Enh.... if time travel can be used to do ANYTHING, then writing a story is pretty much impossible. Every story would end before it began. Time travel MUST have limitations otherwise it's a useless story telling device.
*ding ding ding*
That's exactly why it is a poor choice for STOs story arc. It would be much more plausible, dramatic and coherent if we got rid of the time travel aspects and just were hopping around in space, learning about his plan, coming too late, trying to make it right.
Nothing of this makes sense. Why, in the future, do the Na'kuhl and Krenim attack the new khitomer thing with conventional weapons and taking hostages int he first place? They already time travel and could undo it without having to be shot by us. Literally the whole thing falls apart - time travel only works for a single story to make a moral or ethical point and then rectify/delete the changed timeline in the end.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Well, I wasnt very surprised. The Iconian War had similar bad writing. And time travel incidents (two notable ones, one which set this arc on), which didnt make sense.
Its my bet they will re-do the ending of "Year of Hell", and let the Timeship wipe itself out of existence, and give us some historical data to check what happened instead in the Iconian war.
It seems the Writings section for STO is either heavily understaffed or someone called in some favors to get his nephew in...
It seems the Writings section for STO is either heavily understaffed or someone called in some favors to get his nephew in...
I wouldn't be quite as hostile. I bet the stories can only be written in a very narrow arc. It seems the executive producer and lead designer are not willing to design/greenlight content that does not more or less closely cling to what happened on the shows because they invest a lot of money in hiring every guest actor they can get a hold on. As such, the writing staff is very limited in what they do - probably they were told to more or less just rehash "year of hell" for this one. Also, STOs storytelling potential is very limited - there is a reason we get all those blogs that tell us the story of the game instead of having the game tell it's own story.
I think Cryptic should - for the sake of the game quality - stop the forced recognition pattern. They feel the need to drop refrences to Trek shows and movies left and right for the fear of losing recognition of the IP or something. The Breen-Deferi story, an original piece not affiliated with the shows - was way superior to a lot of the stuff we got elsewhere because they didn't have such blatant references all the time and had much more liberty to tell the story.
I also think, personally, the money on the voice acting should be saved and invested in actual gameplay and interactive elements of the game. They can advertise way better when they say "robert picardo did voice acting for us!" but the actual contribution of the actors doesn't do much in terms of enjoyment, at least for me.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Enh.... if time travel can be used to do ANYTHING, then writing a story is pretty much impossible. Every story would end before it began. Time travel MUST have limitations otherwise it's a useless story telling device.
*ding ding ding*
That's exactly why it is a poor choice for STOs story arc. It would be much more plausible, dramatic and coherent if we got rid of the time travel aspects and just were hopping around in space, learning about his plan, coming too late, trying to make it right.
Nothing of this makes sense. Why, in the future, do the Na'kuhl and Krenim attack the new khitomer thing with conventional weapons and taking hostages int he first place? They already time travel and could undo it without having to be shot by us. Literally the whole thing falls apart - time travel only works for a single story to make a moral or ethical point and then rectify/delete the changed timeline in the end.
Enh... that assumes you CAN undo the story at the end. Maybe not?
I think it is time to scale back on the 'Special Guest Appearances'. Fan Service is fun the 1st time. It might even be fun the 2d or 3d. But if it gets trotted out every time, then it quickly loses its appeal. It is expensive as well. And most of the time, its impact on game play and plot development is marginal at best and restrictive at worst.
The Breen-Deferi arc was good storytelling. So was the revamped Klingon Tutorial. The Fek'lhri arc was also well done. There were no VO's by Star Trek actors in these. So they were probably far cheaper to produce. And the resources could be allocated for things other than egos and "Ooooh! Squeee!"
One thing I've noticed over the years whenever there is one of these 'Special Guest Appearances': My character becomes a minion. And apparently not a very bright one, either. One who has to lead by the nose down a preprogrammed path by the VO. Which becomes the centerpiece of the FE. I want STO to be about the stories we have now. Not stories about someone who used to be someone.
The current story makes my head hurt with all the plot errors and how time travel is omnipotent until it isn't. All the temporal paradoxes being set up will either be ignored or used as devices to drunkenly stagger the story along to the next FE. There may even be a blog or two. If a game developer has to use resources outside the game to tell the entire story, that's poor design and equally poor story telling.
Something I would suggest to pwe/cryptic. Save the money you spend on VOs to hire some real writers. People with actual experience and verifiable credentials because they were writers for actual science fiction television series. A lot of people come here for Star Trek but they expect better story telling to keep them here. The current story arc with an over the top mustache twirling villain doesn't enthuse me. Yes he has motives and they are good ones. But it is confusing as to whether or not I'm just supposed to whack him or feel sorry for him first and then whack him.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
As I've stated before the whole "right" timeline theme is a purely selfish principle, out of line with Starfleet's enlightened, liberal, attitude. Also, in order to have a "right" timeline, you have to imply there is both a start, and finish, to time itself, with some governing authority (a deity?) implementing it's creative vision over such. Apparently, it's the Starfleet time cops, who have taken it upon themselves to be that governing authority.
Isn't that why its an accord by a galactic union. So that everyone is unanimously agreeing this is how things "should be"? Its not just Starfleet deciding it.
hmm IIRC Kal Dano makes a short, cryptic statement about the Na'kuhl sun before leaving. "there's nothing we can do for them."
I've just replayed the mission to check if I missed something, but nope, nothing.
I still believe the intent was to imply the star to be beyond salvation, which is why he's all "oh noes!" when the Tholians kill the star, instead of a more annoyed reaction. However, due to the various vocabulary used during the two episodes (revive, restart, fix), it failed and lead pretty much everyone to believe the dead star can be saved.
Once again, even a tiny additional dialog would be enough to solve this issue. "Oh no, we're too late, the star is now beyond salvation and we can't travel back or we'll create a paradox!"
Indeed. I would expect that the Tox Uthat would be a much more efficient and complete method of destroying a star being made of future tech.
Starfleet might have run one experiment to reignite one particular star, but that doesn't have to mean they can do it with any type of star. Isn't part of the DS9 story there also saying that it took some time to find a candidate? Or am I confusing that with another science experiment?
But again, without that being mentioned in the episode at all, it just looks like garbage.
While I generally prefer things like this mentioned, they seem to take the "Don't Tell, Show" approach here. In the previous episode, we had spend basically half the mission analyzing the star. This time, the star suddenly changes. It seems not that difficult to infer that the Tox Uthat is a lot more effective at star destruction then the method the Tholians had before. Heck, why would they even bother with the Tox Uthat otherwise!
Without any reason given for not doing it, it goes from "I'm sorry we did our best but there's nothing more we can do" to "eff your problems and eff you too". It's literally the difference between a noble failure to save everyone though you did your best to a callous refusal to avoid the suffering and death of billions of lives and an entire inhabited star system. That's how big a deal it is.
Very true. I usually prefer a show approach to storytelling, but a little tell goes a long way sometimes. No exposition is just as bad as too much exposition.
Enh.... if time travel can be used to do ANYTHING, then writing a story is pretty much impossible. Every story would end before it began. Time travel MUST have limitations otherwise it's a useless story telling device.
*ding ding ding*
That's exactly why it is a poor choice for STOs story arc. It would be much more plausible, dramatic and coherent if we got rid of the time travel aspects and just were hopping around in space, learning about his plan, coming too late, trying to make it right.
Nothing of this makes sense. Why, in the future, do the Na'kuhl and Krenim attack the new khitomer thing with conventional weapons and taking hostages int he first place? They already time travel and could undo it without having to be shot by us. Literally the whole thing falls apart - time travel only works for a single story to make a moral or ethical point and then rectify/delete the changed timeline in the end.
I've been wondering something.
