Borg Collective Connections to Dilithium or Tritanium

posted on November 16th, 2010, 12:27 am

My idea is to have either the recycler or the incubation center have a toggle "weapon" that when activated, converts 1 collective connection to either 100 dilithium or 100 tritanium depending on what button the player pushes.  And have a button that can transmute dilithium into tritanium and a button that can transmute tritanium into dilithium with some resource loss.

That would (1) allow the player to build more powerful vessels if he/she has the connections but not the resources or vise-versa, (2) allow the player to convert the tritanium into dilithium or vise-versa when the player has an excess of one resource but a lack of another resource, and (3) it would save supply by not having to generate the lacking resource if the player has an excess of a resource.

Also, maybe the cap on the optimized resource assimilator to be raised to eight units instead of four.  Not that it'll make much difference if that facility hasn't been built, but it could help prevent the connections to resource imbalance.

posted on November 16th, 2010, 1:12 am

I'm kind of a borg junkie, and it's always connections that die the hardest.  In very short games, yes, resources will deplete first.  However, even with maxed out connections research, if you are building ships other than tac cubes, your connections will reach a critical level and hang there before your resources do.  (largely because at that point you really need ships, so you spit out spheres, assims, adaptors, dodecs, and scubes whenever you have the resources, occasionally looking funny at resistance is futile.  You might even use it.

posted on November 16th, 2010, 1:23 am

But who doesnt build cubes when they get the chance? besies optec said he would look at it and FO is balanced for 20 to 40 min games i believe .

posted on November 17th, 2010, 6:05 pm

What about this:

The recycling-center is able to "trade" ressources. You can change dil to tri and other way around AND you can change dil+tri vs. collective connections?

With this, you can handle "too much ressources but no collective connections" or "too much collective connections but no ressources"

BUT this solution is only half baked. I think, the borg really have in late game more ressources than collective connections. While other fractions have problems with supply in late game and thus must purchase it so they get problems with ressources, (not the dominion and the feds to pretty well there too) the borg dont suffer supply shortage. Also, the borg always fight outnumbered. Against the dominion, the borg will have a tough match.

Same goes for klingons vs. borg, but the borg can assimilate klingon ships, while the dominion late-game ships cant be assimilated that fast.

Against rommies the borg are at advantage I think and vs. the feds, they are en par.

I think, the borg only need two little tweaks:
Ability, to fight off vast numbers of ships with few ones [Cube(s)] and the ability, to build ships all along with lesser bottlenecks.

Maybe the collective connections can be increased by building additional starbases oder larger station?

What about a "real" uni-complex. I know its hard to implement, but the main base of the borg might expand slowly, creating "borg space" and expand even further, accumulating even more collective connections...


But this will lead to an exp-function, where you will kill off everything with pure mass in late game... not so good either. Gnah... I dont know. I dont like the idea of borg having bottlenecks in its economy. It just dont... suit them.

They should be expensive and slow, but not... crippled.

The problem is the Borg are the perfect enemy: Incredibly strong, adaptive, technologically advanced, numerous, efficient and synchronized. If the Borg were put into the game in a close-to-cannon incarnation they would be game-breakingly overpowered. They need to be crippled so they are balanced enough to be a RTS playable race.

This is also why there were so few TNG story lines involving the Borg, the only way to defeat them was to outsmart them some how, and doing that to many times would cheapen the threat they posed (which Voyager later did, effectively turning them into just-another-bad-guy.)

posted on November 17th, 2010, 6:56 pm

So, one sphere would be a brute force thing which would stand against 10 or 12 fed-ships?

THAt would be NICE!

Imagine! You need 4 or 5 minutes to build your first sphere while other players have already 6 or 7 ships out. The early and first strike will be countered by a single sphere. Let us increase the costs of a sphere to an amount that represents the number of ships you are facing in the same time interval.

Then make the sphere so dreadful, that it CAN withstand this number of ships. Now you have a SINGLE ship that is able, to withstand the enemy fleet, but only at this point. Now you want to expand, defend your expansion and so on.

