JJ: J’Ula Online

Well, this probably isn’t the way things are supposed to end…

Personal Log, Stardate 98676.1

It has come to this.  My enemy has become….

I am not sure, to be honest.  J’Ula has proven to be the lesser of two evils.  Her actions have provoked a civil war in the Klingon Empire, shattering it perhaps beyond repair.  For a time, the events had rendered me outcast to Starfleet-with few left as allies.  But my reputation was restored, as the Klingons splintered.

…And I have to admit, there is a dark part of me that is glad.

In my own time, we were enemies.  J’Ula was our nemesis and bane.  She remained so after our transit to this time.  Now she claims that all the horrors wrought in her name were performed by her associate, Aakar.  She claims to support this legendary general, Martok.  I don’t know that I believe her.  But Starfleet does-and I’ve been ordered to render assistance.

To my enemy.

The Klingons are our enemies.  Our allies.  Our enemies again and our allies again.  The Romulans have a Republic, not a Star Empire.  Everything is jumbled up.

I should not be in command.  I was supposed to work my way through the ranks, like every other captain…in my time.  I should be gaining the experience needed to command a starship; I thought I was holding it together, but now…now….

…I want to go home.

For th-no.  Just….  End Log Entry.  Save.

It’s the eleventh anniversary of Star Trek Online!  And…well, a lot is happening here!

Among other things, the Year of the Klingon continues (and despite what you might have guessed, it ain’t over yet!), but there’s plenty of familiar activities going on.  So before I get to the spoileriffic stuff, we’ll go into some detail about the anniversary itself.

First up, there’s the usual festivities of going after Omega particles.  This year, though, they’ve opened things up-no longer do you have to go to three specific locations to gather particles to complete this mission from our favorite omnipotent, Q; now, you can go to any three locations!  This speeds up the task considerably, and makes it fairly straightforward to get daily progress for the event.  What event?  Well, as has been the case a lot over the last couple of years, there is an event that requires you to do so many things per day for a period of days for a reward.  And for the anniversary, you could expect no less than a new ship-the Temer-class raider, a blend of Romulan and Klingon tech (makes perfect sense when you think about it).  You need to effectively do 14 days out of 20 to get it done, so there’s still time to start and get it for free.  But if you can’t, you do get pro-rated credit in Zen to purchase it in the C-Store if you find yourself falling short.

Another reward from the Omega chase (well, another possible reward) is the 11th anniversary party popper.  Unlike previous years, it does not blow balloons or do anything fancy-it just belches out fire!  From Klingon hell!  (And occasionally, a tormented soul will find its way out, too…and it’s armed with the more traditional party popper with balloons.  WILL THE TORMENT NEVER END FOR SUCH SPIRITS!?)

Speaking of Klingons, pretty much all the KDF specific missions have finished being revamped at this point.  Plus, new hair stylings for new characters.  And more importantly, a new recruitment event begins-Klingon recruitment!  No better time to roll a Klingon now, because they can allow such characters to get new rewards for both those characters and for the account in general.  And heck, if you’re going to do Klingons, why not go the extra mile?  Apparently, there is now the option to create a Discovery-era Klingon.  I don’t know that they have a story behind them or not (I’m guessing no), but if you’re a Discovery fan, you can finally make a Klingon that looks like they came from that series.  Plus new costume outfits for Klingons.  Really, it’s all Klingon, all the time!

Oh, and did I mention there were a couple of new episodes?

I will note that yes, another episode rolled out during my hiatus; suffice it to say, it did take care of the little problem of being hunted by your own sides, but it also broke the Klingon Empire.  Oops.  So what now?  Well, the answers are after the break (or the next picture, so if you don’t want spoiled, STOP WHILE YOU CAN, OR EXPERIENCE BIJ!!!)

JJ: Civil War

The enemy makes her opening pitch-she wouldn’t rig the game, would she?

Personal Log, Stardate 98110.1. 

At last-after so long chasing down rumors about where she had gone-after she unleashed a weapon that could conceivably end life everywhere-J’Ula has declared that she will address the Klingon High Council.  Somehow, she managed to regain her position on it-I don’t know how.  Klingon politics never mattered to me, even in my era.  The fact that they wanted us dead was all that mattered.  The Klingons of this era are only marginally better, as far as I can tell.  I’ve repressed that feeling a lot.  Alliances have been built, and it would be horrible to have a captain wreck all that by acting on impulses a couple of hundred years old.

