Changes to the Borg

posted on October 6th, 2013, 6:43 pm

Myles, in Star Trek Voyager Endgame Seven of Nine clearly states to a suggest to take the Transwarp Network and destroying it in the Alpha Quadrant wouldn't work because there is only exit apertures in the Alpha Quadrant and no Transwarp structure. Only exit apertures open at the exit location and then close returning to normal space. That statement makes it official to how Transwarp and Transwarp Apertures work.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transwarp_conduit
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transwarp_aperture
http://borgcollective.wikia.com/wiki/Transwarp

what a Exit Transwarp Aperture looks like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvqme6qYtME

This link is about the entire hub:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transwarp_hub

i see where the confusion here is, my mistake, i used terminology too loosely. let me clarify what i mean:

i used "transwarp aperture" when i meant "interspatial manifold". either way, the crux of the matter is that the conduits are lined with technology (see the hexagonal things in this image: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Co ... terior.jpg). borg ships can't just choose where in space to exit, they have to exit where the transwarp conduits end. like a network of wormholes.

presumably the borg cube in bobw was leaving a trail of these on its way to earth, which is why borg ships were later able to reach earth much faster (FC and endgame). hence "transwarping in" ships to a battle in fleetops would require that these (presumably costly) hexagons be present at the destination.

posted on October 6th, 2013, 6:48 pm

The only time I've seen a Cube chase a Galaxy Class had the Galaxy pushed to the limit with the Cube casually strolling along behind it, not putting any real effort in. The episode makes it seem the Borg weren't even trying, which is quite normal for them. Not like they were in much of a hurry.

He could have been talking about the fact that Borg ships have transwap built in.

Actuallly I was mostly referring to the Borg only taking about one year to reach Earth after their first encounter. They are way way out in Voyager country. I had actually forgotten about the episodes where Voyager or Enterprise couldn't keep up with them for very long.

As far as using resources to have Starfleet bring in resources it makes alot more sense than buidling starbases, science stations and shipyards in contested warzones. You have to have some kind of limit so you either have abstract resources or time limits or a combo of the two.

The best approach is the Medieval Warfare approach where you have so many points to pick your army ahead of time. You can either have lots and lots of cheap troops or a smaller number of elite troops and the same could be applied to starships, you get 10,000 useless Intrepids or 100 Sovereigns or 2 Defiants.

Also regarding the needing of "apetures". Didn't the Voyager crew get a ship that let them go super fast but it ended up being a trap set by some species to get Voyage to the Borg? I don't recall them using a any external device.

posted on October 6th, 2013, 7:17 pm

Actuallly I was mostly referring to the Borg only taking about one year to reach Earth after their first encounter. They are way way out in Voyager country.

rewatch the episode q who. you'll see that q didn't send the enterprise to borg space. he sent it near system j25. nowhere near borg space. it was only 7000 ly from federation space. instead of the 70000 ly voyager was sent. the borg ship was already on its way to earth at warp speeds, probably because of what happened in the episode Regeneration in enterprise.

As far as using resources to have Starfleet bring in resources it makes alot more sense than buidling starbases, science stations and shipyards in contested warzones. You have to have some kind of limit so you either have abstract resources or time limits or a combo of the two.

the thing is, it's not a warzone. time is messed around with in a2/fo. a ship normally takes years to build. at the beginning of every game of fo is an amount of time equivalent to several ships being built (that is to say several years are passing) before any fights start. the area becomes a warzone when the fighting starts, not before. for gameplay reasons, time is the concept which is abused the most.

Also regarding the needing of "apetures". Didn't the Voyager crew get a ship that let them go super fast but it ended up being a trap set by some species to get Voyage to the Borg? I don't recall them using a any external device.

that was quantum slipstream, given to them by arturis in Hope and Fear, to get revenge on voyager's crew for helping the borg against 8472. it looked similar to transwarp because they saved money by trotting out the same vfx as borg transwarp but with blue colour instead of green. but it wasn't transwarp. also it wasn't as fast as a transwarp conduit, voyager used it for a while but once again it just reduced their journey by a few years. the full journey would have taken hours, an improvement on warp drive, but still a long time.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 12:23 am

First off, I wish to tip my digital hat to Myles for knowledge of trek-trivia.

