I don't believe you can find the Odyssey uniform anywhere except the tailor on the Fleet Starbase. Regular tailors don't have it. She is in the supply room down the ramp to the right when you leave the transporter room.

Have fun wearing it - I love mine! :)

Chapter XIX: Identifiable Sign

Semil stood naked in front of the small mirror over the wash basin in the spartan washroom of his cramped quarters. In some respects, he had to admit, life aboard this Bird of Prey was not unlike even the largest of the Dominion Dreadnoughts - minimal comforts to the point of an almost zealous asceticism.

Even Klingons, for all their stoicism, they were still a proud people. One would never accuse a Klingon of primping, and yet a life in service of the Founders would never allow such vanity as examining ones own appearance beyond the most basic grooming.

The Vorta's eyes traced up the long scar that ran up the slope of his right temple, parallel to his hairline. Unlike the rough, jagged lines he was accustomed to seeing on his Jem'Hadar or these Klingons - clear signs of battles long since fought and won.

This was different. There was a clean surgical precision to the line - an almost delicate architecture that had allowed someone to tap into the darkest recesses of his brain. It had been done well enough that it might not be noticed at first glance, to an untrained eye. It was like looking at a new roadway built over top of a slum - Dominion diplomatic engineers were building them all the time in newly annexed territories.

A clear, identifiable sign of the new society that was being built atop the old one.

A not entirely inappropriate allegory to his current condition, he thought. The Founders and Jem'Hadar visited his dreams less and less frequently. What dreams he could remember were increasingly shaped by his current circumstances. The squirm of food that the mess hall chefs preferred. The smell of targ. The sweat and musk and mildew of the exercise floor.

While still thoroughly distasteful, it had all become increasingly comfortable over time. At least he was more able to ignore the parts that disagreed with him. For some of their more dangerous planetside excursions, he had even begun wearing some of the armor pieces they kept aboard. Even with all the bluster and puffery, the Klingons could be immensely pragmatic about certain things.

He had done his best these past few weeks to refrain from comprisons between his former lives, and this new one. Still, they crept in without much effort. He didn't have extensive experience otherwise, after all.

The comm system intoned. "Semil to the bridge."

With that, the Vorta reached for a towel and flicked off the vanity light.



The small, dimly lit bridge of the Vaq'ghol hummed with the quiet intensity that Semil was becoming accustomed to as the standard operating mode on a Klingon bridge. He stepped in through the blast doors, alerting K'vot to his presence.

"We approach Hitora V under cloak." K'vot was always so curt about these briefings.

The Colonel continued without acknowledging Semil. "Beta Lankal. Ha'toria. QuVat. We are running out of colony worlds to keep this search up." He swivelled in his Captain's seat to face the Vorta. "Since you remain so convinced of our current mission, if our search comes up empty again here..."

Semil was growing accustomed to being afforded the luxury of interrupting K'vot at carefully selected opportunities. "The Lethean's time in Empire territory is our best chance to find the clone cache. You've already agreed that he would have been less likely to hide the clones on Cardassian or Orion worlds."

"Yes, yes. And Klingon-controlled territory would afford him sufficient security to operate without threat of poaching or piracy." K'vot dismissed Semil's repetition with a wave of his hand as he swivelled back around to face the viewscreen.

"I still don't understand what security concerns of yours require us to maintain cloak. We could operate much more effectively if we were allowed to actively scan the surface."

"Then you'll simply have to trust that we have very good reasons to operate as discreetly as possible. Reasons that may well compromise the success of our mission."

Semil nodded with a slight huff, unaccustomed to being kept in the dark, operationally.

"I suppose then, that we'll be beaming down to the settlement, shortly."

"I imagine that's why you're already wearing your armor."

Semil shrugged, supposing that K'vot knew him better than he would care to admit, in many ways, perhaps better than he knew himself, as they started through the bridge doors towards the transporter room.

