Dumpster Fires

(Obviously, anyone expecting weekly or even monthly updates on this blog was probably highly optimistic.)

So. Star Citizen released its 3.18 patch a couple of weeks ago. Everything worked perfectly and was widely acclaimed as the best patch any company has ever released.

And then I woke up.

If you’re reading this blog, then you probably have read other gaming sites that have described the patch as a complete and utter disaster. While that might be slightly overstating things, I have been heard to remark that, while in the past I would say the game has more bugs than a Starship Troopers movie, now I have to say it has more bugs than the entire Starship Troopers franchise.

For most of the time since its release, I wasn’t able to even log into the game. This was not a unique experience. Posts on the official forums lit up. Gaming sites sat back to watch and eat popcorn. Cats and dogs were living in sin together. Marshmallow men started to wander the streets. (The last two may have been made up. Maybe.)

In some ways, though, this wasn’t completely unexpected. 3.18 was pitched as one of the most significant ones since…maybe 3.0? It was so big a deal that it threw off the quarterly big patch cadence; we had exactly one major patch last year. (This year isn’t looking great either, although we might get three.) It was going to introduce Persistent Entity Streaming, which would allow ships and inventory items to be dropped anywhere…and stay at those dropped locations until someone else came along and acted upon it. I’m still dubious on how that will ultimately work out, given game population and the sheer volume of stuff they can be carrying with them. Not to mention the volume of medical gowns that shows up every time a character respawns after having been killed off.

But I can definitely say that it works. There was a limit previous to this that only allowed three vehicles for a player to be spawned in at once. I was able to spawn in six recently-and most of them I left at an outpost until I returned an hour later, to find them still there. (Two were in bad shape; I think some wind blew ship wreckage on top of them with predictable results.) This is a big deal-there are ship concepts still on the drawing board that will need to be able to carry heaps of vehicles, and while it’s silly to assume they’d all belong to the same player…well, some people go crazy in SC.

This change also allowed the game to do something that the developers have been promising for years, something that kept getting pushed back, and back, and back: the first iteration of salvaging gameplay. You can strip the hull off of wrecked ships now, where you generate recycled material to sell at the various trade kiosks around the star system. Anyone can do this with a hand tool-in fact, the small canisters can even be used to take that recycled material and do some spot repairs on your own damaged ship. (It won’t reattach a wing, but it can likely at least cover up the exposed metal framework.) But it really shines with the salvaging ships in the game, one of which has been actually in game for a few years at least, and the other just recently released with this patch. (I can’t speak to how effective they are-they aren’t ships I have.)

It’s still the first iteration, so the heavy duty salvaging is still on the horizon. But as the mining gameplay loop shows, the devs will likely iterate on it hard.

These are just a couple of the most significant changes in the patch. But…I did use the phrase “dumpster fire” in the title, right? Even though people are having better luck logging in, there are still plenty of challenges. Missions may not actually be accepted when you accept them in the contract manager; it lags like crazy sometimes. Speaking of lag, bounty targets aren’t having their “neutralize target’ marker on them right away all of the time, which means if you kill them off beforehand, you don’t get paid, and you fail the mission to boot. (Technically, it’s “incomplete”, but it’s likely to go away when you log off, which is effectively failing the mission anyway.) More problematic is the fact that hangars at various landing sites don’t acknowledge your requests for landing sites; there’s a workaround, but sometimes that workaround doesn’t work. This can be a problem if you need fuel badly, or worse yet, are about to dehydrate to death and NEED to get inside to buy a drink. Starship claims are a little tricky, as well as storage of those ships. And these are just the things I personally experienced in my limited amount of time I’ve had since being able to log in again.

The devs, fortunately, are aware of all of this, and have been working. The fact that I can log in now more or less consistently is proof of this. There’s a 3.18.1 patch on the immediate horizon that will (hopefully) address some of the more critical bugs. Maybe, maybe not, but we’ll find out. Once the more critical bugs are taken care of, we should be able to get back to the “film” instead of “franchise” comment about the bugs in the game. There are still things I really want to try out that came in the patch, like the starship race tracks (which I will undoubtedly wreck on more often than not, because I suck at racing) and the changes in how cargo hauling (where the cargo can be interacted with now-which makes piracy possible).

The devs are going to want to make sure things are running relatively smooth real soon; after all, May is when they do their big Invictis Launch Week sales and free-flights for people who haven’t backed the game; being unable to log in would be a very bad look for prospective customers….

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….

The Nature of Good and Evil

When things are about to go to hell.