Secondly, I share everyone's hatred for replacing the uplink every single time. The amount of attention the process requires is absurd. I might buy it strictly for the cubes, but not beyond that. I love the notion of a transwarp inter-spacial manifold for vessel deployment and the setup is perfectly logical for the following reasons:

A. The manifold requires resources (DL, Tri, and S) to build. Additional resources are required to 'power' the manifold and bring in ships from Borg space. CC are still required for operating vessels in the sector. It's the same concept as the S8472 yards in a2... not that I'd want to see their return.

B. It creates a single point of failure (SPoF) which means the IM nerfs itself just by replacing uplinks. Plus, you can't just summon hundreds of cubes if you have to pay through the nose for each one. You could also leave the IM with a build queue of one. The dev team could be really mean and add a % chance of failure for each deployment.

C. From a narrative perspective, you can't 'warp in' 100 cubes for the simple reason that the collective doesn't have them to spare. If you think about it, Borg-controlled territory would be militarily engaged on all on fronts either defensively or offensively. The Borg also launch offensives across the entire galaxy, hence their presence in FO. They gain ground by assimilating areas where there is insufficient resistance. The collective may deem hundreds of cubes necessary to capture a critical position of a highly resistant species, (Earth, Romulus, or Kronos for example) but not for a sector by sector campaign. Such an action would be grossly inefficient.

The creative juices are overflowing at this point, but I do think the IM is still a good idea.

Edit: This is somewhat off topic, but has anyone nailed down how the Hanson family heard of, tracked down, and were assimilated by the Borg? They pre-date TNG if I'm not mistaken and there would have to have been a cube hanging around very close by... and please don't let it be Enterprise That ship might have been establishing a means for future ships to travel faster as well.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 4:40 am

Aren't the Borg still at war with that horrible Species - 8 dumbest idea ever- stupid plot aliens- thanks Voyage for neutering the Borg or whatever the numbers were.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 9:31 am

Aren't the Borg still at war with that horrible Species - 8 dumbest idea ever- stupid plot aliens- thanks Voyage for neutering the Borg or whatever the numbers were.

no voyager battered them. and for a while 8472 wasn't even sure if voyager had told the borg how to make the weapons that can kill them. i'm not even sure if voyager ever clarified that to 8472, they did give them some specs on the weapons, though. so at the moment it can go either way. maybe 8472 are immune to the weapons, maybe not. either way, the borg definitely don't have the weapons and so stay out of fluidic space.

A. The manifold require <snip>

thanks for labelling your points.

points B and C:

i don't see why the borg can't warp fleets of cubes around with the transwarp network. it's been explicitly shown to operate almost instantly across the galaxy, there's almost no danger. the borg can't be in a constant state of shooting/being shot. they might have areas that they think need ships to be near (like the unicomplex). but the definition of "near" is defined as proximity to a transwarp conduit. their fleet would have unparalleled mobility, like the vaadwaur had when they were conquering half the galaxy, but even better. any base close to a transwarp conduit is as well defended as every other base close to a conduit.

besides, most races that know of the borg are not stupid enough to go and attack them. even if you do hurt them, you just make them see you as a threat. the borg aren't even centralised, so there aren't any choice targets that would hurt them significantly.

the transwarp network was seriously OP. they could have sent 5 cubes to earth, any time after FC. but of course they didn't, because they only wanted to attack earth in very specific episodes/movies. outside of those, they had no preference for earth above random DQ planets.

EDIT: oh and on point B, endgame explicitly disallowed shooting the conduits dead from normal space, to prevent voyager using them, then blowing it up from earth. despite the fact that this happened in a previous episode to the borg queen's diamond. but that also had the magic transwarp frisbee plot device as well.

EDIT2electricboogaloo:

Edit: This is somewhat off topic, but has anyone nailed down how the Hanson family heard of, tracked down, and were assimilated by the Borg? They pre-date TNG if I'm not mistaken and there would have to have been a cube hanging around very close by... and please don't let it be Enterprise That ship might have been establishing a means for future ships to travel faster as well.