Hi All,

I have a silly question where in the tailor do you fine the Odyssey uniform?

Thanks

Well, finally got into Age of Wushu, and cripes, it's that damn first-person POV that makes me nauseous. And it does seem to be, in other respects, like Swordsman, which really surprised me. I don't know how I got a different impression.

Is anyone else craving a martial-arts game with animation more like, say, DC Universe?

Well, now I've run into an issue with the game. To perform my Combat Focus, I have to press my left and right touchpad buttons at the same time. I am on an MSI, there is a single button that you see-saw for left and right. This is physically impossible to accomplish, and it won't let me change the keybind for it. Bah. I have the same issue with Spore, I can't proceed in the Civilization level because my laptop isn't designed for this (relatively simple) function. I've got a mouse boxed up around here somewhere that I've never even opened, which of course is the easy way around this. Deciding whether to bother.

Meanwhile, I will try downloading Age of Wushu through Steam and see if that works. I get this file error downloading it from the AoW site, and have learnt that quite a few people have this same issue.

Quote by SiranNataan

For those of us who have been awaiting the game because a persistent bug keeps a LOT of us from being able to download Age of Wushu, this is exciting.

I play Wushu through the steam client without any issues. What type of problem are you experiencing? Maybe I can help! :)

As for Swordsman Online, I am a bit underwhelmed as well. I see some pros & cons (and similarities in between) regarding Swordsman Online and AoW. I haven't been playing very long to give a solid review however, but I think I'll stick with it for the time being to see how it pans out and to give it a fair chance.

Which, yeah, all these ten-years-ago things remind me of current Chinese games (I'm most familiar with Grand Fantasia). I'll keep at it a little while, anyway. I wasn't gaming ten years ago, so what is old to some is new to me. I had tried Everquest like six months ago and the HUD plus the first-person POV literally gave me headaches. Of course I'm a character-creation junkie so I wish I could make a dozen toons to customise on this engine.

Well first things first; It won't hurt STO.

That said I really wish something would. I know I'm probably going to get laced and my legs broke as I walk home tonight for saying this but STO is really showing it's age and I find it really hard to spend time in-game even playing the latest featured episode.

Star Trek needs a new game and needs a new MMO built from the ground up to be a fully featured MMO with amazing ground combat and a procedurally generated universe.

I really liked the look of infinite space in a totally different type of game way. The UI was super sexy.

I've been playing it a little (got to level 8 which didn't take long) and .. I think I'm probably done.

It feels really old-school with a very clunky engine and combat system which requires a weird mix of clicking and ability activating (with long cool-downs). It's very boring for what should be a very fluid martial-art styled fighting.

There is an active combat system which I tried to use first but the reticle is badly placed and makes combat almost impossible (it almost becomes a whack a mole with you trying to position to reticle for every click).

The graphics aren't ugly they just look about 10 years old, which is fine if graphics aren't a big pull for you but they are for me.

The questing seems entirely story based so far with quests alternating from simple "talk to" objectives then "kill so many" objectives and then eventually (and quite often) a story instance which plays out in long cutscenes and very little action. The nice thing is that the quests seem to be one-at-a-time and not big quest hubs.

It almost plays like a point and click adventure story with the quest log activating as your guide. The quests will have highlighted objectives with an underlined word or phrase which upon clicking will send your character automatically moving to the objective. It was actually nice but takes away any feeling of adventure or exploration.

I have a big problem with the cutscenes I mentioned earlier (and I have to stress, I'm only level 8. This could improve with time). All the best action takes place in these pre-scripted animations of which you have no control. For example, an early quest saw me chase down a baddie. He proceded to do some Crounching-Tiger esk jumps across building tops. The game give me back control and I proceeded to move my character onto a little blue spot and the game took control from me and I watched as my character did similar impressive jumps to chase my enemy.

