Why is every big scary unstoppable villain always portrayed as an allegory for Satan? You know, the big bad guy behind the scenes who uses minions to sow discord, etc. Engages in subtle machinations, never simply shows up and crushes his victims in one stroke. You know the drill.
The Iconians have had 200,000 years to develop new technology since they were driven from their homeworld. From what we've seen in game, they haven't been slouches either; one-shotting Borg fleets is quite impressive. So why waste the time pitting the lesser races against one another?
Why don't they come in and say to us: "Okay guys, everything here belongs to us including the atoms in your bodies, so we're going to have to insist you stop using them", then wipe out the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians and everything in between?
Why all the moustache-twirling? It's unnecessary. Show up and make your move, Iconians! If you're so thirsty for conquest, why don't you get off your dimension-hopping asses of air and darkness and do it?
What better way to see what you're up against than have them fight amongst themselves. They could be pitting the major powers in the quadrant against each otehr to determine their capabilities of defending themselves. Plus, if the majority of the empires are wiped out in conflict between each other, the Iconians can just waltz in, finish the rest and take over with little effort and expending few resources.
Don't forget it was the ancestors of the worlds in the alpha quadrant that forced the Iconians to flee in the first place, for all they know, we could kick their asses again.
Or, you know, they could just be doing it to make the story a little more interesting..
Maybe their culture has been stagnant and is not so supreme. Maybe there are very few of them. Maybe they prefer not to risk themselves at all so they use underling species. Maybe they're not all that and due to circumstances have actually gone backwards in development. Maybe they were frozen in time until recently so they didn't advance from their Gateway days, still powerful but not invincible.
What better way to see what you're up against than have them fight amongst themselves. They could be pitting the major powers in the quadrant against each otehr to determine their capabilities of defending themselves. Plus, if the majority of the empires are wiped out in conflict between each other, the Iconians can just waltz in, finish the rest and take over with little effort and expending few resources.
Don't forget it was the ancestors of the worlds in the alpha quadrant that forced the Iconians to flee in the first place, for all they know, we could kick their asses again.
Or, you know, they could just be doing it to make the story a little more interesting..
Of course it's to make the story more interesting. I'm just disappointed that it's usually the only way to make the story interesting after you've set up an all-powerful villain for the heroes to deal with eventually. The villain can't just go and squash the heroes in the first five minutes, he has to sit back and plot and send out his minions of darkness and foster distrust and violence and hate, etc. - Seen it too many times already.
The Iconians were forced to flee by whoever it was that lived there 200,000 years ago. A lot can change in 200,000 years and the races that existed back then are all long gone by now.
Also if the Iconians we see now eat the Borg for breakfast, then I don't see them needing to learn much about us to find our weaknesses. I'm pretty sure our biggest weakness will be how quickly our ships turn into a rapidly expanding vapor when their weapons cut right through our shields and hit our hulls.
Nah, it didn'one shoted a borg fleet, it needed several shots for a single cube.
And who says they could have spend the last 200k years developing their tech. maybe they needed 199.999 years to recover to a state where they could starty to get back into swing of things. And what about their numbers, maybe only 1 ship survived of all their race?
Besides having an unstablable army just waltz in is boring gameplay wise.
Of course it's to make the story more interesting. I'm just disappointed that it's usually the only way to make the story interesting after you've set up an all-powerful villain for the heroes to deal with eventually. The villain can't just go and squash the heroes in the first five minutes, he has to sit back and plot and send out his minions of darkness and foster distrust and violence and hate, etc. - Seen it too many times already.
The Iconians were forced to flee by whoever it was that lived there 200,000 years ago. A lot can change in 200,000 years and the races that existed back then are all long gone by now.
Also if the Iconians we see now eat the Borg for breakfast, then I don't see them needing to learn much about us to find our weaknesses. I'm pretty sure our biggest weakness will be how quickly our ships turn into a rapidly expanding vapor when their weapons cut right through our shields and hit our hulls.
But how do the Iconians know that those races are no longer around if they don't do something like the game is portraying them now? The Iconians could have been in another galaxy for all we know, and have no idea what is going on in these parts anymore.
As for the one-shotting Borg. Maybe the Iconians are thinking if we're still around when the Borg are here, then there must be something to us. We have fought the Borg off a number of times. For all the Iconians know, we have some super-weapon that could take them out. They need to know what they're up against. It makes sense.
Yes, the whole, hide in the shadows and use others to do your bidding thing has been used God only knows how many times, but the fact is it works.
