One down; second soon

I finishd Belsavis, the first of three planets that are part of the third and final chapter of all of the class storylines with my Sith Warrior character; second to play. Only two more planets to go, and the third one doesn't even have a Bonus Series (although there's the finale and a handful of other non-planet missions to work in there.) I was a little shocked at how quickly it went down; in only two or three days—days, I'll mention where I worked full time and had some busy personal commitments in the evening too—I did all of the Belsavis Heroic missions, all of the planetary story missions, all of the class missions, even the exploration missions, and then did the Bonus Series. I feel like I just did Belsavis with my Knight only a week or so ago (which is true; I'm playing a lot right now) and the first time through it felt like it took longer, even if the missions were different. Just about the only thing that I didn't do that I did with the knight, although this only took a few minutes really, was wander around the map to uncover the whole thing as far as it could be reached.

So, yeah—I've got some experience tinkering with some of the other classes in the past too, where I studiously avoided the force-using classes for whatever reason. And I've watched an awful lot of playthrough videos over the years on Youtube. I think I can say something about what class to play and why at this point, even if I'm still a far cry away from playing all eight of them all the way through. I'll put out the order that I've chosen for my playthrough and why, I suppose, although of course, naturally I'm leapfrogging rather than playing one through non-stop and then moving on to the next. As I go through the post "main story" stuff with my first two classes, I'll start on the next two immediately.

1. Jedi Knight. This is considered the most iconic story, and this is the character that is kinda sorta "in canon" assumed to be the one who actually goes through the expansion packs. Often considered, "KotOR 3" because of this, from a story perspective, it's probably the absolute best to go through first. However, it's not perfect; given that it's a melee rather than ranged combat class, it's a little bit harder to use than some of the other classes. In addition to this, the character is so bland, boring, and lacking in personality that he's really not a great choice to be the masthead for the entire game with the most iconic of the stories. That said, I still think it's the best choice for a story-first type gamer (as opposed to a more MMO style gamer) to play through. Kira as the default love interest is a classic love interest; and let's face it, Star Wars needs to be a swashbuckling romance; a kind of Sabatini novel set in space, in order to work (this is a big problem with Luke Skywalker's story arc in the original trilogy; when they made the change to pawn Leia off on Han and not let Luke have a love interest, that was a major blow to the credibility of the story as a classic story.)

2. Sith Warrior. As kind of the dark mirror of the Jedi Knight, the Sith Warrior is an obvious second choice, and his story is also very iconic and classic Star Wars. I actually prefer to play him a little less on-the-nose petty evil and more of a pragmatist working within a corrupt system (the Sith Empire) and mostly ignoring the light/dark implications of the choices you make. (Although most of them will end up being light even so if you're not some kind of weirdo psychopath yourself, thinking that the darker choices make sense.) One way that the story doesn't work, building a bit on my comments for the Jedi Knight above is that the "default" love interest, Vette, may well be kinda cute in personality, but I just don't really like making love to aliens, so I'm working on the Jaesa angle. The dark side Jaesa is kind of interesting in a twisted, disturbing kind of way, but the light side Jaesa, which doesn't pay out until literally the very end of the game, at the end of the Onslaught expansion, is among the best romances in the game.

3. Smuggler. This fairly classic swashbuckler/pirate/crime lord style story is one of the more attractive ones, and the witty banter and dialogue seems to often be some of the best in the game. Amusingly, the smuggler character has single-planet romance options; he can leave a trail of broken hearts all through the galaxy, which is kinda sorta unique to this character, although a handful of other characters have a handful of single-planet romance options. Risha is the main love interest, however, although I recommend getting a reskin if you can. I'm qualified to buy the blond reskin in the Cartel market, so as soon as I go through her very first cut scene, I'll pop into the fleet and pick that up so I can have her run around as a prettier version of herself first. I played most of the first two planets way back when that's all you could do with this game on free-to-play (and I did it as a girl character too, gack) and it really sold me on the idea that Star Wars can actually be better without the Force and lightsbers. Although I like the way the character was written, a combination of the writing and the limitations of the medium make the character come across as just a bit too passive and beta for all the action that he's capable of getting, though.