Why couldn't I have done this myself? It would have been an awesome gameplay mechanic to have, almost like having a bit of a platform game in my MMO (like GW2's jumping puzzles or Tomb Raiders platforming). But instead I was given control to point and click and use the terrible combat system.

It's a shame because you could do some cool things with this type of IP but this just isn't thinking outside the box in any way.

I'm somewhat interested, but not enough to give up on STO. The Armada 3 mod for Sins of a Solar Empire fulfils my need to command vast fleets over many star systems, so between that and STO, all my Star Trek fantasies are already fulfilled.

Okay, I've been playing some more this morning and am getting into it more. The HUD/UI threw me off at first, because it's more in the Everquest/WoW mould that usually melts my brain. But it's more streamlined in Swordsman and I'm adapting to it better. I think part of my problem with the dialogue is translation. Like, I don't see folks running around early China saying "cool", for instance. I just chose my school for my first character, so once I get different schools on all three, I think I'll have a better feel for what's going on.

They just opened closed-beta for Swordsman last night. For those of us who have been awaiting the game because a persistent bug keeps a LOT of us from being able to download Age of Wushu, this is exciting.

The thing you have to bear in mind is that this is a game designed for the Chinese market. The source material is the 1967 novel Xiao ao jiang hu, which is hugely popular in China and has been adapted to various media over the years. Bearing this in mind, they've designed this game with the Chinese market in mind.

Which means it has some of the features common to Chinese games that may strike the Western mind (like my own) as a bit off. First off, the UI is driving me nuts. Now, it should be said that at the very beginning of the game, it offers you a menu to choose what kind of control you're using. Not having any sort of joystick, I chose the keyboard option. But it's kind of janky. When I go "back", I want to turn around, but instead I'm essentially moonwalking. To target an enemy, you have to aim your cursor at them and left-click. This is terribly awkward when you're getting swarmed, and hard to remember when you're so used to pounding away at the Tab key. I haven't seen yet whether I can change my hotkeys or anything, I'll check later.

You also have to bear in mind that this game abides by the Chinese gaming aesthetic. The HUD reminds me vaguely of Everquest, in that a lot of the options aren't really visible or straightforward. And the story isn't really progressed through dialogue, which is curt, corny, and reminds me a LOT of early Legend of Zelda. The map is also very much in the Chinese aesthetic--simplified, with huge text.

There are some things I love about this game. The character customisation is unbelievably flexible, although it's not obvious unless you click the Advanced menu. Those who appreciate Cryptic's character customisation (minus the bugs) will feel right at home. What's weird, though, is that your customisation doesn't affect your character portrait. In the character-creation menu, you have a set of eight standard portraits to choose from. This struck me as odd, especially given that the range of these portraits is very narrow compared to what you can do with the tailor. The set design of this game is gorgeous, and I'm eager to explore it more.

If you're looking to get your Age of Wushu fix through this game, this will not do. But if you're comfortable with Chinese-style games, want to engage in a famous-but-not-to-you IP, and want to explore a beautiful gaming world, this will work for you.

Closed beta is only running for two weeks, so I'm not sure how much player feedback is going to influence the game. On the one hand, as I said before, this game is clearly designed for the Chinese market, so I don't think there are going to be any big changes to Westernise it. On the other hand, the folks I saw in chat seemed to be native English speakers; however, it's likely that they are already accustomed to this gaming aesthetic.

My beta characters are named Zhuangzhi, Xinhuang, and Gudai. But all beta characters will be wiped on launch.

I'll play around with the game a little more for now, but at the moment I'm really sunk into SW:TOR, so we'll see how involved I get.

Honestly that press release has me going meh a lot. Not unlike the early reviews etc for STO though.

Sounds very much like they are ignoring most of the ip/canon as well.

Firstly mentioning having Constittion and D7 alongside Defiant etc. Yes I know STO has them as well. But with the basics limited to the lowest tier much to some players annoyance.

