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Cardassian Arc: What SHOULD Survive
gulberat
Member Posts: 5,505 Arc User
I'd like to take a look at the Cardassian arc, which if the Romulan arc is any indication, may be up for a major cutting. Instead of looking at it from a negative standpoint, here's my question.
What episodes do you want to see *survive*?
Which do you want to be kept with no changes? Which do you want to stay but in a revamped form and/or possibly combined with other episodes into a new and updated plot?
My preference is to focus the arc strictly on Cardassia and the True Way. This means the 2800 arc stays. I also consider Seeds of Dissent a strong episode plot-wise because of the point it makes about the everyday Cardassian citizen as a decent person once you drive off the True Way threat. (It also suggests something about the new Cardassian government too, in that once the True Way is gone these civilians are not afraid to speak openly to you or be seen with you.)
What episodes do you want to see *survive*?
Which do you want to be kept with no changes? Which do you want to stay but in a revamped form and/or possibly combined with other episodes into a new and updated plot?
My preference is to focus the arc strictly on Cardassia and the True Way. This means the 2800 arc stays. I also consider Seeds of Dissent a strong episode plot-wise because of the point it makes about the everyday Cardassian citizen as a decent person once you drive off the True Way threat. (It also suggests something about the new Cardassian government too, in that once the True Way is gone these civilians are not afraid to speak openly to you or be seen with you.)
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I'd also like an option to fry Drake and say you just did it because you don't like him.
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But if I had the option; I'd still prefer to deal more with the Cardassian politics than the True Way. Maybe show us its political arm, and show us how it loses its political influence with the Detapa Council, and resorts to terrorism to get its way (and, thanks to us, fails.)
And I would really like a solid explanation how the True Way was willing to ally itself with Jem'Hadar and Changlings after everything that they did to the Cardassians - or get rid of that aspect.
The first one with Riker can stay. I think they should cut Empok Nor and put Gul Madred in the Badlands instead, where Gul Brun was.
Maybe they don't keep anything before the 2800. As few of the new Romulan arc episodes as there are, I find them much more enjoyable than the dozen before the Vault previous.
It either needs to be remade or removed.
For everything else there are things which need to be updated, but overall i like the storyline.
There's only one mission I look back to positively at the moment and that's the one with klingons and tribbles...which isn't even cardassian...and could probably be just as well done with the Foundry...by me (so keep a look out sometime around November-December, after the season release. :P )
What I'd like to see is a new 4 episode True Way arc that only hits on some of the same plot points and characters from previous episodes (exactly what they did with the Romulans and Borg) but largely does new things. The mirror universe would be much better handled as part of the new season and the other tangents...well if someone wants to give them some love in the foundry then more power to them. But I would rather see cryptic's time and energy spent making more definitely productive plot developments for STO.
[PS. the 2800 series is not part of the revamp. Meaning, it'll still be here come season 11 without any major modifications. The cardassian revamp is handling all the episodes that date back to the dark, pre-F2P past of the game.]
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they already do; i use my free veteran suits to great effect against that gas on every new character that runs through that mission, or rebreathers if romulan (yes, those work too)
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That I'd like too, but I don't think the True way really needs to be established as a well organized rebellion to a failed political scheme (a la the Romulan Republic). It could be treated more like a terrorist organization, where a few disenfranchised members of society take up arms against those they deem as "outsiders" or complicit with outsiders in order to right some sort of perceived historical injustice (without their host government necessarily doing anything wrong to provoke them, besides simply not being what they want it to be.)
You also wouldn't need to try to explain away 40 years of Cardassian reconstruction. They could have easily rebuilt infrastructure in that time but without addressing major social problems (such as residual followers of the old Cardassian imperialistic dream.)
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That's actually a different arc and probably won't be touched. The Cardassian arc are the missions before that from before the game went F2P.
Now compare that to Kagran.
I suspect if only the 2800 remains canon and not the Undine and Mirror attacks on DS9, Kurland comes up looking a lot better. I will enjoy that just to stick it to the Kurland haters.
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The Jem'Hadar episodes should stay, simply because how else will new players get the Jem'Hadar set? Unless they plan on opening up the Gamma quadrant and moving them into a new Dominion story arc, which would be awesome but maybe asking for too much too soon.
I thought The "Tribble with Klingons" was a good one-off episode. It's one of the few that actually made me smile. Just seeing the rage that cute little balls of fluff can induce in Klingons makes it worth keeping. I know it's not very Cardassian related, so maybe it should be moved into the Klingon War arc?
The episode "Suspect" is good. Like one poster said above, I think it could use a few more possible endings. Again it's not strictly Cardassian related, so maybe it could be moved somewhere else instead of just being removed.
Maybe the Terran Empire has invaded Cardassia or something, and we're going to be sent along to help. One thing I will say, if they're redoing the Cardassian missions and they haven't got Andrew Robinson on board, I shall be disappointed.
Here is some I can care less if they cut.
Suspect
War Games
Shut Down
Tribble with Klingons
Tears of Prophets
The other side
Cage of Fire
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
That's not really a prediction, as a new Rep was confirmed and the first "Mirror" queue, announced last week on STO's news page, is already on tribble. In fact one of the other threads has a link to the video of some guys doing a trial run through.
Also, as I said on the other thread discussing this issue and others here have reiterated here, they said from the start that The 2800 would not be touched. (Except perhaps for slight upgrade tweaks.) So no one has to worry about that.
That almost looks like my list.
