> @foxrockssocks said: > (Quote) > > > I mostly agree with this from my memory of one playthrough. I believe the episode intends to imply that the BOFF and ship we get as rewards are the Romulan turned Elachi turned Romulachi, aka Tarsev and his ship. The bad shrooms mess up his mind enough but after we fix everything, he and presumably his crew, remember enough of their past lives to defect. > > In other words, they are changed through a freak occurrence after tripping on bad shrooms while the rest remain disgusting creatures or corpses. Had they arrived 5 minutes earlier they would have been dead, and 5 minutes later, they would have remained normal Elachi. > > I'll be very disappointed if it turns out the Elachi are going to largely become friendly, but I don't think the episode really implies that.
The problem is Cryptic's track record. First the Kobali, with forcibly converting and brainwashing sapient beings into more Kobali. Then trying to make mass murderers sympathetic with the Iconians. Now, they actually managed to pull it off decently with the Hur'q, but they still dumped all the crimes of the Dominion on one leader without even thinking about the complicity of the other changelings.
IOW they're one for four with this basic plot. Or one for six, possibly: they had legitimate opportunities to do it well with the Vaadwaur and Undine, and chickened out.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
currently, I just want to forget that I have done this mission. the visuals are amazing, but i'm fed up by all this mushroom nonsense. I played with my main rom and that was just ridiculous to help the elachi (btw the new elachi model is really ugly). I'm not going to do again this mission.
I miss the good old sto. I hope that star trek: picard will be a great show, and really " Star Trek".
While I thought most of the mission was decently designed, ickiness about the Elachi aside, I did find the part where you had to run between two consoles balancing the radiation level to be very frustrating.
I really dislike action segments like this in missions. There's a reason I'm playing a MMORPG and not a Mario game or competitive FPS. I'm older and my reflexes suck.
Besides the Elachi nonsense. I had to suspend my disbelief to understand how a program made of light absorbed the memories and soul of the real stamets...
"Great men are not peacemakers, Great men are conquerors!" - Captain Archer" "When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." - Captain Janeway #Support Mirror Universe I.S.S. Prefixes
Besides the Elachi nonsense. I had to suspend my disbelief to understand how a program made of light absorbed the memories and soul of the real stamets...
I'm afraid these mushrooms are turning to be ultimate plot device - instantaneous space travel, resurrection, integration with all kind of biological and artifical life-forms...practically the Holy Grail of science. You need it to fill a plot hole, they can do it.
Used to be a fun game yes, unfortunately things changed in the last 2 yrs and now its a job with little time to even want to spend building characters any more.
> @somtaawkhar said: > (Quote) > Andoria seems to be a hub of temporal/multi-dimensional events. > > The Battle of Procyon V takes place there as well.
According to Enterprise, the battle takes place in the Expanse, far from Andoria.
> @somtaawkhar said: > (Quote) > Yes it is, or, more specifically, Andoria is in the Procyon system > > As you can clearly see in-game, and in the pic below, the planet Andoria orbits the star Procyon. Which is consistent with the Star Trek Star Charts, which state Procyon is the real world human name given to the star that Andoria orbits in-show. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procyon > Andoria would be Procyon 8 in-game. > (Image)
Not according to canon. Andoria is both the name of the moon where Andorians originated and the name of that system.
Andoria doesn't have a canonical location. Star Charts says it's the Procyon binary system, the Star Fleet Technical manual says it's the Epsilon Indi trinary system. Both stars are a little under 12 LY from Earth, so either one is in striking distance of both Vulcan (now canonically 40 Eridani thanks to DSC) and Earth. STO relies on Star Charts, so for our purposes it's Procyon.
Star Charts also contradicts canon by describing Andoria as Procyon VIII, mistakenly forgetting that it's the moon of a gas giant and not a planet in its own right.
Personally, I blame ENT having a habitually lousy sense of scale even by Star Trek standards for the placement of the Procyon V battle.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
As if that wasn't confusing enough, in Tears of the Prophets Andoria is shown to be close to the Cardassian Border.
Also, the fact that they're using the Star Charts as base for the Galaxy Map doesn't mean they're always respecting it: just look at what they did with the Sol System... I know they explained why they decided to put it in the Beta Quadrant, but it's still incredibly amusing to me, (and senseless, but that's another story entirely).
All in all, I think Andoria is one of those systems that changes position according to what's needed for this or that episode.
Not agreeing with someone doesn't give you the right to be an TRIBBLE.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
I'm going to go through this mission one more time, for the sake of getting the new BOff for a character whose shtick is being a mad scientist. And then I'm never going to touch it again, because it's a colossal pain.
Plot: The idea of contamination of interdimensional mushrooms causing the destruction of the multiverse was a stupid plot in the show, and it's not any smarter in STO. The idea of feeding someone's research papers into a computer and getting an AI that reasonably imitates the original's personality was nonsensical when VOY did it with Cardassian Mengele, and it's no more logical with STO's Holo-Stamets.
