Alien Species Availability for 23c planned?

battlestar

Unsure where to post this... but it would be a great addition to have the Alien species available to 23c characters.

It wouldn't violate Trek I.P., as "aliens" are just generic aliens, who would exist in any universe right?
And it may help sell even more Species Change Tokens too yea?!

For example, my main is a 23c char with a bunch of character-bound items, on whom I've dedicated a ton of time/effort, and I'd definitely love to be able to try out Alien on it.

Cheers!

phoenixc

Most of the time requests for stuff end up in "General Discussions", I've noticed. Having it moved there by one of the moderators would probably get more people to notice it.

You are right, it would be great if they did that, a lot of people ask for the alien tab to be put into the TOS character generator (myself included), it would make things a lot easier and avoid nonsense like having to use one of the other Fed generators to do TOS aliens and ignore the fact that the transporter, communicator, and other effects and UI elements are all wrong, along with not being able to use the Pioneer bridge, which is the only TOS bridge available to F2P players.

Adding a TOS-centric version of the 'Alien' tab would not only solve all of that, if it had wider color pallets for skin, hair, and eye color it would enable some of the TOS aliens that even the 2409 Alien tab cannot (like the metallic bronze skin and hair tones of the Ithanites).

baddmoonrizin

thread /moved

battlestar

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

Most of the time requests for stuff end up in "General Discussions", I've noticed. Having it moved there by one of the moderators would probably get more people to notice it.

You are right, it would be great if they did that, a lot of people ask for the alien tab to be put into the TOS character generator (myself included), it would make things a lot easier and avoid nonsense like having to use one of the other Fed generators to do TOS aliens and ignore the fact that the transporter, communicator, and other effects and UI elements are all wrong, along with not being able to use the Pioneer bridge, which is the only TOS bridge available to F2P players.

Adding a TOS-centric version of the 'Alien' tab would not only solve all of that, if it had wider color pallets for skin, hair, and eye color it would enable some of the TOS aliens that even the 2409 Alien tab cannot (like the metallic bronze skin and hair tones of the Ithanites).

Thanks for the mod move request. And I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've written! Great point about the F2P 23c players too.

I myself have spent nearly $2K on STO during just over a year of playing the game so far (Please don't judge me too hard, haha!) STO really has so much potential to be a fully immersive experience... so much material to work with... and an entire universe to create and expand upon... maybe someday it will re-work and evolve into a true open-planets/open-space, full scale, explorable massive reality... anyway, sorry I digress!

Back to the subject... Maybe if enough players request it, we can get it to happen so everyone can enjoy some epic 23c Alienz?!?!

Very much looking forward to the day it's added. When it does, I'll be a serial 23c species change purchaser.

lianthelia

I'd say the odds are pretty low, it's been a long time and they still haven't even added Discovery Andorians like the said they would. There really weren't many aliens seen in TOS, and when they were they often were basically human looking

battlestar

lianthelia wrote: »

I'd say the odds are pretty low, it's been a long time and they still haven't even added Discovery Andorians like the said they would. There really weren't many aliens seen in TOS, and when they were they often were basically human looking

Ah yeah, I definitely see your point... thanks for replying! Unfortunate if they don't... just so... much... potential to be had... STO...!

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sumugi6

Honestly, the most disappointing thing is that all those species that you unlock with Zen are ultimately playable only by those in the Starfleet storyline. That TOS and Discovery storyline characters are limited to basically two or three species, makes them feel both underwhelming and underrepresented.

rattler2

sumugi6#5811 wrote: »

Honestly, the most disappointing thing is that all those species that you unlock with Zen are ultimately playable only by those in the Starfleet storyline. That TOS and Discovery storyline characters are limited to basically two or three species, makes them feel both underwhelming and underrepresented.

The TOS options are centered around species that are known in TOS, specifically the four founding members of the Federation. DSC... we're still waiting on DSC Andorians to be added as they did say they were working on that. The only species I can think of that would make sense as an unlock for TOS is Caitians because of M'Ress in TAS. Any TNG era species that are unlocks would not make any sense in TOS or DSC.

phoenixc

rattler2 wrote: »

sumugi6#5811 wrote: »

Honestly, the most disappointing thing is that all those species that you unlock with Zen are ultimately playable only by those in the Starfleet storyline. That TOS and Discovery storyline characters are limited to basically two or three species, makes them feel both underwhelming and underrepresented.

