Borg - Holding Beam and Tractor Beam ideas.

posted on June 29th, 2010, 1:16 am

As I had already mentioned in another topic the Borg lack a tractor beam. //www.fleetops.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,3/topic,7872.0/

When we think about adding tractor beams for the Borg, why not thinking about adding a few more cool features and at the same time rework the still quite useless holding beam.

My ideas:

Giving standard tractor beams to all large borg vessels (Sphere, Diamond, Cube)
Explained in the other thread - no negative influence on game balancing

Reworking the holding beam.

1. Instead of the short, static (and useless) beam we have now, what about making it some kind of combat tractor beam? I mean a beam that would allow you to tow ships against their will with a long enough duration to put some reasonable distance between you and the battle field. When the beam is over, the towed ship would be free again, if it hasnt been assimilated by then. The longer duration of the beam would allow to leave the assimilation rate on a similar level. This would be usefull for removing especially annoying ships from a enemies fleet, like veteran Tavaras or similar ships. Even if it gets away in the end, it has likely paid a high price for it and you have more change to destroy it. In this scenario, the towed ships would still be able to fire everything it has.

2. Or at least what about this? Make the holding beam
  - last at least 30 seconds, rather more
  - drastically increase the assimilation rate (drones beamed over per second)
  - disabling all weapons on the targeted ship - alone that ability would greatly increase  it usefulness if you can silence that annoying dreadnoughts weapons for a while.

3. The most awesome solution, but probably very difficult, if not impossible to code.

Allow the holding beam to actually pull ships into the borg vessel. Possible sizes should be by borg ship type:
Sphere -> Small ships
Diamond -> Small and Medium ships
Cube -> All ships

Once a ship is completly pulled in, it should be removed from the game. Assimilation would imo imbalance the game, since you would usually choose valuable ships to pull in. Imagine a 4 cube Borg fleet that just assimilated 2 dreadnoughts this way....  quite mean. At most we could consider giving the borg vessel the remaining hull points of the vessel. The pulled in ship should be removed without explosion, after all it is disassembled.

The make this into good balancing this "pull in holding beam" needs to have some more limitations:

It should take a while to pull a ship inside. Long enough to give the enemy fleet opportunity to destroy the cube or to at least damage it so severly that it aborts. The cube should be forced stationary while doing this (as seen in Voyager). when it would be allowed to move as suggested in 1. it would be imbalanced.
For obvius reasons, this need a lot of energy or even better a cooldown (perhaps depending on the vessel size pulled in and the borg vessel) to make it balanced.
The ship that is pulled in should be allowed to fire whatever it has at the cube. I at least would sure do that if I would be on board and face assimilation.

Graphical? Implementing this would require to give the named borg ships some kind of hangar that could be opened or at least has to be open all the time. An Animation of that would be more than awesome. It wont create much additional graphical load since there are not many large borg ships in game normally and so it is unlikely that more than one hangar opening sequence had to be rendered at the same time.

I realize that the last thing is likely impossible, but I had to suggest it anyway, because it would be so cool and borgish. Imagine the fear of a player for his veteran vessels when such a cube appears and begins to advance towards his beloved Tavara..

I am open for suggestion and more holding beam ideas. 

posted on June 29th, 2010, 1:22 am

i'm for 1, but not 2 and 3.

1 makes sense. if the holding beam can disable enemy engines it should be able to pull ships along with it.

and the holding beam is far from useless now.

build a 3 regen 1 holding sphere and u can use 2 vin dode to double its regen time. and any ship running away can be pinned by the holding beam. this works even better near your enemy's yards. they think they can wait quite a while before issuing repair order, at the last moment when they push repair, u use holding beam, not much of their hull is left to resist borg weapons.

posted on June 29th, 2010, 4:27 pm

I like ideas #1 and #2, except I think that weapons shouldn't be disabled. Idea #3 I think should only apply to much smaller ships than the Sphere (like the Intrepid or smaller), as we never saw larger ships getting pulled in. Maybe up to an Akira-sized ship being taken in by a Cube.

posted on August 7th, 2010, 1:00 pm

Bump

Any more thoughts?

posted on August 7th, 2010, 1:48 pm

Well, the assimilation capabilities right now are not great, but it would vastly imbalance the game, if we increase it any more. And - if you increase the duration by the same time identical drones/beam (So instead of 100 drones for 10 seconds --> 100 drones per 20 seconds with decreased energy consumption) the only thing that would change is, that you need more time in order to assimilate. Under the line, this would weaken the holding beam. Because every second you dont have the enemy ship assimilated, you fight in disadvantage compared to the holding beam we have now.

So, a decreased energy consumption wont solve a thing. Lets play around and say, a holding beam will transfer 400 drones per second, while you holding beam will nom nom all of you energy in one second. This would give you an instant assimilation. So you dont have to wait 20 seconds until you have it.

Range: If you make the holding beam long range and push the ship away, it... would make no sense either. You try to assimilate a vessel with it. If you are up against a tavara, you have to destroy or assimilate it. Assimilation of 800 crew members would be possible if you have enough time and ships and backbone. Sounds balanced.

If you only have a sphere, then you maybe wont make it this far. Pushing it back to long range also means, that it is outside the weapons range of your cube. So you cant destroy it. If I see a tavara, I try to destroy it. I fire on it, wait, until the tavare wants to cloak, then activate the holding beam and fire again. If I'm lucky, I nom nom its hull. If not, I was too weak.

My idea:
Make the boarding ability the borg have to a free ability to certain chassis. So a diamond, a Cube and two spheres may activate the boarding ability, concentrate on a single vessel and take it over in an instant. Then the ships will activate its holding beams in order to assimilate the second ship. If that was the case, enough time is gone, to activate boarding the second time, to get the third ship. After that, you must wait for energy refill.

Also, I never really use nanites. They cost too much precious energy.

posted on August 7th, 2010, 4:15 pm

Also, I never really use nanites. They cost too much precious energy.

nanites are actually very effective. they have many uses

they can decloak ships by knocking out weapons.

they can reduce the firepower of a fleet of ships.

they can knock out engines and allow borg ships to run away and regenerate.

they are always worth it. the fact that they cost a lot of energy is necessary as they are so useful.

posted on August 7th, 2010, 6:51 pm

I'd prefer the pulling beam to the classical holding beam. Perhaps a holding beam module could enable both independently, a pulling beam and a assimilation beam. If both targets are the same ship tis makes a classical holding beam again.

posted on August 10th, 2010, 4:15 am

I've said it before a long time ago, and I'll say it again.

I think the only thing that needs to be changed to make assimilation perfectly effective is to make the shields remain up on the assimilated ship.  Or give the borg some sort of special ability that replenishes shields (maybe at the cost of crew, some penalty to keep them from abusing it in team matches).

It wouldn't even have to be a recharge, just some escape mechanism to make it so that assimilated ships can join the fight and not die 3 seconds after being assimilated.

Suppose assimilated ships become invulnerable to damage from the same class of ship as themselves for 30 seconds after being assimilated?  Borg shield and all.  It could cost supplies or collective links.