Borg - with veterans and doubel gold bars not too impressive

[Anonymous]

posted on July 5th, 2009, 12:22 am

Last edited by Anonymous on July 5th, 2009, 12:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

At this time Veterans of romulans, feds, kling and dominiion cruisers and battleships range get an increased offensive that ranges between 47 for kbeajq to about 65+ for Dominion pure tech V-13s.

SCubes start with about 22-28 offense and a defense at about 22-25, but are short to medium ranged, and always get the full brunt of torp attacks which deal extra damage to them even though they are small and low stat borg ships that have stats about equal to a double silver ktinga... Optimize spheres can go to 103, with defense of 23 max. Assims of assimilate get defense 50 and offense that can go to 65, but they are better served with more system oriented refits to hit crew. Cubes are as usual.

For borg we have existing balances in place vis a vis connections that gain rather slowly and have pretty costly upgrades to increase the rate. Bigger units such as cubes not only have high connection requirements, but also have costs ranging into 3600-4000 for regular to tactical cubes wth the proper module on optimize, while Assimilate goes higher still.

The primary question that comes up then is what factors are balancing borg, and what are superfluous stymiers.

At this time the borg costs and connections are a well laid out balance to the ships' power when compared to the other races.
However, when standard races get the added bars as well as veteran status which augments their stats, and borg ships are already limited in numbers by connections as well as resource requirements, as well as the all important micro-gameplay factors, one then has to ask what exactly do the Borg have as EXTRA which would ever compensate for the increasing stats of the other races.

In the end, the  borg are balanced against other races through cost and connection and micro attention requirements. This balance focuses on start stats and build rates of other race ships.

With increased rank on other race ships, the disparity in stats takes a nose dive - most veterans are on par with most borg spheres and diamonds in stats.. In the end, we are left with a borg that pretty much lose the stat advantage, for which the player otherwise is penalized through cost and connection requirements.

At this juncture, IMO the borg most certainly need some form of adaptation to retain the stat edge for which they already cost more and build slower with the connection requirement - which in of itself involves thousands of resources in upgrades just to get a slighter quicker accumulation rate.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 12:42 am

How often do you get Veterans against the Borg Serpicus? I mean, you'd have to lose a ton of ships to make that happen 

[Anonymous]

posted on July 5th, 2009, 12:48 am

Last edited by Anonymous on July 5th, 2009, 12:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Arent the guides that are out there pretty crystal clear on how to take down each kind of borg ship with bombers and rams and long range torp refits and cloak and warp in....
and in fact don't those same guides mention exactly how to do so with as little difficulty as possible.

And you are asking me that. you;re one of the best players out there, and ive seen u taking down ships easily enough....

You're asking me that?  The borg killer himself?

Ive easily screwed up borg opponents early game to mid game with just bombers and rams, and long distance hits with torp refit rhienns.
I believe you can too, and although yes there are losses u incur, it is not impossible even for the mid level players. let alone the more advanced ones.

Besides how much does q ktinga need to advance to get more than 25 offense. it already starts at 19. How much does a Mijural phaser refit need to advance from 17 offense to get past 25?

Plus let's not lose sight of the fact that the issue here is not based solely on a 1v1 logic. In game balancing I can look at romulans and say yeah they have problems. But if I look at dominion i most certainly do not - especially with the bomber and A-20s.
Given the stymied borg builds early to mid-game the issue here is not what a player can get against borg. The more relevant line of thought is related to what a player gets in a game, that a borg cannot, while at the same time the borg is already penalized by connections and cost to compensate for the added stats.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 12:56 am

Nobody said it was done with ease Serpicus: afterall, there is a Borg section in there on how to do as much as possible with as little difficulty as possible as well (a better version will be coming out within the next few days hopefully).

For instance, currently Mal and I have been testing a particular Optimize strategy that seems extremely difficult to counter--you can read it when we're satisfied with the results. It seems there is very little room for error for the non-Borgie... which is kind of creepy to me.

