The story line would have made much more sense had we been doing a heist for a critical part of the Krenim ship that only the Iconians had. Instead we have Kargan, who's a cross between Leroy Jenkins and Zzap Branigan based on his decision making, thinking that the best thing to do while we wait for the device to be built is to stand and trade with a vastly superior enemy force.
The suicide mission into the Iconian Sphere was awesome. /sarcasm
Really though this has got to be the laziest story arc to date. Which is really sad considering this is what 5 years of stories have been building up to. Its like they finally got tired of building up to the Iconians and decided they needed to get them out of the way. So whatever story, no matter how irrational would do.
i wonder if they are anchored to their personal command ship? like a life line in time, they can travel anywhere, to and from the ship, but are totally dependant on its frame of reference while away from their home galaxy. if the ship were to be destroyed it would sever that link and cast the mind adrift completely.
If that were the case... Would you risk said ship and the Queen of Iconia? The moment we set foot on that ship. The Iconians should of flooded the corridors with Elachi and Herald forces.
there were at least 18 boarding parties on that ship, so im guessing things were busy elsewhere, especially as we were the last crew to board. creating portals was draining her energy as it was, so i can only imagine the extra drain it would have caused reaching further and creating more, so what would that have achieved, other than a quicker death? damned if you do, damned if you don't. oh then there is full scale 'every available ship' battle going on outside the sphere.. it may feel like it, and story writing has that way of making it feel, but we are not stuck in a solitary moment of time, everything else is still going on.. things we are aware off within our proximity and operation, and then who knows what else?!
i wonder if they are anchored to their personal command ship? like a life line in time, they can travel anywhere, to and from the ship, but are totally dependant on its frame of reference while away from their home galaxy. if the ship were to be destroyed it would sever that link and cast the mind adrift completely.
If that were the case... Would you risk said ship and the Queen of Iconia? The moment we set foot on that ship. The Iconians should of flooded the corridors with Elachi and Herald forces.
there were at least 18 boarding parties on that ship, so im guessing things were busy elsewhere, especially as we were the last crew to board. creating portals was draining her energy as it was, so i can only imagine the extra drain it would have caused reaching further and creating more, so what would that have achieved, other than a quicker death? damned if you do, damned if you don't. oh then there is full scale 'every available ship' battle going on outside the sphere.. it may feel like it, and story writing has that way of making it feel, but we are not stuck in a solitary moment of time, everything else is still going on.. things we are aware off within our proximity and operation, and then who knows what else?!
Heres the problem. It shouldnt take you headcanoning this situation to explain itself. The writer, the developers, should have done a better job of giving us an explanation.
This is one thing in a long line of hamfisting this whole storyline and expecting us to just buy into all of it. The stories in general have felt more like the first missions you play in the game then the longer more thought out missions you play like Surface Tension. Im convinced they just want this whole thing to be over with.
This is one thing in a long line of hamfisting this whole storyline and expecting us to just buy into all of it. The stories in general have felt more like the first missions you play in the game then the longer more thought out missions you play like Surface Tension. Im convinced they just want this whole thing to be over with.
surface tension came out how long after a step between stars, which came out how long after sphere of influence? all of the most recent FEs have been coming out 3 weeks after the last - which is what players have been asking for; more story content coming out faster...too bad speed causes quality to suffer
personally, i'd rather they go back to once every 4 months
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
This is one thing in a long line of hamfisting this whole storyline and expecting us to just buy into all of it. The stories in general have felt more like the first missions you play in the game then the longer more thought out missions you play like Surface Tension. Im convinced they just want this whole thing to be over with.
surface tension came out how long after a step between stars, which came out how long after sphere of influence? all of the most recent FEs have been coming out 3 weeks after the last - which is what players have been asking for; more story content coming out faster...too bad speed causes quality to suffer
personally, i'd rather they go back to once every 4 months
Foundry Authors would like to speak to you about speed and quality. Plenty of people can dish out well thought out material in a short period of time without sacrificing the story.
Theyve had 5 years to get a general idea of how the arc would go. And how to work it out when the time came. This whole storyline smacks of last minute hamfisting.
