Surprise surprise....more Borg stuff! :-p

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 3:52 pm

@serpicus
I like your approach too. Will you prefer energy cost or none,  acttice/passice feature?

@tyler
You're right, their system is decentralized, but not in FOPs. All larger borg vessels would have to be redone. A cube might have many many torpedo launchers, beam emitters and so on. Critical shot and plasma bolt may kill one weapon amplacement of dozens. Unfortumately for ST reality, but beneficial for gameplay we don't have such ships. A balanced cube with realistic weapon numbers would need to have torpedos of unrealistic small yield.

@Unleash Mayhem
You mentioned a severe point. Is regeneration of the sphere (it's an active "weapon" too) really disabled when the weapon systems are down?

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 4:46 pm

@serpicus
I like your approach too. Will you prefer energy cost or none,  acttice/passice feature?

@tyler
You're right, their system is decentralized, but not in FOPs. All larger borg vessels would have to be redone. A cube might have many many torpedo launchers, beam emitters and so on. Critical shot and plasma bolt may kill one weapon amplacement of dozens. Unfortumately for ST reality, but beneficial for gameplay we don't have such ships. A balanced cube with realistic weapon numbers would need to have torpedos of unrealistic small yield.

@Unleash Mayhem
You mentioned a severe point. Is regeneration of the sphere (it's an active "weapon" too) really disabled when the weapon systems are down?

IMO reroute should consume energy cost. it will be available if borg internal systems are down like weapons, engines, sensors etc. and should be a borg in-built special ability like the cloak is for the roms or klings.

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 7:51 pm

How about a totally different track - the Borg ships 'adapt' to enemy special weapon effects. The first time a Borg vessel is hit by a special weapon it has the full eight/five seconds no weapons/sensors effect or whatever it is. The second time and each successive time the borg ship is hit by the same weapon, the effect lasts for a second less or does less damage than it did previously.

I suppose you'd have to have some cap on this - maybe the maximum adaption any ship can have is lowering the special weapon's effectice time or damage by 50%. This cumulative adaption to enemy technology is in my opinion very 'Borg-like'. It would make Borg certainly more challenging to go against - since opposing players would have to use different strategies rather than spamming the same ship. It would make it a heck of a lot harder for players who use unbalanced fleets of one ship class - by making Borg ships more resistant to the same type of support weapons/abilities if the are overused.

e.g. the Defiant critical shot would only be effective for eight seconds the first time it was used - then the second time it would only have an affect for five seconds. Time after that three seconds and so on. 

NOTE: resyncing with the collective could remove the adaption bonus. Oh, and maybe it would be a bit too much on any ship smaller than a Sphere - keep it as a defining point of the large stuff like Cubes, etc.

Just a thought....

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 9:15 pm

That actually seems like a better solution than my idea.

I agree 

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 11:20 pm

Hmmm, I don't like the implementation too much (the idea may work better in another form): in short games (where you still reach 100 priority) the Borg would be weaker than in long games because each ship would adapt as you gained more ships... Sounds very difficult to balance.

posted on April 3rd, 2009, 11:26 pm

But really it's just the borg equivalent of the experience system. And they more than anyone deserve one in my eyes.

posted on April 4th, 2009, 1:12 am

mayhem could you take out your uss phonix picture and all of that stuff, i just find that its rather large and takes up alot of space, and personally i want to read what people have to say, and you picture is biggger then alot of posts

posted on April 4th, 2009, 1:23 am

Yeah, I was about to ask that a few days ago, hehe  At least just make it a tad bit smaller 

Anywho, yeah, I know it is the Borg equivalent of the experience system... but we've had a similar debate before and I believe the developers have stated that they do not wish to give the Borg any sort of experience. Still, the one that has been suggested above seems... unpredictable... given that you are bound to use more of the same type of ship as the game goes on (it isn't spamming when you rebuild a balanced fleet several times) and there is no reason to make Spheres, Diamonds and Borg more powerful than they already are IMO. I still would prefer adaption to go hand in hand with assimilation personally: where you assimilate a certain number of vessels of a particular class... and then you adapt to that classes weapons or get extra good at slicing through the defense. Perhaps if the mechanism for the first proposed experience system could be worked out a bit better, I'd get on board 

posted on April 4th, 2009, 3:55 am

Diminishing returns would be a good and bad thing....but it did go in the right direction.  Perhaps it could be put on a timer.....or perhaps it works on a ship one time only until the battle is over?

[Anonymous]

posted on April 4th, 2009, 10:43 am

Last edited by Anonymous on April 4th, 2009, 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Watching "The Best of Both Worlds" today and remembering the attack on earth by the Borg in "First Contact", I would suppose to ad a "sphere" module to the cube list (maybe taking more than one module slot), to allow it EITHER to build Spheres (or smaller vessels when less modules are used) in its mobile yard or to allow for "fighter"-class spheres orbiting the mother vessel for a) costs of special energy and the sphere had to return into the cube after a set period for some reason OR b)costs tri/dilithium but are permanent until shot down ... maybe with a total cap?

This disctinction could also serve to emphasize differeneces of Borg-Avatars!
These MINI-Sphere could allow for better anti-destroyer capabilities.

Decision depends on actual comparison of sphere/cube size in show and game.

Why? Sheer Coolness

posted on April 4th, 2009, 12:14 pm

Awesome idea. But I don't know how hard it would be to get working.

Ray, and Dominus, is this ok? I took out the huge one. I'm too used to forums with huge layouts, didn't realise it would be so disruptive to us here.

posted on April 4th, 2009, 3:55 pm

I've seen other mods build Spheres from the Cube, so I'm sure it is possible 
It would be a cool thing for the Cube as a last ditch effort to toss out a sphere as Assimilat avatar.
Thanks Unleash Mayhem, much better 

posted on April 4th, 2009, 3:58 pm

I believe Sphere-launching Cubes were already suggested, but the team weren't to sure of the Idea becasue all the Cubes would need to be edited. Any idea how many odf's that is?

posted on April 4th, 2009, 4:12 pm

Where n=number of different modules, x is the number of modules in a cube (I forgot) and k is the number of impossible combinations (can't be bothered to work out).

(n^x)-k

Can someone punch in some numbers please? I want to know how much work the team really put in.

posted on April 4th, 2009, 7:57 pm

there are a total of 34 different cube configurations