I would say Flores, then K'Gan, then Khev comes last.
Flores, T'Vrell, etc. - You went through the Academy with them, you helped them reach graduation, rank aside you're all equals and it feels that way.
K'Gan, Ch'gren, Thraak... each have their own reasons for following you (K'Gan was fourth in the chain of command and now is second), Ch'gren wants to honor Doran and Thraak is basically after an escaped prisoner... Besides, they can get away with taking a bit of an attitude towards you as captain; as a certain DOff assignment says, 'To challenge is to be Klingon, to mutiny is to be a biHnuch'. (even if one of them is Gorn)
Khev... until you rescue Rinna, especially, but overall to a degree... it's his story, I'm just along for the ride. Quite frankly, really, if I had a choice, he'd probably get his teeth kicked in for the attitude he takes sometimes... and "Mind Games" with Khev playing the 'shoulder angel' and Sela playing the 'shoulder devil' doesn't help, by that point I'm usually tempted to tell Sela everything in exchange for getting to kill Khev and Hakeev...
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, TNG: "Q-Who?"
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Having started my Fed before season 8, I say Corspa beats both of them. Why? She's a completely blank slate. I redid her face and wardrobe, renamed her, gave her a backstory of my choosing, and set her loose with a phased polaron minigun.
Plus, she's an Andorian. Humans are overrepresented in Starfleet as it is.
"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"
I BOUGHT boffs to replace Khev. one thing i would like: that romulans get access to the uniforms of thier selected faction if desired, or the boffs if not romulan get access to the romulan uniforms.
kine sucks that i have no real "uniform" for my away team
...Maybe it was just me, but I think that Romulans can now get access to a limited selection of allied uniforms. I know that my KDF-Rom-Alien and his crew could select some of the KDF uniforms, i.e. Fur Sleeves, but not Klingon Standard, the individual shoulder pads were an option... Satra was able to select the 'armored' and 'cutout' "bare chest" options... so the Devs might have made that request reality already, vetteguy.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, TNG: "Q-Who?"
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Having started my Fed before season 8, I say Corspa beats both of them. Why? She's a completely blank slate. I redid her face and wardrobe, renamed her, gave her a backstory of my choosing, and set her loose with a phased polaron minigun.
Plus, she's an Andorian. Humans are overrepresented in Starfleet as it is.
I was really disappointed our talker wasn't the female andorian engineer all Feds used to start out with. That would've been more interesting to me than just another guaranteed free purple tac boff like slow-van...
How about some diversity in our experiences, devs? Sheesh.
What's almost sad is that they gave most of Corspa's storyline to Kolez - not an original member of the ship's compliment, join up with you when their posting is put out of action, aid in the actual ground-defence of Vega Colony, etc. - when they could have just made her the security officer assigned to Vega Colony in his place, left in some continuity from the old tutorial...
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, TNG: "Q-Who?"
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
I was really disappointed our talker wasn't the female andorian engineer all Feds used to start out with. That would've been more interesting to me than just another guaranteed free purple tac boff like slow-van...
How about some diversity in our experiences, devs? Sheesh.
Huh? All my fed toons started out with an andorian tac called "Tala".
On an unrelated note, Flores wins imo. "TRIBBLE" wins every time (misogynistic of me, I know).
The problem I have with Tovan and Flores isn't their characters so much as their permanence - Tovan in particular. Since you can't dismiss him, he's a perpetual reminder that you have the exact same origin story as every other Romulan in the game. He's representative of Cryptic's painful railroading in the Romulan storyline.
Flores isn't so bad because at least you can dismiss her, but it's a shame you can't rename her - I'd prefer not to lose a purple tac officer. So I guess out of two annoyances, Flores is the less annoying for me. Woo, go Flores!
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There used to be a picture here, but they changed signatures and I can't be bothered to replace it.
Tovan is better because he's actually integrated into the storyline.
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Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Playing through both my feeling on Elisa was.. meh, who is this person? I mean, they told me shes my best bud, but other than being told that she is my friend, she doesn't feel like it. We haven't gone through anything together, and she is kind of just there.