We don't need another TNG Borg faction. From all we know the Iconians WERE the big guys around for a while, with the ultimate superior transportation technology. Until their homeworld was bombed to dust. We don't know who exactly bombed them out, but we could reason that we are technologically as far or superior to them. If the Iconians strike now we will have peace within a week and swarm them everything the alpha and beta quadrants have to offer.
Oh, and
: As far as I remember the magazine article the Iconians are now a nomadic people who live completely on their ships. Would you risk the vessel your family is on in a war?
Why is every big scary unstoppable villain always portrayed as an allegory for Satan? You know, the big bad guy behind the scenes who uses minions to sow discord, etc. Engages in subtle machinations, never simply shows up and crushes his victims in one stroke. You know the drill
... because why waste your ships after a brutal defeat thousands of years ago when the Feds and KDF are silly enough to kill all their neighbors?
It's like asking why Germany didn't attack Russia the winter prior during WWII.
Spoiler and Speculation Alert: Obvoiusly the Devs need time to throw them into the Game as the big badass guys... so we could say.. The Undine having that Gate inside their Colony for who knows how long (Old gate compared to the one in Coliseum) ...Have had some encounters with the Iconions at some point... Then either not knowing who they are... whether it be they've forgotten, dont care or just see them as another Bipedal scum who cant read the "Stay out of Fluidic Space" sign... So... its possible the Undine knowing who they are... are happily fighting them in some part of the Galaxy "Delaying their arrival"... Failing that... the Iconions are lazy.
Since we don´t know in what capacity the Iconians returned, where they were all the time and what exactly they want, there is no point in liking or disliking what´s happening.
Why not just wait for the story arc to unfold and rage then ?
Since we don´t know in what capacity the Iconians returned, where they were all the time and what exactly they want, there is no point in liking or disliking what´s happening.
Why not just wait for the story arc to unfold and rage then ?
There's a good quote about this:
Garak: Where you offer kindness, I offer mystery. Where you offer sympathy, I offer intrigue. Just give me a seat next to the Community's bed and I promise you I'll conjure up enough innuendos, half-truths and bald-faced lies about my so-called career in the Obsidian Order to keep the Community distracted for days.
In summary:
Missions hint at something, possibly in misdirection
Community: "Karma police! Arrest this man! He talks in maths!"
It's a quite old, and in this case, sinisterly foreshadowing tactic. Divide and conquer. Quite likely, they were the ones pushing the Dominion to war with us way back when, and when they saw how powerful the Alpha quadrant was, they decided to break it up. We know they're responsible for Horbus, a clear decapitation strike on the Romulan Empire (why them, I don't know. Perhaps the solution will come from their side), and they've disrupted the two other most powerful empires in the region, the Klingons and Federation, with a war between them (possibly taking coincidence and setting up multiple plans to make it happen), and Undine attacks, AND likely tickling the borg into an invasion, and advancing their assimilation technique.
Then along ~you~ come, disrupting every last one of their plans, and moving the Klingons, Feds, and Romulans closer and closer to a peace conference with every mission you take. Suffice to say, I think they're going to make things rather personal when you show up.
Just as they are the Demons of Air and Darkness, you are the Alpha Quadrant's Savior, and Angel of Hope and Retribution. Where you go, the Federation's sword of justice follows, meting out swift and precisely targeted vengeance upon those who would disrupt the peace.
At the moment, it seems they've decided to try and take you out on the ground, decapitate the federation's top ship, and break a chain of events that would lead to their downfall by perfecting a ground warrior to use against you.
In short, they're ridiculously Genere savvy, and realize just how big a threat you are.
Regardless of how powerful the Iconians are, I doubt they have the resources to deal with a long, drawn out war. First step is to get resources. To do that they needed allies. By putting the quadrant at war and possibly destroying Romulus, they get the Romulan Empire (where most of their old territory was) and whatever resources they can get. The Tal Shiar would be easy to take control of if you promise them power after their empire was crippled.
Next, the Iconians are interested in Slavery. Randomly attacking races you want to serve you won't work. You have to understand them to break them and it is through battle that one's true spirit shows.
It's a quite old, and in this case, sinisterly foreshadowing tactic. Divide and conquer. Quite likely, they were the ones pushing the Dominion to war with us way back when, and when they saw how powerful the Alpha quadrant was, they decided to break it up. We know they're responsible for Horbus, a clear decapitation strike on the Romulan Empire (why them, I don't know. Perhaps the solution will come from their side), and they've disrupted the two other most powerful empires in the region, the Klingons and Federation, with a war between them (possibly taking coincidence and setting up multiple plans to make it happen), and Undine attacks, AND likely tickling the borg into an invasion, and advancing their assimilation technique.
