Sphere dance (description in main post)

[Anonymous]

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 11:38 am

Last edited by Anonymous on August 3rd, 2010, 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ok some background on the sphere dance as i use it.

Build multiple Spheres all with 3 regen modules.

then any time 1 is attacked use regen on it and if it loses lots of health retreat it while the others fire on the enemy. I retreat my spheres at around 40% - 50% health.

Eventually i like to end up with 3 spheres doing this.

I also make all my spheres with 3 regen 1 holding module, and i make a dodecahedron with 2 vinculum modules which i leave on green alert, far behind my fleet.

any time a sphere runs out of energy for regen and is still damaged i use the dode to give it energy again and allow it more regen.

today i had a match when i used this strategy against feds and they couldnt kill a single sphere and they quit in anger at the futility of attacking dancing spheres.

so i wanted to gauge public opinion on the sphere dance. i don' think it has any issues, as these 3 spheres arent the strongest spheres offensively and using the holding beam a lot will drain energy really fast. i only use the holding beam to stop retreats when the enemy is retreating all their ships and doesnt wanna turn around and fight any more.

My vote is for option 1: It's fine as it is

EDIT: bugger, originally i intended to have overlap between the options, so thats why voting for multiple options was allowed, but i made mutually exclusive options, so even though u can vote for more than 1, it doesnt make sense to. so ignore the ability to vote for multiple options and just pick the one u think is right.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 12:22 pm

Yeah, nice one. Good someone mentions it! 
I had to deal with "dancing spheres" ( ) yesterday and it really su**ed. 

But in fact it isn't overpowered, it is good micro - and he didn't even use holding beams!
What happened every time I attacked the Borg base was that sooner or later a couple of spheres appeared, shot my ships down while I failed to kill even one sphere and ended up retreating with minor to severe losses.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
But again: Overpowered? Nope.

The thing is that when someone is using dancing spheres it is unlikely that he's going to attack your base too soon. So you have plenty of time to build powerful turrets and powerful ships 'cause he's spending his res and connections on spheres. (Just don't wait until he gets tired of spheres and starts building diamonds and cubes...  )
You simply have to wait until your fleet is big and strong enough to steamroll his spheres anyway.
It was already lategame when I finally managed to kill one of four spheres with 13 or 16 ships (a mix of cruisers and battleships). I'm pretty sure I would have managed to kill more of them with more and stronger ships.

One thing that comes in handy when playing feds and facing the "Sphere Dance" is SFC. Simply try to cut off the sphere's escape route to finish it off just when your opponent thinks of it as safed. But in any case it is vital to lure the spheres as far away from any base defences as possible.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 12:47 pm

So you have plenty of time to build powerful turrets and powerful ships 'cause he's spending his res and connections on spheres. (Just don't wait until he gets tired of spheres and starts building diamonds and cubes...  )
You simply have to wait until your fleet is big and strong enough to steamroll his spheres anyway.

This is what usually makes you lose. The microing of spheres is quite easy and very powerful. Even 1 sphere build in early or begin of mid-game is strong. That is because it is quite fast, has a super special and can regen in the backlines...I would suggest making the Sphere slower and increasing its max-enery. that way you cant "dance" that easily. In exchange the Adaptor should be a little faster.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 5:04 pm

This is what usually makes you lose.

What are you supposed to do if your Borg-opponent never leaves his base and retreats his sphere into the save space around his main base whenever you try to attack him? 
I'd really like to get some advice on this...

I would suggest making the Sphere slower and increasing its max-enery. that way you cant "dance" that easily. In exchange the Adaptor should be a little faster.

I second that. The Sphere should be fast and maybe even faster than the Assimilator. But as it is i feel it is too fast.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 5:09 pm

What are you supposed to do if your Borg-opponent never leaves his base and retreats his sphere into the save space around his main base whenever you try to attack him? 

well the sphere dance can be done other places than your base too.

thats how i used it in that game.

u just retreat 1 of them away, anywhere, doesnt matter where it goes, as long as the enemy has to go through the rest of your forces to get to it. and if they chase the sphere it will take ages for them to kill it (if they can), allowing you to take more than enough kills in return from them.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 5:14 pm

and if they chase the sphere it will take ages for them to kill it (if they can), allowing you to take more than enough kills in return from them.

