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gunny338
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Will see see a gamma holding added to s.t.o. anytime soon? With fleet holding in every sector except gamma alot of us are wondering if there are plans to update fleet holding.
"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives.
We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity"
Captain Jean Luc Picard
We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity"
Captain Jean Luc Picard
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We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity"
Captain Jean Luc Picard
We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity"
Captain Jean Luc Picard
Personally I liked entire ViL with one exception, adding the gamma quadrant as a giant battleground with bland objectives instead taking advantage of a new gamma with various planets to visit and activities/patrols
The key to all of that is that the Dominion mostly kept order by ruthlessly suppressing the other civilizations, something they would have lost the ability to do because of the war losses followed by the Hurq all but destroying their empire. The war with the Alpha/Beta quadrant Alliance drawing off some of that pressure probably even revitalized the undergrounds that existed and encouraged them to loop in others.
Once the Dominion was weakened Gamma would have erupted with all the more aggressive of the suppressed civilizations, probably even using captured Dominion ships, secretly armed freighters, and any military ships their various undergrounds would have been building in secret. Hostile civilizations sniffing around the Dominion outskirts could also take advantage of the weakening of the Dominion.
There was tabletop game by FGU that had almost exactly that situation in one of their sector modules, Terran colonies settled via a stargate settled the region not knowing they were in the path of a very large conquering empire. When it rolled over them they kept up a cooperative face but built mechs and ships in secret to use when the time was right. It was an interesting module for Space Opera, and STO could do just as interesting a job on an unstabilized Gamma quadrant if they wanted to.
Instead of a dull and rather hokey battlezone Gamma could indeed have been prime patrol fodder with the players putting out all sorts of brushfire situations and even have a random encounter setup where they could find hidden bases or flotillas sneaking around Dominion territory. They could have even used two-ending scenarios for episodes and patrols where the player could choose to crush the rebels or take an armed diplomatic approach which would make both the red and blue faction players happy.
So there really is a lot that could be done there.
Of course for any of that to work they would have to expand the Dominion to include Vorta and other Gamma races as leveling characters and not just the gee-wiz endgame only Jem'Hadar, and I just can't see them putting in that kind of effort anymore without CBS setting a show there or something.
To me at least, & it could've as easily just been coincidental timing, it seemed the whole ViL story-arc was cut too short. I wanted more. lol I thought that was some of the highest quality work done by Cryptic 'recently' with those missions, especially a couple of them, & overall good continuity. I'll admit though besides the actual story-missions I haven't delved into the Gamma Quad too much.
There really isn't anything in the Gamma quadrant map to delve into, it is not really a "quadrant" map like the other three though it is set up to look like one (and perhaps they were originally intending to make it a full sector but stopped for some reason). It is simply a battlezone like Gon'cra or the Badlands except that it has far more boring distance to cross between minigame areas. The episodes and one TFO are the only other parts ViL has.
The Hur'q damaged all of them, true, but the Dominion was rigidly orderly and depended on that order and control to function, the chaos the Hur'q caused would favor the rebels even if they were all taken down by exactly the same margin, even after the war itself. It is not an overwhelming advantage, but it could very well kick off enough brushwars and other trouble to make it a very interesting expansion.
We have enough holdings already.
Besides if cryptic uses other means now to enable desirable unlocks things are much fairer handled amongst the players than they are via fleet holdings.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Didn't Cryptic have a sort of "Community Objectives" or whatever title they gave it a few times?
I always thought those were neat. I know other games utilize that feature.
The community does whatever for a goal then everyone gets a benefit of some sort. Just retitle that too like "Universal Holding" or whatever.
As others have mentioned, there are lots of inhabitants to potentially interact with. It seems wrong that the whole area is just dead space without the battlezone.
The fact that Rene Auberjonois has passed away means there probably can't be another gamma story arc, which is a shame, because new things are generally introduced with a story arc.
I just feel as if their predilection of going to the trouble of making those, given the amount of development time involved and then just dropping them like a hot potato isn't exactly the best idea? Cryptic has a wide variety of in-game locales that they seldom to never revisit. Shame!
A new Gamma arc involving the Dominion itself could be done without having Odo directly involved, in fact it makes more sense for one set in the Gamma quadrant itself to have a different contact since Odo is in Alpha with his Jem'Hadar fleet, not Gamma.
The biggest stumbling block would ironically be fact that the only faction that would be inappropriate for such an arc would be the Jem'Hadar since even the STO mini-stories, along with elements of the J'H starter scenario make it clear that the rest of the Dominion does not like the fact that Odo is putting J'H in officer positions and are just humoring him, and that only in his expeditionary force, not the bulk of Dominion forces and society.
Therefore an arc set in Gamma would require the other races, especially Vorta since DS9 established that they command all the Dominion ships and bases (outside of Odo's expeditionary force in STO of course), and the devs seem unwilling to even entertain the idea of Vorta player characters despite the clear evidence in DS9 that they made up both the intelligence and command corps of the Dominion.
during tribble testing the atrocious colony provision costs & minigames were pointed out.
in reaction to that feedback the amount of needed provisions was slightly reduced and needed dilithium contributions were generously increased to offset the provisions decrease.
then because of the feedback of 'one' vocal player the powers that be decided to remove needed duty officer contributions from the xp projects and in turn increased the needed dilithium again.
annoying maybe but something you can deal with. the really TRIBBLE and scummy thing happened when the holding finally made it to holodeck.
some undocumented bait and switch happened. the xp each project yielded was reduced from 1,200 to 1,000.
as a result of that 'minor' adjustment the total amount of provisions suddenly was larger again than the original testing iteration which supposedly was 'reduced'.
don't be all open and transparent about changing costs and then try to sneak in a ~25% increase in total costs at the last minute.
Even if that is more than just political vapor, something that ingrained takes a while to implement even on a small scale. The Dominion was a rigid cast system for centuries, and the gulf between Vorta and Jem'Hadar is as great as it is between human and critch in Carnival Row, or put another way the J'H were treated even worse in some ways than droids in Star Wars or replicants in Blade Runner.
For that matter, they are pretty much considered manufactured biotech by the Dominion just like the replicants, and not too different from the synths in PIC, just listen to Keevan and it is obvious that he considers them no more than expendable talking weapons, not people, and that is just the most obvious example.