When we made our failed Incursions, the Annorax in the new timeline registered a drop in power in its temporal core. What if this one had a limited number of temporal incursions? It can time travel freely, but removing things from existence is limited, perhaps based on the rushed construction? Or maybe done intentionally? The Alliance would try to limit the ship in case it was ever turned against them.
In that case, the temporal dreadnought is a powerful timeship, but not the Temporal Death Star the original was. Or it just needed time to recharge. However, it does also mean that every Temporal Incursion it makes occurs across all timelines it exists in, drains power from the same core.
The Na'Khul and the Krenim have different goals. The Na'khul only want one temporal incursion in truth, one that results in the restoration of their star. The Krenim however want revenge and to tear the Temporal Accords apart. Attacking the conference is a terrorist act, because Noye knows that just because he kills the signors of the document doesn't mean the participating nations can't go forward with it. The Galactic Union is fully capable of defending itself from temporal attack already. It was a scare tactic and an announcement. Noye wants the fight, he wants the war.
Well, I wasnt very surprised. The Iconian War had similar bad writing. And time travel incidents (two notable ones, one which set this arc on), which didnt make sense.
Its my bet they will re-do the ending of "Year of Hell", and let the Timeship wipe itself out of existence, and give us some historical data to check what happened instead in the Iconian war.
It seems the Writings section for STO is either heavily understaffed or someone called in some favors to get his nephew in...
Like using Borg time travel technology to get back to Iconia? That works for me. It also restores the Tuterians and Clauda.
It seems the Writings section for STO is either heavily understaffed or someone called in some favors to get his nephew in...
I wouldn't be quite as hostile. I bet the stories can only be written in a very narrow arc. It seems the executive producer and lead designer are not willing to design/greenlight content that does not more or less closely cling to what happened on the shows because they invest a lot of money in hiring every guest actor they can get a hold on. As such, the writing staff is very limited in what they do - probably they were told to more or less just rehash "year of hell" for this one. Also, STOs storytelling potential is very limited - there is a reason we get all those blogs that tell us the story of the game instead of having the game tell it's own story.
I think Cryptic should - for the sake of the game quality - stop the forced recognition pattern. They feel the need to drop refrences to Trek shows and movies left and right for the fear of losing recognition of the IP or something. The Breen-Deferi story, an original piece not affiliated with the shows - was way superior to a lot of the stuff we got elsewhere because they didn't have such blatant references all the time and had much more liberty to tell the story.
I also think, personally, the money on the voice acting should be saved and invested in actual gameplay and interactive elements of the game. They can advertise way better when they say "robert picardo did voice acting for us!" but the actual contribution of the actors doesn't do much in terms of enjoyment, at least for me.
I enjoy the actors quite a bit, but that doesn't mean that they can't be involved in new content. After all they were involved in new content when they were acting on the show.
The Breen arc and the Breen themselves were still heavily rooted in the Breen's appearance in the Dominion War, it's the Deferi who were the real stars.
However, I am among those generally opposed to the blending of the Preservers and the First Humanoids, which I feel was rather lazy, or at least uninspired. So that depressed me greatly about the storyline as a whole.
With all of the story remastering they've actually thrown away plenty of good storylines, the Aelesans and their ancient hidden super weapons for instance.
But yeah I appreciate that they're completing storylines from the shows, and trying to bring a sense of more completion to things, but they can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Original stories work.
I think it is time to scale back on the 'Special Guest Appearances'. Fan Service is fun the 1st time. It might even be fun the 2d or 3d. But if it gets trotted out every time, then it quickly loses its appeal. It is expensive as well. And most of the time, its impact on game play and plot development is marginal at best and restrictive at worst.
The Breen-Deferi arc was good storytelling. So was the revamped Klingon Tutorial. The Fek'lhri arc was also well done. There were no VO's by Star Trek actors in these. So they were probably far cheaper to produce. And the resources could be allocated for things other than egos and "Ooooh! Squeee!"
One thing I've noticed over the years whenever there is one of these 'Special Guest Appearances': My character becomes a minion. And apparently not a very bright one, either. One who has to lead by the nose down a preprogrammed path by the VO. Which becomes the centerpiece of the FE. I want STO to be about the stories we have now. Not stories about someone who used to be someone.
The current story makes my head hurt with all the plot errors and how time travel is omnipotent until it isn't. All the temporal paradoxes being set up will either be ignored or used as devices to drunkenly stagger the story along to the next FE. There may even be a blog or two. If a game developer has to use resources outside the game to tell the entire story, that's poor design and equally poor story telling.
Something I would suggest to pwe/cryptic. Save the money you spend on VOs to hire some real writers. People with actual experience and verifiable credentials because they were writers for actual science fiction television series. A lot of people come here for Star Trek but they expect better story telling to keep them here. The current story arc with an over the top mustache twirling villain doesn't enthuse me. Yes he has motives and they are good ones. But it is confusing as to whether or not I'm just supposed to whack him or feel sorry for him first and then whack him.
But doesn't that negate what you said earlier?
If we have seen story arcs such as the Deferi, the Klingon tutorial, and the Fek'lhri that were actually good created by the same writing team that created the "sub-par" arcs featuring guest stars, then the problem isn't actually the writing team but them having difficulty meshing a meaningful guest appearance with maintaining our character's appropriate gravitas.
Though Harry Kim at least was actually our minion. Big surprise.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Good point, but it does raise a very bad question: what if we go back in time and board the Annorax before Noye raises the shields, then shoot him with the shields up?
Maybe the universe would just explode.
-R
No, if he dies inside the timeship with temporal shields up then he just dies. The crew can go back and get an older/younger Noye, but that one is dead.
He's dead yes, but what happens to the timeline INSIDE the temporal shields? Temporal shields seem to protect the enclosed space from external changes to the timeline, but it's highly unclear how they would work against internal changes.
The problem is that while temporal shields need to be external to the timeline to work, the fact that they can be raised and lowered means they are still on some level stuck within the timeline. So what happens when I go back in time and alter the timeline within the shields? Or if I go back in time and prevent the shields from being raised in the first place?
Really, it's the fundamental problem of trying to make sense of a time travel story when the players can travel through time to any arbitrary point.
But yeah, destroying the timeship via temporal incursion would solve a lot of problems, the only issue is that we wouldn't be able to get back to Iconia...which may not be a bad thing as I said above. Also the Timeship is what really lets the temporal genie out of the bottle since Starfleet has had access to time travel for over a century at this point. Although without the Timeship there may not be a need for the Temporal Accords either.
If we didn't use the Annorax for out trip back to Iconia then I'd say Incursion it away.
It seems like we ought to be able to travel back to the fall of Iconia without the Annorax: there are other ways to travel through time, and we have the tech to use several of them. So I'm all for erasing the Annorax. It was stupid idea to begin with.
@captaind3 - You covered it in your response. Is it the "same writing team"? I don't think it is. At least I've not seen any proof of this.
Look at the Iconian story arc. In particular the story where the writer sneaked in The Reference Which Shall Not Be Named For Fear Of Starting Another Flamewar. Was that good storytelling? Did it have a meaningful impact upon either the plot or story progression? Or was it dropped in as a way to be hip, and edgy? Does that person still write for STO or has she(?) moved on?
A stable writing team has one thing which this game sometimes lacks - continuity. A good writing team not only has continuity, it also works very hard to avoid those little errors which cause a cessation of immersion. There are few contradictions. The ones that exist do so for a reason. Which may or may not be apparent or may be held back for later resolution. A stable writing team also avoids setting up unresolvable problems. How or when are we going to get the Sword of QeylIss back? This is the significant cultural artifact of the Klingon Empire. A link to the founding of the Empire. And we, through the writers, left it laying on the deck like a discarded candy wrapper.
If the writing of the game play for The War Which Was Not A War was good enough, we the players, should not have needed the Dev Blogs to create a sense of just how desperate the Alliance's position really was. It should have been obvious from the story as seen through the game play. The Dev Blogs should have been a way to enhance the story line. Not be an inadequate substitute for it.