This is one thing in a long line of hamfisting this whole storyline and expecting us to just buy into all of it. The stories in general have felt more like the first missions you play in the game then the longer more thought out missions you play like Surface Tension. Im convinced they just want this whole thing to be over with.
surface tension came out how long after a step between stars, which came out how long after sphere of influence? all of the most recent FEs have been coming out 3 weeks after the last - which is what players have been asking for; more story content coming out faster...too bad speed causes quality to suffer
personally, i'd rather they go back to once every 4 months
Yeah, I actually said this back when DR came out, that they could've bought themselves a lot of time to do DR better by releasing "Mindscape" as a standalone. Not to mention they REALLY cost themselves with the climax/denouement of the Undine arc by making it an afterthought instead of letting it stand by itself. Alone, it would've had a much greater impact IMO than it did.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Not "Broken Intelligence", but rather "Insulted Intelligence" - the mission insult both my intelligence and the intelligence of the characters involved.
Actually, I was mostly OK with the Iconian war plot development before that - it had some questionable moments, but there remained a possibility to sort them out further along the story.
And then we have "Circle of Idiots" befall on our heads - apparently for our sins.
In my view, the second worst of all time close after "Divide et Impera" (Hmmm, on the second thought maybe "Divide et Impera" WAS better, after all ). Cryptic removes parts of Romulan arc for "quality issues" and now gives us THIS.
The whole mission was a huge disappointment.
The plotline doesn't hold together and falls apart into loosely connected pieces.
The suicide attack of the Alliance Fleet on the Herald Sphere with unclear purposes...
The attack on the flagship with unclear purposes...
Boarding of the flagship with unclear purposes...
(It doesn't seem that we are trying to destroy it - actually, it could have been done by ships alone, we didn't need to beam down for THAT... And what the destruction of the ship will achieve anyway ? For all we know, Iconians can have another hundred of these dreadnoughts - it is not like it is some kind of Death Star or some other "you win" button piece of tech. And before we board the ship we don't even know that M'Tara is there)
Disabling the energy nodes to unknown ends...
And at last driving M'Tara to her death without a second thought about consequences...
(And our character knows enough to exactly predict, WHAT will just happen if she dies)
What is the POINT of what we are doing throughout the whole episode ?
It looks like the answer is that the whole plot of the episode is basically unimportant. Hence its logic slips, inconsistencies with the previous storyline, plot holes and overall plot falling apart. It doesn't have any value per se - it has one sole function, to fulfil which it was written.
Namely - to bring us to the point, when the use of the Time Weapon becomes unavoidable. "Oh look - our fleet is destroyed - we can't protect ourselves, we are defenseless. And those bad ebil Iconians are Iconians are out for our blood - they will kill us all" (Yeah, and remind me who is responsible for just that, distinguished Admiral (Dahar Master) Pinhead ? Maybe, you know, someone killed their leader and sent them into murderous rage - haven't your heard something about that? No ?). The needs of many... blah-blah-blah.
Basically, the whole episode is an advocacy for using the Timeship - to justify the violation of Temporal Prime Directive, to justify genocide against unique ancient intelligent species... To bring the plot to "us or them" junction. It pretends to address the concerns the players voiced in the discussion about this whole temporal shenanigans ... and miserably fails to do so.
And as the whole episode is just a mere function serving to connect two dots - "we in tough, but manageable situation" and "we are in deep-deep s... snow", hence its poor quality and logical fallacies.
It is the same story as with "Dust to Dust" over again. People started voicing concerns about Kobali cause being just, about their actions in respect of Vaadwaur in stasis. And lo and behold - we get the episode, which tells that Vaadwaur in the pods are mainly soldiers, that those" ebil bad guys" have thrown out most of their civilians out of the programme to put more soldiers into stasis, etc. So it is OK - or we are supposed to think that it is OK - for Kobali to keep them, where they are, and wait till they die to use the bodies for their own proliferation.
Though the overall quality of "Dust to Dust" was much higher of course - the justification part was done much more subtler and elegantly in that case.
This episode made zero sense... basically we spent an enormous amount of irreplaceable resources to enrage a nearly unstoppable enemy even further? WHY?
