[PC] Season 12 Queues: "Gravity Kills" and "The Tzenkethi Front."

ambassadorkael · January 2017

With the launch of Season 12, the Tzenkethi are bringing the fight to Captains on two new fronts. Here's all the details on our newest Queues, "Gravity Kills" and "The Tzenkethi Front."

Full details here:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10343853-season-12-queues:-gravity-kills-and-the-tzenkethi-front

psycoticvulcan · January 2017

The first one looks more interesting than the second. Black holes are always cool.

I'm really not fond of the Tzenkethi acting like stereotypical genocidal invaders, wiping out planets and the like. We're already fought plenty of those types before. A more morally grey antagonist would be more interesting.

Still, I'll reserve judgement until I've played the missions.

megawolf0 · January 2017

Well now this is interesting. Wonder how the event horizon would work? Would we need to like go full impulse to get out? And would the enemy be stuck there if trapped?

captainmikec · January 2017

Two new queues.... I'm all for new content, but old content needs to be cleaned up as well.
PLEASE do something with the massive list of STFs and queues that no one plays anymore.

The queue list is massive and 90% of it doesn't get played anymore, it's time to dump some of them!
Most of them have 2 or 3 difficulties, adjust the rewards and difficulty and instead of easy/advanced/expert just have 1 queue as "normal" difficulty. This will force the 2 people waiting for normal and the 3 people waiting for expert to play together and actually have a game.

And in cases where no other human players show up... it's time to add some AI as assistance so players can still enjoy the mission they like. Some of these missions are the only way to get certain marks and required items.... even if no one else is playing, people still need to be able to complete them, even if solo.

A massive list of queues looks impressive at first, a massive list of empty queues where the wait time is listed as "--" makes the game look empty and abandoned.

captaind3 · January 2017

Why did you guys go with Hypermass instead of the Star Trek established Singularity? Just curious.

megawolf0 wrote: »

Well now this is interesting. Wonder how the event horizon would work? Would we need to like go full impulse to get out? And would the enemy be stuck there if trapped?

Technically full impulse doesn't go FTL so you shouldn't be able to escape an event horizon which is the point where greater than light speed is required to escape.

So we would need warp.

somtaawkhar wrote: »

psycoticvulcan wrote: »

The first one looks more interesting than the second. Black holes are always cool.

I'm really not fond of the Tzenkethi acting like stereotypical genocidal invaders, wiping out planets and the like. We're already fought plenty of those types before. A more morally grey antagonist would be more interesting.

Still, I'll reserve judgement until I've played the missions.

Well, we have no idea why they are doing it yet.

Cryptic has done a fairly good job with antagonists of late IMO
-The Sphere Builders, Na'Kuhl, Noye/Krenim, and Boratus/Vorgons, were all trying to get revenge on the AQA for **** them over in various like nearly exterminating their race, and getting the survivors stuck in some alternate dimension(Sphere builders), getting their sun destroyed(Na'Kuhl), getting their wife and unborn child deleted from time(Noye), or their sister being killed(Boratus)
-The Iconians were actually the good guys originally, whose decent into "evil" was caused by various races nearly exterminating their race out of greed for the Iconian's advanced technology, and Sela shooting at them, causing them to lose the World Heart, and thus, robbing them of their ability to rebuild their civilization. And even after all that, none of them except T'ket actually wanted to kill everyone.
-The Vaadwaur were only going on a campaign of conquest because they were being manipulated by Gaul/The Bluegill/The Iconians, and their attacks on the Koabli were only because the Kobali were keeping tons of cryosleep Vaadwaur for themselves so they could resurrect them as Kobali once the power on their pods died.
-Hell, the Voth only wanted the omega molecules to use them to end warp travel around their space as a means to protect themselves against the onslaught of the Borg, who had they had been at war with for ages.
-Even one of the earliest villains, B'vat, had that whole 11th hour reveal that suggests he was only being "evil" because of the necessity to keep the predestination paradox of encountering himself intact.

So, I suspect there will likely be a greater reason behind why the Tzenkethi are doing this.

Exactly.

By that line of history the Tzenkethi just being genocidal conquerors would be a change of pace.

captainmikec wrote: »

Two new queues.... I'm all for new content, but old content needs to be cleaned up as well.
PLEASE do something with the massive list of STFs and queues that no one plays anymore.

The queue list is massive and 90% of it doesn't get played anymore, it's time to dump some of them!
Most of them have 2 or 3 difficulties, adjust the rewards and difficulty and instead of easy/advanced/expert just have 1 queue as "normal" difficulty. This will force the 2 people waiting for normal and the 3 people waiting for expert to play together and actually have a game.