'Time and Tide' is not worse than the old 'Divide and Impera' mission. To me, it is the same. The best crew in Starfleet got snookered by a low level Undine spy and could not seem to do anything about it. In Time and Tide we again got snookered by someone who we should have kept a closer eye on and also could not seem to do anything about it.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
But yeah, destroying the timeship via temporal incursion would solve a lot of problems, the only issue is that we wouldn't be able to get back to Iconia...which may not be a bad thing as I said above.
There are a number of problems here:
- changing the events of Midnight might have unexpected consequences. For intance, we dont's save Iconians and the World Heart = the Iconian technology inside the World Heart falls into the hands of races, that destroyed Iconia = the new mighty instellar Empires arise = wham ! - the Federation, Romulan Empire, Klingon Empire disappear out of the timeline, with Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, Andorians, Orions and others becoming just mere servitors of some other powerful galaxy states. The Romulans never come into existance in the first place. The player character is never born. = Noye having a good laugh under his Temporal Shield at us, basically committing suicide and doing his job for him.
- we can't destroy the Annorax via "ordinary" time incursion, as nothing we do to the Annorax in the past will affect this particular ship while its time shield is on. We need to find and destroy somewhere in time this particular Annorax and its time-shielding with Noye aboard, the way Janeway did with original Annorax timeship. ANY other method will be useless.
- changing the events of Midnight might have unexpected consequences. For intance, we dont's save Iconians and the World Heart = the Iconian technology inside the World Heart falls into the hands of races, that destroyed Iconia = the new mighty instellar Empires arise = wham ! - the Federation, Romulan Empire, Klingon Empire disappear out of the timeline, with Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, Andorians, Orions and others becoming just mere servitors of some other powerful galaxy states. The Romulans never come into existance in the first place. The player character is never born. = Noye having a good laugh under his Temporal Shield at us, basically committing suicide and doing his job for him.
If either the Iconians would have destroyed it or if it wouldnt have destroyed the aggressors (Big powerful tech in the hands of people who dont understand might just cause this. See the Delta-Quadrant-Civilization that nuked itself with Antimatter-Warheads which came from the Federation (or at least Starfleet). Why were Stargate's Tollans that wary about giving Tech away? Neighboring planet civilization nuked the entire planed out of existence ).
But well, talking about midnights story points and errors (we could have ended the war before it even startet twice in the Mission. In Mass Effect we would have either gotten Renegade or paragon points for each respectively...)
The Story setting on with the Iconian War, after we went to the Delta Quadrant and especially after the Dyson Sphere transported to Iconia has been very lacking from consistency and integrity.
Hope those get remastered soon... or in the context of our current storyline: Yesterday...
> @darthmeow504 said: > For those of you keeping score at home: > > 1) We are present for the Tholian destruction of the Na'kuhl star, failing to prevent the use of the Tox Uthat in time. We then defeat the Tholians and secure the TU, and... we go and bury the bloody thing? I fully expected that we would get a chance to repair the star and to not do so is completely unacceptable on every moral level. I only cooperated as long as I did because I expected people who wear the uniform of future Starfleet to conduct themselves like Starfleet and clean up their own messes. By the time I realized the truth it was too late, I was no longer in the right timeframe to do anything and the TU was lost to me as was the expertise to use it since Kal Dano was dead. > > 2) Now, we're expected to be ok with the signing of this treaty which has at it's core the refusal to undo the aforementioned temporal incursion (the whole thing was caused by Kal Dano coming back with the TU to save the Lukari, after all which is a temporal interference in and of itself)? And worse, we're supposed to fire on, destroy the vessels of, and kill the personnel of the Na'kuhl who are fighting to restore their homeworld against the people who screwed them over and refuse to fix it? We're on the wrong side. We would do the EXACT same thing if we were in the position the Na'kuhl are in and in fact they did everything they should to be considered morally justified. They TRIED to ask nicely, they tried to be diplomatic and work within the system and were flatly denied. Only after exhausting peaceful methods did they resort to force of arms, and they have every right to defend their world and their civilization. They have every reason to consider the temporal agency their declared enemy in a war they didn't start --they were minding their own business when things they had no part in came knocking on their door bearing the gift of destruction. They are innocent victims. It is morally wrong to side against them and do them additional harm. > > In the much-derided and now deleted mission Divide et Impera we were fooled into committing an act of war against innocent Romulan scientists and doctors, and the plot railroaded us into doing nothing to stop it long after it should have been obvious the orders were illegal and the mission was a crime. We weren't even given the option to refuse the unlawful order to set weapons to kill, forcing us to abort the mission via metagaming (aka beaming out and refusing to finish) or commit a massacre that any sane Federation captain would absolutely refuse to take part in. Picard or Kirk or Sisko would have put Zelle under arrest immediately and turned themselves over to Romulan authorities in order to testify against Zelle and T'Nae. The game literally gave us no option to do the right thing. And for that, it was completely excoriated by the playerbase. > > This, I submit, is far worse because rather than simply a few dozen innocent doctors and scientists we are talking about the destruction of an inhabited star system with all the deaths, trauma, cultural disruption, and other horrible effects on billions of innocent people PLUS the murder of starship crews and persons fighting against these horrific injustices. I for one won't do it. I aborted the mission and will drop it from my queue. I won't have my character take part in these crimes. I'm here to play Starfleet officers, not war criminals. That uniform stands for something, and Gene Roddenberry would be spinning in his grave to see the things done by people claiming to carry the banner of Starfleet. My character may not be granted a choice by the gameplay railroad, but I do. I won't be part of it. > > Someone in the writing staff needs to get an education on Starfleet ethics or another job writing for a different setting where those ethics are not a core part of the IP.
Destroying the Annorax would result in the Iconians all dying in the bombardment.
Here are the problems with that:
Romulus is never destroyed. This is essential for two reasons. One is that we can see how the destruction puts Romulans on the path to joining the Federation as they do in the future where the Temporal Accords take place. The other is that we know that had Romulus not been destroyed, their Borg research would have doomed the quadrant.
Additionally, there are traces of Iconian technology in the New Khitomer design. It seems plausible that they may be essential to future developments.
Also, it appears our mission to Iconia was the temporal equivalent of the Phoenix flight. We'd done time travel (think: impulse speed, a few centuries) but that was DEEP time travel and made us worthy of Temporal First Contact which in turn had to play out that way for Walker's future.
But let's look at this sideways: if Walker doesn't exist then nobody is there to fix the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline in Temporal Ambassador, which may be accurately regarded as the "original" timeline, even before the Prime timeline.
In that case: Romulus doesn't blow up (because Sela was never born and nobody ever went back to save or outrage the Iconians) or get assimilated but the Tholians take it over after the Federation and Klingons weaken one another. We (as freighter captains) help Tasha and Castillo steal the Enterprise-C but there's no way home because Walker doesn't exist.
Basically, turn the Annorax on itself and we wind up back in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline. Temporal Ambassador Part 2.
I'll grant you, this could be interesting for one reason and one reason only:
If Sela could be a part of that, it presents Sela with both her mother and an intact Romulus and a chance to royally mess things up.
Say... By Temporally shielding Romulus from that timeline with the Krenim tech (which can temporally shield a planet) then when things get fixed, that Romulus pops into our universe.
Destroying the Annorax would result in the Iconians all dying in the bombardment.
Not necessarily. From what I saw of Year of Hell, the only reason the Annorax caused all of history to be reset was because its temporal core destabilized, causing a temporal incursion within it that erased it. So destroying it with conventional weapons (and by making sure the core doesn't destabilize), it'd merely result in its destruction without any restoration.