Tovan on the other hand is very story integrated, and while I don't like that you can't remove him, he and the rest of your Boffs are so much better integrated than into the story than any of the Feds in the hack job on that tutorial.
I have to vote K'gen and Flores as I didn't want to push them out of the airlock. That and Tovan seems to be puppet mastering you through the story until he rescues his sister, he literally speaks and thinks and acts for you which is irritating.
TK is a free purple BO with pretty nice passives. He is also your friend --- as I recall, HE got you your first ship which belonged to HIS friend. After about level 30 he more or less learns his place and begins to behave as an officer. It makes sense to me ... you end up in charge of TK's friend's old ship, become a pair (and later a small group) of heroes without formal training, and your bridge lacks discipline because its a gang of buddies not trained officers. Over time, that corrects itself, everone learns their place by the mid levels.
I actually felt bad about letting a few of the original gang go, but the guy that lost his brother on cloud city and the female reman are just not up to the job at 50.
toven kev is a great purple officer it would be nice once you join a faction that you can send toven kev to the academy for proper first officer training and command training. on my romulan characters toven kev is leading the way team kicking butt. if we could command a personal attack wings of 4 ships toven kev would be getting his own ship tier 1 ship since he want to be the captain. also i would be happy if commander and lt and ltc offier can take charge of ship up to tier 4 in out furure mini personal attack wings and officer captains could command any ship including fleet ships in our personal attack wings.
Tovan Khev has the physical strength Elisa doesn't. If he had a big heavy object, I think he could bludgeon Elisa to death. However, Elisa does have tactical officer experience and I see her as the kind of person to just pull a phaser on Tovan to kill him, whereas he never went to the academy like she did.
It really depends if there's prep time. Because my initial impression is Elisa would be able to beat Tovan in a straight-up fight.
He's just a mechanic, she's a trained fighter. She already has a questionable academy record, I don't think she'd be above using stun just to fight dirty. Tovan's just a naive farmboy with Charva issues. Tovan goes down in less than 5 minutes in a fight with Elisa. Believe it.
I think if you were to pit them against each other the question is what is better. Formal training or ruff street fighting. With out the formal training of star fleet would Tovan be more willing fight dirty. Also as a Romulan he would be much stronger then Flores.
Also are we talking gun fight where range means no strength advantage or are we talking caged hand to hand combat.
My vote is for the one who finds the blunt objects hidden under the ring.
...Maybe it was just me, but I think that Romulans can now get access to a limited selection of allied uniforms. I know that my KDF-Rom-Alien and his crew could select some of the KDF uniforms, i.e. Fur Sleeves, but not Klingon Standard, the individual shoulder pads were an option... Satra was able to select the 'armored' and 'cutout' "bare chest" options... so the Devs might have made that request reality already, vetteguy.
What I'd really love is for the Diplomacy boffs to be able to use your own faction's costumes. Especially if I end up getting an Orion. Eleya may be lax about shipboard discipline when it comes to her command staff, but she's not that lax.
"Honey, you either put some clothes on, or you're off my ship. I don't give a flying kiss'tek what Diplomatic Corps said."
"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"
I actually felt bad about letting a few of the original gang go, but the guy that lost his brother on cloud city and the female reman are just not up to the job at 50.
On any under starting boff you have, just buy the corresponding purple boff (so for T'Vrell get a Vulcan Sci-Off) you'd like them to replace. Make sure to save his or her costume/features and then reapply it to the purple boff. You can then replace any of the starting officers who aren't purple this way.
The only downside is that some of the boffs can come with a special item that will not be carried over to the new boff (Romulan boffs especially). So you'll lose out on those.
---
Now onto sorta topic.
Personally speaking, if I'm getting a boff with a backstory, Cryptic should flesh that boff out. With Elisa, I should know more about why she's my best buddy during the course. Sure, I'm the ace student and she's the potential troublemaker, but how exactly did we get together? What made us be pals? I think this needs to be delved into more, so its not just sort of "this is the way it is, don't question it".