Forgive me, also, for not feeling sorry for the Elachi, when the "friendly" one is still confirmed to have once been a Romulan before being overwritten by malevolent spores. Trying to make such a species sympathetic is even dumber than doing so with the Kobali, and that's saying something.
Quoted for emphasis. At least when Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda made a species that reproduces by parasitizing sentient life forms, they had enough sense to describe it as r@pe and consider the species non-negotiably inhuman monsters (aside from Token Heroic Magog Rev Bem).
Was this mission written by the same person who wrote the damn Kobali arc? And why wasn't that person fired?
Actually... as someone so rabidly fascinated with the Romulan Republic story that I played it twice... on Tribble, once before and once after the Tribble server wipe. I can say this answers a question that's been bugging me for years. Where did the Elachi originate? We know for sure they didn't start out parasitizing Romulans. So what DID they start on? This ep suggests that the Elachi we see in Devil's Choice are basically resorting to cannibalism since they lost access to their natural food source. Some of them probably aren't made out of Romulans either. It also suggests a method by which the Iconians may have forced them to become a servitor race. Essentially a very specific form of insanity.
This episode is very nice visually. I can't remember seeing such emotion on my/other character faces before. The slides between nodes is really cool. Story-wise it's a bit meh, to me, not a fan of DSC's story elements. A bit to fantasy for my sci-fi. But overall I'd give it a 8/10. Also like that I can rotate though my alts each 20hrs* for the Event credit. I don't have to run the same toon 20 times. Which would be a real drag.
*I wish we'd switch from a 20hr cooldown to a true daily reset like our Dil refining has. Some days I work early and others I work evenings. It really makes doing a 20hr cooldown event problematic and occasionally I have to skip a day because IRL stuff.
Graphically far superior to other mission(s), in fact a noticeable increase of all texture qualities since this update. However, this mission left me wanting to to avoid the story update. I was given the impression that I was nothing more than a mechanical arm meant to do mundane tasks. There was nothing that Stamets could not do on his own so, my role was redundant. The Stamets character was both arrogant and condescending. Voice acting, while good, was written and expressed in a very unprofessional way. By this I mean, the characters were talking as if they had full authority to create and develop any and all endeavours. Using phrases such as, "I won't let that happen," or "Not on my watch" are inferring that the person has sole authority. Starfleet, while a citizen outfit, is still organized by chains of command. At one point Stamets begins a thought filled trip down memory lane. The former RCN in me unequivocally denies this. If you start going on about feelings during a mission roll-out, you are clearly not meant to be there. You are a liability to the team and you'll be on the first buggy back to the bivouacs - keep your mind clear and your eyes on the prize.
The environment was, interesting. Travelling to different pockets of .. something .. was refreshing but the colours were too saturated and felt very surreal. Additionally, words such as, "portals, realms" and "corruption" were used very frequently and more of the, "...you must stop this" was thrown around. I briefly thought I was playing a D&D quest with laser guns.
I would like Cryptic maintain the same level of science and professionalism as seen in previous missions ..
"Victory is not determined by whose armies are strongest. It is determined by who is left standing." - Napoléon
Graphically far superior to other mission(s), in fact a noticeable increase of all texture qualities since this update. However, this mission left me wanting to to avoid the story update. I was given the impression that I was nothing more than a mechanical arm meant to do mundane tasks. There was nothing that Stamets could not do on his own so, my role was redundant. The Stamets character was both arrogant and condescending. Voice acting, while good, was written and expressed in a very unprofessional way. By this I mean, the characters were talking as if they had full authority to create and develop any and all endeavours. Using phrases such as, "I won't let that happen," or "Not on my watch" are inferring that the person has sole authority. Starfleet, while a citizen outfit, is still organized by chains of command. At one point Stamets begins a thought filled trip down memory lane. The former RCN in me unequivocally denies this. If you start going on about feelings during a mission roll-out, you are clearly not meant to be there. You are a liability to the team and you'll be on the first buggy back to the bivouacs - keep your mind clear and your eyes on the prize.
The environment was, interesting. Travelling to different pockets of .. something .. was refreshing but the colours were too saturated and felt very surreal. Additionally, words such as, "portals, realms" and "corruption" were used very frequently and more of the, "...you must stop this" was thrown around. I briefly thought I was playing a D&D quest with laser guns.
I would like Cryptic maintain the same level of science and professionalism as seen in previous missions ..
Did you watch season 2 of Discovery?, the enviroment is great, same as the series, and Staments it's just like the series character, that's why i liked his performance so much, it was him, even in his behaviour... overal, i liked it.. and about the Elachi, we will help a faction of them, like the liberated borg or something like that, so i dont see the problem, the other elachi are as bad as always.. they are the Libelachi??
