Interested in Star Trek Online Playthroughs?

[Deledrius]

You didn't like it. Okay, but seriously, did you need to write something that long to say it?

I mean, this is a site formed around critiquing entertainment and Star Trek specifically. I'd rather someone write a long, detailed reason why something is poor than just "I didn't like it".

But my enjoyment of Star Trek Online is not why I'm writing this post. It's because of the unjust presentation of Star Trek Online that's being given here. I'm reading opinions from people who played the game 5 years ago for 2 hours but "know" that it's rubbish and a Star Trek theme-park at best. Great! Thanks for your opinion.

I've played it a lot more than that, so thank you for that attempt to dismiss negative reviews, but you're welcome to my opinion! And thanks for yours. If you enjoy it, great, and you seem to so that's wonderful!

[Eishtmo]

It's a pew-pew-pew game but it's improved a great deal.

Best campaigns?

Yesterday's War, IMHO.

Delta Rising, including all the patrols is the best.

As for the Kobali thing, it always seems to me that people miss some important bits:

The storage facility on Kobali Prime is NOT full of civilians. As you dive deeper, it's revealed that it was intended to be, but as the war went worse and worse for them, the Vaadwaur put more and more military into stasis. It's why Gaul wants it so badly, he needs more troops to keep the war going.

The Kobali only rebirthed those whose stasis had failed. Later they claimed they were maintaining the working pods, but it seems reasonable they just kind of let them fail as time went on. Afterwards, under pressure from the Feds, they likely did maintain the pods, and stopped rebirthing the dead ones in the hopes of ending the conflict with the Vaadwaur.

Rebirth normally doesn't let the person remember their past. If it did, all the Vaadwaur they put through the process would either kill themselves, or go insane. Humans (of which only 2 had it done to them) seem to buck this trend, and even in the original episode it was kind of odd.

The sheer rage seems to be missing those points along the way.

[CharlesPhipps]

The storage facility on Kobali Prime is NOT full of civilians. As you dive deeper, it's revealed that it was intended to be, but as the war went worse and worse for them, the Vaadwaur put more and more military into stasis. It's why Gaul wants it so badly, he needs more troops to keep the war going.

Having just replayed it, it is specifically full of CHILDREN. The Vaadwaur designated saving children as a high priority to replace lost soldiers and be educated as weapons. That's a thing on them but it kind of explains the intensity of the Vaadwaur's reaction.

The Kobali only rebirthed those whose stasis had failed. Later they claimed they were maintaining the working pods, but it seems reasonable they just kind of let them fail as time went on. Afterwards, under pressure from the Feds, they likely did maintain the pods, and stopped rebirthing the dead ones in the hopes of ending the conflict with the Vaadwaur.

Again, it's the fact they're keeping the functioning pods from the Vaadwaur (admittedly a bunch of enormous assholes) that gives the latter cassus belli from a pretty firm standpoint.

Rebirth normally doesn't let the person remember their past. If it did, all the Vaadwaur they put through the process would either kill themselves, or go insane. Humans (of which only 2 had it done to them) seem to buck this trend, and even in the original episode it was kind of odd.

Like I said, a lot of cultures (except for the Klingons) have issues about the disposal of their dead's remains. I agree, though, that for the vast majority of Kobali that they're not the people they were. They're more like Elachi and made from the dead of other races.

Anyway, the Kobali agree to return anyone's remains who is not to be allowed to be raised by their families at the end of the mission.

[CharlesPhipps]

Just finished the Iconian War.

1. I feel they could have blown up some more planets aside from the Preservers to make the Iconians more terrifying. I did like how they managed to have the Iconians win the Battle of the Dyson Sphere, though.

2. I feel like they could have added a War with the Borg and had the Iconians explained as fighting them while also fighting the Alpha Quadrant. The Borg and the Undine joining forces with the Alpha Quadrant would have made the grand finale even more epic!

3. While killing an Iconian is our big accomplishment, I kind of feel like Kahless should have been allowed to kill one rather than just chop off an arm. I feel like he was made out to be a fool in his mission.

4. The final mission is appropriately Star Trek for how the war comes to an end.

5. While the Iconians can't use time travel, I feel like they could have used the Vaadwaur or Elachi or Heralds as tools to follow the PCs or sabotage their research.