I am not a fan of this at all. Not only am I being pushed around horribly as a player, but it's clearly being done in an EXTREMELY strained attempt to "be timely" and "ripped from the headlines." It's not even done intelligently. I feel like I've been shoved into one of the worst, most poorly written, most Anvilicious episodes of TNG. I don't even want to play it again for the weekly reward despite needing tech upgrades.
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Enh.... if time travel can be used to do ANYTHING, then writing a story is pretty much impossible. Every story would end before it began. Time travel MUST have limitations otherwise it's a useless story telling device.
*ding ding ding*
That's exactly why it is a poor choice for STOs story arc. It would be much more plausible, dramatic and coherent if we got rid of the time travel aspects and just were hopping around in space, learning about his plan, coming too late, trying to make it right.
Nothing of this makes sense. Why, in the future, do the Na'kuhl and Krenim attack the new khitomer thing with conventional weapons and taking hostages int he first place? They already time travel and could undo it without having to be shot by us. Literally the whole thing falls apart - time travel only works for a single story to make a moral or ethical point and then rectify/delete the changed timeline in the end.
or Klingon Storyline , i love first few missions with K'mtar and Worf !
hell , even Romulan storyline is good ......
but , stop OT
i like New Khitomer , map looks good
only thing - i m Klingon Hero , warrior well known in all four quadrants , i have really BIG honor guard disruptor on my back ....
but i watch like moron 10+ seconds how "bad guy" make loooooooooong speeech , beam bombs to civilian station and teleport away
= sorry but i been in army IRL and this for any soldier is enrough for use weapon , hell i have enrough time even to set disruptor to stun
First Law of Time Travel: You can't stop the plot from happening. Any attempt will result in more plot happening.
Pretty much. Trying to reason out what "should" happen when using time travel tech is a recipe for frustration. It's all theoretical. So anyone end everyone can say something different, and there's really no right or wrong.
I blame Nog, it is all his fault! He got us involved with the Krenim, No, wait, I blame Vic Fontaine for influencing Nog to stay in Starfleet, no I blame Julian Bashir for introducing Vic Fontaine to Nog, No I blame Bashir's friend Felix for programming Vic Fontaine.... And so on and so forth....
I must warn you, I am quite Isane! I am Grand Duchess of the Abh Empire: Beneej Letopanyu Spoor!
First Law of Time Travel: You can't stop the plot from happening. Any attempt will result in more plot happening.
Well, yeah. I was really just throwing all of that out there because I thought it would be fun to try another one of these "direct" solutions people suggest and have it backfire us into another timeline. But I intuitively think sending Sela along with us to her mother's timeline would be good for her arc because it would probably open up both a Tasha/Sela meeting and Romulus (and maybe address the dangling T'Nae plot).
...only thing - i m Klingon Hero , warrior well known in all four quadrants , i have really BIG honor guard disruptor on my back ....
but i watch like moron 10+ seconds how "bad guy" make loooooooooong speeech , beam bombs to civilian station and teleport away
= sorry but i been in army IRL and this for any soldier is enrough for use weapon , hell i have enrough time even to set disruptor to stun
My Romulan isn't the type to do the "right" thing either. Were the story more flexible, she'd have been the on to steal the Annorax and do some time manipulation of her own.
Speaking of, it's really amusing to play the mission in your own Annorax.
Good point, but it does raise a very bad question: what if we go back in time and board the Annorax before Noye raises the shields, then shoot him with the shields up?
Maybe the universe would just explode.
-R
No, if he dies inside the timeship with temporal shields up then he just dies. The crew can go back and get an older/younger Noye, but that one is dead.
He's dead yes, but what happens to the timeline INSIDE the temporal shields? Temporal shields seem to protect the enclosed space from external changes to the timeline, but it's highly unclear how they would work against internal changes.
The problem is that while temporal shields need to be external to the timeline to work, the fact that they can be raised and lowered means they are still on some level stuck within the timeline. So what happens when I go back in time and alter the timeline within the shields? Or if I go back in time and prevent the shields from being raised in the first place?
Really, it's the fundamental problem of trying to make sense of a time travel story when the players can travel through time to any arbitrary point.
No not really. It's a portable timeline. Killing Noye inside of them would result in him dead. If the shields go down, then when the Annorax reintegrates into the timeline, since Noye no longer exists outside of the timeship, his death reintegrates. However with the Timeship it's a bit different, canonically, the Temporal Core is what insulates it from timeline changes, not temporal shields, that was a technology Voyager in that timeline developed.
Now if he's killed in a time frame before he entered the ship like 2409, then he dies inside, and lives outside normally.
This is probably the least complicated bit of time travel tech. Inside of the temporal shield is not outside of time. It is a portable self contained bubble of the original space-timeline where the ship was created and the temporal shield activated. It is frozen meaning he doesn't age that we know of.
By the way here is another bit of fact that they missed and didn't explain. Without specifically modifying weapons and shields to deal with it, the ship under Annorax's original design should basically be immune to attack. Now since we built it, it makes sense that we would know how to damage it, but the Borg at Romulus shouldn't have been able to damage it at all. It would bear mention if the Borg could bypass Temporal phase shielding.
But yeah, destroying the timeship via temporal incursion would solve a lot of problems, the only issue is that we wouldn't be able to get back to Iconia...which may not be a bad thing as I said above. Also the Timeship is what really lets the temporal genie out of the bottle since Starfleet has had access to time travel for over a century at this point. Although without the Timeship there may not be a need for the Temporal Accords either.
If we didn't use the Annorax for out trip back to Iconia then I'd say Incursion it away.
It seems like we ought to be able to travel back to the fall of Iconia without the Annorax: there are other ways to travel through time, and we have the tech to use several of them. So I'm all for erasing the Annorax. It was stupid idea to begin with.
@captaind3 - You covered it in your response. Is it the "same writing team"? I don't think it is. At least I've not seen any proof of this.
Look at the Iconian story arc. In particular the story where the writer sneaked in The Reference Which Shall Not Be Named For Fear Of Starting Another Flamewar. Was that good storytelling? Did it have a meaningful impact upon either the plot or story progression? Or was it dropped in as a way to be hip, and edgy? Does that person still write for STO or has she(?) moved on?
A stable writing team has one thing which this game sometimes lacks - continuity. A good writing team not only has continuity, it also works very hard to avoid those little errors which cause a cessation of immersion. There are few contradictions. The ones that exist do so for a reason. Which may or may not be apparent or may be held back for later resolution. A stable writing team also avoids setting up unresolvable problems. How or when are we going to get the Sword of QeylIss back? This is the significant cultural artifact of the Klingon Empire. A link to the founding of the Empire. And we, through the writers, left it laying on the deck like a discarded candy wrapper.
If the writing of the game play for The War Which Was Not A War was good enough, we the players, should not have needed the Dev Blogs to create a sense of just how desperate the Alliance's position really was. It should have been obvious from the story as seen through the game play. The Dev Blogs should have been a way to enhance the story line. Not be an inadequate substitute for it.
'Time and Tide' is not worse than the old 'Divide and Impera' mission. To me, it is the same. The best crew in Starfleet got snookered by a low level Undine spy and could not seem to do anything about it. In Time and Tide we again got snookered by someone who we should have kept a closer eye on and also could not seem to do anything about it.
So you're saying they rotate writers in and out and as a result we're seeing an instability in the story. I can buy that. I don't believe the last few story posts were done by Kestrel either. They don't announce position changes other than the Exec Producer.
I don't know which reference you're referring to as I skip flame wars.
As I said earlier, especially with a damned time travel plot, it's difficult to actually see the full continuity at the beginning.
Frankly I would've tagged the sword of Kahless with a chronometric beacon myself. However, I'm not entirely worried about that. It's been lost before. Perhaps the Iconians will return it to the Klingons as a peace offering when they decide to rejoin the galactic community. Maybe if and when we fight T'Khet again, we'll be able to recover it. The Empire endured without it, they'll be fine.