Graphically far superior to other mission(s), in fact a noticeable increase of all texture qualities since this update. However, this mission left me wanting to to avoid the story update. I was given the impression that I was nothing more than a mechanical arm meant to do mundane tasks. There was nothing that Stamets could not do on his own so, my role was redundant. The Stamets character was both arrogant and condescending. Voice acting, while good, was written and expressed in a very unprofessional way. By this I mean, the characters were talking as if they had full authority to create and develop any and all endeavours. Using phrases such as, "I won't let that happen," or "Not on my watch" are inferring that the person has sole authority. Starfleet, while a citizen outfit, is still organized by chains of command. At one point Stamets begins a thought filled trip down memory lane. The former RCN in me unequivocally denies this. If you start going on about feelings during a mission roll-out, you are clearly not meant to be there. You are a liability to the team and you'll be on the first buggy back to the bivouacs - keep your mind clear and your eyes on the prize.
The environment was, interesting. Travelling to different pockets of .. something .. was refreshing but the colours were too saturated and felt very surreal. Additionally, words such as, "portals, realms" and "corruption" were used very frequently and more of the, "...you must stop this" was thrown around. I briefly thought I was playing a D&D quest with laser guns.
I would like Cryptic maintain the same level of science and professionalism as seen in previous missions ..
Did you watch season 2 of Discovery?, the enviroment is great, same as the series, and Staments it's just like the series character, that's why i liked his performance so much, it was him, even in his behaviour... overal, i liked it.. and about the Elachi, we will help a faction of them, like the liberated borg or something like that, so i dont see the problem, the other elachi are as bad as always.. they are the Libelachi??
Actually, No. I did not watch Discovery past episode three. I had to turn it off because my son could not watch it and I wanted to introduce him to Star Trek. But the point of my Post was to point out that this type of interaction will not garner a new audience.
Libelachi - LOL .. good one
"Victory is not determined by whose armies are strongest. It is determined by who is left standing." - Napoléon
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
> @foxrockssocks said:
> (Quote)
>
>
> I mostly agree with this from my memory of one playthrough. I believe the episode intends to imply that the BOFF and ship we get as rewards are the Romulan turned Elachi turned Romulachi, aka Tarsev and his ship. The bad shrooms mess up his mind enough but after we fix everything, he and presumably his crew, remember enough of their past lives to defect.
>
> In other words, they are changed through a freak occurrence after tripping on bad shrooms while the rest remain disgusting creatures or corpses. Had they arrived 5 minutes earlier they would have been dead, and 5 minutes later, they would have remained normal Elachi.
>
> I'll be very disappointed if it turns out the Elachi are going to largely become friendly, but I don't think the episode really implies that.
The problem is Cryptic's track record. First the Kobali, with forcibly converting and brainwashing sapient beings into more Kobali. Then trying to make mass murderers sympathetic with the Iconians. Now, they actually managed to pull it off decently with the Hur'q, but they still dumped all the crimes of the Dominion on one leader without even thinking about the complicity of the other changelings.
IOW they're one for four with this basic plot. Or one for six, possibly: they had legitimate opportunities to do it well with the Vaadwaur and Undine, and chickened out.
I don't disagree. It is one of my pet peeves about the game that some of our biggest enemies just suddenly change in the end. The Iconian finish annoyed me although the way it brought the KDF and FED together was believable, the Hur'q felt very forced and sort of a deus ex machina with the Founder behind it all. The Breen are kinda in this boat too after the Deferi line, and now we can fly all their ships, however its arguable that the whole story there was just the result of one leader.
The Kobali, though, as screwed up as they are, were always friendly to us. I thought their secret was all handled as far more of a grey area than most.
The Vaudwaar can burn for all I care. I hate fighting them but love killing them when I have to. Evil SOBs. Maybe that's largely because of Gaul, and the rebellion almost made sense but they were all happy to go along with him from the beginning. They came back onto the scene on a war of conquest and revenge, that is how we first met them. I really can't have sympathy for common soldiers who execute civilians, so trying to redeem them to some degree with the rebellion didn't make a lot of sense and fell flat with me.
The Undine I thought were almost done reasonably well. They weren't overtly hostile in Voyager episodes after all was said and done so it was one of the early questions in STO, why are they now? With Iconian manipulation behind it, they could have forced them to be friendly after that was all revealed, but instead they basically left us alone, which feels more realistic. However, they were better off as a story before they retconned in that idiot Cooper, and that made the ultimate end of the Undine wars a lot less satisfying.
But then that is the stupid trope the game keeps throwing at us isn't it? Once we kill the main badguy the rest just stop being jerks. No treaties to end wars, no lingering animosities, no power shifts as a power vacuum forms somewhere.
So I'm hoping they don't do anything to make the Elachi friendly or sympathetic once we off Queen Bowser and save the Mushroom kingdom. There's no legitimate reason to do that because their existence and reproduction is a direct threat to sentient life whereas the Kobali seem to be able to manage without forcing it on anyone, aside from some Vaudwaar.
