STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

[X] The Short Way (aka the "Fucking Seriously? Star Trek V?" Route)
[X] The Middle Path (aka the "I too Like Babylon 5" route]

You can "fix-it" by firing canon out of a cannon.

We can still keep the themes, events from some of the episodes, etc. etc. But 70 years is a death sentence on its own, so it only makes sense to aim for an alternate route regardless of how the end goal is itself a dangerous mission.

DragonCobolt said:

"Do not...repeat...do not get into a drinking contest with Neelix," Tom Paris groaned, rubbing his temples slowly, a heavy cup of faint pink liquid sitting before him and smelling...absurdly foul. Harry, who was about to ask his new friend about that, instead faded off into silence as Tom picked up the cup, pinched his nose, and downed it all in one go. He shook his whole body, smacked his cheeks, and let out a 'wuuugh' noise. He smacked his lips, then nodded. "Okay. The room's not spinning anymore."

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Therapist, wearing only a shirt and slurring slightly due to hangover: "Now remember, Daddy Neelix isn't real, Daddy Neelix can't hurt you."

Daddy Neelix, standing in the background and mixing a breakfast cocktail whilst grinning-

[X] The Short Way (aka the "Fucking Seriously? Star Trek V?" Route)

holy shit, people, I was joking, that was the joke option!!!

You should know better than to joke with voters!

[X] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")

Running into Seven and the Borg kids is what's pushing me towards the side of the long haul. Getting involved in Dominion shenanigans could be fun but DS9 covered the Dominion War well and this is ultimately a Voyager quest not a DS9 quest.

Skippy said:

(2) I think advancement systems are usually a good idea for quests, because they give voters the wonderful feeling of having gained shinies, and having something to bicker over. In general if you can stand the effort, I think it would be a good idea. Maybe not with full character sheets for all the bridge crew, as that could be cumbersome, but just a simplified set of "traits" you can gain as upgrades, or something along those lines. As we're cut off, ship upgrades should probably focus more on exotic/weird technology that we've found on our travels, rather than more generic upgrades to existing systems which we might find if we were in the Federation.

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The crew actually holding onto the technology of the week and using it to improve their own equipment would both be a nice way of adding power and would serve as another fix to an aspect of the original show which tended to ignore continuity.

DragonCobolt said:

holy shit, people, I was joking, that was the joke option!!!

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And yet, it was presented as a serious option by the characters in the story. So if they don't consider it a joke option, I don't either.

Edit: You can still just veto the vote if you really don't want it as an option.

I'm kind of torn here.

Objectively, taking the short path seems like it is the most Starfleet thing to do - an audacious plan premised on our crew's technical savvy, mastery of obscure spatial phenomena and ability to improvise and adapt to a dangerous situation, which allows us to save everyone. It also has the highest chance of meaning we finish the Quest before the Homeworld RPG comes out and DC loses interest.

On the other hand, out of character, I kind of do want to see us going the long way around, as it is closest to the Quest's premise of being a "fixit" of Voyager. It also means there is a huge wealth of material kind of readymade for us to adapt, which should not be underestimated in terms of making a Quest easier to write. We can have the fun of taking the more memorable Voyager episodes, and turning them into something resembling coherent storytelling.

So, yeah, still mulling it over.

[X] The Middle Path (aka the "I too Like Babylon 5" route]

DragonCobolt said:

holy shit, people, I was joking, that was the joke option!!!

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You've made your bed! Now lie in it!

[x] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")

A group of Starfleet personnel and ex-Starfleet personnel choosing to go on a long ass journey through uncharted space, that will let them discover the strangest new worlds, newest life, and go where no Starfleet has gone before?



edit: Also it's less work for DC.

DragonCobolt said:

holy shit, people, I was joking, that was the joke option!!!

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Okay, this cinches it for me:
[X] The Short Way (aka the "Fucking Seriously? Star Trek V?" Route)

(Fast forward to us radically underestimating the spatial "catapult" effect with modern warp drives, and the Great Barrier catapulting us into another galaxy altogether.)