4. Agent. I'm actually on the fence if I want to do this one as part of my leapfrog options or the bounty hunter, which I've played quite a bit of as an alt. The agent is rumored to be the first story written for the game, and in most respects, it's the most ambitious; a kind of James Bond in space type character, with three different (although related) story arcs for each major chapter of the main plot. The first one has a 24-like foil the terrorists vibe, while chapter 2 is a psychogical thriller with mad-science tones, and chapter 3 is the big-old globalist (galaxy-wide, in this case) conspiracy kind of story. While the character himself isn't nearly as dashing as the smuggler, he's got this kind of much colder, scarier vibe to him that gives him some of the charm of the darker James Bonds that we've seen; it really is quite well done. That said; again, the romance options, which is an important part of any good Star Wars story (and any good James Bond story, for that matter.) Kaliyo is the default one, and she's a hot mess of drama and baggage. Not a pleasant or attractive girl at. all. Just a horrible choice. However, much later in the story you pick up Raina Temple. Slap a customization on her (#4 is available, luckily, right after you pick her up, and #9 is great too, if you can find it.) and you're good to go. She actually seems like a likable character too, which makes the inclusion of Kaliyo all the more baffling. The only explanation I can think of is that whomever was in charge of that aspect of the story is too irreconcilably beta to have any understanding of what an attractive woman is actually like.

5. Jedi Consular. While the Jedi Knight is sometimes considered the prototypical "heroic Jedi" this one is sometimes described as an "average Jedi." Some people seem to really like this story, but I've heard a lot of others say that it's a bit slow and underwhelming. I figure by the time I come back around to it I'll be in the mood for another Force character, but I'm not expecting to really love this story so much. But we'll see; maybe it'll surprise me. Scuttlebutt is that the default romance option, Nadia Grell, while a little bit funny looking may be one of the sweetest and most likable of the girl romance options.

6. Sith Inquisitor. I don't have a lot of info on this class story either, except that it comes across as perhaps a little too passive; doing too much of someone else's step and fetchit, and supposed to be a double-crossing genius but who can't see obvious plot twists that the players can. Again; I'll play it because I'm planning on playing them all, but I don't have really high expectations on this one really. Not sure what to do with the romance either. The default is the Togruta gal, but I don't really love romancing aliens too much. Maybe I'll hold out and romance Lana Beniko with this character?

7. Trooper. Another class that is often considered one of the poorer ones; a strong start and strong finish, but an awful lot of draggin in between. Plus, the concept just doesn't appeal to me too much. I'll almost certainly not change my mind about putting this one off until nearly the end.

8. Bounty Hunter. The only reason this one is so far back is because I know so much about the story and have played a considerable amount of it with a character who I flubbed up and locked out my companion storylines before finishing them. I actually quite like almost everything about this guy; a laconic alpha of occasionally dubious morality with a very cute sidekick/romance option played by none other than Party of Five and Mean Girls star Lacey Chabert. Also, I want to have the best ability to have loads of cosmetic options, so playing it late means that I will have everything collected by all of the other classes that they didn't or couldn't use available for this bad boy to take on. 

I'm somewhat amused

There's something dodgy with the scale. I'm using the Agent ship from Old Republic, although I could do this with any of the six ships; look at the cutaway version first. This is consistent with my experience of playing the game and seeing the ship both from outside and inside.

However, the official descriptions describe them as much bigger, and these images show people that... must be only about two feet tall. Talk about some weird scaling issues!

Old Republic Update

Not that anyone else cares, as I'm way late on this given that the game is coming up on 10 years old in 2021 sometime, but my Old Republic progress continues apace. I finished, just this morning, actually, the class story for the Jedi Knight, which is considered probably the most iconic and classic of the class storylines. Sadly, the Jedi Knight is also one of the most bland and boring of the characters, and a lot of the missions that he's required to do are hoaky and silly, as are his responses to them. It's as if tiny children tried to come up with moral dilemmas which normal people just find asinine, for the most part. That can kind of be ignored, a bit, and some of it isn't the Knight anyway, it's the Republic class story that is often worse than the class story in this regard (and the exploration missions, which although they give you a handful of fetchit quests, actually bring down the writing quality average considerably because they're usually pretty stupid.)

Anyway, one down; seven to go. The Sith Warrior is starting chapter three, so he's within striking distance of finishing up too. I actually intend to take both of them through the expansions, but I seriously doubt that I'll take all of the characters through them, because ugh. Too much repetition. 

But what to do after finishing the story with the Sith Warrior? Do I want to leapfrog back to the Knight and do some of the epilogue stuff like Ilum, Section X, the Black Hole, etc. and then leapfrog back to the Warrior to do the same again? Or do I want to start a more complicated leapfrogging by adding the Smuggler and Agent prologues into the mix first? With a four character leapfrog, my progress between the four will be slower, and I do want to get to at least Chapter 9 of Fallen Empire with at least one character so I can start opening all of these Heroic crates that I have and distributing whatever armor I pull out of them to the other characters still coming. Which means that I'll probably keep the Agent and Smuggler stuff moving a little slower; I'm thinking that maybe I'll do the epiloge stuff first, then the Smugger/Agent prologues, and then moving into expansions with the two knight/warrior characters. I think according to this plan, I'll get to the crate opening stuff after the smuggler and agent have finished chapter 1, which means anything that I open up that would look good on them can be worn through chapters 2 and 3 and however much of the expansion content I decide to do with those two characters.