Graphically far superior to other mission(s), in fact a noticeable increase of all texture qualities since this update. However, this mission left me wanting to to avoid the story update. I was given the impression that I was nothing more than a mechanical arm meant to do mundane tasks. There was nothing that Stamets could not do on his own so, my role was redundant. The Stamets character was both arrogant and condescending. Voice acting, while good, was written and expressed in a very unprofessional way. By this I mean, the characters were talking as if they had full authority to create and develop any and all endeavours. Using phrases such as, "I won't let that happen," or "Not on my watch" are inferring that the person has sole authority. Starfleet, while a citizen outfit, is still organized by chains of command. At one point Stamets begins a thought filled trip down memory lane. The former RCN in me unequivocally denies this. If you start going on about feelings during a mission roll-out, you are clearly not meant to be there. You are a liability to the team and you'll be on the first buggy back to the bivouacs - keep your mind clear and your eyes on the prize.
The environment was, interesting. Travelling to different pockets of .. something .. was refreshing but the colours were too saturated and felt very surreal. Additionally, words such as, "portals, realms" and "corruption" were used very frequently and more of the, "...you must stop this" was thrown around. I briefly thought I was playing a D&D quest with laser guns.
I would like Cryptic maintain the same level of science and professionalism as seen in previous missions ..
Did you watch season 2 of Discovery?, the enviroment is great, same as the series, and Staments it's just like the series character, that's why i liked his performance so much, it was him, even in his behaviour... overal, i liked it.. and about the Elachi, we will help a faction of them, like the liberated borg or something like that, so i dont see the problem, the other elachi are as bad as always.. they are the Libelachi??
The story seems to suggest that the evil Elachi are all corrupted somehow.
The problem is Cryptic's track record. First the Kobali, with forcibly converting and brainwashing sapient beings into more Kobali. Then trying to make mass murderers sympathetic with the Iconians. Now, they actually managed to pull it off decently with the Hur'q, but they still dumped all the crimes of the Dominion on one leader without even thinking about the complicity of the other changelings.
IOW they're one for four with this basic plot. Or one for six, possibly: they had legitimate opportunities to do it well with the Vaadwaur and Undine, and chickened out.
I don't disagree. It is one of my pet peeves about the game that some of our biggest enemies just suddenly change in the end. The Iconian finish annoyed me although the way it brought the KDF and FED together was believable, the Hur'q felt very forced and sort of a deus ex machina with the Founder behind it all. The Breen are kinda in this boat too after the Deferi line, and now we can fly all their ships, however its arguable that the whole story there was just the result of one leader.
The Kobali, though, as screwed up as they are, were always friendly to us. I thought their secret was all handled as far more of a grey area than most.
The Kobali are smiling monsters.
Go back. Go all the way back to their debut episode, VGR: "Ashes to Ashes". When a Kobali convert refuses to submit to the lifestyle and runs away, they send two capital ships -- or what the Kobali consider capital ships -- to bring her back by force. When they're met by her real family, the crew of Voyager, she refuses to go with the Kobali, so they attack the ship. Then her self-appointed "dad" sends a message saying that if he dies trying to retrieve her, it's on her head.
That's not the act of a loving parent, it's textbook abusive boyfriend behavior, shaming and guilting the abused significant other into going back with them. It also ties nicely into the "Stay with your kind!" idea that '90s Trek so often pulled out. That's a segregationist's position.
There's also the rampant consent issues regarding their reproduction by necromancy, which have been covered at length before.
I don't give a f**k that the Kobali act friendly to us. So did South Vietnam, so did the Pinochet regime in Chile, so do Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It doesn't make them worthy allies. The storyline should have ended with the Alliance seizing the cryo vault and turning it over to the Vaadwaur, and then pulling out.
Instead, the Kobali are given the job of providing medical support for the invasion of Vaadwaur Prime! Bar none, the most horrifying single dialog box in the entire game.
The Vaudwaar can burn for all I care. I hate fighting them but love killing them when I have to. Evil SOBs. Maybe that's largely because of Gaul, and the rebellion almost made sense but they were all happy to go along with him from the beginning. They came back onto the scene on a war of conquest and revenge, that is how we first met them. I really can't have sympathy for common soldiers who execute civilians, so trying to redeem them to some degree with the rebellion didn't make a lot of sense and fell flat with me.
Well, see, I look at it completely differently. What do the Vaadwaur actually do that is so bad?
Fight a war of conquest. Excuse me, one of the primary members of the Alliance is the Klingon freaking Empire. The Federation literally just fought off a land-grab by the Klingons on their mutual border in the Beta Quadrant, and for roughly the same reason: to "recover ancient territories". Explain to me why the Klingons get to walk on that, and yet the Vaadwaur must be stopped at all costs when they do the same thing?
Use chemical weapons against a military target. Compared to World War I, what's actually shown in the mission is frankly humane: the weapon they used killed Kobali almost instantly, it's nothing like the German gas attacks at Osowiec Fortress or elsewhere. Is that really so much worse than killing them with disruptors? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRow6G5wQIw
Inoculate themselves against Kobali conversion. This not only condemns the Kobali morally -- the Vaadwaur expressly forbid themselves to be used as breeding stock: consent is not given -- but it also makes perfect military sense as it prevents their enemy from replenishing their numbers. Oh, and we're railroaded into defeating the inoculation.
In other words, the Kobali storyline forces us to be complicit in a mass r@pe that makes the Soviet sack of Berlin look tame.