It is the same story as with "Dust to Dust" over again.
I agree with all your post but wanted to call this out. It's becoming clear that the writers at Cryptic have a different... ethical viewpoint than a good amount of the user base. From forcing us to support grave robbers in dust to dust to the very non-Star Trek approach of forcing us to kill all the high end villains- this is not a develop team writing for the wider array of Star Trek fans.
This is development team writing for themselves, and their own niche morality.
This is one thing in a long line of hamfisting this whole storyline and expecting us to just buy into all of it. The stories in general have felt more like the first missions you play in the game then the longer more thought out missions you play like Surface Tension. Im convinced they just want this whole thing to be over with.
surface tension came out how long after a step between stars, which came out how long after sphere of influence? all of the most recent FEs have been coming out 3 weeks after the last - which is what players have been asking for; more story content coming out faster...too bad speed causes quality to suffer
personally, i'd rather they go back to once every 4 months
Foundry Authors would like to speak to you about speed and quality. Plenty of people can dish out well thought out material in a short period of time without sacrificing the story.
Theyve had 5 years to get a general idea of how the arc would go. And how to work it out when the time came. This whole storyline smacks of last minute hamfisting.
As a Foundry author, I think you're making a gross misrepresentation. Your definition of "short" in particular seems to have no basis in reality... A decent Foundry mission usually takes at least 2 months.
What is the POINT of what we are doing throughout the whole episode ?
I thought Kagran made that clear. Without this attack, the war would have been over in a week. He says this in the briefing.
So, the point of the massive attack was to force the Iconians to focus their gaze and forces on the assault on the Herald sphere.
During the battle, Tom Paris mentions the Heralds' reserves being larger than anticipated. Now, he wouldn't even know that if the Alliance fleet hadn't taken out enough Herald ships in order for them to call for reinforcements.
So the Heralds suffered heavy losses as well. This seems to get missed by a lot of players. I guess they should've made that more clear.
With those heavy losses and the death of M'Tara, the Iconians are now most likely licking their wounds for a bit.
The only problem is that allied casualties were much higher than anticipated. In fact, they ended up being so high that the Krenim weapon is our only chance left.
I don't know...maybe some peaceful period of mourning is required after the death of an Iconian. Who knows...
If they lashed out immediately I'm sure it would have been mentioned in the debriefing.
Without this attack, the war would have been over in a week. He says this in the briefing.
We will lose a war in a week - so let's not suffer and lose it in one day. Klingon logic !
How exactly this attack should have prevented losing the war ? What were the military goals of this offensive ? What was supposed to be achieved ?
The whole operation looks like it was planned by orcs from Warhammer. "Let's go shot some Heralds! WAAAAAAAARRRRGH !!!!!"
Destroying the Herald Fleet ? Impossible - we are outnumbered and outgunned
Taking over the Sphere ? Impossible - again we don't have nor the numbers, nor the technology against literally millions of Heralds, which could be transported there by gateways. Even if we somehow happen to defeat the ships protecting the Sphere.
Try to destroy the Sphere ? That we could have done - but for that we needed to take some powerful weapons of mass destruction like trilithium projectiles with us. And, as we know, the Alliance Fleet didn't have anything like that.
Try to destroy the flagship ? What for ? - For all we know, they have hundreds of such dreadnoughts: we already take out at least three of them - at Qonos, during our previous raid to the Sphere (from the game events' point of view I regard the events of the queued content as happening just once - and the later replays are simulations, just as with the story episodes) and during Delta Flight. Doesn't seem that it particularly helped us.
Going after M'Tara ? Even if we factor out the simple truth that such move is plainly dumb - we don't even know that she is at that ship before we meet her there.
The outcome of this attack was predictable from the start. But Kagran, Quinn, Paris, Nog, Jarok, Seven and last, but not least our distinguished Admiral/Dahar Master Half-Wit suddenly all have amnesia and forget all the information we gathered about Iconians, the outcome of the previous major battle with Iconians when we have lost 1/4 of our fleets after engaging only a fraction of Herald forces... forget everything.