Also I think the FE arc should be looked at this time. Add a floater volume to BTR and remove OG, and modify OB so you have to do fewer tasks so it doesn't drive you mad.
Oh and finally, make all of the Cardassian and Dominion missions take place on a remastered DS9. I know one is coming, but it will be coming after the next series has hit and as it features heavily in the missions as DS9 and Terak Nor and various Cardassian outposts.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
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Judging from the ROM arc revamp , that'll be a lot of stuff that is sure to have something in it that someone or other has a fondness of .
That's the price to pay for the speedy ushering to the $30-60-120 ships that the company wants you to buy .
In STO at this point, story barely comes in 3rd place in the ships2sell + systems/gimmics .
But if I ponder that, story comes in 4th place after art .
For me, seeing some deadweight cut is fine for me. I'll be sad if "Seeds of Dissent" goes. But I wonder...would it be technically a problem (i.e. EULA violation) if someone were to resurrect one of the old missions in the Foundry, even if they gave very obvious credit where credit was due to the dev team for writing the original mission? In theory, by watching a playthrough on YouTube, it might be possible to get fairly close, especially with some of the simpler, older missions...but I'm not sure if it would be kosher to actually do that or not.
(Seeds of Dissent DOES have a sequel on the Foundry that I've seen and rather liked, BTW.
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There is at least one foundry mission that is a re-creation of a mission from the old Romulan arc, with all credits, so I guess it's not a violation.
To be fair the Mirror attack on the station can be explained by the fact that Kurland and DS9 crew probably thought the initial problems before they became bad enough to ask for some help (i.e. where we come in) could be understandably written off as DS9 being a 58 years old Cardassian mining station the federation pretty much hooked a bunch of their tech into over the years and hoped for the best (i.e. why O'brien complained the place occasionally).
So the Terrans just took advanatge of DS9 probably being an in better condition Drozana Station than a Deep Space K7 or Earth Spacedock.
Maybe Rapier doesn't make the cut, for example, but maybe we can have a mission where we beam solo to a Belfast/Defiant interior (which incidentally is presently only seen in cutscenes and The Foundry). And maybe the mission where we do that is the Franklin Drake mission.
Rather than looking at what we keep as a "verbatim" thing, I'd want to look at it in terms of what elements can they keep or should they keep and how much of the existing material can be salvaged around that?
The worst mission might be salvagable in terms of its maps. The best mission might be something that can take on the best elements of other missions.
The biggest thing I think we'll lose... and I feel weird about this... is Thomas Riker's kid. I feel like that has potential. Particularly voice acted and with a bit more of the character focus the game has acquired. You've got an encounter where we meet a character who isn't aligned with a military, born in a prison camp. That's rare in STO. You've also got a case where you have a half-human, a tradition as old as Spock. He actually has some weird commonality with Sela. And I feel like once STO commits to a direction with a canon character (like Thomas being dead), we need some continued acknowledgement of that. It's like... I would be fine with bringing Martok back any number of ways but I want his presumed death and B'vat's ascension to remain part of the lore, even in a revamp. (They do have an out there in that his death and loss to B'Vat was apparently during an unexplained broadcast failure.)
I'd be tempted to plug that Joshua Riker character into some of the other stories and get an actor attached to the role. Maybe make him our "inside man" who knows what the True Way is up to because the guards at his prison camp defected or his colony came under fire.
There were some good ones in the Cardassian arc, but there were also a lot of oddballs that didn't make sense in the long run.
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Suspect & War games: Merge these. Make the War game a holographic projection, and have Franklin Drake invent some adequate reason to be there. Basically the portion where you board the Undine controlled Starship would play out similarly to Suspect.
Shutdown: This might be worth cutting, or maybe being revamped. Instead make it a Changeling infiltration supported by rogue Jem'hadar, and True Way elements. This could be used as an introductory episode for Laas, ending with his escape from the station. Also Laas could use a unique character model.
Rapier: Cut this. It is a terribly long, and boring mission. Introduce Eraun in some other episode instead. The best a revamp of this could do is foreshadow the fact that the Wormhole is acting strangely, leading to The 2800. Other than that, it really isn't worth a revamp.
Forging Bonds: Either revamp or cut. This could be a good mission to work Nog into the Cardassian Struggle story line however.
The Long Night: Keep, and revamp. Gul Madred should have a unique character model. If Cage of Fire is kept, it might be worth dropping hints in this mission that something else is going on not directly related to The True Way.
The Mirror Universe Missions: They need their own episode chain separate from the Cardassian Struggle in my opinion.
The Tribble With Klingons: Cut. Maybe create some bizarre Tribble related plot line somewhere else in the game. It is a reasonably entertaining idea, it is just out of place.
The New Link: Keep, and revamp.
Seeds of Dissent: Put this before The Long Night. It could potentially be merged with Forging Bonds. Otherwise, cut it.
Cage of Fire: Cut or revamp. It could benefit from being entirely redone, but we won't lose anything substantial if it is cut.
The 2800 Missions: Keep. I'd suggest some minor tweaks be done to them though. Stream line the cut scenes, and please make it so we can skip the majority of the cut scenes (they are painful to sit through on replays). Maybe consider revamping Operation Gamma, because it can be a tedious mission for many.
I always use two-seater Shuttles with two 360° arc weapons and a Point Defense system for this one. Worker Bees, non-skipable cut scenes, and that Farak nonsense can make it a bit frustrating.
Remember that The New Link is also important for capturing a Changling that is needed on that Security Officer mission.
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l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
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