Borg mechanics

[wfs5519]

posted on March 12th, 2009, 10:29 am

Last edited by wfs5519 on March 12th, 2009, 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

-I've been experimenting with the borg mechanics a bit, adding some sound effects, and playing with the odfs, tech trees, and sprite files, which all are incredibly complex, and came across some questions and points.  Some may help solve some of the borg mechanic points i saw made b4, others may just help inspire.
I'm curious if there are any assimilation incentives being added for the borg.  for example, gaining advantages over certain races or vessels based on what you capture.  I reworked the borg mixed tech a bit, allowing all borg captured construction ships, regardless or race, to build the same adaption matrix, which only now dismantles and repairs vessels.  This drastically cuts back on the odfs needed for that particular assim. matrix model.  The adaptor module is dependent only on which races' construction ship is captured, adding some odfs.  I made some of the modules, for example, the partial adaption, the devastating attack, drone transport, sensor relay, and slizer dependent on weather or not the adaption matrix was built, requiring assimilation to access those abilities (yea it took some doing to say the least). 
-I'd love to be able to analyze or assimilate a ship's technology, gaining some kind of special ability for the collective, either by selecting, or randomizing, such as acquire a special weapon, or acquire a defense to a special weapon.  I think it could be done, but it is a lot of work to accomplish.  I'm too busy for it ATM, but I thought i would put the idea out there for the devs to note down.
-The other thing I did was I made borg ships with larger chassis sizes, cube, diamond, and pyramid cost, or remove priority, and i added very small priority counts on construction ships and freighters, essentially demanding priority (more or stronger ships) as a need to defend critical (defenseless) targets.  The more defenseless targets produced, the more are needed to defend.  Why did I do this?  priority has a purpose until you exceed 100 or so, then you don't really need to worry about it, and you can very quickly produce until you defeat... well no... more like completely annihilate the opposing race with ease, essentially outproducing, and outgunning them.  By the time you have 100 priority as it is currently, you probably have an excess of resources.  As I have it now, producing large vessels causes the priority to drop, as it should IMO.  This essentially represents weather the collective is at ease, or in need to expand, and limits how many of the stronger ships can be produced at a time.  I tried adding priority to ships from other races also, so as they are assimilated and dismantled, it adds priority to the borg resource pool.  It worked great for the borg, but I ran into some production and tooltip problems for the other races.  I set it up for other races similar to the crew pool settings, and they work ok, which confuses me a little.
A few questions:  Are dilithium moons and Tritanium moons able to place an orbital station?  If so, I would like to try to eliminate the freighters (which seems to inefficient to be borg style IMO) and replace them with a station that orbits, and feeds directly to the pool, maybe even upgrade them based on assimilating freighters (resource extraction/assimilation beams, or extraction speed).  If not, is it possible to place a stationary base that doesn't orbit, but can essentially extract Dil. and Trit. AND feed it directly to the pool?
Another question: is there a way to breifly reveal enemy locations when vessels are captured, representing the collective assimilation enemy tactical information, maybe even something similar to intelligence report.

one little bug in my untouched game I noticed; when shields are upgraded for any race, the shield bars on all stations and ships go up, but the shield strength doesn't.  It's not too big a deal, and it might have been too subtle to notice.  The shields regenerate anyway, but I thought I would mention it.

posted on March 12th, 2009, 11:21 pm

"Why did I do this?  priority has a purpose until you exceed 100 or so, then you don't really need to worry about it, and you can very quickly produce until you defeat... well no... more like completely annihilate the opposing race with ease, essentially outproducing, and outgunning them.  By the time you have 100 priority as it is currently, you probably have an excess of resources.  As I have it now, producing large vessels causes the priority to drop, as it should IMO.  This essentially represents weather the collective is at ease, or in need to expand, and limits how many of the stronger ships can be produced at a time. "

I think this is a superb idea: especially considering how powerful Cubes get to be... and once you get one, a fleet of them isn't far away (and is really extraordinarily hard to stop).

posted on March 17th, 2009, 6:44 pm

As I have it now, producing large vessels causes the priority to drop, as it should IMO.  This essentially represents weather the collective is at ease, or in need to expand, and limits how many of the stronger ships can be produced at a time.