During the battle, Tom Paris mentions the Heralds' reserves being larger than anticipated.
Hmmm, maybe he should have read our character's report on our short excursion with Sela into the Sphere. I seem to remember there was something there about Herald Fleet blotting out the sun.
In fact, they ended up being so high that the Krenim weapon is our only chance left.
Exactly what I have written - the prime and only goal of this episode is to justify the use of the Krenim Time Death Star.
Resulting in "Plot-holes... Plot-holes everywhere"
Without this attack, the war would have been over in a week. He says this in the briefing.
We will lose a war in a week - so let's not suffer and lose it in one day. Klingon logic !
How exactly this attack should have prevented losing the war ? What were the military goals of this offensive ? What was supposed to be achieved ?
Deal enough damage at the heart of the Iconian defense so that they will be licking their wounds for a while instead of moving forward with their invasion.
It seems to me that even less would be achieved by keeping the fleet around the Krenim station and hoping they don't get caught, or by splitting the Alliance forces so the Iconians can kill them in easy-to-chew portions.
The Iconians were on the offensive. Their fleet is out there, taking over Alliance planets, destroying Alliance bases and destroying Alliance ships.
The Allied Fleet attacked at the heart of the Iconian operations - where the Iconians probably didn't expect an attack.
Sure, it was a well-defended location - but not so well defended that they didn't call for reinforcements when the Alliance Armada reached their doorstep.
There was little hope of a decisive win. The whole operation was to delay the enemies advance just long enough to make the Krenim Temporal Weapon work and alter the timeline. And since the ship itself is protected from the alterations to time it causes, that might include going back before this fateful battle even happened.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Destroying the Herald Sphere would of been possible if we had the Undine to support us.
Rather than charging into a scuicide mission... we know the Undine have the ability to blow a hole in the Dyson Spheres... if we had them on our side... Victory!
What should we of done? Captured the dreadnought... told the auto-pilot to go to Fluidic Space... shoot some Undine... boom... problem solved.
Why aren't we forming alliances? Granted most of them most likely won't listen but... The Breen, Borg, Tholians, Deferi, Cardassians, Talarians and so on.
Where the hell are the Delta Quadrant races? The place at the start of this mission was in the DQ. Were they smart enough to say "Oh hell no are we doing that."
Deal enough damage at the heart of the Iconian defense so that they will be licking their wounds for a while instead of moving forward with their invasion.
The thing is that while getting Iconian/Herald forces JUST wounded, we get our own forces almost totally destroyed.
So they don't need to lick any wounds now - and after our "brilliant" move of causing M'Tara's death they definitely won't hesitate even for a moment.
You don't throw out your army out of the window only to weaken the enemy - not to defeat it. Because after that you just won't be able to use the results of enemy's weakening.
The gateways give the Iconian forces a major advantage in logistics - however spread out they may be, they can be gathered in endangered spot in the matter of minutes. And that just what we see in the episode. You don't need to be a military genius to predict the outcome - being under a major attack Heralds will bring in all forces they can muster through the gateways.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Try to destroy the flagship ? What for ? [...]
Going after M'Tara ? Even if we factor out the simple truth that such move is plainly dumb - we don't even know that she is at that ship before we meet her there.
We do know. It's not just a random dreadnought. It's the FLAGSHIP. That's where the commanders usually are.
Where else would she be if not there?
The thing is that while getting Iconian/Herald forces JUST wounded, we get our own forces almost totally destroyed.
Yes but it doesn't matter because we will have the Krenim weapon!
So they don't need to lick any wounds now - and after our "brilliant" move of causing M'Tara's death they definitely won't hesitate even for a moment.
Well, they obviously are doing just that.
You don't throw out your army out of the window only to weaken the enemy - not to defeat it. Because after that you just won't be able to use the results of enemy's weakening.
The result is having bought enough time to complete the Krenim weapon. Why is this so hard to grasp?
This isn't a war you can win with ships.
Try to destroy the flagship ? What for ? [...]
Going after M'Tara ? Even if we factor out the simple truth that such move is plainly dumb - we don't even know that she is at that ship before we meet her there.
