Ideas and suggestions for revampoed DS9 front revamp.

timelord79

I hope there is still time for input and suggstions from players.

if you have wishes and hopes for this upcoming revamp, post them here in a positive way for the devs to see.
No need to rant or rage here.

This is what I hope for:

A revamped Deep Space Nine station that is true to canon in design and maybe a bit closer in size.
We all know Taco has wet dreams about this project, so let him do it please.

Content:

A streamlined Cardassian Arc without the filler, 3-4 episodes long with Madred as the main villain voiced by David Warner who tries to bring back the old Cardassian totalitarian empire by forging an alliance with the new Dominion.

That could lead into the New Dominion Arc, 2-3 episodes, which features Lars as the main villain of course, voiced by J.G Hertzler.

And then with only minor tie ins we get a Mirror arc, 3-4 episodes. that features 2 main villains, Smiley's son, voiced and resembling Colm Meany more and of course our own Mirror universe counterpart.
How can there be a mirror tory without fighting our evil me.
They have the tech now to copy our characters appearance onto NPCs. I'm sure they can also add a goatee if they want to. XD

And one would hope they utilize the new systems on the map for those stories somehow: Ferenginar, Betazed and Trill among others.

Also there is a long tradition with mirror episodes in DS9. Every episode has to feature a Ferengi being killed in a gruesome way! We have to have that.
Which Ferengi do we have that could be killed?
Farek? That Ferengi Woman from the Gamma Quadrant mission.
Madran from the Mining colony and New Romulus.
Qaris, owner of the bar in Treasure Trading Station
And of course Hadron as the current owner of Quark's Bar is automatically a walking corpse in the mirror universe.

thay8472

What about a Mirror mission or five where we're playng our mirror selves? In our campaign to become the leader of the Terran Empire / Klingon-Cardassian Alliance / Romulan Aristocracy ?

orondis

Thinking back the Cardassian arc was really three arcs. Undine, Mirror and True Way.

The Undine mini-arc can be discarded right away, it just didn't fit (especially now Terradome has been removed).

Mirror arc is also a bit superfluous and unneeded, but I actually rather liked having a mirror universe story... It just didn't feel like it meshed well with the arc as a whole.

The tribble mission was a nice bit of relief, I'll give it that, it just seemed like it belonged in the Fed-KDF war arc.

The Section 31 mission can be ripped right out.

sirmayday

thay8472 wrote: »

What about a Mirror mission or five where we're playng our mirror selves? In our campaign to become the leader of the Terran Empire / Klingon-Cardassian Alliance / Romulan Aristocracy ?

Tying this to the rest of the character's career would be a nightmare, but I think the cleverness of the idea makes it worth trying to do.

blevok

I haven't seen anything about new ds9 stuff, but i haven't been following too close lately. I've lobbied for a ds9 revamp since the beginning, and if it's finally going to happen, i'd be ecstatic, i just really hope it's given some serious time and care.

While ds9 itself is my primary interest, it would be great to see the story missions revamped, and some new missions added. Most of the ds9 story missions are TRIBBLE of course, but second wave is great and i'd love to see more like that. It's by far my favorite mission in the whole game, because it actually feels like star trek. Killing jem'hadar on the promenade while the station burns, then fighting off waves of jem'hadar outside the station...yes, more of that sort of stuff please.

I'd also like to see more mystery/puzzle missions relating to the prophets, pah-wraiths, and political stuff on bajor.

As for ds9 itself, of course i want it canon scale, at least on the inside. No ramps or any other cheats that break immersion. And i want more than the promenade. One full 360 level of the habitat ring and docking ring would be enough. Not all the rooms have to open, just some of them. Maybe a couple dozen quarters of varying sizes, and the same for cargo bays, with some science labs here and there, and some jeffries tubes. And i want dozens, if not hundreds of foundry interaction points.

Of course i expect it to be a half-assed effort, like the canon bridges/interiors having minimal areas accessible, but i'm just saying, make ds9 great, like adventure zone great, and i'll spend lots of time there. And money, if there's stuff to spend money on...(holosuite simulations, gambling, quarters, etc).

And for the love of all that is good and true, make latinum interchangeable with EC. What's ds9 without a shady meeting in some cargo bay to trade latinum for contraband or other illegal goods?

