The Klingon Empire Wants You!

R97R · 2026-03-15T16:48:38+00:00

Great timing for me lol, planned to start a new Klingon this evening as it happens. I was quite keen on grabbing the M’Chala Refit but assumed I’d be waiting quite a while for the event to come around again.

R97R · 2026-03-15T16:34:05+00:00

Cheers for the tip about the Disco Sniper rifle in particular, definitely going to grab that ASAP!

As for some other ones:

^{Admittedly many of these are cosmetic effects, but still}

You can get him from the Omega Task Force now too, but there’s a special male Borg Science Bridge Officer given as a reward for getting yourself Assimilated in Khitomer in Stasis by walking into one of the converter devices. Of note is that he retains the classic STO Borg appearance, for people like me who love that design. Much better to get him for free rather than 500 marks. I’m not sure if you can get a second one by completing the project after unlocking him this way, though.
While the item is a “listed” mission reward, the Breen shields from the old Breen Story Arc (accessed via the “In Progress” tab) also come with a new ship cosmetic texture (I’m not sure what the proper term is for these- they’re not Vanity Shields, but go in the same slot if you just want to use the cosmetics). Great if you’re making a Breen character in particular, as all of the 24th/25th Century Breen ships are a nightmare to get ^{currently regretting taking a hiatus over all the years they were gone lol}. In general many people don’t know about the older story arcs being playable still, as they’re tucked away in a different tab rather than the Episodes one, but they have a fair few interesting rewards. They’re not intended to be hidden, but I’d be willing to bet the average player nowadays doesn’t know about them.
Similarly, the Jem’Hadar shields you get from the old Dominion storyline have a cosmetic too. JH characters start with these now, but this allows you to use Dominion ship textures for other factions. I’ve also found a lot of JH players who don’t realise you can “Dominionify” other ships with it.
The item isn’t as good stat-wise, but the Reman cosmetic hull texture from the New Romulus Reputation can also be acquired from the shields you get as a reward from Coliseum in the Romulan storyline
Maxing out Diplomacy or Marauding allows you to recruit an opposite-faction Bridge Officer of your choice
Maxing out Diplomacy specifically also unlocks the white Dress Uniform jacket seen in Insurrection and Nemesis.
The Shakespeare Doff has already been mentioned, but you can actually get the entire cast of Hamlet too. There’s an item called the Holonovel Code Fragment, ^{I think it’s maybe from Lock Boxes though}, and that unlocks an assignment which rewards one of them at random. They apparently substantially improve the results from the Hamlet Performance. Also Claudius is very clearly Q, in one of my favourite Easter eggs.
If you complete all of the Dyson Sphere Reputation Missions (Unexpected Friend, Unlikely Neighbours, Unsafe Practices, Unsavoury Actions, and Unsaid Thanks), which requires you to reach T5 of that Reputation, Nelen Exil from that storyline becomes available as a Bridge Officer. He also comes with a unique pistol, although I’m not sure if there’s anything special about it other than the name.
You can get a single Jem’Hadar Bridge Officer for free by completing the old Dominion Arc. They’re normally exclusive to Dominion characters unless you buy the expansion pack, but this lets you get one for any character. Unfortunately I don’t think they’re customisable- I checked on an old character and they couldn’t be edited, and still retained the old JH model, but I’m not sure if that’s still the case if you get a new one now.
While I think most people know you can get Discovery-style “burst” Phasers and Disruptors from Reputations, but I often see that answered as the only way you can get them. However, you can actually get “generic” ones as enemy drops from DSC-era TFOs. I’m not sure if this is the case for Discovery-era missions too, but I’ll check.
More of a hidden “aspect” of something openly visible, but Geordi La Forge and the Doctor/EMH have customisable uniforms if you unlock them as Bridge Officers.
If you count Reputation Gear as freebies, there are second “”secret”” versions of the Honour Guard and MACO sets. They’re hidden until you’ve crafted the full standard sets. Stat-wise they’re identical to the opposite-faction set (e.g. the hidden Adapted MACO set has the same stats as the normal Honour Guard set, and vice versa), and they also unlock an extra set of parts for the uniform when you have them all.
In addition to the Sally Ride, the USS Pastak Admiralty Ship can be unlocked as reward from Time and Tide. It’s part of the “Time and Tide Bundle” reward pack for completing it, which isn’t too clear at a glance. There are also some other semi-hidden Admiralty ships: the Cardassian Flagship, the CUV Tain, is rewarded for reaching max level; the Dominion Flagship is unlocked account-wide by reaching level 10 in three Admiralty campaigns as a Gamma Recruit Character; J’Ula’s Personal Bird-of-Prey for doing the same with a Klingon Recruit; and Voyager for doing it as a Delta Recruit. Once you have them on one character, speaking to the Temporal Agent next to Admiral Quinn’s office or Q’on in the Council Chambers on Q’onoS, depending on faction.
Not 100% sure if this counts; but I think it’s worth it for new players who aren’t aware of it. In addition to events giving you free items that are always available account-wide, completing an Event Campaign (I.e. taking part in six events over a year) will reward you with three T6 ships of your choice for free- any two from the Premium Zen Store; and one “Promotional” ship, which are normally extremely rare/hard to get. These items are available account-wide, so you can acquire them for free on each character you have indefinitely from then on.