[X] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")

Skippy said:

Okay, this cinches it for me:
[X] The Short Way (aka the "Fucking Seriously? Star Trek V?" Route)

(Fast forward to us radically underestimating the spatial "catapult" effect with modern warp drives, and the Great Barrier catapulting us into another galaxy altogether.)

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Worse, we get tossed into the past and then the quest becomes the Discovery Fix It Quest.

While the route to the dominion has the most opportunity for new content by going through space that has never appeared, it does mean that all fix-it situations with any canon material would be gone, unless we have that canon stuff or proxies shifted into our new route. So....

[X] Long way

CyberEnby said:

A group of Starfleet personnel and ex-Starfleet personnel choosing to go on a long ass journey through uncharted space, that will let them discover the strangest new worlds, newest life, and go where no Starfleet has gone before?

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The problem here is that while in normal Starfleet they get to go home, here they can't do that. Or resupply. Or gain repairs or support. Exploring alone for decades at a time is a radically more difficult and fraught path than exploring for a 5 year mission, and even those frequently return home as well. Even if some of the crew is up for basically exploring till they die, most Starfleet personnel probably aren't nearly so extreme in their desire to explore that they'll put it above all else.

Also, if they never return home, who will they share their exploration with?

edit: Also it's less work for DC.

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I don't believe it works that way. The other two routes don't stop DC from using or tweaking canon material, and sticking to the canon rout still requires a lot of work from DC in re-writing things to fit the quest anyways. (And uh... the quest dies as soon as the Homeworld RPG comes out. So we're likely not going to even make it far past canon-adjacent space anyways.)

~To be fair, it's a joke that it's a joke~

[x] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")

[X] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")

It's not called a Fix It quest for nothing after all.


However

I am unsure of how out of the three options this one would be picked IC. OOC I see the appeal but honestly? IC I'm unsure of how you would work this.

[X] The Short Way (aka the "Fucking Seriously? Star Trek V?" Route)

Revan4221X said:

[X] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")

It's not called a Fix It quest for nothing after all.


However

I am unsure of how out of the three options this one would be picked IC. OOC I see the appeal but honestly? IC I'm unsure of how you would work this.

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Yeah, I'm in a similar place honestly.

The issue for me is one of suspension-of-disbelief, and in terms of character motivations rather than something less important like technobabble. It feels hard to imagine these characters, who are smart, deciding to take the "effectively a life sentence without some lucky happenstance" option without a good reason. Meanwhile going for Sha'Ka'Ree... seems difficult to imagine as being that daunting to these characters, who are sitting around on the planet where they defeated one godlike energy being two weeks ago.

If there was a genuine desire to use the long extended cruise as an exploration mission, I'd get it, but it seems like a lot of the crew (understandably) want to go home more than they want to survey nebulae or uncontacted cultures. I can't imagine a smarter Janeway not rolling the hard six to get them home as quickly as possible, with less risk of losing many of them on the way - if there is one defining character trait she has in her very uneven writing, which should carry forward here, it's her audacious risk taking in tight spots.

So yeah, as much as I kind of want to see how this crew would react to the Voth, or the Hirogen, or Species 8472, or so-on... I want to vote for an option which makes the most sense to me in terms of what our characters would go for, because DC is a good writer and I'm already invested in them.

Honestly, the best justification I can come up with that feels real to me for the Long Way might be something like Q showing up, and saying if we don't pick it, we will lose the chance to save many people who we would have met and helped on our journey. That feels like something that might motivate this crew to effectively willingly sign their lives away.

Well, the long way has the following advantages

1) It's safest
2) the Borg are an X-risk for humanity so observing them this deep in their territory is prime Federation goals
3) Borg have highly advanced travel systems, so spotting and using one is not an unreasonable plan
4) The other plans are...like, weirdly, way more dangerous.

The Great Barrier is no joke, and we have no idea what's in the Gamma Quadrant. The Borg are scary, but they are a KNOWN threat.

Starfleet has a saying: "It's always what you don't see that gets ya" so a plan that minimizes unexpected risk is pretty easily pitched.

EDIT: Also, fun fact, parallax fits as a title despite this being about prepping to go because parallax is about getting many POVs to understand movement in space.