And in cases where no other human players show up... it's time to add some AI as assistance so players can still enjoy the mission they like. Some of these missions are the only way to get certain marks and required items.... even if no one else is playing, people still need to be able to complete them, even if solo.

A massive list of queues looks impressive at first, a massive list of empty queues where the wait time is listed as "--" makes the game look empty and abandoned.

A good point. As for something as classic as the Borg STFs they could use some updating, but also they could use relevance. Another Borg story arc that would require the STFs would help. But a lot of people have so much Omega Rep mats (marks and elite marks) that they would be able complete anything else instantly. The All new everything attitude sadly lends things like the first STFs to becoming obsolete.

shadowfirefly00 · January 2017

megawolf0 wrote: »

Well now this is interesting. Wonder how the event horizon would work? Would we need to like go full impulse to get out? And would the enemy be stuck there if trapped?

I imagine it's a spherical gradual hazard, with an outer layer you need to use any speed boost (including FI, but remember that won't be available if you're in combat) to escape it; anything falling into the sphere proper is toast, no questions asked. And yes, given that (from the description) you somehow have to force the production facilities to fall into the thing to safely get rid of them, it would be only logical for the Tznekethi ships to be subject to the same hazard.

Sort of related: how closely does the Tzenkethi use of microquasar hypermasses parallel Romulan use of singularities? For all we know, the Tzenkethi might use 'hypermass cores', with abilities similar to singularity cores...

As for 'The Tzenkethi Front'... that reminds me a little bit of the final mission of Homeworld 2, where you have to fight off the last enemy fleet on your very doorstep while playing 'goalkeeper' with respect to their orbital bombardment weapons.

somtaawkhar wrote: »

Well, we have no idea why they are doing it yet.

Cryptic has done a fairly good job with antagonists of late IMO...

Indeed, sir, and I would hope they don't drop the ball here.

captaincelestial · January 2017

Considering that U.S.S. Jupiter is invovled, I hope that I.K.S. Kor is a T6 Klingon Carrier (please, oh please, oh please!)

saurializard · January 2017

If I willingly go into the singularity and I don't end up in the Kelvin Timeline, I'm gonna be sad.

crypticarmsman · January 2017

captainmikec wrote: »

Two new queues.... I'm all for new content, but old content needs to be cleaned up as well.
PLEASE do something with the massive list of STFs and queues that no one plays anymore.

The queue list is massive and 90% of it doesn't get played anymore, it's time to dump some of them!
Most of them have 2 or 3 difficulties, adjust the rewards and difficulty and instead of easy/advanced/expert just have 1 queue as "normal" difficulty. This will force the 2 people waiting for normal and the 3 people waiting for expert to play together and actually have a game.

And in cases where no other human players show up... it's time to add some AI as assistance so players can still enjoy the mission they like. Some of these missions are the only way to get certain marks and required items.... even if no one else is playing, people still need to be able to complete them, even if solo.

A massive list of queues looks impressive at first, a massive list of empty queues where the wait time is listed as "--" makes the game look empty and abandoned.

I'd rather they just streamline the Queue List Interface and maybe have Tabs across the top that group the PvE queue content by Reputation name. That would go a long way to alleviate the massive 'information vomit' list that is unwieldy to scroll down; and simplify and make the info easier to process for casual users who don't know how/r what to bother looking doing the long list of Filter boxes you can check off to streamline the list.

IMO - getting rid of content in an MMO is rarely a good idea because not everyone has been playing STO for years. The game still gets new players who haven't already grinded some content 100's of times.

iconians · January 2017

More queued content that will only be rendered obsolete and seldomly played once the content locusts finish grinding out the Lukari reputation for their characters, and move onto the next carrot.

No ground queues either, although I'm hopeful that at least one ground mission is already a work in progress and will find its way to Holodeck sometime after Season 12 launches.

At least we have the Tzenkethi Battlezone so new characters have a reliable place to grind out Lukari marks and the elite currency for the Lukari reputation system once these queues become a ghost town, since it's only a matter of when, not if -- barring some innovative overhauling of the queued mission system, which many of us have been asking for.

iconians · January 2017

somtaawkhar wrote: »

iconians wrote: »

No ground queues either, although I'm hopeful that at least one ground mission is already a work in progress and will find its way to Holodeck sometime after Season 12 launches.

I do belive the new mission being added in S12 has ground in it.

Yeah, which is a good thing. I meant a ground-only queued mission, though. They clearly put a lot of work into the ground NPCs of the Tzenkethi, so it's kind of a disappointment players won't be able to team together to face them.

trillbuffet · January 2017

This news seems better than DR or the agents of shield err the past or whatever. Although I hope they have done some work behind the scenes to make ground skill activation smoother seems so slow compared to other mmo's in this type of gameplay. As well the is so many years old now that it needs to do away with having to only group with your own faction. As well it would help if they aren't going to ever change the faction thing is if it puts some new function in that shows all the people who are on a map and a specific map chat just for that for communication purposes. The game kinda feels like I am cut off from the rest of the universe lol.

