POLL: Best STO missions of all time

quantumquantonum

Hello! This discussion is to decide which STO episodes are the best of all time!

This is how it will work:

• Below there are several categories for different types of episodes
• Comment below what mission fits any category the best. You don't have to every one, but could if you want. Also, if a mission fits multiple categories, feel free to repeat.
• Also mention what episode (Iconian, temporal, or wasteland, for example) it is from.
• At the end of the month I will look at everyone's posts and come up with the finalists, then you vote for the finalists, and I will anounce the winners!

The categories: (NOTE: they were simplified.)
Note: there are missions away from the main storyline (like in reputation tracks) that can fit under these categories

• Best mission group (just added) (2-5 missions directly related to each other, or one episode with less than 10 missions.)
  
  
• Cross-faction missions (within storyline):
• • Best overall
  • Best combat
  • Best non-combat
  • Best character acting (animation and voice acting)
  • Best use of random events
• Foundry
• • Best of all time
  • Most user-created (a lot of work put into the map)
• PvE queues
• • Best overall
  • Best teamwork
• FED/AoY (anything only accessible to FED and AoY, or primarily focused on FED/AoY)
• • Most scientific
  • Prime Directive award
  • "Space, the Final Frontier..."
• KDF (only accessible to KDF, or primarily focused on KDF)
• • Most honorable
  • Most relatable to Klingon culture
  • "Qpla'!"
• ROM (only accessible to ROM, or primarily focused on ROM)
• • Most Romulan
  • Most Tal-Shiar (sneeky, risky...)
  • "In enemies, find allies"

feiqa

This is going to sound odd. Cross faction mission Cutting the cord. The battle sequences are fine and the tactical layout is interesting. It is nice to get some 3D action on a ground map. But what moves this from basically mission X+1 to good is playing it as a Romulan. The mission could end with the RR captain shooting Hakeev and walking away, because it caps the entire RR chain right there. I almost wish they could pull this mission from the Fed and KDF lists and leave it Romulan alone because of that.

markhawkman

My favorite fight? Defense of Mol'rihan. It's a very satisfying fight, partially for story reasons, but partially for the epic massacre of the Elachi.

antonine3258

Cross-faction mission? Midnight (Iconian War) - the combat's reasonable but fairly intense, and it's a very satisfying and epic conclusion to the arc, allowing the Alliance to move back to its ideals, while the sins incurred linger for future arcs.

Most Romulan: 'Cloak and Dagger' from 'In Shadows' - you have to let a good man remain in custody to be able to continue tracing the poison to the source. It's part of why when you finally get to openly smash the Elachi at Mol'rihan that it feels so satisfying.

Most Tal Shair - 'Mind Game' from 'In Shadows' - also one of my favorite missions period. Never has it felt darker before the dawn when the UI is used very effectively to have your character fall under Sela's conditioning.

feiqa

antonine3258 wrote: »

Most Tal Shair - 'Mind Game' from 'In Shadows' - also one of my favorite missions period. Never has it felt darker before the dawn when the UI is used very effectively to have your character fall under Sela's conditioning.

Ooh good call. I never had a game mission make me shudder or give me nightmares before this one.

markhawkman

Mind game is the first mission where I've wondered if collision errors in the geo were intentional or glitches.

ketwolski

Cross-Faction: Surface Tension. I enjoyed the diplomatic elements, voice acting and also the destruction of ESD. To me, flying towards ESD in a field of destroyed ships was a visual I truly enjoyed.

Most-Rom: Blood of the Ancients. First real taste for ground combat against the Iconian threat. I remember playing this mission through with a few friends and how we were all really outmatched by the Heralds. The visuals of seeing New Romulus burning while we attempted to by them time for an evacuation was just beautiful...really set the tone for the Iconian War arc.

quantumquantonum

Ok, I removed a few categories that I thought were useless.

Best overall: There are a lot of Midnight choices, but I thought it was very linear and the end music sounded like a Star Wars opening theme remake. I'd have to go with Temporal Ambassador in Klingon War for FED characters. It is a fun episode to play where you meet voiced characters from Enterprise-C, and even fly the ship. It also has the first instance of a temporal ship in the storyline. There are many challenges and choices in the mission, as well as some humor elements (the Wisest Tribble).