While a Star Trek: Discovery individual is fairly prominent in the new pair of episodes, parts one and two of “Measure of Morality” in Star Trek Online, it felt proper that I not do the mission with my Discovery-era character, and return to my primary Federation character-the first character I made for STO.  He might not thank me, though, because it features the one thing more headache inducing than time travel:  reality manipulation.

But before I get into that-which, as per my usual, may include spoilery things-I’ll touch briefly on a couple other things the anniversary brings.  Firstly, and foremost, there is a new Task Force in the game, which deals heavily with J’Ula.  I’ve not actually done that TFO yet, though, so any comments on it will have to wait.  Given how often I bother with those, it could be a long wait.  It happens.  But as such a significant part of the latest publish, I felt that I should at least point it out.

Also going on is the usual Omega Particle frenzy.  Getting these particles can be used to help with gear upgrade technologies.  That’s not insignificant for those looking to eke out the most from their equipment.  Crafting that gear can possibly be targeted specifically to quality or to increasing the Mark of the gear.  I didn’t check on the relative costs in particles-again, I wasn’t highly motivated.  I don’t do a lot of crafting stuff these days.

Doing these-or the new episodes-count towards daily progress for the grand prize of the publish:  the first Klingon/Romulan/Starfleet jointly built starship.  And if nothing else, it sure looks like the love-child of a Klingon battlecruiser and a Starfleet cruiser.  This is a description I’ve used before:  I have often said that the USS Discovery looks a lot like the mutant child of such.  Well, the new Khitomer-class cruiser looks even moreso like such.  Still, it’s not shocking.  Ever since the three great powers of the Alpha/Beta quadrants came together, we’ve been drifting towards that sort of thing.  You need to do this for 20 days-or less, and pay a proportionate amount of Zen-to earn this ship.  I have no idea which of my characters would use this thing, but I’m sure I can figure it out at some point.

Finally, somewhat related, fairly soon the devs will be releasing a mega-pack on the C-Store containing no less than 10 starships:  “legendary” starships, which are unsurprisingly the big hero ships of the television/movie series.  At this writing, they’ve revealed the Defiant, Odyssey, Galaxy, Sovereign, NX…and the Kelvin Constitution.  It feels like a safe bet we’ll see the Intrepid, probably the Discovery.  The original Constitution is likely to show.  The last…dunno.  This pack doesn’t just include these ships, though:  they’re also including the “skins” for all varieties of those classes that are already in game, AND their related consoles, AND any special traits.  There are two versions of this megapack:  the first holds pretty much what I described, the second includes all of that plus tech upgrades, Phoenix packs, R&D packs, master keys, dilithium and other stuff.  Honestly, I wouldn’t consider the second one worth it at all.  On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d go with the first, either:  it’ll be 19500 Zen.  For those keeping score, that’s 195 dollars worth of stuff.  Is it worth it?  A lot depends on how much you want these ships; or how badly you want the Tier-6 Constitution class ships.  (Yeah, these are all T-6.  I probably should’ve said that up front.)  Now, that’s the initial price.  After some period of time, it’ll go up all the way to 30000 zen.

Okay, I think I’ve said enough on the non-spoilery stuff.  Spoilage may wait ahead after the jump/pic!

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!

JJ: More Discoveries

What is it about Starfleet ships that invite boarding parties?

Personal Log, Stardate 96991.76. 

It feels odd for Admiral Quinn to be ordering me to participate in a simulation of a scenario that I have lived through.  I’ll grant that the Admiral couldn’t possibly know that I’d lived through the events around Priors World, and one of my encounters with J’Ula.  How could he?  I can scarcely credit it myself.

We seem to be in a period of uneasy peace at the moment.  I haven’t been given many combat assignments, which has allowed my crew and I to explore regions of space that rarely see a Starfleet vessel.  For those who have lived in this time, these stars seem like explored, settled space.  For me, though, I’m seeing places I’ve never had a chance to see before.  It still seems relatively recently, after all, since I was given command of a ship, albeit in harsh circumstances.

With all the technology and experience of the people of this time-having survived wars I can barely envision-I can’t believe that J’Ula will prove to be much of a danger beyond the usual raiders and pirates.  The Klingon Empire seems to be uninterested in claiming her, and the Federation is mightier than it was in my day.  Even the Romulan Empire-a mystery in my time-seems unlikely to work with her.  The only thing I worry about is that ship of hers, which still has technology that nobody I’ve spoken with can explain.  History isn’t any help here either.  Perhaps its secrets were lost with House Mo’Kai.  We’ll see.

For the future.  End Log Entry.  Save.