In regards to Tovan, I think our character should just be someone who Tovan has heard of, but doesn't really know too well. It would also be better that by the end of the starting area that it is determined by the crew that we should be in charge of the ship rather than Tovan. He feels slighted because it is his friend's ship and let's be honest, did a lot of the ground work to save as many people as they could, but we get picked for how well we followed those orders on the ground and gave commands in space (like an overall thing).
It would then give more reason as to why he would then jump in to answer things and questions because he wants to prove himself and doesn't exactly feel comfortable us being the Captain. It would also allow us to go "Tovan knock it off" and by the end of Nimbus, I think we should have proven to be the type of person he's willing to follow.
As for K'Gan, as has been mentioned before, he just sort of drops out of sight after the tutorial, but that's a good thing. It doesn't capture us and make us go "well this is how K'Gan is". We just get a brief introduction to what type of person he's like, so this allows us to place whatever type of background or character he is after that. When compared to the other two First Officers though, it does fall flat from a storyline or personality throughout though.
The only thing I would flesh out about K'Gan is that he's such an honorable Klingon that is probably why he's never been in command of his own ship or never had become a First Officer.
I also think it would've been a lot better had each character introduced in the tutorial, could possibly be a candidate for your first officer (or at least 3 to go along with each profession), and if they didn't become your first officer (by your own choice), they would end up as characters who would show up from time to time during the storylines you play.
Since you already know of them, this would mean that Cryptic doesn't necessarily need to create characters for NPC ships that show up maybe once and aren't heard from again. You know these people from beginning until the story ends at the point it is at. A reason for wanting to care for other people.
If you need an example though of what I mean... It would be like if you picked T'Vrell over Elisa for example, Elisa would later show up as the Captain/First/Security of another ship. Or perhaps work their way up to being a Captain from their original position by the time you yourself reach Captain. She could even be learning from or working under Lt. Torres on the U.S.S. Kirk when that story occurs and assists us while we try to stop the invasion.
For the Romulans, this would allow you to not have Tovan. If you don't choose Tovan, the Romulan Republic would assign you to your own ship (or Tovan to his). You'd still eventually do something [spoilers~!] so that he's be grateful towards you for doing so, but it would being a Captain of his own ship and coming to help you out during it.
For the Klingons, I'll admit that this is a little tricky but doable. You could make it a lot more heroic and honorable that everyone who participated in the opening storyline has the chance to become their own Captain, but your First Officer that you want would demand to remain under your command because you have the most honor and he would like to follow you. Or something similar.
I'll just apologize to people who have a better idea about how Klingon society works. I'm just going with what I'm recalling from the shows, so if it doesn't work that way, yeah, I'm going to apologize.
Anyways, point I was trying to get is that it would effect your story and things progress for you. It would give you more reasons to play different alts, as the story wouldn't be so much similar to begin with since you could only have one first officer.
That's probably a lot more work and possibly hassle than Cryptic could do, but I think it would make for a more interesting game having these people who graduate/survive/assist with you take on actual roles within the game. If nothing else, it would give us re-occurring character throughout the story. Something I think that STO lacks.
Just my humble opinion.
---
Now fully on topic:
If I had to say which character is better, from a storyline perspective it is Elisa, from a perspective of how much we can imagine about the character it would be K'Gan, and from actual personality (whether good or bad) it is Tovan.
Overall, I'd say K'Gan. While I know K'Gan's a true Klingon warrior (what Klingon isn't?), he feels a lot more reliable than Elisa or Tovan. Though he speaks little, he seems to be more understanding of his position and how he can help us be a good Captain. That may just be me. I'd rate Tovan worse because as many others have said, the story seems to be about him instead of about us.
From a game play perspective of who is XO and supports the character.
Flores, hands down. You went to the academy together, you helped one another out. When you get to be acting XO on the ship she handles it well and assists as is her job when you become captain.
Tovan sadly I need to ignore his existance in order to be captain. He sent you to check the messages. (Would have come with but was looking over supicious comm traffic from the night before.) Orders you to meet with sec chief as he goes to get evacuation going. Orders you each step of the way off Virinat. He knows how to pilot the ship, but sends you to the bridge while he gets the ship working. So on and so on. It is more like you are Spock to his Kirk.
