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Agents of Yesterday: The player character insignia
excalibur37
Member Posts: 17 Arc User
I've been able to get through the first half of the first mission of Agents of Yesterday, so I don't know if this is addressed further in the story, but I figured I'd bring it up anyway:
Agents of Yesterday is supposed to be based in the year 2270. Based on the use of the TOS bridge in the tutorial, I'm presuming this takes place before ST: The Motion Picture (which, according to Memory Alpha, was around the early 2270s).
In this time, the Uniform Insignia which has come to represent the whole of Starfleet starting with ST: TMP, originally represented the ship the wearer was serving on. In this case, the insignia was used by the USS Enterprise. Since the player character would never be officially serving on the USS Enterprise, that insignia would never be worn by the player character in an official capacity.
Additionally, this insignia primarily represents space warp (it's shown in the novel Star Trek: Federation when Zefram Cochrane is describing warp travel. Presuming the player character is representing a temporal agent, my opinion is that it would make more sense for temporal agents to have an insignia related to time travel rather than one related to space warp, especially since it appears that temporal agent, while being a united entity under the temporal accords, is not under the same umbrella as Starfleet.
For the sake of continuity. will the player character have the ability to "create" their own insignia to represent their ship? I imagine it would just be a matter of porting the ability to upload an insignia from the Fleet component to make it available to individual players, in addition to providing a selection of templates to choose from for the less artistic.
Agents of Yesterday is supposed to be based in the year 2270. Based on the use of the TOS bridge in the tutorial, I'm presuming this takes place before ST: The Motion Picture (which, according to Memory Alpha, was around the early 2270s).
In this time, the Uniform Insignia which has come to represent the whole of Starfleet starting with ST: TMP, originally represented the ship the wearer was serving on. In this case, the insignia was used by the USS Enterprise. Since the player character would never be officially serving on the USS Enterprise, that insignia would never be worn by the player character in an official capacity.
Additionally, this insignia primarily represents space warp (it's shown in the novel Star Trek: Federation when Zefram Cochrane is describing warp travel. Presuming the player character is representing a temporal agent, my opinion is that it would make more sense for temporal agents to have an insignia related to time travel rather than one related to space warp, especially since it appears that temporal agent, while being a united entity under the temporal accords, is not under the same umbrella as Starfleet.
For the sake of continuity. will the player character have the ability to "create" their own insignia to represent their ship? I imagine it would just be a matter of porting the ability to upload an insignia from the Fleet component to make it available to individual players, in addition to providing a selection of templates to choose from for the less artistic.
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(For the record, I am 100% in favor of a complete revamp to bring the game into line with lore wherever remotely feasible from a coding perspective.)
Another thing to take into account is that during the 23rd century Starfleet had not yet perfected Replicator Technology and mostly had big bulky ones at Industrial sites. So something as aesthetic as a patch would be made by hand, rather than use valuable energy of the Industrial models.
The TOS badges were really pretty basic, so 5 to 10 simple shapes and insignia that you can mix and match would add a whole new level of customization onto an already very robust system.
A guy can dream right?
But I was hoping for something that was at least template based, or have a selection of shapes for various sectors on a grid (let's say 3×3) representing parts of the insgina (similar to the flexibility with costumes), allowing for there to at least be varied insignias in the game.
The easier solution would have been to slightly move the timeline to be after the events of ST: TMP (which, for all intents and purposes, is an extended pilot of a Star Trek series that was to follow TOS). But this would involve re-costuming every ship and bridge in the expansion, something which would now be an incredible burden now that alpha versions of actual episodes are on tribble.
Give that we can manufacture clothing by with machines today, I seriously doubt that they can't do the same in 2270.
But I get your point, sort of. The Ariel is one of those iffy canon things. According to Startrek.com, the S.S. Ariel (not U.S.S. - though there's no real distinction that I can find between the two) was a small ship with only 6 crewmen and not really on the same level as the Enterprise. Maybe they had different patch assignments for different divisions within Starfleet? Who knows.
Regardless, given that the game can parse the data of fleet patches without causing too many issues, I don't think that doing the same for some customized ship badges would cause much trouble. The geometry is basically the only difference - besides the specialty divisions.
Here's are some of the badges that were on the show:
The entire reason all of Starfleet went to the "Iconic Enterprise Arrowhead" is that the Enterprise was the only one of the "original 12 heavy cruisers" that survived her initial 5 year mission.
Then we also know that there's an 18 month window between the end of said mission and the start of TMP - the time that the Enterprise sat in refit.
However, rampant speculation exists that with the show "ending" in 1969 and the movie filming in 1976-1978 window (for a 1979 release), there was a second 5 year mission of the Enterprise.
So, for all we know, AoY will be in that second 5 year mission window... Where the arrowhead was "iconic" but the uniforms were still velour...
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I concur. According to memory alpha, TMP was in the early 2270s, while WoK was in 2285. it also suggests that season 3 of TOS was 2269. If Voyager made a hard date of 2270, that would also give TMP a smaller window (18 month refit = 2271-2272)
I'd wager the actual total of emblems per "ship" would be thirty, but with 3 different ones each for command, operations, and science officers.
that was the exact number he gave.
http://www.gandtshow.com/g-t-sl-al-rivera-agents-yesterday/
He was very excited about it.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I have to agree with this actually. Its probably 30 shapes, and then the 3 divisions per shape, which would make 90 badges.
Sweet!!