I’ve had to write and re-write this post a couple of times.  The original version of this post-and a couple after-had a bit too much of my bitterness at the direction of the game, much of which has been dictated by the current executive producer; I recently realized that I haven’t agreed with almost anything that Star Trek Online has done since he got the Center Seat (to borrow Trek parlance).

So I’m not going to focus on anything about the latest publish except the new episodes that rolled out.  And, honestly, there are aspects that bug me there, too.  Let’s see where things go with this.  So, after the break, we get into the nuts and bolts of the episodes.

W&M: You’ve Got the MIDAS Touch

Yeah, I really had to go there with that pun.

Personal Log, Stardate 96857.36.

It’s good to be back on Earth for some shore leave.  The crew deserves it, after the messes we’ve had to deal with lately.  We narrowly avoided a one-way journey to the far end of the galaxy, stopped an invasion of Federation space, and lost a number of brave men and women in our struggle to return.  It’s been hard, but it seems we may finally get a break.  The Lakarian is in for repairs at drydock, and it may be some time before it’s ready to go out again…if ever.  We have some Cardassian engineers from the homeworld giving the SCE a hand, but it was a rough trip, and may require substantial refit time.

So, I expect the crew to be broken up and shuffled to different ships, different parts of the fleet.  Perhaps we will journey together again someday, once more aboard the Lakarian, and truly go where no one has gone before.  Perhaps.

As this journey ends, I prepare for my new beginning.  Wherever that may take me.

Computer, end log.

Welp, my expected plan to do two more posts concerning the Foundry in Star Trek Online is likely to be one post-this one.  Unless I do a post-mortem, of course, which could still happen.  But I chose a heck of a mission arc to finish up the Ways and Means chronicle.  The last mission of the arc, in fact, had not been released until just a few days before the expected end-of-life for the player-generated content tool in STO.  I was prepared, in fact, to have Selak’s story end on a far uglier note as a result of that; so at least Selak’s career will still go on someday…well, as much as any of my non-main characters, at least.

Despite appearances, this is NOT Captain Kayal and his crew….

So, let’s take a look at “In the Shadow of MIDAS” by greendragoon, a story in three parts, which features the use of the MIDAS array that was once used by the Pathfinder project made famous for its work in communicating with the USS Voyager during the back end of its journey in the Delta Quadrant.  (Its first one, that is; the Delta Rising expansion more or less made MIDAS irrelevant for that sort of thing.)  The story kicks off with the news that the array has been used to expand the original micro-wormholes used to communicate with Voyager to one large enough for ships to go through.  It ain’t stable, it ain’t consistent, but it’s consistent enough to send ships through and back.  The problem?  The last couple of ships they sent through…didn’t come back.  So they sent for Starfleet’s best.  (Okay, you got volunteered.  It happens.)

The mystery begins with the discovery of a wrecked starship and decimated world that has seen better days.  The exploration of both reveals a threat that becomes imminent, as a war has been going on in secret in this part of the galaxy, and your crew has just become the latest pawns.  You have to find a way to resist the intrusions, learn who to trust, recapture ships, and find a way to get home before it’s too late!  So, no pressure, right?

This series was extremely well done, and if you get a chance in the next day to play it (tomorrow being doomsday for the Foundry), I’d highly recommend it.  Part two has a nice twist that hasn’t been seen since the Romulan Republic’s story arc (except it happens to everyone…), and there’s a map in part three that just makes me regret the loss of the Foundry more and more each time I look at it.

With this arc, I officially conclude this character chronicle-and likely further major work in STO for some time.  I’ve been unhappy with a number of things lately, between the Foundry being kaput, the poor redesign of the character creator (which I suspect will propagate to the tailor’s screen sooner rather than later), and the constant removal of content at a far faster rate than we get it.  This clearly indicates to me that it’s time for a break from STO, although I’ll certainly return to it for new content releases, but for the most part, it’s time for a chronicle somewhere else.  At some point, maybe I’ll get inspired enough again to do a push in STO, but for now, we’re at a series finale.  We’ll see if a new series kicks off in the future.

Thanks for the memories, Foundry authors. Your work will be missed.

W&M: Peace and Security

We do sometimes wind up on nice planets.

Personal Log, Stardate 96851.66.

We’ve finally returned from the Delta Quadrant after a short tour of duty, and immediately got sucked into a large-scale conflict with the Iconians.  To my surprise, the Lakarian has managed to acquit itself nicely.  Which is to say, it wasn’t blown up.

Things have started to settle down.  I’m not entirely sure how the alliance managed to talk the Iconians into going away, but I’m grateful they did.  Maybe now things can get back to scientific exploration.  I’m almost uncertain as to what that’s like.  Ever since graduation, it’s been one thing after another, and maybe we can finally let this contest of empires finish and get back to important work.

