Having problems handling Assimilator Rush strategy...

posted on August 9th, 2010, 9:29 pm

I do hope the Borg redo includes changing the mechanics of or removing the assimilation beam. It's completely non-canon and can cause tremendous problems if a bunch of assims get together. It's one of those things that's fine when two ships are using it but OP when 6 are (if they get to your mining, starbase, or yard you'll see why.)

posted on August 9th, 2010, 9:58 pm

If you're having trouble handling Assimilators as Dominion, keep in mind that S-2's counter Assimilators very nicely.  They have more crew than Bugs or Bombers, they are torpedo armed, they are fast, and they have the Tactical Weapon Arrays passive that grants them 50% bonus damage to long range.

  They were made in Heaven for demolishing Assimilators.

posted on August 9th, 2010, 11:02 pm

I think your main problem was just the birds of prey.  Don't build BoP against the borg.  Their strength (and weakness) is that none of their ships are weak to pulse weaponry.  So don't handicap yourself and just skip pulse destroyers altogether.  If you can get to the battle yard, start spamming sangs.  They're fragile, they're weak in low numbers, and once you figure them out they're AMAZINGLY fun against the borg.

The early game strategy is to kill the assimilators, but if your enemy plays defensively and starts building up a force of them, I recommend teching to vutpas.  Don't research their specials, just the refit.  1-2 vutpa refits reinforcing your vessels while the enemy tries to assimilate them can give you the seconds you need to win.

posted on August 10th, 2010, 1:19 am

wait why are u mentioning incubators, they are immobile and located at the enemy base. if u cant run away from a station with no engines you were just doomed to be assimilated.

its perfectly reasonable to keep ships from being auto assimed by transporting. assims transporters work the same as 1 klingon ship. so for every assim they have, keep 1 ship cloaked to beam to vessels. sangs and veqs are not short range. kbq and qawduj and vorcha are not short range. only bop and susa are. but they are quite fast and assim is sloooooow. retreat bop and susa when they take a little damage. brels even do extra damage to assims because of their long range.

posted on August 10th, 2010, 10:13 am

You know, my problem was with fighting 3assims at a time. Once they got a single drone on an empty ship they may use the incubation centre and you can`t do anything anymore. Of course you might say beam faster, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn`t. If your micro isn`t a lot better than the one of the Borg player, he will get some ships from you. Beaming on one ship leaves your other ships with smaller crews, so the Borg can easily change target and eliminate/ take over whole fleets.
The Assim beam is not only long range, once it has focused on you it follows your ship even a bit out of range(I think). B'rels crew is much too little against Assims, their pulses are weak, I wouldn't use them.
I don`t consider Assimilation beam to be totally non-canon, the only problem about them is that they ignore shields. Canonwise they should use a tractor beam which finds out the shield frequencies and afterwards they can take the crew or ignore shields with weapons, too.

posted on August 10th, 2010, 11:54 am

keep a ship cloaked, then as the beam is working, start beaming. the beam will finish eating the crew, but your ship should already be transporting, but the borg ship wont be yet.

for 3 assims, beam with 3 ships.

posted on August 12th, 2010, 3:38 pm

Well, I admit I haven't tried it yet, but it seems to me that this strategy is easily countered with a single EM Scube .
But at least it sounds quite useful. However, what about Dominion, Feds? They don't have cloaking devices...

posted on August 12th, 2010, 5:24 pm

Breen Cruisers have cloaking

posted on August 12th, 2010, 5:36 pm

Once a critical mass of Assimilators is reached (enough to strip your ships of crew before you can stop them), your best bet is to have a counter for them.

  Romulans are indeed pretty tough, but Spectres have LOTS of crew and are very hard for even 3 assimilators to take over.  If those assimilators are x2Auto / x1Regen they won't hold up very long against determined attacks.

  Feds can use Monsoons / Intrepids if you haven't had time to tech to Akiras.  They don't have a lot of crew but they both have instant-damage specials.  Akiras will do you better as each one can absorb nearly an entire auto-assimilator's beam.

  Klingons ... well ... to be honest I don't have a good answer for Assimilators at critical mass.  If you haven't been able to handle the first 1 or 2 Assimilators with Susa/KBQ/Veqlaragh, you may be in deep trouble.  For either avatar though, a quick tech to Sangs can actually work pretty well.  You may find though that you can't tell what they're going to make before you NEED to have that battle yard up, unfortunately.

  Dominion will win the day against nearly all Borg factions with S-2.  They counter Dodes and Assimilators and have enough crew to not worry so much.