Borg Speed Alterations

[Boggz]

posted on March 9th, 2010, 5:13 am

Last edited by Boggz on March 9th, 2010, 5:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Now this is gonna get a LOT of people's panties in a twist ... but everyone just remain calm and keep your hands and arms inside the aircraft at all times.


  I've been feeling more and more lately that certain Borg units could use a speed reduction.  Not necessarily because I feel that they move too fast, but because of the fact that they have rapid course correction and rapid acceleration, making the final kill on units like the Sphere can be next to impossible for certain factions.


   Mainly I am talking about the Dominion and the Romulans.

   The Romulans lack the necessary torpedo-based firepower early-mid game to handle a sphere at the moment.  Luckily we've been told that they will be getting an overhaul.  Woot.
   The Dominion CANNOT keep up with a Sphere in order to kill it.  Solutions can include ramming a sphere to keep it in range of your bombers, but frankly the Sphere's trajectory after being rammed is hard to utilize effectively and the thing regains it's composure too quickly to make it work that well.  Borg have such excellent acceleration that they've hit top speed very soon and you cannot keep up.  They don't have real effective sphere killers till you've reached C-17's or made enough bombers to one-shot the Spheres.  Sometimes you can whiddle the Sphere down to 1/3 then unleash your Bomber-specials on them, but I've not found many players willing to let me down that .


    Spheres, with a speed of 100, are without a doubt the most common of the bigger tanking units seen in multiplayer games.  The Prime Sphere is a MASSIVE damage soaker and generally makes up the bulk of a Borg player's mid-late game damage receiver and absorber.  I am finding in this patch that getting many Spheres up is much much easier than before and that getting that final kill on them is harder and harder.  The only units truly able to catch up to and engage a retreating sphere are Interceptors, which by nature don't tend to do all that well against large medium ranged battleships like the Sphere.  Kvorts, Intrepids, Leahvals, Puretech B-5's, all do pretty well against Spheres in that regard because they're broken.  That should not be the solution.  We should be seeing FEWER of those units instead of PURELY those units.

EDIT:  For comparison:

Comparable Units with a Speed of 90:
D'Deridex
V-13
Sovereign
Norexan
Galaxy
Nebula


  These are all Mid-game battleships / heavy Cruiser that are large size, medium range, and have a speed of 90.  Not a single one of them is capable of handling a Sphere, and all but the Warp-ins come out AFTER Sphere's do.  Thus I ask ... what is the logic of an enormous, damage-soaking tank, large size, medium range battleship having a speed of 100?

   I guess I am asking that for a few of the most commonly used units (the scube and the Sphere), that their course correction and acceleration abilities be taken into account when deciding their speed.  If the answer is:  "they already are, that's why they are what they are , then please, from a player who desperately chooses a loss in a balanced game over a win in an imbalanced one, look again.  There's a reason no one goes Assimilators or Adaptors (with the exception of a few who make Adaptors) anymore.  No one goes Assimilate because their Spheres aren't worth it.

  Thanks . 

EDIT 2:  I would even be very happy if the abililty REGEN caused a drop in speed to 80.  70 I would prefer (same speed as a Cube), so that a person cannot simply just activate Regen and run!

posted on March 9th, 2010, 5:58 am

Well, my manly boxers are twist free, but are you sure your knickers aren't the ones that are slightly knotted?

I know you don't like playing borg, but spheres certainly aren't all that bad.  I've never had problems chasing down spheres as dominion.  Bugs are speed 140, and bombers are speed 100, so I've never had any problems keeping a sphere within arms reach.  You can swarm them with just bugs since they have Autonomous AI and blow up your bugs before they die.  Dead sphere!

To be honest, I don't think we can reasonably talk about balancing until the next patch comes out.  Until the global speed get changed there's no way to know if spheres are unbalanced or not.

The patch is almost here, Boggz!  Don't be a tit and get ants in your pants!

posted on March 9th, 2010, 8:20 am

Or just let a bug ram it from the other side so that the sphere closes to your slow units while it has no propulsion....

posted on March 9th, 2010, 10:14 am

Or just let a bug ram it from the other side so that the sphere closes to your slow units while it has no propulsion....