In combat directly you have two security officers. One a star fleet trained combatant and the other basically a policeman. Tovan has a few kilos on Flores and is a romulan (heavy worlder) Flores has more education, Tovan more seasoning. Edge: Tovan
Indirect combat, looks similar at first to the line up. Academy marksman vs cop that shot bottles. But a quick review shows Flores got put on the floor by boarders, while Tovan stood on a hill with a rifle and held his ground versus armed attackers allowing people to be rescued. Edge: Tovan
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Khev, Flores and K'Gan all smack of Cryptic trying to be BioWare and not being very good at it. This isn't necessarily the fault of Cryptic's writers - The STO game mechanics aren't set up in the right way to produce a crew the game will make you bond with the way you do in Mass Effect (or TOR, if we're comparing apples to apples).
It's a nice attempt. But STO isn't set up to make it work. TOR was developed from the get-go to give you a crew you could get to know. I dumped all three of them as soon as I could, and my crew are -my- crew. If the game isn't going to give me character development the way it should be done, I have no problem doing that myself.
I gave K'Gan a backstory of my own since Cryptic didn't seem interested in it. In my eyes he's K'Gan, Son of Kortak, a commoner and a former enlisted man. (I don't know if the Klingons have enlisted, but it's never been said outright that they don't.) He served in the Gorn-Klingon War as a ground warfare officer and lost his left eye and gained a field commission at the Siege of Gorn. He and Brokosh (my Lethean captain) met when they served aboard IKS Sek'lhr.
"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"
Khev, Flores and K'Gan all smack of Cryptic trying to be BioWare and not being very good at it. This isn't necessarily the fault of Cryptic's writers - The STO game mechanics aren't set up in the right way to produce a crew the game will make you bond with the way you do in Mass Effect (or TOR, if we're comparing apples to apples).
It's a nice attempt. But STO isn't set up to make it work. TOR was developed from the get-go to give you a crew you could get to know. I dumped all three of them as soon as I could, and my crew are -my- crew. If the game isn't going to give me character development the way it should be done, I have no problem doing that myself.
Another example is the difference between Neverwinter Nights 2 and its first expansion Mask of the Betrayer, and its second expansion Storm of Zehir. The first two have a full party of premade companions with premade personalities and backstories, and the campaign is set up accordingly with character development subplots and so forth. This is the model all of BioWare's games since at least Neverwinter Nights has used.
Storm of Zehir is more like Icewind Dale: The party is a completely blank slate and you construct them from scratch, and the campaign is mostly dungeon crawling. They programmed in optional dialogue for your companions based on various traits (class, alignment, stats, and so forth), but they still basically lack their own personalities.
Prior to LOR, STO operated like Storm of Zehir: The party (your captain and boffs) was a blank slate, and the game and mechanics were set up with this in mind. LOR tried to shoehorn the BioWare model into the Icewind Dale box, and it didn't really work well because the playerbase had a different set of expectations and the game was organized around the other model.
"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"
Another example is the difference between Neverwinter Nights 2 and its first expansion Mask of the Betrayer, and its second expansion Storm of Zehir. The first two have a full party of premade companions with premade personalities and backstories, and the campaign is set up accordingly with character development subplots and so forth. This is the model all of BioWare's games since at least Neverwinter Nights has used.
Storm of Zehir is more like Icewind Dale: The party is a completely blank slate and you construct them from scratch, and the campaign is mostly dungeon crawling. They programmed in optional dialogue for your companions based on various traits (class, alignment, stats, and so forth), but they still basically lack their own personalities.
Prior to LOR, STO operated like Storm of Zehir: The party (your captain and boffs) was a blank slate, and the game and mechanics were set up with this in mind. LOR tried to shoehorn the BioWare model into the Icewind Dale box, and it didn't really work well because the playerbase had a different set of expectations and the game was organized around the other model.
