Fourth Borg Avatar: Regenerate

posted on January 16th, 2011, 8:14 am

I know the borg redo is underway, and it may be a long time before third and even fourth avatars come onto the scene, but I just had an awesome idea for the borg that doesn't fit with their current setup, so...avatar!  Also I think the third avatar should be Adapt.

Here is the concept behind the Regenerate Avatar: the borg have adapted to heavy combat by studying the more extreme cases of regeneration certain ships have successfully completed and transferring this knowledge to all of their vessels.

In shorter terms, their ships can come back to life.  A dead borg ship creates a wreck or a debris field, similar to the chassis that was built on the collective uplink.  Given enough time (and perhaps some resources from the owner) the wreck will rebuild itself and come back to life.

Gameplay-wise, it keeps with the borg theme of "win hard, lose hard."  As long as the borg can control the battlefield at the end, they can recoup their losses.  If there wasn't already a redo in progress I would suggest this for all borg right now: it allows for a more aggressive playstyle because borg players wouldn't be forced to tank their ships as hard as possible to keep them alive.

Canon-wise, the borg did this all the time in TNG and the rest.  They even brought their drones back to life through some nondescript process.

Alternately, you could give borg ships a HP buff and make it so all subsystems besides life support shut down when they go below a certain HP threshold, to give them a "disabled" state before death.  It would help bring back the zombie feeling of the original borg.

posted on January 16th, 2011, 8:22 am

Nice idea! Reminds me of C&C Generals...those pesky GLA holes...>.<

Leaving hulks behind would be awesome at any rate btw

posted on January 16th, 2011, 8:28 am

Shouldn't this be easily possible with the same way that levelups are done now?

[Desertyrain Minrok]

posted on January 16th, 2011, 9:34 am

Last edited by Desertyrain Minrok on January 16th, 2011, 9:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sounds really nice, if you are a borg-player - but look at it in a differents angle.
There are wrecks everywhere on the maps an the borg are tutrle in their base. they don't need that much ressources anymore to rebuild their ships...

If the wrecks could be destroyed completely it would be ok, but other wise...
Well, what if another player tow the wreck to his base? - These wrecks could be a knowledgebase for something loike... second generation special weapons.
Like the intrepid tricobalt torpedo gets more advanced to an anti borg weapon, with hull-breaking-multi-warhead-technology to cause massive internal damage to a borgvessel...

Or the Serkas Quadcobalt torpedo gets replaced by an omega-particle based torpedo...

posted on January 16th, 2011, 3:19 pm

oh yeah, of course the wrecks are destructible.  They might have half the hp of the original ship, very much like GLA holes    So if the borg were forced to retreat, the enemy can just kill it.  Only if the  borg drive their enemies from the battlefield (or get sniped in range of their own starbase) will they have a good chance to regenerate.

posted on January 16th, 2011, 10:25 pm

Why not just make the refresh cycle regenerate the vessel by shutting down all systems except for life support?  Wouldn't that be easier?

posted on January 16th, 2011, 11:25 pm

I think that the concept is if the vessel has no special energy or whatever and dies anyway, this is a last ditch effort. Protect the corpse of the vessel for two minutes (whatever time may be) and get it back, for less expense