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Slaves or Saviours - my first mission
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I have just finished my first mission on the Foundry and just tested it myself. It is currently bug-free but please be free to look for some.
The space combat seems to not be so difficult so maybe play it on an increased difficulty? It might make the ground combat quite challenging however. But don't worry, I have placed four respawn points in my ground map so there won't be those annoying backtracking from your original spawn point all the way back to where you were and getting the 'trying-not-to-get-your-away-team-stuck-behind-every-door-problem' when you die.
Please test it out and tell me what you think
Some info:
Title: Slaves or Saviours
You have received a mission from Councilor Adler, a Federation politician. He has taken an interest into the Humanoid Trafficking Taskforce and managed to recruit some ships away from the frontline to assist in ending a slaver-operation.
He seems like a selfless humanitarian but he has an alterior motive.
A mathematician who seems to be the key to an important military contract has been put into slavery as well.
Report to the Celes-system to start your mission.
- Chrepht
The space combat seems to not be so difficult so maybe play it on an increased difficulty? It might make the ground combat quite challenging however. But don't worry, I have placed four respawn points in my ground map so there won't be those annoying backtracking from your original spawn point all the way back to where you were and getting the 'trying-not-to-get-your-away-team-stuck-behind-every-door-problem' when you die.
Please test it out and tell me what you think
Some info:Title: Slaves or Saviours
You have received a mission from Councilor Adler, a Federation politician. He has taken an interest into the Humanoid Trafficking Taskforce and managed to recruit some ships away from the frontline to assist in ending a slaver-operation.
He seems like a selfless humanitarian but he has an alterior motive.
A mathematician who seems to be the key to an important military contract has been put into slavery as well.
Report to the Celes-system to start your mission.
- Chrepht
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Very creative use of different kinds of aliens. It was great to not just see a bunch of Klingons or Cardassians, but a variety of faces.
Nice use of hardware details in the problem solving. It read like a real Star Trek mission where people used what information they had to come up with solutions.
Nice details such as insulting the Tellarite, that shows you know the show. Tiny details like that add real depth to the mission.
I loved the creature that spoke in binary and a computer was used to decode his speech. Very creative and not difficult but adds variety. Something we've never seen in any of the STO mission. The lady at the end that spoke of the warp core as a dance of two gods. Wild dude, very wild and again creative. So much better than any of the generic kill this and that missions.
The only thing I would change is dial down the pew pew. There is no need to shoot at six or seven groups at a time. In a Star Trek episode, you would typically only fight one ship at a time. Maybe you would engage, two mobs at a time but no more than that. Dial down the mobage, it's the most boring part of the mission. You've got more than enough creativity to make the mission fun, focus on that.
What's the next one about? :rolleyes:
Now...
The first thing I noticed is that you never specified where the Celes system was. You should tell us what sector block it's in.
Next, you wrote a Captain's log. Please don't tell my character what to say. He's my character and that's my captain's log, something I am perfectly capable of writing.
Next, I had to beam onto another ship for no reason at all. The mission report was long and held no useful information. Plus it could have easily been transmitted over subspace radio, which was what I thought the original contact did.
Next the freighter of scientists. I have no idea why they were attacked and why the crew wasn't taken as slaves. Also, why did they hate me? Seriously, why did federation scientists hate starfleet, especially the captain that just saved them? I get they hated war but war or not, we wouldn't have done anything different. It's not like they were able to send out a distress call. No one knew they were missing.
You also put too many words in my mouth. I'm an engineer yet I spoke like I was someone else. Made me feel like I was watching an episode of Voyager instead of playing an episode of Voyager.
Your desire to put cargo containers in the hall way puzzles me. Why would anyone clutter up a high traffic hallway with cargo containers?
You also need to reposition the volcano plant farther back. I can see it in the console.
Next your solution on how to find the ships made no sense.
If they were all naussican ships, why did some of them use different weapons? And why didn't I see those weapons when I eventually fought them?
Next, why did I care about which ship took him? They all went in the same direction and the guy had a transponder chip.
Also, "The ship was very old".... how did we know? And even if it was, why on Vulcan would they have flakes fly off? That's not how Warp works. Warp drive creates a subspace bubble around the ship which allows it to lower the mass of what's inside, partially submerge it in subspace, then fold space around the ship. The stress is when the ship doesn't have enough power to the warp field to lower it's mass or the warp field is unstable and various parts have different mass ratios. (like the front of the ship being 50% normal mass while the back being 10%.)
