I already wrote briefly about Star Trek Online during its open beta period. Back then I promised I’d write a Let’s Play series using Star Trek Online; beginning with this post, I am going to attempt to do so. I’ll post one per week, if all goes well.
The majority of everything I write after this paragraph will be from my character’s point of view; if I have something to say I’ll set it off somehow so you know it’s me, rather than my character. All of the missions I describe will be real, but my characterizations of various… characters… is usually completely fictional – after all, nobody wants to read a literal account of the game. So, with no further ado, let’s play
必利勁
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The year is 2409. The Federation and the Klingon Empire are at war, the Romulan homeworld has been destroyed, the Cardassian sector is in turmoil in the aftermath of the Dominion War, and… oh yeah.
The Borg are attacking.
I’m Ensign Jason O’Malley, a recent graduate of the Starfleet Academy of Engineering. Welcome to the mess hall of the U.S.S. Innovation. I’m off duty, despite the Borg attack, which suits me just fine. It has given me time to tweak my phaser. That’s basically how I spend my free time… I’m always fiddling with one thing or another. Last night I improved the efficiency of the food replicator in my quarters by twenty percent, and there aren’t any really bad side effects. Unless you ask for banana pancakes. Please don’t ask my food replicator for banana pancakes. Or anything made with bananas, really.
But other than that, it’s perfect. Just like this phaser here – it works perfectly. I’ve only made minor modifications. At any rate, it doesn’t matter. I won’t get a chance to use it. I’m the most junior officer on board, so it’s not like they’re going to ask me to go on any away missions or anything, and the Borg probably won’t beam on board to attack us. Why would they? That cube there is a thousand times the size of our little ship.
I should probably note a few things here, for reference.
Star Trek Online’s character creator is built on the same ridiculously flexible customization engine as the one found in Champions Online, so those of you who like making exact in-game duplicates of your favorite actors are free to do so; similarly, those of you who like making really, really weird-looking aliens are also free to do that if you wish.
The innate skills of STO characters is tied to the species you choose; Humans, for example, get Leadership and something else by default. For the character I use in this story, my species is technically “alien”; I wanted four engineering abilities, and making a custom alien gets you whatever abilities you want, so I just made an alien that is, in every measurable aspect, Human.
I also opted to use the uniforms from the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series, rather than the new ones they designed for STO. I did this primarily so I’d be immediately recognizable as a Starfleet Engineer, rather than as some guy wearing mustard-stained black armor. (Or, in other words, hi Mom!)
There are some portions of the game I’m simply going to ignore in this series, like the Player-vs-Player mode and anything having to do with Bridge Officers. (Bridge officers are basically my bridge crew and my away team; they won’t really add anything to the story I tell here, but I reserve the right to completely change my mind later.) I’ll also ignore skill point allocation.
Hopefully my promotions will fall in natural places in the story, so I’m not given a promotion for helping a Bolian swamp cat get down from a tree (as opposed to, say, getting a promotion for saving a planet from attacking Bolian swamp cats). I’ll probably play my narrative as if that’s the case, regardless of whether it happens that way.
Yeah, you’d think that they could be a little more realistic with the opening mission. I mean a Borg attack/rescue mission is perfect for leaving you by yourself and all your crew mates dead. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to program in a story that makes sense. Anyway, good post :P.
Hehe, yeah, that’s kind of a strange first mission. We have a HUGE threat that no one really cares about at all. A bunch of people may die… I guess we should send the new guy with 0 experience…
How often does a hologram answer a hail on a federation ship? Hmm. And how come the hologram doesn’t look like the hologram from Voyager?! I like that guy. He makes me happy.
More importantly, how come you’re not involved in an endless love/hate relationship with one of the other crew members? You need to find a chick that you can hit on between missions.