True. There's no point in chasing something which is at least as fast as your own ships when you have to go through/around a wall of spheres.
There's still one chance left to stop the spheres from running anywhere. It's the Sovy's special or anything else slowing down ships or disabeling their engines.
But it takes a lot of time to tech up which takes us back to my first post where I said that you'll need a lot of time.
But if waiting (and teching) kills you and attacking dancing Spheres kills you too we can do the maths:
Sphere Dancing + teching up = defeat
Sphere Dancing + attack = defeat
Seems wrong at least to me... 

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 5:34 pm

Remember that the spheres cant level up - no borg ship can. Micro the special abilities of your ships and you can outgun the spheres. Take 2 defiants with critical shots to reduce the wall and halt them on doing the regen-special ability. You can also send in an experimental cruiser to shield up your force. There are plenty of ways to counter it.

Long range artillery works like intrepids work too. Against a sphere the intrepid is fine, with backup of excel 2 or steamies and one or two defiants. This combo also works great on any other borg ships, like cubes. Against the long range targets you can maybe send a monsoon or two for first strike fodder. They evade torps pretty well and can take a little punishment from the beams. In that time, you can take out the weapons with defiants and kill them slowly.

The rommies can take a similar tactic, as do the klingons and the dominion. They all have disabling weapons.
(plasma bolt/polaron torp/dampening missile)

Remember that the borg have fewer ships. Use that advantage.

[Anonymous]

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 5:36 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on August 3rd, 2010, 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

True. There's no point in chasing something which is at least as fast as your own ships when you have to go through/around a wall of spheres.
There's still one chance left to stop the spheres from running anywhere. It's the Sovy's special or anything else slowing down ships or disabeling their engines.
But it takes a lot of time to tech up which takes us back to my first post where I said that you'll need a lot of time.
But if waiting (and teching) kills you and attacking dancing Spheres kills you too we can do the maths:
Sphere Dancing + teching up = defeat
Sphere Dancing + attack = defeat
Seems wrong at least to me... 

Firstly sphere's arent that fast, only 100. all fed combat ships from antares yard can catch it. all field yard vessel can catch it. romulan staryard combat vessels with the exception of the generix spectre can catch it. but if u spam spectres poo on you and you deserve it. All dominion construction yard vessels can catch it except the breen cruiser. again spamming one type of ship is poo so u deserve it.

secondly not all  engine stopping ships are late game:

- klinks have officer kvorts, and veqlaragh special, and chargh special, and polaron field, and polaron torp (multiple uses should kill engines)
- roms have cehlaer special and generix vets.
- feds have sovvie, which takes time, but against borg u will have a larger number of intreps in your fleet to finish them with trico, and intreps are much faster than spheres.
- dominion has the cheap bug, which kills engines for ages. and the is bomb, and the breen battleship.
- other borg have nanites. and holding beams work too.

EDIT:

Long range artillery works like intrepids work too.

intreps arent useful in this case. they are good for attacking turrets at arty range but to deal significant damage to an undamaged sphere would require a stupid spam of intreps. trico's main use against spheres is to catch them unawares when their health is low, finishing them before regen can work for long.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 5:43 pm

if you are referring to the act by which people try to draw your ships away from your starbase with stupid spheres, jumping in and out of range while taking out your miners and constantly regening...then it annoys me to heck!   RAGGGEEE To all who use it!!!

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 6:19 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on August 3rd, 2010, 6:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Firstly sphere's arent that fast, only 100. all fed combat ships from antares yard can catch it. all field yard vessel can catch it. romulan staryard combat vessels with the exception of the generix spectre can catch it. but if u spam spectres poo on you and you deserve it. All dominion construction yard vessels can catch it except the breen cruiser. again spamming one type of ship is poo so u deserve it.

secondly not all  engine stopping ships are late game:

- klinks have officer kvorts, and veqlaragh special, and chargh special, and polaron field, and polaron torp (multiple uses should kill engines)
- roms have cehlaer special and generix vets.
- feds have sovvie, which takes time, but against borg u will have a larger number of intreps in your fleet to finish them with trico, and intreps are much faster than spheres.
- dominion has the cheap bug, which kills engines for ages. and the is bomb, and the breen battleship.
- other borg have nanites. and holding beams work too.

