It's the source of the beam that kills the Dyson's captain. Supposed to be invisible, but on some graphics settings (particularly lower ones) it's visible. There's a few other missions with fancy effects where on low settings you can see ghosts like this that generate them. There's one inside the console at the end of Sphere of Influence, and a few more around the generator puzzle later in this mission.
Interestingly, while I hadn't noticed it before, when I was returning from activating the generators on my third runthrough (KDF), the Little Man Who Wasn't There was back again in the room with the Voth battlesuit, only on the other side of the room from where he had been before...
I liked the mission a lot. Lots of different things to do. Some of the imagery was spectacular. Flying and space walking near the surface of the sun was amazing. I loved the shot of the battle tilting down to your ship moving towards the station. Finally some cinematic directing. The last scene with the sphere door was pretty striking too.
It was great to hear Tuvok, but every line was delivered like every scene was the same. In the series, even Tuvok raised his voice when heavy stuff was going down. Worf was the same way in the last FE. I can only guess it's how they were directed. It takes a lot out of the immersion. Anyway, when things weren't exploding, he sounded great.
I had trouble with the Voth in that small room, but when I tried it with another toon using the Voth gear, it went much smoother. It's exactly what you need there.
Nice introduction, although could have done without having to follow my little logistics officer to get to the subcommander.
Particulary liked the sense of looming menace in the command centre.
The first run around in my own ship was very pretty. Nice solar effects indeed.
However, as I ran around the next phase doing things and stuff, I couldn't shake a sense of deja vu.
The fabled space walk worked fine for me, no texture issues, for which I'm grateful. Took me a little while to remember how to use a jet pack, but it was fun.
More walking around, more deja vu.
Final space battles were fun enough, liked the arrivals of the flagships.
But then was when it hit me, what that nagging sense of deja vu was.
Have an FE with an actual star trek actor doing the voice over.
Travel somewhere forbidding and solenae styled.
Walk around inside a structure, have a few fights, deal with some puzzles.
Suddenly face and unintended consequence, with nasty strategic ramifications.
Fight off a bunch of horribles in and around a huge gate, with the aid of aforementioned star trek actors characters hero skills.
Structurally, it was extremely close to SoI.
Now, thats not necessarily a bad thing. SoI is, imo, one of the best pieces of work to come out of Cryptic since ftp. And there were clear differences in sequence between the two.
Also, if it aint broke, dont fix it.
Structurally, SoI worked very well. This one used a basically similar structure, laid a bit more shooty shooty over it and a couple more puzzles. It also had some extremely good graphics and the space excursion bit was new.
So, overall, a good FE. Perhaps not quite as impacting as SoI.
And, I think, that may be cryptic being a victim of its own success.
The bar was set pretty high with SoI. This new FE absolutely lives up to that standard, maybe even suropasses it in some dimensions, but doesnt surpass it by as much as would be necessary for me to go 'wow' again.
However, I am also minded of how, when The Empire Strikes Back first came out, some movie goers left the cinema unhappy. It took Return of the Jedi, and the perspective it brought to the narrative, for Empires strengths to become apparent.
As for rewards, running this three times for the solena space set is good. My feelings on the Qmarks are well known, so i will not repeat them here.
I am 90% sure that the branch for mech vs assassin is determined by the solar inhibitor that is first repaired. Specifically, when you first approach the station, there is an inhibitor nearest to you, and repairing that one will give you the mech. However if you move to the right and repair that one first instead, you will get the assassin. I have only tested this one time so far while keeping all prior choices at their default, and it worked, but I havent fully tested all permutations. There may be something else here like CW vs CCW but I am 90% sure its just keyed to the platform that is repaired first.
I tried again before heading to bed, this time switching direction to CW rotation after repairing the right platform, and it gave the mech. I'll try a couple more permutations when I dont have to replay the whole thing.
Great new episode. It is very refreshing comparing to older episodes.
The first part with the sun looks great!!