Unfortunately, it seems that the past is going to come calling.  I received a message to report to the Uchagra system…and my old…well, it seems “friend” isn’t really the right term.  Captain Ross is there, and that usually means interesting things are afoot with Starfleet Security.  It will be interesting to see how things have changed since we last met, so long ago it seems now.

Computer, end log.

The clock is ticking, and the end of the Foundry in Star Trek Online is less than two weeks away!  So, let’s take a look at another pair of missions in the Foundry that are going to be lost to time in the sadly near-future.

Firstly, though, a little mea culpa.  My original plan for this week was to do missions related to the Iconian War.  Once upon a time, I was sure there were a number of missions in the Foundry related to the Iconian War, taking place at different fronts.  I could swear there had even been a tag of [ICO] being associated with them, so they’d be easy to find on a search.  Well, either there were never that many missions ever created for them, or they got unpublished and never republished due to some reason or another.  Which makes it for the best that I won’t be doing the Cast List Revival Party plan, since I had been expecting plenty of Iconian missions to mess with in the Foundry.

So, hey, dodged that bullet, right?  It would’ve been sooo embarrassing to have planned that out and found out that it just wasn’t gonna work.

Iffar, on the other hand, has gotten a little more unfriendly.

So instead, I revisited a story arc in the Foundry that began earlier in Selak’s career with the Starfleet Security arc by Gorgonops; “Entropy” is the third mission in that arc, and had to be put off until roughly now due to its requirement for high-level characters, which meant Selak couldn’t go through it for a long time.  But, hey, it’s all good now!  It begins on the world of Ucharga, and it sounds like it’ll be a nice, standard sort of mission to help the colonists there deal with some contaminants.  But the presence of Captain Ross of Starfleet Security sends things going in another direction-specifically, a need to prevent an assassination of a Klingon General, ordered by Section 31; and the assassin is an old friend, met in earlier episodes in the arc.  So not only do you need to stop the assassin (fortunately, she’s just trapped in the moral morass of having to determine if she must obey that order), you also need to uncover the mystery behind the General-and deal with a Klingon who’s got the political connections to be a major annoyance.  All that on top of another discovery of an Iconian artifact on another world.  By the time this mission is over, not only will the fate of the Klingon General be decided…but you’ll also make a discovery that upends the nature of your relationship with the members of this branch of Security.

“Continuity” is the fourth and final episode of that arc, and features a return to Iffar, the planet first encountered at the beginning of this arc.  And it seems that there have been consequences to the events of that mission:  Iffar’s gotten a bit too security conscious, and may be on the verge of a civil war with its own colonies.  It’s into this stew that you and your crew are thrown, and while you may have sympathies for either or both sides, things take a turn for the violent during a trade conference, and you soon have a very personal motivation to see this through to the end.  And while everything may be resolved in the end, the Starfleet Security team will never be the same!

I’ve enjoyed these missions, and there’s a lot of detail in them.  The author does a good job with putting in optional objectives too (even though the Foundry doesn’t support them precisely), and there is the usual banter between NPCs that you can listen in on and learn more about those characters.  I also have to put in kudos for the antagonist of “Continuity”; he was designed so well visually that I recognized him during the final confrontation before even hovering my cursor over him to get his name, or see it during the dialogue pop-ups.  That’s what I call good design!  I do recommend that these missions be done in order; while the missions are designed to stand alone as well as link to one another, the fact is that “Continuity” makes a lot more sense if you’ve done “Entropy” first, and there are some major spoilers for the previous missions if you haven’t done the first pair (“Gemini” and “Polarity”).

If one enjoys these missions, note that there are two more “seasons” of this Starfleet Security set of missions; while I do plan to run through them, I don’t believe I’ll be doing full reviews of them, as I do want to hit some other works before the Foundry finishes up.  I don’t expect more than two more posts before I wrap up my Foundry time and, not by coincidence, this character chronicle.  After that, I expect STO will be put into the rear view mirror for the most part, save for visits when new content rolls out (the roadmap does look intriguing); I think it’s time for new character chronicles in some of my other main games.  Look for more on that later this month.

W&M: The Cardassian Way

I’ve seen strange things, but this one wins….

Personal Log, Stardate 96797.63.

Much has happened since my last entry.  My crew and I were exonerated, thanks to our work in finding where the real President was and returning him to Earth.  And the Paxtonites are-if not defeated-then driven so far underground that they’ll hopefully take another couple hundred years to try again.  The situation on Megara has been…well, as fixed as it’s going to get.  The Romulan Republic will handle it now, and it’s probably for the best.

