Ok, so they ARE able to understand time-travel? Then why can't they find us (and by 'us i mean the Alliance / the Krenim) in our time bubble?
Or why didn't they suspect anything when we disappered right before there eyes? IF they really see us as a threat, they wouldn't ignore the fact we vanished mysteriously...IF they where arrogant enough to NOT see us as a threat, it makes absolutly no sense they called in all there forces to defend the sphere (as far as they know absolutly nothing has changed between those two episodes threat-wise).
The lack of suspicion is odd, but it is possible that because of the Iconian physical issues with time-travel their understanding of temporal science is comparatively lacking to the rest of their technology (they can't exactly do any practical experiments themselves, any accidents would have failed to advance their knowledge since they'd forget about it, and they might understandably be wary of letting their subject races achieve too much of an understanding of it in case those subjects turn out to be less loyal than hoped for).
"Butterfly" is a shortened version of "Butterfly effect." And the mission description indicates that the Alliance used the weapon but something went wrong. Judging from screenshots and other clues I'm thinking this mistake restores Romulus which was then assimilated by the Borg. The Player and Nog work together to correct the mistake and restore the proper timeline.
The mission after that sends us back in time 200k years to the era of the Iconians. We get to explore their culture and civilisation. Screenshots suggest we'll see 'humanoid' versions of the Iconians because they weren't all glowy and energy like so long ago.
The page might be gone, but I remembered as much as I could.
Do you remember the fleet that we had at the start of the mission?
Do you remember what was left of the fleet at the end of the mission?
Killing 1/6th of the enemy when he kills 19/20ths of your fleet is not "gaining ground". It's just losing.
Did you know the Federation has a lot of Fleets. Not just 1 big fleet. KDF has Fleets. The Romulans they should have, but theirs is smaller and limited. Since they are still rebuilding.
That attack was with a small portion. Since several other ships was not included in the attack. There is still ships left.
Yes we have gained ground. The writers want to use a "weapon ploy" so they make it seem dire. Only a few FEs don't cover it, and when they send the player to Kobali to kill Vaadwaur. So I don't really don't see them a threat. I will more likely skip the rest of the story since its getting so horrible. Work on my alts and skip it entirely with them once they get to that point. And write it off as a fiasco.
Didn't the mission say that a quarter of all ships in all of Starfleet were lost in that battle?
Her fleet has taken dozens of worlds, thousands of starships, billions of lives.
So... dozens of worlds? Maybe we can... fight to keep one?
Well, we can save Qo'noS, Qo'noS, and Qo'noS. If you want something for a change of pace, you can always go to Qo'noS as well, and Qo'noS also has players trying to fight for saving it. As the war progressed, we were able to journey to Qo'noS for the Iconian War and stage another attack, although the Iconians counter-attacked and we were forced to defend Qo'noS as a result. This war has been pretty brutal, but in order to survive, we'll further need to attack the Iconians at Qo'noS, Qo'noS, Qo'noS, and we'll also need to deploy more ships to Qo'noS. Maybe before Season 11, we'll be able to fight for Qo'noS as well, but I guess only time will tell!
Man, that made my insides hurt from laughter!
Please, Cryptic, do not let us use the Krenim time ship to erase anything from time!
It is such a sellout ending.... even for you guys!
LOL... You don't even know the mission yet. This is your mission if you choose to grind it (humming some mission grindable theme song) Your mission is to insert yourself into Cryptic Studios posing as a nutrition expert and replace their catered food with puppy chow (trust me they work for PWE so by this time they won't know the difference). Now that they are distracted you use the time ship to make sure none of them ever exist so Cryptic studios will hence never exist. If you do this some reputable mmo company will have gotten the license and we will have forgone the mindless grinding and save billions of hours of game time as well as development time.
"Butterfly" is a shortened version of "Butterfly effect." And the mission description indicates that the Alliance used the weapon but something went wrong. Judging from screenshots and other clues I'm thinking this mistake restores Romulus which was then assimilated by the Borg. The Player and Nog work together to correct the mistake and restore the proper timeline.
The mission after that sends us back in time 200k years to the era of the Iconians. We get to explore their culture and civilisation. Screenshots suggest we'll see 'humanoid' versions of the Iconians because they weren't all glowy and energy like so long ago.
The page might be gone, but I remembered as much as I could.
