Journey of T'Bao, Part 1 - Star Trek Online

About T'Bao

There isn't much to say about T'Bao right now. She is a Vulcan, and part of the Sciences division of Starfleet. Before T'Bao I did some experimenting with a Klingon and a Romulan character, and had an Andorian captain for a couple of days before I got sick of being called my full name by NPCs and re-rolled.

T'Bao's Progress

T'Bao was given command of the U.S.S. Thermopylae (Miranda Class) after the higher ranking officers were killed in action by the Borg. Her first action after being officially given command of the Thermopylae was the attempted rescue of the S.S. Azura, who was being attacked by Orion pirates. Though the Azura was lost, the crew was spared.

Admiral Quinn of Starfleet then ordered Lieutenant T'Bao to Vulcan in order to escort a diplomat to P'Jem. After meeting with the diplomat and escorting him aboard, T'Bao beamed down in order to conduct some personal business. While there, she encountered a plot to deceive the Romulan ambassador. She discovered who was behind the treachery and proved it to the ambassador, and then returned to the ship.

After warping to P'Jem, the Thermopylae was ambushed by Klingons, claiming that an Undine shapeshifter was there. After freeing the Vulcan temple on P'Jem from the Klingons, the diplomat was discovered to be the Undine infiltrator. The infiltrator escaped P'Jem but was ultimately defeated in space over the planet by the Thermopylae and a support fleet.

From there, Lt. T'Bao took the Thermopylae to Memory Alpha. There, she solved a few problems for Ferengi merchants and in the process learned about how to make items. T'Bao then left Memory Alpha in order to follow up on coded messages sent from the Undine infiltrator.

This led Lt. T'Bao to the Lackey system. There she discovered and ended an illegal Gorn mining operation. Proceeding into the Paulson Nebula, she discovered a Klingon listening post. She then forcefully evicted the Klingons from the post, with the assistance of her bridge crew: Ensign Threya (Andorian Tactical Officer), Ensign Stewart (Human Engineering Officer), and Ensign Voss (Trill Science Officer). There was also a guy in a red shirt there, and we will just call him "Guy."

We leave the good (if humorless) Lieutenant on Earth Spacedock, where she has been asked to talk with the Chief Medical Officer to learn about injuries.

Observations

I tend to try to only focus on the things I find to be positive about the game experience, If it seems like I am overlooking something terrible to you, it is entirely possible that I just didn't find anything nice to say about it!

So far, the game is doing a good job of making me feel like I am playing through my own Star Trek series. I've never been big on the Next Generation Star Trek, growing up with the movies and the original series in syndication. However, this is a pretty good time frame and I am glad that the Klingons are the bad guys again. I was hoping that the Romulans would also be the bad guys and we would get the three-way faction warfare that makes Dark Age of Camelot so magical. I don't know enough about the game yet, so we will see if it turns out that way. The content seems like typical Star Trek content, so it at least feels consistent with the television shows. The quest icons are confusing (no separate icon for quest available and quest in progress), but at least it makes me pay better attention to the dialogue.

I am in Free-To-Play mode, mainly because I am exploring how microtransactions feel as a gamer. So far, the only things I have felt drawn towards paying for are new uniform options and cool ships. However, I am not committed to the game enough to make me want to pay for those things yet. I have been too busy with the gameplay to think about the economy of the game much. That will come later.

Thanks for reading!

- Bull