We have it confirmed not only that RA5-10 will have new sectors (confirmed by Gozer in his Neutral Zone interview and dstahl more recently) but that the ship artists are designing new ships for the new sector.
This suggests a new enemy entering the fray. We have it confirmed that the Breen are the new enemy. We can deduce from this that Breen space ("north" of Zeta Andromedae) is the new sector block. That would make it look like the Kobheerian sector block one of the RA 5-10 leveling areas.
And that might make peculiar sense.
Kobheerians were UFP members (and a Ferenginoid species) who remained neutral in the Dominion war. They mysteriously turned up at the
Tsunkatse match in the Delta Quadrant where Seven of Nine took on the Pendari Champion (played by The Rock).
And in turn, the Iconian Gateway we saw on DS9 (
"To the Death" - The First Appearance of Weyoun)led to
Dozaria, a Breen Planet in that sector block.
So we have evidence that an Iconian gateway leads there. We have evidence of the Kobheerians traveling to the Delta Quadrant somehow.
MISSION SPOILERS...
...
...
...
With what we know about the Iconians backing the Reman destruction of Hobus and sending the Borg back to kill Benjamin Sisko at Wolf 359, we can reasonably infer that they are the main enemies of the game and that they had a major presence in Breen space.
We can also infer that the Breen are not to be trusted. The Romulans have a saying, "Never turn your back on a Breen." They allied with the Dominion against the rest of the Alpha Quadrant.
And the Captain's Table hints that the Breen will do something devastating and shocking in the near future.
Here's my prediction:
The Breen are working for the Iconians. They have a history of favoring outside powers and the likely Iconian gateways in their territory make it likely that the two have forged an alliance.
And here's the wild part: We know that Cryptic has finished the full solar system map for the Sol System but are holding back on releasing it. We know that the Breen had the means to launch a surprise attack on Earth in the Dominion War. (They lore the Golden Gate bridge in two!) We also know that the Iconians' portals lead directly to San Francisco among other places.
My prediction is the devs are holding off on releasing the new Sol System map until Season 2 because the Breen are going to ransack Earth and the Sol System which is what sends us into Breen space from RA 5-10. So when we get the full explorable Sol System, it will be "battle damaged" by Breen acting on behalf of the Iconians.
And if I'm wrong, well... Hey, Cryptic, you have a content writer job opening, right...? ;-)
Comments
They already used the Remans and a Romulan.
I think, on the whole, they were sent packing out of our universe by the younger races thousands of years ago and so their preferred MO is to pit the existing races against eachother and wipe them out before reordering the galaxy, maybe promising to let a few allied races live in the galactic reshuffling if they pledge loyalty to the Iconians.
They seem to be picking disenfranchised races like the Remans or outsiders like the Breen, who are more likely to be callous about the idea of wiping out large chunks of the established order.
ya never know the breen might of known about the iconions a far lot longer than the rest of us... hell we dont even know what a breen looks like :O maybe they are/were iconions or somthing that resembles them :O
they have been gone for tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds so they probably dont have any where near there power they once had
nothing to worry about then .. declare war on you se do... Response .. WE SURRENDER!!!!
Qed, that is why they don't actually fight, they get other races to do it!!
Btw, I can say this and not be prejudicial because I am french. So I don't want some web master citing me for being an anti-French Frenchman.
Now i don't remember anywhere where it said the Iconians had anything to do with whats currently going on. what mission did it have that?
if you replace the word iconians with the word shadow you have the plot of babylon 5
the one where you visit iconia and some strange ship appears during one of the romulan missions. there were several other references about them being Demons of Air and Darkness that was mentioned in the tv show.
the devs have said someone else is pulling the strings so it all points to them. im not sure if they have ever mentioned them in person but its a pretty safe bet it them
That's not lost on me and, honestly, with all the B5 AND DS9 love in this game, I'd waiting for them to introduce a Sheridan/Sisko-type NPC.
Everyone will pay lipservice to the idea that they don't want NPCs to overshadow the players but every MMO under the sun has benefited by having a few friendly NPCs who do. There are advantages to it from a storytelling perspective. You can have bad things happen to them (see: Bolvar in WoW, Hero-1 in CoH, etc.) You can rally players behind and against them (see Thrall, Saurfang, Garrosh, Varian in WoW, Statesman in Heroes) and in doing this you can have the NPCs act like jerks to fuel the conflict of the game without making the players feel like jerks themselves (especially see Statesman, Recluse, Garrosh and Varian).
You also have an out with a B5/DS9 plot as the privileged NPC can have some mystical destiny/prophecy mumbo jumbo to make them important while also maintaining that the players are better conventional captains. So the NPC can be pivotal without necessarily making the players seem bad at what they do by comparison.
It isn't that Captain X is a better captain that we are; it's that the 29th century Starfleet officers have said that history records that he will save the day with their help or is Q's handpicked champion or something. So the NPC gets to "cheat" in every way that they surpass the players, enabling players to have pride in their own characters while also giving the NPC a special story role.
While this may be true, your line of thinking fails on one main point: it's also been implied that, unlike all the other major powers, the Iconians never even bothered with starships - they had portals instead, why bother with starships?
Now I'm certainly not saying that they DIDN'T have ships, just that that's a somewhat dangerous conclusion to jump too.
I stopped reading here. this is science fiction, not real life.
so someone sold the iconions a weird looking ship that fires red lazor beams ? ... or is it some kind of defence turret platform... thing?
Well let's not forget that if we make the Iconians the big bad bad guys, this game starts to resemble Stargate.
All great sci fi works off of contemporary ideas, geopolitical situations and the like. Just because you don't like the US doesn't make the comparison moot. The 1st sci fi movie (metropolis) is based off of someones ( at that time) contemporary utopian/dystopian ideal.
Phoxe has a point - what are the real puppet masters doing?
we know their world was destroyed by an orbital bombardment. some defensive ships might have been handy then.
perhaps they have changed their tactics to deal with a very starship heavy galaxy
or maybe its is someone else. dangerous or not im keeping my money on them
Perhaps they manipulated the Breen - as the breen have effective starships (they did destroy Starfleet Academy in DS9).
I mean, Breen ships did this to Starfleet:
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Raid_on_San_Francisco
we still dont know who that strange ship was and who that belonged to
your BO suggests thats it simply teleported away,
perhaps the breen have found some old iconian tech and are using it themselves
or maybe its going to be someone totally out of left-field. maybe its the tribbles, they want their revenge against the klingons
Since this is a spoilers thread, I'mma going to throw in my opinion and note that it looked a lot like how I suspect Grigari ships might look....
Nah, DS9 already went there on several levels.
/Subscribed
I figure that they would bother with ships now because an enemy race with no ships, a boring STO makes...
I would think, if your species is nearly driven extinct because you don't have a fleet to block the various species you've terrorized from bombing your planet to the Paleozoic Era, that would be an R&D priority over the next couple hundred thousand years