The TOS options are centered around species that are known in TOS, specifically the four founding members of the Federation. DSC... we're still waiting on DSC Andorians to be added as they did say they were working on that. The only species I can think of that would make sense as an unlock for TOS is Caitians because of M'Ress in TAS. Any TNG era species that are unlocks would not make any sense in TOS or DSC.

Unfortunately, they completely ignore all the other Federation aliens from TOS and TAS, which is what makes the TOS start (and by extension the Temporal recruitment) feel underrepresented. The missing non-founder TOS races would be easy to implement, most of them are just color and hair differences except for a very few that have different-shaped ears (which already exist in the 2409 Alien generator so they would not have to be modeled new):

• Loktarans (they have wild manes of normal colored hair in weird styles, so probably the most difficult ones to do)
• Ithanites (little people with metallic gold skin and hair (and possibly eyes))
• Violacean (they have skin in shades of purple and violet, a fan theory points out that the color could be from photosynthetic
  symbiosis happening in their skin so they may be related to green Orions)
• Zambeans (very tall but otherwise human looking)
• Catullans (the males have wild, big Klingon hair but no ridges and in bright neon colors, no female is seen unless Shahna
  (from Gamesters of Triskelion) is one. She has the same poofy big hair (but without the receded hairline) in bright green.

Non-Federation aliens might also be found serving on a Federation ships as an exchange officer, the same way that a Federation officer went to serve on a Fesarian ship in The Corbomite Maneuver, so Fesarians and others would be good to have available in the Alien tab (Fesarians would just be a height slider adjustment).

Most of the TAS races would be impossible due to armature/skeleton differences, but Caitians would definitely work since they are already in the 2409 part of the game, along with the amphibious humans that The Journey Home establishes as having become full members by the time of the movie, (though without any water-based scenarios they might be a bit irrelevant), Sord's race (the short lizards from The Jihad), and possibly a few others.

battlestar

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

sumugi6#5811 wrote: »

Honestly, the most disappointing thing is that all those species that you unlock with Zen are ultimately playable only by those in the Starfleet storyline. That TOS and Discovery storyline characters are limited to basically two or three species, makes them feel both underwhelming and underrepresented.

The TOS options are centered around species that are known in TOS, specifically the four founding members of the Federation. DSC... we're still waiting on DSC Andorians to be added as they did say they were working on that. The only species I can think of that would make sense as an unlock for TOS is Caitians because of M'Ress in TAS. Any TNG era species that are unlocks would not make any sense in TOS or DSC.

Unfortunately, they completely ignore all the other Federation aliens from TOS and TAS, which is what makes the TOS start (and by extension the Temporal recruitment) feel underrepresented. The missing non-founder TOS races would be easy to implement, most of them are just color and hair differences except for a very few that have different-shaped ears (which already exist in the 2409 Alien generator so they would not have to be modeled new):

• Loktarans (they have wild manes of normal colored hair in weird styles, so probably the most difficult ones to do)
• Ithanites (little people with metallic gold skin and hair (and possibly eyes))
• Violacean (they have skin in shades of purple and violet, a fan theory points out that the color could be from photosynthetic
  symbiosis happening in their skin so they may be related to green Orions)
• Zambeans (very tall but otherwise human looking)
• Catullans (the males have wild, big Klingon hair but no ridges and in bright neon colors, no female is seen unless Shahna
  (from Gamesters of Triskelion) is one. She has the same poofy big hair (but without the receded hairline) in bright green.

Non-Federation aliens might also be found serving on a Federation ships as an exchange officer, the same way that a Federation officer went to serve on a Fesarian ship in The Corbomite Maneuver, so Fesarians and others would be good to have available in the Alien tab (Fesarians would just be a height slider adjustment).

Most of the TAS races would be impossible due to armature/skeleton differences, but Caitians would definitely work since they are already in the 2409 part of the game, along with the amphibious humans that The Journey Home establishes as having become full members by the time of the movie, (though without any water-based scenarios they might be a bit irrelevant), Sord's race (the short lizards from The Jihad), and possibly a few others.