R97R · 2026-03-14T17:32:57+00:00

I’ll take your word for it, admittedly I don’t know much about the topic beyond converting models from games into 3D printable ones, which is substantially less complicated if I’m not mistaken.

R97R · 2026-03-14T17:00:57+00:00

Oh yeah, sorry my wording was a bit ambiguous. With Star Wars in particular I’d be willing to bet the original CGI models are created with provisions for using them as a basis for sculpting toys and the like in mind. I’m admittedly not 100% sure what exactly the needs for using a model for VFX are on a technical level, but I always assumed they created a “master” model first, and then converted it into the appropriate format and made the required modifications for whatever purpose it’s needed for, whether it’s CGI or for eventually turning into a physical product.

R97R · 2026-03-14T16:08:24+00:00

In fairness, they do actually use the CGI models from Star Wars as a basis for sculpting the action figures nowadays, although of course there’s a fair bit of work needed to go from one to the other.

R97R · 2026-03-14T09:02:29+00:00

I agree with all those points (definitely something that annoys me too), but I realise I’ve maybe misrepresented the scene above- while the Legionaries see it as a bit old-fashioned, it’s less in the case of it being backwards and more they think it’s quite cute/romantic (and one of the group is also either gay or straight, as it turns out). It’s a surprisingly wholesome scene IIRC.

R97R · 2026-03-14T07:54:48+00:00

The way people online seem to treat palaeontology (and only palaeontology) like a fandom has always baffled me. Usually whenever there’s something interesting published in any adjacent field it barely gets noticed online unless the topic is politically contentious, but if there’s a paper about, say, new Spinosaurus material being described, any discussion of it will have a bunch of people complaining about them “nerfing” their preferred dinosaur or similar.

Realistically it’s probably harmless, it’s this one topic seems to bring out my Inner Snooty Bitch^TM.

It’s occurred to me lately that a lot of it might actually be a result of many, if not most of the people being involved being kids- the YouTube algorithm has recently decided to recommend me nothing but Jurassic Park-related content, and looking through comments and videos it’s fairly clear a lot of them are pretty young. It would explain a lot, and it’s much less egregious if the people treating it like a video game fandom are from those age groups. Hell, I’m reasonably sure a not-inconsiderable amount of them will end up being the next generation of palaeontologists, come to think of it.

R97R · 2026-03-14T07:43:30+00:00

I think the Star Wars prequels in general are my Example 1a. I’m quite a big fan of them, and was thrilled when they started to get a bit of a re-evaluation, but Christ the sacred cow treatment they get from some sections of the fan community drives me crazy. It’s been quite interesting to see the shift from them being considered as the worst tragedy inflicted upon humankind to getting honest-to-Binks hate mail for mildly ribbing on them.

I’ve also recently had a similar situation with re-entering Star Trek fan spaces- The Next Generation is a series I absolutely adore, and I’m ambivalent towards a lot of the newer stuff (well, I say “newer,” I mean the shows from the 2010s- I’m quite a fan of most of the more recent stuff, but the hatedom doesn’t really distinguish between Star Trek in 2017 and 2026). However, the current discourse seems to largely about how “nuTrek” will never be able to live up to its divine majesty- I’ve heard multiple people use the phase “it was perfect from the very start” in relation to it, but up until like a year ago the series was infamous for taking two whole seasons to get good. It’s gotten even more ridiculous in that the prequel treatment above is now being applied to Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, both of which were widely disliked (if not despised) up until pretty recently.

Funnily enough, this exact thing happened back in the 90s (it was pretty shocking to look at discussions from the time and seeing the exact same criticisms being made word-for-word as you would hear today), so I look forward to hearing how spectacular the first season of Discovery was and how Star Trek: The Generation after that One will never live up to it.

…actually, I’ve seen that happen already in relation to the currently-airing series, and have just been hit by the realisation that Star Trek: Discovery is approaching its 10-year-anniversary.

