An Outland-ish Proposal: Borg

[godsvoice]

posted on January 27th, 2012, 6:21 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 27th, 2012, 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've been playing a whole heck of a lot of Romulan, Dominion, and Borg recently, completely cutting out any Federation or Klingon gameplay altogether. (I figured this next patch might be a while, and it just seemed like a waste to not figure out these factions in full before the next patch, as I wouldn't really know all the changes or be able to see all the work the devs have put it) Slowly getting the feel for them all now though.

Aside from have played it time to time over the past year or so for fun, never really looked at the factions too too in depth for fun strategies.

First off, the Borg Diamond is like an amazing bringer of death. The one with 92 offensive or whichever, yikes 
Long range, torpedo Queen smashing, nanite slicing, geometric doom! Even just three are incredibly powerful.

To the topic at hand: Borg Optimize vs AI Merciless Federation Map: Outland

Queue Four Borg Miners. Mine Tri, Di, Tri, Di. After those miners have set up their little linkup thing station, you can pretty much ignore your home base.

Construction ship: Send construction ship immediately to expansion build conduction matrix. Sandwich it between both moons and the asteroid belt.

The pesky AI Federation sends its construction ship to our expansion?! We must punish them for their resistance.

Once Construction ship is finished building Conduction Matrix, Build Transmission Matrix. Build it Right beside as much as possible, still in between the moons. The moons are like the bread, and the two stations are the butter in-between.

While the Transmission Matrix is being built, research the first upgrade at conduction matrix. Once the Transmission Matrix is complete, research the station holding beams special. Build uplink.

Build dode with a interception-relay module. Leave just enough space between the two stations to build the relay in between them, and right below one of the moons. So you have transmission matrix always on the outside, then conduction matrix on the inside, then relay in between.

Don't Build the conduction matrix on the outside! I tried, and the fed expands a yard to the other spot, and you can't get the transmission matrix into a good location.

ok back to the setup.

So, eventually you will get holding beam set up, and by this time you will have a few sabers, scouts, and newtons flying around. Assimilate! A yard will also be set up just out of reach.

Allow the relay to destroy the fed mining station which is sure to be close by.

Assimilate ships! Build miners to bring over to the expansion once enemy station is destroyed. Fill up the mining.

Build some more uplinks. Get one or two assimilators with three of the blue modules for assimilating quickly. With this ship, and the two transmission stations, you will quickly assimilate a fleet. The relay will serve has your firepower to slow the enemy down.

Do not destroy the fed yard that is sure to be build right at YOUR! Expansion. Use two auto-assimilators?? two take it over. By this time, your fleet 2?? whatever you make it. It's my fleet 2, fleet one being my scout, and send them to repair.

Wipe the AI out with a hefty fleet of its own ships. MUA HA HA HA.

Resources are never really all that terrible... but in the start some rough patches. Eventually you will just get a rampage of resources though... as you really only build 4 ships maybe? Get incubation in there two, three is good.

Build Tactical Cube, 2x Tac, 3xTorp, 1xBeam. This Tac Cube with two Auto-assims destroy. If wanted, Then build another cube of the same kind and walk through fed AI main base laughing... HAHAHHAHAHAAHAa


Featured strategy: Station holding beam start.

Edit: With the Conduction and Transmission station sandwiching the moons, you get really good coverage of the expansion. You can instant assim miners and sabers plus the like. And future waves will be more easily dealt with.

posted on January 30th, 2012, 6:46 pm

This probably wouldn't work against a player.  And the AI is stupid.

[godsvoice]

posted on January 30th, 2012, 9:39 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 30th, 2012, 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No idea what it would do against a player. I think the main thing is when the transmission station finishes. Because then you go into building uplinks. As soon as you get the holding beam, then you have three stations that assimilate. And I've noticed its a guaranteed assimilation, that is, there is no special energy right? So it is just a matter of time.

The holding beam finishes research around 6 min or so, but you can have uplinks and stuff before that. But none of those early AI ships can really bother you. If you had a station with a holding beam at your expansion, its guaranteed ship for you then (and you have two stations with holding beams at expansion, so every attack from your opponent gives you two low crewed ships for free), at least early on, because a few monsoons, intrepids, or sabers regardless are not going to destroy a whole station any time fast.

Also, online you can get probes out at some point.

Either way, it doesn't matter so much.

lol. For AI it's always nice and easy to say 'AI is stupid' therefore any strategy you use that beats it, you can just say, oh wait, the AI is stupid so it doesn't matter. But I actually had to play around with this strategy a couple of times before I got it to work. You need to build the stations in the right spots or you will get swarmed by the AI regardless.

And besides, there is still choice of what ships you assimilate, and you are outnumbered.

When comparing AI to Online, it is always convenient to say AI is not good anyways.

But considering AI to AI, some strategies work some don't. But you still have to beat a Merci AI. If you can, then you can, and a strategy that beats it beats it.

(But yes, AI probably shouldn't attack my expansion with a few sabres that just get assimilated, and they also probably shouldn't expand to MY expansion the way they do, but oh well)

The AI will still attack you early on with a dozen or so ships and you will have nothing really built when it does. Except maybe the relay and a few assimilated ship, and one borg ship of your own.

posted on January 30th, 2012, 9:41 pm

station holding beam doesn't require energy, but a clever human will just force fire on the ship from outside of station range and deny you the steal, or damage it to almost dead, then when you finish capturing, get the final shot for experience too.