EDIT:

intreps arent useful in this case. they are good for attacking turrets at arty range but to deal significant damage to an undamaged sphere would require a stupid spam of intreps. trico's main use against spheres is to catch them unawares when their health is low, finishing them before regen can work for long.

I think you're forgetting something here about engine disabling. Spheres have regenerate ability, which can insta-regen any engine disabling. I've seen a Sphere recover from ram in less than a second, same for Sovereign special.
You have to take out a Sphere's weapons system first unless it is out of energy, and good luck if you don't happen to have a team of Defiants sitting around (yet another way the Feds manage to be better than everyone else, a 100% weapon disable that can be used multiple times just on reserves.) Cehlaer ability is the most effective at stopping Spheres as it stops regen and holds the Sphere in place.
Chargh is Taq only, good luck if you're Martok (her BoPs are also better for taking on Spheres, Martok really gets the short end of the stick.)

As far as speed goes, if you build a mixed fleet chances are only your smaller yard ships will catch up, this can be really aggravating when the K'Vorts manage to stay in range and get phasered to death while the Vorchas are stuck way behind and cant catch up to polaron torp it (and do you know how many torps it takes to get a likely engine disable?), Polaron field effects can be resisted by high system values IIRC. Don't count on getting vet K'Vorts or Generix against the Borg, unless they are spamming probes.

A stupidly large spam of Intrepids is actually a quite valid strat that is really fun (both avatars due to Mayson's defense bonus and Risner's offense bonus, but Risner's offense is better for Spheres.) The Intrepid dance counters the Sphere dance and then some.

if you are referring to the act by which people try to draw your ships away from your starbase with stupid spheres, jumping in and out of range while taking out your miners and constantly regening...then it annoys me to heck!   RAGGGEEE To all who use it!!!

The killing miners with Spheres is indeed very annoying since Spheres laff in the face of turrets, especially the new, multiuselesstargeting HWP.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 6:37 pm

I think you're forgetting something here about engine disabling. Spheres have regenerate ability, which can insta-regen any engine disabling. I've seen a Sphere recover from ram in less than a second, same for Sovereign special.

this is wrong, regen fixes damaged subsystems (which is rarely a problem for borg) damaged subsystems are red, disabled subsystems flash yellow.

the thing which determines how long specials have effect is the system value. and assimilated resistance passive for holding beam modules. so regen wont turn the engines back on when they are flashing yellow, the reason that spheres get their engines back fast is cos they have a naturally good resistance to specials due to having fewer ships.

You have to take out a Sphere's weapons system first unless it is out of energy, and good luck if you don't happen to have a team of Defiants sitting around (yet another way the Feds manage to be better than everyone else, a 100% weapon disable that can be used multiple times just on reserves.)

the defiants special is useful, but disables weapons for a reduced time on borg ships. and ships with holding modules will recover much faster.

Cehlaer ability is the most effective at stopping Spheres as it stops regen and holds the Sphere in place.
Chargh is Taq only, good luck if you're Martok (her BoPs are also better for taking on Spheres, Martok really gets the short end of the stick.)

disruptor bombardment consumes a lot more energy than combat tractor beam. usually a sphere retreats when all of its regen energy is used up. then you only need to worry about engines, which combat tractor will do for quite some time.

martok gets the fast susa which is great at munching borg, plus it can use its special when chasing a damaged sphere and deal much more damage in a short time. overwhelming it quickly.

both klinks get polaron field and polaron torp.

(and do you know how many torps it takes to get a likely engine disable?)

expect to use 4, its a simple geometric random variable, each subsystem is equally likely to be disabled, but i think shields are ignored in this. plus borg dont have them so polaron torp wont hit them.

plus you shouldn't need to catch up, if you were foolish enough to let them get away from your fleet before u woke up and decided to polaron torp them, then u deserve to lose.

