Talaxian fighters - Why Neelix's ship instead of their actual fighters?

gbw2318 · December 2014

In Delta Rising, the fighters they have the Talaxians use are all based on Neelix's ship, the Baxial. Why not have them use actual Talaxian fighters, like the ones that helped Tom Paris retake Voyager from the Kazon-Nistrim?

angrytarg · December 2014

Good question. Either they are planning a new lockbox with those or Cryptic is just lacking care lately.

markhawkman · December 2014

Um, they had Neelix's ship to use as a model. I'm pretty sure this group of Talaxians didn't have any of the fighters the others used.

It's good to remember that this group of Talaxians fled Talax because of the war with the Haakonian order. It's possible those fighters hadn't even been designed yet. Especially since the fighters were not seen until after the war was over.

Real-world, that design may or may not have been Talaxian at all since this was it's SECOND appearance with the first as a Rakosan vessel.

gbw2318 · December 2014

The Delta Rising map extends from the Nekrit Expanse, from mid season 3 of VOY, down through Borg Space - which was said to be thousands of star systems but in STO consists of the southern Sylleran Sector and northern Alsuran Sector, but never mind - through Year of Hell territory in the rest of the Kotaba Sector, entering Devore space in the Tekara Sector - who are never mentioned, as far as I know, despite the Devore Imperium being rather substantial and having ships powerful enough to have kept Janeway using subterfuge rather than direct confrontation despite repeated intrusions onto her ship - down through the space around the Turei and Vaadwaur homeworlds and a good ways beyond, at least to season 6 of VOY territory.

This means Neelix and his group of Talaxians retraced most of Voyager's journey to the Alpha Quadrant in the ensuing decades to just before Year of Hell territory. Ocampans and Kazon have traveled beyond the Nekrit Expanse the other way and through Borg Space somehow. There's no reason Talaxians couldn't have either, since the impression one gets in that a lot of Talaxians left their homeworld after it was conquered by the Haakonian Order and they likely wouldn't have stopped traveling in the years since - the people Neelix settled down with traveled to season 7 territory, after all. It's all too likely that Talaxians joined with them in interim.

Besides that, the Rakosans were a peaceful people who are unlikely to be dealing arms to other species. Also, if we compare the fighter:

To the ship that the Talaxians Neelix settled with had with them:

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There are distinct design similarities. It's all too likely that the there is no canon explanation for the use of the same studio model for the Rakosan and Talaxian fighters, but they evolved either alongside each other or, more likely, the Rakosans copied the Talaxians to some extent since the Talaxians have been space faring for centuries, hence their previous contact with the Vaadwaur at the height of their power.

angrytarg · December 2014

Well I think you can stop right there trying to rationalise why a ship's design was shared between two people. In Voyager it was all about saving money. They wanted to create as few original designs as possible and heavily recycled CG models all over the place. Neelix freighter, the Baxial, was a background model from Firefly for instance and 8472 was based on Babylon 5 models. While the recycling of studio models wasn't exclusive to Voyager it reached a new high (or rather low) here. So arguing about evolution of designs in the Delta Quadrant is rather moot.

Add to this STOs own in-game logic, which is non existant. STO is only build around showing you things that were on screen to get more players to play because they recognize stuff. Like gbw2318 said, the distances the people of the Delta Quadrant traveled make no sense and keep in mind that Cryptic tried to forcefully squeeze every minor species that was ever seen on screen into their patrol missions just so you have something to recognize - even extinct species magically returned just so you recognize the on-screen reference. So every exlanation as to why they don't have that fighter is also moot. STO doesn't care about any of that, see the overall state of the game and that not even the playable ship line up makes any logical sense or shows an evolution of ship designs. They just cram old ones alongside original designs that are tailored around the metagame so people spend.

So in conclusion the Talaxians should use the fighters that were shown in the show

ussboleyn · December 2014

I thought the Baxial type ship would be the new Cell/Freighter in the next doff pack.

Talaxian fighters - Why Neelix's ship instead of their actual fighters?

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