The U.S.S. Soval has been requested by the Klingon Chancellor to attend this address; he has asked that we help deal with J’Ula if things turn out badly.

I’m expecting it to turn out badly.

For the future.  End Log Entry.  Save.

It finally comes down to this:  ever since the Age of Discovery in Star Trek Online, the Klingon temporal exile J’Ula has been hanging around the edges, causing problems.  With the opening gun in the Year of the Klingon, the potential for a fracture of the Klingon Empire has never been greater-and given that the galaxy has just managed to finally reach peace with large portions of the assorted quadrants, one would hope that maybe Starfleet could get back to exploring, the Republic could get back to rebuilding itself, the Dominion could put the pieces back together, and the Klingon Empire could get back to…oh.

The Empire is doing exactly what you’d expect in peacetime:  find someone to fight.

The latest patch, with the banner of “House Divided”, should give a pretty good indicator of how this is going to turn out.  There will be spoilers ahead, which will be significant ones, and it’ll be after the break.  But first, as usual, broader thoughts, focusing on the stuff that’s not related to the episodes.

There’s a new event running that offers the “Red Angel suit” as a reward.  This is Discovery related, and the only reason I know anything at all about it was because of the previous STO episode.  Credit is earned by the usual means:  certain TFOs, episodes, patrols.  Nothing unusual on that one.

Also, the early Klingon experience has gotten some updates/polishing.  Also, shockingly (hah!), a couple of episodes have been removed, relating to…well, not much.  The “House on Fire” and “House Pursued” missions weren’t exactly deep, and didn’t have anywhere near the amount of content other removed episodes have had in the game.  For a change, I’m not too saddened by this, aside from the fact that the Klingons didn’t really need to be losing content of any kind.  Well, that’s a fight that was lost a long time ago at this point.  On a brighter note, some Klingon customization options have been added, to some ships and to the Klingon characters.  Nothing new on uniforms unique to the Klingons, of course, but head options have expanded a little, and-again-they need all the help they can get, so more power to ’em.

All right.  Ready for those spoilers?  If not, STOP READING HERE!  Do NOT go beyond the next image!

Otherwise?  Strap yourselves in….

PYRO: A Matter of Time

The Menders of Ouroboros were of no help.  Despite their supposed mastery of time, they would not confirm or deny what Pyrotech had seen.  It had been the same with the other supposed time travelers.  Nobody was willing to tell him his future.  Was it because they were unable?  Or unwilling?  Pyrotech didn’t know.  He didn’t care.

The end result was that Pyrotech felt like he was beginning to lose his mind.  The damned Oculus!  The damned Oneiromancer!  He’d spent months in the Rogue Islands building a reputation!  Building up respect!  Or was he?  Pyrotech had to accept the hard truth.  He wasn’t getting respect in the Islands.  At least, not the kind he wanted.  He was respected as a high-tech leg-breaker, but not as a scientist.  Not as an inventor. 

And the vision from the Oculus…it had showed him a different future.  One where he stood among heroes as one of their own.  Once where he looked at peace with himself and the world.  He was…respected.

For the first time, Pyrotech didn’t know what to do.  Or did he?  Was he just blinding himself to the obvious?

Could he choose another way?

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Six

It’s been a little while since I looked back in on the City of Heroes Homecoming servers.  There’s always something going on, between my excursions into Star Citizen, and working on getting that anniversary ship in Star Trek Online.  But that doesn’t mean I forgot Professor Pyrotech and his story.  And just because I haven’t been writing about him lately doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the character.

The character is, in fact, nearing level 30, which is a big milestone.  Once upon a time, this was a level that unlocked auras for a character, which became less important since all the costume parts were unlocked with Homecoming.  It’ll give another mission to unlock a costume slot, which became less important since you already started with five with Homecoming.  But I’d penciled in level 30 for the big morality switch, and I’ll have another armor design for the good Professor after that.

Meanwhile, the Winter Event has come and gone, and last month the Valentine’s event went through.  The developers working on Homecoming are testing out a new powerset (currently called Electrical Affinity) and a new power pool called Experimentation, which will be in the same vein as the Sorcery and Force of Will.  It’ll be interesting to see if they have new animations attached to them; that was one of the more complicated sort of things from what I recall from the OG CoH.  I have a feeling, though, we’ll be looking at reuse.  Nothing’s wrong with that, of course-it’s amazing that they can do what they’ve done.