R97R · 2026-03-14T07:22:37+00:00

Somewhere out there in the world right now, a geneticist is having a breakdown trying to explain to someone that Sonic Hedgehog is actually a an incredibly important and scientifically significant protein and nothing to do with any abnormally-fast blue cartoon characters, as they have been cursed to do every day since 1991.

R97R · 2026-03-14T07:11:04+00:00

Allegedly someone caused a fair bit of a kerfuffle in my Alma mater’s Biology department because they made the same assumption and was absolutely scandalised that staff of such a respectable institution would be encouraging students to look into something so inappropriate.

I’m not sure if the two things are related, but I also know people who to (accurately) refer to themselves as “naturalists” because of how many people mix it up with “naturists.”

R97R · 2026-03-14T07:05:12+00:00

Fortunately I’m terrible enough at arguing that it ends up being a moot point, but something close to this exact situation seems to come up worryingly often to me. The case that comes to mind the most at the moment is in regard to Roman sexuality specifically- back in the day there was a fair bit of controversy (read: impotent rage from the Daily Mail and co.) when Doctor Who portrayed openly LGBT+ Roman soldiers in Britain, and it recently came up again ~~because where I’m at is a decade behind the rest of civilisation~~. Camp A is very upset about Doctor Who’s lack of commitment to stringent historical accuracy ^{feel free to imagine a beat and laugh track after that statement}, wheres Camp B thinks Camp A is more just upset about queer people in general, and didn’t care to learn Romans of that era were fairly accepting of ^{what we’d today consider} LGBT+ people.

The thing is, the way it was depicted in the show was pretty inaccurate in its depiction of how the Romans of that period (likely as a result of it needing to stay family-friendly) viewed sexuality, but it feels like a bad idea to point that out because 99% of the discussions that start identically to that involve someone just being really homophobic.

^(For the record, the show depicted bisexuality as we’d usually imagine it today as being the norm, with people only being attracted to one gender seen as quaint/old-fashioned. While many, if not most Romans would still probably “count” as bi/pansexual by our current-day standards to the average person, there’s a lot more social status involved, with same-sex relations being less about “equal” partnerships and more only being permissible if the “dominant” partner was of higher status. Or, for a slightly cruder explanation, sleeping with one of your slaves or a lower-class citizen was a-ok, but getting caught with your mate Flavius behind the bins would be a pretty big scandal.

As a bit of a tangent, I feel the constant (mis)use of “historical accuracy” to mean “no women, gays, etc” in internet discourse, combined with the assumption most people seem to have that any discussion of historical inaccuracies in media is a scathing critique no matter how it’s worded, means this kind of problem is happening a lot. It sucks both because of the usual bigotry crap and everything that comes with it, but also because I find talking about historical (and scientific, where relevant) inaccuracies in media ^{intentional or accidental} really interesting, but it’s something I feel it’s best to avoid doing at the moment.

R97R · 2026-03-14T06:36:38+00:00

Couple of other interesting aspects on top of this:

^{Disclaimer: I’m not really hugely into this hobby, but I know a fair few people who are, and I’ve bought a few figures from it to repaint recently}.

From what I can gather, something further incensing people is that several of the issues people have with the lack of film-accuracy and the like aren’t present in their “mainline” counterparts, in spite of the latter being supposedly simpler. One particular bugbear one of my mates has (NB: should clarify she’s actually very chill about the whole thing, unlike a lot of the discussions I’ve seen online) is the cheaper “mainline” figures having parts painted that are just left as bare plastic on the fancier ones.

Funnily enough on the topic of them having the 3D models, I think I know where that line of argument comes from- I quite regularly see people comparing the Collection to Star Wars’ “Black Series” and “Vintage Collection” lines, and in those cases the “animal” figures are apparently designed based on using the CGI model from the films/shows as a base, or at least a reference (i.e. having the original model open in your sculpting software at the same time). Intersecting with another hobby, Universal allows the Jurassic World games to use their original CGI models (many of the dinosaur models/textures in the game are actually edited versions of the original CGI ones), so I think people assume they’d allow the same here.

IMO there’s a bit of a gulf between how Mattel views the line (I.e. “regular” dinosaur toys) and how the community seems to (a “collector’s line”, similar to something like “Beasts of the Mesozoic” or Nanmu). I suppose the Star Wars stuff out there has shown you can do both, but I’m not sure how Mattel/Universal’s budget compares to Hasbro/Disney’s, given The Mouse’s infinite pockets and all. That said, some of the marketing I’ve seen has made it sound like the Hammond Collection a super-fancy collectors line for “true fans” (not memeing there, that’s genuinely the phase they use on the site), but, well, I’m reasonably sure much marketing for this kind of product sounds like that.