MA says:

During the 2350s, the Hansens took the Raven on a field mission to locate and study a rumored race of cybernetic beings from beyond the Romulan Neutral Zone known to the peoples of the Beta Quadrant as the Borg.

i don't like how the borg were introduced. it was implied (although not stated, so i'm calling it bollocks) that the borg were the force that was destroying federation and romulan bases in the neutral zone in the early TNG episode that reintroduced the romulans. i don't like that as it's ridiculous. the borg sneaked all the way to the alpha/beta quadrant, then stole some starbases on the sly. then left without a trace, only to be heading back again for the enterprise D to meet them at j25. it sounds like a romulan plan, destroy those bases to get the feds and romulans fighting again.

the hansens were looking for the borg, they probably only had some horror stories of a cybernetic race of arseholes, given to them by survivors. maybe guinans race (destroyed by the borg) actually bothered warning the hansens about the borg. they either didn't warn starfleet, or starfleet thought they were insane.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 3:57 pm

I agree with you on most points. Trek directors and producers saw the Borg as a ratings booster rather than the mortal threat that made them so attractive in the first place. They don't understand what it means to be an underdog. If they did, Voyager would have been a lot better.

If I was in charge of canon, I would have said that the attacking ship in bobw was from The Neutral Zone. The one that attacked in FC was from j25. I would imply that neither was not sent on a straight course for Earth to begin with. Unfortunately, the particular question which ship did what will always be debated.

I agree that the TWN in endgame was OP, but that's not what I'm looking for in FO. As discussion clearly reveals, each media be it a TV series, novel, or movie portrays elements of the story differently. FleetOps like any other media has the ability and the right to create its own unique definition of the Borg or anyone else just the same.

Here is how I see that Borg fleets are limited. TNG, DS9, and Voyager all revealed species which would have an advantage over the Borg. The galaxy's a big place with many races much stronger than the Federation. As previously mentioned, the Borg are known far and wide. I doubt there are many incursions into Borg space, but I'm sure many species have taken steps to prevent the Borg's advance. I'd even go as far to say that some know more about the Borg than the Federation. And finally, Borg territory is overwhelmingly vast. In a gun fight, the bigger you are, the easier your are to hit. This is the problem all expanding empires face no matter how they operate. In the Kirk era, there were three major powers. In TNG, for reasons beyond me, the Cardis joined their ranks. I don't count the Dominion because they're only a problem when they use the Bajoran wormhole to take a dump.

As for the original topic of changes to the Borg, the IM works because it is "linked to technology". The conduit can't stabilize without it. Why? Because this is FO and we say so. At least that would be my reason for putting it in.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 4:12 pm

if we're gonna just ignore canon then there's no need for the borg to be the race that gets this unique trait.

currently borg already have a unique trait (like the other races in the game), they build their ships without yards and have very few buildings. also cc.

last time i heard, the iconians were going to have the trait of not building their ships, and having them warp in (in this case from other timelines where the iconians are in charge of everything). personally i think that's a better plan.

the only reason to give the borg this trait in the form of transwarp is slavish duplication of canon, but to make it fun for the game, we'd have to not stick to its canon description.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 4:27 pm

Works for me Activision, bless their frozen little hearts, took their own creative license when creating STA I and II.

I don't know about the Iconians and time travel, but its impossible to avoid all similarities between races. All that matters is each race is unique enough that players want to play them. I myself would happy having 50+ races to choose from as long as there was some difference. The more suited a race is to each player's style, the better the battles get.

Another thing that be really cool if it could be balanced is to improve the collective's efficiency (combat, resource usage, etc.) by assimilating and recycling enemy ships and station.

posted on October 17th, 2013, 5:03 pm

Honestly I would love to have the borg gain the power they had from the shows and movie, right now they are close but the borg player still needs to get large fleets of usually smaller ships and you don't usually see a cube in the mix until way late in the game if at all. We have only seen the borg with ships, only seen one station and that was their "hive", not a usual sight.

I would like to get rid of all the buildings except a very unimatrix looking building which can research and build ships. The borg should reward players for assimilating enemies. When you assimilate an enemy ship or station you gain research points to use either for current ship upgrades or specials like cutting beam or the ability to build larger ships like cubes.

The borg don't have many ship designs and I understand why the team used their creative freedom and made a few extras for the borg but the borg don't play like that, they have a couple of smaller ship designs, scout cube, interceptor in voyager, a small scouting sphere, medium ships which include a couple of different sphere types, and large ships include two to three cube types a sphere and the diamond as a command vessel. True they don't seem creative when it comes to ship design but they are the borg, they aren't supposed to be.

I would also like to see borg ships mining from moons, they shouldn't need to go back to a central drop off point, you just pop a cube on a dilithium moon and it will mine away until it gets attacked or you need it for something else. That should add a whole new realm of possibilities for the borg and give them a strategic strength but also weakness depending on how you use it.