  Read the post, Raven.  I addressed that .

Well, my manly boxers are twist free, but are you sure your knickers aren't the ones that are slightly knotted?

I know you don't like playing borg, but spheres certainly aren't all that bad.  I've never had problems chasing down spheres as dominion.  Bugs are speed 140, and bombers are speed 100, so I've never had any problems keeping a sphere within arms reach.  You can swarm them with just bugs since they have Autonomous AI and blow up your bugs before they die.  Dead sphere!

To be honest, I don't think we can reasonably talk about balancing until the next patch comes out.  Until the global speed get changed there's no way to know if spheres are unbalanced or not.

The patch is almost here, Boggz!  Don't be a tit and get ants in your pants!

No I don't like playing Borg.  It's true.  I like being Borg even less.  I don't like "all or nothing" type situations in general and that happens to be the Borg playstyle.


  I will take a breath and agree, Mal, that the patch is almost here, but I feel that there is in no way a change in this field in order at all.  I don't think the patch will address this at all so I can only hope that the other races (Dom and Rom specifically) will have the added ability to handle these ships better.


  Bugs may take reduced from medium, but they are so weak right now that they do very little.  Reduced damage does not a Sphere kill, young Padawan .  Bombers are still a great way but their acceleration is slow enough that it's easy to get juked unless you stay within close range at all times.



    I dunno ... I'm not a fan of Spheres at all.  I feel they are just too useful in all situations and thus prevent even the remotest use of Assimilators in Optimize, Adaptors except under specific circumstances ... and yadda yadda yadda ...

 
  I've heard people say that the Sphere represents a whole early game fleet.  True!  Very true!  But I do not believe that the Sphere needs to have 2 distinct survival traits: strong speed and a monstrous ability to soak damage. 


  I've also heard people (*COUGH ray ... *cough) draw parallels to real life Tanks vs. other vehicles.  Don't do that.  That's not at all what it's about.  This is a game, and I feel that the acceleration and course correction abilities of this vessel give it an edge that other ships of it's class do not have even while it has a higher base speed.

I'm asking that it be taken into account.  There is no reason to use an Assimilator when you can use a Sphere.  None.  Borg do not function the same way as other races.  Fine.  But they should still not have units rendered obsolete by others.  FleetOps seems to respect that principle.

posted on March 9th, 2010, 6:52 pm

Bugs may take reduced from medium, but they are so weak right now that they do very little.  Reduced damage does not a Sphere kill, young Padawan  .  Bombers are still a great way but their acceleration is slow enough that it's easy to get juked unless you stay within close range at all times.

Young Padawan?   Boggz, you've told me before you don't have a lot of  experience with the dominion.  Yes, 1-2 bugs do very little damage.  But 16 easily aces a sphere, and ensures it can NEVER retreat to a nebula.  It receives the same damage reduction that an intrepid does.  A bug takes less than two-thirds of the damage, meaning it can take a sustained 5-6 hits (more like 6) before it is destroyed by a typical sphere.  In fact bugs > Bombers in this instance because of the passive.  Before, bugs did pretty well against the borg.  Add a few supporting S-2s and they're all you ever need to field, young Anakin.

As far as roms go, you have to spam in the beginning either leahvals or generix frigate refits this patch.  Since I go leahvals, they simply murder spheres.  With enough of them, you can metaphasic disruptor a sphere and kill it before the player even has the chance to click the regen button.  And if you have a problem with the acceleration, you need to be using the minimap to navigate, as that will help resolve some of the issues with delays in orders that we see.  Just like I explained to you way back in 3.0.7 when you were having issues with brels.

Trust me.  It is not all roses and chocolates with the Collective.  They still have to build expensive ships that can get swarmed and destroyed pretty easily.  A speed of 100, even with better acceleration, is easily caught when many of your ships can push speeds of 140-160.  The Klingons have a field day with spheres, with gravity mine, alternate armament, and the all time favorite, combat tractor beam.   How would you like it if your entire fleet were kept from moving for 20 seconds and swarmed?

