines of New Romulus. They could also turn up to threaten Vulcan or Andorian Aenar.
The game could also benefit from some overhaul regarding the Telepathic trait. Additional dialogue options for Betazoid or Aenar captains would be an excellent addition to many missions that involve duplicity.
What might be another way to introduce the Devore into the game is to make telepathic an option that any captain can acquire as part of the story that introduces them. Perhaps the Prophets bestow the gift to allow the captain to combat the Devore or maybe an encounter with a Nacene leaves the captain with a genetic resequencer and a new trait option.
if remember there was a race in voyager that looked like sontarens from Dr Who, kinda had potato heads and they spyed on voyager because they collective infomention and stuff
I feel like the game already has a very robust time travel based collection of missions and play elements and don't feel that adding another time traveling race to the mix would be a strong addition to the game. That niche feels well saturated to me.
the difference is that the Krenim did NOT have the ability to perform time travel. that's what I thought was cool because they manipulated time but without traveling though it.
I favor the Devore because we have a set of Telepathic traits and we've been clamoring for Betazed long enough and I think that a Devore expeditionary force attempting to invade Betazed would make for an awesome adventure zone along the lines of New Romulus. They could also turn up to threaten Vulcan or Andorian Aenar.
this is pretty cool.
The game could also benefit from some overhaul regarding the Telepathic trait. Additional dialogue options for Betazoid or Aenar captains would be an excellent addition to many missions that involve duplicity.
Aenar aren't playable.
What might be another way to introduce the Devore into the game is to make telepathic an option that any captain can acquire as part of the story that introduces them. Perhaps the Prophets bestow the gift to allow the captain to combat the Devore or maybe an encounter with a Nacene leaves the captain with a genetic resequencer and a new trait option.
that seems unlikely. What would be the point of making all races telepathic?
You could have it where you need to create a new character that is "flung" or pulled through a warm hole to the delta quadrant and then needs to find their way home. Thus being a combination of a new species without having to create a new playable one and at the same time not trapping established characters in the delta quadrant. This "Delta Quadrant Character" could be any of the current playable factions.
I voted Vidiian, but to be honest, that would only work under a two real factors.
1) With Phage: Basically the think tank cure was something so unacceptable (worse than organ harvesting) that they basically had to draw the line and keep doing what they were doing. Maybe something along the lines of they mutated the phage driving them to be more savage, possibly having to literally cannibalize others to keep from degrading. Kind of like ghouls, they need to consume healthy living tissue to keep their own from breaking down, and making them look like they used too.
2) Without the Phage: Even with the Phage eliminated, harvesting had become a way of life for them for 2000 years. Instead of harvesting to stay alive, they were now doing it to improve themselves. Kind of like an extreme cosmetic surgury from Escape from LA. They're out there still harvesting, but now they don't need too, they're just addicted to it.
The Devore seem like theyd be a hair more interesting to play/fight than the Krenim to me but either would be interesting imo. Please Cryptic... FIX THE FRAKKING ISSUES WITH ROMULANS BEFORE adding a new race/faction/allied species.
As I saw mentioned elsewhere by other users, how to get there is quite easy, use transwarp gates. Thats how the borg are getting to Alpha/Beta quadrants so just have the Omega Force capture both ends of the road to the Delta Quadrant.
Personally tho Id rather see yall give more love to Dominion as a faction we could play and the Gamma Guadrant.... well really Id prefer you finish Romulans as their own faction and with a better plot... but if we have to talk only new stuff Dominion ftw :P Imo would tie in better with the existing game
However, I like your stranded Idea sounds exciting.
But I think being stranded on a planet just wont work, most people might not be happy with the idea of not being able to fly a ship till its completed.
personally i think the slide towards the Krenim is probably because they're one of the few true interstellar civilisations showcased in voyager. the Krenim are also one of the few factions in voyager that just out and out pounded on Voyager itself, proving that they would match the FED/KDF (unlike the Kazon-seriously, creating a lore that had them advance like 100 years between voyager and 'now' would be difficult to do well, easy to do badly).
on a side note, what exactly is PWE hoping to do? FE series? lockbox? plans for a new expansion?
Comments
Love the ship designs, the tribal culture and I would love for there to be a Kazon faction. But I'm also aware that's very very unlikely, they are not the first choice for a lot of people and wouldn't be that much of a money spinner.
Another option is the FoB could perhaps double as a Fleet Holding, Fleets set up their own Outposts in the Delta Quadrant to aid in increasing faction influence into new territories.
Just food for thought really. Thanks.
Starship adaptability. Just like voyager adapted to meet the needs of the Delta quadrant, we should be able to 'adjust' a console slot or perform a doff mission to attempt 1 slot addition to the area of your ship of choice.
