Star trek general /stg/ The Iconians are behind everything edition

>CARRIER
1, No trade missions, this ship has much better use for its inside space than to lug around trade goods.
2, No exploring, there are ships far more fitting for this purpose than this one.
3, No colonization, again, all inside space is used for ordnance, fuel, crew space and fighter craft storage and hangar and repair areas.

>The Iconians are behind everything edition

Who?

>POLICE CRAFT
1, No piracy, exterminating, exploration, trading, attacking, colonizing or homecoming, this ship is only for patrolling and answering to distress calls.

Don't you remember them satan? Their automated shit blew up U.S.S. Yamato in TNG.

Bio ship on a Homecoming mission should automatically become Moya.

>FREIGHTER
Just trading and nothing else.

Put this stuff in a pastebin or something senpai. Pretty good.
Also, freighters etc. could be Q ships or the like.

Good point, as for pastebin, don't have an account and have never used it before, so if there is any friendly user around id like to ask him to do it.

The were a long, long time pre-Federation race that dominated the same locality and beyond. Out to the gamma quadrant at least. They had gates that let you walk between worlds. Picard found one facility and had to deal with the automated defences fucking over the Enterprise and a Romulan warbird at the same time because it was trying to over-write their systems and causing everything to crash constantly.

Later Sisko teamed up with some Jem'Hadar to take out a group of rogue Jem'Hadar who had found another Iconian gate facility.

Dunno why they're behind everything given they're long, long dead. As in everyone ganged up on them and murdered the shit out of them to the point that their remains are rare as fuck. Insanely advanced though to have teleporter gate things that work across a galaxy even without a gate the other side, even to ships. And they definitely built stuff to last.

Well, they are behind quite a lot of shit in STO. And we get to fight them at one point in an entire story arc called "The Iconian war".

Let's not talk about the evangelion wars thanks

the what?

Japanese cartoon

I'm talking shit about how the "Iconians" in STO look like a generic discount angel race in a Japanese anime

But they weren't nearly geometrical enough!
Well except T'Ket, what with all her edges.

To be fair I nearly cut myself on all the iconians edges.

TNG just casually dropped a shitload of ancient, superpowerful races/beings into the backstory and then did absolutely nothing with them beyond one or two episodes. I mean they did that all the time on TOS, but that was expected for a monster of the week show of the 60s. You'd think Gene would have figured out that consistent world building would be important by the 1980s, especially after the huge success of the movies.

Like the fucking T'Kon Empire, one story, never mentioned again. Granted, said story was awful, but something could have been done with them. or the Crystalline Entity. Or any of the others.

In all fairness they did something with the Crystalline Entity in that they killed the fucking thing and then acted all sad as shit about it. Boo fucking hoo this one of a kind super special snowflake got broken, it's only crime was the death of a few billion UFP citizens and the eradication of all life on unknown number of planets.

Crazy bitch shouldn't have been sent to the nut house for killing it. She should have been handed a medal and then thrown in the nut house.

Also the planet with the cloaking device and sterility that abducted Wesley and then committed the awful crime of giving him back. Super computer with thousnads of years of super advanced knowledge in it and the locals let Starfleet have free reign of it. Never mentioned again.

>Crystalline entity
All we have nowadays is a single STF in STO where you and 19 other folks attack a tholian fleet guarding a crystalline entity and try to blow up the entity with conventional weapons.

What was the T'Kon empire like btw?

Yeah, that was another first season episode. Also don't forget the super secretive and powerful aliens in "The Royale" who created a casino for a dying astronaut for... reasons?

>What was the T'Kon empire like btw?

We don't know shit about them. They built a quadrant-spanning empire including outposts and stashed supertechnology everywhere, including creatures which blend technology and living beings somewhat like the Guardian of Forever.

Then, if you take the episode they were mentioned in as presented, they were all wiped out by a supernova. I'm not even sure how that would have happened. We never see one of them, even as a picture.

Because cosmonaut had a shitty novel about a casino on him at the time of abduction and that's about all they had to go on for what humans like to live in. Which is FUCKING BULLSHIT! presumably the vessel he came in on had a computer. Presumably it had shit about Earth in the computer.