I'm asking that it be taken into account.  There is no reason to use an Assimilator when you can use a Sphere.  None.  Borg do not function the same way as other races.  Fine.  But they should still not have units rendered obsolete by others.  FleetOps seems to respect that principle.

I'm not sure how often you play Borg.  I know it's not a lot, otherwise you would know that Assimilators are embarrassingly slow, and that is why they are not used.  Probes and scubes are nice for the early game, but you need something with longevity.  Also, much of the Borg cost is in system value, and if you don't have any kind of special weapon, then you're really losing out.  The transmission matrix is really expensive until later on, so you need a ship that can use some sort of special to be useful.  That's why the sphere is the workhorse of the Borg Fleet.  Adaptors are a joke unless you're...you know..adapting against something.   Assims are too slow, as previously mentioned.  Diamonds cost a lot of CC and are a support vessel.  Cubes are so expensive that they're only used for much later in the game, usually if you're winning and need to bust through some heavy defenses.  So what other vessel does that leave?  The Detector?  The resource assimilator?   Tell me what vessel the borg should use.  

Also, you can just use a medium counter that has autonomous AI or SSEC and completely wipe the floor with spheres.  The sphere has and always will be the mainline vessel for the Borg, because they need it to be.  Again, I'm sure they'll be slower in the next patch, when everything gets slower.  But when I see a sphere, I'm usually like "Free Experience!" , especially if I'm going up against a player who isn't in top shape when playing the Borg.

Right now Assimilators have a speed of 50 or something.  Little ships can zip in and out before they get assimilated.  The current speeds that you love have really crippled Assims.  Also, the purpose of an assimilator is to assimilate!   So if I'm looking to assimilate I use them.  But if I'm not looking to do that, then I pick spheres and scubes.

posted on March 9th, 2010, 7:23 pm

First off boggz. your saying that me drawing that parellel is a bad thing..... and second off, i wasnt being serious about it we were joking around

i agree that the sphere is to fast, other ships should be able to escape and atm, they cant

i totalyl agree about the retreating borg, very hard to kill, and because of there shape, it does seem like they change course very easily, and the expirienve borg player, can use the spheres range, armor, firepower and speed, to keep just out of range of most enemy ships, while still picking them off

posted on March 9th, 2010, 7:35 pm

@ Raven:  Sorry dude I guess I didn't really address Bug Ramming on this post, I think that was on Tunngle .  My apologies .


@ Mal:  The Young Padawan thing was a joke .  Yeah I know that I don't play Dominion a lot, but I've found it problematic with other races as well.  Klingons are generally faster than other races and do have some great abilities to slow the damn thing down.  Feds are so saturated with Torpedoes that just about any ship can effectively engage Borg ships.  That's why I'm really concerned about Rommies and Dommies.


  I dunno.  Perhaps a different strategy would benefit this issue better.  The overall issue though is that it's a large battleship with medium range, yet has a higher base speed, better acceleration, and better turning that ANYTHING of comparable use/power.  That combined with being a massive damage sponge just got me all numbered up.  In practical use they end up being the End-all for Borg.  Why use ASsimilators when Spheres are all around better?  Why use Monsoons when Intrepids are all around better?  Why use B'rels when Kvorts are so much better?  Same issue goes for the Leahvals on a different way.


@ Ray:  I have no idea what you're talking about .  You kept interrupting my convo with Yandonman last night with random things that weren't really the issue.  Once again I have no idea what you're talking about .

posted on March 9th, 2010, 7:57 pm

Yeah, I knew it was a joke, I just thought it was funny being called Young Padawan where the Dominion are concerned.