Then along ~you~ come, disrupting every last one of their plans, and moving the Klingons, Feds, and Romulans closer and closer to a peace conference with every mission you take. Suffice to say, I think they're going to make things rather personal when you show up.
Just as they are the Demons of Air and Darkness, you are the Alpha Quadrant's Savior, and Angel of Hope and Retribution. Where you go, the Federation's sword of justice follows, meting out swift and precisely targeted vengeance upon those who would disrupt the peace.
At the moment, it seems they've decided to try and take you out on the ground, decapitate the federation's top ship, and break a chain of events that would lead to their downfall by perfecting a ground warrior to use against you.
In short, they're ridiculously Genere savvy, and realize just how big a threat you are.
I'm assuming that they're afraid every single Alpha quadrant power could decide to band together to fight them if they attack directly. They may have incredibly advanced technology, but I get the feeling they don't have numbers. A tiny fleet of ships, even vastly powerful ships, still doesn't stand a chance against the combined fleets of all the Alpha Quadrant species.
So, what's the best way to proceed? Trick them all into weakening themselves with petty wars. Then once they've decimated each others fleets, we come in and clean up what's left and the quadrant is ours again.
That's my theory anyway.
I also have a theory about how things are going to play out with the Iconians arc of the game now that we know they're behind it all. But, I'll keep that to myself and hope that it actually happens.
How can you be sure the races that kiccked the Iconians out are really gone? Rmemeber the Preservers were GONE, pressumed extinct; but they´re back now (and we need new preserver missions Cryptic! What are they up to, what do they think of their kids, etc). Even without having gone into stasis who´s to say the ancient races are simply choosing not to show themselves? Their proyected tech level would make them unto gods... hopefully less annoying than the Q though!
Maybe the ongoing manipulation of the younger races is meant to draw them out? Or maybe... they´re walking arround us, there have been several cases where Starfleet captains have meet beings of uncalculable powers, evolution or hyperadvanced tech?
How can you be sure the races that kiccked the Iconians out are really gone? Rmemeber the Preservers were GONE, pressumed extinct; but they´re back now (and we need new preserver missions Cryptic! What are they up to, what do they think of their kids, etc). Even without having gone into stasis who´s to say the ancient races are simply choosing not to show themselves? Their proyected tech level would make them unto gods... hopefully less annoying than the Q though!
Maybe the ongoing manipulation of the younger races is meant to draw them out? Or maybe... they´re walking arround us, there have been several cases where Starfleet captains have meet beings of uncalculable powers, evolution or hyperadvanced tech?
The Star Trek Novel, The Immortal Coil represents this very thing quite clearly and accurately. It would not be hard (or even remotely difficult) for an advanced race to live amongst the Alpha Quadrant races and NOT be detected.
Then again, not all advanced races went out to explore either. Some brought things to them to learn about (remember that one TNG episode where Barclay kept getting smarter until he was able to bring the Enterprise to a location so an advanced being could learn and converse with them?)
i was just thinking a featured series based not on a big over-the-top bad guy could be cool. like a science mission or expedition mission that went awry.
a planet where you hafta help a science ship track down an invisible creature (who reveals itself at will) that took one of their crew only to discover after reporting in to the head scientist several times (which each time would be a new episode) that there is a positive outcome or twist.. maybe the creature is on the verge of sentience and you end up making that discovery in your dealings with this creature.
or you explore temple ruins and face off against its dangers.
there are a lot of story types that dont need a physical "bad guy" all the time to make they story interesting. things like this could be really cool too. its worth noting, i think.:D
There's a practical reason and this is the reason TV shows have adopted the "big bad" premise.
Simply put, a genuinely threatening bad guy with mass murder in mind cannot win too much. Eventually, they wipe everything out. Someone out to destroy the universe can only win once and then the story is over.
On the other hand, even though the setting would be destroyed the moment this bad guy wins, we can't have them lose every week or they seem like incompetent stooges. So writers give those villains pawns who lose, generally through incompetence or zealotry or refusing to follow the plan. Following the masters' plan? They would have won.
This creates a situation where you can repeatedly face a big villain, repeatedly win or at least thwart them (or otherwize minimize their impact to ten deaths instead of ten million) and that big villain remains less diminished for their defeats because they would have won if not for their disobedient lackeys or because of something they could not know without being there in person.
