assimilated ships

posted on January 18th, 2010, 9:02 pm

Oh yes. Assimilate a Tavara and add just six Borg-modified heavy pulse disruptors and see who stands against this....

I don't think that A Tavara could handel the knock-back from that, even with a borg SIF it would be blown apart!

I think the Idea of modules is a good one. like a venture scout might not have any and a tavara might have 3 or 4. depending on the size


I think this discution came up before but I don't know I if dev. commented or not... regardless, this is a little diffrent idea, but simular

posted on January 18th, 2010, 9:03 pm

Oh yes. Assimilate a Tavara and add just six Borg-modified heavy pulse disruptors and see who stands against this.... well I don't think adding more weapons to ships which have been assimilated and powered up by that anyway is a good idea at all. As I said. Replacing the original weapons with Borg ones would make them strong enough already and is enough to me.

An assimilated tavara would be no where near as powerful as a cube and yet fleets stand against this... so yeah there's something to think about and a simple balnace modification such as removing the ability to cloak on a tavara when assimilated would remove any problems. The borg wouldn't cloak anyway their prime directive is to assimilate not to hide.

But also as with all assimilated and normal borg vessels they have alot of drones aboard so after being assimilated the crew complement should increase so recapturing the vessel would be pretty hard.

posted on January 18th, 2010, 9:41 pm

This thread has reminded me of a Voyager Repeat; The Raven (which was on tv today infact), where a Borg modified Type 8 Shuttle incapacitated an entire fleet of B'omar ships on it's own...

posted on January 18th, 2010, 10:05 pm

like phoenix has stated, there are plently of examples of assimilated ships becoming more powerfull.


and I like eraldos Idea and I would like to take it farther, how about all of the specal weapons are removed (since you can't unlock them anyway) but maby this would only happen after you select 'assimilation moduels'. then the question remains, should the assimlated ships gain the borg specal weapons or not, personaly I'm thinking not, just to keep it balanced.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 4:44 am

I suggested something similar to Blade's Complete Assimilation concept mod in my first post, but now I realise there could be something even better, as Complete Assimilation uses replaceWeapons, so you have to actually tell the ship to upgrade and the AI is unable to do this...

It would be great if the modding gods were able to set up a ships .odf with an ability like this:

fedSOD = shipsod
fedmaxhealth = 100
fedmaxshields = 100
fedweapon1 = "phaser"
fedweapon2 = "photontorpedo"
borgSOD = shipsodborg
borgmaxhealth = 140
borgmaxshields = 140
borgweapon1 = "modifiedphaser"
borgweapon2 = "gravitontorpedo"

and the game would use anything marked with fed while owned by the Federation and anything marked with borg while owned by the Borg, rom while owned by Romulans etc.  This would mean even the AI would reap the benefits from capturing or assimilating an opponents ship.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 8:09 am

no reason to do that all you need to use the "ownerRace" (i think thats what its called) from the constructors. Besides the way you suggested leaves no room for any hull or shield upgrades.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 9:56 am

Constructors don't actually change the ship or build list when captured, so I am not sure how that would work?

posted on January 19th, 2010, 1:29 pm

Build lists don't change? How does it come then, if you capture an alien constructor that suddenly any build option except for the suiting mixed-tech-yard vanish?

posted on January 19th, 2010, 3:17 pm

The build lists change simply because every constructor has 4 stations that they can build if they are captured by another race.  Stations are either visible or not depending on who is set as the owner and the buildablebyownerraceonly = 1 command, which every station is set to 1.  The list itself doesn't actually change.
I'll use a Federation Constructor as an example...

Constructors have 4 different sets of stations in the build lists.  Federation Constructor build list:

builditem0 = "fed_outpostYA"
builditem1 = "fed_storage_dock"
builditem2 = "fed_antares_yardY"
builditem3 = "fed_sf_engineeringY"
builditem4 = "fed_sf_scienceY"
builditem5 = "fed_sf_commandY"
builditem6 = "fed_eraudi_yardY"
builditem7 = "all_delay"
builditem8 = "all_delay"
builditem9 = "all_delay"
builditem10 = "fed_platformY"
builditem11 = "all_delay"
builditem12 = "fed_mixedtech_yard_domA"
builditem13 = "fed_mixedtech_yard_kliA"
builditem14 = "fed_mixedtech_yard_romA"
builditem15 = "fed_mixedtech_yard_borA"
builditem16 = "all_delay"
builditem17 = "all_delay"
builditem18 = "all_delay"
builditem19 = "all_delay"
builditem20 = "dom_mixedtech_yard_fed"
builditem21 = "kli_mixedtech_yard_fed"
builditem22 = "rom_mixedtech_yard_fed"
builditem23 = "bor_adap_matrix_fed"
builditem24 = "all_delay"
builditem25 = "all_delay"
builditem26 = "all_delay"
builditem27 = "all_delay"
builditem28 = "all_delay"
builditem29 = "all_delay"
builditem30 = "all_delay"
builditem31 = "all_delay"
builditem32 = "all_delay"
builditem33 = "fed_outpostY_DDWW"
builditem34 = "fed_platform_phaser"
builditem35 = "fed_platform_pulse"
builditem36 = "fed_platform_sensor"