We do know. It's not just a random dreadnought. It's the FLAGSHIP. That's where the commanders usually are.
Where else would she be if not there?
On the sphere going... "whoa... glad I'm not over there." or "T'Ket... you want to one shot Defera or Cardassia? It might make them go away."
However... as it is... we now have T'Ket sitting on the sphere going...
"Where the feck did (Player Character) go?" ... "Ah.. there you are in the Kyana System... what are you... Krenim!"
then to add insult to injury... the dead can be subsumed into Elachi... providing them with more soldiers.
Assuming the Elachi are still about... which they should be as the last time we saw them a group of them attempted to mug us on the Herald Sphere...
and..
That's assuming they can convert the dead. (Think there was a line somewhere about them collecting dead bodies from a Cardassian ship)
I always hate to give away an interesting idea but I think it would be fun to have a story where, basically, the Elachi are raiding a graveyard and we can't evacuate it fast enough and our only alternative is to convert the dead into Kobali so the Elachi can't have them.
Sort of a "lesser of two evils" type thing when it comes to desecrating the dead.
i wonder if they are anchored to their personal command ship? like a life line in time, they can travel anywhere, to and from the ship, but are totally dependant on its frame of reference while away from their home galaxy. if the ship were to be destroyed it would sever that link and cast the mind adrift completely.
If that were the case... Would you risk said ship and the Queen of Iconia? The moment we set foot on that ship. The Iconians should of flooded the corridors with Elachi and Herald forces.
Is she Queen? I kinda got the impression that they were more or less a Democratic council and that any power she had was more like being a moderator than an administrator.
We do know. It's not just a random dreadnought. It's the FLAGSHIP. That's where the commanders usually are.
Where else would she be if not there?
And what exactly gives us the idea that the fleet is commanded directly by any Iconian - let alone M'Tara - and not some experienced Harbringer ? And Iconians just giving instructions from the safety of the Sphere command centre or from Andromeda galaxy for that matter ?
The result is having bought enough time to complete the Krenim weapon. Why is this so hard to grasp?
This isn't a war you can win with ships.
The thing is that until the next episode we don't know if we bought any time at all. Maybe it will begin with, for instance, Earth getting glassed by a bunch of dreadnoughts - in accordance with T'Ket's plan for filling the oceans with the lifeblood of any species who dared to oppose Iconians.
And if Cryptic writers will make Heralds and Iconians after the death of M'Tara sit and do nothing - this will be yet another plot-hole and example of logical inconsistencies resulting from this episode. It will make no sense at all.
First, they're mad as a March hare. We didn't have anything to do with their ouster 200,000 years ago. None of the Alpha and Beta quadrant races were advanced enough at that time to have done it. They're just lashing out at whomever is closest. I don't think logic and rational debate are going to cut it. They've been pursuing this campaign for decades. You'd think at some point--with them being all advanced and everything--they'd have pulled back and said, "Wait--our anger is misplaced! These are not the beings who deposed us! We must repent our evil ways and make amends by showering them with love, candy, and fluffy bunnies cavorting amidst rainbows!" Yeah, I didn't think so, either.
Second, they use thralls to do their dirty work, while they pose behind the scenes, twirling their metaphorical mustaches and gloating, waiting for just the right time to make a dramatic and flamboyant entrance. They deserve no more (and no less) than a swift kick in whatever they use for nads now.
Third, they have vocabulary issues. It seems like the only word they know for "destroy" is "burn." The galaxy will burn? Really? The big spinny thing composed almost exclusively of massive hydrogen fusion reactions is going to...burn? I think that torpedo is already out of the tube, cupcake.
Fourth, look--the moment something or someone says "You cannot kill a god!" about themselves, they're just asking for it. I consider it a personal point of honor to disabuse them of that notion.
Fifth, a loss of so much history? Seriously? Look, if you makes you feel better, we can read their diaries later.
What if according to the story our character is not a trigger-happy moron, who unnecessarily provokes the Iconians, but rather a cold-blooded calculating scum bag After all these months of fighting, hundreds of destroyed spaceships and tens of thousands killed opponents - both in space and on the ground - started to grow on him/her. And constantly hanging out with Sela and her fancy ideas of handling things didn't help much either.