I have not, you may notice, thought too far ahead beyond that, because obviously I still have four more classes to do after that; the other Jedi and Sith classes and the trooper and bounty hunter. Who will all benefit enormously from having much more choice of rare armor and weapon cosmetic items, and who therefore may look quite a bit cooler than my "main" characters who had to blaze the trail first without the benefit of being able to follow someone else who unlocked a bunch of crap for them already.

I do really enjoy a lot of the cosmetic stuff, to be honest with you. Star Wars, even the bad movies like the sequel trilogy and to a lesser extent the prequel trilogy always got at least one thing pretty right; the visual design. That said, there are some even cooler things in this game than in the movies, at least conceptually. Although often held back by the limitations of the medium. For quite a while now, my Jedi Guardian has had a black core blue lightsaber crystal with a big, chunky Onderon pummeler's hilt (I think that's what it's called anyway. Regardless, I like the look of it quite a bit.) This makes it kind of look like a darksaber that's blue instead of white, which is a really cool look, by the way. In fact, I like it so much that I've decided all of my force characters will have a variant of the black-core crystals. My Sith Marauder has two black core orange crystals, which are ferocious looking and super cool, and I need to get a hold of the black core green and purple crystals for my other Jedi and Sith characters with their double sabers respectively.

I also had a bit of a strange affectation with my Jedi Knight where I refused to dress him in those dumb brown robes. I have six alternate outfit designed, and I did relent a little bit and have a charcoal gray jedi robe as one of the later ones that I added. In fact, for quite a long time; the first two planets, basically, I wore the craftable Terenthium Onslaught armor followed by the Xonolite armor, with the head uncovered, which gave him a more of a Han Solo scoundrel kind of look. I did eventually come up with my own alternative Jedi classic outfit when I got some kind of dressy tunic of sorts that's mostly tan but with goldish accents. I gave him one of the headbands to look a bit like a crown (although there's an even cooler one in the tactical sets that really does look like a crown; time to upgrade eventually—when I want to spend a million credits and three thousand tech fragments on it, which won't be right away. I've spent too much there between my two characters and my tech fragment budget in particular is a bit depleted.) But mostly, I figure an action oriented knight would wear action-oriented clothing, not peasant robes. That was one of the few major misteps Lucas made on visual design; deciding that rather than Ben Kenobi wearing clothes that looked exactly like Uncle Owen's style because he was living in the same environment in hiding, that that's actually what Jedi dressed like. So, Uncle Owen dresses like a Jedi, even though he's just a dirt poor peasant farmer in a galactic backwater. Maybe he raided Qui-Gonn's closet when he was last on Tatooine or something. 

I did also do a white robe highlighted with blue while on Hoth, but mostly because I thought it looked warm and I happened to get it at the right time to wear it for that planet.

I still think that the way to save Star Wars from itself is to start doing stuff that takes place as far in the future after the movies we have now as the Old Republic is in the past. But maybe borrow some of the color visual design elements that Old Republic did, which make it look familiar yet also a little different to emphasize that yes, this is Star Wars, but it's separated in time from the Star Wars that you know. 

On the other hand, the super exaggerated spikes and pauldrons that a lot of the design elements have are really stupid and need to be toned way down.

Ad Astra armor

 Early on I made, as an example, a Cilindarean commando suit. Think of it as a fully loaded Mandalorian warrior suit, or maybe a bit like Warmachine from Marvel. (Really, they're pretty similar in most respect, except that the Star Wars versions probably have less ammo for their bigger weapons, and there's no such thing as the repulsor blasts.) I'm heading towards the crew of a ship that are iconic for Ad Astra, and it includes two main characters who are partners as well as their associated sidekicks and others who make up their crew. All in all, maybe a half dozen characters, maybe one or two more if you include a droid or two. One of them is an ethnic janissary, and although the janissaries and the Cilindareans aren't exactly the same, I'm using the Cilindarean armor that I already devised in the m20 game to represent janissary traditional armor too; the two groups are related culturally in a somewhat uneasy rivalry yet also alliance kind of fashion, and although janissaries are much less likely than Cilindareans to hire themselves out as mercenary bands, considering themselves blessed to have won their freedom and happy to keep it as armed and very capable militias on their colony worlds, a Cilindarean and a janissary are meant to be more or less equivalent as a military unit.

