borg assimilation idea

[deathincarn]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 5:16 am

Last edited by deathincarn on November 12th, 2010, 5:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

ok so i had this awesome idea whilst sitting in traffic on my way home from work yesterday for a really cool way for the borg to do some assimilating. and perhaps if the devs like it there may still be time to include it in the borg redo.

as some of you might know in the voyager episode "dark frontier", the queen informs seven-of-nine to develop the borgs new method to assimilate highly resistant species (such as humans) by making use of a 'assimilation virus'.

"The virus is designed to infect every lifeform on a target planet, assimilating the planet's life slowly. By the time the population realizes what is happening, half of their population will be drones" - quoted from memory alpha.


Now hows about we adapt this idea into fleetops, make a weapon module that adds a new weapon to any borg vessel that possesses the module. the weapon will fire kinda like a borg torp and when it hits a vessel (providing the said hit vessels shields are down), the vessel will be infected with the assimilation virus and hence slowly convert that ship to the borg players side.

here are some rules for weapon:

1 ) the infected ship can only have the virus removed if it repairs at a dock.

2 ) the infected ship can only be infected with the weapon if shields are down. else the weapon does damage to shields subsystem if shield are still up.

3 ) if ship hit once with weapon while shields down the crew assimilation rate is: 1 crew member converted to borg every second.

4 ) if ship hit twice with weapon while shields down the crew assimilation rate is: 2 crew member converted to borg every second.

5 ) if ship hit 3 times with weapon while shields down the crew assimilation rate is: 3 crew member converted to borg every second. and so on and so on. (but devs will have to decide on it, personally i think it should be exponential not linear, but that may be overpowered)

6 ) even if the ship is infected once and never hit again assimilation will continue until ship is repaired at dock.

7 ) once every crew member of enemy ship is converted to borg then the ship is yours.

8 ) once a ship is infected all other borg ships will cease firing on that infected ship (because the borg want to assimilate it) and only the borg assimilation virus weapon will continue to be fired at infected ship. conventional borg weapons will be fired at non-infected enemy ships.

9 ) the assimilation virus weapon does not need special energy to be fired.

i think this idea will really give the borg some strength especially when faced with small ship spam, and also give the borg some really needed late game strength on large maps when a enemy fleet is far from its home base, which will force any infected ship to immediately return to shipyard for repair or it will most certainly be converted.

So what do all think? 

posted on November 12th, 2010, 5:24 am

How would you prevent the ship from becoming derelict with this weapon when all the crew has been converted?

posted on November 12th, 2010, 5:32 am

the the crew is being converted to borg, so it wont become a derelict. after all the crew is converted it should be a borg ship with 75% of the total crew capacity being borg.

so if one had a ship with 100 crew max, then after the crew is converted to borg, it should be a borg ship with 75 drones on board out of a possible 100 drones.

use the game mechanics that are used for the holding beam, just modified in a way to give the borg this new weapon

posted on November 12th, 2010, 8:14 am

Why no special energy? It should be used like every other Borg special weapon(Matrix+special energy) or via the module system. What do you have in mind? The latter would mean it's restricted to certain vessels only, the first needs special anergy.

The Borg lack late game strength? Since when? They got a cube and nanites!  In my eyes the Borg are the species you should never allow to get into late game.

If you stop firing on a target, then it will reload its shield(even if it's only a small amount), however it will be enough to prevent the assimilation part come into action.

It is a nice idea, I just wanted to point out some issues.

[deathincarn]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 9:05 am

Last edited by deathincarn on November 12th, 2010, 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Q) why no special energy.
A) because if it uses special energy then i fear its gona become like the the holding beam, where you gona use crap loads of special energy just to fire it for like 5 seconds and perhaps still not be able to capture the ship. i feel the weapon is something that should be able to be standard hardware. it doesnt take special energy to fire a phaser or torp hence i dont think it should take special energy to fire this new weapon. and it makes sense in terms of cannon coz the real threat to the borg are the resistant species like human, romulan, klingon etc, so its logical for the borg to equip it as standard on all borg vessels to combat those species, the borg arent just gona fire it like once or twice using special energy they gona use it all the time.

Note: even tho i say it should come standard on all vessels, i still want it as a module coz its fun to customise borg ships.

Note: I really dont want it to use special energy coz then it gona be like the holding beam, you get 1 or 2 shots with it and then u cant use it again till special energy regens. and lets be honest here how often do we see a holding beam borg ship? practically never coz it sucks, its incredibly ineffective, u beter off just waiting till you knock out shields and then just teleport drones over. also its gona take on average 1 to 2 minutes to assimilate a ship using this weapon, so it takes a while, its not like instant or a 30 sec deal. hence why make it use special energy?

Q) The Borg lack late game strength? Since when? They got a cube and nanites!
A) Of course, how often does one ever see a cube in multiplayer, its a very rare sight. and even then its easy to kill if u got like 20 excel II's and some support. also cubes are incredible expensive, u proberly better off building like 3 regen spheres than a cube with the same resources.

Q) If you stop firing on a target, then it will reload its shield (you have a valid point there)
A) well the idea behind fixing that would simply be that the borg drones that have been assimilated from the virus weapon will disable shields. (which isnt so bad considering that the enemy ship will still be able to fire its weapons and fly around still until fully assimilated by the virus, it just hasnt got shields, and borg ships wont attack it coz it being assimilated, also you can make it possible so that one cant teleport drones over on an infected ship just so that the weapon cant be abused when it causes shields to be down)

posted on November 12th, 2010, 10:34 am

Not requiring this to use special energy to fire would make it really, really powerful.  Even if it fires only once every ten seconds if the weapon hit only twice on a ship from the small yard the owner might not have time to send it to repair, and the Borg player could keep doing it.  The Borg already have a ton of abilities to quickly assimilate small ships (like the assimilation beam, the teleport through shields thing, etc.).

