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Forced to do Kobali missions?
lexusk19
Member Posts: 1,415 Arc User
Why are we forced to do the Kobali ground missions? Im lvl 60 and trying to skip the the Iconian war arc, but am stuck playing the Kobali ground stuff... I dont care about them at all, wish the Vaadwaur would wipe them all out. >.>
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And I THINK it still shifts to the stock Polaron Rifle for a bit after doing a melee with it.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
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normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
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I'm using that from now on.
From a Terran point of view, that would work. I'd also side with the Vaadduar and expose the Kobali's true colors to the whole galaxy.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Both sides are not exactly angels, Terran diplomacy to this problem is strong arm the Kobali into returning the Vaadwaur their people and then make the Kobali sign a treaty saying they have to ask permission first. The Vaadwaur can be dealt with later.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
@baddmoonrizin
Wasn't that essentially what happened at the end of the Kobali missions? The alliance pressured the Kobali to release the Vaadwaur (though as an offer to the Vaadwaur for a ceasefire) and only turn willing people into Kobali.
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
Now it's been a while since I played the missions, but last I checked, the Kobali only took Vaadwaur bodies that were already dead and didn't purposely sabotage the cryogenic chambers, the Vaadwaur then returned and demanded that the Kobali leave the temple and that all Kobali made from Vaadwaur be returned to them, the Kobali were willing to concede to the first point (leave the temple and never return) but not the second (hand over a large part of their population based on their ancestry).
I'm digressing a little, but the fact is that the Kobali see nothing wrong with "recycling" the bodies of the dead, it's a necessity for them to continue as a species after all. And whilst it's easy to sympathise with the Vaadwaur's opinions over their dead being raised as Kobali, they fired the first shots when the Kobali refused to forcibly hand over those made from Vaadwaur against their will and had other options when it came to preventing Kobali use of their dead like vaporising their dead or recovering the bodies themselves. Instead they chose to turn all their people into biological weapons.
Am I saying that the Kobali were 100% in the right, no, but they acted as they did out of a desire to continue their own species, they were more than willing to step back when the Vaadwaur returned and only fought the war out of self defence when the Vaadwaur decided that the perfectly reasonable offer of the rest of their surviving soldiers being returned wasn't good enough.
In response to the Kobali not immediately rolling over and submitting to their demands, the Vaadwaur attacked an otherwise peaceful species, they turned their own soldiers into biological weapons and only stood down when the alliance forced their kobali allies to submit to Vaadwaur demands.
Were the Kobali right to act as they did, no, but I do feel they had some moral high ground over the Vaadwaur.
There are things in this game far, far worse than Kobalistan.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Actually, no, this is not in the FCT.
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That thing has nice parts and not all my characters have it.
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You could always put on your own music too.
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And I find it difficult to sympathize with the Klingons in this game because less than five years ago they were conducting ethnic cleansing operations and the Klingon PC canonically tortures a man to death. But they're the Federation's allies now because reasons.
And as far as the Vaads' use of chemical weapons goes, get over your knee-jerk reaction and look at what they actually did. First, they inoculated themselves against the virus the Kobali use to make more of themselves. That's simply good strategy: it denies their enemy a source of reinforcements. And it's more thorough than simply burning their dead: the Vaadwaur can't possibly recover every dead man or badly wounded POW so I would've suggested the same thing if it was Starfleet fighting the Kobali. After that, they launched a tactical chemical attack against enemy ground troops, using a weapon that, from screen evidence, kills quickly and painlessly. Compare that to the effects of the World War I chlorine, mustard, and phosgene gas attacks that actually prompted Earth's chemical weapons bans. It's peanuts.
Now compare that with the Kobali. Not only are they graverobbers, they reproduce by r*pe, non-consensually infecting humanoid corpses with a virus regardless of the wishes of the decedent's family or larger culture. And forget the wishes of the decedent, which they become capable of expressing when brought back: if you don't like it, they devote military assets to bring you back into the fold at gunpoint, and try to passive-aggressively guilt-trip you into compliance if you manage to get back to your own people. A friend-of-a-friend who was date-r*ped basically said that was equivalent to saying that she should be forced to live out the rest of her life with her attacker.
Which leads into the next point: the Kobali are a net drain on the Alliance's resources. Their ships are wholly outdated -- remember the Samsar-class was built with donated Alpha Quadrant tech -- and as a natural consequence of the way they reproduce, their population won't be very high: unattended corpses that haven't decomposed too far to be usable are few and far between. And they repeatedly lie to us about mission-critical intelligence. Contrast this with the Vaads, who despite probably having an even smaller population than the Kobali (remember they're the survivors of a genocide themselves via cryogenic vaults like the one the Kobali are squatting on), are shown kicking the cr*p out of the Voth and the Borg. And to top it off, Eldex is roughly as p*ssed at the Iconians as we are.