Murder some Talaxians because Gaul felt put-upon. That's on him, not the entire species. Before anyone invokes Godwin's Law, I'll do it for you: one of the lesser-known facts about the Nuremberg trials is that they usually acquitted soldiers ranked lieutenant or below, more or less because they were deemed too dominated by their officers and the N@zi Party apparatus to be fully responsible for their actions.
There's a similar account I read of a conversation between a Japanese WWII veteran and an American. He praised the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, because before that, he was completely willing to die in suicidal combat for the Emperor.
"Do you still want to do that?" he's asked.
"No! I was crazy! We all were!"
Bear in mind that, per console dialogs found in "Dust to Dust", the organizers of the cryo vault program favored children because they could be trained as soldiers more easily once the coast was clear.
Also bear in mind that the fact that Gaul needed the bluegills at all suggests that his senior officers as well, would not willingly have gone along with his plans.
So basically you're left with writers' hoplophobia as the reason the Vaads are EVUL.
The Undine I thought were almost done reasonably well. They weren't overtly hostile in Voyager episodes after all was said and done so it was one of the early questions in STO, why are they now? With Iconian manipulation behind it, they could have forced them to be friendly after that was all revealed, but instead they basically left us alone, which feels more realistic. However, they were better off as a story before they retconned in that idiot Cooper, and that made the ultimate end of the Undine wars a lot less satisfying.
See, I think it would've been beautiful if the Undine had joined the alliance during the Iconian War. They have just as much reason as anyone to be mad as all hell at the Iconians: they were made into the Iconians' useful idiots, and a culture that prides itself so much on strength logically would not be happy about that. And for crying out loud, the Undine mothership's dialogue in "Mindscape" sets it right up.
Plus, well, Death Star-level firepower. They're the perfect door-kicker against the Dyson sphere. I imagine an STF playing in reverse of "Undine Assault", where we have to protect Undine planet killers from the Heralds during raids on Iconian infrastructure.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
So basically you're left with writers' hoplophobia as the reason the Vaads are EVUL.
While I do generally agree with your assessment of both on the kobali and the vaadwaur, I don't see that as the writers' fault. We don't fight the vaadwaur because they're evil. We fight them because they're hostile and serving the even more hostile iconians. Once we defeated Gaul and his pro-iconian flunkies (most of which were mind-controlled by bluegill to begin with), they stop being a threat and we leave the dissenting faction to hopefully build a more reasonable govenment.
And as such, I don't think we help the kobali because they're "good," either (at least, not after we found out what they've been up to). The writers acknowledged their moral failings, as argued by captain Kim, and by the end of the arc we even see them begin reforms to address them. Rather, we help them because it's strategically advantageous to cooperate against a mutual enemy. Enemy of my enemy and all that. While the gameplay may be too easy to ever properly represent it, dialogue across the story arc indicates that the vaadwaur are supposed to be too powerful for us to beat on our own and that's why we're trying to get all the allies we can get (I mean, seriously, even the effin kazon).
About the only thing about the kobali arc that I do fault the writers for is not showing, on-screen, explicit orders from Alliance command to cooperate with the kobali despite of the revelations made. The benzite showing up to preach Prime Directive (which doesn't even apply, since the kobali holding the vaadwaur in stasis hostage is obviously not an internal matter) to captain Kim while the player character, who is the ranking officer present, completely ignores the whole argument just makes no sense at all unless the PC knows the decision was already made.
So basically you're left with writers' hoplophobia as the reason the Vaads are EVUL.
While I do generally agree with your assessment of both on the kobali and the vaadwaur, I don't see that as the writers' fault. We don't fight the vaadwaur because they're evil. We fight them because they're hostile and serving the even more hostile iconians. Once we defeated Gaul and his pro-iconian flunkies (most of which were mind-controlled by bluegill to begin with), they stop being a threat and we leave the dissenting faction to hopefully build a more reasonable govenment.
And as such, I don't think we help the kobali because they're "good," either (at least, not after we found out what they've been up to). The writers acknowledged their moral failings, as argued by captain Kim, and by the end of the arc we even see them begin reforms to address them. Rather, we help them because it's strategically advantageous to cooperate against a mutual enemy. Enemy of my enemy and all that. While the gameplay may be too easy to ever properly represent it, dialogue across the story arc indicates that the vaadwaur are supposed to be too powerful for us to beat on our own and that's why we're trying to get all the allies we can get (I mean, seriously, even the effin kazon).
Fails the scale test. The cryo vault that Gaul himself came out of on Vaadwaur Prime in "Dragon's Teeth" only had a few hundred survivors in it. If I'm feeling generous, their total population is probably under a million individuals, most of whom are not going to be shooters because a modern military needs a logistics train backing it up. (Replicators can't solve everything, after all, and there's no evidence the Vaadwaur even have them.)
The only reason the Vaadwaur are a significant threat is the Iconian upgrades overpowering the less-advanced local civs and the Alliance having too many irons in the fire back home. The Federation by itself should have been able to curbstomp them with sheer numbers. Heck, I'd give the Romulan Republic good odds.