I would take the time to firmly disagree with your assessment of the story blogs. That is NOT the writer's fault. The Dev team in responding to the player's request for more featured episodes chose to focus on that going forward. Unfortunately they did it to the exclusion of everything else. So while they were remastering old episodes they were not making new normal campaign episodes. So with the feature episodes focusing on major turning points, the story blogs were left to tell us the story away from our own characters. Personally I would've placed them as cut scenes in game. Or at least reports accessible from our ready rooms. I don't like it anymore than you do, but they clearly wanted to end the Iconian storyline in time for Season 11 and they wanted to do it in a limited amount of episodes. That's not a writer's decision, that's a producer decision. To give this story and war a proper fleshing out would've required an expansion pack. Iconian War would've had to be at east half the size of Delta Rising.
There are other things they could've done I think. A daily at star systems where you have to race to a system in quadrant space and repel and Iconian attack, in a similar vein to Tau Dewa Patrol. Have a percentage bar like in the battlezones, but you get credit whether you win or not since it's a losing war storyline wise anyway. But again, that's a gameplay decision, not a writer's decision.
The difference between Divide and Tide is that in Divide we were NOT the best crew. We were rookies still. If I recall it was a Lt commander level episode. Also the writers intended to let us fix that one. Now we are the best crew, but we're completely out of our element. The real hoodwinking was when we buried the Tox Uthat instead of trying to restore the Na'khul star. But we haven't seen that fully play out.
But yeah, destroying the timeship via temporal incursion would solve a lot of problems, the only issue is that we wouldn't be able to get back to Iconia...which may not be a bad thing as I said above.
There are a number of problems here:
- changing the events of Midnight might have unexpected consequences. For intance, we dont's save Iconians and the World Heart = the Iconian technology inside the World Heart falls into the hands of races, that destroyed Iconia = the new mighty instellar Empires arise = wham ! - the Federation, Romulan Empire, Klingon Empire disappear out of the timeline, with Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, Andorians, Orions and others becoming just mere servitors of some other powerful galaxy states. The Romulans never come into existance in the first place. The player character is never born. = Noye having a good laugh under his Temporal Shield at us, basically committing suicide and doing his job for him.
- we can't destroy the Annorax via "ordinary" time incursion, as nothing we do to the Annorax in the past will affect this particular ship while its time shield is on. We need to find and destroy somewhere in time this particular Annorax and its time-shielding with Noye aboard, the way Janeway did with original Annorax timeship. ANY other method will be useless.
I had said earlier that without going back, Sela can't attack the Iconians and TRIBBLE T'Khet off. There are two results. The Iconians fail to escape altogether without our help resulting in no Iconian War. Two the Iconians do escape with the World Heart and don't lose their way and disappear peacefully into the sands of time to rebuild their civilization in peace. Which to me, is the timeline Picard was in in TNG.
The interesting thing is mighty interstellar empires did rise afterwards, but they had all destroyed themselves in the intervening 200,000 years. Look at the T'Kon, they certainly had Iconian level technology, and they ceased to exist. The reason the Iconians were concerned about giving out that technology was that they were certain these races would use the technology and only harm themselves. I think they were right. The World Heart was ALL of the Iconian knowledge, but it wasn't the only place they had it. I'm sure Iconia was plundered for every bit of salvaged tech, but it wouldn't avail them. In the end the other races weren't as smart as the Iconians.
I do acknowledge however that that's not 100%. But also keep in mind, that that wasn't in the original plan for Midnight either. There was no consideration given to what technology the incoming races would gain after defeating the Iconians, because we already know they won. There is something to be said for the fact that we took the world heart with us though. Curious enough, without us, "The Other" L'Mirren never makes it to the computer to store the World Heart. The enemies also bomb the structure afterwards. I would think T'Khet and L'Mirren would've had a self destruct to activate if the tech was at risk. After all...wouldn't we?
I didn't say that. I said use the Year of Hell solution. When Janeway rammed the original temporal weapons ship, it backfired and launched a temporal incursion into itself. Thereby erasing it from having ever existed. In all timelines. The Annorax is a completely different ship, but in Annorax's new timeline the TWS was knocked all the way back to its blueprints. If we do that, then we solve the problems and reverse the failed incursions as well. Originally Temporal Incursion was the term specifically used for the Weapons Ship's push an object out of the space time continuum forever weapon. I apologize for the confusion.
Destroying the Annorax would result in the Iconians all dying in the bombardment.
Here are the problems with that:
Romulus is never destroyed. This is essential for two reasons. One is that we can see how the destruction puts Romulans on the path to joining the Federation as they do in the future where the Temporal Accords take place. The other is that we know that had Romulus not been destroyed, their Borg research would have doomed the quadrant.
Additionally, there are traces of Iconian technology in the New Khitomer design. It seems plausible that they may be essential to future developments.
Also, it appears our mission to Iconia was the temporal equivalent of the Phoenix flight. We'd done time travel (think: impulse speed, a few centuries) but that was DEEP time travel and made us worthy of Temporal First Contact which in turn had to play out that way for Walker's future.
But let's look at this sideways: if Walker doesn't exist then nobody is there to fix the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline in Temporal Ambassador, which may be accurately regarded as the "original" timeline, even before the Prime timeline.
In that case: Romulus doesn't blow up (because Sela was never born and nobody ever went back to save or outrage the Iconians) or get assimilated but the Tholians take it over after the Federation and Klingons weaken one another. We (as freighter captains) help Tasha and Castillo steal the Enterprise-C but there's no way home because Walker doesn't exist.
Basically, turn the Annorax on itself and we wind up back in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline. Temporal Ambassador Part 2.
I'll grant you, this could be interesting for one reason and one reason only:
If Sela could be a part of that, it presents Sela with both her mother and an intact Romulus and a chance to royally mess things up.
Say... By Temporally shielding Romulus from that timeline with the Krenim tech (which can temporally shield a planet) then when things get fixed, that Romulus pops into our universe.
The flaw with your analysis is that Walker and the Pastak were not responsible for the temporal rift that took the Enterprise-C forward and backward through time. They provided additional firepower so that we could get the Enterprise-C to the portal. Presumably however no matter what, the E-C goes back to Narendra beat up. One thing he did do was bail our Captain out as he wasn't supposed to go back to the past.
While the destruction of Romulus did lead to the republic, Romulan politics were a lot more in flux at the time. Without Hobus Empress Donatra is still alive and can still influence the Romulan people to a new era.
I am not a fan of this at all. Not only am I being pushed around horribly as a player, but it's clearly being done in an EXTREMELY strained attempt to "be timely" and "ripped from the headlines." It's not even done intelligently. I feel like I've been shoved into one of the worst, most poorly written, most Anvilicious episodes of TNG. I don't even want to play it again for the weekly reward despite needing tech upgrades.
No, Berat, you're being forced into an early episode of Enterprise.
Enh.... if time travel can be used to do ANYTHING, then writing a story is pretty much impossible. Every story would end before it began. Time travel MUST have limitations otherwise it's a useless story telling device.
*ding ding ding*
That's exactly why it is a poor choice for STOs story arc. It would be much more plausible, dramatic and coherent if we got rid of the time travel aspects and just were hopping around in space, learning about his plan, coming too late, trying to make it right.