The Admiralty was extremely unhappy with my actions during this crisis-particularly in light of the fact that we’d effectively deserted to “join the Cardassian navy”.  I have no doubt that I was heading for a court-martial, except for the intervention of…Councilor Elim Garak.  Who gifted Starfleet with a new, top-of-the-line Damar-class starship…with the proviso that the command of the ship should be given to me.  Between this and the recommendation of the President, the ones in the Admiralty who wanted to bust me so far down the ranks that I’d need warp capability in my boots to get back to “Ensign” had to shut up and accept it.  I think, though, that I can give up any hope of being promoted to Admiral one day.

That’s okay.  This ship is a LOT better than my last one; the USS Lakarian has the bells and whistles that the Galor cruiser didn’t.  It plays to my strengths-sciences-while also leaving no doubt about who is behind all this-there are stations designed for information gathering of a type very different than scientific.  The Starfleet Corps of Engineers went through the ship micron by micron to find any tracking beacons or listening devices, and came up empty.  Well, except for one device that played back a message from Councilor Garak congratulating us on finding the one plant.

I’m not sure how much I can trust him, but I have to admit that I love his sense of humor.

Things are moving fast.  The Klingon Empire and the Federation have declared peace in light of the Undine and Iconian threats, and it’s likely that the Lakarian will be called upon to take its place on the front line of the new conflict-which, as it sounds, is happening even now in the Delta Quadrant.  That one’s a long story.  After all that’s happened, though…I’m ready.

Computer, end log.

We’re short weeks away before the Foundry in Star Trek Online takes its final bows.  Because of this fact, even though I’ve hit my usual stopping point for my STO chronicles by Selak getting to 50 (and thus, able to fly that nice, shiny new tier-6 ship), I plan to continue this chronicle until the Foundry is no more (two posts?  We’ll see); it’s the least I can do to support the authors of some very well done missions.

As noted above, I got Selak in his T-6 ship.  When the “Victory is Life” expansion landed, I knew early on that I would be looking to put a Cardassian character in a Cardassian ship, and the end point would be one of the new big boys there.  As was often the case, there were three ships available, and I went with the science oriented one.  Plus, it’s an Intelligence ship, which means that I might have to hunt down some Intel training manuals for a couple of the bridge officers to take advantage (or make them with my main Starfleet character, who maxed out on his Intel specialization long ago).  Or I may just leave the ship positions as is; there’s no law that requires me to use the Intel abilities.

But really, where’s the fun in that?

This time around, I’ve got three missions to recap and comment on.  Note that, now that I’ve finished the leveling for the character (unless I decide to come back to him one day), I have started ignoring if a Foundry mission gives “mission rewards”.  Now I’m all in for the story.  I’ll mention that detail below, though, in those cases; I know not everyone is as forgiving as I am at this stage in Selak’s career!

Occasional hazards of the Delta Quadrant

First up is “In Silence”, an offering by starfarertheta that was the last spotlighted mission on the STO web site before the announcement of the Foundry sunset.  (Horrible timing, yes?  On the other hand, there are special rewards being given to authors of spotlighted missions, so there’s that.)  After “accidentally” leaving Ambassador Sugihara at Starbase Magellan (I’m dubious as to whether or not it was an accident…), your ship turns around to pick him up.  Well, that’s life in Starfleet for you.  But a distress call draws you to a destroyed structure in space; your crew decides to investigate this.  This mission isn’t heavy on combat-although if you WANT combat, you have an opportunity to indulge near the end of the mission.  It’s mostly about investigation and exploring the structure.  (Note:  it has two levels.  I don’t want to tell you how long it took me to realize this.  Take the appearance of a staircase seriously.)  The map was well done, and this mission gave me a last chance to grab a screenshot of the old Earth Spacedock (aka the Starbase Magellan now).  And looking at it, I can’t believe the devs haven’t repurposed the starbase for another facility somewhere in-game, because it’s still a decent look.  Its only crime was that it wasn’t the ESD we have come to know and love over the years.

