This Does Not Bode Well For The Federation…
July 26, 2010
"We must acknowledge, once and for all, that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis." -- Spock. Smart man.
On the quest for the elusive “surprise” Tribble reward, my adventures continued this past weekend on the Star Trek Online test server. On Sunday, I delved into the mystifying and bureaucratic world of the Federation Diplomatic Corps.
Two diplomacy missions down, failed both on the first attempts. Dammit, my T’Andy’s a Vulcan and a soldier that likes things that go boom, how can you give her something like a Pulse Laser and expect her not to use it?
So far, “leading with the olive branch” hasn’t been working out very well for my captain, but fortunately, if at first you don’t succeed, the missions can be restarted. So don’t panic, that war you accidentally started isn’t going to be permanent, and T’Androma should be sporting that shiny new ambassador suit in no time.
I have to commend Cryptic for their efforts. Making it as a career diplomat is more than I expected. The two missions I managed to complete involved a lot of investigation, research, and running around talking to NPCs. So brush up your MMO reading skills, Federation captains, because if my experience has taught me anything, you have to be pretty thorough and you don’t get much room for error. I’ve heard that these diplomatic missions can get pretty complex, so I’m prepared to be thrown into even hairier situations.
Admittedly, schmoozing some snobby politician is nowhere near as fun as blasting Borg cubes in space…but damn, these new snazzy captain’s quarters make it all worthwhile (that’s right! New ship interiors!)
My place. Tonight. You bring the Chateau Picard, I'll bring my usual Vulcan frigidity. How's that for diplomacy, or did I fail that one too?
MMO Gamer Chick 
Awesome post, but your screenshots and captions take the cake. Glad to hear that the diplomacy missions are working out. I’ll be interested to see what you think once you’re further into the system.
Unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be doing any more playing on Tribble. I didn’t really want to in the first place, but I’ll admit it I did it mostly because of the Tribble weekend. I don’t want to spoil any more of the content for myself, I’ll be waiting for it to go live on holodeck.
Sounds fun. I didn’t know where to go to get diplomacy missions.
I heard that you used to get “bread crumb” quests for them, but when I went on last night I couldn’t find them either. I heard there were quests that started on Bajor and Vulcan though, so that’s where I went.
Really? The interiors are all over sized and the diplomacy missions are memorizing quest text like that one quest about the miners at the start of the game? Your kidding right? Ugh!
The ship interiors were big, but I didn’t think they were that badly oversized. In fact, I was actually kinda happy they fixed the size of the doors. I do wish there was more functionality though, but as I say with everything involving Cry[tic, one step at a time.
As for the diplomacy quests, which one did you do that had you memorize? The two I did had a lot of reading, but neither of them asked me any questions that required me to regurgitate answers. In fact, as a noob Star Trek fan on the Vulcan mission, I was actually quite happy to learn a lot about the history of the Romulan split.
Kaozz was telling me what a great blog you have! Wonderful! I dont play Warcraft but I love to watch! Ha Im hooked on jewellery making and spending hoardes of cash on it! lol. Nice blog GC.
Thank you for checking my blog out! Kaozz has a great Warcraft blog herself…I don’t play WoW as much as I used to, but I just started a new character and am working on leveling her so I’m still on the game fairly regularly. thanks for reading 🙂
If diplomacy are that hard cool, everyone used to say how easy STO was.
What I’m wondering is how many people in the game is now complaining that diplomacy is too hard vs pew pewing with Lazers.
Not exactly hard, no. At least the ones I’ve done. But what you do have to be is thorough, and make sure to try everything. And if you’re not sure of something, don’t click “continue” 😛
That sounds like a lot of fun, and aimed squarely at someone like me. I’ll jump through a lot of hoops frivolities like furniture and cosmetic gear.
I still prefer the space combat, but diplomacy is canon and a lot of Star Trek fans were asking for it. I didn’t really understand it before (why play a game if it’s just going to be all talk and no fighting?) but now that I’ve familiarized myself with the shows a bit more, I can see why it was requested and why people believed adding the new feature will make it more “Star Trek-y”.