Borg transwarp core, let us craft something epic.
What about those strange space stations for trading etc?
I hope STO get's better ...
and by now I am sure Starfleet found away to talk to them using the same method they used to contact Voyager back in Session 6 so there could be a Starfleet Delta that started right on that planet.
Captain Keith A Carr
It is obvious to me that after the S8 release with the Voth we will see a Voth lockbox and a Delta Quadrant reputation system (possibly called Voth reputation) with the tribble reward being that we get 1 mark for it per hour. Or seeing that we will be in a space adventure zone within a Dyson Sphere (I hope it is fairly large inside and exploits the full 3D effect of spaceflight) it might be the equivalent of a tribble for a spaceship with the side power of 1 mark per hour.
To better understand those new adventures, I'm going to explain my ideas below :
Key words : choice - lenghtly - Effort - exploration - randomness
Those key words are the elements that are the most missing in the great game that is Star Trek Online.
The Delta Quadrant offers the opportunity to use them in a splendid way :
Lenghtly
Once the exploration trip launched, the players (at the account level, so all this player's characters) will not be able to play in any other quadrant. It's a sacrifice, yes, but he will be rewarded with many useful rewards for the fleet but will not be able to farm the usual farming stuff (dilithium, reputation rewards...).
The length of the trip must be long and those who attempt it should be prepared for any eventuallities (how many healers ? How many engineers ? And so on...).
One week should be a good length.
Choices will be even more important that way.
Why a lenghty period ?
So the "price" is important, so we stop having 10 minutes lenght mission that we have been fed since a while, so the Delta Quadrant is a challenge.
War effort
The way to reach the Delta Quadrant as no importance, but it must be a strategic choice at the fleet level. A wormhole or a gateway, it doesn't matter. What matter is this access shouldn't be automatic but that you have to play to get it, that it should be a reward. The access should be something like what was done for New Romulus, but for a fleet (so more by fleet project than by a reputation). A discovery step by step, with levels.
Example :
T1 : missions to gain access to the trip.
T2 : missions during the trip (scanning, fixing...)
T3 : discovery and exploration of the arrival zone.
T4 : difficult missions.
T5 : pinnacle fight.
Exploration and randomness
It would be an adequate moment to remake the exploration mission.
The Delta Quadrant is filled with systems to explore, and the key word should be "Randomness" or "surprise".
If the number of missions are indeed limited (limited ressources to create them), we should never expect them to be exactly what we expect them to be.
For that, I suggest to create modulary missions with random events.
Explanations :
The team start a mission, and get on a map.
The modulary system immediatly start. A first part (as a map with one or more objective) starts.
At the same time, the random system starts, foes, equipment, attitude are selected by the system, randomly.
Once this step is done, other maps will be created and so on...
Every element would be random, like the number of enemy ships the wave will be made of ?
When starting a mission, you'll never know what sort of foes you'll face, the lenght of the mission (1,2,3 or even 10 maps), and what type of action to do ?
Every mission will be unique that way and the final reward will be linked to this (the more difficult, the better reward it'll be).
In addition to the random mission, it would be good to create a type of random loot ultra-rare (like the way youn used to get the borg sets at the start of the STF).
The joy of an useful loot is missing from STO since a while.
It's really possible, since all what is required already exist in the game (random enemies in incursion or no-win scenario, random creation of exploration missions...)
To support my suggestion, here is an example based on a known STF :
STF Khitomer space (the plan is not to replay old missions at random, but I'll use it to show how much randomness I believe is necessary).
We will suppose that the first mission started exactly like a Khitomar space elite (the random system selected it like that : one map module with borg enemies).
You then move to another mission, and here, the random system will choose another configuration. Even if it draw the same starting map, enemies will have changed, their strength increased many times, this time you have to make sure nothing ever pass the central gate (instead of up to 10 for the first map), the number of spawned foes at been lowered, but there is now 3 gates, a big flagship spawn at the center and time is limited. After many efforts, you get through (after totally rethinking your usual strategy) and then another map is launched with new elements (space or ground).
The result : the pleasure of playing is always renexed, failing will be the most common result of the mission (after all you have to rethink everything for each mission as the enemy or the objective may be too hard or the players will not have the time to adapt quick enough to the changes).
Problem with the size of fleets :
When looking at the others systems of fleet projects that the principal problem will be to adjust to the differences between fleets members roosters.
To take care of this problem, I suggest :
1) To limit the numbers of players that can be sent to explore one week, like 5 or 10. Like this, the number of points and ressources will be limited to the numbers of games played and not to the number of players of the fleet.
A secondary problem is then created : everyone should be able to try to new content, even in the biggest fleets. They could be multiple teams of 5 or 10 sent to explore the same zone, but inside the fleet, only the team with the most ressources will be able to use it in the fleet project. The other teams' ressources will be destroyed.