Iconia, and the Sphere, are located on the "eastern" end of the beta quadrant map at the edge of known space, and Iconian forces are advancing towards the "west" swallowing up Alliance territory.
And that's just the beta quadrant alone. We don't know what's exactly going on in the gamma quadrant, and our intel on most of the delta quadrant is sketchy at best too.
"Our fleets are protecting key worlds, but dozens of other targets have fallen to Herald attacks."
Which means exactly that. Worlds like Qo'noS, New Romulus, key locations like Battle Group Omega, may have come under attacks, and are "relatively" safe, but the Alliance can't be everywhere at once -- especially after the loss of that armada in Broken Circle.
As for why it's not reflected in-game: people who haven't played the Iconian War arc - especially those who joined recently - would be only confused by all the Herald ships flying around.
Plus they can't make drastic changes to the open maps that last only a few episodes -- they have remain consistent.
I don't see any of this. This is what I see from the story so far in game. They have not swallowed up planets and vast areas of space. Mostly area is the Iconian Sector. We lost a Starbase near New Romulus for now. And we lost 2 planets. One destroy to be re-purposed for the Soleana. One they took which we invaded during the House of fools. Only main planet that got hit was New Romulus, and we held it and they left. Since then they been bottled up in their area of space and been difficult to remove.
My ship has been sent to Kobali to fight off the Vaadwaur as part of the Iconian Resistance.
They didn't make any enemy encounters or planets for us to ground action to defend it. Other than the crappy "filler" blogs. The war isn't as bad as they say.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Generally, a military engagement with losses above 50 % is a bad result*. Certainly so if your enemy hasn't suffered comparable losses. And if this was everything we could "spare" on such an assault, what are our chances that our next assault will fare any better? We're not going to win the war by slowly losing ships and soldiers defending our homeworlds. We have to bring the fight to the Iconians, or we are lost.
*) I think the number where the losses are deemed too high is actually much lower, something around 20 to 25 %...
From what I saw in game, we hadn't had many loses. Just a couple and the fleet is still strong. Plus you know its not bad when they send you to Kobali for trench warfare against the Vaadwaur to help on the Iconian Resistance. Which is where they sent my ship to. So how can it be dire when they sent me off the front lines?
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Generally, a military engagement with losses above 50 % is a bad result*. Certainly so if your enemy hasn't suffered comparable losses. And if this was everything we could "spare" on such an assault, what are our chances that our next assault will fare any better? We're not going to win the war by slowly losing ships and soldiers defending our homeworlds. We have to bring the fight to the Iconians, or we are lost.
*) I think the number where the losses are deemed too high is actually much lower, something around 20 to 25 %...
From what I saw in game, we hadn't had many loses. Just a couple and the fleet is still strong. Plus you know its not bad when they send you to Kobali for trench warfare against the Vaadwaur to help on the Iconian Resistance. Which is where they sent my ship to. So how can it be dire when they sent me off the front lines?
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
Red alerts, enemy encounters, additional side stories, ground combat. Something other than a single mission somewhere that has nothing to do with it. And a few horrible FEs. On this we got nothing. Its more like Lame War or Iconian Fiasco.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
Red alerts, enemy encounters, additional side stories, ground combat. Something other than a single mission somewhere that has nothing to do with it. And a few horrible FEs. On this we got nothing. Its more like Lame War or Iconian Fiasco.
If you're say, level 55 or higher, sure... that would be awesome... cruising along at warp 6 drinking tea in my ready room, and BAM! heralds all up in your face... lower level toons get lower level random encounters. ( I have a delta recruit that thinks she's at war with the Klingons.)
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
Red alerts, enemy encounters, additional side stories, ground combat. Something other than a single mission somewhere that has nothing to do with it. And a few horrible FEs. On this we got nothing. Its more like Lame War or Iconian Fiasco.
If you're say, level 55 or higher, sure... that would be awesome... cruising along at warp 6 drinking tea in my ready room, and BAM! heralds all up in your face... lower level toons get lower level random encounters. ( I have a delta recruit that thinks she's at war with the Klingons.)
Something similar has been proposed and shot down numerous times only with the borg and ESD
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
Red alerts, enemy encounters, additional side stories, ground combat. Something other than a single mission somewhere that has nothing to do with it. And a few horrible FEs. On this we got nothing. Its more like Lame War or Iconian Fiasco.