Best mission group: Future Proof.

Best combat: Cutting the Cord, Romulan Mystery. You might not fight as much, but you get to order people to beam down and fight, bombard stalker fighters, and more.

Best non-combat: Dust to dust, Delta Quadrant. It had some pretty interesting and challenging parkour.
Best character acting: Midnight, Iconian War. This showed how much voice acting and character animating improved throughout STO.

Best use of random events (newly added category): A Step Between Stars, Dyson Sphere. There are different paths you take to get to the room with the shutdown switch. Also, you never know if you will meet the Solanae captain or a Voth mech. Also has different choices for the defences.

quantumquantonum

This is still happening, so feel free to participate! Choose which episodes are the best in STO so far!

wendysue53

"POLL: Best STO missions of all time"

I know! I know! I know! oh - wait... They didn't publish that one.

questerius

Nobody mentioned Divide et Impera?

cidjack

Any and all missions on Nimbus III, after all, it is based on the best Star Trek movie of all time.

"Drops mic"

questerius

cidjack wrote: »

Any and all missions on Nimbus III, after all, it is based on the best Star Trek movie of all time.

"Drops mic"

Speaking off Nimbus III, on a rerun earlier this week i discovered there was a teleport system for various areas to be unlocked similar to the new romulus system. Been through Nimbus dozens of time, but never noticed that before.

lordsteve1

I must admit I really liked Sphere of Influence.
It's the first hint of something bigger than we can imagine that we get in game really and it's got some nice suspense. I mean those Solanae corridors are freaky when you have never been there before, you honestly don't know if enemies are going to drop out of the walls/ceiling onto you.
Plus it has some nice ties back to one of the creepiest TNG episodes ever. I love the spooky clicking noise the silent make.

Close second is the one where we find the Elachi base in subspace and finally find out what they've been up to all these years, or possibly Dust to Dust for the cool trap riddled mazes.

tempus64

This is a pretty hard topic to come up with single mission type answers for IMO. For example, for some reason when I'm leveling up a new toon, I always look forward to heading off to Nimbus. I don't know why but I love doing all those missions. Another mission I just love doing for some strange reason is Coliseum. It's long and drawn out and yet I enjoy doing it.

For KDF, I think most fans of that faction will say that there's nothing better than the Fek'Ihri Return storyline. After that it's a toss up between probably Afterlife and The Gates of Gre'thor. Afterlife probably wins out. Despite my opinion that the Romulan faction missions are the best storyline in the game, it was that KDF storyline that gave me the strongest feeling of really portraying the faction in terms of their culture etc.

I played a bunch of Foundry missions awhile back and really enjoyed some of them. But I never made detailed notes of them so can't really list them. One of them was on the KDF side and actually used some of the Fek'Ihri Return maps. The other was on the Fed side and closely mirrored that STNG episode where they were caught in a time loop and kept getting destroyed. The first time loop of that mission really caught me off guard.

Actually. the fed one might be First Cause, Then Effect by RogueEnterprise.

thay8472

The old Undine themed missions had a cool concept to them ... Bring them back Cryptic!!!

Bring back Terradome!

questerius

thay8472 wrote: »

The old Undine themed missions had a cool concept to them ... Bring them back Cryptic!!!

Bring back Terradome!

As a single played story mission. Perhaps even tied in as to why the Tzenkheti are their angry selves with grudges against the Federation and Klingon Empire.

velqua

Best mission of all time on STO: Dust to Dust. This mission that some very good voice acting, game puzzles, and combat. Plus, you could get a Bridge Officer as well as 3 pieces to a space set. It also brought a resolution to two stories on Voyager. I would like to see a story arc around the relationship of Jhet'leya and Keten post Kim's rebirth. I would even like to see Harry and Libby Kim meet with Keten and Jhet'leya just to see how things would be in a future episode.

storules

I only have one entry...

PvE Queus:

Breaking the Planet!

I spent hrs on it and still enjoy it either with fleetmates or on my own. Nothing like taking a bunch of klingons by myself on ground.

velqua

storules wrote: »

I only have one entry...

PvE Queus:

Breaking the Planet!

I spent hrs on it and still enjoy it either with fleetmates or on my own. Nothing like taking a bunch of klingons by myself on ground.

