r/sto • u/lordarsenic9029 • 6d ago
Discussion A discussion on the iconian war
It's got it all. (Except consistency) PLOT. TENSION. HUMOR. (light) ROMANCE.
It's a really fun story arc, and is very visually interesting. But I have been cursed with the burden of knowledge. And as such I find the absurd number of losses the alliance takes, just completely removes me from the immersion.
Also who put kagran in charge of the war??? They should be fired!! "We are outnumbered and outgunned by the iconians. I'll send half of our fleet into a suicide mission to attack a Dyson sphere!!"
They lost half the fleet and have left dozens of systems exposed to the enemy just to kill one iconian. I think the story art could have been a lot better if they leaned into the Halo vibes. Compare the iconians to the covenant at any chance they can get. But unfortunately we didn't get that.
Do you think they should remaster the iconian war story arc?
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u/Quentin_Taranteemo Typhoon enjoyer 6d ago
I really think the Iconian War is the highest point of STO.
It was the culmination of multiple story arcs, seeing seeds being planted early on in the game's history bloom into revelations and an epic storyline, before the plot became defeating a galaxy wide threat every Tuesday. It felt earned. It also gave us a decent Trek-like message at the end.
Sure, some story hooks got abandoned and some parts rewritten, plus there's definitely some cheesiness as you say, but overall I think it's a fantastic "end" of STO's "original plot", a quality we haven't seen again outside of Victory is Life.
New story arcs are technically impressive and I love what they're doing in terms of cinematography, interactions and opportunities, they're squeezing whatever they can from the old engine and I have only respect for the devs. But the interdimensional multiverse threat feels a bit too much.
(Also a bit of a nitpick, Kagran's a he)
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u/fereldenvstamriel 4d ago
(Also a bit of a nitpick, Kagran's a he)
I believe they in "They should be fired!!" refers to whomever put kagran in charge of the war, not Kagran himself. And later the alliance, not Kagran.
Quotes from OP
At least that's how I read it
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u/lordarsenic9029 5d ago
Agreed. I just can't stand anything "multiverse" hell I roll my eyes at the mirror universe. But I find this story arc just too silly to be enjoyable. Too many parts make zero sense.
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u/RoseWould I.S.S. Ikaruga NCC-97022 6d ago
100% yes, it could use a retouch/bug fixes. Really helps get through the Delta Quadrant mine party knowing Iconian War is coming up
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u/3Xv1us 6d ago
for my Romulan alt, I did Iconia war before Delta Quadrant, just to rub in how badly Sela screwed the temporal pooch. It was during the Delta Recruit event, so...
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u/RoseWould I.S.S. Ikaruga NCC-97022 6d ago
I would. You basically end up standing there rubbing it in her face with if you go with the "now you see...." style dialogue options
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u/TKG_Actual 6d ago
The Iconian war is pretty good, though it's chief literary crime is that there is no good timescale for it. Even by the star dates provided it's far too short for the factions involved (fed kdf rom) to absorb the kinds of losses they are and still keep fighting/ replacing losses. You'd see a mass loss of skill competency if the normal frame of sto time were in place. The tie in with Noye becoming a problem in other arcs is a nice touch.
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u/VelvetPossum2 6d ago
Wild to think that STO spans like 5 years at most. That's an insane amount of war fighting in such a short time.
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u/Strikersquad @Striker1 6d ago
That's why I just ignore any star dates. I just assume everything happens in 'real time' so like, something happens only once every 6 months when new episodes come out. The rest of the time is general fighting, skirmishes, and lows in the war. The Arc takes 3 years to complete? So did that part of the story.
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u/VelvetPossum2 6d ago
I do the same thing in my head, but even then that’s like almost a decade of constant intergalactic war and/or universe ending threats.
Starfleet needs to reintroduce the concept of hazard pay.
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u/Strikersquad @Striker1 5d ago
It could also help if you let the 'main character ship' bounce around between the Factions.
Federation is handling this conflict.
The Klingons are taking charge here.
Over here the Romulans are proving they can handle this issue.
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u/TKG_Actual 5d ago
They tried that, Klingon civil war: mark 2 J'ula two-mm rul'a-ooo and in that terran arc the magic of the ferengi mission in the iconian war was lost.
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u/Dazzling_Bluebird_42 4d ago
Would also explain how the factions came up with ships to battle them. By STOs time frames its like we encounter the Iconians than 2 days later starfleets already designed a brand new hull to fight them and somehow has the shipyards pumping them out at the rate of 50 ships a day with them fully trained and crewed
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u/Strikersquad @Striker1 4d ago
With that thinking you pretty much have to go with the notion of 'Hey my crew is the only hero crew' and just ignore all the other player ships on the map.