Actually, whilst we're on the subject, isn't a Sovereign class a top of the line Federation cruiser built specifically to fight the Borg, with a lot of novel technology in it? Basically the most advanced ship we have at this point which isn't actually a protoype?

Now, I realise I am pulling an "arguing with the GM about already established plot information in their own quest thread", always a bold strategy, but OOC I'm not sure how to square the idea that the Borg would not try to assimilate us, if they had an opportunity to.

[X] The Middle Path (aka the "I too Like Babylon 5" route]

You could always write in that Starfleet has encountered the Dominion to make it so that there is a solid in character reason not to go towards the Gamma Quadrant. Again, canon Voyager did feature a holodeck simulation in the second season where a Jem'Hadar attack ship was featured.

Skippy said:

Actually, whilst we're on the subject, isn't a Sovereign class a top of the line Federation cruiser built specifically to fight the Borg, with a lot of novel technology in it? Basically the most advanced ship we have at this point which isn't actually a protoype?

Now, I realise I am pulling an "arguing with the GM about already established plot information in their own quest thread", always a bold strategy, but OOC I'm not sure I buy the idea that the Borg would not try to assimilate us, if they had an opportunity to.

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You're thinking about the Defiant. While the Sovereign featured originally in First Contact there's nothing to say she was built to fight Borg, whereas Sisko's baby explicitly was.

Skippy said:

Actually, whilst we're on the subject, isn't a Sovereign class a top of the line Federation cruiser built specifically to fight the Borg, with a lot of novel technology in it? Basically the most advanced ship we have at this point which isn't actually a protoype?

Now, I realise I am pulling an "arguing with the GM about already established plot information in their own quest thread", always a bold strategy, but OOC I'm not sure how to square the idea that the Borg would not try to assimilate us, if they had an opportunity to.

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Oh, they WILL assimilate your ship, immediately, if they notice you.

But again, a single ship is, from their perspective, like bacteria. They do not care.

The reason is actually fairly simple: Over millennia, the borg response has been honed and they know that assimilation is...kind of destructive. It's fast, yes. It's efficient, yes. But it also has failure rates. A species that makes Sovereigns is worth assimilating - but a single Sovereign is not worth noticing unless it draws attention and causes damage because assimilation processes are destructive.

Like, they're more likely to get a charred wreck and a few hints of technology than the actual technology.

This does mean that, knowing this, you do have an...interesting bargaining chip. If you can find out how to make a galactic sized brain even notice you're talking.

[X] The Middle Path (aka the "I too Like Babylon 5" route]

Of the 7 seasons of Voyager, this path would share about the first 3 seasons before trekking into new content. A lot of canon content can quickly be reworked to still be relevant, could bring in some DS:9 crossovers, and we could still be subjected to Borg-Space-Time-Bullshit. Also, being the area of Borg Space doesn't mean that it is all the space we will find Borg, so 7 of 9 and the early Borg arc are still on the table.

Middle and Long still place us smack dab in Kazon Space for a good length of time as well.

For the IC reasons, the long way through Borg Space is something queasy and stressful considering how long you'd be going through it. More stressful than a US submarine operating in USSR waters during the cold war. While in theory the Voyager shouldn't be harassed by the Borg, one wrong sensor ping or anomaly and the entire collective could bear down on all sides- and being how often anomalies tend to happen on Fed ships that could sound like an unreasonable gamble to a lot of non-science crew (also the Maquis.) Janeway would have her views and reasons for proposing this route as the safest and many science crew would likely agree with her conclusions based on the background, but the more your background deviates from that (like being a tactical officer) the more insane it starts to sound.

In that same way, going by the short path sounds like poking the bear IC and I don't know if that would fly or be something even seriously considered despite the chance at getting home quickly.

The middle route looks on paper to be safer if you don't view Borg Space as safe, and 20 years might be more than what people signed on for but would be in line with a full tour and retirement. It is filled with the risk of the unknown but that just means being more flexible. Ironically, I think this would be more attractive to the crew more grounded in tactical backgrounds in the academy, and even engineering- courses that instill the need to be highly flexible to make things work- than the science officers.

So from my perspective there is a strong narrative reason for the crew to be divided between those two paths.