Next the combat in the "chase" map was fine but finding each ship was frustrating. The area was too large and the ships too far apart. Plus, I found the "flagship" first and wondered why I couldn't beam over to it and skip the rest? I suggest removing the "kill the 5 squads" and simply let me find it first then once I get to the reach marker, spawn in a squad to protect the ship. That way I get the combat or ignore it while searching but always get some combat.
This is where the story falls apart.
I get that there was a slave revolt even though the captain said nothing about it and there wasn't any indication. I don't understand how I beamed through his shields though nor why there was a jamming field over Engineering when the shields would have prevented beamout easily enough.
Next the "binary language". Binary is a very slow language and if he can vibrate his laranx, he can speak in analog, not binary. Unless his laranx can only produce one frequency. A good concept but it would have been better if you didn't explain it or perhaps had him be a Binar or have no laranx and speak through some form of device which was damaged.
Again, the hallways had containers in them. Why I do not know.
Next you have the engineer and the slaves. I get that you couldn't lower the force field but you can't beam through force fields either. That's one of the point of a force field. Also, why would you link your comm badges to the ship's life sign monitor? And why would that mean you couldn't be beamed up?
Then the shuttle....
I thought the escape would be some kind of daring escape but it wasn't. Now I like how messing with the EPS manifold caused the captain to know there was a problem but one would think that his guards would have given a warning or his sensors detected a beam in or something.
And why did the fire suddenly occur on the ship? Fire surpression shouldn't be offline nor should fires break out from the safe removal of a starship component.
Also, as a map tip, smoke should be on the top and fill the hall way, not on the bottom. Fog goes on the bottom, smoke from fire always rises to the top. If you put the smoke to fill the whole hallway, that would work better.
Also add in text about how you'll bring the Environmental and Fire surpression systems offline when taking out the EPS manifold. That'll help the story.
The final fight was hard... on normal. Seriously, 2 high level squads at once? Not fun.
And when you revealed about the transponder I asked one question: why didn't I scan for that in the first place? Or why didn't the naussicans remove it? Surely they would have known.
And why did they think that a person claiming to be the scientist who was clearly a different species would fool me? Didn't I have a picture of the guy?
Since that guy couldn't do anything, I suggest making it a hologram. Though the thought that the scientist seems to think that Starfleet Captains wouldn't help a ship full of slaves, most of which have taken over the ship, is very odd.
So, I kill the captain, take a hypospanner and...
I have to fly out? Couldn't I have simply shut down main power or disabled the jamming field myself? That way I could beam out and not have to worry.
And why did I have to blow up the ship? Seems like overkill to destroy a ship where the slaves managed to take control of all areas except the one area that I just took control of.
Summary:
Your dialog was fine but not for me. For another captain, sure, but not for my captain. The dialog of the others was also fine and well though out.
The story had far too many plot holes.
Your positioning on maps needs work. (at least remove the cargo containers from the hallways.)
Enemy squads need space. Each squad is designed to be a challenge as a squad. Multiple squads in the same area are often too difficult to defeat.
Make sure you give better background on why the Naussicans are after this scientist. Sure the encrypted data sounded good but I never knew what it was for nor why the Naussicans simply left the scientists alive when they should have captured them, destroyed their ship, and left to interrogate their prisoners.
I will say that creating the various aliens and their culture was nice and you could definitely use that skill to your advantage.
You never played "Cold Case" have you? In that you used a tricorder and medical records to determine the proper treatment for a patient.
One thing though, about the crates in halls, some maps have those placed there by Cryptic and as you can't move things Cryptic placed, it might not be the author's fault. I know in one of my missions there are crates in the corridor that are really annoying, but I couldn't ditch them but the station map was definitely the only one that I wanted.
And the Deferi medical thing was in Cold Comfort. There's also something similar in Skirmish from the Devidian series where you are in the Cardassian sickbay and also the Bajor diplomacy missions where you have to find evidence on a computer is similar.
Ah, thanks.
No one spoke in binary in Cold Case, or any other STO mission. I've played them all on the Fed side.
I'm curious to check out your missions and their content. They must be so much better.
Im wondering how far your going to take bashing cryptic's stuff. To the point where one reason their missions suck is because they dont have someone talking in binary.
Have you tried The Longing by RachelGarrett?