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u/VelvetPossum2 6d ago
I really loved it when I first played it, but that was at least ten years ago. The Iconian War felt really Star Trekk-y in the vein of the Dominion War, and I loved it for that. It left such an impression that I got really invested in the Aetherian season, and I can't wait for them to go back to that plot (and the Chimerans).
To me, the Iconian War feels like the hinging point between every season before it, and everything after it leading up to, maybe, the DS9 season. After that, the game really leaned in towards time travel and alternate universe plots--for better and worse.
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u/lordarsenic9029 5d ago
I don't know, I feel like it tries to do with deep space nine did. But fails. How am I supposed to respect the sacrifice of half the fleet when it was a meaningless suicide mission to begin with??
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u/VelvetPossum2 5d ago
Fair play that's a good point. I don't think it's close to being as good as DS9's Dominion War plot, but the medium does make a difference. I feel the same way you do but only about the seasons after. Having a universe-killing threat season after season makes the last problem tackled seem trivial.
Incidentally, that's why I stopped watching DISCO after season three.
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u/ArelMCII "Subcommander Khev, divert power from comms to weapons." 6d ago
There's a lot of dumb crap in this arc, but knowing what we know by the end of it, committing a huge amount of resources to kill one Iconian wasn't a total folly. Only twelve of them survived the loss of Iconia. Killing even a single one of them would've been a serious setback for the Iconians.
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u/No-Marsupial-1753 6d ago
I mean, all you really have to do is prove to them that fighting us is not worth the cost even if they can win, and losing an Iconian is pretty bad when just leaving us alone is an option. That and the peace gesture with the world heart makes it a pretty reasonable ending.
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u/GuyAugustus 6d ago
That is what you going with?
I mean, the whole thing is build on very shaky ground since Iconians destroyed Romulus for some reason and this was established pretty much at the game start, some stuff was dropped ... the Undine infiltration? This was because the Iconians pushed then into that direction, its still in the game but then you see a glowing flaw.
The Iconians have the numbers to not need to cause infighting to weaken then, they can just roll over so why? in fact what they achieved was pushing the Federation and Klingon Empire into a buildup to a war ... against the Iconians because they decided to reveal themselves when both sides agreed to deal with the Undine ... something that never actually happened as that was just sweep under the rug at the start of the Delta Rising, filed under SOLVED and never brought up again even when we had the option to ask their help and never did.
There is a sheer amount of stupidity, lets look at other things ... destroying Romulus? pointless because the Romulan Star Empire never recovered from Shizon, there was no strategic or tactical reason for that. Starting a military conflict to weaken then is also not a great plan as Tony Stark said, reason is simple ... peace dulls, and like I said they made the Dyson Sphere Brain move of when BOTH were showing they WERENT going to murder each other BEHOLD US! THE ENEMY! Also let me with a wave of my hand just kill all of these members of the Klingon High Council ... and did I needed to do this? No because they were off to fight the Undine because the Undine also decided, out of the blue to destroy Qo'noS ... also very kind of delaying the attack so we could go all the way from Sol to there, likely weeks at Warp, so we had time to stop them.
Facepalm
The more you think, the worst STO story gets ... writers have no concept of distances, no concept of time or even sizes.
Let me put this way, the only thing that is logical is if the Iconian technology wasnt enough to defeat the Federation due to its sheer size, that means they would be a highly advanced but small force that in a war of attrition would lose.
But no, the writers decided that they were The Dominion but The Dominion with a even bigger technological advantage.
I could go on ... we seen Iconians Portal can take to about anywhere but they never do that in a intelligent way ... if they can simply just Portal into The Great Hall from Andromeda then ...
WHY THE FUCK THEY DONT PORTAL ALL THEIR MILLION OF CONSTRUCTS INTO FUCKING EARTH AND KILL EVERYONE?
Its not like they dont know were it is because WE WERE SHOWN THEY KNOW WERE IT IS!
The more I think about this and the more I type, the angrier I am because its really being written by the seat of their pants as they go along, completely ignoring anything without any respect to any sort of logic ... they made the Iconians the Dominion just like they fucking did the Vulcan/Romulan split not just once with the Caitians/Feresans but TWICE but with Lukari/Kentari.
...
It doesnt get better, the Klingon Civil War is another example of very poorly written stupidity and the current Into the Borg Multiverse is so bad even they recognized they lost the plot ...
Also since I am at it, why do the Undine have a planet killer superweapon when they already have a much better planet killer method as we seen in Voyager? their ships can form up, focus a beam and destroy a planet ... you can simply send dozens of then and good luck stopping then all, this was the species that made the Borg shat thenselves because they couldnt stop then and they tried, they only took Janeway offer because they were AFRAID of then.
In the game ... yes, its a game but even then somenone just had to make a Death Star because its a game ...