I just wish Bioware had started from the outset more of Neverwinter nights 2. I liked the interaction and such. My only complaint on that game, your companions couldn't take prestige classes.
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Another example is the difference between Neverwinter Nights 2 and its first expansion Mask of the Betrayer, and its second expansion Storm of Zehir. The first two have a full party of premade companions with premade personalities and backstories, and the campaign is set up accordingly with character development subplots and so forth. This is the model all of BioWare's games since at least Neverwinter Nights has used.
Storm of Zehir is more like Icewind Dale: The party is a completely blank slate and you construct them from scratch, and the campaign is mostly dungeon crawling. They programmed in optional dialogue for your companions based on various traits (class, alignment, stats, and so forth), but they still basically lack their own personalities.
Prior to LOR, STO operated like Storm of Zehir: The party (your captain and boffs) was a blank slate, and the game and mechanics were set up with this in mind. LOR tried to shoehorn the BioWare model into the Icewind Dale box, and it didn't really work well because the playerbase had a different set of expectations and the game was organized around the other model.
I absolutely agree with you. I can see what Cryptic's team are trying to do, and props to them for trying to give us a more story-and-character driven initial experience, but the system's just not set up that way. TOR does it better simply because it's designed to do it from the get go.
The roleplayer and storyteller in me absolutely loves that I have a bridge crew. Actually, I love that I have both boffs and doffs. And I love that they have names. I love that doffs have personality traits and that the purchased ones have quotes, too. It makes the ship feel more alive. These people on my ship are more 'real' to me. You start to associate doffs with success or failure, even if it's actually a random roll of the dice. My bridge crew have personalities.
I do give Cryptic credit for trying it, but unless you really are going to go full on BioWare on us and give us BOffs we can talk to and have conversations with, it's really just a nod to story and character.
I enjoy all 3 of them and put them to use. My Fed Eng got Flores from asking the officer, since he was done way before they redid the missions. So now she is used on my away teams and bridge crew. Only change on her looks was the outfit. Tovan I still use him since he was featured heavy with the story, and he feels like my best friend. K'gen I use him on my new KDF captain. He makes a good officer as well. I kept him in his outfit so he can stand out.
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Comments
Flores, T'Vrell, etc. - You went through the Academy with them, you helped them reach graduation, rank aside you're all equals and it feels that way.
K'Gan, Ch'gren, Thraak... each have their own reasons for following you (K'Gan was fourth in the chain of command and now is second), Ch'gren wants to honor Doran and Thraak is basically after an escaped prisoner... Besides, they can get away with taking a bit of an attitude towards you as captain; as a certain DOff assignment says, 'To challenge is to be Klingon, to mutiny is to be a biHnuch'. (even if one of them is Gorn)
Khev... until you rescue Rinna, especially, but overall to a degree... it's his story, I'm just along for the ride. Quite frankly, really, if I had a choice, he'd probably get his teeth kicked in for the attitude he takes sometimes... and "Mind Games" with Khev playing the 'shoulder angel' and Sela playing the 'shoulder devil' doesn't help, by that point I'm usually tempted to tell Sela everything in exchange for getting to kill Khev and Hakeev...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Plus, she's an Andorian. Humans are overrepresented in Starfleet as it is.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
*dances* Yeah! Tovan sucks! He is SOOO annoying! Hate hate HATE HIM! TROLOLOL!
kine sucks that i have no real "uniform" for my away team
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
I was really disappointed our talker wasn't the female andorian engineer all Feds used to start out with. That would've been more interesting to me than just another guaranteed free purple tac boff like slow-van...
How about some diversity in our experiences, devs? Sheesh.
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Huh? All my fed toons started out with an andorian tac called "Tala".
On an unrelated note, Flores wins imo. "TRIBBLE" wins every time (misogynistic of me, I know).
Flores isn't so bad because at least you can dismiss her, but it's a shame you can't rename her - I'd prefer not to lose a purple tac officer. So I guess out of two annoyances, Flores is the less annoying for me. Woo, go Flores!