If you're say, level 55 or higher, sure... that would be awesome... cruising along at warp 6 drinking tea in my ready room, and BAM! heralds all up in your face... lower level toons get lower level random encounters. ( I have a delta recruit that thinks she's at war with the Klingons.)
There is ways to lock out that content. WoW used them. If your not of level or hadn't done the required missions. You didn't have access to the areas. You can go to a planet and have an option below it. Iconian encounter. If your of level and requirement you can go to it. They already have some of this in practice, so it wouldn't be hard to do. Space encounters same thing. Keep a lock on them to keep certain levels out.
Anyways since this story arc is horrible and its far too late to save it. Its really pointless to talk about how its needs to be. Its a shame when the greatest bads for the game turn into nothing but blog fodder.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
You know, there is one thing which has bothered me greatly since the beginning, where I was first introduced to the idea that Iconians might be behind the troubles of the STO-verse. That is the idea that Iconians are universally evil.
Iconia, as discovered by Picard, was not geared for war. The probes launched from the surface appear to be primarily defensive weapons, intended to disable but not destroy potential enemies. Sure, if a disabled ship's antimatter or singularity containment fails, it would be devastating, but if there were Iconians in the defense center they would have time to shut down the virus and prevent that from happening.
Now, imagine an Iconia geared for war. Every portal can open up anywhere, drop off anything, and vanish. Why not have a handful of planet-buster bombs racked and ready to fire into the nearest gateway on command? (No such devices were ever found.) Open a portal located over a star and you have a plasma canon as large as you want, capable of wiping out entire fleets. With such a weapon you have no need of expensive to maintain fleets of herald ships, or servitor races to man them, at all. And planetary portals. Those pesky aliens all up in your grill because you won't give them instantaneous transport? Well, if you like them, move them to another sun far-far-away where it will take them generations to find you again. If you don't like them, move their world to an Oort Cloud or into a decaying orbit around a black hole or pulsar.
So, I have trouble with the idea of Iconians being the evil, warmongering race that STO portrays. Their technology isn't geared for war. It's geared for exploration and self defense.
So what happened? I think we'll find out in Season 11, and I think it will be because we use the timeship to go back and rescue the real Iconians. Not the dozen who fled into subspace to build an army of heralds and a fleet of Dyson Spheres, but the ones who actually built the technology M'Tara and company use.
I think the dozen Iconians left in the universe were left behind because they were the military leaders whose continued blunders enraged lesser races, forcing Iconia to fight a war they didn't want to fight, and that those leaders then transformed themselves over 200,000 years into beings of energy supported by technology. When we take the Timeship back to Iconia at the end of its war, we'll discover the real Iconians, and offer them a place in the future where their presence can quell the 'evil' ones and where they can put down new roots among friendly neighbors. Thus we'll have the sudden disappearance of the Iconians in the canon timeline, and the abandonment of the militant Iconians who become the villains we know and hate today, and we do it all without ever disturbing the present timeline.
I have to agree, the potential is indeed there, that they were different back then, and the wrongly accused Iconians were villainized by the very same races that used to call them "benefactors" for reasons (as of yet) unknown.
And we know that "history is written by the victors".
It is also possible that the Iconians we are facing today represent a group of extremists that never wanted to accept defeat and is now out for revenge. Might as well go ahead and call them "The Iconian Remnant".
Either way would be an interesting twist to the whole thing.
Buuuut seeing Iconian bridge officers popping up all of a sudden would still be a little weird XD
"Ad astra audacter eamus in alis fidelium."
-
"To boldly go to the stars on the wings of the faithful."
Nah, not the Iconians themselves. This mysterious _Other_ who put them on that path.
Except that there is no evidence (hard or even circumstantial) to suggest the Other did anything other to "Save us from oblivion".
All we know about the Iconians is what they are now, we know zero about what they were like 200,000 years ago. Someone mentioned that the Iconians had to have provoked the attackers who bombd their world but here's an alternative.
200,000 years ago, a fleet comes out of nowhere, and bombs Iconia to ash and rubble. A vast alliance of the races the Iconians oppressed, come to take their revenge.
Federation ships, KDF, Romulans, Cardassians...
The Galaxy makes it's own enemy. **This** would be an epic way to handle time travel and end the whole war. The player then has to save the (decent) Iconians from the genocide, and transports them maybe into the future? Of course they now no longer remember him/her, and all they can call their savior "The Other".