It's just bad writing. There was even a Foundry mission series I played not long before sunset that had a Mirror Delta Quadrant. It flipped the script, made the Kobali the villain and the Vaadwaur our allies, and me and my friends' collective reaction was that the story made a hell of a lot more sense this way (besides the fact the Mirror Kobali are just the Prime Kobali minus the pretense).
About the only thing about the kobali arc that I do fault the writers for is not showing, on-screen, explicit orders from Alliance command to cooperate with the kobali despite of the revelations made. The benzite showing up to preach Prime Directive (which doesn't even apply, since the kobali holding the vaadwaur in stasis hostage is obviously not an internal matter) to captain Kim while the player character, who is the ranking officer present, completely ignores the whole argument just makes no sense at all unless the PC knows the decision was already made.
Yeah, that cutscene was just lousy. For Pete's sake, the first time I played through that arc, I was on my Romulan. They don't even have a Prime Directive. Never mind the fact that literally every single player character who plays the arc by that point outranks Captain Morally Bankrupt Benzite by several grades.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
So basically you're left with writers' hoplophobia as the reason the Vaads are EVUL.
While I do generally agree with your assessment of both on the kobali and the vaadwaur, I don't see that as the writers' fault. We don't fight the vaadwaur because they're evil. We fight them because they're hostile and serving the even more hostile iconians. Once we defeated Gaul and his pro-iconian flunkies (most of which were mind-controlled by bluegill to begin with), they stop being a threat and we leave the dissenting faction to hopefully build a more reasonable govenment.
And as such, I don't think we help the kobali because they're "good," either (at least, not after we found out what they've been up to). The writers acknowledged their moral failings, as argued by captain Kim, and by the end of the arc we even see them begin reforms to address them. Rather, we help them because it's strategically advantageous to cooperate against a mutual enemy. Enemy of my enemy and all that. While the gameplay may be too easy to ever properly represent it, dialogue across the story arc indicates that the vaadwaur are supposed to be too powerful for us to beat on our own and that's why we're trying to get all the allies we can get (I mean, seriously, even the effin kazon).
Fails the scale test. The cryo vault that Gaul himself came out of on Vaadwaur Prime in "Dragon's Teeth" only had a few hundred survivors in it. If I'm feeling generous, their total population is probably under a million individuals, most of whom are not going to be shooters because a modern military needs a logistics train backing it up. (Replicators can't solve everything, after all, and there's no evidence the Vaadwaur even have them.)
The only reason the Vaadwaur are a significant threat is the Iconian upgrades overpowering the less-advanced local civs and the Alliance having too many irons in the fire back home. The Federation by itself should have been able to curbstomp them with sheer numbers. Heck, I'd give the Romulan Republic good odds.
And yet they can't.
We don't have any population numbers for the vaadwaur. The population of the one shelter in Voyager means nothing, since we already know full well they have more, on multiple planets. And again we have no numbers of how many more or how many planets. Nor do we know how fast they reproduce. In actuality, their numbers could be pretty much anything. And through the iconians they could basically have almost any technology as well.
What we do know is that the game neither said nor showed them to have any shortage of troops or ships.
Ok, the Kobali rant can stop, because you're derailing the thread. Thanks.
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Comments
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> I mostly agree with this from my memory of one playthrough. I believe the episode intends to imply that the BOFF and ship we get as rewards are the Romulan turned Elachi turned Romulachi, aka Tarsev and his ship. The bad shrooms mess up his mind enough but after we fix everything, he and presumably his crew, remember enough of their past lives to defect.
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> In other words, they are changed through a freak occurrence after tripping on bad shrooms while the rest remain disgusting creatures or corpses. Had they arrived 5 minutes earlier they would have been dead, and 5 minutes later, they would have remained normal Elachi.
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> I'll be very disappointed if it turns out the Elachi are going to largely become friendly, but I don't think the episode really implies that.
The problem is Cryptic's track record. First the Kobali, with forcibly converting and brainwashing sapient beings into more Kobali. Then trying to make mass murderers sympathetic with the Iconians. Now, they actually managed to pull it off decently with the Hur'q, but they still dumped all the crimes of the Dominion on one leader without even thinking about the complicity of the other changelings.
IOW they're one for four with this basic plot. Or one for six, possibly: they had legitimate opportunities to do it well with the Vaadwaur and Undine, and chickened out.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I miss the good old sto. I hope that star trek: picard will be a great show, and really " Star Trek".
I really dislike action segments like this in missions. There's a reason I'm playing a MMORPG and not a Mario game or competitive FPS. I'm older and my reflexes suck.
"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." - Captain Janeway
#Support Mirror Universe I.S.S. Prefixes
I'm afraid these mushrooms are turning to be ultimate plot device - instantaneous space travel, resurrection, integration with all kind of biological and artifical life-forms...practically the Holy Grail of science. You need it to fill a plot hole, they can do it.
Anyone remember when this was a game and not a job?