In addition to preserving the big villains' mystique, it also allows for weaker challenges that weaker good guys can participate in that still contribute to the main plot. In this game's case, that would be your pre-VA captains. On a show like Buffy, that was your non-powered characters like Dawn and Xander. In Twin Peaks, maybe it was the conflict of TRIBBLE Tremayne and Andy Brennan over Lucy. You have challenges appropriate to the character by playing a filter between the protagonists and the ultimate antagonists..
There can be numerous explanations to this. All the "evidence" we have of Iconians is one ship. One ship, no matter how powerful, cannot take on the entire Starfleet, or the KDF.
Who knows? Maybe there is just this one ship left, in the entire galaxy. Lore aside, the supervillain always has to have some weakness, just as the poster above me wrote. I just hope Iconians don't turn into current Borg with the next expansion: tons of them everywhere and we grind them.
There can be numerous explanations to this. All the "evidence" we have of Iconians is one ship. One ship, no matter how powerful, cannot take on the entire Starfleet, or the KDF.
Who knows? Maybe there is just this one ship left, in the entire galaxy. Lore aside, the supervillain always has to have some weakness, just as the poster above me wrote. I just hope Iconians don't turn into current Borg with the next expansion: tons of them everywhere and we grind them.
The borg did, twice. If it wasn't for those cheating jerks on the Enterprise.:p
I will admit. I am looking foward to the Iconians revealing themselves fully and seeing what they're up to. But cryptic, did ruin the mystery for me. So I'll be looking foward to the endgame, but in the end..just seeing it as another expansion.
And Cpt_Richardson: I LOVED that post and I think it's very accurate.
The borg did, twice. If it wasn't for those cheating jerks on the Enterprise.:p
Well each time, the Borg faced cca 30 ships. Also, during the second encounter they were already heavy damaged. After the Dominion war they'd be facing more like 300 or so ships. I bet the Sol sector is probably the most protected place in the galaxy atm.
Honestly I am more concerned about time travel. What prevents the Borg from recreating "ST: First Contact" events, just around some other planet - then they travel safely to Earth, assimilate it and... done.
Maybe their culture has been stagnant and is not so supreme. Maybe there are very few of them. Maybe they prefer not to risk themselves at all so they use underling species. Maybe they're not all that and due to circumstances have actually gone backwards in development. Maybe they were frozen in time until recently so they didn't advance from their Gateway days, still powerful but not invincible.
There's a lot of ways to explain it.
I suspect the "They're so few..." thing has something to do with it.
Remember this is a species that was brought to the brink of extinction at one point. The Iconians may not even be able to reproduce anymore; after all Iconians may be a post-singularity species*, and if they are it's also possible that the destruction of their homeworld left them sterile, so only the handful of immortal survivors are left.
We don't know that of course, but for all we know the Iconian faction is 6 people in their equivalent of a pizza delivery car; it just happens to be a VERY advanced pizza delivery car.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity - Summed up - Technology advances at an enormous rate, immortality is a fact of life, and in-general a post-singularity society is in a lot of ways indistinguishable from something out of a "Golden Age" in a fantasy novel... except with lasers.
Honestly I am more concerned about time travel. What prevents the Borg from recreating "ST: First Contact" events, just around some other planet - then they travel safely to Earth, assimilate it and... done.
My attitude is that time travel probably has complicated rules which modern humans would be incapable of understanding.
My initial theory is that, without temporal shielding, any attempts to alter history just create new timelines. Temporal shields not only "insulate" you from changes but if you go back in time without them, you get shunted sideways just a bit to an alternate past by a sort of natural resistance to altering history.
I hate to be this guy but I think time travel like we see in Trek or Back to the Future pretty much has to be governed by fantasy rules like "temporal shielding" or "self-corrective timelines" or "nexus points of destiny energy" because it's already so far afield from real science to begin with.
In a society with warp speeds and criss crossing networks of travel, first of all, people should routinely meet one another out of order. Meeting your future self and your future wife or bumping into a friend who died 20 years ago would be routine and unavoidable.
Second, causality probably works the exact opposite of the way most sci-fi depicts it. I think Hawking is onboard with the idea that the future selects the past more than the past influences the future and observational evidence is mounting to suggest that we are the product of multiple converging pasts.
So the idea of timelines and potential outcomes branching out from a decision point, macroscopic or quantum, may be totally backwards. It may be that decision points actually cause multiple potentialities to CONVERGE. Instead of being like a tree which branches out from one trunk, it may be more accurate to view potential as a loose chain of carbon molecules, like coal, that are being condensed down into a diamond, one universe being concentrated out of many.