It has not escaped my attention that it’s been almost a year since Homecoming was unleashed upon the world-a year where Paragon City and the Rogue Islands were reborn.  (Okay, Praetoria, too.)  It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.  Certainly hasn’t been as long for me, since I didn’t get back rolling until the back end of May.  Won’t be long before I can say I’ve been playing the game for a year again.

In the meantime, next time I post up on Pyrotech, we’ll be looking at a new man!  So to speak, of course!

PYRO: Gone Rogue

 

Pyrotech stood over the fallen body of Frostfire.  The victory wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been.

Beating up Sky Raiders and Council didn’t bother him.  It was really satisfying, in a way, to show that his tech was better than theirs.  Plus, one was a pack of mercenaries with a gimmick, and the other was a Fifth Column wanna-be.  All things considered, he had no qualms about throwing down with them and coming out on top.

Frostfire, though, was a different manner.  He was barely out of his teens, or at least that’s the impression Pyrotech got.  He made it sound like the dimensional ray-gun was his ticket out of the Rogue Islands, that somehow recovering it would put him in Longbow’s good graces.  For all of that, he sounded so desperate.  Pyrotech had almost been tempted-but he’d spent too much time building a reputation for reliability, too much effort into getting the ray-gun in the first place.  Frostfire wouldn’t listen.

It wouldn’t be long before Sky Raider reinforcements arrive.  He looked at the body lying there.  The Raiders were sure to take out their loss on Frostfire.  That was just too bad.  When you played the game, you had to be willing to take the consequences.

Right?

When the Sky Raiders burst through the partially melted doors, they found nothing but an empty room.

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Five

Happy New Year!  And I’m going to open it up with a post on the continuing chronicle of Professor Pyrotech, coming to you from the Homecoming servers for City of Heroes.  And it includes a major milestone for the character.

As mentioned in the previous post, I had all ten tip missions needed to trigger a Morality Mission that could allow the character to-dare I say it?-go Rogue.  This would enable the character to change his alignment from Villain to Rogue-but what does that mean in practical terms?

Well, from a Rogue Islands standpoint, nothing.  The character can still do missions for the bad guys, talk to the contacts, do the bad deeds.  Tip missions will still drop, and still give choices between Rogue and Villain alignment choices.  But now, the character can travel to Paragon City, the titular City of Heroes, and start doing activities there.  You’d start by seeing a detective in one of the non-hazard zones, who gives you access to the radio missions in Paragon.  After a number of those, you can even get Safeguard missions to protect banks instead of robbing them.  And just like heroes, you can be introduced to Paragon contacts if you complete them.

That said:  you may be introduced, but you can’t actually DO any of their missions.  Not yet, anyway.  You’re still considered a villain, after all.  And I’m pretty sure that similar will happen if a Rogue tries to talk to one of the heroic Task Force contacts.  You get a lot of benefits from being able to walk on the other side of the fence, but you still can’t do it all.  You can, at least, join people doing these missions and Task Forces, though-teaming blueside has attractions such as the fact that there are usually more teams going there.  That’s a big benefit for the level-conscious.

Oh, there is one more thing.  Just like elsewhere, defeating opponents can drop tips here, too, which give tip missions.  However, the difference is that you don’t get a choice of options for these missions:  these are Heroic missions, and these are what you do to eventually open up a Heroic morality mission!  That’s not on my plate right now for Pyrotech, however:  he’s got a ways to go before I let him work on those.

But he’s at the mid-twenties now, so beginning to turn over a new leaf may be coming sooner than he expects!  The adventure continues…!

PYRO: Dynamic Duo? Nah.

It was, Pyrotech thought, a sad statement on his life in the Rogue Islands.

Stardusk had seemed like a perfect partner.  He’d gotten her out of a mess, the two had worked together and made some decent money.  It was a pleasant surprise, and a change from the treachery and backstabbing that seemed to pervade the Rogue Islands.

So, naturally, she backstabbed him.  It didn’t work, of course-it might have, if he had still been using either of the last two iterations of his armor.  But the fuel tank had been replaced by a more durable container, no longer using the flammable liquids to generate fire.  All things considered, he’d used the profits of a number of recent jobs to excellent effect.

But Stardusk’s treachery hurt.  Was it impossible to form any lasting partnerships here?  Was he always going to have to keep one eye over a shoulder to avoid having someone try to kill him, destroy his work?  Pyrotech wasn’t sure if this was the life he wanted.