I like this idea.

posted on March 17th, 2009, 7:00 pm

if producing a cube is to drop priority, how do we earn more? By wasting more resources on smaller ships? how do we then compete as borg with oncoming fed and kling spams.

If we ever adopt the priority drop feature, the miner optimization ideas as ventured in Zolar's thread by Zolar, me and the rest will most certainly be needed.

posted on March 17th, 2009, 7:47 pm

I do like the idea of the Borg having orbital mining stations and it is entirely possible without any special features I believe by making asteroids have the 'planet' classlabel so they could be mined with orbital stations or freighters.

posted on March 26th, 2009, 3:59 pm

Not to say dropping priority is a bad idea.....it is actually KIND OF a good idea.....however, I'm not sure if I just suck this much or if anyone else notices this....but the bigger the Borg ship....the more resources it costs to make.  Cubes are upwards of 8k dilithium (counting the matrix, the cube itself, and all its modules.).  Most maps (assuming 4-8 player size) have enough resources for 2 of each moon per player.  I can't resource fast enough.  I struggle w/ early power houses, like Klingons, when playing humans.  A.I. Isn't too much of a problem 1v1 hard....unless its Dominion...then you just Assimilator rush.  I'm not sure how many of you play Borg consistently enough to realize, but our ships are very resource intensive. 

I definitely like the idea....because after priority hits 100, he's right, you can spam any ship.  If the dev's want to make it lower by 5 per Cube or something like that, that could work....but I'd also think a drop in cost for Cubes would be even more warranted. 

I'm not sure if the author mentioned it, but I think the lower priority value should only be a Cube attribute.  Just don't limit the number of Cubes like the Tavara.

[Anonymous]

posted on March 26th, 2009, 4:06 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on March 26th, 2009, 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

that's exactly why it is already self-balanced and we do not need the drop in priority as an additional hindrance. If priority were to drop I would end up having to forcably waste the hard earned resources on yet another assimilator or sphere which is ridiculous and not proper gameplay.
Also, if we want to drop priority based on the construction of a ship, then the borg must get additional priority by virtue of the destruction of enemy ships - the more you fight and destroy the higher the urgency or priority to get more powerful ships from the collective.

ATM, even if you want to build more borg ships, you cant.
The resources to build a fully functional cube drain about 5k of your dilithum and about 2.5-3 k of trilithium. given the current moons and rate of mining, it is controlled in of itself.

no caps on cubes - they're already capped by virtue of the rest of the borg tree/resource requirement trade off.

the permutations and combinations are endless, which is why IMO Borg mechanics are fine atm and do not need changing.

the only tweak I feel we need for the borg - redundantly once more - is the mining station change, and this is simply to remove the delay of orbiting and then docking at a station that itself is random in its queer self-placement (and this too can be avatar specific depending on the objective most in line therewith - assimilate or optimize or eradicate or whatever).

posted on March 26th, 2009, 6:00 pm

aye, we are pleased with the strength of borg ships and have no unitlimits in mind at the moment. There might be some smaller changes to Borg mechanics in the future, but nothing precise is fixed yet

[ray320]

posted on March 26th, 2009, 6:29 pm

Last edited by ray320 on March 26th, 2009, 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

im am one who initionally diliked borg with the relese of v3, i found them hard wo use, and weak, now idk if i figured out to use them, or if they were tweaked, but i find them now, to be the most powerful race, right besides the roms(idk which i think is the best) i find borg excel at large, maps, with teams  battles, but maybye not so much on small maps, with 1v1 batles

