I just realized why L'Miren's actions seemed so bloody familiar!! Dlenn's reaction to the death of Dukhat in Babylon 5... her normal serene self was lost in a moment of pain and grief and she voted for genocidal war against the humans.
hopefully l'Miren finds her sheridan who makes her doodaad glow or whatnot
we cant kill them!!! Romulans have Iconian souls! And Iconians do NOT kill our own!
i think that's definitely the way this is headed.. definitely - the feds will be reborn L'Miren-ians, the kfd T'Ket-ians and the roms/vulcans M'Tara-ians.. it will turn out that spock is the one. we'll find all this out just as captain brannigan fires the weapon of mass repercussions, it will work as expected, unsuccessfully, and a great darkness will return, like a shadow over our galaxy. a secret, special order called the power rangers will arise.. these specially trained alliance captains with iconian souls and herald minion forces will be flying special ships called dyson stars, and led by spock, will save the day.. the end.
Of course the Iconians didn't want to kill all of us before... that's what that whole solanae thing was... they were cataloguing potential new servitor races.
I just realized why L'Miren's actions seemed so bloody familiar!! Dlenn's reaction to the death of Dukhat in Babylon 5... her normal serene self was lost in a moment of pain and grief and she voted for genocidal war against the humans.
hopefully l'Miren finds her sheridan who makes her doodaad glow or whatnot
we cant kill them!!! Romulans have Iconian souls! And Iconians do NOT kill our own!
i think that's definitely the way this is headed.. definitely - the feds will be reborn L'Miren-ians, the kfd T'Ket-ians and the roms/vulcans M'Tara-ians.. it will turn out that spock is the one. we'll find all this out just as captain brannigan fires the weapon of mass repercussions, it will work as expected, unsuccessfully, and a great darkness will return, like a shadow over our galaxy. a secret, special order called the power rangers will arise.. these specially trained alliance captains with iconian souls and herald minion forces will be flying special ships called dyson stars, and led by spock, will save the day.. the end.
*Looks at romulan character* Hmmm
*looks at Avatar* ......
Umm.. The campaign will continue as planned!
Ever since the release of Delta Rising, the stories in this game have gone down hill. Plot holes are massive, stories feel rushed and ill conceived. We're told that events are happening, but every professional author knows that you must show the event taking place, not simply inform the reader. Not if you want to engage the reader and make them care about the events.
We're told that the Iconians are hitting civilian population centers, so show us. We're told that the Krenim are our friends and allies, but they went from being trapped in a seizure inducing temporal distortion, to the new fleet holding the very next episode.
What about doing some sort of machinima using in game tools to tell filler stories, to help bridge the gap between one mission and the next. Once upon a time, Featured Episodes ran back to back, and they made sense. What happened in Part 1 resonated in Part 5, every single time. When I compare the Breen featured series, which was the first, to this one? The Breen story was superior in every way.
Slow down and take your time, Cryptic. You're rushing, and it's showing. You have to compete with new expansions coming out for other MMO Titles in the next couple of months, and you're not doing yourselves any favors by performing shoddy work.
I just realized why L'Miren's actions seemed so bloody familiar!! Dlenn's reaction to the death of Dukhat in Babylon 5... her normal serene self was lost in a moment of pain and grief and she voted for genocidal war against the humans.
hopefully l'Miren finds her sheridan who makes her doodaad glow or whatnot
we cant kill them!!! Romulans have Iconian souls! And Iconians do NOT kill our own!
i think that's definitely the way this is headed.. definitely - the feds will be reborn L'Miren-ians, the kfd T'Ket-ians and the roms/vulcans M'Tara-ians.. it will turn out that spock is the one. we'll find all this out just as captain brannigan fires the weapon of mass repercussions, it will work as expected, unsuccessfully, and a great darkness will return, like a shadow over our galaxy. a secret, special order called the power rangers will arise.. these specially trained alliance captains with iconian souls and herald minion forces will be flying special ships called dyson stars, and led by spock, will save the day.. the end.
you have done a very scary job of capturing the STO writer's style and quality here....