It wasn’t like he had many alternatives.  Well, that was a problem that science wasn’t going to help with.  He’d find a way, somehow.  Some way.

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Four

It’s time to close out the year in City of Heroes’s Homecoming servers!  And coincidentally, close out my posts for the year.  (Don’t worry:  Professor Pyrotech Issue Five will return in January!)

I’ve been continuing the character’s adventures in the Cap au Diable region, and he’s successfully gotten above level 20.  This allowed me to do two things.  Firstly, I did the costume mission from the Face Maker in the tailor’s shop, which unlocks an extra costume slot at this level.  This meant a lot more back in the day, before CoH went freemium and you could buy yet another five costume slots.  And the Homecoming guys have those five slots unlocked automatically, which gives you five slots right off the bat at level 1.

But, I figured, why not?  Especially since this was another threshold I’d set for the next upgrade in Pyrotech’s outfit.  It’s slimmer than this previous outfits, indicating that he’s been able to acquire better materials (by theft or by the profits for his thefts).  The cylindrical tanks on his back has been replaced by a more tech looking backpack (which, sadly, you can’t really see in this cover; I’ll try to get a better one next time).

The second thing is that, upon reaching 20, the character becomes eligible to acquire Tip Missions.  Tip Missions are special missions that are used to begin changing the morality of the character.  10 successful alignment-specific missions leads to a morality mission.  Success on that mission allows you to change the alignment of your character.  It used to be that you could only do five of these missions a day, so you’d have to do this over two days.  I’m not sure if that’s still in force or not; I’m usually not online long enough to see.  I had the choice to do each mission as a Villain or a Rogue.  Since my long-term plans are pretty set, I ran ten Rogue missions.  I imagine that in my near future, I will get a Rogue Morality mission, which will allow Pyrotech to change from Villain to Rogue.

The fun thing about these missions came about by accident.  I had a mission that included helping out an NPC villain named Stardusk (she’s on the cover above!), which didn’t really stand out in my mind until another mission had Stardusk contact my character for an alignment mission.  At this point, I had begun figuring on including that character in my little fiction blurb-but I didn’t anticipate that I’d see her one more time where she teamed up with someone to take Pyrotech out!  It was unintended-these missions are random, after all-but it made for a nice little mini-arc for me to include in this character’s story.

The next post here will be after the New Year, so enjoy the holiday!

PYRO: Winter Events

 

Professor Pyrotech sat at the University, waiting.  And he still wasn’t sure why.

Why did he let Amanda Vines go?  Sure, she offered a equal payment to what Brass was offering to let her go and make her broadcast-a broadcast with the potential to blow the lid off of Dr. Aeon’s PTS.  But was it worth the potential of rocking the boat with Arachnos, the ones who brought him out of Galaxy City and into respectability?

Never mind the open question on if he was truly respected now.

Maybe it was because he saw himself in her, a little bit.  She was a journalist, and in the pursuit of the discovery of facts.  In a way, that wasn’t so different from the science Pyrotech loved, another field where the discovery of fact was sacrosanct.  He didn’t know what Brass would do if Pyrotech stopped the transmission; he didn’t know what would happen if he simply waited for the transmission to broadcast.  It was simply a matter of making a choice.

Pyrotech cursed to himself.  Perhaps now was the time to visit that pocket dimensional nightclub and drink a lot.  Surely, nothing strange would happen there beyond what he’d encounter at the bottom of a glass.

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Three

I’m reaching the upper reaches of the teen levels for Pyrotech in City of Heroes’s Homecoming servers, and the “good” professor is hip deep in dealing with Arachnos contacts.  But of course, we’ve entered the holiday season, and the devs have turned on the game’s Winter Event.  And in another nice touch, Atlas Park is now dealing with snow and frozen lakes.  (One day, it may snow in the Rogue Islands.  IT COULD HAPPEN!)  But that’s only the smallest part of the event.

While I’ll likely detail some of the other details as I do them, there are at least a couple parts to remark upon.  First, there are the gifts.  Randomly around the zones, there are gifts lying around, which can either spawn goodies…or fellows who are definitely on Santa’s Naughty List.  More to the point, however, is the mission from Father Time, available to everyone:  the Red Caps have decided that there shouldn’t be any happy new years anymore and grabbed Baby New Year.

Yes, that’s Baby New Year on the cover above.  Be afraid.