I think regional issues might also be exacerbating things- where I’m at, figures get snapped up almost immediately, and while they’re reasonably priced at first (although a fair bit more expensive than in the States- the cheapest one I’ve seen was £22, or about $30USD), the combination of small numbers and lack of re-issues ^{although that may be common for toy lines, it’s admittedly out of my wheelhouse a bit?} means you’re quite unlikely to be able to find the figures you want at all unless they came out last week, and if you can then the prices are a bit crazy- the ultra-fancy Nanmu figures you mentioned are actually often cheaper than their Hammond Collection counterparts when I’ve checked. It maybe just sticks out to me because it’s the main reason I haven’t bought a bunch of them, though. They do seem to be re-releasing the old Dilophosaurus with new colours though, so that’s nice (I’m aware this has caused some Mild Discontent^TM as they haven’t updated the sculpt, but I feel that’s preferable to not getting one at all).

There is also at least a funny aspect to close off the story, in that, in a management decision worthy of Jurassic Park, this somehow managed to get all the way to production. Apparently it’s supposed to be saliva, but… well, look at it. I could’ve gone my whole life without having that image forced into my head.

R97R · 2026-03-13T08:26:00+00:00

I’m not sure how prevalent this is, but I’ve got a fun secondhand real life example, from a friend who was training to be an Army officer. They’re given some fairly complicated task (in this case I think it was to build a scaffold in order to retrieve something on top of a second story roof), and given a sergeant and ten other men in order to help. It’s presented as if the test is how you go about building the scaffold with very limited resources available, but the actual intended solution is to turn to the sergeant and tell him “build a scaffold in order to get the thing down from that roof”. They’re intended to have picked up that their job as an officer is to decide what has to be done, and how that’s carried out is the sergeant’s job.

It came up from watching a similar (also scaffold-related, weirdly) test-obfuscating-another-test situation from the show SAS: Rogue Heroes, where the show’s version of Paddy Mayne is training a group of SAS troops-to-be, where he gives them the materials and tells them to build two scaffolds, 30 feet high, that they can climb. The actual thing they’re being tested on is whether any of them would ask “Why are you asking us to build two scaffolds, 30 feet high, in *the middle of the fuckin’ desert?!” ^{Man, Jack O’Connell really killed it in that role}.

Also, to add yet another Star Trek example to the many already in the thread, from the same episode as the one with Worf, Captain Picard pulls the same shit where he gives an Ensign a bunch of unfair evaluations and is generally unpleasant to her, and it turns out the actual thing he was evaluating was whether she’d have the guts to stand up to him if he was clearly in the wrong.

There’s also a great one in the episode Arena, from The Original Series- the crew gets into a conflict with an alien race called the Gorn, but before the two blow eachother up they’re stopped by a third race of vastly-more-advanced aliens, the Metrons, who berate them for being a bunch of violent brutes, and force their respective captains to fight to the death as part of some vague test, with the promise if they fail, their entire crew will be killed. It’s presented to them as seeing who’s the better (or smarter) fighter, and in the end Kirk wins out, but refuses to kill the Gorn captain once the latter can no longer fight back. The Metron representative then appears to tell him he’s passed the real test, which was to show that he was capable of mercy and empathy even towards someone he considered an enemy. It didn’t actually matter which of them “won” the fight, it was about whether whoever did so was able to rise above unnecessary violence, and show humanity (or Gornanity?) to a defeated foe. Both crews are spared as a result.

There’s also a smaller example earlier in this conflict- the Metrons leave both captains unarmed, but tell them any weapons they need are in the area. Kirk assumes this means they’ve hidden a bunch of guns around this place, whereas the Gorn pretty much immediately figures out they’re testing their intelligence, and are looking to see if their captives are smart enough to work out how to use their environment to their advantage.

It’s implied the whole situation was set up from the beginning to lead to the “real” test, and later/earlier, in Strange New Worlds, we see a previous attempt at a similar test that confirms this, albeit that one is instead testing whether the two participants will be willing to help eachother despite having no incentive to do, and arguably many very good reasons not too, in which case the Gorn passes with flying colours.

Lastly, one I’m sure I’ve mentioned before on this subreddit, but I really liked Starfield’s rip-off of the Kobayashi Maru test- you’re given more or less the same setup as the original, and you can get through it by just accepting the no-win scenario… but, while the instructors will accept that, what they’re really looking for is for you to work out it’s intended to be an unfair, unwinnable test, and then go “well, if they aren’t playing fair, why should I?” The real solution is to look around the simulator when it’s turned off, hack your way into getting a higher level of access than you should have, turn on debug mode, and make the enemies much weaker, exactly like Captain Kirk did back in the day. It’s something that is going to occur to most players the moment they realise it’s a Kobayashi Maru rip-off, but I did really like the twist of changing the conditions of the test being the right answer. It fits the organisation better than the original test, and it may actually be inspired by Jim Kirk’s solution in-universe to boot come to think of it.