The circle that needs to be broken is a time-loop on this magnitude. Whether Cryptic does something like this? Who knows.
You had a very nice idea about this "breaking the time-loop".
I was also thinking something similar.
Something goes very wrong with the krenim weapon and transport us and Sela (with the Founder fleet) back in time.
Seela want to bomb Iconia and she do that. In the meantime we save few (or all of them?) iconians telling them what they have to do in the future.
Otherwise we risk a time paradox and we would also destroy the alliance and all the timeline that we know. It's a big sacrifice in therm of lives but the other option would be worse for our timeline.
At this point we go back to the future after the iconians have played their part and something should happen to stop the war.
Do we "free" the other iconians that we saved? But how? We can't transport iconians trough time (time travel make them crazy, Seela said).
This scenario would explain the words of the prophets:
The Other saved them. The Other will save them again."
I have to agree, the potential is indeed there, that they were different back then, and the wrongly accused Iconians were villainized by the very same races that used to call them "benefactors" for reasons (as of yet) unknown.
And we know that "history is written by the victors".
It is also possible that the Iconians we are facing today represent a group of extremists that never wanted to accept defeat and is now out for revenge. Might as well go ahead and call them "The Iconian Remnant".
Either way would be an interesting twist to the whole thing.
Buuuut seeing Iconian bridge officers popping up all of a sudden would still be a little weird XD
I'm willing to accept they were... less.... evil back then. Good? no. It seems that the previous war was fought because the Iconians decided to subjugate everyone. The Iconians may have seen themselves as benevolent rulers and not attempted to establish a tyrannical hold over the galaxy, but that appears to be the end result of their actions. Their subjects rebelled and the Iconians still don't understand why..... because their hubris blinds them to the simple fact that no other race is willing to treat them as the master race.
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
A battlezone
Missions that portray the war as well as the "Tales of the War" do.
Elachi, Parasite, Solanae War themed missions?
"The Elachi are the soldiers." Well... Unless every single Elachi has Stealth Module III ... I don't see no Elachi.
Parasites? Why are these not being used? Send out the Parasites to find the next target?
Solanae? Maybe they've abducted us ... we've woken up ... then we've got to escape before T'Ket arrives to chop our arms off?
Missions that show how completly and utterly ****ed we are.
Blow up planets (Cait Prime / Ferasa - Then you don't have to add them to the game.)
Make a race go to near extinction ... (Caitains maybe? :P )
Bring back Kurland for a mission.
Some people think we need them to attack us everywhere we turn. Where time and time again, all we want is something more. Similar how the other villains / Reps was treated. This one is the worse compared to the others. For interaction with the villains is horrible. Its like they are not even there or trying. Give me some good space battles to join and ground action. That is all I want. That is not qued events.
This story is a complete lost. I just want them to hurry and bring out Season 11.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
It's an MMO what were you expecting? To get hunted down by Heralds every time you enter sector space?
A battlezone
Missions that portray the war as well as the "Tales of the War" do.
Elachi, Parasite, Solanae War themed missions?
"The Elachi are the soldiers." Well... Unless every single Elachi has Stealth Module III ... I don't see no Elachi.
Parasites? Why are these not being used? Send out the Parasites to find the next target?
Solanae? Maybe they've abducted us ... we've woken up ... then we've got to escape before T'Ket arrives to chop our arms off?
Missions that show how completly and utterly ****ed we are.
Blow up planets (Cait Prime / Ferasa - Then you don't have to add them to the game.)
Make a race go to near extinction ... (Caitains maybe? :P )
Bring back Kurland for a mission.
Some people think we need them to attack us everywhere we turn. Where time and time again, all we want is something more. Similar how the other villains / Reps was treated. This one is the worse compared to the others. For interaction with the villains is horrible. Its like they are not even there or trying. Give me some good space battles to join and ground action. That is all I want. That is not qued events.
This story is a complete lost. I just want them to hurry and bring out Season 11.
Thinking about it... every other rep had a battlezone. Hell.. even the next rep has a battlezone. Yet for the moment the games been building on for the past 5 years? Where be my battlezone /rage /logout
Omega / Defera
Rom / New Romulus
Tholian / Nukara Prime (Really want a reason to go back here.)
Dyson / 3/4 Dyson Maps
Undine / 1/4 Dyson Maps
Delta / Kobali Prime
Iconian / ???