Plus skipping over the events towards the end of DS9 with Fed/Klingons allied once more. Using this new "potential unlimited power" as a wedge to split them again.

"defeating weird and wonderful monsters, attacking enemy planets and intercepting plunder ships. A good starship captain is a must!" so no first contact and trying to ally? Not to mention that Kess said 8472 had eliminated all life except their own in fluidic space. And that was their goal for non fluidic space now. So where were these monsters etc that 8472 did not destroy as being weaker?

And Feds should not be attacking planets and attacking plunder ships full stop. Klingons sure, but not Feds.

Small niggles maybe and I can think of plenty of games that do see you attacking planets. Although mods for Sins of a Solar Empire are using its mechanics. Armada saw you doing so as well. But I always felt the cultural influence takeover was a far more Federation style takeover...

I will keep an eye open for this and will most likely take a look. But the press release does not fill me with much hope really.

Distinct lack of info on actual game mechanics as well. Talk of building/commanding fleets. So seems closer to an RTS than a MMORPG...

Hey, all. Hope you're enjoying the new installments. It's occurred to me that maybe we could use a break.

So enjoy this brief interlude, from a long time ago, in a Quadrant far, far away.

Interlude 1: Galvanis VII

Vorta Field Supervisor's Report. Agent Semil aboard Battle Cruiser 31185.

We are on approach to Galvanis VII. Embedded operatives have reported regime change in the embattled Galvanian government that may be more amenable to our agenda in this administrative block. We have been dispatched to entreaty the new government to cease attempts at resistance. They could hardly do worse than their predecessors.



The reception hall was in greater disrepair than the dossier reports had prepared Semil for when he beamed down. Plaster had crumbled away from the arches and ceiling in wild abandon. The hastily boarded and reinforced windows had done little to prevent their shattering. Shards of fluorstained glass littered the floor.

Pity, Semil had it on good authority that those things were vaguely pleasing to even Vorta eyes.

The Galvanian welcoming party at the far end of the hall was clearly a ragtag bunch. A lone cloaked figure stepped forward from the beleagured crew, his arm in a sling.

"I am Golonk the Third. Newly appointed Archduke of Galvanis VII. Thank you for agreeing to parlay." The man put in clear effort to emanate an uncomplicated, facile pride and stoicism despite his shoddy surroundings and compatriots. A feint that Semil or anyone could see through. Still, Vorta training meant keeping up appearances of graciousness.

"A pleasure, Archduke! An immense pleasure, indeed." In striding across the room well ahead of his well-heeled Jem'Hadar guard, Semil demonstrated for the assemblage what truly politic gregariousness and confidence looked like.

"My name is Semil, on behalf of the Dominion." Semil always enjoyed flourishing his speech when introducing himself in such a manner. He had always felt that the dramatic flair underscored the grandiosity of an institution as august as the Dominion.

"And may I be the first to offer condolences on the loss of your brother, Archduke Sellundis. Well, the first from the Dominion, at any rate." He smiled in that Vorta way that any other species would view as obsequy.

"It was your shocktroops that killed him."

"And I'm certain they didn't do you the courtesy of offering condolences. The brutes." Semil gestured off-handedly at his Jem'Hadar guards, who paid precisely no mind to the proceedings.

"If you're done with the... pleasantry -- perhaps we could engage in the matter for which I've summoned you here today." Golonk motioned to the hastily arranged conference table, its hodgepodge of chairs communicating a certain desparation that Semil found charming.

Semil let himself be led to a particularly comfortable-looking, unscorched seat. "I have every appreciation for a negotiator unafraid of directness."

The Archduke sat opposite, in a clearly less comfortable, but substantially more imposing, regal, though battle-worn chair. "Let me get to the point. For centuries, Galvanis has been happy to accede to every demand--" Golonk caught himself "...every offer the Dominion has brought to us. This uprising was started by my brother. Now I can't atone for the choices Sellundis made. But he's gone now. And with him any resistance Galvanis would mount."