The second half of this partnership, though, is a renegade Serean knight; one who probably grew up on a planet of one of the colonies and has had, since at least the time of his parents, little connection to his Serean culture, having rejected it and embraced the Christian religion of the Bernese and others of the old Marian Empire tradition (some of the Revanchists are a type of heretic Christian, but most of them have abandoned their faith within the last three or four generations or so.) What kind of gear would a Serean knight (or for that matter, a knight generally) be expected to have, especially one who runs as a kind of privateer/smuggler as a living? And how to do I make sure that his combat effectiveness is about as good as that of the janissary with his fully kitted out suit?

I refer you, again, before we begin, to the m20 document that has the rules for the game, specifically the equipment page. So, let's get started. I think a knight in Ad Astra isn't exactly like a Medieval knight, with the heaviest armor available, but he's also not like a Jedi who just wears dumb brown robes. This character (name TBD) wear a black ballistic cloth flight suit with some embedded shielded plates on them, with another padded jacket, tunic or vest on top of that, which has a built in energy shield. While his traditional weapons are his psionic sword and shield, he also carries a heavy radium pistol, a number of grenades, maybe some additional smaller pistols in another holster or two, and knives in his boot sheathes. He's probably got a helmet, but may not always wear it, prefering often to simply put up the hood of his jacket.

Because psionic powers are penalized with any armor heavier than light, this description of armor will be (and honestly sounds like, anyway) light armor, +4 to AC. This is a 2,000 credit base cost. The really expensive addition is the energy shield, which is unusual on a personal armor set, especially a light armor set (although notably, nothing in the rules precludes it, just setting stuff that says it's unusual.) This adds Damage Reduction 10 against radium weapons and adds an additional 10,000 credits to the cost. (For reference, my fully loaded Cilindarean battle suit costs 18,575.) The knight suit would also have a commlink for 50 credits on one wrist bracer or gauntlet, and a utility belt for an additional 250. It would have, in particular for this character, active shadow camouflage, giving him an armor affinity for Stealth (2,000 credits) and the ballistic cloth is especially treated by psionic sages and warlocks to give it the ability to absorb small amounts of kinetic energy and store it for later use (seen, kinda sorta, in the Black Panther's suit in the Marvel movies.) This gives him also the Acrobatics affinity, so that's another 2,000 credits.

He doesn't have a jet pack, but I imagine he owns some kind of small speeder and keeps in "garaged" on the ship when not in use, and he has an optional face shield that would look very similar to the Winter Soldier's face mask that serves as a sensor and HUD interface as well as a breath mask (Perception affinity, +2,000 and 250 respectively.)

This armor, then is certainly in the same ballpark as his partner's fully loaded janissary suit; it's 16,300 not counting the mask and 18,550 with it. I'm actually a little on the fence about the mask. If I were more inclined to tell stories about singular characters, I'd rather let him have it, but since I'm talking about stories about a partnership, I don't think that they both need it. Plus, the psionics powers that he has allows him to do a bunch of other stuff; maybe it'd be nice if they had their own space a little bit more. 

On the other hand, I'm also on the fence about the radium shield. The psionic power negate energy would represent his psionic shield and do something similar, and I could maintain the setting element that this is more of a vehicular bit of equipment rather than a personal clothing/armor piece of equipment. However, I'm also considering maybe giving him a couple of one-of-a-kind warlock powers made incarnate on the armor; maybe catfall and biofeedback. If I do take away the shield, I'll certainly add those, and be much more likely to assume that he does have a facemask, although he may not always have it with him.

Me on Star Wars on Youtube III

 

I was falling in love

 https://open.spotify.com/album/30bWTGXXlc2APoa8Nzss0Z

An underrated, underappreciated when it was new, and sometimes forgotten gem of the 80s (in favor of their bigger hit I Ran), Space Age Love Song is really the best song A Flock of Seagulls ever did, and one of the better love songs of the 80s in general. The original is brilliant, but this much more recent collaborative affair with the Prague Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra is magical. Michael Score, the lead singer and main guy for A Flock said that while the band came together fairly quickly, they struggled to find a guitar player, and had at least a dozen guys come in. Most of them heard the synth heavy sound, which in the very early 80s was deemed sufficient, I guess, and asked them why they wanted a guitar player at all. But Score knew that their sound would need it (he was a big fan of more guitar-heavy traditional indie stuff; the name of the band comes from a line from a Stranglers song, for instance, that they'd just seen in concert together). Can you imagine this song without that insistent guitar riff? It really makes the song what it is, and replacing it with some analog synth voice would have been devastating to the sound.