Long story short, the Vaadwaur are no worse than the Klingons or the pre-war Cardassians and they aren't a waste of carbon. That's the kind of "enemy of my enemy" we need. But we get stuck with the damned zombies I suppose because they're mammals and Reptiles Are Abhorrent.
TL;DR: There is no more horrifying line in that entire expansion than the statement in "Takedown" that the Kobali had medical duty during the invasion of Vaadwaur Prime, and no more lazy of an excuse than the throwaway line in "Dust to Dust" that "oh, Eldex kinda turned on us offscreen because reasons". (I didn't even see it my first time through the mission, that's how lazy Cryptic was about the writing in that subplot.)
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Thats what I do all the time
That Kobali battlezone music is just so darn annoying. Otherwise, it is a good area to grind and get some nice marks.
No side is truly an angel, given the choice I would have gone "not my problem, both sides are equally in the wrong."
The Vaadwaur were ruthless in battle because it was out of necessity under Gaul's leadership, maybe under Eldrex's leadership they will be allies.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Yeah, but the thing is, I don't see the situation as Grey and Gray Morality so much as being Black and Gray Morality, with us being railroaded into supporting the Black against the Gray and enabling them to continue their bad behavior: the same mission that brings up the Vaads inoculating themselves against Kobali resurrection requires the PC to develop a countermeasure to let the Kobali infect them again. Whereas I just don't see the Vaads as behaving any worse than a certain playable faction, that also recently started a war on the stated casus belli of ancient territorial claims. The Klinks wanted the disputed territories on their Federation border back, the Vaads want their old empire back. The Klinks committed war crimes, the Vaads committed war crimes. Why is the one allowed to skate but the other must be opposed at all costs?
Which reminded me of this thread from a couple years ago on VOY's casual xenophobia regarding an even less humanlike adversary...
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Politics, the Federation need the Klingon Empire onside which includes not bringing up awkward questions.
An example would be the Western Allies being allied to Stalin in Earth's WW2, they have to keep him onside because they knew what he was like.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
After 900 years, I'm pretty sure other governments had moved in by then.
As for War Crimes committed by the Klingons vs War Crimes committed by the Vaadwaur...
The Vaadwaur committed Genocide multiple times. The Klingon Empire never did.
The Morality of the Kobali "Temple" has already been taken care of in game. The Vaadwaur STARTED the war because they wanted their people back. Under normal circumstances that would be understandable. They crossed the line when they started developing chemical weapons specifically designed to perpetrate the Genocide of the Kobali.
In the case of the Kobali... its really the lesser of the two evils that the player sides with. And Captain Kim does call out the Kobali pretty much all the way up through Dust to Dust. And unlike the Vaadwaur, the Kobali were actually willing to change. The Vaadwaur... the only language they understand is firepower. They wouldn't have stopped. Especially with Gaul driving them to conquest.
Would the Vaadwaur have stopped once they reclaimed their historical territory? I don't think so. They are highly aggressive. They would have continued to expand, destroying more civilizations while under the hidden control of the Iconians. Hell... they might have even without that hidden control.
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Also already addressed: They were using them against Kobali troops on the battlefield.
No, they're not. At least the Vaadwaur don't make any pretensions about their motives and intentions.
Yeah, he calls them out, and then gets immediately overruled by that damn Benzite. And they keep lying over and over and over, with their entire excuse boiling down to Nobody Ever Complained Before. Which is a load of complete garbage considering that in TV canon they've demonstrated their willingness to launch military offensives to retrieve single would-be Kobali who reject having it forced on them. Do you seriously believe this is the first time somebody's gotten mad enough at them to retaliate in force? Hell, that's probably why they were nomadic before they landed on Kobali Prime.
As evidenced by... the fact that Gaul had to have his senior commanders infested with bluegills to get them to go along with him? Oh wait, that and Eldex kind of indicate the exact opposite.
And by the end of the story, Gaul's dead. I say dump the damned zombies like a hot potato and get somebody who's actually useful on our side.
Would the Klingons have stopped expanding if they hadn't collided with the Federation? The Romulan Empire? The Cardassians (@gulberat noted their similarity to prewar Cardies, too)? The Tzenkethi? The Gorn? The Ferengi? (Yes, the Ferengi: remember the Battle of Maxia?)
I'm not saying Gaul didn't need to be stopped. I'm saying that the Vaads writ large are no worse than multiple governments back in the Alpha Quadrant with whom the Federation maintained a steady detente for more than a century, and that the Kobali are smiling passive-aggressive monsters that don't deserve the blood we shed for them.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/