Also the aliens were too alien to communicate with. But apparently not too alien to create a whole society of artificial fully sapient and sentient humans that could communicate perfectly.

And on the subject of communication; The captain abducting shit stains who communicate only through metaphor and reference. A nice idea until you think about it for a few seconds. How the fuck do they exchange the highly detailed technical information needed to build, maintain and operate a warp capable vessel. And how is it that no communication has been made with them? The UFP has entire planets worth of psychics with no sense of personal privacy, why are they not at least attempting to make up for inflicting the Troi family on the galaxy? And WTF happened to the human telepaths?

>TNG just casually dropped a shitload of ancient, superpowerful races/beings into the backstory and then did absolutely nothing with them beyond one or two episodes.

Honestly I don't mind this. It's just background info for the problem of the week. They're dead and gone. There's no need for things to be continually explored if they're not a continual threat, unlike say... Klingons or Romulans.

It gives a hint or two and if really needed for other plotlines it's easy enough to expand upon what's there. Though coming up with a twist to not just do the same thing repeatedly is the real trick.

But it's also the implications of the shit that they find.

The discover the Iconian world in the Neutral Zone.

With ship killer weapons and what is in effect an interstellar, unblockable, two-way transporter/portal gun.

Picard and Data destroyed, at most, one settlement. A settlement that was in pristine shape. There is no way in hell the Romulans or the UFP or anyone else is not going to go to war to get hold of that level of shit. Whoever manages to get hold of that shit and figure out how it works wins everything, everywhere, forever.

And the Dyson sphere that remained untouched and unmentioned till the events of STO 30 years later.

Star Fleets biggest interest about the thing was that they got Scotty back.

It was not, who built it, how built it, are they still around, why build it and can we make the star in the middle behave because it could comfortably house the entire UFP inside with HOLY FUCKING SHIT levels of room left over.

Seriously where did they get the shit to build that thing? That's an entire stellar cluster worth of metal.

>Then, if you take the episode they were mentioned in as presented, they were all wiped out by a supernova.

They must have gotten hit with a evem more powerful version of what fucked up Romulus. Either that or a Q did it.

>How the fuck do they exchange the highly detailed technical information needed to build, maintain and operate a warp capable vessel.

Well, hivemind species would probably say the same thing about the way humans communicate. Ultimately they have a tool - their form of language - that they've learned to use. So if you grow up learning that 'Maza, Like Thunder on Stone' means 'pass me the hammer', you pass the hammer.

>And how is it that no communication has been made with them? The UFP has entire planets worth of psychics with no sense of personal privacy, why are they not at least attempting to make up for inflicting the Troi family on the galaxy?

Because Betazoids are frauds and Vulcans can only do telepathic stuff with a mind meld that is probably too invasive to perform on a species you haven't opened formal relations with.

>And WTF happened to the human telepaths?

Did any human ever have full blown telepathic powers without coming into contact with a magic space cloud or god-like being?

As for why human psychic potential stopped coming up in Star Trek I presume it has to do with real world reasons. When TOS was made, ESP was still being investigated as a serious scientific phenomenon (the CIA was doing experiments as late as the 1970s) but by the time later installments of Star Trek appeared it had been largely tossed aside as pseudoscience.

In terms of the show, I don't really mind the Dyson sphere not being a big plot thing either. Sure it's gigantic and fascinating but past the initial contact it's the kind of thing I'd expect to quickly be covered in scientific fleets that then sit there for years running carefully planned expeditions rather than dramatic events that need paying attention to. Especially since the Dominion war happened shortly after.

Dunno if they did any novels about it but it's well out of both DS9's and Voyager's remit to go back to it, and TNG was off being largely mediocre movies.

And for the Iconians, the implication was that the only functional thing left on that planet was that base with everything else being scoured off by orbital bombardment. And the Romulans, despite all the backstabbing and paranoia, are a pragmatic people when it comes down to it, they'll have been happy it was denied to their enemies as well given that any open war between the Feds and Romulans would have inevitably dragged the Klingons in for good measure and even IF (big if) they could have secured it, their asses would be collectively glassed.

>Did any human ever have full blown telepathic powers without coming into contact with a magic space cloud or god-like being?

Yes. Pic related. The one in the dress.