Love this post! Such descriptions... brings back TOS memories... awesome.

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vetteguy904

the whole point to the limitations in temporal agent toons was to have the founding members. there are arguments for Caitians since there are caitians in both TAS and 3-4 of the movies.

phoenixc

vetteguy904 wrote: »

the whole point to the limitations in temporal agent toons was to have the founding members. there are arguments for Caitians since there are caitians in both TAS and 3-4 of the movies.

That is only realistic for the portion of Starfleet that was directly inherited from UESPA, not the ships and crews from other member worlds, like USS Intrepid in The Immunity Syndrome.

Dialog in TOS hinted that Starfleet at the time was not as homogeneous (at least out in the field) as it is in later times even before The Immunity Syndrome featured a solid example, and later, one TAS episode had a line of dialog that new life support, food processing (probably incrementally improved TOS replicators/fabricators, though they didn't go into details), and medical technologies is what allowed more mixing of species in the crew complements than previously.

Adding Caitians to the TOS chargen set and at least a limited 'Alien' tab that can handle the TOS Federation races (mainly just expanded color, full range size, and a few ear and hair options that mostly exist already in the regular 'Alien' generators) would be great, and it would most likely get more people to make Temporal Recruits to try those new species out.

vetteguy904

the Intrepid was never specifically said to be a vulcan origin ship. it was said a ship of vulcans. they also say that 400 vulcans died not knowing what killed them. 403 is the compliment of a constitution class in that time period. in addition, the intrepid is noted as lost in the franz joseph tech manual.. a constitution class

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rattler2

Yea its pretty much accepted that the Intrepid was a Connie with an all Vulcan crew. We do see something similar in a DS9 episode with Captain Solok's crew when he steps up his rivalry with Sisko deciding to one up him at his own favorite game, Baseball. I think it was the T'Kumbra, which was a Nebula class. All Vulcan crew.

phoenixc

Yes, Intrepid was a most likely a connie, but there is no guarantee that it was built in Earth orbit. It could have been built by the Vulcans from standard Federation blueprints, or various members could contribute empty ships to Starfleet and the Vulcans ended up with the Intrepid, or any number of other possibilities (though building localized versions of standard designs seems the most likely).

Anyway, the point wasn't about the ships themselves, it was that in the TOS era there was not a lot of different species on any particular ship, and the only ship we ever saw in the series in any detail was the Enterprise, which was essentially UESPA crewed, so it did not represent every other ship complement-wise. That is why limiting TOS character selection to only the founding members is not realistic.

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rattler2

Not most likely. CONFIRMED to be a Connie. She was destroyed by a Space Amoeba in 2268 (TOS Episode The Immunity Syndrome)

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Intrepid_(NCC-1631)

She would be succeeded by NCC-1707 USS Intrepid, a Connie II Refit by the time the Whale Probe hit Earth.

angrytarg

Remember that Agents of Yesterday/year is a loveletter to the TV show, not to any in-universe point in time. That's why you have a TV-filter on your screen during these missions. So any content from TAS is excempt by the fact that it wasn't part of the TV show.​​

phoenixc

Agents of Yesterday as it was originally introduced was really more of a backhanded compliment than a "love letter" because the devs did not do the scenario straight (in this case that fake rasterization to distance it from the mainline STO stuff), but instead doing something similar to the movie trend that was still somewhat popular at the time of turning remakes of serious classic series into spoofs (take a look at Green Hornet for example). Old series were considered "Retro" and somehow embarrassing for some weird reason, apparently just because the production technology was not as good back then and almost no-one wanted to even try doing a serious update of them.

That said, despite the silly filter (which they removed a few years ago) they are still good missions, as is Spectres (which really should be available on the regular mission tree now that the skip function actually works people so who hate TOS or whatever can skip it if they don't want to play it) since they did not take the spoofiness into the plot and dialog (except for the drink thing in Spectres, but it is no worse than the gags in The Trouble With Tribbles and stuff like that is a good change if done in moderation).

c0mp

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

The Trouble With Tribbles

I really miss those Klingon missions with the Tribbles.