On our end. That gateway was presumably from the Andromeda Dyson Sphere, over 2 BILLION light years away. Of course there was no ship in sight.
Ditto; fixed that to
copied from wikipedia:
The Andromeda Galaxy (/ænˈdrɒmɨdə/) is a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5 million light-years; 2.4×1019 km) from Earth.[4]
Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mother's, and yours.
This is development team writing for themselves, and their own niche morality.
Hardly a "Niche" morality, but one not at all in the spirit of Star Trek and DEFINITELY not The Federation/Starfleet
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
The writing of this episode was awful IMO, as was the gameplay.
I wasn't a fan of the Delta Rising storyline in general, but compare this 'climactic' battle with the final showdown the the Vaaudwaur.
The fighting was larger in scale, and much more brutal. There were distinct phases as we pushed through their defences. We had to conserve our resources and deploy our allies intelligently.
Here we just basically fly in, blow up a few patrols and then enter the sphere. There are system patrols that are more difficult than that.
The flagship of the Iconian fleet is taken out by being rammed by a Klingon Raptor. When a Jemhadar bugship did it to a Galaxy class it was to show how much of a serious threat the Dominion was. Here we have the reverse, and it only serves to make the Iconians look weak by having their flagship last less then 60 seconds against in a skirmish versus the advance forces. Also, Paris comes across as a bit of a coward and a jerk by running away after two ships...only to have the raptor take it out and Paris come slinking back.
Where was the Flagships of the Federation, the Republic, and the Empire? If this was as vital a battle as the game is telling us, it seems like they should be there. For that matter, where are the species outside of the three main powers? Everyone has something at stake here- so why aren't the Breen, Cardassians and Ferengi on board? Where are the Undine? Where are the Delta Quadrant powers?
Against the Vaaudwaur we even made pains to get the Kazon and Turei on board.
The episode seems like it had parts cut out. We rescue three ships, and are then asked to 'clear a path to the portal', but there are no enemies to clear, and no use for those three recruited ships. The taskforce we leave with is less then what we reach the sphere with. Where did we go? If they were lost in fighting further out, it seems like we should have been able to play that. Likewise, the 'rescue survivors' bit has jumbled dialogue-it seems half finished.
As for the fight in the ship interior itself, completely underwhelming. The Iconian Queen is yet another monologuing idiot who all but falls on her sword. It was corny with Hakeev, It's beyond getting old now.
Being able to kill the Iconians by pulling out their power plug is beyond stupid. We saw Iconians fight without being on their ships before, and they didn't keel over and die from the effort when the Klingon high council got vaporized or the Romulan soldiers on New Romulus got blasted into orbit. Cryptic made a big deal out of Iconians being weak to Omega particles and temporal shenanigans-so why not having us use some sort of chroniton weapon or Omega particle weapon-instead of this power cord nonsense and hamfistedly railroading us towards using the Krenim genocide device in a future episode.
quoting wiki's is generally a bad idea... too easily edited. But this at least is an easily verifiable statistic from more reliable sources
Nope. Try to edit it, and come back and tell us how you fared...
(protip: you can't. Wikipedia is watched by like 3000 editors like hawks. They can start a months long flame wars about a single prefix.)
Are they intentionally trying to TRIBBLE the Iconians off? I mean, doing so we buy time as it'd bait them into wasting time and energy on killing whole planets that would otherwise pose no threat. Kind of like a scorched earth tactic. Yeah, billions might die, but since they weren't directly contributing to the war effort their loss won't be felt until after the war is over.
quoting wiki's is generally a bad idea... too easily edited. But this at least is an easily verifiable statistic from more reliable sources
Nope. Try to edit it, and come back and tell us how you fared...
(protip: you can't. Wikipedia is watched by like 3000 editors like hawks. They can start a months long flame wars about a single prefix.)
Well, it's actually watched by more than that..... but each individual editor only watches certain pages. Usually pages that they like and vandalism tends to make them angry.
Well, I don't know if it was related to the feedback the Iconian arc was getting, but it appears Kestrel is on the way out. That said, I would not expect to see any work from a new writer to compare with for at least six months based on the typical Cryptic development cycle.