A. buildItems 0-10 = Outpost, Storage Dock, Antares Yard, SF Engineering, SF Science, SF Command, Eraudi Yard and Turret Platform.
B. buildItems 12-15 = Dominion, Klingon, Romulan and Borg Mixed-Tech Yards for the Federation.
C. buildItems 20-23 = 4x Federation Mixed-Tech Yards for the other races.
D. buildItems 33-36 = Upgraded Outpost, Turrets.

Note:  "all_delay" are used to create spaces between buttons in the build list

1) Stations listed under A. are set to be owned by UnitedFederation and are always available, as long as the player is the Federation, due to the buildablebyownerraceonly = 1 command and as such are not available (or visible) to non-Federation players.
2) Stations listed under B. are the mixed tech yards buildable when you have the required ally.  These stations include the requiredAlly = command and are owned by UnitedFederation, so they can only be built by a Federation player that has the needed ally.
3) Stations listed under C. are basically identical copies to those listed under B. however the requiredAlly command is not used, owner faction is changed from UnitedFederation to that stations owner and the shiplist is changed to the mixed-tech ships available to the corresponding race (ex, Federation Mixed-Tech yard is set to Dominion as owning faction and has the Dominion's Federation Mixed-Tech ships, even tho the station is on the Federation Constructor).  This means if a Dominion player captures a Federation Constructor, the one and only station available for the Dominion player to build is the Dominion/Federation Mixed-Tech Yard (buildItem20) as it is the only station set to Dominion as the owning player.  All other stations are not buildable by the Dominion and as such are not visible in the build list.  These stations are also spaced using all_delay a number of times so they do not appear in the visible list while the Constructor is owned by a Federation player.
4) Stations listed under D. are the ones the AI uses.  Since the AI can't currently use replaceWeapon commands, the only way to get them to build turrets is to allow them to build the turret without needing to build the platform and upgrading.  Same as fully upgraded Outposts and Borg Uplinks.  All these structures are spaced using all_delay so that they do not appear in the players build lists, but they are there otherwise the AI would not be able to build them.

So as you can see, all the necessary items are in the one list on one ship, neither the ship or the list actually change, the game simply hides buildItems which you're not allowed to build.  If my interpretation of this is incorrect then ignore me, but this is how I see it.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 3:25 pm

thats pretty correct. the buildItemXAvailability controlls how a buttons is displayed

posted on January 19th, 2010, 3:51 pm

The list of available constructions changes, regardless of whether the list is already there. If that was the case, there would be all stations and 2 of each mixed-tech (ally and capture) regardless of who owns the ship.

You must have misunderstood; we were talking about ingame, not the odf.

[Vorsath]

posted on January 19th, 2010, 4:03 pm

Last edited by Vorsath on August 10th, 2010, 2:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know, I was only trying to explain that the list and ship never change, the game just doesn't show the stations you can't build, its that simple...
Knowing this,  I don't understand how the shiplist changes would help with somehow changing an assimilated ship.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 4:34 pm

Having it use different weapons based on race similar to Construction ship build lists was the same idea of mine. The build lists were mentioned as an example.

posted on January 19th, 2010, 4:48 pm

yep we have some ideas and we definitely want to extend assimilation to be more show like. a good example is the ENT Borg episode, where you can see how they continue to assimilate the cargo ship more and more

posted on January 19th, 2010, 8:36 pm

yep we have some ideas and we definitely want to extend assimilation to be more show like. a good example is the ENT Borg episode, where you can see how they continue to assimilate the cargo ship more and more

Thats exactly what i was thinking of when i posted this topic, this makes me think that borg ships arnt actually constructed in yards or anything like that but are assimilated vessels transformed into simple shapes like a cube, sphere ect... built up over time from a single assimilated ship.