(As a side note, the upcoming Masterpiece Bee figure has been allowed to use the Beetle look again. Finally)

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

There are certain similarities. The emphasis on simplicity, reliability, and ease of production, for instance. Also the climate control is rubbish.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yes, but does the new version of the Bird of Prey have a bud vase?

Probably not, but I can see some Klingon ship designer looking at the captain's chair on the original B'rel or K'Vort, and saying, "This needs a mek'leth sheath. And a cup holder."

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

(My recently-made non-Klingon KDF alt dismissed the whole new-tutorial starter crew except the Science Gorn; for a while I left him with the default name, but recently thought better of it and pushed Random a few times until it came up with something I liked. He is not especially large, especially for a Gorn, but he is very smart, and dependable, and the least likely of the senior officers to make off with the ship - all of which means he usually gets left in charge when the captain beams somewhere.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards

Translation: Some say he comes from a really very nice planet, and had no real need for a refrigeration suit. All we know is he's called Kul.

He looks like he should be locked in a cage in a small town in Ferelden, waiting to be freed by a Grey Warden, so he can bring cookies back to his people. But yes, that is an unfortunate name, if you have a lot of humans on your crew. Any other race would probably not get the joke, though if there is a Sadistic Creator in the Star Trek Universe (which there is), his name probably translates into something equally insulting and puerile in most other languages in Known Space. (Except Breen; among Breen, it translates as "Noble Scholar and Warrior of Great Wisdom, Might, and Potency" or somesuch nonsense.)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

It's not just the name, mind; one thing that the screenshot doesn't capture as well as I wish (partly because it's a still, partly because of the issues with STO screenshots we've discussed before) is ... well, he's got no hair on his head of any kind. No head hair, no facial hair. And he's got a very tall cranial ridge with a very prominent edge all around the top, making for a ... rather distinctive shape.

The net effect is that ... well, it appears to be something of a case of nominative determinism.

EDIT: Who is, admittedly, something of a dickhead, but in a more metaphorical way.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

In fairness to Warrior Kowdik, a cow dick doesn't actually look like that. (What? I've been to a dairy farm. I can't be the only one here.)

--G.
Technically, cows don't have dicks.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

--G.
Just talkin' 'bout Klingon Shaft.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well, to be fair, I'm pretty sure that's why they implemented the various endgame-capable retrofit/refit ships (including a K't'inga). That said, many of those are inordinately annoying to obtain, between getting the fleet asset(s) sufficiently high level and accumulating the requisite currency (either 200,000 fleet credits, or 20,000 fleet credits and a 4-pack of modules). (And, of course, being in a fleet to begin with, which can be a trial if you don't have a situation like mine, where I joined a fleet composed of people I already knew to some extent.)

A, that doesn't help in any way at level 31, and B,

>the fleet asset(s)

is pretty much the end of that conversation, far as I'm concerned.

I did that with Cosmonaut, bought the Heavy Cruiser Retrofit so that he could get back into an Excelsior, but that doesn't require being an active member of a raid guild"fleet".

I don't mind the game's naked capitalism (the C-Store ships), this servers-and-developers shit doesn't pay for itself, but dictating my play style twists my shorts a bit.

It strikes me that this could pretty easily be addressed if they sold ships like suits of clothes. I wouldn't mind driving something with the capabilities of a Vor'cha if I could just dress it up like a proper battle cruiser.

("Non-cosmetic things you could only get if you happened to be a subscriber during this one event that was held two years ago" can fuck off as well. Looking at you, admiral-level Ambassador-class.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Here, I completely agree with you -- I just "upgraded" R'Mukka's ship, as she hit level 30 herself, and wasn't real happy with it. It can be made up to some degree with gear, but only some, since gear can't make up for the weaker boff slots, smaller number of weapons, and so on.

>that doesn't require
>being an active member of a raid guild"fleet".

This is one of the things that I love about my fleet. Sure, we're a tiny fleet, but we have precisely zero expectations of fleet members beyond "don't be a dick", and our progress, blue-side at least, doesn't suck too badly (we've got our dilithium mine and embassy to Tier II each, IIRC, and our Starbase is at Tier III). If there's enough of us around we sometimes form up a group for PvE stuff (the Solanae ground Battlezone is quite entertaining when you've got four people running around together -- everything just melts), and we routinely toss spare gear in the fleet bank for others to use.

>It strikes me that this could pretty easily be addressed if they sold
>ships like suits of clothes. I wouldn't mind driving something with
>the capabilities of a Vor'cha if I could just dress it
>up like a proper battle cruiser.

That'd be nifty, and it's pretty clear that the codebase can handle it, given the one mission where your ship is disguised as a D7 (no matter what it is), and the ship disguises you can get for latinum.

>("Non-cosmetic things you could only get if you happened to be a
>subscriber during this one event that was held two years ago" can fuck
>off as well. Looking at you, admiral-level Ambassador-class.)

Indeed, that annoys me, though at least there's a fleet version. (And, I note, my fleet meets the requirements for it... I'll have to remember that.)

Mrph mrph mrph Fed Research Science Vessel spit spit mrph.