Comments
Don't forget it was the ancestors of the worlds in the alpha quadrant that forced the Iconians to flee in the first place, for all they know, we could kick their asses again.
Or, you know, they could just be doing it to make the story a little more interesting..
There's a lot of ways to explain it.
Of course it's to make the story more interesting. I'm just disappointed that it's usually the only way to make the story interesting after you've set up an all-powerful villain for the heroes to deal with eventually. The villain can't just go and squash the heroes in the first five minutes, he has to sit back and plot and send out his minions of darkness and foster distrust and violence and hate, etc. - Seen it too many times already.
The Iconians were forced to flee by whoever it was that lived there 200,000 years ago. A lot can change in 200,000 years and the races that existed back then are all long gone by now.
Also if the Iconians we see now eat the Borg for breakfast, then I don't see them needing to learn much about us to find our weaknesses. I'm pretty sure our biggest weakness will be how quickly our ships turn into a rapidly expanding vapor when their weapons cut right through our shields and hit our hulls.
And who says they could have spend the last 200k years developing their tech. maybe they needed 199.999 years to recover to a state where they could starty to get back into swing of things. And what about their numbers, maybe only 1 ship survived of all their race?
Besides having an unstablable army just waltz in is boring gameplay wise.
But how do the Iconians know that those races are no longer around if they don't do something like the game is portraying them now? The Iconians could have been in another galaxy for all we know, and have no idea what is going on in these parts anymore.
As for the one-shotting Borg. Maybe the Iconians are thinking if we're still around when the Borg are here, then there must be something to us. We have fought the Borg off a number of times. For all the Iconians know, we have some super-weapon that could take them out. They need to know what they're up against. It makes sense.
Yes, the whole, hide in the shadows and use others to do your bidding thing has been used God only knows how many times, but the fact is it works.
Oh, and
... because why waste your ships after a brutal defeat thousands of years ago when the Feds and KDF are silly enough to kill all their neighbors?
It's like asking why Germany didn't attack Russia the winter prior during WWII.
"Let's you and him fight":p
Spoiler and Speculation Alert: Obvoiusly the Devs need time to throw them into the Game as the big badass guys... so we could say.. The Undine having that Gate inside their Colony for who knows how long (Old gate compared to the one in Coliseum) ...Have had some encounters with the Iconions at some point... Then either not knowing who they are... whether it be they've forgotten, dont care or just see them as another Bipedal scum who cant read the "Stay out of Fluidic Space" sign... So... its possible the Undine knowing who they are... are happily fighting them in some part of the Galaxy "Delaying their arrival"... Failing that... the Iconions are lazy.
Why not just wait for the story arc to unfold and rage then ?
In summary:
Then along ~you~ come, disrupting every last one of their plans, and moving the Klingons, Feds, and Romulans closer and closer to a peace conference with every mission you take. Suffice to say, I think they're going to make things rather personal when you show up.
Just as they are the Demons of Air and Darkness, you are the Alpha Quadrant's Savior, and Angel of Hope and Retribution. Where you go, the Federation's sword of justice follows, meting out swift and precisely targeted vengeance upon those who would disrupt the peace.
At the moment, it seems they've decided to try and take you out on the ground, decapitate the federation's top ship, and break a chain of events that would lead to their downfall by perfecting a ground warrior to use against you.
In short, they're ridiculously Genere savvy, and realize just how big a threat you are.
Next, the Iconians are interested in Slavery. Randomly attacking races you want to serve you won't work. You have to understand them to break them and it is through battle that one's true spirit shows.
I knew they were watching DS9!:D
I like your theory a lot!
So, what's the best way to proceed? Trick them all into weakening themselves with petty wars. Then once they've decimated each others fleets, we come in and clean up what's left and the quadrant is ours again.
That's my theory anyway.
I also have a theory about how things are going to play out with the Iconians arc of the game now that we know they're behind it all. But, I'll keep that to myself and hope that it actually happens.
Maybe the ongoing manipulation of the younger races is meant to draw them out? Or maybe... they´re walking arround us, there have been several cases where Starfleet captains have meet beings of uncalculable powers, evolution or hyperadvanced tech?
The Star Trek Novel, The Immortal Coil represents this very thing quite clearly and accurately. It would not be hard (or even remotely difficult) for an advanced race to live amongst the Alpha Quadrant races and NOT be detected.