To be more positive though, I can say that I will always be grateful for the inspiration the Spectres arc has given me, as well as the Undine arc. Those are my two Kestrel highlights for sure, and wherever she goes I wish her well.
EDIT: I forgot the character of Eldex. That was another very nice accomplishment in my book.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
This episode was a filler episode at best. The only purpose it serves is to remind us that this war is "extremely deadly" and "threatens the entire galaxy". At no point in the episode is there a clear explanation as to what the purpose of this attack is. Like, are we attacking them before they attack us? Was this battle going to happen either way, so we might as well have it on our terms?
Think about earlier missions like "House Pegh" and "Delta Flight". We know exactly why we're there, what the goal of the mission is. Both of these missions featured a clear objective, a problematic plot twist during the mission, a martyr-making death of someone in the group (Kahless and Westin, respectively), and somehow sneaking out a small victory despite getting pummeled by Heralds and Iconians. More importantly, both of those missions did a smart job of reminding us how outmatched we are against the Iconians.
"Broken Circle" lacked just about all of these things. And what it did have (a potential martyr-making death from Guroth) was either misused or unnecessary; Guroth's sacrifice gave us a shot at the flagship, but did anyone mention that? Even our small victory, which in this case is killing M'Tara, was almost completely disregarded; rightfully so, I should add, as now it gives the Iconians further cause to destroy us.
But what really got to me the second time I played through it was how your character doesn't sound like an upstanding commanding officer upholding the duties and responsibilities of your respective faction while safeguarding the lives of our crew and citizens of our faction. This is especially important when it comes to the Krenim weapon. When the mission begins, we can express our concerns about using it. But at the end when we're talking to Nog, Paris, and Kagran, all of that gets thrown out the window as we suddenly seems so adamant about using this dangerous weapon; there's only one dialogue choice at this point.
As I said, this was at best a filler episode. It could've been done so much better, which is greatly disappointing.
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer...
Another thing that bugs me: can they at least make up their minds whether we're admirals or not? Why are we getting direct orders from captains -- and rudely, at that? At one point my character says he will "file a complaint with Starfleet Command". I'm a fleet admiral -- I AM Starfleet Command.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
Another thing that bugs me: can they at least make up their minds whether we're admirals or not? Why are we getting direct orders from captains -- and rudely, at that? At one point my character says he will "file a complaint with Starfleet Command". I'm a fleet admiral -- I AM Starfleet Command.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
This is something no one seems to get. Yes, you are a Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master at Level 60. But, you're part of a team and you're not the leader of the team. All you can do is do that complaint lodging, nodding your head and following orders. Remember "A Step Between Stars"? You can sit there and tell Tuvok to go to hell over opening the Iconian Gateway, but he'll do it because it's part of the orders.
Another thing that bugs me: can they at least make up their minds whether we're admirals or not? Why are we getting direct orders from captains -- and rudely, at that? At one point my character says he will "file a complaint with Starfleet Command". I'm a fleet admiral -- I AM Starfleet Command.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
This is something no one seems to get. Yes, you are a Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master at Level 60. But, you're part of a team and you're not the leader of the team. All you can do is do that complaint lodging, nodding your head and following orders. Remember "A Step Between Stars"? You can sit there and tell Tuvok to go to hell over opening the Iconian Gateway, but he'll do it because it's part of the orders.
Yeah, never confuse rank with authority. Your character might be an admiral, but you don't make decisions on that level. And the people that do decided Kagren was the best choice to lead the mission.
Another thing that bugs me: can they at least make up their minds whether we're admirals or not? Why are we getting direct orders from captains -- and rudely, at that? At one point my character says he will "file a complaint with Starfleet Command". I'm a fleet admiral -- I AM Starfleet Command.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
This is something no one seems to get. Yes, you are a Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master at Level 60. But, you're part of a team and you're not the leader of the team. All you can do is do that complaint lodging, nodding your head and following orders. Remember "A Step Between Stars"? You can sit there and tell Tuvok to go to hell over opening the Iconian Gateway, but he'll do it because it's part of the orders.