The only problem I had with the ground map was the enemies were clipping into the wall of the hugeass laser room. Non of the shot was going through the wall. I was lucky since I was playing as a sci captain with a physicist kit. I managed to kill them with the wide area fire and radiation abilities.
The space walk was great!! But adding a downward thrust (opposite of what the space bar does) would be nice.
I can see huge potential with this. Zero Gravity PvP combat. How does that sound? Granted, they need to add combat animation to the floating animation and new maps, but I can see this being popular and a new variety compared to the old PvP maps. Maybe something low gravity like this from Elite Force 2.
I've only played through the episode 3 times with the same FED captain and all 3 times, I did not get into the windowless sun baked room. I don't know if this is completely random or had something to do with previous interaction with game objects.
Cooper's betrayal was not expected at all. I thought he might just die at the end.
I would love the new Dyson research outfit. The white and glowing purple looks awesome!! So Cryptic, make it so we can wear them.
I did not expect the old TNG Dyson Sphere to be in this at all. But the movement of this question now begs the question, are the space around the TNG Dyson Sphere now impossible to warp in? And was this mentioned previously at all? I feel like a big metal sphere the size of Earth's orbit disappearing all of a sudden with release of massive amount of Omega and disabling warp capability would be huge news.
The big laser blowing up the door and the Voth ship was impressive. I don't know about anyone else, but the Science Destroyer was pretty close to it when we tried to hail them and was trapped in the tractor beam very near it. So wouldn't the exploding Voth ship also damage our own ship as well? The game engine could only do so much, but if this was a TV episode, I can image how the Science Destroyer had to raise their fancy sun protective shielding to survive the Voth's explosion up close but still ended with a few scratches on its paint job from the Voth's debris.
Overall I really like it. Unlike many people, I would not say it is better than Sphere of Influence, but it is not worse than it either. They are on equal footing and complement each other quite well.
Best scene was the Undine shot coming through the Dyson Sphere doors.... I do not want encounter whatever took that shot.
Yeah, I saw that and was "WTF! Do they have the frakking Death Star in there?" Yes, I did multiple sci-fi references in one sentence reffering to a Star Trek game as well-sue me.
Yeah, I saw that and was "WTF! Do they have the frakking Death Star in there?" Yes, I did multiple sci-fi references in one sentence reffering to a Star Trek game as well-sue me.
where do I go to acquire the mission "A Step Between Stars" after I have already played it once?
Just in case kozar2's description is not enough:
click on the "Hail Starfleet" icon, bottom of the mini-map frame to your left.
On the pop-up window, click the Episode tab.
The Feature Episode will be the top button on the left hand framework.
I expected Cooper to be an undine when I first met him. I'm not Sherlock Holmes, but everytime in a videogame you have a coward, always complaining with an irritating voice, he is the mole/bad guy. Writers do that because it's unexpected.
Every single time. Remind me how the cop's chief or spy's boss was always guilty in tv shows/movies for a while. Because it was supposed to be unexpected.
Comments
It was great to hear Tuvok, but every line was delivered like every scene was the same. In the series, even Tuvok raised his voice when heavy stuff was going down. Worf was the same way in the last FE. I can only guess it's how they were directed. It takes a lot out of the immersion. Anyway, when things weren't exploding, he sounded great.
I had trouble with the Voth in that small room, but when I tried it with another toon using the Voth gear, it went much smoother. It's exactly what you need there.
Anyway, despite my nitpicks, very enjoyable.
Nice introduction, although could have done without having to follow my little logistics officer to get to the subcommander.
Particulary liked the sense of looming menace in the command centre.
The first run around in my own ship was very pretty. Nice solar effects indeed.
However, as I ran around the next phase doing things and stuff, I couldn't shake a sense of deja vu.
The fabled space walk worked fine for me, no texture issues, for which I'm grateful. Took me a little while to remember how to use a jet pack, but it was fun.
More walking around, more deja vu.
Final space battles were fun enough, liked the arrivals of the flagships.
But then was when it hit me, what that nagging sense of deja vu was.
Have an FE with an actual star trek actor doing the voice over.