The map for that mission is actually pretty nice. Doing it solo does take a considerable amount of time. Wouldn't mind trying that out with a group.

quantumquantonum

Vote now, before I total all the entries at the end of this week! Winners will be announced over the weekend!!!

jexsamx

questerius wrote: »

Nobody mentioned Divide et Impera?

Unpopular Opinion Puffin time.

I actually liked Divide et Impera.

It put the character in what was obviously a bad position, gave a sensible cover story to make it believable that it could progress to a point, and past that point made it obvious that something was not right, but thanks to good ol' chain of command (and the fact the mission was linear, if we're being honest), left the player with no choice but to keep going.

With a quick rewrite and revamp it could have been one of the more Trek things in the game. All you'd need to do was make choices available at each questionable discovery that could allow the player to defy orders and basically skip to the Undine fight. After all, how many times in Star Trek have we seen crews pushed by questionable orders until their morals forced them to act? Like when Picard was possessed by that alien thing? The admiral whose name I forget during the episode featuring what would become the Bluegills in STO? It's a common theme that Divide et Impera set up pretty well, it just suffered from a severe lack of refinement.

antonine3258

Divide et Impera's lack of agency (for no reason) was probably one reason it irritated people; there were no alternate paths or even ability to voice reservations, or any follow-up to make amends. I don't think the idea behind it was bad, just the execution.

Mind Games is explicitly messing with your character's actions, and has a cathartic ending, so why it always works better for me.

psychoplatt

There was only 1 Mission that needed some tactics- I vote for Terradome - in all categories

PSY

toiva

Mind Games is definitely one mission a person remembers.
I also liked the Elachi missions a lot. They were very good at setting the tone for weird/a bit mysterious/creepy.

Oh, and when it comes to inventive missions (cross faction), the Anniversary mission from two years back on Kobali (Dust to Dust?) with all the relatively difficult running and jumping over moving ramps was pretty great. I can understand how it's a challenge for some, but that has its place in a game.

lucho80

The best episode hands down is "What Lies Beneath". It is creepy as all heck.

markhawkman

antonine3258 wrote: »

Divide et Impera's lack of agency (for no reason) was probably one reason it irritated people; there were no alternate paths or even ability to voice reservations, or any follow-up to make amends. I don't think the idea behind it was bad, just the execution.

Well, it was supposed to be part one of 2 or 3... But the followup didn't get made due to the extra rushed dev schedule pre-launch.

feiqa

jexsamx wrote: »

questerius wrote: »

Nobody mentioned Divide et Impera?

Unpopular Opinion Puffin time.

I actually liked Divide et Impera.

It put the character in what was obviously a bad position, gave a sensible cover story to make it believable that it could progress to a point, and past that point made it obvious that something was not right, but thanks to good ol' chain of command (and the fact the mission was linear, if we're being honest), left the player with no choice but to keep going.

With a quick rewrite and revamp it could have been one of the more Trek things in the game. All you'd need to do was make choices available at each questionable discovery that could allow the player to defy orders and basically skip to the Undine fight. After all, how many times in Star Trek have we seen crews pushed by questionable orders until their morals forced them to act? Like when Picard was possessed by that alien thing? The admiral whose name I forget during the episode featuring what would become the Bluegills in STO? It's a common theme that Divide et Impera set up pretty well, it just suffered from a severe lack of refinement.

You forgot the one where the entire crew is given amnesia and supposedly secret orders to eliminate the central command of a sworn enemy. But the further they went the more wrong it seemed till the entire crew said they were not going to fire as the whole thing felt wrong. Then the intruder outed himself and they caught him.

Divide et Imperia was sour because you felt railroaded into doing something totally counter to Federation practices. Even when you know what happened. Your superior swept it under a rug to cover the whole thing up. It probably was just easier to excise it than give it a total rewrite for a satisfactory star fleet ending.

jorantomalak

Midnight is my fav mission after everything hobus, the destruction of romulus, the war it was all selas' fault she was her own worst enemy, her actions caused the destruction of her homeworld and the deaths of billions and a war that almost wiped out the alpha quad.

kitsunesnout

Also Midnight here as best overall! It's still the most memorable and interesting mission yet for me that has a quality that's yet to be repeated by any mission afterwards!

Second place though would probably be mind games, I loved how different that was!

Unknown

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