Yeah, never confuse rank with authority. Your character might be an admiral, but you don't make decisions on that level. And the people that do decided Kagren was the best choice to lead the mission.
Can anyone think of real-life cases where a competent military would have a captain ordering around an admiral??? I am coming up with nothing.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Yeah, never confuse rank with authority. Your character might be an admiral, but you don't make decisions on that level. And the people that do decided Kagren was the best choice to lead the mission.
I understand that it's possible for a lower-ranking officer to be in over-all command. Captain Sisko, acting as an adjutant to an admiral, was ordering the disposition of multiple fleets in the assault on Cardassia in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, for example. But that's not what I'm complaining about. It's the tone. The other officers address you as if you're junior to them. And, the odd thing about your character saying that they will file an objection, is that it implies your character isn't directly involved in the high-level decision-making process. You'd expect that all the senior leadership of the three factions would have been involved in such an important decision well before this moment. Maybe you could understand filing an objection as something with a gravity analogous to a supreme court justice writing a dissenting opinion, but there's nothing else really to justify that interpretation.
But more generally, there's been a shift in tone with the Iconian War, and this isn't really about rank, per se.
At least as far back as the Cardassian Struggle, the NPCs react to your character as a particularly respected person who has accomplished a great deal, without reference to your rank. Several important NPCs make a point of deferring to you, and asking you to take the lead: Captain Shon, Admiral Tuvok, Ambassador Worf. In some missions, you're asked to decide how to deploy other ships; in others, it's established that your character makes important decisions. Aside from easing the game mechanics, that's consistent with the TV series -- from TOS on, it almost always appeared that a Starfleet captain is generally considered a very important person; Kirk almost always got immediate responses from the heads of state of entire worlds, and was treated by them with respect. This remained the case with other series, and I also often got the impression that Picard was treated as effectively a peer by Starfleet admirals, whom he usually seemed to know personally.
By contrast, in the Iconian War episodes, your character seems to be getting ordered around, with no input. In "Broken Circle", you're assigned to a wing of ships -- without even the conceit that you're in command of the wing of ships. Someone unnamed announces that you're the last to arrive, and orders the wing into action. In "Time in a Bottle", the mission opens with you being treated like a nobody by Ferengi merchant. Perhaps that was intended to be comic. But generally, I got the feeling that the writer was after the feel of a CRPG, about the stage when a player character arrives in the Big Hub City but almost no one knows who they are. But narratively, we appear to be in the endgame, and it's well established that the player character is very important.
Another thing that bugs me: can they at least make up their minds whether we're admirals or not? Why are we getting direct orders from captains -- and rudely, at that? At one point my character says he will "file a complaint with Starfleet Command". I'm a fleet admiral -- I AM Starfleet Command.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
This is something no one seems to get. Yes, you are a Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master at Level 60. But, you're part of a team and you're not the leader of the team. All you can do is do that complaint lodging, nodding your head and following orders. Remember "A Step Between Stars"? You can sit there and tell Tuvok to go to hell over opening the Iconian Gateway, but he'll do it because it's part of the orders.
Yeah, never confuse rank with authority. Your character might be an admiral, but you don't make decisions on that level. And the people that do decided Kagren was the best choice to lead the mission.
Can anyone think of real-life cases where a competent military would have a captain ordering around an admiral??? I am coming up with nothing.
I'm not saying it's common, but it does sometimes happen, and the higher ranking people usually don't like it.
At least as far back as the Cardassian Struggle, the NPCs react to your character as a particularly respected person who has accomplished a great deal, without reference to your rank. Several important NPCs make a point of deferring to you, and asking you to take the lead: Captain Shon, Admiral Tuvok, Ambassador Worf. In some missions, you're asked to decide how to deploy other ships; in others, it's established that your character makes important decisions. Aside from easing the game mechanics, that's consistent with the TV series -- from TOS on, it almost always appeared that a Starfleet captain is generally considered a very important person; Kirk almost always got immediate responses from the heads of state of entire worlds, and was treated by them with respect. This remained the case with other series, and I also often got the impression that Picard was treated as effectively a peer by Starfleet admirals, whom he usually seemed to know personally.
