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Make Caitians a TOS race
tygerwolf
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
Okay, I know this is an unpopular opinion and one that ONLY THE FURRY COMMUNITY has, but there are Caitians in Star Trek IV and VI!!!
YES, those films were made DURING the reign of TNG, but they PREDATE The Next Generation in the ST timeline by 50+ years!!!
YES, those films were made DURING the reign of TNG, but they PREDATE The Next Generation in the ST timeline by 50+ years!!!
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Lower Decks been Canon since Day 1, plus Lower Decks pretty much also Canonized TAS as result, not sure which Episode it was but Ransom shows a picture of TAS to the Main Characters and called Kirk, Spock and McCoy, Those Old Scientists, Animated Shows like LD is about as Canon as SNW.
Personally, I prefer TOS since it is legitimately soft sci-fi, before it got corrupted with all the space opera nonsense from the movie division of Paramount trying to coattail Star Wars. I like Star Wars, but unfortunately it put severe constraints on the kind of sci-fi scripts that Hollywood was willing to do at the time due to its popularity triggering a space opera lemming frenzy that locked space shows into a silly transplanted WWII mode that the industry has not been able to shake off completely to this day.
It's been an open criticism since Agents of Yesterday arrived that it should have qualified for that specific Premium Species unlock as a choice for the TOS Starfleet tutorial. It was a purposeful design decision to have not done so. I suspect the only thing that might inspire a change of heart would be if Caitians show up on Strange New Worlds. Cadet M'Ress would be a fine inclusion and encourage such a course change for STO. Season three hasn't yet started filming. Due to the strike. It's anyone's guess if that season would do the trick.
I'm kind of confused just how does the TOS faction "break canon" with TOS? it's set 2270 so it's past TOS itself.
hmm don't you mean season 3 of SNW as season 2 was filmed and aired already.
We know - even when it wasn't shown - that many more species were members of or allied with the Federation during that era. So besides Caitians, playable Denobulans, Rigellians and perhaps species like Trill should be a thing (Mayweather had already visited Trillius Prime a century before TOS).
It would be strange if there were only four members for over a century. Even with planets like Coridan (for which explanations are given as to why they initially didn't join officially), there's no way such a small coalition could have resisted the Romulan Star Empire that way. There had to have been help from other worlds as well. And there were already representatives present of 18 worlds when the Coalition of Planets was formed.
If you look at present-day organisations like the EU, it's clear that, although the group of initial members may not be that much larger, more members will likely join sooner than later. It may be a rather slow process, but it doesn't take a century to expand an organisation or community when membership is open to those who meet certain requirements. Not when there are plenty of aspiring members who also already meet those requirements (like, as mentioned above, planets like Rigel, Denobula and yes, the Caitians).
The Federation was formed within a few decades or so, between members that were in armed conflict regularly before. There's no good reason why it should take 5 to 10 times as long for planets like Rigel or Denobula to join, especially when there's been no indication of any such pre-existing conflict between the other members and those worlds.
I don't think it's likely any changes will be made though.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Thank you. I made the correction.
True, the Federation has more than the original four signatories by the time of TOS.
In Journey to Babel alone they show at least nine full member states (counting Human twice since there are extraterrestrial Humans shown all over Trek and some of the delegates that looked human wore unfamiliar clothing of the kind usually used by non-terrestrial Humans in the show):
The total number of worlds was known from dialog in Metamorphosis to be over a thousand inhabited worlds, but both time (the Federation was only about a century old at that point) and dialog later on from TNG about the number of current full members makes it likely that there were probably a few dozen full members at best and the bulk of the thousand or so were probably colonies, protectorates, associate members, and probably treaty-bound close-allies like the Argelians were (until 2378 when the Argelians officially joined the Federation, at least according to the Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library).
While I do agree that it would be worth adding TOS Caitians, the question becomes HOW? Caitians are a C-Store unlock, so do we add in a TOS variant as an addition to the original or make a seperate TOS Caitian unlock?
It depends on how the character generator is coded, it may be a simple matter to add them as-is from the c-store or it might require a convoluted kludge. There is no way to know without seeing the code. If it could be done without too much trouble though it would be a good thing since AoY itself is supposed to be at the end of what would have been season five had TOS continued past season three, and technically TAS became a substitute for season four (when life support and medical technology breakthroughs made it practical to support highly mixed crews like that).
Even if Caitians would not be practical for coding reasons or whatever, there is the matter of the other Federation member races shown in TOS, so 'Alien' would be a good thing to have at least, even if it is a severely limited version that can only simulate those shown races (which are mainly a case of odd skin and/or hair colors and textures (example: Violaceans and Loktarans), unusual height variation (Zambeans), or both (Ithanites)).
It is not a dealbreaker either way of course, but it would be great to be able to do those races in the temporal recruitment where they are most relevant instead of doing them as Delta or regular 2409 types and faking they AoY part with the character background text.
I'd accept that as the back door to creating a Caitian Captain from that period. That was what irritated some player's. Many player's already paid to unlock the species. And I will not re-buy Caitians just for the AoY unlock. That would, IMO, be a silly way to approach it. By 2370, there would most certainly have been a few Caitian Captains by then. Most Admirals didn't move up the ranks in quite the same way as James T. Kirk. How else did we see Caitian Admirals a mere sixteen years later in The Voyage Home? Their careers had to start at least when Pike and/or Kirk careers were also active.
Kludging it into the already existing Caitian C-Store unlock may not be possible unless they make it unlock two races.
That is the crux of the problem with faking TOS aliens by using one of the other Federation generators: while you can say anything in the Character History all of the "vibes" are still TNG or DSC era. All of the little TOS touches like transporter, tricorder and communicator SFX are wrong, the ambient control sounds are wrong, the kits and weapons are impossible to have from the start and it is rather immersion breaking to start out with the wrong era gear.
And only the AoY generator allows the use of any badge other than the Starship Duty Delta so if your character concept is for someone in one of the other divisions there is no way to get the Auxiliary/Merchant Marine Lilly Pad, the Outpost Duty Division "Sunfish" (or "Acorn" depending on who you ask), the Starbase/Headquarters division Starflower, or the Fleet Command (aka field Commodore) "Pretzel" (though that last one would be weird for low-level characters).
However this has nothing to do with the topic at hand and I'm trying to move on.
> But you get through those TOS missions in a few hours. Just make a cat on a current era character and give them a 60's era vibe.
Player inspired work arounds are certainly part of online gaming. Though these only get us so far. I'm sure what your suggesting has been done. There is nothing wrong with that approach. I've done similar with my Caitian boffs added to my TOS crew post-time travel.
That just isn't what's being asked for.
I want a TOS Caitian captain from tutorial levels with all the trappings of the TOS Starfleet that our game offers. The communicator emote with transporter effect. A Pioneer class starship. Weapons that I don't need to sink my dilithium into a K-13 fleet asset to unlock. Then still have to buy them. 😉 Who's brought to the future with this things intact.
just add the option as an unlock, just like SWTOR does.
It could've happened in Canon, we're not the Enterprise and I'm pretty sure the Enterprise wasn't the only Starfleet vessel to have weird stuff happen to it during that time period.
The problem though is apparently the Transporter Effects and communicator are bound to the faction. An artifact of the way the game is built from day one.
I'd love to have the Wrath of Khan Transporter Effect from the Genesis Device for one of my TOS characters