Just my 2 cents but am excited for Season 12

sarah2774 · January 2017

saurializard wrote: »

If I willingly go into the singularity and I don't end up in the Kelvin Timeline, I'm gonna be sad.

I did pvp, if you go into the singularity you explode unless you manage to warp out of the singularity on time.

markhawkman · January 2017

somtaawkhar wrote: »

shadowfirefly00 wrote: »

Indeed, sir, and I would hope they don't drop the ball here.

Though, to play devil's advocate here, the Tzenkethi being just "kill em for giggles" wouldn't exactly be BAD per say.

While having villains with more complex motives is nice, the simple fact is there ARE people who do things like this simply for more power, and no other real reason.

Everyone rags on Hakeev for blowing up Romulus simply for more power from the Iconians, but that's not exactly an unrealistic motive, especially given how powerful the Iconians actually are.

A unvierse full of nothing but "tragic" villains isn't exactly realistic, and its not like we have that many "for the EVILZ!" villains anyways. The list basically mounts too
-The Devidians
-Hakeev/Tal Shiar
-The Breen

Everyone else has some other motive behind their actions.

I'd not include the Devidians or Breen. the Devidians were doing it because they eat people to survive. Thot Trel well... we know WHAT he was doing but not much about why he wanted to acquire Preserver tech.

lilchibiclari · January 2017

psycoticvulcan wrote: »

The first one looks more interesting than the second. Black holes are always cool.

I'm really not fond of the Tzenkethi acting like stereotypical genocidal invaders, wiping out planets and the like. We're already fought plenty of those types before. A more morally grey antagonist would be more interesting.

Still, I'll reserve judgement until I've played the missions.

Yes, it would be nice to have some motive behind their choice to wipe planets clean beyond pure xenophobia or hunger for territory. Maybe there's something specific that they are trying to eradicate/acquire, and they are wiping planets that have been "contaminated" by it? For example, those aliens that invaded the Draconians, whom the K-13 folks had to save them from? Perhaps the Tzenkethi are eradicating anybody who has had contact with those aliens?

shadowfirefly00 · January 2017

lilchibiclari wrote: »

Yes, it would be nice to have some motive behind their choice to wipe planets clean beyond pure xenophobia or hunger for territory. Maybe there's something specific that they are trying to eradicate/acquire, and they are wiping planets that have been "contaminated" by it? For example, those aliens that invaded the Draconians, whom the K-13 folks had to save them from? Perhaps the Tzenkethi are eradicating anybody who has had contact with those aliens?

That'd be an interesting twist... most particularly in the form of wondering just what is this thing they're so bent on eradicating that systematic extermination of anything which they conclude has come into contact with it is the only viable tactic? The Tzenkethi acting like an interstellar Blackwatch is naturally not without precedent in sci-fi settings: the Imperium of Man in WH40K is infamous for this; the Forerunners created the various Halo stations for the purpose of doing so as a fallback plan for dealing with the Flood.

inferiority · January 2017

It's odd that queue's are now being made only for level 60 given that they're a main source of marks for reputation that open at level 50 that allow players to obtain level 45+ gear.

inferiority · January 2017

somtaawkhar wrote: »

The Terran, Temporal, and Tzenkethi, reps are all level 60.

They're level 60??!! Really??!!
Better file a bug report cos I was able to level up those reps when I hit level 50.

By the way, the Terran Reputation and Battlezone all tie in to the DS9, Mirror Universe & Bajor story arc and that's playable from level 35...

shadowfirefly00 · January 2017

Relevant videos follow (thanks, Timberwolf):

Be warned: the protomatter bombs in the latter may have the same hazard to carriers as the dreadnought core in Days of Doom when the queue is released into the wild.

somtaawkhar wrote: »

No, the Mirror Universe Battlezone ties into the Future Proof story arc, as Leeta is a participant in the Temporal Liberation Front, and all the Terran reputation messages deal with her talking about her getting technology from her friends in the future, and using that technology to make herself more powerful and defeat the Iconians.

Which leads to the sixty-four-million-credit questions: what's she getting up to, and when can we expect her to resurface...?

bojc · December 2018

"GRAVITY KILLS" Just came here to say omfg i hate this map with passion. I started to hate it when it hit on new "join random queue". From now on i will rage quit before it even starts ... rant over >:(

[PC] Season 12 Queues: "Gravity Kills" and "The Tzenkethi Front."

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