>>that doesn't require
>>being an active member of a raid guild"fleet".
>
>This is one of the things that I love about my fleet. Sure, we're a
>tiny fleet, but we have precisely zero expectations of fleet members
>beyond "don't be a dick", and our progress, blue-side at least,
>doesn't suck too badly (we've got our dilithium mine and embassy to
>Tier II each, IIRC, and our Starbase is at Tier III).

That sounds a bit like the fleet I lucked out into; except that some of my fleeties are, in the best possible way, insane; and we've nearly got our Tier V shipyard project finished. If anyone wants a SB invite, btw, then feel free to ask; I'm @larilille, for complex reasons.

>Indeed, that annoys me, though at least
>there's a fleet >version>. (And, I note, my fleet meets the requirements for it... I'll
>have to remember that.)

It's a pretty wierd ship. I'm not sure I'd want to fly it except for the looks.

S.

So, if you spend some EC, I think you could manage to get through at least level 40. Of course, at that level your choices are another Vor'cha, or a Negh'Var, so I don't know if that really helps you in the long run.

*shrug*

I solo almost exclusively, and I'm not very good at the game, so there's a lot of weight to pull. I'm just tellin' it like it is. :)

That said, I may try it anyway. Heck, K'senya's already done something like that once. I created her during bonus XP weekend the other week, and because of the screwing up of the leveling curve that did, she was level 21 before J'mpok came across with the first scheduled free-ship token (which is supposed to arrive at level 10) - so she played through her teens with her original bird-of-prey, and fuck me, was that ever tedious by 19 or so. One gets tired of blowing up all the time. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That sort of happened with the Romulan I created on the same weekend -- I got my first token and mailed it in to the cereal company to get a new ship, but somehow I completely overlooked getting my second token for like five or six levels. I had much the same feeling of "oh no not again" through so many engagements, and on stumbling over the token I had that moment of clarity where I went, "oh, so that's why..."

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

On the one hand, that sounds utterly epic and I SO want to hear the background to that. On the other hand, Borg or Klingons without pants? Scary!

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

They haven't reached that mission yet; too low-level.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Simar's crew is, at this point, entirely composed of the stock bridge officers you get either for free at the beginning of the game or with the Steam starter pack. Like any STO bridge officers, they're only as interesting as you care to make them by fiddling with their bios, and since the tutorials got redesigned a bit back, it appears each faction has one starting officer you can't even do that with, making it an almost purely internal proposition if you're going to invest them with any significance.

That said, from left to right:

Ensign T'Vrell, communications officer. Also qualified as a science officer, but linguistic studies are her first love, not that she would agree with that phrasing. At the Academy, she almost found herself pushed into the sciences anyway by a poor (by her standards, anyway) performance on her xenolinguistics final, but Simar - for perfectly logical reasons, mind you - pushed her to apply for a retake. To their considerable bemusement, she and Simar were subsequently voted Class Couple 2409 by the Yearbook Committee, despite the self-evident fact that they aren't one.

Ensign Elisa Flores, tactical officer. She's the Federation's stock "cipher" officer, the one who's in all the tutorial cutscenes and whose name and bio you can't edit - the latter of which factors wouldn't be quite so annoying if she at least HAD one. There are vague allusions in the tutorial to her having had some sort of disciplinary-record problem at Starfleet Academy, but she did well enough to be selected as Captain Taggart's tactical officer for the Ill-Fated Training Cruise, so she must not be a complete fuckup. As you can see in the above screencap, however, she has poor muzzle discipline, which is not necessarily something you want in a tactical officer.

Lieutenant Simar, commanding officer. "Reluctant" isn't really the right word to describe him - he's satisfied to serve in whatever capacity Starfleet requires - but he was certainly not expecting to be thrust into command so soon, or indeed at all. By training and inclination, he's a paraphysicist specializing in trionic and multiphasic phenomena, as well as a medical doctor. He named his ship after the great 20th-century Earth paraphysicist Dr. Egon Spengler, who discovered many such phenomena before Earth's technology level had actually advanced to a point where they could be understood. He also has an abiding interest in mycology (the study of spores, molds, and fungus).

Ensign Zarva, chief engineer. Zarva is interested in precisely one thing: engineering. To her, the initials "R&R" stand for "reading and research"; she doesn't have off-duty time so much as acknowledge that the inherent inefficiencies of being a biological life form mean there are a few hours a day when she can't be at work. Oddly, this doesn't mean she doesn't have a social life; it's just that, like everything else in her life, it happens mainly in the engine room. Just because she's an obsessive workaholic doesn't mean she can't multitask, after all.

Ensign Sokoni, science officer. A lifelong spacer, Sokoni was born in the days when starships carried dozens of dependents, including small children. Though raised in the full Vulcan tradition by her parents, she had never actually been to the planet Vulcan until adulthood. Perhaps because of this, her connection to the place and its ways is somewhat attenuated. This manifests itself mainly in an atypical streak of daredevilry; although never otherwise than calm and perfectly self-controlled, she is well-known for her willingness to run risks that are, on their face, wholly illogical.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Polychrome

--
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