By contrast, in the Iconian War episodes, your character seems to be getting ordered around, with no input. In "Broken Circle", you're assigned to a wing of ships -- without even the conceit that you're in command of the wing of ships. Someone unnamed announces that you're the last to arrive, and orders the wing into action. In "Time in a Bottle", the mission opens with you being treated like a nobody by Ferengi merchant. Perhaps that was intended to be comic. But generally, I got the feeling that the writer was after the feel of a CRPG, about the stage when a player character arrives in the Big Hub City but almost no one knows who they are. But narratively, we appear to be in the endgame, and it's well established that the player character is very important.
For the Ferengi thing, Ferengis don't give two TRIBBLE about who or what you are, only if you have Latinum and plenty of it. Or, you're the Grand Nagus and anyone related to him. It's not a sign of disrespect for someone awesome military-wise; they just don't think you're awesome Latinum-wise. Which, in my case, would probably be true.
For the Iconian War deal, I'm starting to think that they're considering you to be the "big guns". In a way, we are: we're the guys with Fleet weaponry, Reputation gear up the wazoo, etc. We're the ships that, if Reputations were around in the era of TOS and TNG, Scott and Geordi would have outfitted their Enterprises with. They're gonna hold us back and treat us like weapons. And, I'm starting to think this is where the Alliance is going about things all wrong in the big scheme of things.
Another thing that bugs me: can they at least make up their minds whether we're admirals or not? Why are we getting direct orders from captains -- and rudely, at that? At one point my character says he will "file a complaint with Starfleet Command". I'm a fleet admiral -- I AM Starfleet Command.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
This is something no one seems to get. Yes, you are a Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master at Level 60. But, you're part of a team and you're not the leader of the team. All you can do is do that complaint lodging, nodding your head and following orders. Remember "A Step Between Stars"? You can sit there and tell Tuvok to go to hell over opening the Iconian Gateway, but he'll do it because it's part of the orders.
Yeah, never confuse rank with authority. Your character might be an admiral, but you don't make decisions on that level. And the people that do decided Kagren was the best choice to lead the mission.
Can anyone think of real-life cases where a competent military would have a captain ordering around an admiral??? I am coming up with nothing.
I'm not saying it's common, but it does sometimes happen, and the higher ranking people usually don't like it.
Also it's usually people lower than admiral.
Keep in mind that right now, the mission is a "feature episode". Right now the minimum rank to play is level 10: Lieutenant Commander.
I'm guessing that has something to do with it?
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer...
I just hope we get the chance to fix all of this. Temporal incursions can be written well... or abysmal beyond words. Unfortunately given the track record of cryptic...
I doubt we will end up becoming the Iconians or sharing their souls though. Well, have to go build a gateway now.
I just hope we get the chance to fix all of this. Temporal incursions can be written well... or abysmal beyond words. Unfortunately given the track record of cryptic...
I doubt we will end up becoming the Iconians or sharing their souls though. Well, have to go build a gateway now.
Nononono Gateways bring bad things... remember what happened when the Vorlon tried to storm the gates of heaven?
extra galactic super-psychic space ticks invaded with their uber-ships
Keep in mind that right now, the mission is a "feature episode". Right now the minimum rank to play is level 10: Lieutenant Commander.
I'm guessing that has something to do with it?
That's a fair point.
But they won't change the mission text after the Featured Episode period is over, I think. It would be better if they added some functionality to address different ranks with different dialog options. (They can do that already with Diplomacy Rank, IIRC.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Keep in mind that right now, the mission is a "feature episode". Right now the minimum rank to play is level 10: Lieutenant Commander.
I'm guessing that has something to do with it?
That's a fair point.
But they won't change the mission text after the Featured Episode period is over, I think. It would be better if they added some functionality to address different ranks with different dialog options. (They can do that already with Diplomacy Rank, IIRC.)