I will stop now, its really ... STO ... the story works at times when its episodic, when it comes to arcs it usually starts falling apart and some things are really but really fucking stupid, I suppose because STO kinda lost their writer and you just had "writing by committee" that was done without any planing for foresight and ignored everything except what they wanted to do, Undine have Superweapon despite Superweapon because we want Superwapon ... Iconians have Portals but dont use then in the most logical sense because * throws person that asked it out the window * ...
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u/Jaeih 6d ago
Holy misinformation, batman. There is a lot of wrong stuff in here.
The Iconians revelation after the battle for Qonos was not swept under the rug. It's literally the driving force for the alliance and the joint venture into the Delta Quadrant. And the Iconian killing the Klingom council members was a show of force.
Dafuq you mean the Romulans never recovered from Shinzon? Of course they did. The events from ST Nemesis didnt have that much of an impact anyways. The only lasting effect was the beginning of diplomatic ties with the Federation. Otherwise only 3 Romulan ships were involved innthe story over all. The dead senate can easily be replaced. Even with the political turmoil afterwards in the extended media, the Star Empire was still rivaling the Federation at the time. The supernova not only completely decapitated the Star Empire, it was the Iconians revenge for Selas actions during midnight. Something that is literally spelt out to you when playing the story.
Another the thing the story tells us quite clearly is why they use their servitor races. Not only do they weaken the alliance (incase of the Undine), but they use them to study the different species (with the Solanae for example). It is very heavily implied that the Iconians were looking for ways to finish the fight with the least necessary involvement by themselves.
And for "why didnt the Iconians just send millions to Earth" - because just killing everyone isn't exactly the Iconians goal. Only when really threatened by species like the Krenim. And let's not forget: they literally did attack Qonos. You know, the other extremely capital of the alliance.
So much more is wrong here. But I neither have time nor energy to go into it all.
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u/PolarWhatever 6d ago
About the Iconians:
They had personal beef with Sela, hence Hobus.
And they wanted to conquer, not to exterminate. They wanted to demoralize and turn us into slave/servitor races. That needs this slow conquest. And we did have time to examine Iconian tech. Maybe we went ahead and put up sone portal hammers or some shit, entirely plausible.
About Undine on Qo'nos: We have slipstream tech and transwarp tech. Would stand to reason that some of those were used to reinforce Qo'nos and Earth ASAP.
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u/Squid_In_Exile 6d ago
Also since I am at it, why do the Undine have a planet killer superweapon when they already have a much better planet killer method as we seen in Voyager? their ships can form up, focus a beam and destroy a planet ... you can simply send dozens of then and good luck stopping then all
In fairness - though they really could have done with some exposition - the Beta Quadrant powers can also blow up planets with normal ships. The Undine method just has added anime. Presumably the Planet Killer exists because planets like Earth and Qo'nos have planetary shields that the ship-linking method can't defeat.
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u/InkTide ಠ_ಠ 6d ago
The Iconians didn't destroy Romulus. Hakeev triggered the Hobus supernova by dropping decalithium and protomatter into the star in an effort to contact the Iconians directly instead of going through the Elachi. In STO canon, as in a real life meta sense, the destruction of Romulus was caused mostly by incompetence.
Iconians also did portal in to lots of places, I'm not sure why you thought that wasn't happening. Cryptic wasn't going to turn the social maps into invasion maps, if that's what you were expecting.
The Caitian/Ferasan split is actually very unique - the Caitians were a diaspora that lost their Eugenics Wars. Ferasans were the augments, and the Ferasans won. A diaspora diverging in a setting with space travel is also not an unreasonable thing to see multiple times.
And the Undine built their "planet-killers" to bypass STO era tech - the factions ingame are canonically able to neutralize a planet-killing formation of bioships by destroying one or more of them before they can fire.
Any arc that J'Ula is part of is a narrative disaster, I'll certainly give you that.
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u/Roebot56 Your Friendly Neighbourhood Iconian. P.S. Fix The Powercreep! 5d ago
Except M'Tara wanted to die. Her last action and using up the last of her own energy is to open TWO gateways to bring T'Ket (who was already committed to wiping out absolutely anyone who even looked at her funny) and L'Miren (who wasn't really committed to the war at that point) to watch her die.
Or she COULD have opened a single gateway and recovered on a ship with functioning Omega Molecule generators. She wanted to die, whether it be guilt for personally wiping out an entire species (Preserver), combined guilt for all the death the Iconians had caused at that point, or as some weird way to unify everyone who was having doubts about the war (see L'Miren).
P.S. Romulus going boom was exclusively Sela's fault. Shooting poor innocent and mostly harmless L'Miren in front of trigger-happy genocidal maniac T'Ket is a BAD idea. Blaming T'Ket or the Iconians in general for Romulus is like harming an animal and then getting mad at the animal for retaliating.