Just my 2 cents, thanks.

posted on October 18th, 2013, 9:32 pm

Honestly I would love to have the borg gain the power they had from the shows and movie, right now they are close but the borg player still needs to get large fleets of usually smaller ships and you don't usually see a cube in the mix until way late in the game if at all. We have only seen the borg with ships, only seen one station and that was their "hive", not a usual sight.

I would like to get rid of all the buildings except a very unimatrix looking building which can research and build ships. The borg should reward players for assimilating enemies. When you assimilate an enemy ship or station you gain research points to use either for current ship upgrades or specials like cutting beam or the ability to build larger ships like cubes.

The borg don't have many ship designs and I understand why the team used their creative freedom and made a few extras for the borg but the borg don't play like that, they have a couple of smaller ship designs, scout cube, interceptor in voyager, a small scouting sphere, medium ships which include a couple of different sphere types, and large ships include two to three cube types a sphere and the diamond as a command vessel. True they don't seem creative when it comes to ship design but they are the borg, they aren't supposed to be.

I would also like to see borg ships mining from moons, they shouldn't need to go back to a central drop off point, you just pop a cube on a dilithium moon and it will mine away until it gets attacked or you need it for something else. That should add a whole new realm of possibilities for the borg and give them a strategic strength but also weakness depending on how you use it.

Just my 2 cents, thanks.

I really like those ideas. Going down this path, one might even eliminate stations all together. We could start with the infamous command cube and perhaps a scout. All ships would be capable of movement. Every ship including the ComCube could be placed into a 'mode' where on-board drones orient themselves to a specific task. Their attributes would be altered based on the role they assume. Larger chassis requiring more resources could perform more than one role. Since these roles/modes would be very general (mining, research, CC generate, upgrade, combat), the largest constructable chassis might be limited to 2 or 3 roles. Anything the Borg assimilates could perform these functions creating a huge incentive to assimilate rather then build.

Another radical change I've been mauling over is an expansion of the inter-spacial manifold concept. Instead of consuming resources directly to 'power' the manifold, why not direct them into the manifold-supported aperture and deliver them to the collective. Not that I cared a lot about it, but the idea of Borg 'supply stations' doesn't seem right. We could have multiple IMs, but delegate some to receiving miners. The miners in turn would have to be defended, carry more resources, and/or be harder to destroy.

It would be a pretty unique idea. The best part about this is if a player finds his or her self with extra resources, then, if possible, those IMs could be switched to egress traffic and bring in additional ships. Its a scary notion in some respects, but evil left unchecked will eventually overrun everything...

posted on October 18th, 2013, 9:45 pm

the borg do miss some of the key features they have in the shows, assimilating for knowledge and adapting to weapons.

since a 'race for cloaking and scanning' is going to be in version 4 perhaps a similar thing could be for the borg.


each ship the borg assimilate could increase its science points (rather than just building the station and selecting what to spend a limit of 10 points on)

while each borg ship any of the other factions destroys could gain them benefits on researching better weapons to damage borg vessels.

tho perhaps this way if one faction gained a certain amount of headway they could become to hard to combat.

posted on October 19th, 2013, 2:03 am

somewhere in that i smell borg ranking system, when all borg ships gain rank same time, for 1st rank need to by killed xxx hull points and asimilated xxx "individuals" for 2nd killed yyy asimilated yyy "individuals" and so on...

colective sharing knowledge so they should all rank at once

some logaritmic or exponencial function can be used , and number of ranks can be diferent from other races...

this can pretty nicely simulate borg hunger for perfection.... more you asimilate more you rank up .

base on funcion used to calculate advancement, they can have 10 or 50 ranks.... that is open for debate.



and i think borg special need to be redone...
i propose this:
borg research can stay, let them reseach all abilities for a fee, BUT you must decide which special you want on concrete ship like nodes

for example 3x prime sfere bonus for cutting beam, torp sfere - torp special, asimilators and cube - instant attack transport

and small ship like scube 1 special, adaptor 2special, sfere 3 special, diamond 4 special, pyramid 3special, tac cube can have all special because it can adapt best

posted on October 19th, 2013, 5:05 am

I really like the idea of assimilating ships in order to research stuff. I also agree in getting rid of stations and having cubes do everything like mining and research.