[godsvoice]

posted on January 30th, 2012, 9:46 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 30th, 2012, 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, that would probably work.

But this wasn't like my Klingon online suggestion. This really was a way to beat Fed Merci.

Although all strategies are open to online interpretation.

Not all ships can fire from outside range of these stations though. They literally are built on top right next to the moons. (you'd need several, those ships don't do high damage in low numbers, and as soon as beam is researched, I can research other specials for my ships quickly, and have saved resources to invest) but yep The borg player should still be able to get ships out I think. Should.

So I'm pretty sure you'd need a saber or canaveral mix. Monsoons are same range, just like intrepids. Aren't they?

Edit: Or you can use both stations to quickly get one ship (And that one tri heavy assimilator is really good with this). Also, I think the better way online is to just scout, see that I'm using my only ship to build two stations and no ships (maybe just a probe) and tech up to something like an akira. Then not attack until you have greater numbers with SFC. Maybe... but I dunno One borg relay can only deal with so many ships.

posted on January 30th, 2012, 10:29 pm

You certainly come up with some odd strategies.  I like it!

I doubt you could get away with this in a game against humans, mostly because of the incredibly slow start getting ships.  A person who saw you do this would either tech-rush or grab as much land as they could.  Still, depending on the map and if they had never seen such a thing before, they might be tempted to race in with small ships and end up losing several.

You should focus on getting your own ships up as fast as possible after the initial setup, using the other transmission matrix specials to gain an edge through boarding and maybe transwarp.  Like Myles said, you may get defensive kills but you can't count on capturing the ships you snag.  See if you can win this scenario without using captured ships in your fleet.

Klingons are actually good to learn if you're also learning Romulans.  There are key similarities and key differences, the biggest being that Klingons can expand much more aggressively with their abundance of yards and tough miners.  In the same way, playing the Dominion is similar to a Federation double-yard start.  Once you learn the one, it's relatively easy to get the other.  You may not get good enough to play those races competitively, but you will understand how to fight against them much better when you understand what your opponent is trying to do.

[godsvoice]

posted on January 30th, 2012, 10:47 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 30th, 2012, 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, no, this is specifically an Outland map strategy. Map = Outland. There is no 'land to grab'. Sadly, I haven't really experimented with too many of them. Basically following conditions apply to make this effective: very close expansion; very few total expansions on the map (i.e. one expansion each). Even for a map like pathtonowhere, to send contructor all the way over there is a long time, and then still having to build those stations.

I get one expansion, you get one expansion, and both of mine have holding beams. 

I use other strategies on different maps. I get that this is a little out of tune. But on outland, the AI expands really fast to each expansion, and it can be slow getting ships out.

Again, sadly it really is an Outland ... -ish strategy.

Edit: Actually it does work on some other maps. Just tested it on pathtonowhere, you just build the stations further out from the expansion, blocking off the entrance i.e. the central part a little bit, not too too centralized right in the middle, just out from the red nebula beside your expansion, and wall it off. it works.

[godsvoice]

posted on January 31st, 2012, 10:08 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 31st, 2012, 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, and this wouldn't require keeping the enemy ships I capture. Just needs to slow the opponent down long enough.

Question: In a regular game, how long does it take to get transmission up on a small map?

With this, you instantly go for holding beams. Then I'd recommend partial adaptation and devastating attack. Research prevents use of holding beam though, so you have to time it well. Wait to get the relay up.

But, the point is for holding beam stations and intercept-relay to soak up early opponents forces. It doesn't matter if you hold them. The stations are being turned into massive forward turrets. A ship can't be recaptured. As soon as you snag that Akira in range, you start transporting drones on to it like crazy from transmission, conduction, constructor, or nearby miners. The crew of borg vessels makes them huge transporting threats. So even if you give the opposing player ranks, its costing them their own ships to do it.

And I can easily win this against AI without using the captured ships in my fleet for sure. You just tech up to cubes. Build a few intercept relays for solid defence and wait. Or you can attack with the fleet you create.

My favourite cube so far, is the triple holding beam, and triple torpedo modules. It's ranked at something like 190 offensive, 115 defensive, and 155 system (rounded up). When you build two-three of them. You just watch them repair as the damage splits up between them all. They repair sooooo fast. It's like 4500 di, 2500 tri, and 205 supply roughly, including all parts of construction, chassis selection and all the modules.

The only ship that is slightly annoying is the E2. It fires at intercept relay from outside its range, and the holding beams can't lock on. But that is way to far into it, and I just send ships after it.

(And I've tried it on a few other small maps and it works, i.e. wind of war, etc. Just make sure there are few number of expansions, close first expansions, small map, or an area that is easily controlled with two stations equipped with holding beams to hold off enemy ships. As long as there is some favourable balance there, it should be a fun strategy to attempt. Early game ships just can't do enough damage even if attacked before I get my intercept relay dode. So unless a player can destroy my construction ship within the first 5 min or so... might be worth attempting online. Dunno.)