So he/she deliberately provokes the Iconians and Heralds to go on a killing genocidal rampage. The Iconians and Heralds entertain themselves with frying the Alliance planets and killing billions and billlions to avenge M'Tara. They get carried away by the undoubtedly pleasant task of eliminating the filthy vermin (aka the alliance races) from the face of the Galaxy, and thus the Alliance gets the time to finish the Deus ex Machina Timeship... at the expense of the lives of millions and millions of innocents.
Then - voila - use the Timeship and all this never happened. The ends justify the means, blah-blah-blah...
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Really though this has got to be the laziest story arc to date. Which is really sad considering this is what 5 years of stories have been building up to. Its like they finally got tired of building up to the Iconians and decided they needed to get them out of the way. So whatever story, no matter how irrational would do.
Heres the problem. It shouldnt take you headcanoning this situation to explain itself. The writer, the developers, should have done a better job of giving us an explanation.
This is one thing in a long line of hamfisting this whole storyline and expecting us to just buy into all of it. The stories in general have felt more like the first missions you play in the game then the longer more thought out missions you play like Surface Tension. Im convinced they just want this whole thing to be over with.
surface tension came out how long after a step between stars, which came out how long after sphere of influence? all of the most recent FEs have been coming out 3 weeks after the last - which is what players have been asking for; more story content coming out faster...too bad speed causes quality to suffer
personally, i'd rather they go back to once every 4 months
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Foundry Authors would like to speak to you about speed and quality. Plenty of people can dish out well thought out material in a short period of time without sacrificing the story.
Theyve had 5 years to get a general idea of how the arc would go. And how to work it out when the time came. This whole storyline smacks of last minute hamfisting.
Yeah, I actually said this back when DR came out, that they could've bought themselves a lot of time to do DR better by releasing "Mindscape" as a standalone. Not to mention they REALLY cost themselves with the climax/denouement of the Undine arc by making it an afterthought instead of letting it stand by itself. Alone, it would've had a much greater impact IMO than it did.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Actually, I was mostly OK with the Iconian war plot development before that - it had some questionable moments, but there remained a possibility to sort them out further along the story.
And then we have "Circle of Idiots" befall on our heads - apparently for our sins.
In my view, the second worst of all time close after "Divide et Impera" (Hmmm, on the second thought maybe "Divide et Impera" WAS better, after all
The whole mission was a huge disappointment.
The plotline doesn't hold together and falls apart into loosely connected pieces.
The suicide attack of the Alliance Fleet on the Herald Sphere with unclear purposes...
The attack on the flagship with unclear purposes...
Boarding of the flagship with unclear purposes...
(It doesn't seem that we are trying to destroy it - actually, it could have been done by ships alone, we didn't need to beam down for THAT... And what the destruction of the ship will achieve anyway ? For all we know, Iconians can have another hundred of these dreadnoughts - it is not like it is some kind of Death Star or some other "you win" button piece of tech. And before we board the ship we don't even know that M'Tara is there)
Disabling the energy nodes to unknown ends...
And at last driving M'Tara to her death without a second thought about consequences...
(And our character knows enough to exactly predict, WHAT will just happen if she dies)
What is the POINT of what we are doing throughout the whole episode ?
It looks like the answer is that the whole plot of the episode is basically unimportant. Hence its logic slips, inconsistencies with the previous storyline, plot holes and overall plot falling apart. It doesn't have any value per se - it has one sole function, to fulfil which it was written.
Namely - to bring us to the point, when the use of the Time Weapon becomes unavoidable. "Oh look - our fleet is destroyed - we can't protect ourselves, we are defenseless. And those bad ebil Iconians are Iconians are out for our blood - they will kill us all" (Yeah, and remind me who is responsible for just that, distinguished Admiral (Dahar Master) Pinhead ? Maybe, you know, someone killed their leader and sent them into murderous rage - haven't your heard something about that? No ?). The needs of many... blah-blah-blah.