I know what you meant, and yes I remember
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> Andoria seems to be a hub of temporal/multi-dimensional events.
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> The Battle of Procyon V takes place there as well.
According to Enterprise, the battle takes place in the Expanse, far from Andoria.
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> Yes it is, or, more specifically, Andoria is in the Procyon system
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> As you can clearly see in-game, and in the pic below, the planet Andoria orbits the star Procyon. Which is consistent with the Star Trek Star Charts, which state Procyon is the real world human name given to the star that Andoria orbits in-show.
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> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procyon
> Andoria would be Procyon 8 in-game.
> (Image)
Not according to canon. Andoria is both the name of the moon where Andorians originated and the name of that system.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Andoria
Star Charts also contradicts canon by describing Andoria as Procyon VIII, mistakenly forgetting that it's the moon of a gas giant and not a planet in its own right.
Personally, I blame ENT having a habitually lousy sense of scale even by Star Trek standards for the placement of the Procyon V battle.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Also, the fact that they're using the Star Charts as base for the Galaxy Map doesn't mean they're always respecting it: just look at what they did with the Sol System... I know they explained why they decided to put it in the Beta Quadrant, but it's still incredibly amusing to me, (and senseless, but that's another story entirely).
All in all, I think Andoria is one of those systems that changes position according to what's needed for this or that episode.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
My character Tsin'xing
*I wish we'd switch from a 20hr cooldown to a true daily reset like our Dil refining has. Some days I work early and others I work evenings. It really makes doing a 20hr cooldown event problematic and occasionally I have to skip a day because IRL stuff.
Graphically far superior to other mission(s), in fact a noticeable increase of all texture qualities since this update. However, this mission left me wanting to to avoid the story update. I was given the impression that I was nothing more than a mechanical arm meant to do mundane tasks. There was nothing that Stamets could not do on his own so, my role was redundant. The Stamets character was both arrogant and condescending. Voice acting, while good, was written and expressed in a very unprofessional way. By this I mean, the characters were talking as if they had full authority to create and develop any and all endeavours. Using phrases such as, "I won't let that happen," or "Not on my watch" are inferring that the person has sole authority. Starfleet, while a citizen outfit, is still organized by chains of command. At one point Stamets begins a thought filled trip down memory lane. The former RCN in me unequivocally denies this. If you start going on about feelings during a mission roll-out, you are clearly not meant to be there. You are a liability to the team and you'll be on the first buggy back to the bivouacs - keep your mind clear and your eyes on the prize.
The environment was, interesting. Travelling to different pockets of .. something .. was refreshing but the colours were too saturated and felt very surreal. Additionally, words such as, "portals, realms" and "corruption" were used very frequently and more of the, "...you must stop this" was thrown around. I briefly thought I was playing a D&D quest with laser guns.
I would like Cryptic maintain the same level of science and professionalism as seen in previous missions ..
Did you watch season 2 of Discovery?, the enviroment is great, same as the series, and Staments it's just like the series character, that's why i liked his performance so much, it was him, even in his behaviour... overal, i liked it.. and about the Elachi, we will help a faction of them, like the liberated borg or something like that, so i dont see the problem, the other elachi are as bad as always.. they are the Libelachi??
Actually, No. I did not watch Discovery past episode three. I had to turn it off because my son could not watch it and I wanted to introduce him to Star Trek. But the point of my Post was to point out that this type of interaction will not garner a new audience.
Libelachi - LOL .. good one
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I don't disagree. It is one of my pet peeves about the game that some of our biggest enemies just suddenly change in the end. The Iconian finish annoyed me although the way it brought the KDF and FED together was believable, the Hur'q felt very forced and sort of a deus ex machina with the Founder behind it all. The Breen are kinda in this boat too after the Deferi line, and now we can fly all their ships, however its arguable that the whole story there was just the result of one leader.
The Kobali, though, as screwed up as they are, were always friendly to us. I thought their secret was all handled as far more of a grey area than most.
The Vaudwaar can burn for all I care. I hate fighting them but love killing them when I have to. Evil SOBs. Maybe that's largely because of Gaul, and the rebellion almost made sense but they were all happy to go along with him from the beginning. They came back onto the scene on a war of conquest and revenge, that is how we first met them. I really can't have sympathy for common soldiers who execute civilians, so trying to redeem them to some degree with the rebellion didn't make a lot of sense and fell flat with me.
The Undine I thought were almost done reasonably well. They weren't overtly hostile in Voyager episodes after all was said and done so it was one of the early questions in STO, why are they now? With Iconian manipulation behind it, they could have forced them to be friendly after that was all revealed, but instead they basically left us alone, which feels more realistic. However, they were better off as a story before they retconned in that idiot Cooper, and that made the ultimate end of the Undine wars a lot less satisfying.
But then that is the stupid trope the game keeps throwing at us isn't it? Once we kill the main badguy the rest just stop being jerks. No treaties to end wars, no lingering animosities, no power shifts as a power vacuum forms somewhere.