Nice rewards. Sounds like a lot of work! I love cosmetic stuff so I’m sure I’d be working on those too if I played hehe. I do wish they had a trial out so I could give this game a try. I’ve bought too many games this year lol.
I think they do have an endless trial out there, with a lot of content restricted, but it’s still free!
Yes, diplomacy is the hallmark of everything Star Trek. Exploring strange worlds, seeking otu new life and new civilizations and boldly going where no one has gone before involves making alot of peace and compromises.
I like that cryptic tries, even though i’m of the opinion that A. The idea of making everyone at odds and at war with one another to encourage more straight on combat was a genius idea. B.Nerds are whiny and want it all, well i take it back, they dont know what they want, and they like to complain too much.
IE: “Waah, i want more diplomacy missions isn’t that what star trek is about!?” Then they get it, and suddenly they complain because cryptic could’ve been working on something else. Ya gotta appreciate them for going all out and jumping through hoops for the people though.
I think the day i can store stuff in my ship and not just in my bags, have a clearcut spec that really works for me, including using exclusively “the green lasers” and planets become more hub-like than a one shot mission type. Star Trek Online will be perfect 🙂
“Nerds are whiny and want it all, well i take it back, they dont know what they want, and they like to complain too much.”
This made me laugh, because so often it’s true. 😛
Cryptic is by no means my favorite game developer out there, but I do have to hand it to them — they listen to the feedback. I’ve been disappointed with them and I don’t expect their changes to happen overnight, but they’ve taken so much abuse but are still trying. I respect that.
And agreed,they NEED to add more functionality or customization to their ship interiors.
The thing i like about STO most sadly is the thing that has so much room to be bigger and better. Their ship and spaceplay is flawless as a guy who grew up on Starfleet acadmey for pc, i think even then there’s room to grow the game as a matter of different ship types and the way other ships handle, getting the Federation’s on point is one thing, but i’d love to see more Klingon, Romulan and even Orion vessels in play.
Anyhow, what i meant was that the GROUND combat is my fav. I think it defeats the idea of Tank, Heals, and DPS. Because in all honesty, in my time i found nothing different with either of the 3 classes.
Save for the obvious, it’s just easier to expose and exploit TO ME as a Sci guy, but engineers just get gadgets and tricks and tacticals…really get to shaft, IMO, i’d just rather they expand upon the capabilities of those classes. Tacticals should be more fiercesome melee if they want to, hold their ground more and mitigate damage better.
Science is on point, pvp wise though they’re pretty overpowered, and Engineers…well, i like their survivability, but nothing says toast in a pvp fight like, “Oh look at me, i have a shield generator” survivable, sure, but they dont have anything that services them like a science officer, to me.
I wish there was better..well just i wish the ground game was better, and more varied.
I think if STO would have released as a great game if it was given more time. It’s no secret that its development was rushed.
Nevertheless, I love the space combat. I quite like ground combat too, though it was not as well received as the space portion. As a tactical officer, I spec’ed into firearms and explosives…melee just isn’t as fun for me, I like it better when things go boom 🙂 What I have is three of my officers using expose weapons and the last one using an exploit weapon. With this set up, I get exposed enemies pretty often and I just pretty much play the way you described, switching between expose and exploit with my own weapons to dispose of them. If my exploit is on cooldown and my cd reset is also unavailable, I hit the hotkey that tells all my boffs to target my target, satisfied with the knowledge that at least one of them will be able to pull it off. Like you said, there’s really not much difference between either of the three classes, but what’s more important is your boff set up and the skills you give them. I think I did that too well, because now ground combat is a cinch, and I never really have to worry about anything other than making sure I’m shooting and blowing stuff up 😛
Wait… those are Cardassians you pissed off! Awesome!
I love me my Cardies.
Yep, those are Cardassians I pissed off. And they didn’t go easy on me either. The first thing they said when I screwed up was something along the lines of “You’ve failed us all this day!”
I mean, I know I’m a Vulcan and people don’t expect that anything should affect our feelings, but still…that’s harsh.
Would you say it made you cry a little inside? That your Vulcan’s stone heart was moved my the suffering you had unleashed on the galaxy?
Just look at the above screenshot, I’d say she’s the very picture of a devastated Vulcan! Broken stone-heart and all.