Nothing of this makes sense. Why, in the future, do the Na'kuhl and Krenim attack the new khitomer thing with conventional weapons and taking hostages int he first place? They already time travel and could undo it without having to be shot by us. Literally the whole thing falls apart - time travel only works for a single story to make a moral or ethical point and then rectify/delete the changed timeline in the end.
or Klingon Storyline , i love first few missions with K'mtar and Worf !
hell , even Romulan storyline is good ......
but , stop OT
i like New Khitomer , map looks good
only thing - i m Klingon Hero , warrior well known in all four quadrants , i have really BIG honor guard disruptor on my back ....
but i watch like moron 10+ seconds how "bad guy" make loooooooooong speeech , beam bombs to civilian station and teleport away
= sorry but i been in army IRL and this for any soldier is enrough for use weapon , hell i have enrough time even to set disruptor to stun
...only thing - i m Klingon Hero , warrior well known in all four quadrants , i have really BIG honor guard disruptor on my back ....
but i watch like moron 10+ seconds how "bad guy" make loooooooooong speeech , beam bombs to civilian station and teleport away
= sorry but i been in army IRL and this for any soldier is enrough for use weapon , hell i have enrough time even to set disruptor to stun
My Romulan isn't the type to do the "right" thing either. Were the story more flexible, she'd have been the on to steal the Annorax and do some time manipulation of her own.
It stretches the imagination that the Pastak can go anywhere in time, yet somehow going back 30 seconds earlier to stop Noye would cause the universe to implode or ruin the timeline. It doesn't fly with me.
I rather like what Q told Picard in "Tapestry" when it came to altering the past. Nothing Picard did would cause galaxy to explode and such, something to the effect of "quite frankly, you're not that important."
If Picard is not important, then Noye surely is not either.
Bad example, that was strictly a Q created timeline, completely isolated, just like in All Good Things. Saying Picard wasn't that important was just him tweaking Picard.
First Law of Time Travel: You can't stop the plot from happening. Any attempt will result in more plot happening.
Well, yeah. I was really just throwing all of that out there because I thought it would be fun to try another one of these "direct" solutions people suggest and have it backfire us into another timeline. But I intuitively think sending Sela along with us to her mother's timeline would be good for her arc because it would probably open up both a Tasha/Sela meeting and Romulus (and maybe address the dangling T'Nae plot).
I don't see how that would work. That would just be sending Sela to her own past. It's not like she never knew her mother. Hell she's the one who got her mother killed. Always wondered if she had any guilt about that, hard to tell with a pathological liar.
T'Nae was either killed on the Enterprise-C in the battle, killed on Romulus for being a Vulcan, or was stuck in a Romulan prison, meaning there may be two T'Nae running around. I would imagine the prisoner T'Nae retired somewhere quiet, happy to be free, and respecting the Temporal Prime Directive enough to not interfere with her present counterpart. She is a Vulcan.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Comments
*ding ding ding*
That's exactly why it is a poor choice for STOs story arc. It would be much more plausible, dramatic and coherent if we got rid of the time travel aspects and just were hopping around in space, learning about his plan, coming too late, trying to make it right.
Nothing of this makes sense. Why, in the future, do the Na'kuhl and Krenim attack the new khitomer thing with conventional weapons and taking hostages int he first place? They already time travel and could undo it without having to be shot by us. Literally the whole thing falls apart - time travel only works for a single story to make a moral or ethical point and then rectify/delete the changed timeline in the end.
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Its my bet they will re-do the ending of "Year of Hell", and let the Timeship wipe itself out of existence, and give us some historical data to check what happened instead in the Iconian war.
It seems the Writings section for STO is either heavily understaffed or someone called in some favors to get his nephew in...
I wouldn't be quite as hostile. I bet the stories can only be written in a very narrow arc. It seems the executive producer and lead designer are not willing to design/greenlight content that does not more or less closely cling to what happened on the shows because they invest a lot of money in hiring every guest actor they can get a hold on. As such, the writing staff is very limited in what they do - probably they were told to more or less just rehash "year of hell" for this one. Also, STOs storytelling potential is very limited - there is a reason we get all those blogs that tell us the story of the game instead of having the game tell it's own story.
I think Cryptic should - for the sake of the game quality - stop the forced recognition pattern. They feel the need to drop refrences to Trek shows and movies left and right for the fear of losing recognition of the IP or something. The Breen-Deferi story, an original piece not affiliated with the shows - was way superior to a lot of the stuff we got elsewhere because they didn't have such blatant references all the time and had much more liberty to tell the story.
I also think, personally, the money on the voice acting should be saved and invested in actual gameplay and interactive elements of the game. They can advertise way better when they say "robert picardo did voice acting for us!" but the actual contribution of the actors doesn't do much in terms of enjoyment, at least for me.
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My character Tsin'xing
The Breen-Deferi arc was good storytelling. So was the revamped Klingon Tutorial. The Fek'lhri arc was also well done. There were no VO's by Star Trek actors in these. So they were probably far cheaper to produce. And the resources could be allocated for things other than egos and "Ooooh! Squeee!"
One thing I've noticed over the years whenever there is one of these 'Special Guest Appearances': My character becomes a minion. And apparently not a very bright one, either. One who has to lead by the nose down a preprogrammed path by the VO. Which becomes the centerpiece of the FE. I want STO to be about the stories we have now. Not stories about someone who used to be someone.
The current story makes my head hurt with all the plot errors and how time travel is omnipotent until it isn't. All the temporal paradoxes being set up will either be ignored or used as devices to drunkenly stagger the story along to the next FE. There may even be a blog or two. If a game developer has to use resources outside the game to tell the entire story, that's poor design and equally poor story telling.
Something I would suggest to pwe/cryptic. Save the money you spend on VOs to hire some real writers. People with actual experience and verifiable credentials because they were writers for actual science fiction television series. A lot of people come here for Star Trek but they expect better story telling to keep them here. The current story arc with an over the top mustache twirling villain doesn't enthuse me. Yes he has motives and they are good ones. But it is confusing as to whether or not I'm just supposed to whack him or feel sorry for him first and then whack him.
Indeed. I would expect that the Tox Uthat would be a much more efficient and complete method of destroying a star being made of future tech.
Very true. I usually prefer a show approach to storytelling, but a little tell goes a long way sometimes. No exposition is just as bad as too much exposition.
I've been wondering something.
When we made our failed Incursions, the Annorax in the new timeline registered a drop in power in its temporal core. What if this one had a limited number of temporal incursions? It can time travel freely, but removing things from existence is limited, perhaps based on the rushed construction? Or maybe done intentionally? The Alliance would try to limit the ship in case it was ever turned against them.
In that case, the temporal dreadnought is a powerful timeship, but not the Temporal Death Star the original was. Or it just needed time to recharge. However, it does also mean that every Temporal Incursion it makes occurs across all timelines it exists in, drains power from the same core.
The Na'Khul and the Krenim have different goals. The Na'khul only want one temporal incursion in truth, one that results in the restoration of their star. The Krenim however want revenge and to tear the Temporal Accords apart. Attacking the conference is a terrorist act, because Noye knows that just because he kills the signors of the document doesn't mean the participating nations can't go forward with it. The Galactic Union is fully capable of defending itself from temporal attack already. It was a scare tactic and an announcement. Noye wants the fight, he wants the war.
Like using Borg time travel technology to get back to Iconia? That works for me. It also restores the Tuterians and Clauda.
I enjoy the actors quite a bit, but that doesn't mean that they can't be involved in new content. After all they were involved in new content when they were acting on the show.
The Breen arc and the Breen themselves were still heavily rooted in the Breen's appearance in the Dominion War, it's the Deferi who were the real stars.
However, I am among those generally opposed to the blending of the Preservers and the First Humanoids, which I feel was rather lazy, or at least uninspired. So that depressed me greatly about the storyline as a whole.
With all of the story remastering they've actually thrown away plenty of good storylines, the Aelesans and their ancient hidden super weapons for instance.
But yeah I appreciate that they're completing storylines from the shows, and trying to bring a sense of more completion to things, but they can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Original stories work.
But doesn't that negate what you said earlier?
If we have seen story arcs such as the Deferi, the Klingon tutorial, and the Fek'lhri that were actually good created by the same writing team that created the "sub-par" arcs featuring guest stars, then the problem isn't actually the writing team but them having difficulty meshing a meaningful guest appearance with maintaining our character's appropriate gravitas.