Basically, the whole episode is an advocacy for using the Timeship - to justify the violation of Temporal Prime Directive, to justify genocide against unique ancient intelligent species... To bring the plot to "us or them" junction. It pretends to address the concerns the players voiced in the discussion about this whole temporal shenanigans ... and miserably fails to do so.
And as the whole episode is just a mere function serving to connect two dots - "we in tough, but manageable situation" and "we are in deep-deep s... snow", hence its poor quality and logical fallacies.
It is the same story as with "Dust to Dust" over again. People started voicing concerns about Kobali cause being just, about their actions in respect of Vaadwaur in stasis. And lo and behold - we get the episode, which tells that Vaadwaur in the pods are mainly soldiers, that those" ebil bad guys" have thrown out most of their civilians out of the programme to put more soldiers into stasis, etc. So it is OK - or we are supposed to think that it is OK - for Kobali to keep them, where they are, and wait till they die to use the bodies for their own proliferation.
Though the overall quality of "Dust to Dust" was much higher of course - the justification part was done much more subtler and elegantly in that case.
I agree with all your post but wanted to call this out. It's becoming clear that the writers at Cryptic have a different... ethical viewpoint than a good amount of the user base. From forcing us to support grave robbers in dust to dust to the very non-Star Trek approach of forcing us to kill all the high end villains- this is not a develop team writing for the wider array of Star Trek fans.
This is development team writing for themselves, and their own niche morality.
My character Tsin'xing
So, the point of the massive attack was to force the Iconians to focus their gaze and forces on the assault on the Herald sphere.
During the battle, Tom Paris mentions the Heralds' reserves being larger than anticipated. Now, he wouldn't even know that if the Alliance fleet hadn't taken out enough Herald ships in order for them to call for reinforcements.
So the Heralds suffered heavy losses as well. This seems to get missed by a lot of players. I guess they should've made that more clear.
With those heavy losses and the death of M'Tara, the Iconians are now most likely licking their wounds for a bit.
The only problem is that allied casualties were much higher than anticipated. In fact, they ended up being so high that the Krenim weapon is our only chance left.
If they lashed out immediately I'm sure it would have been mentioned in the debriefing.
How exactly this attack should have prevented losing the war ? What were the military goals of this offensive ? What was supposed to be achieved ?
The whole operation looks like it was planned by orcs from Warhammer. "Let's go shot some Heralds! WAAAAAAAARRRRGH !!!!!"
Destroying the Herald Fleet ? Impossible - we are outnumbered and outgunned
Taking over the Sphere ? Impossible - again we don't have nor the numbers, nor the technology against literally millions of Heralds, which could be transported there by gateways. Even if we somehow happen to defeat the ships protecting the Sphere.
Try to destroy the Sphere ? That we could have done - but for that we needed to take some powerful weapons of mass destruction like trilithium projectiles with us. And, as we know, the Alliance Fleet didn't have anything like that.
Try to destroy the flagship ? What for ? - For all we know, they have hundreds of such dreadnoughts: we already take out at least three of them - at Qonos, during our previous raid to the Sphere (from the game events' point of view I regard the events of the queued content as happening just once - and the later replays are simulations, just as with the story episodes) and during Delta Flight. Doesn't seem that it particularly helped us.
Going after M'Tara ? Even if we factor out the simple truth that such move is plainly dumb - we don't even know that she is at that ship before we meet her there.
The outcome of this attack was predictable from the start. But Kagran, Quinn, Paris, Nog, Jarok, Seven and last, but not least our distinguished Admiral/Dahar Master Half-Wit suddenly all have amnesia and forget all the information we gathered about Iconians, the outcome of the previous major battle with Iconians when we have lost 1/4 of our fleets after engaging only a fraction of Herald forces... forget everything.
Hmmm, maybe he should have read our character's report on our short excursion with Sela into the Sphere. I seem to remember there was something there about Herald Fleet blotting out the sun.
Exactly what I have written - the prime and only goal of this episode is to justify the use of the Krenim Time Death Star.
Resulting in "Plot-holes... Plot-holes everywhere"
It seems to me that even less would be achieved by keeping the fleet around the Krenim station and hoping they don't get caught, or by splitting the Alliance forces so the Iconians can kill them in easy-to-chew portions.