Mirror Rep / S11 Mirror Rep
Thinking about it... every other rep had a battlezone. Hell.. even the next rep has a battlezone. Yet for the moment the games been building on for the past 5 years? Where be my battlezone /rage /logout
Omega / Defera
Rom / New Romulus
Tholian / Nukara Prime (Really want a reason to go back here.)
Dyson / 3/4 Dyson Maps
Undine / 1/4 Dyson Maps
Delta / Kobali Prime
Iconian / ???
Mirror Rep / S11 Mirror Rep
I guess they put in Iconian reputation marks on Kobali Prime... though that seems rather inadequate.
Thinking about it... every other rep had a battlezone. Hell.. even the next rep has a battlezone. Yet for the moment the games been building on for the past 5 years? Where be my battlezone /rage /logout
Omega / Defera
Rom / New Romulus
Tholian / Nukara Prime (Really want a reason to go back here.)
Dyson / 3/4 Dyson Maps
Undine / 1/4 Dyson Maps
Delta / Kobali Prime
Iconian / ???
Mirror Rep / S11 Mirror Rep
I guess they put in Iconian reputation marks on Kobali Prime... though that seems rather inadequate.
Very true on both. Most Reps has either a ground battle zone, qued events, or enemy encounters in space that gives off marks. I don't do the qued so I have fun with the mass joined groups on ground and encounters. For Iconian they only did the qued event on Klingon Homeworld, and a single mission on Kobali. So basically I'm forced to run that single mission to death just for the Rep. Cause I don't do Qued events. I'm doing it for some gear and it has story progression with Sela. And trust and believe it is no fun at all. And seems like worse than work. But I'm sticking with it to get it over with. Lucky for me 1 more gear item to go. And I have enough points to carry me to Tier 5.
Compared to the rest. The Iconian Rep is the worst. And it don't tie into the story making it even worse. I had tons more fun on Nukara and Defera and they don't offer the story progression.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Two of the 'open' missions, isn't there? Still, as the teleporters are set up you're rather encouraged to do the first then the second if you want anyway, so pretty repetitive.
Two of the 'open' missions, isn't there? Still, as the teleporters are set up you're rather encouraged to do the first then the second if you want anyway, so pretty repetitive.
Yes one you can do. Unless someone is finishing up. So at times I get there like that. So you just run shoot a couple and get marks. Rather quick run. At times I end up doing almost the entire of it alone. Now the 2nd part with the tanks and big boss at end. At times you can't even do it, cause it hadn't reset. So your out of those marks.
The others had several options for ground to play with. I rotated them so it wouldn't be repetitive. Since Season 11 is coming out. I can tell they dropped the ball. And went after the stuff Season 11. And making Season 10/10.5 suffer with rushed and don't care attitude. It shows it in all areas.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
All we know is that we will somehow resolve the conflict.
Who knows maybe the Alliance will fall apart because of it.
Btw the fact that we survive the Iconian War was pretty much given since the Temporal Ambassador episode when that Wells came back from the far future to fix things, so I don't understand why people *facedesk* this much.
"Ad astra audacter eamus in alis fidelium."
-
"To boldly go to the stars on the wings of the faithful."
There was no choice for the Alliance of lifeforms from the Milkyway galaxy. They never had one. Not when the Iconians want total annihilation of all other life. Not once have we seen compassion or empathy from the Iconians. They took first blood when they need not have- with the deaths of the Klingon High Council and in doing so they concreted their pitiful excuse of an intent instead of having the better morality we would expect of such advanced enlightened beings. We also need to remember that they have been planning the demise of life in the galaxy for a very long time- far longer than most of the races of the galaxy have been 'civilised'.
I was actually thinking about that. Have they realy been planning our demise for such a long time? We know that time travel is dangerous to them. I'm not sure they've been around for 200 000 years. What if they actually jumped 200 000 years into the future and have only been planning their revenge for a few years?
Comments
Sounds interesting....
A faint glimmer of hope has reappeared!
Didn't the mission say that a quarter of all ships in all of Starfleet were lost in that battle?
LOL... You don't even know the mission yet. This is your mission if you choose to grind it (humming some mission grindable theme song) Your mission is to insert yourself into Cryptic Studios posing as a nutrition expert and replace their catered food with puppy chow (trust me they work for PWE so by this time they won't know the difference). Now that they are distracted you use the time ship to make sure none of them ever exist so Cryptic studios will hence never exist. If you do this some reputable mmo company will have gotten the license and we will have forgone the mindless grinding and save billions of hours of game time as well as development time.