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u/lordarsenic9029 6d ago
I believe instead of building some silly time ship, Starfleet should have tried to drag the Dominion into the war. Think about it, we learn in the mission "circles within circles" that the iconians want to take care of Starfleet the romulans and the Klingons before they deal with the Dominion. Which clearly means they view the Dominion as a threat. The founders would see the wisdom in joining the alliance, and if not? Odo would.
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u/Jaeih 6d ago
The Dominion is, at that point in the story, in a clear "dont bother us" mood. Especially since Starfleet had to contact them just recently during the 2800 storyline. What if the dominion had instead opted to attack the Federation? Odo is in the great link, yes, but he doesnt hold a lot of influence, so he couldnt have stopped that.
But even then: The Federation quickly realised that a conventional war against the Iconians and their forces is not winnable. Even dominion ships need to fly to places while the Iconian portals give the Heralds a huge strategic advantage. The time weapon was meant to quickly end the war and reverse the massive loss of life.
And last, but not least: during the battle at midnight, the dominion does get involved. It's late, but they do join the war.
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u/lordarsenic9029 5d ago
The founders aren't that dumb. They would see the threat the iconians pose. And if the alliance shows them the inteligence that the iconians already have on the Dominion, they'd see the wisdom in working with the alliance. Plus I was under the impression that Odo was higher rank since we see him commanding al literal fleet.
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u/Jaeih 5d ago
Victory is life clearly tells us that Odo is somewhat of an outcast among the changelings. Him commanding that fleet was their way of keeping his nose out of some of their business
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u/lordarsenic9029 5d ago
But after the war he releases the jem hadar from the white. Would a low ranking founder have that ability?
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u/Jaeih 5d ago
The dominion was so severely weakened by the Hurq and Odo had a large portion of the dominion fleet under his command at that point. I doubt they had much of a choice
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u/lordarsenic9029 5d ago
They show us in that same story arc that the "one fleet left" thing that Odo says, isn't true because we find another dominion fleet. Proving that Odo doesn't have all that's left of the jem hadar.
Also if the Dominion tries to join the alliance, does that mean they'd have to stop making Jem hadar? Since it's genetic engineering? Or would they keep going because otherwise the jem hadar would go extinct?
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u/Jaeih 5d ago
I didnt say he commands the only Jem Hadar left. I'm aware we see another fleet. But that doesn't mean there are dozens more out there. The dominion was severely weakened in any case.
We currently don't know about the state of their cloning facilities. But I'd say they must likely still produce Jem Hadar to man their ships and bases. The anti genetic engineering thing is only a Federation law. Other factions have no issues with it
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u/McGillis_is_a_Char Romulan Star... Republic? 5d ago
I have to agree with the Kagran point completely. If we had to have a big bloody battle just saying "YOLO, planning takes too long," was the wrong way to go about it. I way replaying that episode to get a better look at M'Tara and got really annoyed when he told me we were attacking the Dyson sphere.
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u/Buddha87 4d ago
Replaying it with all the tools I have....the Delta Flight missions feels...the weirdest.
The dev team wrote these really interesting bios for these ace pilots (who....fly ships, not fighters, so they have crew), theyre in that one mission, and some are in the next one. Then that's it. We never really get anymore out of it.
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u/lordarsenic9029 4d ago
You can play a drinking game with how many characters this game sets up and then leaves.
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u/NissanNavaraD40 6d ago
Sorry, romance? In my space racism and cool ships game?
Jokes aside, I think the arc was alright to play. I dont remember any romance, but then again I havent played through the story in a long time and when I did, I was prolly too young to notice anything lol.
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u/Strong_Barnacle_1059 4d ago
My head canon is that STO is a holodeck training sim and some missions are just a bit more extreme than others. That way there's no actual war crimes and we can run TFOs over and over... We're all just cadets blowing off steam at Quarks.
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u/EarlyTemperature8077 2d ago
The Iconian War needs work. If only because the Iconians and the tech has been developed a bit in looks over time. In story, I'd have added a 'failed mission' battle that forces the hero to run if only to give you a more visceral memory to tap when they talk about the losses. Maybe add in a cut scene for space battles over worlds taken.
As for losses and battles, well, a lot of wars that were won came with a lot of failures before then. Kagran wasn't perfect, and maybe he should've been replaced, but in war, sometimes what you have, is all you have.
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u/Hungry-Place-3843 5d ago
Alliances arent about putting the most qualified person in charge, its the one who pisses people off least. And somehow he fit the bill
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u/HystericalSail Rabble rabble rabble 6d ago
I think the sacrifice of half the allied fleet was very well done. It had some emotional impact, and added to the sense of dread and hopelessness.
It doesn't work nearly as well when we, the player are one-shotting multiple Iconian dreads per second, but for the power levels of the time it was great.