Next on my list this time is “Eve of Resolutions” by greendragon, and it represents a turning point for Selak’s timeline by officially putting him into 2410-and what better way than to have it occur on New Year’s Day (well, on the Earth calendar).  You’re standing in for Admiral Tuvok at the New Year’s Eve Gala at Starfleet HQ.  And who do you meet almost right away?  Ambassador Sugihara.  (Hope he wasn’t still ticked off about being left behind on Magellan.  Sometimes I love how serendipitous things work out doing these things.)  The festivities are interrupted by an attack on the gala, where the Romulan Ambassador is kidnapped-leading to a chase to catch up before the kidnappers can get him off-world; it isn’t any better when it’s revealed that it’s a faction of Klingons who want to wreck the peace process being hammered out on the Jenolen Dyson Sphere.  Sounds like Star Trek VI, a bit, eh?  But there’s a little more going on than meets the eye.  I liked the chase, honestly-I mean, there’s only so much you can do for a chase sequence in this game, particularly with Foundry tools, but all the same, it at least gave you the impression of things happening (I particularly enjoyed running into the New Year’s Parade).  I also enjoyed the sewer map work (I may never write a sentence like that again); little waterfalls of sewage from above were a nice touch.

Last on this list today is “The Hundredth”, by NCC-89471.  I advance Selak’s timeline a little further, taking him past the Delta Rising crisis (but prior to the Iconian War…this is not a coincidence).  Your ship is sent into the Delta Quadrant (see rant below) to investigate chatter from packs of Hirogen trying to find “the Gamechanger”, which has apparently gained legendary status for its elusiveness.  This could be considered normal Hirogen obsessiveness with the hunt, but a warfleet had appeared in the Turei Underspace, attacking Hirogen hunting parties.  And the Turei are known to be a little protective of Underspace….  This leads your ship into a nice mess, and your job is to fix it before it leads to another major conflict in the Delta Quadrant.  The identity of the fleet involved (and why they’re here) brings back a couple of individuals who haven’t been seen in a long time (well, as far as the episode chain is concerned; one has come back relatively recently in real time, and one has been erased from existence until now…of course, with the Foundry going away, it’s gonna happen again…).  And just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier, the most dangerous inhabitants of the Delta Quadrant show up….  Now, THIS is a mission that has a heap of combat, with an assortment of foes.  The mission tells you early that you’d best have frequency modulators in your inventory, so you know you’re going to be dealing with Borg at some point.  The identity of the Gamechanger is a bit of a surprise, and the mission addresses the potential discrepancy introduced by that fact by a reasonable possibility.  The mission conclusion also include a surprise appearance that ties everything up in a bow, and gets around certain tricky Foundry rules.

Now, that rant I mentioned.  Doing the Hundredth is a mission that starts in the Delta Quadrant.  Unfortunately, unless you’re in a fleet with the access necessary or have done the actual episodes leading to it, you can’t actually GET to the Delta.  So you either have to go do a bunch of episodes so you unlock it…or skip a bunch of episodes to get to that point.  Except, of course, there are episodes that are considered unskippable.  THAT is really irritating, although now that there’s going to be almost no other way to level except via episodes, I guess that hindrance is going to be less of an issue.  Yeah, you could do a leveling experience doing nothing but queues, but that’s no easy task.  And there are only so many patrol missions you can do.

Missions like the ones above remind me of just what the Foundry was capable of, and just leads to more regret to see it go.  Next time, hopefully sooner rather than later, I’ll go into detail about the next set of missions planned for Selak-and it draws in part from my scrapped “Cast List Revival Party” plans.

W&M: Final Purity

A rescue where it all began.

Personal Log, Stardate 96759.09.

The Hanne has had it.  The crew knows it, even though nobody talks about it.  Ever since we were forced to go on the run-the frame was masterfully done-we’ve had to avoid Starfleet bases and ports of call.  My people are trying to find a way to unravel this web, but the facts are:  we are on our own.  And because we haven’t been able to clear our names, or repair fully damage taken in battle-including against Starfleet ships, which we continue to avoid firing upon, which means escape is the only option-or even get deserved R&R, the ship has deteriorated swiftly.  I imagine that this isn’t much different than the situation that the USS Voyager faced when it was stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

One big difference:  I’m no Captain Janeway.

Going to the Klingons is out.  The war is still ongoing, although I’ve heard rumors before all of this happened that there is a summit at a Dyson Sphere that was discovered, or something like that.  I can’t go to the Romulan Republic, either.  They’ve made agreements with the Federation as well as the Klingons, and those agreements would include turning us over.

I can only see one option left-one that might have been unthinkable when I was born, but its an option that could let us continue working as a crew, yet give us some cover.

We can seek refuge in the Cardassian Union.  I can bring us to my home.

I’ve made a preliminary gesture towards the Detapa Council, and they seem agreeable.  The plan is for our crew to…well, defect isn’t the right word.  But we’ll join up with their fleet, and we’ll serve with them in a semi-independent capacity.  In return, we get a ship-one of their old Galor-class cruisers-and they agree to return the Hanne to Starfleet, without indicating our whereabouts.  This is sort of a win-win situation for them, and it allows us to continue to explore space as best we can-and surreptitiously aid Starfleet without telling them who we really are.