Polaron field effects can be resisted by high system values IIRC

all disabling specials can, but u clearly dont know how polaron field works. it disables a random subsystem for a second, every second. so it wont kill engines for long ever. but the point is that when it loses engines it will slow down quite a bit, enough for u to catch up.

A stupidly large spam of Intrepids is actually a quite valid strat that is really fun. The Intrepid dance counters the Sphere dance and then some.

spam of intreps is not fun, its a boring strategy. its easy to stop, but to stop it u need to spam dodes, which is a boring strategy. you get my point, to beat a spammer you have to drop to their pathetic level and spam too, sucking all the fun out of the game. i hate boring strategies that require your opponent to use an equally boring strategy in return to remain competitive.

The killing miners with Spheres is indeed very annoying since Spheres laff in the face of turrets, especially the new, multiuselesstargeting HWP.

if their spheres are at your base then where is your fleet? borg cant cloak and spheres arent that fast, you should have scouted and seen them coming.

you shouldnt have turrets at your base in a 1v1 against borg anyway due to the borg being able to ignore them so easily. make some ships.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 9:06 pm

Firstly sphere's arent that fast, only 100. all fed combat ships from antares yard can catch it.

So from here there's only one way to go: Intrepid-spam. And that's boring. Everything else takes obviously more time or is too slow.

I'm still looking for a really good counter which is not spam and does not include having my a** kicked by a cube cause it took me too long to amass enough ships to fight off the Spheres.

But if there's no help besides spamming, which isn't fun at all, I guess Sphear dance might indeed be op/an exploit 

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 9:37 pm

Well, if you play klingons/rommies, its pretty easy because you can raid pretty easy with your cloaking devices. If you play dom, take your breen battleships to counter and support it with a few bombers. You can also use your arty while placing probes in a nebular or so.

The feds cant use cloak but have the ability to build nice torp-platforms to ensure the expansion. While a sphere never gets torp-resistance and is mid ranged you have some counters:
- Intrepid with Defiant/Excel II support
- Raiding with Monsoons and Steamies
- Back up your fleet with a Descent and your repair ships to hold on pressure

Try to hold on the pressure, so that the borg cant really expand, retreat with your ships if possible and send them back to the corner they came from. A Remore may be good for high offensive vessels you have to break the defense of the sphere. Give the vector calculation to a Souvie/Steamie/Excel II/Nebula Refit (depends on avatar) and give them punishment.

Against 3 or more spheres I would take:
2 defiants, 2-3 excel II, one souvie/ x steamies (depens on how many you get in the time) / x Nebula refits / 4 or 5 intrepids (depends how many you can build) and one or two Remores + 2 Monsoons.

Build 3 Intrepids, one monsoon, 2 intrepids and one Monsoon in the antares yard and one or two newtons. While building them, try to level up as fast to starfleet command and Eraudi. Then the first two ships should be defiants, following 2 Excels and one Remore. At this time, call also a Descent and maybe build a Nova if you play Mayson, if not build intrepids. Then build a Souvie and an Excel II or two for more support. Take your fleet of intrepids and Monsoons for raiding strikes and back them up with your main fleet. Try to hurt the enemy a little with warp ins to supress the initiative.

Then make a run to their expansions and try to attack the main base.

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 9:46 pm

I think physics blocks in general are exploitish, they don't make sense for gameplay, and they also don't make sense for Star Trek (where you could just go over or under without even slowing down, while FO seems to hav trouble making ships negotiate obstacles.)  A good micro will make Spheres almost unstoppable before the non-Borg player has a critical mass.

Borg vs. non-Borg balance is too fragile, pre-critical mass the Spheres will overwhelm as they can dance and not even worry about enemy fleets, but once the non-borg has enuff ships to kill one sphere quickly (before it can get back to base), it doesnt matter if the Borg has 3 or 13 Spheres, the Spheres will die off one by one (Fed mixed fleet of 25 or so ships vs. 4 Spheres quickly leads to dead Spheres.)

posted on August 3rd, 2010, 9:53 pm

Then the answer is easy: Hold them off until you have a critical mass. Dodge and trick.

A sphere will take some time until it can fight against a starbase. So you dont need to worry about one or two. While the borg try to make a dancing fleet, you also have your options.