Countering Late-Game Borg ships.....

[Anonymous]

posted on February 13th, 2012, 4:17 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 14th, 2012, 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Is there quick & dirty method to look at the installed modules on Diamonds, Pyramids, and sometimes "odd" Sphere & Assimilator builds (not Regen or DPS configurations) and say, "I need to build -this- to counter -that-?"

I was involved in a 2v2 game online yesterday, where I was playing Klingons with a Federation ally against Double-Borg opponents.   

We successfully beat-out the Scube storm (I'd say rush, but 10-15 combined Scubes is more of a storm in my book), and we seemed to be doing well at beating-down the Spheres which came next....but couldn't quite get enough firepower on the board to deliver that knock-out blow to either Borg opponent.

Long story short, we ended-up facing a combined fleet of about 4 diamonds, 2 spheres, some adapters & DPS assimilators & lost miserably.   I was finding myself looking at the modules installed on each of the Borg ships, and saying, "What the hell do I build to counter that?"   Because of how the game was progressing, I found myself with a fleet of about 10 Qaw'Duj (no specials, other than Call-to-Arms Imperial Stance) with a couple Sangs and one Vorcha.     My federation ally had a fleet of 10 Intrepids/Monsoons, and a full compliment of Warpins.

Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

posted on February 13th, 2012, 4:28 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 13th, 2012, 5:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

quick and dirty, no. the icons usually reveal the exact build with a little inspection.

so if a sphere has a holding icon, it has 1 holding module.

if a diamond has the queen special you know it has otc module. you can then check the times for that to see how many otc modules it has, 30, 60, 90 seconds i believe for 1, 2, 3 modules respectively.

obviously torp for sphere = torp module.

it requires lots of effort though.

another method is to look at the stats for a sphere and try guess the common builds from the values. requires better memory.

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EDIT: just reread your first line, sorry i misunderstood, i thought you meant you were having trouble identifying which modules were chosen for a ship once it was built, my mistake.

there are many combinations, too many to explain quickly. but think about what each module gives the borg, what it does to make that ship stronger, and in what situations it does so, then try to take away those situations.

nanites does great against lots of small ships where they can pick off kills and split your fleet and make your micro even harder, don't give them small ship spam, you can just about get away with monsoons if they have mainly diamonds, but when nanites disables a mon, scubes/spheres can get the kill, so beware.

if the diamond is mainly combat with nanites as side bonus then monsoons are a good idea. e2/akira as well. same applies to dps assims.

if they have cube then it's very likely they went all in on the cube, and it's almost certainly a standard tac cube. only advice there is to spam e2 or sov, whichever is closer in the tech tree, ie if you have money for chassis 3 and can support sovs, then they are the way to go, they have torps too, are faster and have a special that is perfect for cube hunting. if you can't get there, then e2 will have to do. have your antares yard make a few intreps, and have each run from the cube when shot, they will waste fire and not get kills if you are lucky. monsoons are probably dead against a tac cube, just too much firepower. unless you wanna keep them at medium range and have them not shooting, but that's intense micro. try to get remores too, for point def.

for spheres you want to try get your intreps tanking, spheres are usually built as tanks themselves, not dps dealers. intreps do well against adapters too.

the fleet you listed was a pretty mixed one, presumably they had nanites from 4 diamonds. tbh that takes planning out of the equation, so you probably don't wanna let them get 4 diamonds. you can't expect a spam to counter a mixed fleet like that.

against that many ships monsoons are just dead, and so are cannon fodder.

you had 10 qawduj 2 sangs and a vorcha, your fed ally had 10 chassis 1 ships and warpins, thats not much to face down 4 diamonds and change. the warpins die to diamonds too.

but as a tip, if you ever have 10 qawdujs laying around, that's begging for polaron field. it's like nanites, you can get kills and generally piss people off with it.

posted on February 13th, 2012, 5:25 pm

Well first, currently a Mayson Fed will have a much easier time vs borg than a Risner, as the Monsoon plays a critical role in tanking diamond torpedos.  Unfortunately this doesn't work too well with Klingons, because the Klingon small ships will be targeted first.

Once the Scube Storm has subsided, you will be in a unique position of control over the board, at which point you should try to expand relentlessly.  It will take a fair number of ships to kill a Borg miner, but you should do it as often as you can.

One thing to remember is that a borg late-game fleet will be almost entirely long range.  Any long-range counters you can use will be very helpful.  The feds only really have the monsoon, but the Klingons can get Negh'vars which do nicely.  Once you get 5 Negh'vars with the special, you just about win the game vs Borg.

In the situation described above, that's what I'd go for.  Have the Fed player give resources to the Klingon to build Ordinance Depot and sustain 2 Imperial yards producing continuously.  The Feds should also have extra Tritanium you can use to get the Weapon Overload special, which you need to start early because it takes forever to research.  Then it's just a matter of one-shotting their diamonds every time the special recharges, with Monsoons and Intrepids tanking for your glass-cannony Negh'vars.  All your small Klingon ships should camp out at the enemy's base and try to snipe his uplinks, if you can just one in exchange for losing several ships, it will be to your advantage.

posted on February 14th, 2012, 2:27 am

I think I need to add some details to this discussion, but I'm not exactly sure how to best do that. 

To say that the Borg were just "allowed" to build those ships does not do the overall match justice.  That's just what we had sitting in front of us, when we decided to make a descisive push to finish the game (which was obviously the incorrect decision, based on the results).