Travel somewhere forbidding and solenae styled.
Walk around inside a structure, have a few fights, deal with some puzzles.
Suddenly face and unintended consequence, with nasty strategic ramifications.
Fight off a bunch of horribles in and around a huge gate, with the aid of aforementioned star trek actors characters hero skills.
Structurally, it was extremely close to SoI.
Now, thats not necessarily a bad thing. SoI is, imo, one of the best pieces of work to come out of Cryptic since ftp. And there were clear differences in sequence between the two.
Also, if it aint broke, dont fix it.
Structurally, SoI worked very well. This one used a basically similar structure, laid a bit more shooty shooty over it and a couple more puzzles. It also had some extremely good graphics and the space excursion bit was new.
So, overall, a good FE. Perhaps not quite as impacting as SoI.
And, I think, that may be cryptic being a victim of its own success.
The bar was set pretty high with SoI. This new FE absolutely lives up to that standard, maybe even suropasses it in some dimensions, but doesnt surpass it by as much as would be necessary for me to go 'wow' again.
However, I am also minded of how, when The Empire Strikes Back first came out, some movie goers left the cinema unhappy. It took Return of the Jedi, and the perspective it brought to the narrative, for Empires strengths to become apparent.
As for rewards, running this three times for the solena space set is good. My feelings on the Qmarks are well known, so i will not repeat them here.
I tried again before heading to bed, this time switching direction to CW rotation after repairing the right platform, and it gave the mech. I'll try a couple more permutations when I dont have to replay the whole thing.
The first part with the sun looks great!!
The only problem I had with the ground map was the enemies were clipping into the wall of the hugeass laser room. Non of the shot was going through the wall. I was lucky since I was playing as a sci captain with a physicist kit. I managed to kill them with the wide area fire and radiation abilities.
The space walk was great!! But adding a downward thrust (opposite of what the space bar does) would be nice.
I can see huge potential with this. Zero Gravity PvP combat. How does that sound? Granted, they need to add combat animation to the floating animation and new maps, but I can see this being popular and a new variety compared to the old PvP maps. Maybe something low gravity like this from Elite Force 2.
I've only played through the episode 3 times with the same FED captain and all 3 times, I did not get into the windowless sun baked room. I don't know if this is completely random or had something to do with previous interaction with game objects.
Cooper's betrayal was not expected at all. I thought he might just die at the end.
I would love the new Dyson research outfit. The white and glowing purple looks awesome!! So Cryptic, make it so we can wear them.
I did not expect the old TNG Dyson Sphere to be in this at all. But the movement of this question now begs the question, are the space around the TNG Dyson Sphere now impossible to warp in? And was this mentioned previously at all? I feel like a big metal sphere the size of Earth's orbit disappearing all of a sudden with release of massive amount of Omega and disabling warp capability would be huge news.
The big laser blowing up the door and the Voth ship was impressive. I don't know about anyone else, but the Science Destroyer was pretty close to it when we tried to hail them and was trapped in the tractor beam very near it. So wouldn't the exploding Voth ship also damage our own ship as well? The game engine could only do so much, but if this was a TV episode, I can image how the Science Destroyer had to raise their fancy sun protective shielding to survive the Voth's explosion up close but still ended with a few scratches on its paint job from the Voth's debris.
Overall I really like it. Unlike many people, I would not say it is better than Sphere of Influence, but it is not worse than it either. They are on equal footing and complement each other quite well.
Yeah, I saw that and was "WTF! Do they have the frakking Death Star in there?" Yes, I did multiple sci-fi references in one sentence reffering to a Star Trek game as well-sue me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDBYrFRDIcs :cool:
Under "Episodes" look at "Featured Episodes".
Just in case kozar2's description is not enough:
click on the "Hail Starfleet" icon, bottom of the mini-map frame to your left.
On the pop-up window, click the Episode tab.
The Feature Episode will be the top button on the left hand framework.
Reminds me of Doctor Smith. lol
Or similar to spiders, anyway. Sort of.