The guy speaking in binary is just an example of how you can be creative and make the mission interesting if you have a little imagination. It's like Dr. Who in the 70's. The sets and the makeup were boffo, but because the writers were really creative they took what they had an made really compelling stories, even though they didn't have the advanced computer generated graphics we have today.
The flip side is, there are plenty of movies out there that RELY on the graphics to make the experience good but the plot is empty and boring. You can do a lot with a little creativity. This mission just shows that a lot of the sto writers 1) don't know Star Trek and 2) aren't very creative.
But creativity is a rare talent so I'm just happy we have the foundry.
For you? Probably not. A mission is all about opinion and my guess is that your taste and mine differ significantly.
Although I do have a 2 recorded log reports that you can actually play(as in use a console to activate the verbal log). You might enjoy that part. The rest, not likely. Not enough "use console" objectives. I prefer to write dialog.
I was referring to the basic idea of reading dialog that had the player and his BOs figure something out and then perform some complex action using "use object" objectives to advance the story.
Oh come on. Are you seriously telling me that the Romulan Arc where we find out how the Hobus Star went Nova and destroyed Romulus wasn't creative? I thought that was great. It mixed Protomatter (something we only heard about in Star Trek II) as well as Trilithium which caused a star to go Super Nova (See Star Trek VII) and the third component I can't remember. That was very creative and well done.
As harsh as your review was for this mission, it's actually what I was hoping how people would review my own missions.
It may sting and some may feel insulted, but in the end, those who read and actually take the ideas could make even better missions. They may not agree with all the points but I'm sure some things would be very useful.
As for this mission, I'm going to give it a look once I get enough time to run through an entire mission.
No. I guess my view of creative and that of the mainstream differ greatly. There are so many ideas that have yet to be explored. I guess I expect a lot. There have been some interesting missions in the Foundry, written by people who have obviously been Star Trek fans for a long time and want to explore the material. That's what I was promised at the Star Trek convention with the STO sales pitch, it's not what we got.
I thought it was very creative.
But if there really are so many ideas to explore well then the foundary lets you to put your money where your mouth is and make a mission with these unexplored ideas.
If you need any help with the technical details, the forum will be happy to help.
I think examples of the 47 conspiracy showing up in STO missions shows that there are some Star Trek writing traditions being continued in the game without most people even realising it. It shows that they are into Trek meta-level, more than just common things like knowing how to respond to Tellarites in dialogue.
Some of the storylines they've introduced are extremely creative in tying together things from the TV series, like the whole Preservers thing in the Deferi series - they tied together the Preserver storyline from TOS, and the advanced first humanoids from TNG's "The Chase" and merged them together in a plausible way, which continued both unexplored plot lines from Trek and brought them to us as a modern audience.
It felt very Trek-like to me.
The weeklies are pretty good, but that is not what we got at first. I've said already the weeklies are good, when they are available.
The game fails to implement Star Trek principles at a very basic level, there is no meta level of Star Trek. First of all you can't set phasors to stun. What is meta about that? It's not even Star Trek 101. Plus you go around and kill everything. That's not Star Trek 101 or even 100. There is no meta anything. LOL! :rolleyes:
First off, some phasers have stun. Look at a stun hand phaser some time.
Secondly, if all weapons had a stun setting then two things would occur.
1. The shields would never go down so your enemy would basically never die. (plus you can't one hit them or they could one hit you)
2. The bodies would stay. There is a reason why games remove dead NPCs... :rolleyes:
Again, you want a simulator, which is fine. STO was never designed for that. It was designed to apeal not only to Star Trek fans but also to non-Star Trek fans. I'm sorry if they have to design missions that don't fit your ideal view all the time but like I said, if you don't like it show us you can do better.
They have the stunning in the Devidian weekly series. So now they have that ability, they've mentioned that they are redeveloping the first missions like the SS Azura and want to remaster every mission because they are moving to a new mission architecture. It's in the latest news.
I think his argument is that STO didn't launch awesome.
Plus that whole "set phasers to stun" was just dialog. It didn't make any difference to game mechanics that I saw.
I'm talking about in the final two missions where the NPCs fall down unconscious, and don't disappear because they aren't dead. I don't think they could be vaporised either. It made a visual difference.
I know that people say that the game didn't launch very well, but it's subjective/relative. I have been pretty pleased with the game since I started playing in late Feb/March shortly after the launch. I think it was around Season 1 release, so I didn't experience the "at launch" bugs. I have enjoyed my time in the game and still am.