[Tryptic]

posted on February 14th, 2012, 3:56 am

Last edited by Tryptic on February 14th, 2012, 4:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

In that case they must have been really building up behind their lines while the scubes and early few spheres stalled for time.  Too bad I wasn't there to record it.

One thing, normally you should be getting Vorcha or Sangs instead of Qaw'Duj, unless you're massing them.  You absolutely should have gotten Polaron field for that many Qaw'Duj, I bet that if you threw down all 10 fields at once you would HARD disable the entire Borg fleet and get at least one kill, then retreat, recharge, rinse and repeat.  Once you're that invested in a ship, you need to see it through and get any specials available.

Now I really want to see that, 10 Qaw'Duj stacking Polaron Field against 4 Diamonds.  I'm going to go do it in an AI game and report back the results. 

Oh, I forgot the original point of the thread.  Generally, the counters for Borg ships doesn't really change with their modules.  Unless it's a Blue-Beam assimilator and you have to pay attention to crew levels.  Otherwise just focus on range-based counters, mostly anti-medium and anti-long with beam and torp damage.

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EDIT: Back from the test.  I was unable to test it on Diamonds but I got many Assims and 2 Starbases.  Their super-high system value helps them against Polaron Field, and it's hard to affect more than one but you can absolutely shut down one diamond.  I was surprised at the range of the field, it can cast very far away from your Qaw'Duj fleet which helps to catch or hold back the enemy.  There's also the fact that any subsystem damage they take while under the effect of the field will put the subsystem in destroyed mode and require a few seconds' repair.  I don't know if your fight was winnable but it would have been worth a shot with Polaron Field.

[Anonymous]

posted on February 14th, 2012, 12:36 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 14th, 2012, 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I’m pretty sure that was the case.   

Once we beat down the scubes, we did have complete map control, and re-expanded (as neither of us had working expansions after the initial rush).   However they would hold-up in their star bases until we committed to an attack, then attack our lightly protected expansions with whatever ships they had left.   Our overall fleet was just too slow to catch them.

The whole game was back & forth like that...

We were able to catch them out of position a few times, but once the Diamonds started showing-up, it was all downhill from there.   

One thing, normally you should be getting Vorcha or Sangs instead of Qaw'Duj, unless you're massing them.

I was really trying, but nothing other than Qaw’Duj (and my single Vorcha I managed to produce) were staying alive.   The Sangs were a complete waste, because they would die coming out of the yard.   I had double Battle Yards going, and was doing an even mix of Qaw’Duj and Sangs until I got my armory up late.

I must say that I got really good at hitting the Call-to-Arms Imperial Stance special, then priority repair, that saved so many of them, and really kept us in the game (longer than we probably deserved).

FWIW.....    We were playing on my map, Centauri Epsilon V1.1.    Dissit was my partner as Mayson Feds, and we were going up against Beat and WarpCore as Borg.   

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 14th, 2012, 4:24 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 14th, 2012, 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Call to Arms is the Vutpa' upgrade, so I presume you had Vutpa', not Qaw'Duj 

EDIT: unless of course you were using Imperial Stance, which is the Qaw'Duj's primary...

posted on February 14th, 2012, 5:00 pm

Call to Arms is the Vutpa' upgrade, so I presume you had Vutpa', not Qaw'Duj 

EDIT: unless of course you were using Imperial Stance, which is the Qaw'Duj's primary...

Yea, that one...  LOL 

posted on February 14th, 2012, 9:54 pm

well, what are troopships of any faction going to do against the borg.

we have 125 elite boarding crew!

Oh, well we have thousands of drones. Resistance is futile.

And on another note, as Klingons playing against AI i have a distorted view of borg late game. As the AI has none. Doesn't build cubes, hard to see a diamond too. Early game has its moments, borg ai comes out firing once it gets its first wave of ships.

But in some recent games, as borg vs Klingon AI (which is more decent), borg just put em to shame.

Haven't we heard for a while now though that borg early and late game are sort of troublesome for Klingons?

posted on February 15th, 2012, 1:07 am

To beat down diamond you need suprise, if you decloak right on top of them you can usaly get a snipe if you have enough ships. And never underestimate the value of teching up. Klingons should almost always go for KBQ/Neg-Varh vs diamond, and make sure to get your specials, Klingon specials mostly do direct damage, so takeing a bit at a time is always helpful.


Remember a diamonds best weapon is range, negate that and you can kill them,

posted on May 16th, 2012, 4:10 pm

Even on Merciless the Borg never seem to build Cubes.... anyone experience this as well or know why? 

posted on May 16th, 2012, 4:16 pm

They tend to rebuild lost ships, which they lose a lot due to rushing. That causes it to take a long time to get around to the bigger ships, much longer than the other races.

They will build them eventually, just don't expect to see them unless you've been playing for a few decades.

[Beef]

posted on May 17th, 2012, 5:53 pm

Last edited by Beef on May 17th, 2012, 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Even on Merciless the Borg never seem to build Cubes.... anyone experience this as well or know why? 

Actually, what you need to do is give them resource leeway. I once did 8-way free for all with only me (risner fed) and another merciless borg remaining. In The end he kept sending cubes one by one, sometimes up to 3 at a time... and in the end I counted 27 after several hours of play... it was downright crazy!

posted on May 17th, 2012, 9:32 pm

This is an old thread about player vs player games, alpha.  If you want to discuss a completely different topic, please start a new thread of your own.