The mission isn’t greatly difficult, although it’s probably best to have a bunch of defense inspirations if you’re a squishier archetype for Snaptooth, who can hit pretty hard.  Pyrotech didn’t have too much of a problem, although admittedly, he’s a Sentinel, which makes him slightly less squishy than the average Corruptor/Blaster.  Other than that, it’s just a question of melting snow beasts and red caps.

Now, there are a couple of other things to do for Winter, as well.  At a certain level-clearly at least level 20, since Pyrotech couldn’t run it-is a mission to face off against Lady Winter, who has set up shop in Agincourt in the Rogue Islands, and she isn’t content with just freezing that portion of the Isles.  Fortunately, Father Time knows a guy (that’ll teach you for helping him with Baby New Year).

The other is an LFG queue to take on Lord Winter itself in its realm.  Well, I think it is, anyway.  Once upon a time, it was something available when you opened enough presents in a zone and spawned the way to Lord Winter’s Realm, but I’m pretty sure that now it’s something that can be done via the queue and a league (limited to a maximum of 36 characters, but 12 can do it, in theory).  And that’s a straightforward sort of deal too:  go in, beat him up.

So, the winter events aren’t exactly complicated-and they aren’t meant to be.  After all, the whole point is to have fun, right?

In any event, Professor Pyrotech is knocking on the door of level 20, and that will trigger the next big phase of Pyrotech’s story.  We’ll see if I can get there before the holiday.

PYRO: On The Radio

 

“And it all happened because you listened to the broadcast for the outcasts, the back-beats for the beat-downers, the one, the only: Radio!

RADIO!

RADIOOOOOO Free Opportunity!”

The strange radio fell silent.  Port Oakes had been a useful place.  Pyrotech had begun to cultivate contacts here, but none were stranger than that radio.  Still, it had helped him make a name for himself.  Wyvern had put him at the very top of their hit list of new villains, but the list was long enough that he was sure he could make some money from auctioning it off.  Some of the notes on him were disturbing, though, including his interactions with the radio.

Enough.  He’d robbed a bank in Atlas Park-that felt good, really.  It was a way to strike back at the people who had mocked him.  The money had been enough for Pyrotech to apply some upgrades to the armor-replacing the scrap he’d assembled from the wreckage of Galaxy City with legitimate armor plate.  Still, there was much he needed to improve.  The fire tanks were still a weak point, and the interior systems could use upgrades.  More money had to be gathered, and he couldn’t hit banks all the time.

Perhaps in Cap au Diable, he would find better prospects.  After all, the greatest mad scientist of all had made his home there.  Surely, learning from Doctor Aeon would be of help.  Surely.

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Two

Well, I did get to do one of my favorite contacts in the villain side of City of Heroes on the Homecoming servers.  I always recommend villains do the contact “The Radio”, because, damn!  See that sample of dialogue above?  How can you pass up an entire arc of that?  I liked it so much that I even revisited the Radio by making a Mission Architect arc with it as the contact.  (I don’t know that I was able to match the writing there, but it did allow me to include a rick-roll in there.  I’m a horrible, horrible man.)

I’ve gotten Pyrotech to level 10 (well, higher, technically), which was the threshold for me to do a bit of adjustment to his look.  I’d determined that at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50, I was going to change up his look, showing continuing improvement in his armor.  As he gets more well known, able to access more toys, it made sense that he’d tinker with his suit and improve it (and give a nice rationale for his increased powers).  So, we get a look at the new and improved Pyrotech on this cover.  I’ve already designed each version of his suit, and I’m pretty happy with how it’ll progress.

In the meantime, Cap au Diable awaits.  Pyrotech’s story is going to start getting a bit more interesting in that zone!

PYRO: Mad Scientists

 

“Excellent!  Most excellent!  With this information I will rule the WORLD!  Muhahaha!”

Pyrotech nods to Doctor Creed, but inside, he is disappointed.  At first, Creed had seemed like a kindred spirit.  Both plumbing the depths of mad science, Creed with the biological aspects, and Pyrotech to the technological.  Both had insights to offer the other:  Creed had suggested improvements into the armor, and Pyrotech pointed out the flaws in the Infected antiserum.  But it seemed that their end goals diverged.  Pyrotech wanted respect.  Creed wanted power.  As far as Pyrotech was concerned, ruling took away from time to spend on research and development.