From practice negotiations in training, Semil was finding it terribly useful to "listen with his eyes" in situations like these. He had scored perfect marks for his eye listening skills.

"Archduke, if I may be so blunt - even with your brother deposed. Decomposed. Deposed. I can never keep the two straight -- but I disgress. Sellundis did not wage his rebellion alone. Surely, there must be other Galvanians..."

It was clear that Golonk had prepared for this. "A small, dedicated coterie surrounding my brother's regime. We are prepared to bring the conspirators to justice for their part in bringing such... misery." Golonk gestured out the boarded windows. "You must believe me when I say that the heart of Galvanis has always and truly remained with the Dominion."

Semil assessed the Archduke cooly through his unwavering smile.

"Your Highness, it would bring me no greater pleasure to see you and your world restored to their rightful place within the Dominion." Semil made an outstretched arm gesture that he always thought looked great in broadcast. "After all, what is the Dominion without inclusion? And what is inclusion, forbearing forgiveness?"

The other Agents were going to eat this up in the after action report.



Vorta Field Supervisor's Report. Agent Semil aboard Battle Cruiser 31185.

In orbit of Galvanis VII. I am pleased to report that the new Galvanian regime gives every assurance of their full capitulation and cooperation in resolving this crisis.

It is unfortunate that the Archduke's presentation of events so clearly contradicts our operative reports. A "small, dedicated coterie" could never sustain months of open insurrection without broad, popular support.

I can't decide whether I am more galled by the Galvanians' cowardice, or Archduke Golonk for believing we would ever even remotely believe such a blatant fabrication. I can hardly blame a leader for wishing to protect his constituents, or himself to be more direct - but for Founders' sake, man - at least put some basic effort into it. This is your planet's life at stake here.

I am proceeding immediately with extreme pacification.

Borath, please inform the Founders they were right - as they always are, in all things.

They're great, Starfish1! You'll always have fans here keeping up with your work!

The prospect of building and commanding large fleets of ships appeals to the Strategy gamer in me but I doubt this game will hold a candle to the immersive world STO.

Hrmm, well this is interesting. I did some digging through some of the other NGames game line-up, and have found that as you said, they appear to be largely browser based, and while the graphics are good for a browser level game, I don't think it will really compare in complexity to Star Trek Online.

For those interested, NGames library can be found here, and you can view screenshots of their other works:



After the Star Trek: Infinite Space browser based game was cancelled, I think it left an opening in the market for something similar, which is probably what this is going to shoot for. While I was excited for Infinite Space, and would've played it on my tablet as a supplement to STO, rather than a replacement, I'm not sure that this will live up to the hype that Infinite Space generated, unless this new developer acquired the game, sort of like the Perpetual / Cryptic arrangement.

Will be interesting either way! I doubt that STO will see much of an impact on their player base as you said... I think the game is in a different ball park entirely, but I could see myself playing it casually!

For those who haven't seen it, the cancelled project: Infinite Space had some cool gameplay, for a browser.. in some ways cooler than STO. YouTube link below! Hopefully this new game will pick-up where they left off!

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/06/16/ngames-teases-new-star-trek-mmo/

it looks like the battle between the Federation and the Klingon Empire will continue in fluidic space. Read the article above for the full article. Apparently this new iteration will be heavily influenced by combat, and Massively is speculating that it's going to be browser based.

So what is your feeling on this? Think it will hurt STO? Will you play it?

Personally, it sounds like too different of a game to even put a dent in STO. I'll probably give it a whirl, but it's all the other aspects of an MMO that make me like it; combat is pretty far down on the list.

I absolutely love them! I only wish that I still had the oversize color printed so I could print them out and bask in their fantastic glory!

Sorry, just seen this thread.

I hope they're of continued use to people. I often wonder if it's worth continuing to update the charts, so I'm pleased to see this thread. :)