And this would also be a great time to introduce a civilian faction, or cardassian...

timelord79

Just thought abput something else.

if we get a DS9 exterior revamp please make sure to add canon defensive capabilities, rotating rapid fire torpedo turrets and everything.
I want to see the station unleash this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_hZpEve6jI

leviathan99

sirmayday wrote: »

Tying this to the rest of the character's career would be a nightmare, but I think the cleverness of the idea makes it worth trying to do.

If they did this (and Temporal Ambassador was close to this), I'd like to see it be a Mirror version of the tutorials. The trick is that the factions need to share the Cardassian arc but our mirror circumstances would likely be different depending on faction. A Mirror Romulan, Klingon, or Federation species (which would even tend to vary between human and non-human) would have a different career.

Unless we just went with the idea that our mirror self isn't enlisted in any of the big empires there... or provided the player with a decision of who to side with.

It's easier to write our Mirror self as an NPC and the tech exists to recostume them but it gets murkier when we look at the idea of playing as them because faction matters more over there unless the Terrans, KCA, and Romulan Star Empire are allied.

Here's what I think: DS9 needs an overhaul for a Cardassian front revamp and a well done revamped DS9 would lend itself well to a Mirror Terok Nor Adventure Zone, Nimbus style. This would help with justifying the work into an open Quark's. Cutscenes could transfer us to instanced versions of Terok Nor for missions but you could have open combat on the station constantly going on.

I'd nix the Undine stuff and incorporate some of the stuff there with Mirror instead. So in Franklin Drake's mission, we'd be deciding whether he or the ship captain is a Terran, not an Undine.

Basically, I'd condense those missions down into a 5-6 episode Mirror arc and a 6 episode Dominion arc. Maybe sandwich some of the Dominion stuff into the FE series.

Cardassians themselves have fairly few missions. I'd nix those and rework them for endgame as an Empok Nor STF/queued mission, a Cardassian Battle Zone, a standalone Cardassian FE, and a Cardassian reputation. The True Way is kind of a dead end concept without a revamp and is confusing when you have TWO Dominions in STO (one of which includes Cardassians) and the True Way... and the friendly Detapa Council Cardassians as the legitimate government. It may be realistic to be messy like that but it's one of the more confusing aspects of STO and it would clean that up if leveling had no Cardassian content and the Cardassians were a post-Delta Rising story.

leviathan99

Also, I'll add that unless Borticus gets a SAG card, a Cardassian front revamp probably means that DS9 will need a new commander retroactively or that Kurland will get recast.

So we're into a point where the (final) mission revamps will probably take a bit more involved work from Cryptic, maybe to a point where it would make sense to bring in Michael Dorn again and possibly to a point where Expansion 3 may be DS9 centric.

Which means, I suspect, that the next phase of leveling revamps may also have to be designed around the idea of ALSO supporting separate level 60+ play around DS9.

duncanidaho11

My own hope is for
1. a new DS9 (with some new and exclusive content for the NPC vendors, make the promenade worth a damn)
2. a 4 mission cardassian mission series (with Riker JR, Colonial stuff, Empok Nor, and the New Link) with a 5th variety mission (cryptic could pull from the list of old tangents but IMO a Ferengi Episode would be so much more preferable to a Section 31 test course or all to brief segway too the mirror universe, that needs its own series) to provide just a little gap between Dominion and Cardassian arcs
3. the current dominion arc (ie. the 2400) to be left as is (its not in the same boat as the early cardassian missions.)


Frankly the cardassians haven't been setup in STO (starting from the path to 2409) to be anywhere near as interesting (IMO) as the borg, undine, voth, and so on. So its very, very hard to justify why their mission series should any more elaborate than the other revamps. We have Cardassian space in the game and covering something of the True Way is a good lead-up to Second Wave (and besides it illustrates how the broader political situation in the AQ is going to pot), but without the depth of a cardassian faction there's not much for us to do besides waste time in the boonies of the Alpha Quadrant while waiting for the over-arcing plot of STO to resume. It should be comparable to other faction series.

timelord79

stoleviathan99 wrote: »

Also, I'll add that unless Borticus gets a SAG card, a Cardassian front revamp probably means that DS9 will need a new commander retroactively or that Kurland will get recast.
.

Yeah, they could get in a homage to the books and make Ro Laren station commander.