Though Harry Kim at least was actually our minion. Big surprise.
He's dead yes, but what happens to the timeline INSIDE the temporal shields? Temporal shields seem to protect the enclosed space from external changes to the timeline, but it's highly unclear how they would work against internal changes.
The problem is that while temporal shields need to be external to the timeline to work, the fact that they can be raised and lowered means they are still on some level stuck within the timeline. So what happens when I go back in time and alter the timeline within the shields? Or if I go back in time and prevent the shields from being raised in the first place?
Really, it's the fundamental problem of trying to make sense of a time travel story when the players can travel through time to any arbitrary point.
It seems like we ought to be able to travel back to the fall of Iconia without the Annorax: there are other ways to travel through time, and we have the tech to use several of them. So I'm all for erasing the Annorax. It was stupid idea to begin with.
-R
Look at the Iconian story arc. In particular the story where the writer sneaked in The Reference Which Shall Not Be Named For Fear Of Starting Another Flamewar. Was that good storytelling? Did it have a meaningful impact upon either the plot or story progression? Or was it dropped in as a way to be hip, and edgy? Does that person still write for STO or has she(?) moved on?
A stable writing team has one thing which this game sometimes lacks - continuity. A good writing team not only has continuity, it also works very hard to avoid those little errors which cause a cessation of immersion. There are few contradictions. The ones that exist do so for a reason. Which may or may not be apparent or may be held back for later resolution. A stable writing team also avoids setting up unresolvable problems. How or when are we going to get the Sword of QeylIss back? This is the significant cultural artifact of the Klingon Empire. A link to the founding of the Empire. And we, through the writers, left it laying on the deck like a discarded candy wrapper.
If the writing of the game play for The War Which Was Not A War was good enough, we the players, should not have needed the Dev Blogs to create a sense of just how desperate the Alliance's position really was. It should have been obvious from the story as seen through the game play. The Dev Blogs should have been a way to enhance the story line. Not be an inadequate substitute for it.
'Time and Tide' is not worse than the old 'Divide and Impera' mission. To me, it is the same. The best crew in Starfleet got snookered by a low level Undine spy and could not seem to do anything about it. In Time and Tide we again got snookered by someone who we should have kept a closer eye on and also could not seem to do anything about it.
- changing the events of Midnight might have unexpected consequences. For intance, we dont's save Iconians and the World Heart = the Iconian technology inside the World Heart falls into the hands of races, that destroyed Iconia = the new mighty instellar Empires arise = wham ! - the Federation, Romulan Empire, Klingon Empire disappear out of the timeline, with Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, Andorians, Orions and others becoming just mere servitors of some other powerful galaxy states. The Romulans never come into existance in the first place. The player character is never born. = Noye having a good laugh under his Temporal Shield at us, basically committing suicide and doing his job for him.
- we can't destroy the Annorax via "ordinary" time incursion, as nothing we do to the Annorax in the past will affect this particular ship while its time shield is on. We need to find and destroy somewhere in time this particular Annorax and its time-shielding with Noye aboard, the way Janeway did with original Annorax timeship. ANY other method will be useless.
If either the Iconians would have destroyed it or if it wouldnt have destroyed the aggressors (Big powerful tech in the hands of people who dont understand might just cause this. See the Delta-Quadrant-Civilization that nuked itself with Antimatter-Warheads which came from the Federation (or at least Starfleet). Why were Stargate's Tollans that wary about giving Tech away? Neighboring planet civilization nuked the entire planed out of existence
But well, talking about midnights story points and errors (we could have ended the war before it even startet twice in the Mission. In Mass Effect we would have either gotten Renegade or paragon points for each respectively...)
The Story setting on with the Iconian War, after we went to the Delta Quadrant and especially after the Dyson Sphere transported to Iconia has been very lacking from consistency and integrity.
Hope those get remastered soon... or in the context of our current storyline: Yesterday...
> For those of you keeping score at home:
>
> 1) We are present for the Tholian destruction of the Na'kuhl star, failing to prevent the use of the Tox Uthat in time. We then defeat the Tholians and secure the TU, and... we go and bury the bloody thing? I fully expected that we would get a chance to repair the star and to not do so is completely unacceptable on every moral level. I only cooperated as long as I did because I expected people who wear the uniform of future Starfleet to conduct themselves like Starfleet and clean up their own messes. By the time I realized the truth it was too late, I was no longer in the right timeframe to do anything and the TU was lost to me as was the expertise to use it since Kal Dano was dead.
>
> 2) Now, we're expected to be ok with the signing of this treaty which has at it's core the refusal to undo the aforementioned temporal incursion (the whole thing was caused by Kal Dano coming back with the TU to save the Lukari, after all which is a temporal interference in and of itself)? And worse, we're supposed to fire on, destroy the vessels of, and kill the personnel of the Na'kuhl who are fighting to restore their homeworld against the people who screwed them over and refuse to fix it? We're on the wrong side. We would do the EXACT same thing if we were in the position the Na'kuhl are in and in fact they did everything they should to be considered morally justified. They TRIED to ask nicely, they tried to be diplomatic and work within the system and were flatly denied. Only after exhausting peaceful methods did they resort to force of arms, and they have every right to defend their world and their civilization. They have every reason to consider the temporal agency their declared enemy in a war they didn't start --they were minding their own business when things they had no part in came knocking on their door bearing the gift of destruction. They are innocent victims. It is morally wrong to side against them and do them additional harm.
>
> In the much-derided and now deleted mission Divide et Impera we were fooled into committing an act of war against innocent Romulan scientists and doctors, and the plot railroaded us into doing nothing to stop it long after it should have been obvious the orders were illegal and the mission was a crime. We weren't even given the option to refuse the unlawful order to set weapons to kill, forcing us to abort the mission via metagaming (aka beaming out and refusing to finish) or commit a massacre that any sane Federation captain would absolutely refuse to take part in. Picard or Kirk or Sisko would have put Zelle under arrest immediately and turned themselves over to Romulan authorities in order to testify against Zelle and T'Nae. The game literally gave us no option to do the right thing. And for that, it was completely excoriated by the playerbase.
>
> This, I submit, is far worse because rather than simply a few dozen innocent doctors and scientists we are talking about the destruction of an inhabited star system with all the deaths, trauma, cultural disruption, and other horrible effects on billions of innocent people PLUS the murder of starship crews and persons fighting against these horrific injustices. I for one won't do it. I aborted the mission and will drop it from my queue. I won't have my character take part in these crimes. I'm here to play Starfleet officers, not war criminals. That uniform stands for something, and Gene Roddenberry would be spinning in his grave to see the things done by people claiming to carry the banner of Starfleet. My character may not be granted a choice by the gameplay railroad, but I do. I won't be part of it.
>
> Someone in the writing staff needs to get an education on Starfleet ethics or another job writing for a different setting where those ethics are not a core part of the IP.
TLDR; can I have the cliff notes?
Here are the problems with that:
Romulus is never destroyed. This is essential for two reasons. One is that we can see how the destruction puts Romulans on the path to joining the Federation as they do in the future where the Temporal Accords take place. The other is that we know that had Romulus not been destroyed, their Borg research would have doomed the quadrant.
Additionally, there are traces of Iconian technology in the New Khitomer design. It seems plausible that they may be essential to future developments.
Also, it appears our mission to Iconia was the temporal equivalent of the Phoenix flight. We'd done time travel (think: impulse speed, a few centuries) but that was DEEP time travel and made us worthy of Temporal First Contact which in turn had to play out that way for Walker's future.
But let's look at this sideways: if Walker doesn't exist then nobody is there to fix the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline in Temporal Ambassador, which may be accurately regarded as the "original" timeline, even before the Prime timeline.