I wish I could take credit for this plan, but it seems that this is the brainchild of Councilor Elim Garak.  He…has a reputation, and it’s said he was once Obsidian Order.  I don’t know if that’s true, but based on this plan, I’m inclined to believe it.

I hope I’m making the right decision.  We have to be free to find a way out of this mess.  To the Federation, we’re all traitors.  We have to prove otherwise, and we can’t do that in a cell.  We’d most likely be murdered before we ever saw trial by the conspirators.

This will be my final log as an official Starfleet Captain.  I hope that the log on this ship will convince someone of our innocence, but I suspect that it will never get out; the conspiracy is too deep now.  I’ll be taking copies with me to the next ship, but I hope that someone hears my words-and starts to ask the right questions.

Computer, end log.

First, a technical note:  I’d failed to mention that the arc I featured in my last post had been written by Rellimtime82; I’ve since updated the post to include that info.  I like to make sure credit is always given to the authors of these missions.

All right-let’s get the show on the road.  Despite the recent announcement that the Foundry is “dead tool walking”, I’m not about to let it stop my work on Selak.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a race to the finish to get him to a stopping point before it goes away, because without the Foundry missions, I’m extremely uninclined to retread the standard mission arcs to finish him up.  I’ll keep putting up posts here, although the summaries/reviews/comments on each mission are going to be a lot shorter since I’m not going to take as detailed notes for myself.  I considered not bothering to review the missions either, just mentioning that “these exist”, but the way I see it, if I enjoy an arc enough to comment on it, I should at least remark on it so that others can try to play them before the end-and if they want to tip the authors some Dilithium (I pretty much always tip the max if I make it through their mission) as recognition for their work, all the better.

(And just an FYI:  the character chronicles for Jhusui and Jalot’iklar are still considered “open ended”, based on future episodes featuring either the Discovery-related stuff or Dominion-related stuff, respectively.  Beyond that, new content that doesn’t fall into those neat buckets will just be fodder for my mains.)

So:  on to new business.

As of the last post for my latest Star Trek Online character chronicle, Selak was in a bad, bad place:  he was stranded in the middle of a major cliffhanger in a Foundry arc.  Fortunately, I was close enough to level 40 to power my way through the remaining levels via patrol missions and duty officer missions to get there.  That was a key milestone for the next phase of Selak’s personal arc, because the moment I’d made this Cardassian character, I knew I’d be putting him into a Cardassian ship.  This wasn’t exactly how I had planned on it happening, but I kind of liked it the more I thought about it; if nothing else, this put the character in a similar position with Starfleet that my Orion character, Dathiro, had with the Klingon Empire:  no longer really a part of the organization involved, but still affiliated with it in a haphazard way.

Accordingly, I did a revamp for Selak and his bridge crew as far as their uniforms went.  Fortunately, there’s plenty of options out there to make the characters distinct from the Starfleet standards.  While most of the outfit options are all definitively Starfleet, there was enough to work with to make outfits that were anything but Starfleet.  Selak and a science officer got to go Full Cardassian; I’d always had a Cardassian-style outfit for Selak for his “off-duty” look (even if it wasn’t actually an off-duty uniform as far as the game is concerned), but now I wanted to have a more “official” one for his new status.  I took the liberty of using a T’Pol style outfit for my tactical officer, while using the Mercenary outfit for my medic.  The engineer was a rougher one-I didn’t want to go with a Section 31 look (I had honestly considered them when figuring out where Selak goes from here, but it didn’t fit my long term goals; they may yet be involved later), and I’ve gone all-in with the Intel uniforms with other characters.  So I decided to grab one of the armored looks for him.  Adding to the touches on each character-nobody is using a Starfleet insignia or rank insignia anymore, but I did try to preserve the color coding of departments; red for tactical, blues for sciences, and gold for operations.  (Technically, I should have gone red with Selak himself, but I hadn’t done it for his Starfleet outfit, so why do it with this one?)  At some point, I’ll probably replace one of these (the engineer looking likely) for a Jem’Hadar crew member who will make use of one of their species-specific looks.

So I was all set to have the characters engage in the game without Starfleet.  I could start rolling with Foundry missions.  And to my great surprise and pleasure, Purity VI has been republished-so Selak’s exile was destined to be a short one!  (And after I went through all the uniform changes, too-well, at least it’ll be easy to get them back into Starfleet gear….)  So, let’s hit the conclusion!

Ah, the odd juxtaposition between episode title and activity.