Either way, the point remains that it is extremely difficult to get Veterans against any Borg player seeing as you'd have to destroy at the very minimum 5 Borg vessels with the same one ship (without it getting destroyed). Hardly a great point, as I see it, to improve Borg stats.

[Anonymous]

posted on July 5th, 2009, 1:12 am

Last edited by Anonymous on July 5th, 2009, 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ive not read ur optimize startegy, but yes the max of 5 scubes early in game before having to wait for the next round of accumulations is the precise kind of tactic with borg that i am referring to.

If we look at just that point, we will see that in the time taken to get 5 scubes with 28 offense and 22 defense, a klingon player will have about 4 brels and 3 ktingas.
a dominion pure tech player will have 3 a-20s and about 3 bombers.
a fed can get hsi first warp in, plus about 3 sabres.

At this point of time we will have borg connections at 0. and restarting. You will have diverted resources towards a tech facility, and have completed the first rate upgrade (while having bought the first connection upgrade). At this point you arent going to get more borg ships for a but, and u have a choice at thos point to get more scubes and drain ur priority or go for a sphere. IMO adaptors and assimilators are a waste on opimize.

So as you can see we do not need to share tips on strategy at this point.

At this time I am merely asking 1 simple question.

As borg I have connections that are intended to regulate my numbers. I have costs that are very high that are designed to balance out my high stats.
there 2 regulate borg to the level of balancing the game for borg start units against non-borg stat units.

Unless you imply that a non-borg cannot get veterans ever, the argument of difficulty is moot. Difficulty against borg ships is what I believe the mods have introduced connections as well as high Costs for.
Let us also not forget that borg building involved microing, whereas non-borg cna have a steady flow of ships. more than amply addressing the balance between the 2.

This leaves rank advancement outside the scope of the current balancing stats and micro-intensiveness and cost and connection equation.

So while I am sure our community is eager to read your and Mal's guide, I do not believe that my point is in any way addressed therewith or even understood when mentioning that advertisement.

btw - you now owe me $300 for the space to advertise your  new guide .

I hope to hear from the other members too, as this is a rather important aspect of borg gameplay at this time, and with the coming noxter gameplay I see the borg being left slightly hindered in front of other races (at least the standard 4) in this particular aspect.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 1:22 am

Arent the guides that are out there pretty crystal clear on how to take down each kind of borg ship with bombers and rams and long range torp refits and cloak and warp in....
and in fact don't those same guides mention exactly how to do so with as little difficulty as possible.

Hey, you were the one who brought up my guide in the first place, so you owe me advertising rights

Anyway, this strategy isn't anything like what you mentioned, but it is quite similar to 3.06 so far. I just think you need to experiment a bit more--if anything I have been tempted within the last few days to post a thread discussing a potential overpoweredness of Optimize, but I will not until I'm certain.

You mentioned Scout Cubes, which is interesting, because by that stage if you lose 5 of them, all that's gonna be a veteran is a destroyer or light cruiser... so nothing again that can compare to any Borg midlevel unit in terms of stats.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 2:18 am

But what if it´s not a 1 vs. 1 ?

You can have your ships gaining ranks while fighting the other players. Let´s consider some sort of stalemate between the non-borg players, each has lost a fair number of ships but also had the opportunity to get veterans, no one is really on the brink of destruction.

In that scenario the borg player is at a serious disadvantage, any ship he looses is a big step towards loosing, while other players have gold-bar ships and veterans with quite evil special weapons AND keep building ships, you can´t take them all out at once.

Don´t get me wrong, i´m not experienced in multiplayer games, so i cannot simply agree with serpicus on that, but i think he has a point. What´s the most fearsome thing about the borg you ask ? It´s their ability to adapt, which at this point is almost non-existent ingame. Once you built a borg ship it never adapts, the drones never "learn" anything, no matter how many enemy ships or stations you assimilate.

