Starship Troopers: Horizon

I enjoyed it a lot, definitely the type of event I would love to see more of, where the crew and command can go full on defensive-aggressive against a large invading force! I especially liked the numerous command announcements that cemented that this wasn't just isolated to us, and the given preparation time for the crew to get hyped up and defensive measures to be taken.

Most importantly, the entire crew was involved from start to finish, which is what I sometimes feel have lacked in the (few) events I have been able to participate in (due to timezones).

I would gladly play more of these.

That was pretty cool. I got burnt like 20 times, failed miserably at killing a downed, burning Lii'dra, fired a disfunctional weapon so hard I zapped my own skull out... But it was cool.

 

More seriously, getting the time to set up defences and plan things out was smart, I feel like everyone got to play around (and not the issue of only command/security handling issues and the rest cowering in their departments), it had a thousand ways to be messed up and end up being a bummer, but by the Goddess and everything that is holy in the Spur, it was not! It was actually good! The fact that the Lii'dra had clear objectives, objectives that were then laid out to the crew, actually gave the battle a proper flow too and not just people randomly roaming around... All of this was just well done.

 

This was definitely worth staying up to 1:30 am. I mean for now. We'll see how it goes tomorrow morning....

Vaurca volunteer here, the event was well executed and very fun, all in all very much worth staying up for. 

GLORY GLORY TO HIGH QUEEN LII'DRA!!!

10/10 Good escalation, everyone had a role to play.

I LOVE KILLING WARFORMS RRRAAAAAHHHHHH.

MARINE MAJORRRRRRRRRRRRRR

10/10 death destruction and dying for the phoron company by inhaling ignited phoron while being e-sworded by the phoron breathers

This event was fun, it honestly felt like a wargame, but I can't overstate my disappointment that this is entirely non-canon (even VR). This would give greater fuel for characters (vaurca and non-vaurca) to hate the Lii'dra or understand what makes them so dangerous. As it stands, the Lii'dra remains "oh they're really bad, trust me" ICly because they're so underutilized (though I guess if you hail from New Gibson it's different). I liked the combat focus and buildup, but the seriousness and combat is about where the fun ends.

For the PvP, I don't have much to say on my end. I walked into a room, dumped an entire magazine into a Lii'dra PB, and then I (and two others) died with no deaths on the Lii'dra side. Either Lii'dra armor is incredibly strong, or AP mags don't do much of anything to them. Keep in mind it wasn't only me that PBed the Lii'dra; I had one other with me and even after we were in crit we were beating the Lii'dra, to no avail. My first thought upon death was "so much for nothing, I guess" and I had to wait out the remaining hour or so.

As far as roleplay goes, the most I got (since I was a CRT trooper) was saying "Kill all Lii'dra!" and having a minor conversation with Deshan alongside a minor confrontation from the captain. CRT troopers weren't allowed to respawn (rangers were?) so I didn't really have much of a choice but to sit there and watch and be denied entry as a crewmember after 20 minutes. By all means, it was awesome watching Flynn and Zhao go toe-to-toe with a warform and a Lii'dra with a thermal blade, but we weren't really provided reasoning as to why we can't respawn other than "you might kill the Lii'dra". Isn't that the whole point? At that point, why not limit respawns for everyone? What makes people who were previously CRT different?

All in all, it was a fun event, but it's something I could reasonably see being accomplished by a mercenary+ninja round. The announcements and "oh shit" tone everything had was phenomenal, but this was offset by a disappointingly quick set of engagements and lack of communication between players. "High intensity" is right; I had no chance to do anything but fire my gun a few times and then watch as the rest of the crew who hadn't died tried to hold their own, all while the Lii'dra got a second wave (I believe) and CRT ghosts had to sit it out when they were dead. It's made even worse by the last-minute decision to make it entirely non-canon. Why? This would have been the first canon event in months, VR or not.

Needs improvement. This would easily be a four-star event if it was somewhat canonized, but as it stands this felt like it was all for nothing. I didn't want to back out of it last minute after hearing the VR concept was scrapped because that's not what I should do as a player, but if this happens again, I don't want to participate in it. Not as a trooper, at least.

Edit: I should say that my review isn't the be-all-end-all. This is from one player's perspective, and my experience as a player was mostly negative. I would have had an entirely different experience as a member of security, or a hangar tech, or some typically-non-combatant role or character rather than an extremely expendable CRT trooper. I don't doubt it was fun for other players, I just never had a chance to play the way as was intended. It was very much 30 minutes of gearing up, 30 minutes of delegating tasks, 3 minutes (or less) of combat and then a good 40-50 minutes of spectating for me. I didn't get to do much of anything.