Hello everyone,
The other day I was watching an episode of Enterprise, the one where the Enterprise comes upon a civilization equivalent to earth's 16th century.
So imagine this: You're exploring a star cluster and enter a system with a primitive culture. You're instructed to scan for anomolies in the system, and pick up energy signatures or alloys that aren't consistent with what you would expect to find there. You move close to the planet and detect a base of some kind, but it has a dampening field around it, so you can't beam in.
You assemble a small away team (you plus 2 BOs) and disguise yourselves as local citizens, and proceed to investigate the base. What you find there could be friendly or not, but you get the idea. This idea has a lot of potential, both in the foundry and as a random mission type. I'm not sure what they have planned for the exploration revamp, but if we're still going to have a random mission generator, it couldn't be too hard to add this kind of mission to it. Success or failure of the mission would be whether or not you follow the prime directive in dealing with the native culture...and furthermore you could choose to keep a team there (via the duty officer system) to study.
Hello everyone,
The other day I was watching an episode of Enterprise, the one where the Enterprise comes upon a civilization equivalent to earth's 16th century.
So imagine this: You're exploring a star cluster and enter a system with a primitive culture. You're instructed to scan for anomolies in the system, and pick up energy signatures or alloys that aren't consistent with what you would expect to find there. You move close to the planet and detect a base of some kind, but it has a dampening field around it, so you can't beam in.
You assemble a small away team (you plus 2 BOs) and disguise yourselves as local citizens, and proceed to investigate the base. What you find there could be friendly or not, but you get the idea. This idea has a lot of potential, both in the foundry and as a random mission type. I'm not sure what they have planned for the exploration revamp, but if we're still going to have a random mission generator, it couldn't be too hard to add this kind of mission to it. Success or failure of the mission would be whether or not you follow the prime directive in dealing with the native culture...and furthermore you could choose to keep a team there (via the duty officer system) to study.
Thoughts?
The potential problem that I see is the "disguise yourselves as local citizens" part of this. I just heard it said recently that STO does not have the tech available to do something like that at the moment. So, that would be the only hurdle that I see.
The potential problem that I see is the "disguise yourselves as local citizens" part of this. I just heard it said recently that STO does not have the tech available to do something like that at the moment. So, that would be the only hurdle that I see.
Maybe not to make a transition on screen, but if you have a BO tell you "we're going to need to wear disguises when we beam down" and then just start with the disguises on when you load the ground map then that would work just fine. Keep in mind I'm not talking about actual "disguises" here, but your character and BOs simply being replaced with pre-made NPCs that look like the native species.
I thought about the costume issues too...although I guess you could just beam down wearing robes or a cloak of some kind. This shouldn't be a combat mission, after all...not until you find out the intentions of the people there.
Going back to TOS, all those missions about them finding a society exactly like the Romans, or like TRIBBLE Germany, or like 30's Chicago used this exact kind of setting. Perhaps the goal of the mission could also be to find the contaminating artifact or person that is impacting the culture of the native people. It wouldn't be hard at all to replicate the 30's Chicago episode, all you'd have to do is make you beam in wearing the 21st century formal wear and not able to change uniforms until you beam out. Would be a nice place to pick up a tommy gun too . I'm kidding...kinda.
And I didn't even think of the episode where the Klingons introduced technology to that primitive planet. That would be interesting, arranging a meeting with a village leader, telling them they have been taken over by the Klingon empire and they must work for you now. After all, the Klingon empire doesn't have to follow the prime directive.
We would just need them to give us the foundry tools to have you change uniforms for that mission. I see this being a problem if you haven't purchased the said uniform...for example, if the local people are all wearing variants of the mercenary uniform, and you haven't bought it, you might not be able to switch into that uniform.
Also, theres a lot of things we don't have in game...if we beam down to a 16th century planet and they have horses and wagons...well...we dont have horses or wagons in game yet. Likewise we don't have old style architecture or random wildlife (other than what we've seen so far).
While it would be awesome to beam to a planet with castles and knights (you could do so in the stock off-duty uniform with robes, just make them brown and green peasant looking), even though we have swords now, we don't have horses or castle architecture in game yet. Though going into the chambers and finding that Merlin was actually an alien who has since moved to this planet would be a very silly, TOS style thing to happen.
Perhaps they need to be open minded with the foundry tools, and create just about anything they can think of.
Comments
How about a mission for Klingons where they have to convince two groups of people on a planet to fight each other. TOS style Klingon missions.
I have to believe that not all Klingons are just stupid brawlers who think they can fix everything with a bat'leth.
The potential problem that I see is the "disguise yourselves as local citizens" part of this. I just heard it said recently that STO does not have the tech available to do something like that at the moment. So, that would be the only hurdle that I see.
Maybe not to make a transition on screen, but if you have a BO tell you "we're going to need to wear disguises when we beam down" and then just start with the disguises on when you load the ground map then that would work just fine. Keep in mind I'm not talking about actual "disguises" here, but your character and BOs simply being replaced with pre-made NPCs that look like the native species.
Going back to TOS, all those missions about them finding a society exactly like the Romans, or like TRIBBLE Germany, or like 30's Chicago used this exact kind of setting. Perhaps the goal of the mission could also be to find the contaminating artifact or person that is impacting the culture of the native people. It wouldn't be hard at all to replicate the 30's Chicago episode, all you'd have to do is make you beam in wearing the 21st century formal wear and not able to change uniforms until you beam out. Would be a nice place to pick up a tommy gun too
And I didn't even think of the episode where the Klingons introduced technology to that primitive planet. That would be interesting, arranging a meeting with a village leader, telling them they have been taken over by the Klingon empire and they must work for you now. After all, the Klingon empire doesn't have to follow the prime directive.
Simple solution.
A) Before you beam down, go to a ship board area and grab a costume.
If you don't do this, you fail the mission. Creates a temporary costume slot.
Also, theres a lot of things we don't have in game...if we beam down to a 16th century planet and they have horses and wagons...well...we dont have horses or wagons in game yet. Likewise we don't have old style architecture or random wildlife (other than what we've seen so far).
While it would be awesome to beam to a planet with castles and knights (you could do so in the stock off-duty uniform with robes, just make them brown and green peasant looking), even though we have swords now, we don't have horses or castle architecture in game yet. Though going into the chambers and finding that Merlin was actually an alien who has since moved to this planet would be a very silly, TOS style thing to happen.
Perhaps they need to be open minded with the foundry tools, and create just about anything they can think of.