Borg have no incentive to assimilate

posted on July 15th, 2010, 3:58 am

This may not necessarily be a balancing issue, but I think this is where it best fits.



Fleet ops has made the Borg much more accurate than they were in Armada II, I am very happy with the current situation and believe that they are well balanced. However, it seems to me that in FO the Borg no longer have any big reasons to assimilate. The only thing that assimilating can get the Borg is some resources, ships lame in comparison to Borg counterparts, and modules for the adaptor (IF a constructor is the ship assimilated). I do not know if anyone else feels the same way, or if a fix is in development; I apologize in advance if I am out of the loop.

I have an idea that could possibly fix this issue; it is however a little rough and may be a totally bad idea. 4 earnable abilities/bonuses/weapons (not sure) could be added, one for each race. Each could be unlocked by assimilating ships and stations, of the race respective to the ability, and analyzing them somehow. The system could be based on point values, the more advanced the ship or station the more points it is worth. After collecting enough points from a certain race, their corresponding ‘extra’ could be unlocked.

In the end, I do not care whether you use my idea. However, I strongly believe that something should be done about the lack of incentives to assimilate.

posted on July 15th, 2010, 7:53 am

Maybe you use the borg wrong.

In the game, every assimilated ship is a loss for your opponent and a win for you. So you dont destroy a ship, you also gain it.

When you fight 10 vs. 10 ships, and you assimilate 4 of them and destroy 6 of them, then you have this:
You have captured 4 and have now 14 ships, without using additional ressources. The enemy lost all ships. So you weaken the enemy and increase your own strength.

It is true, that the borg have no real good mixed tech ships. There could be done something.

posted on July 15th, 2010, 7:57 am

I think a system that makes the assimilation of ships more interesting is planned. I'm more interested in making stations worth assimilating, though.

posted on July 15th, 2010, 10:34 am

yep, we hope to introduce a new assimilation system within the scope of the next few patches. some changes to mixed-tech which will also cause stations to become a more interessting goal (especially for the Borg) will probably arrive shortly after

posted on July 15th, 2010, 12:52 pm

I want a Deep Space Station with the ability to mount/change mixed tech slots! Yeah!

posted on July 22nd, 2010, 4:48 pm

That's good that you're giving it some thought.  I have an idea for a simple fix (might not be simple to code though)

Make it so that when a holding beam or auto-assimilator is used on an enemy ship, other borg ships will be able to board that ship while its shields are up.  Or you could even make a special that makes these abilities lower the enemy's shields temporarily.  They certainly use up enough energy per second to justify it.

Consider how other races have weapon system disables and engine disables.  You could give the borg some ability to disable or damage defensive subsystems, maybe give it to only the assimilate avatar.

I have way too many ideas here, but at the same time what the borg need right now is lots of ideas.  They need more features.  How about making adaption modules available to all borg ships, but only 1 per ship?

The new nanites are a step in the right direction, though.  Those things are NASTY the way a big borg fleet should be.

posted on July 22nd, 2010, 7:26 pm

I was thinking it might be cool to give all borg ships transport attack, to make boarding enemy ships more common. Maybe just Assim big chassis'

posted on July 23rd, 2010, 12:29 pm

However, I strongly believe that something should be done about the lack of incentives to assimilate.

I can't speak for how anyone else plays the Borg, but from my viewpoint there are plenty of incentives to assimilate with the Borg.

As Sheva pointed out above, every captured ship is an positive asset (especially a constructor if you can find an ungarded one), so that is by far the best incentive, especially early-game.   Using a nice mix of Probes/Scubes in conjunction with two Double Intercept Dodecs can allow you to assimilate many early-game ships.   You just need to have your Borg fleet hotkeyed, and remember to use the transport function when the target's shields drop.

If you are still going well mid-game, building the Transmission Matrix and researching  boarding can be a boon to your Borg fleet, as it allows you to further choose your assimilation targets.