The grand finale of the arc is “Purity VI: Of Sacrifice”, and is authored by drogyn1701.  The source of all the troubles that have been heaped upon your captain is an enemy that everyone thought was long gone (as in, “Enterprise-Era”):  the anti-alien Paxtonites.  (Man, they must’ve REALLY hated my Cardassian captain.)  Your captain is at a temporary loss to do after the climactic events of the previous mission; fortunately, a pair of prisoners in the brig offer the possibility of learning more, especially about the one reference found in previous episodes that hasn’t been encountered yet.  That reference leads to a search for answers, and eventually back to where it all began.  With the proof of your innocence at hand, it’s then time to return to Earth and stop a battle between Starfleet ships by apprehending the prime mover of the plot.

Was that vague enough?  I try to tiptoe my way through this sort of thing, especially when I haven’t put up spoiler tags.  I hope it comes through, though, that this is the Big Finish of the Purity arc and it doesn’t pull out stops-taking you into deep space, back to Megara, a battle above Earth and a chase on the planet culminating in the potential destruction of a VERY recognizable landmark.  The story manages to start tidying up the conspiracy, but at the expense of leaving the situation at Megara mostly unsettled.  There’s a reference to a follow up mission being prepped, but that’s another story for another time.  “Of Sacrifice” does a good job on wrapping up the conspiracy plot that was set in motion by-ah, almost spilled those beans.  I felt that it was a satisfying conclusion, although somewhat incomplete.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way:  because there’s a less publicized mission that stands as an epilogue to the full arc!  “Purity Revisited: Of Peace” is the full wrap-up, by Capt.PFDennis, and it begins with an inquiry with your captain and a heap of Federation ambassadors who want to know just what the heck happened.  It fills in some of the blanks that was left over (such as the reason why the Chameleon Stratagem worked so well, despite the technology to detect such things), and indicating that the Megara situation was more or less independent of the conspiracy-it just got co-opted as a convenient thing by the Paxtonites.  The ambassadors don’t show too much happiness at the whole thing, since this was a “humanity-for-humanity” thing, but there it is.

Because of the captain’s experience with Megara, you’re sent back in charge of a task force to relieve the Obani of the Starfleet weaponry that Admiral Fautor had dumped off.  (There are a few hints as to her true fate; nobody found the body….)  You’re accompanied by an ambassador from the Romulan Republic, who has an interesting viewpoint on the affair; his backstory sheds some light on that.  Unfortunately, the Sajan on Megara have taken matters into their own hands since you’ve been gone, and have called for help from the worst possible place; and the help has come in the form of *#shock* advanced weaponry.  Suddenly, you have to deal with the shoe being on the other foot, and only fast talking, careful diplomacy, and an ability to deal with an enemy who is just as happy to see the Federation’s status in the galaxy take a beating can prevent all-out disaster.

“Of Peace” does more-or-less resolve the situation on Megara, or at least puts it in a place where it may be moving in a positive direction.  There is a feeling of deus ex machina here, but it feels somewhat justified given the source of that and the fact that Megara has been gaining attention due to its resources.  The Federation doesn’t come out of this looking very good, but at least the mess made by the Admiral is at least as cleaned up as it can be.  There is a LOT of story here, a lot of dialogue, and while that’s usually something I consider a strength, there’s a couple places where it isn’t-mainly because things start shooting at you before you’ve completed reading the dialogue boxes.  I enjoyed the debrief at the beginning of the mission as it filled in some blanks, and enjoyed the presence of the new characters who had importance here; the Romulan ambassador with the interesting backstory who believes your captain may well be the only honest one in the Fleet, and another Starfleet captain who has a grudge against you for certain actions taken earlier in the arc and is…let’s just say, not really well suited for life after wartime?  The theme of Starfleet more and more preferring military action to diplomatic action definitely is highlighted here.

As far as Selak’s future goes:  well, like I’d said, I had planned on putting him in Cardassian ships, and there should likely be at least some fallout here.  I’m sure his log entry in the next post of this chronicle will go into the new status quo.  (An amusing aside:  I’d forgotten that, as a purchase made of a Tier-5 ship, it also included an automatic free upgrade to T-5U, which adds console slots and Starship Mastery attributes.  I’d been poking on the STOWiki site, and almost missed the note about it.  D’oh!)  I’m glad I got to run the Purity arc again in full, including a chapter I didn’t know existed until recently.  While the arc has its technical flaws, I feel they’re probably limitations of the Foundry; as a story, it holds up to any arc in the game proper.  And given how many cooks were involved in cooking this up, the missions were impressively consistent with each other.  Every author of these missions has good reason to be proud of this arc; there are professional writers who should do as well.