I guess that´s the point in it, the borg need some form of keeping up, without being too powerful to begin with. Frankly i cannot think of an adequate way of doing this right now, my hope is with the mods. After all they said they wanted to change something about borg adaption.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 3:15 am

i play borg alot and at start they can be quite slow,strong once u get spheres but need the ability to adapt,maybe sumthin similiar to special weapons centre in a2,and maybe new sphere variation,cant wait 4 command cube,read about it while ago and am wanderin all about it,

posted on July 5th, 2009, 5:54 am

The people I've been playing with say that the Borg is Over Powered and I can see that depending on the tactics used. if you let the Borg build to the point of Multiple Cubes, say 6, you could conceivably wipe out another player main base with fortification. I've done it.

Though I think it's mostly balanced by the, forgive me, suckiness of the beginning Borg. I mean if your hit in the beginning your are going to be wiped out by Superior numbers.

My thoughts on this (my pro Borg stance) is that you should strike early and the units are gotten quicker by other races. Now I would love for the Borg to get better "Early Counters", but I'm not sure how balancing that would be.

On another note I think mixed tech should work differently, mainly not be isolated to a low-end ship, have the adaption be available for all ships, this is balanced by the fact that you can't have as much firepower, special, or tactical (for cube) in exchange for a specialized defense. Now I also think that the Borg seem, narrow when played often. Again I'm sorry this should really be in a features topic.

I hope my opinion has offered something.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 6:00 am

I think I see what you’re saying, Serp.  I’ll try to restate the point you’re trying to make to see if we’re talking about the same thing:  The Borg are not getting something that everyone else is and is it fair.

In a 1v1 game, there is no way that ranking up matters.  None at all.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  There are just too few ships for the non-Borg player to use for rank up.  But what about a 4v4?  Let’s say that we’re fighting and pretty much everyone dies except for the Federation player on one side and the Borg player on the other, with the other players only having a handful of ships that matter only little in the equation.  Maybe a few cruisers and some scouts that escaped.  Let’s give the Fed player Miranda II’s because they’re awesome, and some Akiras; a large “game winning” fleet.  The Borg player has the same fleet in terms of resources.  Oh, and everyone's base is destroyed, because that's how it will often play out.

By this time, the Fed player has ranked up ships, 3-4 Veteran Miranda IIs (I forget how many veteran Miranda IIs you can have, but that sounds about right), plus a lot of ranked up ships, from silver to double gold.  This scenario isn’t too far-fetched.  So at this point, the Borg are at a disadvantage, and I think that’s maybe what you’re trying to get across, and I agree with that.

Here are my thoughts on how things are for the Borg at the moment.  1v1 The Borg have a huge advantage, especially early game.  On game speed 3 with Assimilate Directive, I can send out an assimilator in 4 min, with Optimize, a sphere in 5.  The non-Borg player pretty much has no where near the number of ships to counter a force like that in those first few minutes.  Dom and I have been playing about 40 games over the last week and a half, and what we’ve come up with is the next best thing to an unbeatable strategy for the Borg player.  (Borg player wins about 90% of the time)  If anyone wants to know more, PM me and we’ll play a few games to show you what I mean.  I think "seeing is believing" in this case, rather than trying to explain it on the forums.  2v2 would be similar, as at least one player has to use some kind of bomber configuration to stop the borg player, which doesn’t do well against the other player’s destroyers. 

It is possible to defeat the Borg player, but only if you’re at the top of your game and really get a good start going.  Also, right now it seems that once a player does have enough ships to defeat one Borg ship, he usually has enough to beat them all, especially if the Borg player is sporting assimilators and spheres early.  We're coming up with counters to this, of course, but at the moment there seems to be a lot that is imbalanced, with the Borg player being unbeatable in the early phase, and the the non-Borg player being being in theory unbeatable if he's given some room to breathe.  But in larger 3v3 and 4v4 games, I could see where rank up could be a problem.

I guess that´s the point in it, the borg need some form of keeping up, without being too powerful to begin with.

In that scenario the borg player is at a serious disadvantage, any ship he looses is a big step towards loosing

I would say these are the three main points that need to be addressed in any solution, and Darthashur has already made them.

• Eliminate the ridiculous early advantage the Borg have at the moment.
  
• Lessen the sting that losing a ship presents.

• Counter the late game rank up that might occur in larger games.