There used to be a picture here, but they changed signatures and I can't be bothered to replace it.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Tovan on the other hand is very story integrated, and while I don't like that you can't remove him, he and the rest of your Boffs are so much better integrated than into the story than any of the Feds in the hack job on that tutorial.
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I actually felt bad about letting a few of the original gang go, but the guy that lost his brother on cloud city and the female reman are just not up to the job at 50.
I came here expecting Mortal Combat forums style
Also are we talking gun fight where range means no strength advantage or are we talking caged hand to hand combat.
My vote is for the one who finds the blunt objects hidden under the ring.
What I'd really love is for the Diplomacy boffs to be able to use your own faction's costumes. Especially if I end up getting an Orion. Eleya may be lax about shipboard discipline when it comes to her command staff, but she's not that lax.
"Honey, you either put some clothes on, or you're off my ship. I don't give a flying kiss'tek what Diplomatic Corps said."
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The only downside is that some of the boffs can come with a special item that will not be carried over to the new boff (Romulan boffs especially). So you'll lose out on those.
---
Now onto sorta topic.
Personally speaking, if I'm getting a boff with a backstory, Cryptic should flesh that boff out. With Elisa, I should know more about why she's my best buddy during the course. Sure, I'm the ace student and she's the potential troublemaker, but how exactly did we get together? What made us be pals? I think this needs to be delved into more, so its not just sort of "this is the way it is, don't question it".
In regards to Tovan, I think our character should just be someone who Tovan has heard of, but doesn't really know too well. It would also be better that by the end of the starting area that it is determined by the crew that we should be in charge of the ship rather than Tovan. He feels slighted because it is his friend's ship and let's be honest, did a lot of the ground work to save as many people as they could, but we get picked for how well we followed those orders on the ground and gave commands in space (like an overall thing).
It would then give more reason as to why he would then jump in to answer things and questions because he wants to prove himself and doesn't exactly feel comfortable us being the Captain. It would also allow us to go "Tovan knock it off" and by the end of Nimbus, I think we should have proven to be the type of person he's willing to follow.
As for K'Gan, as has been mentioned before, he just sort of drops out of sight after the tutorial, but that's a good thing. It doesn't capture us and make us go "well this is how K'Gan is". We just get a brief introduction to what type of person he's like, so this allows us to place whatever type of background or character he is after that. When compared to the other two First Officers though, it does fall flat from a storyline or personality throughout though.
The only thing I would flesh out about K'Gan is that he's such an honorable Klingon that is probably why he's never been in command of his own ship or never had become a First Officer.
I also think it would've been a lot better had each character introduced in the tutorial, could possibly be a candidate for your first officer (or at least 3 to go along with each profession), and if they didn't become your first officer (by your own choice), they would end up as characters who would show up from time to time during the storylines you play.
Since you already know of them, this would mean that Cryptic doesn't necessarily need to create characters for NPC ships that show up maybe once and aren't heard from again. You know these people from beginning until the story ends at the point it is at. A reason for wanting to care for other people.
If you need an example though of what I mean... It would be like if you picked T'Vrell over Elisa for example, Elisa would later show up as the Captain/First/Security of another ship. Or perhaps work their way up to being a Captain from their original position by the time you yourself reach Captain. She could even be learning from or working under Lt. Torres on the U.S.S. Kirk when that story occurs and assists us while we try to stop the invasion.
For the Romulans, this would allow you to not have Tovan. If you don't choose Tovan, the Romulan Republic would assign you to your own ship (or Tovan to his). You'd still eventually do something [spoilers~!] so that he's be grateful towards you for doing so, but it would being a Captain of his own ship and coming to help you out during it.
For the Klingons, I'll admit that this is a little tricky but doable. You could make it a lot more heroic and honorable that everyone who participated in the opening storyline has the chance to become their own Captain, but your First Officer that you want would demand to remain under your command because you have the most honor and he would like to follow you. Or something similar.
I'll just apologize to people who have a better idea about how Klingon society works. I'm just going with what I'm recalling from the shows, so if it doesn't work that way, yeah, I'm going to apologize.