In that case: Romulus doesn't blow up (because Sela was never born and nobody ever went back to save or outrage the Iconians) or get assimilated but the Tholians take it over after the Federation and Klingons weaken one another. We (as freighter captains) help Tasha and Castillo steal the Enterprise-C but there's no way home because Walker doesn't exist.
Basically, turn the Annorax on itself and we wind up back in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline. Temporal Ambassador Part 2.
I'll grant you, this could be interesting for one reason and one reason only:
If Sela could be a part of that, it presents Sela with both her mother and an intact Romulus and a chance to royally mess things up.
Say... By Temporally shielding Romulus from that timeline with the Krenim tech (which can temporally shield a planet) then when things get fixed, that Romulus pops into our universe.
Not necessarily. From what I saw of Year of Hell, the only reason the Annorax caused all of history to be reset was because its temporal core destabilized, causing a temporal incursion within it that erased it. So destroying it with conventional weapons (and by making sure the core doesn't destabilize), it'd merely result in its destruction without any restoration.
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or Klingon Storyline , i love first few missions with K'mtar and Worf !
hell , even Romulan storyline is good ......
but , stop OT
i like New Khitomer , map looks good
only thing - i m Klingon Hero , warrior well known in all four quadrants , i have really BIG honor guard disruptor on my back ....
but i watch like moron 10+ seconds how "bad guy" make loooooooooong speeech , beam bombs to civilian station and teleport away
= sorry but i been in army IRL and this for any soldier is enrough for use weapon , hell i have enrough time even to set disruptor to stun
My character Tsin'xing
Well, yeah. I was really just throwing all of that out there because I thought it would be fun to try another one of these "direct" solutions people suggest and have it backfire us into another timeline. But I intuitively think sending Sela along with us to her mother's timeline would be good for her arc because it would probably open up both a Tasha/Sela meeting and Romulus (and maybe address the dangling T'Nae plot).
Now if he's killed in a time frame before he entered the ship like 2409, then he dies inside, and lives outside normally.
This is probably the least complicated bit of time travel tech. Inside of the temporal shield is not outside of time. It is a portable self contained bubble of the original space-timeline where the ship was created and the temporal shield activated. It is frozen meaning he doesn't age that we know of.
By the way here is another bit of fact that they missed and didn't explain. Without specifically modifying weapons and shields to deal with it, the ship under Annorax's original design should basically be immune to attack. Now since we built it, it makes sense that we would know how to damage it, but the Borg at Romulus shouldn't have been able to damage it at all. It would bear mention if the Borg could bypass Temporal phase shielding.
Agreed.
So you're saying they rotate writers in and out and as a result we're seeing an instability in the story. I can buy that. I don't believe the last few story posts were done by Kestrel either. They don't announce position changes other than the Exec Producer.
I don't know which reference you're referring to as I skip flame wars.
As I said earlier, especially with a damned time travel plot, it's difficult to actually see the full continuity at the beginning.
Frankly I would've tagged the sword of Kahless with a chronometric beacon myself. However, I'm not entirely worried about that. It's been lost before. Perhaps the Iconians will return it to the Klingons as a peace offering when they decide to rejoin the galactic community. Maybe if and when we fight T'Khet again, we'll be able to recover it. The Empire endured without it, they'll be fine.
I would take the time to firmly disagree with your assessment of the story blogs. That is NOT the writer's fault. The Dev team in responding to the player's request for more featured episodes chose to focus on that going forward. Unfortunately they did it to the exclusion of everything else. So while they were remastering old episodes they were not making new normal campaign episodes. So with the feature episodes focusing on major turning points, the story blogs were left to tell us the story away from our own characters. Personally I would've placed them as cut scenes in game. Or at least reports accessible from our ready rooms. I don't like it anymore than you do, but they clearly wanted to end the Iconian storyline in time for Season 11 and they wanted to do it in a limited amount of episodes. That's not a writer's decision, that's a producer decision. To give this story and war a proper fleshing out would've required an expansion pack. Iconian War would've had to be at east half the size of Delta Rising.
There are other things they could've done I think. A daily at star systems where you have to race to a system in quadrant space and repel and Iconian attack, in a similar vein to Tau Dewa Patrol. Have a percentage bar like in the battlezones, but you get credit whether you win or not since it's a losing war storyline wise anyway. But again, that's a gameplay decision, not a writer's decision.
The difference between Divide and Tide is that in Divide we were NOT the best crew. We were rookies still. If I recall it was a Lt commander level episode. Also the writers intended to let us fix that one. Now we are the best crew, but we're completely out of our element. The real hoodwinking was when we buried the Tox Uthat instead of trying to restore the Na'khul star. But we haven't seen that fully play out.
I had said earlier that without going back, Sela can't attack the Iconians and TRIBBLE T'Khet off. There are two results. The Iconians fail to escape altogether without our help resulting in no Iconian War. Two the Iconians do escape with the World Heart and don't lose their way and disappear peacefully into the sands of time to rebuild their civilization in peace. Which to me, is the timeline Picard was in in TNG.
The interesting thing is mighty interstellar empires did rise afterwards, but they had all destroyed themselves in the intervening 200,000 years. Look at the T'Kon, they certainly had Iconian level technology, and they ceased to exist. The reason the Iconians were concerned about giving out that technology was that they were certain these races would use the technology and only harm themselves. I think they were right. The World Heart was ALL of the Iconian knowledge, but it wasn't the only place they had it. I'm sure Iconia was plundered for every bit of salvaged tech, but it wouldn't avail them. In the end the other races weren't as smart as the Iconians.
I do acknowledge however that that's not 100%. But also keep in mind, that that wasn't in the original plan for Midnight either. There was no consideration given to what technology the incoming races would gain after defeating the Iconians, because we already know they won. There is something to be said for the fact that we took the world heart with us though. Curious enough, without us, "The Other" L'Mirren never makes it to the computer to store the World Heart. The enemies also bomb the structure afterwards. I would think T'Khet and L'Mirren would've had a self destruct to activate if the tech was at risk. After all...wouldn't we?
I didn't say that. I said use the Year of Hell solution. When Janeway rammed the original temporal weapons ship, it backfired and launched a temporal incursion into itself. Thereby erasing it from having ever existed. In all timelines. The Annorax is a completely different ship, but in Annorax's new timeline the TWS was knocked all the way back to its blueprints. If we do that, then we solve the problems and reverse the failed incursions as well. Originally Temporal Incursion was the term specifically used for the Weapons Ship's push an object out of the space time continuum forever weapon. I apologize for the confusion.
The flaw with your analysis is that Walker and the Pastak were not responsible for the temporal rift that took the Enterprise-C forward and backward through time. They provided additional firepower so that we could get the Enterprise-C to the portal. Presumably however no matter what, the E-C goes back to Narendra beat up. One thing he did do was bail our Captain out as he wasn't supposed to go back to the past.
While the destruction of Romulus did lead to the republic, Romulan politics were a lot more in flux at the time. Without Hobus Empress Donatra is still alive and can still influence the Romulan people to a new era.
No, Berat, you're being forced into an early episode of Enterprise.
Disruptors have stun settings????
Bad example, that was strictly a Q created timeline, completely isolated, just like in All Good Things. Saying Picard wasn't that important was just him tweaking Picard.
I don't see how that would work. That would just be sending Sela to her own past. It's not like she never knew her mother. Hell she's the one who got her mother killed. Always wondered if she had any guilt about that, hard to tell with a pathological liar.
T'Nae was either killed on the Enterprise-C in the battle, killed on Romulus for being a Vulcan, or was stuck in a Romulan prison, meaning there may be two T'Nae running around. I would imagine the prisoner T'Nae retired somewhere quiet, happy to be free, and respecting the Temporal Prime Directive enough to not interfere with her present counterpart. She is a Vulcan.