The only thing that comes to mind right now is to head back to more of a 3.0.5a system in terms of ship costs, making ships not as powerful, as well.  Keeping Collective Connections, of course.  It’s less “Borgy”, but it eliminates the first two problems.  Those ships where cheaper (at least I think they were ), so there’s not quite the major effect of losing a ship.  Now, to address how to counter rank up.  About 2 weeks ago, Crazy Moose had a thread about borg global experience.  I didn't really read through all the posts,  but if it is possible for them to accumulate global experience, perhaps this could be a way to gain more Collective Connections.  After certain experience gains, the Collective Connections rate would increase, allowing more ships than now and allow for a larger number of bigger ships later, etc.  There wouldn't be as much money diverted to reseraching Connection upgrades, which could be diverted to building ships.  It's a start as least.  It’s late, and I’m low on ideas, but maybe this will get someone else started.  Remember, any solution has to  solve those issues stated above.  Solve all three at once and you’re good to go.   The Borg are certainly playable, and have some pretty nice advantages, but I think there are some things that would be nice to see changed.  But who knows, maybe with the Command Cube and any other changes they've got cooked up, things will end up balanced.  

Oh and Serpicus, I’d love to give you 300 dollars, but we in the Federation eliminated money and the need to accumulate wealth a long time ago so…...

posted on July 5th, 2009, 7:42 am

Maybe it's just me but i don't build tech centers until late into the game after i have 2 or 3 sets of moons  and a reasonable supply of spheres.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 9:48 am

Indeed, I'm thinking about some Borg changes on some modules, in order to give Borg units a better chance to specialize, as that would fit the micro-managing-focused gameplay.

posted on July 5th, 2009, 12:52 pm

Sounds good Optec... and vague as usual (you sneaky developer, you)

I do agree somewhat: in cooperative multiplayer there is the potential for the Borg to not get as much of a benefit from their powerful ships due to veterans... however of course, there is the potential for them to get a Cube/Diamond much more quickly when the other players trade you resources. I'm not sure whether that balances it, but I think that some changes are definitely needed. I hadn't thought about the CC increase as being a method--but that would certainly work well.

posted on July 6th, 2009, 1:41 am

id like to see 6 cubes wipe out the base  ihad earlier i had at least 50 pulse and qauntum torpedoe turrets 2 starbases and 50+ ships gaurding the entrance to my base nothing got through that i can tell u and by the time i was ready to make my move those 50+ ships had nearly all leveled up good fun against 7 ai opponents all on hard imon 3.05 by the way took me at least 4 hours to wipe everyone out some huge battles between the other teams as well lol

[3rdof5]

posted on July 6th, 2009, 2:35 am

Last edited by 3rdof5 on July 6th, 2009, 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways the Borg have been really left behind since the EXP/Vetrans system has been implimented.  The decreasing of the Collective Connections cost for early ships and tweaking of their initial rate of accumulation made the upgrades more worth the cost.  (In terms of seeing an increase for the cost)

I really like the idea of some kind of global experience for the Borg, though I don't know if I'd want it go to Connections.  What about slight individual adaptations to beam/pulse/torpedo weapons.  Like get a beam weapon adaptation 1st level at 5%, pulse adaption at 5% at 2nd, torpedoes at 5% for 3rd level (1st gold bar), and at 4th (double gold) get the adaptation increased to 10%.  But NO stat increases.

One thing I think that really handicaps :wheelchair: the Borg is that the purchasable 20(?) Connections is a one-time deal.  All the other races can purchase supplies regularly, but the Borg can't use the function more than once.  Borg have a one-time supply ability?  That doesn't make sense to me.  I'd really like to see that as a more than once thing.

And . . . I've had 6 Tactical Cubes (Torp modules, beam modules, armor, and rengeneration), a full crew of scout cubes, and about half a group of spheres wiped out by about 3 crews of Sovereigns, leaving me with a base and a prayer for building enough ships to keep attackers out of my base long enough to make a come back.

But as always, I hold high hopes for the next release and seeing what extra goodies come along.