Holding beam ideas (yes again :P)

posted on December 21st, 2010, 10:06 pm

[align=center]Motivation[/align]

heres a post from tcr that got me thinking about holding beams again

What do you think of my idea to make the Borg holding beam drain the shields of a vessel it locked onto?

i personally like the idea of holding beams draining shields.

heres an overview of some ideas i think are nice for holding beam:

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[align=center]Idea 1 - 3 stages of grief (for the enemy )[/align]

holding beam goes through 3 periods similar to what we see in canon.

there are three periods:

[list type=decimal]
[*]beam is locking on, energy is being used, no damage is being done to enemy ship, enemy ship can still move. shield upgrades will prolong this period. bigger higher tech ships in general will prolong the lock on time.
[*]beam is draining shields, enemy ship can move, but at a percentage reduced speed, so engine upgrades will still help. shield upgrades will prolong this period as there are more shields to drain. bigger higher tech ships in general will have more shields and will prolong this time.
[*]shields are down and drones start beaming over, target can no longer move.[/list]

installing more holding modules decreases the length of periods 1 and 2. bigger chassis will reduce the length of 1 and 2 as well. installing partial adaption could give holding a small buff too.

an issue with some of this is that borg on borg holding beams would be interesting. in borg on borg play the holding beam is really just used to stop the enemy ship from running away.

station holding beams would have greatly reduced stages 1 and 2, since stations have stupidly large energy sources available.

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[align=center]Idea 2 - dragging ships kicking and screaming[/align]

holding beam on larger chassis can drag certain ships. so a cube can drag most ships, while a sphere can only drag small sized ships.

dragging would definitely be slower than normal speed.

station holding beam obviously cant drag since stations cant move unless kira says so.

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[align=center]Idea 3 - wombat tractor beam[/align]

sometimes i use the holding beam in the same way as combat tractor, to stop them running so i can keep shooting.

maybe the holding module could have 2 modes, mode 1 goes through all 3 stages and is designed for capturing enemy ships.

mode 2 does stage 1 and 2 but doesnt beam drones at stage 3, and doesnt cause all ships to stop firing on the target during 1 and 2. so its basically a clone of combat tractor.

would use same energy in stage 1 and 2, but maybe slightly less in stage 3 since no drones are beaming over and no assimilation chambers are being used a lot.

station holding beam can do this too.

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[align=center]Idea 4 - om nom nom[/align]

this is by far the craziest idea, but is interesting. we saw in canon that sometimes a borg ship would put a smaller alien ship inside it, what then happens to these ships after their crews are gone is a mystery.

maybe when a ship has lost all its crew some new options appear on the holding vessel.

option 1: bring the vessel inside and decomission it for some resources. the vessel that swallowed the enemy ship will generate resources slowly over the next minute (or other time period), you wont get all the build costs back and during the time period there will be some debuff for the borg ship. maybe movement punishment, or fighting punishment or both, since drones will be working on munching the ship.

option 2: swallow the ship and refit it with some borg tech to increase its stats or give it a borg weapon or a module or something. has the same disadvantages as above, ie a debuff of some sort, since drones will be working on refitting the ship.

of course nothing will swallow big ships, so definitely no eating sovvies, they are just too damn big.

spheres could swallow small ships, pyramids with 4 holding modules and cubes with 3 holding modules can swallow medium sized ships. nothing can swallow large sized ships. diamonds dont look like they have lots of space inside, and they arent exactly front line ships, so this ability wouldnt work for diamonds.

also please no puns about swallowing (yes mal im looking at you )

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[align=center]Balancing ideas in general[/align]

• holding beam makes the holder regen slower while active since energy is being diverted into using the holding beam
• holding beam makes the holder fire slower while active since energy is being diverted into using the holding beam

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wow this turned out to be longer than i thought. glad i decided to paragraph.

sorry for any ideas that are repeats

posted on December 21st, 2010, 10:13 pm

I like the idea of the holding beam draining shields and beaming crew over afterwards, because that's what we saw in Trek, and it's one of those things that translates well from "teh show" to in game.

posted on December 21st, 2010, 10:46 pm

Well, my idea for the holding beam draining the shields is so that the Borg can transport using conventional transporters for a mod I'm working on to "lighten up" fleet-operations.  Or rather, rebalance stock.  I had no idea that it would go this far.