And STO did recently win the Massively "best new MMO of 2010" and "best MMO launch of 2010" in their reader choice awards... competition was Hello Kitty online, but still - that just shows that you could be worse off if every other MMO launch in 2010 was worse (Final Fantasy 14...)
But even so, it's a huge waste of resources and doing it on every map is probably not possible. Not without some kind of sacrifice anyway.
Dave your post is almost exactly just what I wanted to say in my own review. Glad to know I'm not the only one to feel this way
* I feel that the Captain's logs and supplementals are too wordy. Mission briefings are also lengthy, please edit for space.
In fact, when I read the extended treatise on "too much resources devoted to weapons and war, not enough to intra-species trafficking" I got the nagging feeling that the author is trying to promote some kind of agenda. Okay, so is he going to preach to me the need for social justice to help reintegrate former Borg drones back into mainstream society? Or free healthcare for Viidians to cure the phage? I play STO to get away from poitics, which is an important part of my life but on my terms not someone's else's. Give me a break here :rolleyes:
* The "I am ready to engage the squadrons" dialogue should be rewritten because it's the wrong tone of voice.
* Searching the scanner logs should not be activated by a plant on the bridge.
* Enemy starship mobs seem to be too far apart (the last mob before boarding the Naausican slaver ship) or too close together (the first mob).
My one major complaint: Too many obstacles in the hallway to the Warp core. If it's a permanent setting in the Foundry that all of their hallways are filled with crates, I'll happily direct my ire in that direction. But please for the love of Picard, map authors of all types, just get rid of all the junk!
That is so funny that you say you play STO to get away from politics. Then you don't really get what Star Trek was all about. It was about political discussions, disguised as a sci fi show. The fact that you don't want any politics with your sci fi says, you don't want Star Trek. You want some other space shooter game. The fact that politics is in the mission is EXACTLY what makes it very much like Star Trek. So funny that so many people here don't understand what Star Trek was all about.
Take the Bajoran Occupation. So many episodes illustrate that the line between the good guys and the bad guys were often blurred, just like in TRIBBLE Germany. Or the Ferengi way of life, totally exploiting people for profit. That's an extreme example of Free Market Capitalism. A very political statement right under your nose. So if a game purports to be Star Trek, then in need politics. Or as I've said before, just call it Space Wars.
Why would you make Star Trek for non Star Trek fans? That makes no sense. And yeah, you can't kill things with stun because Federation Officers bent over backwards to NOT KILL THINGS. That was a primary goal of the Federation. To seek out not to take out.
Why do you want to kill things? If you want to kill things, you don't want to be in the Federation. You don't want to be a Federation officer. Those people don't join up to kill things! LOL That's my entire point, the Star Trek name has been mutated to satisfy the desire of people to whack things in cyberspace. That's not Star Trek.
They did, when they weren't at war. Last time I checked, Sisko wasn't concerned about killing Jem Hadar. Picard wasn't worried about killing Borg or Remans. Janeway routinely killed Kazon, Vidiians, borg, and other things.
I don't actually care about killing or not. However, if you're in a war stunning the enemy means that you never actually win. Just imagine...
"Sir, we've taken the base. All klingons are stunned."
"Excellent. Begin beaming them to the brig."
"Sir, that first Klingon squad you stunned have woken up and are waking up the rest of the group. We'll be out numbered in a matter of minutes."
Of course that also begs the question of why you can't just beam the enemies into your brig in the first place.
As for starships...
Well how would you design that? Ships goes down to 0% and doesn't blow up? How would you get loot?
Let's say you do loot the remains, do enemy ships repair later?
Frankly, we've seen more ships being destroyed in Star Trek than disabled. Just look at how many ships were destroyed in "Sacrifice of Angels".
And finally: Technologically speaking having enemies stay after they die takes resources and if there's no reason to keep them on the map then why waste the resources?
No you don't and there should be more for RP ers, take em away from twitter. And clearly this game WASN'T designed for Star Trek fans, look at all the Klingon grief!
They did everything in their power to AVOID combat. Have you ever WATCHED the show? Janeway ROUTINELY targeted weapons and then "opened a channel," trying to "work things out." Review your dvds.
That actually happened in Enterprise and they put the prisoners in crew quarters under heavy guard. Again review our dvds.
There is no "looting" in Star Trek. The very idea is anathema to the Federation, watch the show. In Federation terms you would have to TRADE for upgrades or do the research yourself, or share research with other worlds.