So I'm hoping they don't do anything to make the Elachi friendly or sympathetic once we off Queen Bowser and save the Mushroom kingdom. There's no legitimate reason to do that because their existence and reproduction is a direct threat to sentient life whereas the Kobali seem to be able to manage without forcing it on anyone, aside from some Vaudwaar.
Wish the Elahci boff looked like the other elachi, without a mouth.
My character Tsin'xing
Go back. Go all the way back to their debut episode, VGR: "Ashes to Ashes". When a Kobali convert refuses to submit to the lifestyle and runs away, they send two capital ships -- or what the Kobali consider capital ships -- to bring her back by force. When they're met by her real family, the crew of Voyager, she refuses to go with the Kobali, so they attack the ship. Then her self-appointed "dad" sends a message saying that if he dies trying to retrieve her, it's on her head.
That's not the act of a loving parent, it's textbook abusive boyfriend behavior, shaming and guilting the abused significant other into going back with them. It also ties nicely into the "Stay with your kind!" idea that '90s Trek so often pulled out. That's a segregationist's position.
There's also the rampant consent issues regarding their reproduction by necromancy, which have been covered at length before.
I don't give a f**k that the Kobali act friendly to us. So did South Vietnam, so did the Pinochet regime in Chile, so do Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It doesn't make them worthy allies. The storyline should have ended with the Alliance seizing the cryo vault and turning it over to the Vaadwaur, and then pulling out.
Instead, the Kobali are given the job of providing medical support for the invasion of Vaadwaur Prime! Bar none, the most horrifying single dialog box in the entire game.
Well, see, I look at it completely differently. What do the Vaadwaur actually do that is so bad?
In other words, the Kobali storyline forces us to be complicit in a mass r@pe that makes the Soviet sack of Berlin look tame.
There's a similar account I read of a conversation between a Japanese WWII veteran and an American. He praised the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, because before that, he was completely willing to die in suicidal combat for the Emperor.
"Do you still want to do that?" he's asked.
"No! I was crazy! We all were!"
So basically you're left with writers' hoplophobia as the reason the Vaads are EVUL.
See, I think it would've been beautiful if the Undine had joined the alliance during the Iconian War. They have just as much reason as anyone to be mad as all hell at the Iconians: they were made into the Iconians' useful idiots, and a culture that prides itself so much on strength logically would not be happy about that. And for crying out loud, the Undine mothership's dialogue in "Mindscape" sets it right up.
Plus, well, Death Star-level firepower. They're the perfect door-kicker against the Dyson sphere. I imagine an STF playing in reverse of "Undine Assault", where we have to protect Undine planet killers from the Heralds during raids on Iconian infrastructure.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
And as such, I don't think we help the kobali because they're "good," either (at least, not after we found out what they've been up to). The writers acknowledged their moral failings, as argued by captain Kim, and by the end of the arc we even see them begin reforms to address them. Rather, we help them because it's strategically advantageous to cooperate against a mutual enemy. Enemy of my enemy and all that. While the gameplay may be too easy to ever properly represent it, dialogue across the story arc indicates that the vaadwaur are supposed to be too powerful for us to beat on our own and that's why we're trying to get all the allies we can get (I mean, seriously, even the effin kazon).
About the only thing about the kobali arc that I do fault the writers for is not showing, on-screen, explicit orders from Alliance command to cooperate with the kobali despite of the revelations made. The benzite showing up to preach Prime Directive (which doesn't even apply, since the kobali holding the vaadwaur in stasis hostage is obviously not an internal matter) to captain Kim while the player character, who is the ranking officer present, completely ignores the whole argument just makes no sense at all unless the PC knows the decision was already made.
The only reason the Vaadwaur are a significant threat is the Iconian upgrades overpowering the less-advanced local civs and the Alliance having too many irons in the fire back home. The Federation by itself should have been able to curbstomp them with sheer numbers. Heck, I'd give the Romulan Republic good odds.
It's just bad writing. There was even a Foundry mission series I played not long before sunset that had a Mirror Delta Quadrant. It flipped the script, made the Kobali the villain and the Vaadwaur our allies, and me and my friends' collective reaction was that the story made a hell of a lot more sense this way (besides the fact the Mirror Kobali are just the Prime Kobali minus the pretense).
Yeah, that cutscene was just lousy. For Pete's sake, the first time I played through that arc, I was on my Romulan. They don't even have a Prime Directive. Never mind the fact that literally every single player character who plays the arc by that point outranks Captain Morally Bankrupt Benzite by several grades.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
We don't have any population numbers for the vaadwaur. The population of the one shelter in Voyager means nothing, since we already know full well they have more, on multiple planets. And again we have no numbers of how many more or how many planets. Nor do we know how fast they reproduce. In actuality, their numbers could be pretty much anything. And through the iconians they could basically have almost any technology as well.
What we do know is that the game neither said nor showed them to have any shortage of troops or ships.
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Yes please. The kobali thing has been done to death
'blinks" Goddamnit, Sorry Baddmoonrizin
Anyway, i quite enjoyed the episode. Kudos to the art team, the visuals and maps blew me away.