This way the number of teams sent allows everyone to play the same content but do not increase the ressources, just increase the chances of earning more ressources.
2) Limit to one exploration zone by given period.
The fleet will have to decide with exploration zone of the Delta Quadrant for a given period (like 2 months). That way, a fleet can only have one exploration project at a time that will give it one type of reward. Even if the fleet goes really fast, they'll be rewards that it will not get immediatly, giving something to the small fleets, even if moving slower than big ones, stuff big fleets will not have for a while.
Once the 2 months period will end, every fleet will be able to select a new exploration zone or/and decide to stay in the old one to get new rewards. To avoid the fact to join and leave fleets to get the rewards of every explored zone, the fact of leaving a fleet should lead to a loss of explorations ressources and rewards.
To synthetize :
We would have a quadrant to explore, divided in many zones (and many fleet projects to go through). Fleets will have to make choice, to know who to sent, the others would be buzy with tier 1 missions (on this side of the wormhole or gateway) while others will be isolated on the other side, doing a "trip in the unknown" for a long period of time (1 week). They'll have the chance to bring rewards and ressouces for everyone, through the fleet projects, for which rewards will be available to everyone in the fleet. The exploration and the discorety and the randomness should be the determining factors of the new missions that will reveal themselves step by step as the tiers will be achieved and a common storyline will slowly be highlighted.
Speaking about races like Undine or Borg, we should note that we already fight them playing a FED or KLI faction. Maybe, a solution could be to create a new storyline for a Borg character (very much like the Romulan's, with an episode that requires the allegiance with one of the two main factions), a sort of "renegade" that becomes free from the collective and tries to find a new home within FED or KLI space.
That would allow great episodes and great story-line, starting from the Delta Quadrant and going toward the Alpha Quadrant (much like the Voyager's trip, but without the non-sense of having those thousands of ships lost in space and striving to get back home :P).
And, besides everything, we already have ships fitted with Borg Tech..a few more renegade Borg Spheres in Alpha Quadrant space, commandeered by FED or KLI captains shouldn't be that bad
However, I like the idea of having the Vos as the major badies around. The simple extistence of the humans is the proof against their doctrine. This has to be wiped away. ...if you understand the idea.
Geting to the Delta Quadrant ain't so hard, after having Slipstream engines and Transwarp Gates. But after the Voyager featured Season, it should be time to flesh out the Alpha and Beta Quadrant. There a tons of great and interesting "old" species, we actually not even met in STO. By the way, what the heck is happened to the rest of the foundig races of the Federation? They are playable, but else? We got a Vulcan storyline and nothig else. Same idea should be fleshed out for the Klingon allies.
Bottom line is, we really don't need to go to the Delta or Gamma Quadrant to find more things to do. Get the two Quadrants as some featured episode lines with some goodies, like uniforms, maybe some playable races and good old special drops. It would keep the storylines interesting. IMHO the FE were one of the greatest ideas in the game. I would even go so far to buy them as a F2P.
And talking about the Borg. Gee, dstahl, what happend to you? It's almost a year or more since your statement, you don't think having borg as playble faction would be such a wise idea. You where right then. The Borg are a force of nature, they shouldn't be seen as simple enemies, and especially not as a playable faction. They are the worst that could happen to any individuum, period. Borg = bad = game over.
For those who are saying that it wouldn't make sense then why not have them as Unimatrix 0 Borg. You could also have them based in the Delta Quadrant and whilst the Collective are attempting to invade the Alpha Quadrant, they could be attacking the Collective from the Delta Quadrant liberating more drones and capturing more Borg vessels. The player character could be one of those newly liberated Borg who agrees to help Unimatrix 0 in their fight against the Collective. Also, it would allow for the Borg faction characters to align with either the Federation or the Klingons (if you wanted to go down that route) and then they would share the full extent of Borg transwarp technology with their allies giving them the ability to go to the Delta Quadrant.
As for the ships, I would love to pilot a Borg Cube but if it can't be balanced properly or it doesn't scale size wise then just don't add it. There are different ways of sorting out the ships for each tier such as using some the ships we know and filling in the gaps with newly designed Borg looking ships (as there ships are usually just simple shapes). We also know that Unimatrix 0 Borg are capable of piloting Borg ships as they were seen using a sphere perfectly well at the end of Unimatrix 0 part 2.
The ships for each tier I was thinking of something along these lines if the cube could not be reasonably to the game:
tier 1 - Borg Probe
tier 2 - New Design
tier 3 - Borg Sphere
tier 4 - New Design
tier 5 - Borg Diamond
I believe that the Borg Queen's Diamond would be a good final ship as it is still quite large in size and yet smaller than a cube.