The fire still burned within; in spite of the success of their partnership, Pyrotech still felt that he needed to prove himself.  At least the experience wasn’t a total loss.  With the funds he had acquired from some of the banks in the Islands, he felt that he could improve his armor substantially.  Not to the extent that burned in his dreams, but it would be enough to weed out some of the weaknesses in the current suit.

It was time to leave Mercy to Creed, and move on.”

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue One

Well, now that I’ve introduced the concept, let’s see about how well it plays in the City of Heroes Homecoming servers.  Professor Pyrotech has been tearing through the Rogue Islands-well, at least Mercy Island.

I decided early on that I was going to go heavier on the story missions than I had with the Six; since I’m only focusing on a single character, I can afford to be a bit more leisurely about it.  Plus, there are some decent arcs in the Red Side of the game.  I eschewed some of the obvious ones, though.  The game encourages you to do what I think of as “tutorial arcs”, which admittedly are pretty well designed.  But I wanted to go old-school, and so I went to Matthew Burke, a contact from the days prior to Going Rogue, and to Doctor Creed, who has a short-but highly amusing-story arc.  Burke’s behind the main Arachnos building in Mercy, and he sends you to Creed as a possible option after you finish his arc.  As Creed’s arc includes one of the two most entertaining cut scenes in the game, I highly recommend doing it.  (Oddly, my other favorite also involves a mad scientist.  Could be a pattern here.)

The Sentinel AT is holding up decently so far.  I feel a little limited in the attacks; it could be the recharge, or the lack of the number of powers that is always an issue at low level.  I sort of avoided grabbing most of the temp offensive powers at the P2W vendor, so I’m basically using the powerset-supplied offense.  The defenses are holding up decently, but again, a lot of it has to do with being at low level.  What gives me fits, though, is the Sentinel’s inherent power.  I just don’t have a good handle on it; it’s got an ability that charges, much like a Brute’s fury mechanic, but it triggers abilities that I can’t really take advantage of yet.  I probably should have researched things a little more on that.

At level 8, I grabbed the Flight power, so that gives me a substantial amount of mobility now that I’m leaving the beginning island and heading out to the next, Port Oakes.  Hoping that next time I can introduce one of my favorite contacts in the entire game.

PYRO: The Awesome Origin of Professor Pyrotech!

 

They called him mad.  Funny how that never ends well for anyone.

Look at him.  Shoulders hunched, as if trying to hide himself in plain sight.  A look in his eye that seems to be either touched with genius…or madness.  A fire burns in him, and it demands expression.

Soon, the very neighborhood he is preparing to repay for hundreds of slights, real and imagined, will be destroyed-and he will make a choice which will set him on a path deeper into madness.  Or glory.

If you listen carefully, you can hear him whisper as he prepares to don his helmet:  “I hold with those who favor fire.”

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Zero

Well, here we are:  a new character chronicle for the Homecoming server for City of Heroes!  This time, I’ve gone back to my infinitely more sane plan of working on a single character.  Doing six at once had all kinds of problems.  I’m hoping that this will be a marginally more coherent experience.

Thing is, I wasn’t sure what hook I could use.  I knew that the in-game storylines wouldn’t be as big an issue as it could be.  I can’t use the big ones in a consistent manner-the Praetorian storyline ends up having stuff that happens after max level with the Incarnate stuff occurring after you deal with its fallout at a lower level.  That’s nuts.  But there are plenty of standalone stories in the game, lots of little arcs, and I think I can craft something out of that.  So that wasn’t going to be my issue.  And certainly, the type of character wouldn’t be a problem; there are heaps of combinations of powers and archetypes.  And fortunately, it wasn’t that I’d be repeating content much.  I did so much grouped content to help get my characters over the hump during the last chronicle that there wasn’t too much solo work-and the stuff that was, was mostly Praetorian-related content.

But I still needed something that would keep me engaged.  Something that would make the character mean something.  And it hit me out of the blue.  The story could be a redemption arc.

When the expansion “Going Rogue” came out, Praetoria was only a part of the new stuff that came with it.  Arguably bigger was the ability for a character to evolve their morality; a hero could become a villain, and a villain could become a hero.  The process was laid out by the game in the form of “tips” that become available at level 20.  To flip alignments, you had to go through an “intermediate” alignment between hero and villain, or villain and hero.  And that was it-I had my big picture.  I would make a villain, and in the process of the chronicle, he’d become a hero.