That would require more work done by programmers and voice actors. Which I'm guessing is too difficult to do? I don't know. I would like to have the ability to change what rank my character is addressed by. I would just do Captain so at least getting ordered around makes a little sense
I think this is an "issue" lots of video games have, especially the military-esque ones such as STO. No matter what our character's ranks are or what the level is, someone always has to give us orders or tell us what to do. STO has taken a unique spin on this by allowing our characters to ascend to the highest rank in Starfleet, the KDF, and the Romulan Republic. So while we are admirals in rank, the game still needs us to be ordered around like your average grunt.
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer...
I just hope we get the chance to fix all of this. Temporal incursions can be written well... or abysmal beyond words. Unfortunately given the track record of cryptic...
I doubt we will end up becoming the Iconians or sharing their souls though. Well, have to go build a gateway now.
Nononono Gateways bring bad things... remember what happened when the Vorlon tried to storm the gates of heaven?
extra galactic super-psychic space ticks invaded with their uber-ships
The scary part? Remember how she talked about the "great mistake" that the Vorlons made? Yeah, the great mistake was not the gate to Thirdspace. It was arrogance.
Keep in mind that right now, the mission is a "feature episode". Right now the minimum rank to play is level 10: Lieutenant Commander.
I'm guessing that has something to do with it?
That's a fair point.
But they won't change the mission text after the Featured Episode period is over, I think. It would be better if they added some functionality to address different ranks with different dialog options. (They can do that already with Diplomacy Rank, IIRC.)
That would require more work done by programmers and voice actors. Which I'm guessing is too difficult to do? I don't know. I would like to have the ability to change what rank my character is addressed by. I would just do Captain so at least getting ordered around makes a little sense
I think this is an "issue" lots of video games have, especially the military-esque ones such as STO. No matter what our character's ranks are or what the level is, someone always has to give us orders or tell us what to do. STO has taken a unique spin on this by allowing our characters to ascend to the highest rank in Starfleet, the KDF, and the Romulan Republic. So while we are admirals in rank, the game still needs us to be ordered around like your average grunt.
Two of my characters, RP-wise, ARE just captains, yet the dialogue can't be customized to reflect that. One is a Vice Admiral, but I decided to stop his advance into the admiralty at that point in my headcanon, and he is still the second in command in his fleet, not the top dog. Still, he carries enough rank that Kagran should be deferring to him, and not the other way around.
The devs really should have stopped the player's advance at captain, or had us start the game as captains instead of green ensigns, and simply advance in seniority and respect, which our levels would equate to.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Comments
*Looks at romulan character* Hmmm
*looks at Avatar* ......
Umm.. The campaign will continue as planned!
We're told that the Iconians are hitting civilian population centers, so show us. We're told that the Krenim are our friends and allies, but they went from being trapped in a seizure inducing temporal distortion, to the new fleet holding the very next episode.
What about doing some sort of machinima using in game tools to tell filler stories, to help bridge the gap between one mission and the next. Once upon a time, Featured Episodes ran back to back, and they made sense. What happened in Part 1 resonated in Part 5, every single time. When I compare the Breen featured series, which was the first, to this one? The Breen story was superior in every way.
Slow down and take your time, Cryptic. You're rushing, and it's showing. You have to compete with new expansions coming out for other MMO Titles in the next couple of months, and you're not doing yourselves any favors by performing shoddy work.
copied from wikipedia:
The Andromeda Galaxy (/ænˈdrɒmɨdə/) is a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5 million light-years; 2.4×1019 km) from Earth.[4]
Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mother's, and yours.
I dare you to do better.
Hardly a "Niche" morality, but one not at all in the spirit of Star Trek and DEFINITELY not The Federation/Starfleet
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
My character Tsin'xing
I wasn't a fan of the Delta Rising storyline in general, but compare this 'climactic' battle with the final showdown the the Vaaudwaur.
The fighting was larger in scale, and much more brutal. There were distinct phases as we pushed through their defences. We had to conserve our resources and deploy our allies intelligently.
Here we just basically fly in, blow up a few patrols and then enter the sphere. There are system patrols that are more difficult than that.
