Assimilator/Holding beam AND boarding party ideas/issues...

posted on March 15th, 2009, 1:32 am

Ok, so I have 1 main problem with the assimilator and holding beams and boarding party type tech.  All transport crew over to take over ships.  Obviously different ships + more assimilater/holding beam modules, the more efficient the unit is at doing this.  Here's my complaint/idea.  When you use any combination or perhaps just one of these techs, they take the ships crew down to zero.....so in the heat of battle one has to switch one's attention to the ship to transport drones over to take it as yours so the ferengi don't get it.  Ok that's fine.....so now I've got a vessel which relies on shields that I just took over and its got no shields.  So the ai, and any decent human player targets the unshielded ship and I just wasted special energy, my crew, and most of all....my patience. :-p 

So here's a few ideas for a fix.  Either make assimilator/holding beams/boarding parties put a skeleton crew on it....i.e. 25% of the normal crew rate or perhaps 25% of the amount of crew when the ship began being assimilated/etc.  That way these techs/abilities become much more useful without taking away their original purpose or being "OP."  My other idea is that when you take over a ship raise its stats and take away its shields....for example a fed "cruiser" class assimilated would gain the stats of a borg "cruiser" class....or something like that.  I think the first idea would be easier to code in as well as much less OP.  Just as a note to the Star Trek universe....I don't think the borg would waste time assimilating an entire vessel, putting their techs on it, etc, and then have everything end up in a draw....so all the borg transported onto said vessel would all simultaneously die at the exact same time the native race to the ship did.

One more note and I'll leave you guys to flame and discuss my thoughts.  With the boarding party tech all around.....meaning not just the borg, but the romulan equiv, feds, etc all have some sort of boarding party type thing.  Shouldn't they all be beefed up a little?  Perhaps for every use of the special used, crew degenerates at a certain rate?  My reasoning behind this is 2 fold. 

First, I realize this is a game and not 100% accurate to the Star Trek series.  However, this game is much much much more realistic to the shows than vanilla Armada(2) were.  If I dump 10 borg drones on a ship w/ 100 crew....its almost a 100% chance that ship will become borg. 

Second, obviously that would be OP as hell so to make it more realistic to the game maybe make it so that for every boarding party used it will eat up like 5% or 10% of the ships crew.  It will give other races the chance to actually take over ships for one.  Lets face it...you shield users almost never have a ship from someone elses fleet unless its a scout....and you'd have to be a terrible player at the borg to let one of your ships get captured.  It would bring more diversity and fun to the game. 


Let me know what you guys think.

posted on March 15th, 2009, 1:44 am

What's this "OP" you keep mentioning? 

posted on March 15th, 2009, 2:00 am

Over Powered.  I've heard it in games and on gaming forums for idk...the last 10 years?  Sorry, sometimes the lingo catches on as regular speech.

posted on March 15th, 2009, 2:06 am

i have not played roms lately but i use to have a nice little fleet of ships using the tavara

[Anonymous]

posted on March 15th, 2009, 2:18 am

Last edited by Anonymous on March 15th, 2009, 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

yeah. with the Tavs I used to take over quite a few Dom AI mid-level cruisers.
but that was back when we had 6 tavs. now that the Tav-maker is neutered, only 2 drops at most can be squeezed out, so I dont know if i would still be able to.. havent played Rommies in a while either

posted on March 15th, 2009, 2:39 am

We're kind of getting off-topic here.  I'm really looking for opinions/thoughts on whether or not what I mentioned would be good to be put in game and if so, will it be put in game?!

posted on March 15th, 2009, 2:42 am

Well we can't do either.

Good ideas? Put them to a VOTE rather than a discussion.

Put in the mod? Ask the Devs.

But I'm reading on with interest =].

posted on March 15th, 2009, 2:53 am

Thanks for bringing that to my attention Rhaz...I didn't even realize there was a feature request forum.  So please all forgive for the double post cause I'm about to copy and paste this mofo :-p

posted on March 15th, 2009, 3:22 am

How about as the borg transport over the also  target the ship  with Assimilator Nanite torpedoes .The extra members from  boarding party would Increase the assimilation rate (say  5 crew per second for  4 seconds)  of the affected ship. the assimilation torpedos/launcher could use special energy or be  at a set number  before the  ability is  no longer available. As a result  ship would have to rebuild the module to regain the ability. there by limiting the Potential  unfair advantage of  borg ships.

posted on March 15th, 2009, 10:39 am

(merged topics)

Hm, some interessting ideas. I will see what we can do, perhaps for a special ship in the future, but i think general Assimilation will have to stay the way it is at the moment.. hm.. or perhaps something for the assimilation Avatar

posted on March 15th, 2009, 9:53 pm

I would be happy if it was an assimilation avatar bonus.  However, I would ask the reason behind not doing it for both avatars IF its not too much trouble to explain Optec.  I realize you Devs and Mods have a lot of other things to do other than to constantly respond to the sometimes random whinings of the players.

Oh and by the way Optec, I do appreciate your merging both threads and your response.  This is one of the few mods I've seen with Devs that stay in constant touch with the player base.  Kudos on a great mod.

posted on March 15th, 2009, 10:41 pm

Hehe the more ideas you post, there more might be included in Fleet Operations! We got many interessting features and ideas out of community discussions, so its quite important for us.

I would like something like in first contant. beaming some drones over to a ship and with a certain chance they will get more.. and more.. and finally assimilate the ship. I think we can put something like that on todo, but at the moment its not possible and should take quite some time to be implemented, so we will delay it a while. We are currently working on the features and models for the next patches 

posted on March 16th, 2009, 9:04 pm

One more thing related to this Optec....so when one assimilates w/ the beam it goes through the shields.  When the ship is finally assimilated and you beam over....the shields are at 0 even after the transport.  I think raising shield regeneration rate after assimilation would be a nice avatar bonus for assim. 

Also, on a related note, my brother and I both play and we both feel shield regen rates as a whole are a little low across the board.  Maybe you might consider doing a poll to see if a large enough player base feel the same?  I'm not saying anything drastic like 100% more...but maybe like 10% or something.  I'd have to look at the numbers to see what they're at now and test it to see what would be good.  It just takes a solid 5-10 mins for a ship w/ 1% shields to recharge to full.

posted on March 16th, 2009, 9:07 pm

Hmmm... perhaps a "special weapon" could be given to most of the ships of a certain race to turn shield generator off for 10 (or how ever many) seconds and at the end, give 100% shields (or what ever percentage) again