Anyways, point I was trying to get is that it would effect your story and things progress for you. It would give you more reasons to play different alts, as the story wouldn't be so much similar to begin with since you could only have one first officer.
That's probably a lot more work and possibly hassle than Cryptic could do, but I think it would make for a more interesting game having these people who graduate/survive/assist with you take on actual roles within the game. If nothing else, it would give us re-occurring character throughout the story. Something I think that STO lacks.
Just my humble opinion.
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Now fully on topic:
If I had to say which character is better, from a storyline perspective it is Elisa, from a perspective of how much we can imagine about the character it would be K'Gan, and from actual personality (whether good or bad) it is Tovan.
Overall, I'd say K'Gan. While I know K'Gan's a true Klingon warrior (what Klingon isn't?), he feels a lot more reliable than Elisa or Tovan. Though he speaks little, he seems to be more understanding of his position and how he can help us be a good Captain. That may just be me. I'd rate Tovan worse because as many others have said, the story seems to be about him instead of about us.
Flores, hands down. You went to the academy together, you helped one another out. When you get to be acting XO on the ship she handles it well and assists as is her job when you become captain.
Tovan sadly I need to ignore his existance in order to be captain. He sent you to check the messages. (Would have come with but was looking over supicious comm traffic from the night before.) Orders you to meet with sec chief as he goes to get evacuation going. Orders you each step of the way off Virinat. He knows how to pilot the ship, but sends you to the bridge while he gets the ship working. So on and so on. It is more like you are Spock to his Kirk.
In combat directly you have two security officers. One a star fleet trained combatant and the other basically a policeman. Tovan has a few kilos on Flores and is a romulan (heavy worlder) Flores has more education, Tovan more seasoning. Edge: Tovan
Indirect combat, looks similar at first to the line up. Academy marksman vs cop that shot bottles. But a quick review shows Flores got put on the floor by boarders, while Tovan stood on a hill with a rifle and held his ground versus armed attackers allowing people to be rescued. Edge: Tovan
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
It's a nice attempt. But STO isn't set up to make it work. TOR was developed from the get-go to give you a crew you could get to know. I dumped all three of them as soon as I could, and my crew are -my- crew. If the game isn't going to give me character development the way it should be done, I have no problem doing that myself.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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Another example is the difference between Neverwinter Nights 2 and its first expansion Mask of the Betrayer, and its second expansion Storm of Zehir. The first two have a full party of premade companions with premade personalities and backstories, and the campaign is set up accordingly with character development subplots and so forth. This is the model all of BioWare's games since at least Neverwinter Nights has used.
Storm of Zehir is more like Icewind Dale: The party is a completely blank slate and you construct them from scratch, and the campaign is mostly dungeon crawling. They programmed in optional dialogue for your companions based on various traits (class, alignment, stats, and so forth), but they still basically lack their own personalities.
Prior to LOR, STO operated like Storm of Zehir: The party (your captain and boffs) was a blank slate, and the game and mechanics were set up with this in mind. LOR tried to shoehorn the BioWare model into the Icewind Dale box, and it didn't really work well because the playerbase had a different set of expectations and the game was organized around the other model.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I just wish Bioware had started from the outset more of Neverwinter nights 2. I liked the interaction and such. My only complaint on that game, your companions couldn't take prestige classes.
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I absolutely agree with you. I can see what Cryptic's team are trying to do, and props to them for trying to give us a more story-and-character driven initial experience, but the system's just not set up that way. TOR does it better simply because it's designed to do it from the get go.
The roleplayer and storyteller in me absolutely loves that I have a bridge crew. Actually, I love that I have both boffs and doffs. And I love that they have names. I love that doffs have personality traits and that the purchased ones have quotes, too. It makes the ship feel more alive. These people on my ship are more 'real' to me. You start to associate doffs with success or failure, even if it's actually a random roll of the dice. My bridge crew have personalities.
I do give Cryptic credit for trying it, but unless you really are going to go full on BioWare on us and give us BOffs we can talk to and have conversations with, it's really just a nod to story and character.
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