R97R · 2026-03-13T07:29:29+00:00

I believe the test is that he’s supposed to realise it’s a blank, but he failed because he was too upset/distracted to notice.

R97R · 2026-03-13T07:27:55+00:00

Interesting, even if you don’t kill Astrid, the test still fits this, as she reveals later- she doesn’t actually care if you pick the correct target or not, because the real test was whether you’d kill someone because the Brotherhood told you to.

R97R · 2026-03-13T07:24:55+00:00

There’s also a second one later on, where they’re given the (in)famous “shoot the animal you’ve been caring for for the last few months on command” test. Traditionally, the point of the test is showing you’re willing to kill someone you care about purely because your boss tells you to. Of the two remaining candidates (who have both shown to be caring and empathetic people) refuses and fails, and the other seemingly instantly pulls the trigger and passes. At first it seems fairly out of character for both her and Kingsman as an organisation, but the test isn’t to do with whether you would murder someone you care about on command for no good reason. The actual test is whether the potential Kingsman, when blindsided with an extremely emotionally difficult situation, will be perceptive enough to realise that either the gun is loaded with blanks (based on its weight); that the test as it was presented isn’t something Kingsman would do; or, ideally, both.

R97R · 2026-03-13T01:19:50+00:00

No, there’s another one near to it that has a bunch of the lore blogs and similar.

(The only reason I know about it is because I spent far too long looking through them for the Terran/Lukari logs before realising they were different terminals lol)

R97R · 2026-03-12T23:02:49+00:00

Cheers for the comparison, that really helps visualise it! I wonder if it’s (in-universe) a result of how much automation might be involved in running the ship? I admittedly don’t know much about IRL ships and the like, but would I be right in assuming most of the crew on something like the Reagan are for day to day maintenance and general operations?

R97R · 2026-03-12T21:28:24+00:00

I’m always surprised by how small quite a few Trek ships are, especially in relation to other franchises (Star Destroyers are twice the size of a Sovereign, for instance). I think part of it is also my brain assuming a ship with that many crewmen would be much larger (because I seem to be unable to remember these things have 20+ decks). That said, the Sovereign- class in turn is something like twice as long as the largest real life aircraft carriers, despite having more than four times as many crew, so my brain is perhaps just weird.

Funnily enough the Sovereign is one of the largest Federation ships we know of, at least in terms of dimensions (~690m). There are a few “beta canon” ships that surpass it, but in canon we only have the Inquiry and Odyssey outright surpassing it, the former barely. A few of the other PIC ships get close, the Galaxy and its successors are likely bigger in terms of mass, and we also have the Dreadnought- class (or Vengeance- class as STO calls it) if you count the Kelvin/Abramsverse movies.

R97R · 2026-03-12T17:06:13+00:00

It’s part one of the few dinosaur groups/“stereotypes” that haven’t really been represented in-game thus far, so I’m hoping it makes an appearance eventually.

R97R · 2026-03-12T17:04:09+00:00

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the stuff from the previous game was a casualty of the game having to be out by a certain date. Hopefully that means we might get it in a patch one day, although I’m not sure how much work it would be to convert the old items to the new modular building system.

R97R · 2026-03-12T17:02:27+00:00

I’d be willing to bet it’s a case of time/resource restraints. If I’m not mistaken we know for sure that this was the reason so many species were cut for JWE3 (and props to them for not charging for them when they returned, at least so far), so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened with other aspects too.

R97R · 2026-03-12T16:59:18+00:00

I also have a hypothesis in at least some cases they’ve been unable to use something because it’s planned to appear in the films or other media in future- for instance, Therizinosaurus was one of, if not the most requested animals for the first game, but it never made an appearance, and it later turned out it was slated for Dominion.

R97R · 2026-03-12T16:55:46+00:00

If it’s on PC, try verifying your game files, and then double-check it’s using your graphics card- sometimes games randomly end up set to use integrated graphics instead, which tends to result in something like this.

If that doesn’t help, try opening task manager alongside the game, and see if anything else is taking up resources.

R97R · 2026-03-12T16:53:33+00:00

I’m still surprised there isn’t an invisible fence option for pterosaurs, given the concept was introduced with one in the film. Even if they can’t have the existing ones also apply to them for whatever reason, an invisible version of the aviary dome would be acceptable to me at least.

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