[vonCarstein]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:03 am

Last edited by vonCarstein on November 12th, 2010, 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

This sounds insanly powerful. I don't think i like that very much... a combination of that and an assimilator will turn whole fleets over to the borg in seconds. because ships are either fast or have a decent ammount of crew.
Imho essentially what this weapon does is: Give the Borg player a good chance to assimilate every ship of an encouter with the enemy that he wins. Because if u try to flee from these things especially when the Borg keeps some scubes with that in reserve... well I don't think theres a happy ending for the fleet that tries to get away... not to mention that it screws the cloaking races completly... they come out of cloak with shields down. some hits from that weapon... and many of his ships will turn to the borg...

[deathincarn]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:17 am

Last edited by deathincarn on November 12th, 2010, 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

you may have a point, but i think if it does use special energy then it shouldnt use much like maybe every shot takes like 10 special energy or something. i do want this to be balanced, i dont want the borg to be unbalanced. but do think this idea does play to what should be the borg strength i.e. assimilation.

but i do think that if u do go up against say a sphere with say 20 ships and it has this weapon installed it should be able to take over like 5 of those ships or so. i think thats fair. though like i said i do want it balanced

if it must use special energy to be balanced then im fine with that, just so long as it doesnt become the horrible holding beam we have now

[vonCarstein]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:26 am

Last edited by vonCarstein on November 12th, 2010, 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hmm that came out a little wrong.
I like the idea in general I just think it will be terribly hard to balance it (also to balance it vs the other modules of the borg because if that thing can take out shield subsystems and assimilate afterwards I don't think I would put anything else in my ships.
I think the first step of balancing that would be: make it unavailable for s-cubes (and probes)  and limit it to 1 per ship or mb 2 on bigger ones. Because if the Borg player spams this early.. well thats gg for every ship out of the small yards 
or to keep the dmg that weapon does against shields minimal.

edit reason: balancing vs other borg modules

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:29 am

Taking only a little special weapon energy isn't much better than taking none, because Borg ships generally have tons of energy.

So, basically you're saying that a single sphere should be able to assimilate 5 ships (not just destroy, but assimilate), not counting the other ships it destroys?  I don't think that can be balanced, especially considering how fast spheres are (relatively) and how hard they are to kill with regeneration.  If the Borg player has 3 spheres, they can assimilate your fleet.

This ability would also enable the Borg to easily assimilate expansions, or at least the miners (generally, the other player could decommission the mining station, but if they're busy or the Borg launch 10 of the weapon against the station (not unreasonable with probes and SCubes) they suddenly have a free expansion).

Also, as vonCarstein said, this would kill the cloaking factions.

I like that you're thinking about making the Borg better, but they're already pretty god at assimilation.  Letting them take over other ships that much more easily isn't the right way to go, in my opinion.

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:29 am

whoa 5 out of 20 stolen for no special energy, that is op.

to do the same with the blue beam of death takes loads of energy.

i think it should definitely cost energy, i like the idea. it would keep ships decloaked.

about holding beam, i regularly install holding beam module on my spheres. makes them viable targets for the dodecahedron vinculum refresh, making it have super regen. and the holding beam essentially stops a ship running away so u can kill them.

[vonCarstein]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:41 am

Last edited by vonCarstein on November 12th, 2010, 11:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

I also think special energy is a must.

What you never should forget is that there won't be one of these weapon fireing in a battle but many in volleys.. so if you have f.e. 7 ships fireing this... and they concentrate on a ship with shields down.. well the assimiliation rate / sek will get so high it will be impossible to get it home.

Why it should cost special energy: to prevent the said assimilation slugfest after the Borg wins an encounter. After a battle the Borg ships should be low on energy so they cant just pursue and take over every fleeing enemy ship.

posted on November 12th, 2010, 11:51 am

i agree with what u saying vonCarstein. it needs to be balanced, how exactly that gets done is still very much undecided, maybe instead of 1 crew per second maybe instead 1 crew every 2 or 3 seconds. who knows. i just want it to be effective, i want someone who is playing borg to really want to put this weapon on their ship and for it not to be like the holding beam where prob most ppl avoid it like the plague.

posted on November 12th, 2010, 12:02 pm

i agree with what u saying vonCarstein. it needs to be balanced, how exactly that gets done is still very much undecided, maybe instead of 1 crew per second maybe instead 1 crew every 2 or 3 seconds. who knows. i just want it to be effective, i want someone who is playing borg to really want to put this weapon on their ship and for it not to be like the holding beam where prob most ppl avoid it like the plague.

hey, i just said i love holding beam lol, its not plague to me.

on other ships it makes special weapons near useless too. if the enemy is bugging you with defiants or gensups holding modules will help, especially for assiming those low crew defiants

[deathincarn]

posted on November 12th, 2010, 12:07 pm

Last edited by deathincarn on November 12th, 2010, 12:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

but its prob the last thing most ppl consider putting on their borg ships, most would rather put and extra beam, or prime or regen with their last choice being to put a holding beam on. myles, u and a few other may be the exception, but i think im right about the majority of players. 

ok so before this thread gets derailed any further lets get back on topic