The flagship of the Iconian fleet is taken out by being rammed by a Klingon Raptor. When a Jemhadar bugship did it to a Galaxy class it was to show how much of a serious threat the Dominion was. Here we have the reverse, and it only serves to make the Iconians look weak by having their flagship last less then 60 seconds against in a skirmish versus the advance forces. Also, Paris comes across as a bit of a coward and a jerk by running away after two ships...only to have the raptor take it out and Paris come slinking back.
Where was the Flagships of the Federation, the Republic, and the Empire? If this was as vital a battle as the game is telling us, it seems like they should be there. For that matter, where are the species outside of the three main powers? Everyone has something at stake here- so why aren't the Breen, Cardassians and Ferengi on board? Where are the Undine? Where are the Delta Quadrant powers?
Against the Vaaudwaur we even made pains to get the Kazon and Turei on board.
The episode seems like it had parts cut out. We rescue three ships, and are then asked to 'clear a path to the portal', but there are no enemies to clear, and no use for those three recruited ships. The taskforce we leave with is less then what we reach the sphere with. Where did we go? If they were lost in fighting further out, it seems like we should have been able to play that. Likewise, the 'rescue survivors' bit has jumbled dialogue-it seems half finished.
As for the fight in the ship interior itself, completely underwhelming. The Iconian Queen is yet another monologuing idiot who all but falls on her sword. It was corny with Hakeev, It's beyond getting old now.
Being able to kill the Iconians by pulling out their power plug is beyond stupid. We saw Iconians fight without being on their ships before, and they didn't keel over and die from the effort when the Klingon high council got vaporized or the Romulan soldiers on New Romulus got blasted into orbit. Cryptic made a big deal out of Iconians being weak to Omega particles and temporal shenanigans-so why not having us use some sort of chroniton weapon or Omega particle weapon-instead of this power cord nonsense and hamfistedly railroading us towards using the Krenim genocide device in a future episode.
Nope. Try to edit it, and come back and tell us how you fared...
(protip: you can't. Wikipedia is watched by like 3000 editors like hawks. They can start a months long flame wars about a single prefix.)
My character Tsin'xing
To be more positive though, I can say that I will always be grateful for the inspiration the Spectres arc has given me, as well as the Undine arc. Those are my two Kestrel highlights for sure, and wherever she goes I wish her well.
EDIT: I forgot the character of Eldex. That was another very nice accomplishment in my book.
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Think about earlier missions like "House Pegh" and "Delta Flight". We know exactly why we're there, what the goal of the mission is. Both of these missions featured a clear objective, a problematic plot twist during the mission, a martyr-making death of someone in the group (Kahless and Westin, respectively), and somehow sneaking out a small victory despite getting pummeled by Heralds and Iconians. More importantly, both of those missions did a smart job of reminding us how outmatched we are against the Iconians.
"Broken Circle" lacked just about all of these things. And what it did have (a potential martyr-making death from Guroth) was either misused or unnecessary; Guroth's sacrifice gave us a shot at the flagship, but did anyone mention that? Even our small victory, which in this case is killing M'Tara, was almost completely disregarded; rightfully so, I should add, as now it gives the Iconians further cause to destroy us.
But what really got to me the second time I played through it was how your character doesn't sound like an upstanding commanding officer upholding the duties and responsibilities of your respective faction while safeguarding the lives of our crew and citizens of our faction. This is especially important when it comes to the Krenim weapon. When the mission begins, we can express our concerns about using it. But at the end when we're talking to Nog, Paris, and Kagran, all of that gets thrown out the window as we suddenly seems so adamant about using this dangerous weapon; there's only one dialogue choice at this point.
As I said, this was at best a filler episode. It could've been done so much better, which is greatly disappointing.
Either treat our characters like high-level officers, or stop calling them high-level officers. Pick one.
This is something no one seems to get. Yes, you are a Fleet Admiral/Dahar Master at Level 60. But, you're part of a team and you're not the leader of the team. All you can do is do that complaint lodging, nodding your head and following orders. Remember "A Step Between Stars"? You can sit there and tell Tuvok to go to hell over opening the Iconian Gateway, but he'll do it because it's part of the orders.