Only if there is an attack. Feddies are like the Jedi, they use force for defense, never for attack. Once a ship reaches a certain level say 5%, it gives up hailing you asking to surrender or takes off limping or at warp speed. That's how most skirmishes end in every series. And that's only one episode.
Once an enemy dies, have it beamed up by it's shipmates. Enemies RARELY die in Star Trek so it's not an issue. More often than not enemies should flee or you capture them.
I really should be employed by Cryptic to help design this game.
The lack of Klingon PVE content is primarily due to the game being rushed. They had to choose between doing one really great faction and one poor faction or two mediocre factions. They chose the one most players would relate to. Yes the game was rushed but it was rushed by Atari, not Cryptic.
Yes and how often did they do that when they were at war with the specific group? None.
Let's look at TNG - All good things.
On the Medical ship they got attacked by two klingon ships. Remember what happened? They tried to get them to stop but they didn't even get a reply. Then the Enterprise decloaks and what does it do? Blow one ship to bits. No warning, no hails, no "let's talk this out" just "death".
In Sacrifice of Angels, there is no dialog, no "target weapons" nothing. They line up and try to kill each other.
As I stated, when you're not at war with someone, you try to resolve the issue peacefully. When you are at war, you don't. That's just the way it is.
Oh and you missed the daily with the Breen. You can use diplomacy to beam the prisoners off their ship and not fire a single shot.
Also remember that this is a game and it has to follow some rules. For instance, if you have the ability to perminately disable a ship. so do they. Just imagine if all they had to do was drop the enemy shields and "target weapons". You no longer have weapons for 10 minutes.
The same rules that apply to you should apply to them, otherwise it's not fair.
And what about PVP?
All you'd have to do is disable weapons and you prevent respawns meaning they can easily pick you off one at a time, wait for you to respawn, then do it again. A team of 15 players could easily become a team of 1 with 14 "disabled" ships.
Didn't watch much of Enterprise. But even so, that's one. It was probably the Klingon Augment episode wasn't it? Well they weren't at war with the Klingons so why kill them?
Yes it is. But it's essential to an MMO. Of course, technically speaking, there's no such thing as ranked weapons either. Or multiple hit kills. So if you want to adhere to the show, you must have ships with fixed abilities, weapons, ect... that do not scale or rank up. (so your phasers at lt. rank should do the same damage as phasers in VA rank) Also, once your personal shields drop: one hit death. This wouldn't be fun for most people and this being a game, it's designed to be fun for most people.
Klingons never surrender.
Romulans don't either.
Nor do Jem'Hadar.
Also:
Enemies shoot once you're in range regardless of if you shoot first or not. I'd call that "an attack".
....
Please review your DVDs. Voyager killed many Kazon and Vidiians. Heck, Janeway set her ship to self destruct and blew up an entire ship worth of Vidiians. They also caused a phaser feedback that killed every single kazon on the ship.
Picard killed many borg and remans. Unless you think those were set to "stun".
Also, if you captured them where would they go? A brig is not capable of storing hundreds of enemies, nor is it safe. My little escort can only hold about 50 crew yet you want me to beam over and capture 500 Klingon soldiers? Even IF I wanted to that would be tactically stupid.
Not really. You don't know anything about game design. All you seem to know is what you see on the show. I'm sorry to tell you this but...
TV shows are not games. (except game shows)
You can not, under any circumstance, make a TV show into a video game without sacrificing something. Even in TNG- A Final Unity you had to blow up ships. I destroyed many romulan ships myself.
Look, this is an MMO. That means that each player creates their own captain. You can not write a game centered around an unknown captain and expect it to match a Star Trek story. Here, try this. Imagine TNG but instead of Picard it was Janeway. Same exact dialog and actions.
Now replace Worf with Spock.
Now Seven in place of Data.
Now put Kira in for Riker.
Keep all dialog and actions.
Does it make sense?
Let's not and just say we did.
STO is a game. Nothing more. If you read politics into every nuance of an online video game, I pity you. Now if you want to get serious about Star Trek the shows, movies, and novels that's another matter. Still even on the small screen, they take a light hand to stuff like racism, discrimination, sexual identity, and that interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura.
I'm a rightwing Republican living in the States. That political enough for you? I hear about liberals, First Amendment, media bias, angry mobs, partisanship, political grandstanding, and rationalization all the time. It's a cacophony. You don't think I deserve a break from that noise? Too bad because I won't be playing any more missions you may make. JMHO.