In short, I feel like the Iconian War was a bit undercooked. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, though.

[Eishtmo]

I agree. I think they rushed to finish it up so they could move on to other things. The story line could have been, I don't know, 3 or 4 more missions long, showing the WAR, with a nice clutch of patrols and more than 3 queues (one of which is terrible).

That said, once it started the time travel stuff the story line finally hit it's stride. But I kind of just wanted more. It was a good final story, but it wasn't great.

Future Proof is even worse about this. Good ideas, but it's like they wrote the beginning and the end of a story and forgot the middle stuff.

[CharlesPhipps]

Weirdly, a scene I would have appreciated them animating would have been creating coffin assets. This is going to sound morbid as fuck but imagine one of the missions involving entering a cargo bay that is filled to the brim with coffins covered in the KDF, UFoP, and Romulan Republic flags. Just a few more sense of the fact the Iconians are kicking the shit out of all three. I think we're meant to believe like most of the entirety of all three's Navies ended up dead.

We also got the Dominion joining in which I felt could have been a bigger moment.

Oh well, I'm looking forward to playing the rest of the campaigns. This remains my "most improved game" and I may actually ask Chuck to do a playthrough.

[Eishtmo]

The final escape during Broken Circle was the first time I felt the war was pretty brutal. But yeah, coffins would have worked too.

[BunBun299]

When I first arrived on Kobali Prime, I was struggling to remember where these aliens were from. I knew they were from some Voyager episode, but I just couldn't remember which one. Then the whole Rebirth thing was explained by one of the Kobali, and I remembered, "Oh, the zombie necromancers."

My head canon after learning this has my Captain turning to her Borg Engineer, and saying, "If I die here, vaporize my body."

With said Borg nodding, and saying, "Ditto."

Also in my head canon, my Captain, by now an Admiral, approached the Kobali General, and said under no uncertain term, "I can't speak for the Klingon or Romulan forces. But any dead Starfleet personnel, if you want to resurrect them, you either get their permission before death, or their next of kin's permission after. Without one or the other, you don't touch them, or we leave you to the Vaudwaar."

[Eishtmo]

The thing that actually annoyed me about the Kobali arc was how the one fed officer kept quoting the Prime Directive during it. Uh, these guys invited us to get involved in their conflict, we should kind of know what it's about and see if there's an alternative.

Of my characters, the two that went to Kobali Prime one is secretly immortal and the other is a Gorn who during a battle with the Klingons used their bodies as sand bags. Neither cared what the Kobali did.

[BunBun299]

Regarding complaints about the Summer Event in the middle of the Iconian War, only thing I can say is, try to think of it in terms of episodes being shown out of order. Either you went to Risa before the war broke out, or were relaxing on the beach after winning the war. This didn't really happen for me, because I play on Xbox One, and by the time we got the game at all, the Iconian War arc was already complete, so it only gets interrupted for me by turning off the Xbox, or switching to another game.

On a similar note, though, this year the Summer Event did pop up in the middle of Age of Discovery missions being released. Most of the missions are presented as 'historical simulations' to try to give your Captain an understanding of J'Ula, who is supposedly this really great enemy out of the past. I have a hard time taking anything from Discovery seriously, and I can't see any way for this woman who is 150 years out of time to be a serious threat to modern fleets, especially given the things I've had to deal with over the past few years. So my head canon for the Summer Event during this time goes something like this.

My Captain is wearing her bikini on the beach of Risa, when Admiral Quinn calls up about another historic simulation. My Captain answers, "Let me stop you right there, Admiral. Do you have any actionable intel on where this J'Ula actually is? Because there is nothing more I'm going to learn about her from another war game. I've won how many wars for you at this point? B'Vat had access to time travel and a Doomsday Machine, and I stopped him. Empress Sela and her Tal Shiar. The Devidians. True Way Terrorists and Alpha Jem'Hadar. That temporally displaced Dominion Fleet. The Breen. The Borg. The Undine. The Voth. The Vaudwaar. The Iconians. The Tzenkathi. The Hur'q. Did I miss any? Find out where this J'Ula that people keep mistaking for a Klingon is, I'll run over there, take her out, or bring her in. In the meantime, war games can wait. I've got beach games to play."