Anyway, a bit random, I know, but there it is. To make up for my randomness, I'll point out that I'm making updates to more Ad Astra planetary data sheets, I'm just not posting them on my blog. Because I'm also unhappy with the format of Google Sites these days, I'll actually probably transfer them to some offline format (like an odf doc, probably), and if I share them again, it'll be en masse as a pdf.

Watch the original version of the song here with clips from a very early 90s (but still classic 80s style) rom-com movie with a young Jennifer Connelly. Again: magical. I don't necessarily buy into it myself, but there's a consistent theme among many on the internet that Jennifer Connelly in the middle to late 80s (and she still squeeks by in this video, although her buy-by date would be approaching fast) is the most beautiful woman of an entire generation. Again; while I don't necessarily agree with that, she is certainly a beautiful woman, or at least was back then. That can't be denied.

Me on Star Wars on Youtube Part 2

 

Me on Star Wars on Youtube

 

Story mode shenanigans

I make no secret of the fact that I was only interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic as a greatly expanded and improved sequel to the Knights of the Old Republic games, not as an MMO attempting to grab the (at the time) market share from Warcraft. I have NO interest in shared anything, and if I could play the dumb game offline completely by myself and still get all of the content, I absolutely would. So when BioWare toned down the multiplayer and subscription requirements, made the game free to play, and made the character stories a part of the full free to play experience, that's when I got interested in it. Curiously, in order to play it, I went ahead and got a subscription, and I may well keep it as long as I'm actively playing.

But there is still tension between the developers attempts to create a really great, big, CRPG and the business side that said to make it an MMO because that was where all the money was (supposedly) in the late 2000s and early 2010s while it was under development. One such side effect of this tension is that the story can get screwed up if you do things out of order, and it's not hard to do things out of order because of the online multiplayer need to have kick-offs always available. I accidentally kicked off the Oricon missions, which are from the latest expansion Onslaught, on my Bounty Hunter story, even though I'd only finished chapter one (because I had maxed out the level on the character.) What does that mean? It means that all of my relationship stories and companion missions got locked out where I was and I can't seem to engage them anymore. Grrr!

It seems that in order to actually play the game properly, you have to do some research and not get ahead of yourself, accidentally kicking off the wrong quest by talking to the wrong quest giver. Sigh. My bounty hunter was my oldest character, kicking around from many years ago, but left on Balmorra untouched for the better part of two or even three years, and it's disappointing to have him now locked out of being able to finish all of his story content. So disappointing that I actually created a new character to replace him so I can do it again. He doesn't look exactly the same, but he's very similar, and I'm going to do all of the planets that he's done so far again with him. Sigh.

Anyway, I created a tracker on Google docs that you can see, just in case you ever feel the need to have one of these too. The gray boxes are the ones that I've done. In a few cases the order isn't exactly right; the bonus story missions can be (and probably should be) come back to and done later. I also didn't put any of the exploration or heroic missions on them. I'm now picking up all of the heroics at the Fleet right as I start a planet, but let's be honest; I'm mostly doing those to farm for XP and gold and equipment drops. Because combat is actually a bit tedious in this game sometimes, I hardly would be interested in doing them for fun. And most of the exploration missions are kinda dumb, honestly. And there aren't really that many anyway. I keep those turned off on my map and ignore any icons when they pop up; exploration missions I don't want to do and heroics I'm already grabbing at the fleet anyway.

I also marked the bounty hunter stuff that I did already in yellow, for now, although eventually I'll replace those with gray too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HizeXpP5FMex40lWvKg_aKtfDr5u6xae3iJw-CzRc7c/edit?usp=sharing

It's a little funny to think that back in the day, the game topped out at level 50. With my bounty hunter, I was at the new max of 75 while on Alderaan, near the end of the first chapter. I finished to the same place in the story with my Jedi Knight in the lower 70s range, and I've since topped him off with a few heroics. I'll start chapter 2 soon with him already maxed out level-wise. My Sith Warrior is now in the mid-60s in Alderaan, but I'll be close to 70 if not over it by the time I finish. I suspect that as I play more and more classes, my level at that same point will drop, because I'll skip or handwave my way through certain quests that aren't class specific that I would have already done several times by then. And there's only so much farming I can do before it's too tedious to be endured, so I'll probably do less as time goes on. That said, there's certainly something to be said for going through stuff overleveled. Sure, you have level syncing, but if your equipment drops are appropriate for your level, then you've got great equipment which makes your character breeze through (relatively speaking) Flashpoints and Heroics. I don't have a problem with that myself, since I think, like I said earlier, that combat in the game is pretty tedious and overly long and time consuming anyway. Anything I can do to keep it breezy is a good thing.