Then again, not all advanced races went out to explore either. Some brought things to them to learn about (remember that one TNG episode where Barclay kept getting smarter until he was able to bring the Enterprise to a location so an advanced being could learn and converse with them?)
a planet where you hafta help a science ship track down an invisible creature (who reveals itself at will) that took one of their crew only to discover after reporting in to the head scientist several times (which each time would be a new episode) that there is a positive outcome or twist.. maybe the creature is on the verge of sentience and you end up making that discovery in your dealings with this creature.
or you explore temple ruins and face off against its dangers.
there are a lot of story types that dont need a physical "bad guy" all the time to make they story interesting. things like this could be really cool too. its worth noting, i think.:D
I'm not wrapping my head around this one. Fun mission, though.
Simply put, a genuinely threatening bad guy with mass murder in mind cannot win too much. Eventually, they wipe everything out. Someone out to destroy the universe can only win once and then the story is over.
On the other hand, even though the setting would be destroyed the moment this bad guy wins, we can't have them lose every week or they seem like incompetent stooges. So writers give those villains pawns who lose, generally through incompetence or zealotry or refusing to follow the plan. Following the masters' plan? They would have won.
This creates a situation where you can repeatedly face a big villain, repeatedly win or at least thwart them (or otherwize minimize their impact to ten deaths instead of ten million) and that big villain remains less diminished for their defeats because they would have won if not for their disobedient lackeys or because of something they could not know without being there in person.
In addition to preserving the big villains' mystique, it also allows for weaker challenges that weaker good guys can participate in that still contribute to the main plot. In this game's case, that would be your pre-VA captains. On a show like Buffy, that was your non-powered characters like Dawn and Xander. In Twin Peaks, maybe it was the conflict of TRIBBLE Tremayne and Andy Brennan over Lucy. You have challenges appropriate to the character by playing a filter between the protagonists and the ultimate antagonists..
Who knows? Maybe there is just this one ship left, in the entire galaxy. Lore aside, the supervillain always has to have some weakness, just as the poster above me wrote. I just hope Iconians don't turn into current Borg with the next expansion: tons of them everywhere and we grind them.
The borg did, twice. If it wasn't for those cheating jerks on the Enterprise.:p
And Cpt_Richardson: I LOVED that post and I think it's very accurate.
Well each time, the Borg faced cca 30 ships. Also, during the second encounter they were already heavy damaged. After the Dominion war they'd be facing more like 300 or so ships. I bet the Sol sector is probably the most protected place in the galaxy atm.
I suspect the "They're so few..." thing has something to do with it.
Remember this is a species that was brought to the brink of extinction at one point. The Iconians may not even be able to reproduce anymore; after all Iconians may be a post-singularity species*, and if they are it's also possible that the destruction of their homeworld left them sterile, so only the handful of immortal survivors are left.
We don't know that of course, but for all we know the Iconian faction is 6 people in their equivalent of a pizza delivery car; it just happens to be a VERY advanced pizza delivery car.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity - Summed up - Technology advances at an enormous rate, immortality is a fact of life, and in-general a post-singularity society is in a lot of ways indistinguishable from something out of a "Golden Age" in a fantasy novel... except with lasers.
My attitude is that time travel probably has complicated rules which modern humans would be incapable of understanding.
My initial theory is that, without temporal shielding, any attempts to alter history just create new timelines. Temporal shields not only "insulate" you from changes but if you go back in time without them, you get shunted sideways just a bit to an alternate past by a sort of natural resistance to altering history.
I hate to be this guy but I think time travel like we see in Trek or Back to the Future pretty much has to be governed by fantasy rules like "temporal shielding" or "self-corrective timelines" or "nexus points of destiny energy" because it's already so far afield from real science to begin with.
In a society with warp speeds and criss crossing networks of travel, first of all, people should routinely meet one another out of order. Meeting your future self and your future wife or bumping into a friend who died 20 years ago would be routine and unavoidable.
Second, causality probably works the exact opposite of the way most sci-fi depicts it. I think Hawking is onboard with the idea that the future selects the past more than the past influences the future and observational evidence is mounting to suggest that we are the product of multiple converging pasts.
So the idea of timelines and potential outcomes branching out from a decision point, macroscopic or quantum, may be totally backwards. It may be that decision points actually cause multiple potentialities to CONVERGE. Instead of being like a tree which branches out from one trunk, it may be more accurate to view potential as a loose chain of carbon molecules, like coal, that are being condensed down into a diamond, one universe being concentrated out of many.