The next step was to think about the character himself.  I decided early that I wanted to go the mad scientist route.  It’s a fun trope, delightfully hammy at times, and there are a number of examples in fiction I could use to blend together.  His primary influence is-well, I’ll keep that under my hat for now.  I already knew that I wanted to go the “powered armor” look, because I’d be able to evolve the character appearance as he gained in levels.  His first suit would be a clunker, and slowly it will improve to something truly high-tech.

As far as archetype and powers went, it felt like a good time to try out the “new” Sentinel AT.  After all, with Widow Payne in my rear-view now, I’d made a max level character for every AT in the game (admittedly, most of them were on the old Virtue server), but I purposely left out “Sentinel” on that list because I felt it didn’t count.  Well, I’m making it count now.  That left powers.  I really hemmed and hawed on this one, until I decided I could work with the idea of fire.  Thematically, it works pretty nicely:  fire was a part of the earliest myths, a gift stolen from the gods.  That’s the sort of thing a mad scientist would take to heart.

So, in the weeks to come, I expect to do a lot with this character.  As I’ve reverted to the single character chronicle once more, I’ve also resumed the comic-book style cover for the comic-book style game.  We’ll see how things go with the newly christened Professor Pyrotech!

JJ: There Has Been An Awakening…Have You Felt It?

At last…J’Ula finally strikes!

Personal Log, Stardate 97342.2. 

It’s a strange feeling.  I’ve spent over a year in this era now, and I’ve seen so much change.  I’ve been to parts of the galaxy I’d never have dreamt of, lived to see an alliance of the great powers of the galaxy-the Federation, the Klingon Empire (which I still have trouble believing), the Romulan Republic, even with governments I never knew of in my era, such as the Cardassian Union, the Dominion, the Ferengi….

I’ve been in the Gamma Quadrant and the Delta Quadrant.  I’ve been to the far future and the past-which would have been my future, if not for J’Ula and Starbase One.  And yet, that remains the loose end.  I was told that I would face J’Ula again, and yet, she has been absent.  I know in my heart that it’s only a matter of time before I finally confront her again-and close the final chapter in our story.

It’d be nice if someone simply blew her up before that happened.  But I know it won’t.  Some things have the feel of Destiny to it.  This is one of them.

For the future.  End Log Entry.  Save.

Well, in Star Trek Online, we’d been waiting for the renegade and temporal exile J’Ula of House Mokai to make her move in the 2410 era.  With the latest release, “Awakening”, it happens.  We’ll throw some spoilerish stuff here after the break, but as usual, I’ll remark on the fairly inoffensive stuff.

There’s a new Task Force associated with this release, but I’m not too likely to bother with it.  (Thanks, City of Heroes!)  There are also new patrols, which are not quite the same as the old patrols from the early days of the game; they’re closer to the Delta Quadrant patrols, mini-episodes.  They’ll give a decent amount of rewards, too, so they are worth doing.  Plus, these patrols, and the TF, and the new episode are the crux of the introduction of a new Event system.

Previously, events made use of the Reputation system.  You’d do the prime activity in the event, and it would give a token-or a group of tokens-to apply to the reputation, and by the time you filled it up, it would have been a couple weeks, maybe more.  And you’d get the prize.  Well, the events have been separated from the reputation stuff, and it’s a little more interesting.

Now, there’s a pool of points you can get by completing either the TF, patrols, or the new episode.  There’s a maximum amount you can accumulate per day, so you can do a combination of any of the above to get to your limit.  And after you get to the total available, you get the prize-in this case, a Tier-6 Elachi starship.  And the final bit:  if you don’t get through all of the points, you can purchase the ship with Zen, at a discount based on how many points you’d accumulated.  Not a bad deal, right?  It means even if you wind up on vacation (for example) during the Winter Event, you can still get the ship if you’re willing to throw Zen at it.

While I’ve no interest in the Elachi ship, I have to say that I’m a fan of this system.  I’ll withhold final judgment until I make serious use of it, either during the Winter Event or the expected anniversary event.  But my first impression is positive, and given my opinions on some of the things done over the last year in STO, that’s a rare enough thing that it deserves remarking upon.

There are some other minor things; Romulans and Jem’Hadar can use Starfleet or Klingon outfits now, based on whose faction they aligned themselves with, for example.  It’s just an extension of the whole ship thing, which went similar recently, so I’m feeling “why the hell not” at this point.  The Delta patrols have been retrofitted to act like the new ones.  But the big thing with this release is, of course, the new episode-so if you’re someone who hates spoilers, stop here!  Otherwise, keep reading!