You can talk about Uri Geller being exposed as a fraud all you want and most governments no longer employing voodoo economists and shit but the truth of the matter is that Star Trek has always had shit that any other series would admit to being magic in it. And not just in TOS. That shit was in TNG, DS9 and VOY. Admittedly they toned it down in VOY and replaced it with this

scifiideas.com/technobabble-generator/

Which was not to my mind an improvement.

Also apparently any human could have pretty great psychic powers. All you have to do is get some of the right flavour apple juice and inject that good shit straight into a vein. I swear I'm not making that up. Kirk got magic powers on one episode because Bones injected apple juice into his veins.

>apple juice
>psychic powers
>"I swear I'm not making that up"

I want to believe you, I really do, but surely even this show was too serious for that.

The episode was called Plato's Stepchildren.

It was the one where Kirk is brain-raped into kissing his black receptionist and there's a dwarf

>but surely even this show was too serious for that.

From the same episode

youtube.com/watch?v=UhQA-06kSLU

>brainwashed into acting like a horse and rider

Dear sweet merciful-

The rest of the episode is like that.

The eventual show down is between Kirk and that Caesar looking shit having a brain-rape contest to see who can puppet the dwarf with a knife to shank who.

The minstrel boy to the war has gone...

>what fucked up Romulus
That was the Iconians, too.

>Iconians did Psi 2000
>Iconians did Ceti Alpha 6
>Iconians did Praxis
>Iconians did Moab IV
>Everything was Iconians

>Iconians did Roswell '47
>Iconians did Dallas '63
>Iconians did Dallas

Cryptic Quality

>Dunno why they're behind everything given they're long, long dead.

Twelve of them survived, and they're each only somewhat less powerful than Trelane.

Emergency power to forward BUMPers.

>each only somewhat less powerful than Trelane
They're not anywhere close to even Apollo. Igonians can't make things appear out of thin air. Iconians can't mind control. They basically just have energy blasts, self-teleportation, and lots of hitpoints.

I've been doing a rewatch of all 3 90s serieses in order by stardate.
This is it.
Today is Threshold day.

>Random events can't be random

So what's the Tholians deal?

Asshole crystal people from Venus like planets. Dabbled in time travel and shit. Professional assholes.

They're pretty cool, volcanic spider people are interesting and have interesting ship designs. Sucks that they're relegated to being random asshole race #27 but that's Cryptic quality for you.

Refugees from another galaxy, the initial fleet was but a tiny force (even though they brought an artificial planet-shell with them) and they were only capable of producing those tiny police vessels. They had a huge empire but it was overthrown quite spectacularly.

Allied with the Federation out of necessity, as they form a buffer zone between the Klingons and Romulans. But for the most part they are neutral, antagonised by Klingons and wary of the UFP.

Tholian poster, plz go.

Who could be behind this post?

>*Resonates indignantly*

They also have DR/Klingon-Hair-dipped-in-magma-forged-iron.

Since we keep on hearing that starships in Trek can glass planets, which one above all others would you take the most satisfaction in do this to? Can be from any Trek setting. I would glass the Pakled homeworld just on principle alone.

Nausicaan homeworld.

Because fuck those guys.

>I would glass the Pakled homeworld just on principle alone.

Agreed. Violent passive-aggressive retards? Who need 'em.

>Nausicaan homeworld

Arrgh. We're pirates & thugs, always have been pirates & thugs, always will be pirates, and you have to put up with that because reasons.

Glass 'em.

Betazoid, if that's what's necessary to stop Luxanna Troi.

*Betazed

Talax. But it seems like the Haakonians bet me to it.

Kobali Prime. Fuck those retarded zombies.

Oh fuck I forgot about these purple shits. I change my answer from the Nausicaans to these corpse fuckers.

>Hey, we're desecrating the bodies of your dead loved ones, hope you're okay with that.
Why?
>It's how our species propagates
Implications are disturbing. Explain
>We bring them back to life with our weird science but they transform into one of us
Oh. That's not too bad. Many great people deserve a second chance
>But wiat! There's more! The resurrected then get so spend the next days to months gradually forgetting who or what they were until nothing of the old person remains, all the while they are aware of the process.
So you are in fact raiding out graves then resurrecting our loved ones so that they can suffer and die a second time. No wonder every fucker hates you and I'm definitely getting cremated you horrible people.
>It not our fault! We dindu nuffin! Evrabody jus misunderstandin us!

