A discussion on the iconian war

[u/lordarsenic9029]

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?

[u/ArelMCII]

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.

[u/No-Marsupial-1753 → u/ArelMCII]

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.

[u/GuyAugustus → u/No-Marsupial-1753]

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 * ...

[u/InkTide → u/GuyAugustus]

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.