I don't see any of this. This is what I see from the story so far in game. They have not swallowed up planets and vast areas of space. Mostly area is the Iconian Sector. We lost a Starbase near New Romulus for now. And we lost 2 planets. One destroy to be re-purposed for the Soleana. One they took which we invaded during the House of fools. Only main planet that got hit was New Romulus, and we held it and they left. Since then they been bottled up in their area of space and been difficult to remove.
My ship has been sent to Kobali to fight off the Vaadwaur as part of the Iconian Resistance.
They didn't make any enemy encounters or planets for us to ground action to defend it. Other than the crappy "filler" blogs. The war isn't as bad as they say.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
From what I saw in game, we hadn't had many loses. Just a couple and the fleet is still strong. Plus you know its not bad when they send you to Kobali for trench warfare against the Vaadwaur to help on the Iconian Resistance. Which is where they sent my ship to. So how can it be dire when they sent me off the front lines?
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
My character Tsin'xing
Very cool!
Primary ship: U.S.S. Lacus Clyne, Dyson Science Destroyer/U.S.S. Fausticorn, Multi-Mission Reconnaissance Explorer
Secondary ship: U.S.S. Rainbow Dash, Odyssey Tactical Cruiser/I.S.S. Princess Cadance, Mirror Assault Cruiser
Tertiary ship: I.S.S. Freedom Gundam, Mirror Deep Space Science Vessel
My YouTube Channel
Red alerts, enemy encounters, additional side stories, ground combat. Something other than a single mission somewhere that has nothing to do with it. And a few horrible FEs. On this we got nothing. Its more like Lame War or Iconian Fiasco.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
If you're say, level 55 or higher, sure... that would be awesome... cruising along at warp 6 drinking tea in my ready room, and BAM! heralds all up in your face... lower level toons get lower level random encounters. ( I have a delta recruit that thinks she's at war with the Klingons.)
Something similar has been proposed and shot down numerous times only with the borg and ESD
There is ways to lock out that content. WoW used them. If your not of level or hadn't done the required missions. You didn't have access to the areas. You can go to a planet and have an option below it. Iconian encounter. If your of level and requirement you can go to it. They already have some of this in practice, so it wouldn't be hard to do. Space encounters same thing. Keep a lock on them to keep certain levels out.
Anyways since this story arc is horrible and its far too late to save it. Its really pointless to talk about how its needs to be. Its a shame when the greatest bads for the game turn into nothing but blog fodder.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Iconia, as discovered by Picard, was not geared for war. The probes launched from the surface appear to be primarily defensive weapons, intended to disable but not destroy potential enemies. Sure, if a disabled ship's antimatter or singularity containment fails, it would be devastating, but if there were Iconians in the defense center they would have time to shut down the virus and prevent that from happening.
Now, imagine an Iconia geared for war. Every portal can open up anywhere, drop off anything, and vanish. Why not have a handful of planet-buster bombs racked and ready to fire into the nearest gateway on command? (No such devices were ever found.) Open a portal located over a star and you have a plasma canon as large as you want, capable of wiping out entire fleets. With such a weapon you have no need of expensive to maintain fleets of herald ships, or servitor races to man them, at all. And planetary portals. Those pesky aliens all up in your grill because you won't give them instantaneous transport? Well, if you like them, move them to another sun far-far-away where it will take them generations to find you again. If you don't like them, move their world to an Oort Cloud or into a decaying orbit around a black hole or pulsar.
So, I have trouble with the idea of Iconians being the evil, warmongering race that STO portrays. Their technology isn't geared for war. It's geared for exploration and self defense.
So what happened? I think we'll find out in Season 11, and I think it will be because we use the timeship to go back and rescue the real Iconians. Not the dozen who fled into subspace to build an army of heralds and a fleet of Dyson Spheres, but the ones who actually built the technology M'Tara and company use.
I think the dozen Iconians left in the universe were left behind because they were the military leaders whose continued blunders enraged lesser races, forcing Iconia to fight a war they didn't want to fight, and that those leaders then transformed themselves over 200,000 years into beings of energy supported by technology. When we take the Timeship back to Iconia at the end of its war, we'll discover the real Iconians, and offer them a place in the future where their presence can quell the 'evil' ones and where they can put down new roots among friendly neighbors. Thus we'll have the sudden disappearance of the Iconians in the canon timeline, and the abandonment of the militant Iconians who become the villains we know and hate today, and we do it all without ever disturbing the present timeline.