Thankfully they've mostly all congregated on one planet so we can wipe out 90% or more of the population with one Genesis torpedo.

>Kobali

Looking at their shit on memory alpha:

>Over a period of several months, the DNA of the reanimated lifeform was altered by means of a genetic pathogen that converted most of the alien's DNA into a Kobali protein structure. These biochemical changes affected every part of the body, leaving only trace amounts of the original being's DNA.

>The reanimating process involved more than merely "resurrecting" corpses and altering the DNA and physiology of the (formerly) deceased. They also trained the newly-reanimated to adapt to their culture and language. This was necessary to help acclimate the new Kobali as he or she adjusted to becoming a member of a new race. It also helped ease the shock of new Kobali finding themselves alive again, albeit in a completely different physiology and culture.

>they could reanimate those who had been dead for more than two weeks.

These guys must have been engineered. A pathogen that massively reforms a corpse, reanimates it and reprograms it? Gotta be artificial. I think they must have been a civilisation that went this way to preserve themselves after a massive die-off not related to war given they don't naturally seem to be soldiers.

How fresh a corpse is needed I must wonder, theoretically much of their population must come from heavily deteriorated bodies. Do most Kobali simply not remember their former existence because the brain material just isn't there? At what point do they become conscious beings again? How much damage can it fix?

Also fuck that episode, The Kobali were cult-level creepy with their YOU DON'T GET TO LEAVE shit, and Voyager's crew were spectacularly un-Star Fleet with their 'fuck off and be with your own kind, weirdo' attitude. Perfectly missed opportunity to add a new character to the ensemble who also wasn't shit.

In STO, the Kobali happily volunteer to run the hospital ships during the last big campaign against the Vaadwuar.

>race that reproduces by claiming dead bodies of others
>volunteer to run hospital ships
really makes you think

>But wiat! There's more! The resurrected then get so spend the next days to months gradually forgetting who or what they were until nothing of the old person remains, all the while they are aware of the process.

That part was actually indicated to be pretty rare, the vast majority of Kobali wake up with no memories of their previous life. Humans just fuck everything up.

>These guys must have been engineered. A pathogen that massively reforms a corpse, reanimates it and reprograms it? Gotta be artificial.
They say as much in the episode. Something about massively screwing something up, killing their normal reproductive abilities, and this was the only way they could continue their species. My theory is that they were trying immortality, biological augmentation (like how they can do hyper-advanced math in their heads), or something along those lines, and this messed up their ability to properly reproduce.
>Voyager's crew were spectacularly un-Star Fleet with their 'fuck off and be with your own kind
But this happens in Trek again and again.

>But this happens in Trek again and again.
Retarded shit that shouldn't have made it past the script to shooting happened a lot. Doesn't make it right or good.

No it doesn't, but it does make it Trek. Especially because it happened repeatedly.

Perhaps, but it's not keeping to the ideals of star fleet by any means. Which is what I wrote: >spectacularly un-Star Fleet

>Perhaps, but it's not keeping to the ideals of star fleet by any means. Which is what I wrote: >spectacularly un-Star Fleet
Apparently it is, if they keep doing it. Maybe you just don't know what the ideals of Starfleet are. That's OK, because a lot of people are similarly confused on the subject. They project their own values on to the show (usually idealistic leftist values, but I've also seen right-wingers do the same thing), when there is plenty of on-screen evidence to the contrary, no matter what the writers or producers might say in interviews or whatever.

Pretty sure the ideals's were set out fairly clearly and it's just shit writers fucking up without justification for going against that. See Janeway's erratic application of the Prime Directive for a giant example. Or just the highly erratic application of it overall because it was initially just a dramatic device that made sense and later warped into some pseudo-religious commandment.

Reminder that this alliance would be literally unstoppable

Pretty sure the Federation, Dominion, Borg, Voth, Undine/8472, and dozens of other space baddies could do it. Hell, post-Endgame, Voyager could do that all by itself.

which ship has the best ambient noise

Delta Flyer because the ambient noise is classic 1950s rock when Paris is flying it.