Honestly after reading that part in Stahl's post, I feel that they've completely lost the compass and have no good idea of STO's direction in the future.
What? Why would they be harvesting organs if they don't need them anymore? Do they have really bad cravings for liver and onions and Q's Offal Surprise or something?
First off they didn't say they used to have art, they said they used to be a peaceful race of artists and such. they didn't say they don't have art anymore. That aside, they only did what they did because of desperation - they needed organs or they would die out. Take away the reason for needing them and there is no reason to continue killing people for their organs. Even if they remained hostile, it would certainly not be for that reason
The whole stealing organs thing was kept rather hush hush on their homeworld. They made that very clear. and I wouldn't call it sadistic. Nobody said they liked having to do it. They did it because they were desperate and had no other options
Actually they didn't. If you do the math, more people voted for all of the other choices combined than voyager. Its just that they decided to play number games and go by the single most voted for instead of what was actually voted for
Actually what we saw is him doing the opposite. He stopped to spend time with his wife, rather than bury himself in his work - the opposite of what he did the first time around. It was a rather subtle nod to what he said earlier in the episode about regretting having not done so
That might be interesting. Though that might lead to a featured episode where the rewards include a plate of liver and onions, some fava beans and a bottle of chianti
I've always had trouble taking the Kazon seriously. They'd have to be somewhat reimagined to fit in STO.
The Malon could be interesting in that they're not necessarily n adversary, could be made into ally for purely practical trade reasons.
As for Dstahl's post, I'm still strongly opposed to playable Borg, that is playable non-liberated Borg. The Collective should remain the universal foe that brings all other factions together to face it.
When I think about endgame in STO, for me it is still an alliance of FEDs, KDF and the Romulan Republic fighting against the Borg in STFs. They fight together despite a 'cold war' going on between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
And the symbol of this universal enemy, of the Collective, are Borg Cubes. So please don't ever make anything like Borg Cubes playable.
On the other hand, I can imagine the Undine playable (as long as you feel you actually need any Delta Quadrant playable faction).
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
One thing I noticed, is that they never went back to them. Only when they found the Caretakers mate.. But we never knew what ships they had might be a hard possibility to put them in game, but they never focused on their homeworld, did they ever get to the surface? Did they ever survive? How did they live their lives once the Caretaker died and the array was destroyed.. What happened to them. Now all i'm doing is a "what if" post per say. But I would like for some people to put some thought into this.
I would love to hear y'all's opinions on this thank you!
I favor the Devore because we have a set of Telepathic traits and we've been clamoring for Betazed long enough and I think that a Devore expeditionary force attempting to invade Betazed would make for an awesome adventure zone along the lines of New Romulus. They could also turn up to threaten Vulcan or Andorian Aenar.
The game could also benefit from some overhaul regarding the Telepathic trait. Additional dialogue options for Betazoid or Aenar captains would be an excellent addition to many missions that involve duplicity.
What might be another way to introduce the Devore into the game is to make telepathic an option that any captain can acquire as part of the story that introduces them. Perhaps the Prophets bestow the gift to allow the captain to combat the Devore or maybe an encounter with a Nacene leaves the captain with a genetic resequencer and a new trait option.
My character Tsin'xing
1) With Phage: Basically the think tank cure was something so unacceptable (worse than organ harvesting) that they basically had to draw the line and keep doing what they were doing. Maybe something along the lines of they mutated the phage driving them to be more savage, possibly having to literally cannibalize others to keep from degrading. Kind of like ghouls, they need to consume healthy living tissue to keep their own from breaking down, and making them look like they used too.
2) Without the Phage: Even with the Phage eliminated, harvesting had become a way of life for them for 2000 years. Instead of harvesting to stay alive, they were now doing it to improve themselves. Kind of like an extreme cosmetic surgury from Escape from LA. They're out there still harvesting, but now they don't need too, they're just addicted to it.
As I saw mentioned elsewhere by other users, how to get there is quite easy, use transwarp gates. Thats how the borg are getting to Alpha/Beta quadrants so just have the Omega Force capture both ends of the road to the Delta Quadrant.
Personally tho Id rather see yall give more love to Dominion as a faction we could play and the Gamma Guadrant.... well really Id prefer you finish Romulans as their own faction and with a better plot... but if we have to talk only new stuff Dominion ftw :P Imo would tie in better with the existing game
Troll Much?
I was sure we dropped the issue?
However, I like your stranded Idea sounds exciting.
But I think being stranded on a planet just wont work, most people might not be happy with the idea of not being able to fly a ship till its completed.
on a side note, what exactly is PWE hoping to do? FE series? lockbox? plans for a new expansion?