So you need a second sphere. You need another MASSIVE amount on ressources to build this one.

So you are sloow, but a tanker, "unstoppable moving forward". And now there comes the "think part". In order to beat the borg, you do not only need ships, but a good strategy. But this strategy would fail if you fight against another race, like klingons. So the thing to balance this a little out is the number of ships the borg take into field, the slow expansion and the massive amount on ressources they need to build a ship.

But honestly, I dont fear a sphere if I see one, I fear, when I see 3 or 4 of them. I fear a cube (to a certain point). With two defiants in my fleet, I dont fear the cube. So... I dont know. I think the borg are a little too near on the gameplay of the other races.

A little more powerful ships that need more ressources would be nice AND make the damage, the sphere does dreadful. If I compare ressources and off/def/sys-value I spend for a sphere with other races, like dominion, its laughable.

I think its possible, but needs exact balancing.

posted on November 17th, 2010, 7:52 pm

The Borg are getting a command cube soon (I think the next update, but I could be wrong).

[AtiK]

posted on November 18th, 2010, 1:20 am

Last edited by AtiK on November 18th, 2010, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

So, one sphere would be a brute force thing which would stand against 10 or 12 fed-ships?

THAt would be NICE!

Imagine! You need 4 or 5 minutes to build your first sphere while other players have already 6 or 7 ships out. The early and first strike will be countered by a single sphere. Let us increase the costs of a sphere to an amount that represents the number of ships you are facing in the same time interval.

Then make the sphere so dreadful, that it CAN withstand this number of ships. Now you have a SINGLE ship that is able, to withstand the enemy fleet, but only at this point. Now you want to expand, defend your expansion and so on.

So you need a second sphere. You need another MASSIVE amount on ressources to build this one.

So you are sloow, but a tanker, "unstoppable moving forward". And now there comes the "think part". In order to beat the borg, you do not only need ships, but a good strategy. But this strategy would fail if you fight against another race, like klingons. So the thing to balance this a little out is the number of ships the borg take into field, the slow expansion and the massive amount on ressources they need to build a ship.

But honestly, I dont fear a sphere if I see one, I fear, when I see 3 or 4 of them. I fear a cube (to a certain point). With two defiants in my fleet, I dont fear the cube. So... I dont know. I think the borg are a little too near on the gameplay of the other races.

A little more powerful ships that need more ressources would be nice AND make the damage, the sphere does dreadful. If I compare ressources and off/def/sys-value I spend for a sphere with other races, like dominion, its laughable.

I think its possible, but needs exact balancing.

I just don't think it would work, not against human opponents. Defeating the Borg would just come down to an opening zergfest, wiping out the resource collectors/constructor or both. On top of that, special abilities would render the Borg almost harmless since there would only be one or two targets to be focus fired. Flops is geared and balanced toward fleet on fleet combat, they'd have to do a lot of rethinking to make the Borg playable with so few ships(for instance, they would almost have to be immune to a defiant crit strike).

A canon TNG era cube would be able to take on 30+ ships, and that wasn't even a tactical cube. It would be a game ending super unit that would have to take so long to build/cost so much you'd never see one used in a real match. Spere's would be just as lethal to anything smaller then battleships.

posted on November 25th, 2010, 10:09 pm

the borg are designed with the idea to that you need to balance CCs, di, tri and supply. its what makes them unique and imho quite awesome. you have to balance it all so in late game you still have enough of each. I played like 15 non-combat IAs each one 18 minutes or so to learn how to make it all work. thats the just the borg, its what makes them unique.

the dominion can't trade supply for di or tri.

posted on November 28th, 2010, 8:46 am

During the last game we did with the AI, I had two resource pairs, four upgraded miners, a recycling center, and level 3 nodes.  I had plenty of collective connections because of my level three nodes, but my limited Dilithium and Tritanium amount kept me from building as many cubes as I wanted to build.  The supply was my fault though.  I didn't build enough incubation centers to keep up with the demand.

If you left it at 2 nodes, you could have saved di and tri while solving the problem of having too many CC's... at the same time.

I mean, did you really need 3 nodes?