And we know that "history is written by the victors".
It is also possible that the Iconians we are facing today represent a group of extremists that never wanted to accept defeat and is now out for revenge. Might as well go ahead and call them "The Iconian Remnant".
Either way would be an interesting twist to the whole thing.
Buuuut seeing Iconian bridge officers popping up all of a sudden would still be a little weird XD
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"To boldly go to the stars on the wings of the faithful."
You had a very nice idea about this "breaking the time-loop".
I was also thinking something similar.
Something goes very wrong with the krenim weapon and transport us and Sela (with the Founder fleet) back in time.
Seela want to bomb Iconia and she do that. In the meantime we save few (or all of them?) iconians telling them what they have to do in the future.
Otherwise we risk a time paradox and we would also destroy the alliance and all the timeline that we know. It's a big sacrifice in therm of lives but the other option would be worse for our timeline.
At this point we go back to the future after the iconians have played their part and something should happen to stop the war.
Do we "free" the other iconians that we saved? But how? We can't transport iconians trough time (time travel make them crazy, Seela said).
This scenario would explain the words of the prophets:
The Other saved them. The Other will save them again."
My character Tsin'xing
A battlezone
Missions that portray the war as well as the "Tales of the War" do.
Elachi, Parasite, Solanae War themed missions?
Missions that show how completly and utterly ****ed we are.
Some people think we need them to attack us everywhere we turn. Where time and time again, all we want is something more. Similar how the other villains / Reps was treated. This one is the worse compared to the others. For interaction with the villains is horrible. Its like they are not even there or trying. Give me some good space battles to join and ground action. That is all I want. That is not qued events.
This story is a complete lost. I just want them to hurry and bring out Season 11.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Thinking about it... every other rep had a battlezone. Hell.. even the next rep has a battlezone. Yet for the moment the games been building on for the past 5 years? Where be my battlezone /rage /logout
Omega / Defera
Rom / New Romulus
Tholian / Nukara Prime (Really want a reason to go back here.)
Dyson / 3/4 Dyson Maps
Undine / 1/4 Dyson Maps
Delta / Kobali Prime
Iconian / ???
Mirror Rep / S11 Mirror Rep
Very true on both. Most Reps has either a ground battle zone, qued events, or enemy encounters in space that gives off marks. I don't do the qued so I have fun with the mass joined groups on ground and encounters. For Iconian they only did the qued event on Klingon Homeworld, and a single mission on Kobali. So basically I'm forced to run that single mission to death just for the Rep. Cause I don't do Qued events. I'm doing it for some gear and it has story progression with Sela. And trust and believe it is no fun at all. And seems like worse than work. But I'm sticking with it to get it over with. Lucky for me 1 more gear item to go. And I have enough points to carry me to Tier 5.
Compared to the rest. The Iconian Rep is the worst. And it don't tie into the story making it even worse. I had tons more fun on Nukara and Defera and they don't offer the story progression.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Yes one you can do. Unless someone is finishing up. So at times I get there like that. So you just run shoot a couple and get marks. Rather quick run. At times I end up doing almost the entire of it alone. Now the 2nd part with the tanks and big boss at end. At times you can't even do it, cause it hadn't reset. So your out of those marks.
The others had several options for ground to play with. I rotated them so it wouldn't be repetitive. Since Season 11 is coming out. I can tell they dropped the ball. And went after the stuff Season 11. And making Season 10/10.5 suffer with rushed and don't care attitude. It shows it in all areas.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Who knows maybe the Alliance will fall apart because of it.
Btw the fact that we survive the Iconian War was pretty much given since the Temporal Ambassador episode when that Wells came back from the far future to fix things, so I don't understand why people *facedesk* this much.
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"To boldly go to the stars on the wings of the faithful."
Then again, I could just be loosely paraphrasing this.
Well, we might no longer be friends after this. There's more than one way for alliances to survive.
I was actually thinking about that. Have they realy been planning our demise for such a long time? We know that time travel is dangerous to them. I'm not sure they've been around for 200 000 years. What if they actually jumped 200 000 years into the future and have only been planning their revenge for a few years?