The Iconians were on the offensive. Their fleet is out there, taking over Alliance planets, destroying Alliance bases and destroying Alliance ships.
The Allied Fleet attacked at the heart of the Iconian operations - where the Iconians probably didn't expect an attack.
Sure, it was a well-defended location - but not so well defended that they didn't call for reinforcements when the Alliance Armada reached their doorstep.
There was little hope of a decisive win. The whole operation was to delay the enemies advance just long enough to make the Krenim Temporal Weapon work and alter the timeline. And since the ship itself is protected from the alterations to time it causes, that might include going back before this fateful battle even happened.
Rather than charging into a scuicide mission... we know the Undine have the ability to blow a hole in the Dyson Spheres... if we had them on our side... Victory!
What should we of done? Captured the dreadnought... told the auto-pilot to go to Fluidic Space... shoot some Undine... boom... problem solved.
Why aren't we forming alliances? Granted most of them most likely won't listen but... The Breen, Borg, Tholians, Deferi, Cardassians, Talarians and so on.
Where the hell are the Delta Quadrant races? The place at the start of this mission was in the DQ. Were they smart enough to say "Oh hell no are we doing that."
So they don't need to lick any wounds now - and after our "brilliant" move of causing M'Tara's death they definitely won't hesitate even for a moment.
You don't throw out your army out of the window only to weaken the enemy - not to defeat it. Because after that you just won't be able to use the results of enemy's weakening.
The gateways give the Iconian forces a major advantage in logistics - however spread out they may be, they can be gathered in endangered spot in the matter of minutes. And that just what we see in the episode. You don't need to be a military genius to predict the outcome - being under a major attack Heralds will bring in all forces they can muster through the gateways.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Assuming the Elachi are still about... which they should be as the last time we saw them a group of them attempted to mug us on the Herald Sphere...
and..
That's assuming they can convert the dead. (Think there was a line somewhere about them collecting dead bodies from a Cardassian ship)
Where else would she be if not there?
Yes but it doesn't matter because we will have the Krenim weapon!
Well, they obviously are doing just that.
The result is having bought enough time to complete the Krenim weapon. Why is this so hard to grasp?
This isn't a war you can win with ships.
On the sphere going... "whoa... glad I'm not over there." or "T'Ket... you want to one shot Defera or Cardassia? It might make them go away."
However... as it is... we now have T'Ket sitting on the sphere going...
"Where the feck did (Player Character) go?" ... "Ah.. there you are in the Kyana System... what are you... Krenim!"
I always hate to give away an interesting idea but I think it would be fun to have a story where, basically, the Elachi are raiding a graveyard and we can't evacuate it fast enough and our only alternative is to convert the dead into Kobali so the Elachi can't have them.
Sort of a "lesser of two evils" type thing when it comes to desecrating the dead.
Is she Queen? I kinda got the impression that they were more or less a Democratic council and that any power she had was more like being a moderator than an administrator.
The thing is that until the next episode we don't know if we bought any time at all. Maybe it will begin with, for instance, Earth getting glassed by a bunch of dreadnoughts - in accordance with T'Ket's plan for filling the oceans with the lifeblood of any species who dared to oppose Iconians.
And if Cryptic writers will make Heralds and Iconians after the death of M'Tara sit and do nothing - this will be yet another plot-hole and example of logical inconsistencies resulting from this episode. It will make no sense at all.
Suddenly had an idea...
What if according to the story our character is not a trigger-happy moron, who unnecessarily provokes the Iconians, but rather a cold-blooded calculating scum bag
So he/she deliberately provokes the Iconians and Heralds to go on a killing genocidal rampage. The Iconians and Heralds entertain themselves with frying the Alliance planets and killing billions and billlions to avenge M'Tara. They get carried away by the undoubtedly pleasant task of eliminating the filthy vermin (aka the alliance races) from the face of the Galaxy, and thus the Alliance gets the time to finish the Deus ex Machina Timeship... at the expense of the lives of millions and millions of innocents.
Then - voila - use the Timeship and all this never happened. The ends justify the means, blah-blah-blah...
*Black humour mode off*