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Can anyone think of real-life cases where a competent military would have a captain ordering around an admiral??? I am coming up with nothing.
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But more generally, there's been a shift in tone with the Iconian War, and this isn't really about rank, per se.
At least as far back as the Cardassian Struggle, the NPCs react to your character as a particularly respected person who has accomplished a great deal, without reference to your rank. Several important NPCs make a point of deferring to you, and asking you to take the lead: Captain Shon, Admiral Tuvok, Ambassador Worf. In some missions, you're asked to decide how to deploy other ships; in others, it's established that your character makes important decisions. Aside from easing the game mechanics, that's consistent with the TV series -- from TOS on, it almost always appeared that a Starfleet captain is generally considered a very important person; Kirk almost always got immediate responses from the heads of state of entire worlds, and was treated by them with respect. This remained the case with other series, and I also often got the impression that Picard was treated as effectively a peer by Starfleet admirals, whom he usually seemed to know personally.
By contrast, in the Iconian War episodes, your character seems to be getting ordered around, with no input. In "Broken Circle", you're assigned to a wing of ships -- without even the conceit that you're in command of the wing of ships. Someone unnamed announces that you're the last to arrive, and orders the wing into action. In "Time in a Bottle", the mission opens with you being treated like a nobody by Ferengi merchant. Perhaps that was intended to be comic. But generally, I got the feeling that the writer was after the feel of a CRPG, about the stage when a player character arrives in the Big Hub City but almost no one knows who they are. But narratively, we appear to be in the endgame, and it's well established that the player character is very important.
Also it's usually people lower than admiral.
My character Tsin'xing
For the Ferengi thing, Ferengis don't give two TRIBBLE about who or what you are, only if you have Latinum and plenty of it. Or, you're the Grand Nagus and anyone related to him. It's not a sign of disrespect for someone awesome military-wise; they just don't think you're awesome Latinum-wise. Which, in my case, would probably be true.
For the Iconian War deal, I'm starting to think that they're considering you to be the "big guns". In a way, we are: we're the guys with Fleet weaponry, Reputation gear up the wazoo, etc. We're the ships that, if Reputations were around in the era of TOS and TNG, Scott and Geordi would have outfitted their Enterprises with. They're gonna hold us back and treat us like weapons. And, I'm starting to think this is where the Alliance is going about things all wrong in the big scheme of things.
Keep in mind that right now, the mission is a "feature episode". Right now the minimum rank to play is level 10: Lieutenant Commander.
I'm guessing that has something to do with it?
That's a fair point.
I doubt we will end up becoming the Iconians or sharing their souls though. Well, have to go build a gateway now.
extra galactic super-psychic space ticks invaded with their uber-ships
But they won't change the mission text after the Featured Episode period is over, I think. It would be better if they added some functionality to address different ranks with different dialog options. (They can do that already with Diplomacy Rank, IIRC.)
That would require more work done by programmers and voice actors. Which I'm guessing is too difficult to do? I don't know. I would like to have the ability to change what rank my character is addressed by. I would just do Captain so at least getting ordered around makes a little sense
I think this is an "issue" lots of video games have, especially the military-esque ones such as STO. No matter what our character's ranks are or what the level is, someone always has to give us orders or tell us what to do. STO has taken a unique spin on this by allowing our characters to ascend to the highest rank in Starfleet, the KDF, and the Romulan Republic. So while we are admirals in rank, the game still needs us to be ordered around like your average grunt.
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Two of my characters, RP-wise, ARE just captains, yet the dialogue can't be customized to reflect that. One is a Vice Admiral, but I decided to stop his advance into the admiralty at that point in my headcanon, and he is still the second in command in his fleet, not the top dog. Still, he carries enough rank that Kagran should be deferring to him, and not the other way around.
The devs really should have stopped the player's advance at captain, or had us start the game as captains instead of green ensigns, and simply advance in seniority and respect, which our levels would equate to.
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