I like the idea of it taking longer to lock onto specific vessels with each stage reducing the effectiveness of the engines until it reaches 0.  Why didn't I think of that.  However, after the shields are down, I was thinking that the player would have to manually transport over to the enemy vessel using the transport button.  That way, it would save on ODFs by allowing the player to either choose to transport to the vessel, or blow it to pieces.

For the stages where the beam is locking on, a simple "lockOnTime" multi-line command would be in order, then the "damageMode" command is used to drain the shields once the beam has locked on with the "damageBase" command taking out the shields at the specified rate per second on a per-unit bases depending on that units shielding technology.

As for Borg vs Borg, add a "canLockOn" multi-line command to the holding beam ORD file.  And set the value to 0 when dealing with Borg vessels.  If this is set to 0, then you can set the "lockOnTime" to 0 as well.  Borg would adapt to holding beam attempting to lock on, and other Borg would adapt to the adaption.  Repeat the process until the holding beam deactivates.  A "reduceEngineEffectiveness" multi-line command would be in order to so that when locked-on, but shields still up, the unit will still be able to move a little.

I'm not too fond of the two separate holding beam modes because of the extra ODFs required, however, I would love to see the engine effectiveness reduced significantly once the beam has locked-on, then disable the engines once the shields are down.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 1:33 am

All nice ideas.

The vessel holding beams never bothered me too much because they are special energy driven.

I'd love to see buildings use special energy on their holding beams as well. Right now you loose a ship the moment a building can lock on (crappy movement autonomy)

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 1:42 am

I'm fine with no energy cost on a station, the Warp Cores on those things could probably generate a lot more power than any ship.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 10:19 am

Like all of the ideas I've suggested ideas similar to most of them before but the idea of goign through phases was good. I especially like the idea of systems upgrades helping to resist the holding beam like shields and engines which might give people anincentive to buy them.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 11:47 am

I'm fine with no energy cost on a station, the Warp Cores on those things could probably generate a lot more power than any ship.

Given the size and crew it is also most likely they'd use a lot more power than your average vessel.
Even a Borg Cube which rivals borg structures in size only has a limited amount of special energy to use.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 11:54 am

The crew isn't as maintenence-extensive as most races due to the lack of a need to power a life support, only an alcove that would be inactive when not used. They also don't have the massive engines a ship like the Cube would have, which would be more energy spare.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 3:07 pm

The crew isn't as maintenence-extensive as most races due to the lack of a need to power a life support, only an alcove that would be inactive when not used. They also don't have the massive engines a ship like the Cube would have, which would be more energy spare.

From voyager it was mentioned that the alcove used a large amount of power. In addition simple maintenance and structural containment fields and basic life support which the borg need as well (why else would they have changed the environmental controls for the decks they occupied in ST First Contact.

It would also be inefficient use of resources to have an excessive power source for a structure.
Overall it makes more sense to have a building holding beam use special energy than no usage of special energy.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 3:20 pm

Large by Voyager standards or large by Borg standards? The environment is an oddity since Borg don't need life support or any particular environment, they could shut it down and let space in the ship and the crew would be fine.

What is inefficient about generating extra as a backup incase of reactor damage? Makes more sense than generating only the bare requirements. Using a small amount of the auxillery energy would be better than draining the energy already in use. Not to mention the lack of engines I mentioned means itcan generate a large amount of auxillery energy a ship wouldn't have.

posted on December 22nd, 2010, 5:03 pm

i agree stations should have plenty of energy for holding beam. they can only fire 1 at a time.

canon states that borg ships maintain an atmosphere inside.

canon also shows that drones can work in a vacuum, but maybe its less efficient as the organic components need more help from the technological bits.