I'm a fan of the low-grumble of the Galaxy

I'll tell you this for nothing it sure as shit isn't the Breen skin on STO.

To bad they hate each other with a fiery passion

Well, There's always some asshole like the Duras family willing to put aside feuds for gaining power.

Now a Federation/Romulan alliance and perhaps more plausible, that'd be something impressive. And it was in the Dominion war too.

A Klingon-Romulan Alliance is basically what would have happened if the House of Duras won the Klingon Civil War instead of Gowron.

Given how much the Klingons of that era though hated Romulans, had Duras won, he'd still probably have been mired in civil war even after defeating Gowron, weakening the empire even more. All they had to do to kill his support was demonstrably show his Romulan backing and support just fell away.

Probably exactly as the Romulan's planned (backup plan anyway). A weak Klingon empire is practically as good as one allied to them, given they could just go and take stuff directly from whatever holdings Duras would have still had.

arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10408813

>Another event
What's going on? Is Cryptic compensating for something?

More likely they've noticed that people like events, and so are doing more of them.

Really makes your skin crawl, you mean.

Man I hate the Kobali.

What bothers me most about the Prime Directive is that the original wording is thus:

"It is forbidden to interfere in the natural development of viable pre-warp cultures."

Two notes:

1) It specifies "viable". Interference in cultures that are not "viable" for some reason (such as, say, their homeworld is about to lose its atmosphere or something) should be perfectly allowed.

2) It specifies "pre-warp". The Prime Directive has nothing to do with the Federation's interaction with, say, the Kobali or the Romulans.

I've long been confused by the citing of the prime directive as apparently a clear case for non-intervention in the Klingon Civil War of 2367 - 2368. Basically nothing about it applies by any standards. But. If they cited the Khitomer accords having a non-interference policy for internal Klingon matters, that'd make a fuckton more sense. Because of course the Klingons would love for the UFP to stay out of their shit when they go fight themselves. Half of them would want Star Fleet fighting with them just for the advantage, the other would see any intrusion as precursor to a takeover. So best to just stay out of it.

And barring the Romulan intervention would probably also be part of the terms of the alliance (different treaty I believe given that didn't happen until after Enterprise C got asploded) under a 'keep those pointy-eared bastards out of our shit if we're having internal debates because they always try and fuck both of us over' clause.

mein negro of superlative taste

Writers tended to jump on the Prime Directive as their get-out-of-jail-free clause for when they needed a reason for the crew to be restricted. I like to think that when captains refer to the Prime Directive, they're using it as a shorthand for the long list of rules and regulations that made up some sort of Book of Directives.

Such as real content? Impossible!

That's a reasonable assumption. These days I'd kind of expect a show/setting to have built in a big list of narrative-ly useful directives and treaties to refer to in the setting bible, so there's a consistent list for characters like Savik to quote. Helps continuity and all that.

Like the technobabble generator, it actually could be a useful tool for RPG's sake to have one, since having some regulations would help develop the narrative and characters for when they might need a guiding poke in a suitable direction or giving them something to try and work around without being court martial'd.
Don't need to list everything, just some bits here and there so when dealing with someone like Captain Jellico, there's actual regulations to point at that he's tight about that others are more lax on since they will directly affect characters rather than just be implied for the sake of the story.

They have a whole weekend of data to analyze to make more nerfs, and events (especially reruns) are easy. Plus, it gets >muh metrics when they don't have any new content.

You could probably take some of the pre-existing treaties and flesh them out a bit more. The Khitomer accords in relation to the Klingons and all their client races, the Treaty of Algeron for the Romulans and then just star making up names for treaties between the UFP and other minor powers.

As for Starfleet General Orders, ST Minutiae went and made this:
st-minutiae.com/articles/treaties/general_orders.html

I think their can be much fun in playing someone from the 23rd century lost in the 25th.

"Let me tell you about Jim Kirk." And just this long rant about how awful he was because you weren't on the enterprise and you weren't buddies with him and you thought the dude to be a blow hard, a show boater, and damn near dragged the Federation into war several times.

"Greatest hero my ass!"

so essentially Agents of Yesterday

I guess? I don't play STO.

you just kinda described it haha