Just remember that to get the huge damage sponge ability, you have to give up dps, and the sphere costs a ton of resources.  I haven't had a problem as Romulan or Dominion.  I remember early in the patch chasing a sphere down and losing a lot of ships that way, but that's because I kept start/stopping my leahvals.  You have to keep your ships moving so you can take advantage of your higher speed, then acceleration means nothing.  And the dominion are as good as the klingons at taking out borg ships, imo.  The way to beat the borg is to overwhelm them with superior numbers, and the Dominion and Klingons do well in that department.

Why use ASsimilators when Spheres are all around better?  Why use Monsoons when Intrepids are all around better?  Why use B'rels when Kvorts are so much better?  Same issue goes for the Leahvals on a different way.

Well, this seems more like an issue with the passives, since you're citing all the ones with SSEC or Autonomous AI.   We already know those ships are too strong and have no downside.  The issue is different between Assims and spheres.  I've already explained why assmilators aren't used in this current patch, but once that gets fixed, you'll see a lot more assims, especially when there's a reason to pick Directive:  Assimilate.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but playing borg more often will help you see where I'm coming from.  I think you'll see that when your sole assets end up being only a few ships, that "amazing" speed of 100 will seem pretty good compared to ships which are half again as fast.

The patch will come!   And things will be better.  I promise.  

posted on March 9th, 2010, 9:48 pm

boggz, last night i was talking about the sphere speed,.......

and i was saying, that you mistook my comparing a sphere to a tank as be being serious, i was joking around.....

posted on March 9th, 2010, 10:14 pm

Embarrassingly I don't think I can add much more as I agree quite strongly with Mal on this (especially seeing as the speed reductions will make the movement speed differences less extreme).  Although, I must say, that Adaptors are the shit when it comes to fighting off the current Federation Warp-In, not to mention good against Borg as well. I'm willing to bet that Adaptors will be more useful when the speed reduction takes place, because right now they just can't keep up with some of the things they should be nailing (like Negh'vars) because they have "bunch up" issues.

I think quite a few of the complaints arise because of how 2v2, 3v3 etc work. In a cooperative multiplayer game, people can tech faster and go to their "more efficient units" because of inherent imbalances in player skills. In a 1v1, it is usually much less lenient, and you are going to find that you'll have to tech slowly and securely to win well. Going straight to a Sphere is going to be hard if your opponent is harassing well with large sized vessels (or if they are building turrets) because you have to wait for a decent while before you get the priority.

posted on March 10th, 2010, 12:43 am

Hmm ... well then I will hold my tongue and patiently await 3.1.2.

  .

posted on March 16th, 2010, 5:45 pm

I haven't been playing often lately, but as a player who prefers Borg (entirely just because they're the Borg) and usually plays Optimize at that, I use Assims very sparingly.

The comment about their speed is quite accurate.  Everything can run away from them.  And they can't run away from anything.  If I'm paying out that kind of resources for something so slow, it better be tough as nails and hit like a truck, because it's got no choice once the battle begins.  It really is 'all or nothing' for that ship.

When I do build them, I tend to park them permanently on top of my resources as a deterrent to raids, and -maybe- I'll pick up a couple free little ships out of it.  Those ships usually just get added to the deterrent line.

And the Adaptor?  Why would I use that?  It's inaccurate, doesn't hit that hard when it does connect in the first place, isn't really that tough unless I've caught an appropriate constructor (and even then, I'm unlikely to use it unless every opponent is the same race, because a ship customized to fight feds doesn't do so hot against klingons).  I'd rather shell out the dilithium and tritanium for a ship that is useful against all opponents...preferably one with some reliability.

That all adds up to Assim being rare, and Adaptor being a taunt.  Yes, if I field Adaptors on someone, I'm mocking them, because those are precious connections and resources that could have been used on something much better.

I don't play Assimilate often enough to give a fair judgement of the Assimilator under that avatar.  Though when I do play as Assimilate, I spam the things.  Not out of some sense of strategy, but because the concept of playing as Assimilate without a bunch of Assimilators seems wrong.

posted on March 17th, 2010, 1:25 am

Yep, I agree with you.

Good thing is, if I'm not mistaken, all speeds will be slightly adjusted as something was entered wrong before.  So hopefully the issue will be fixed by that.