heres why:
borg on large maps excel for pretty much one reason, resources, they are very resource heavy for ships, but enough moons, and its unstopable, with a teamate, your teamate cna protect you with its little ship, as the disatvantage for borg, is small number of slow, howver powerfl ships,(its hard to protect base) but with all he dilitium and tri, its easy to upgrade priority and build ships, so that you soon have assimilators and spheres, by this point, your pretty much unstopable, and once you get to cubes, nobody can stop you, with a temate they can protect your base, and you have no wory about priority, with the borgs weapons, its easy to wipe through the enemy, even without a teamate, you have a wealth of resources, with 4 dilithium, and 5 trilithium moons(a teamate had the same amount) (this was on daka corridor) it was easy to continoulsy build cubrs, heck i was just cranking them out, id let my reources build, buld 5 more cubes it was easy, borg are really the most powerful, and nobody, not the powerful rommies, with there tavaras, nor the underpowered overexpenisive, weak federation(ships have so little crew, allowed to be easily assimilated) with there, equaly(if not more so) weak,(espeically in attack) descents, nor the kligons, with.... um there battle hardened(easy sovy killin) nevarghs(i guess thats all they got), nor the dominion, EVEN with there battle ships, can not stop the borg on this, when you dont need priority anymore, and have enough resources, the borg, are unstopable, even with only enouggh reosources for a few cubes, the borg are....... well lets put it this way
resistance is futile

on a small map its different, and though i am about to argue how much weaker they are, i must say, they cause alot of problems for me,
          what happens is this, if its a small two person map, then the borg will pretty much definently win for a few reason, but first off, is there probe, can easily kill the other players scount, and construction ship, before any other resistace is met, so for the borg, they build another contruction ships, and if they went with assimilation, have asimilators soon, which can quite easily asimilate any ship that comes at them very fast, (as the early ships for other races are all low crew), they stop the other player from expanding, while the borg player picks up all the moons, there you go, they got resources, boom, borg win

on a medium size map it can go one of two ways, both of the way i mention before thos, but the enemy player, can also somtimes be able to harras the borg in the begining with hit and run, and not allow it to expand

now borg is probably tied for my most favorite race to play, because there powerful, but in my opinion, there two powerful, and they can blow some other races out of the water, i love the borg, but in my opinion right now
the bottom line is, the borg will almost always win, i know that borg geing ultra powerful is canon, but unless borg can be toned down a bit, for gameplays sake, then i for one, think they should be a non playable race, and only used, as an ai, or in campaihn missions

posted on March 26th, 2009, 6:47 pm

In fact I play lotta games and still consider the romulans and feds to be the hardest enemies. Despite the feeling that is just a good sign, everyone notices another race to be too strong, I'll try to argue on that:

- Borg can't kill a construction vessel which operates near the homebase.
- Feds defiants can take a cube out easy. Magic word: Critical Shot. That one rocks every cube
- Borgs need a lot of time to become strong.

[Anonymous]

posted on March 26th, 2009, 6:56 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on March 26th, 2009, 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

@ray
on the large maps when ure collecting this large quantum of resources on your moons, arent the other guys doing the same with their races?

by the time a borg side has collected enough to get to a cube, the oter guy has enough to build fleets of ships.
enough on such large maps to outnumber the borg 3 to 1.


you seem to be evaluating in a vacuum of end game play as the only point of attack.
But even when the borg reach 100, they do not have enough resources on even the large maps to pump out cubes - from 24k dil and about 12k tril you will get about 6 cubes.
Compare that to 4 full fleets of norexans, D'deridexes and ereses and support generixes the like, the fleets will hve a good chance of dealing some serious damage to the borg.
also, it should be noted that were not talking about 1 on 1 tactics for the roms. with the larger number of ships, they could engage the borg ships with half the fleet, while committing the remaining fleet to take out the borg stations.
and frankly to stop borg production you need to hit their stations - especially the research stations and the construction ships.
there are a lot of strategic implications here, and not just send fleet 1 into action against fleet 2 and hope that when the dust settles something has come of it for u.

If the opponents were playing against you they should have been spying, and scouting. If your teammate allocated most moons to you, in the initial stages itself the enemies could have capitalized and taken him out.
while themselves building. together those large fleets would have most certainly been able to confuse your fleets and get your bases while keeping your borg ships which are most certainly less in number than what the others can pump out int he same time busy.

The example you;ve cited is more wait and watch on the part of both sides till they come in with their end ships and then compare the results - that isnt RTS.

posted on March 26th, 2009, 6:59 pm

I cant sign on that.
The borgs are my favorite Race, but in fact the cube is really useless against more than 50 ships, let it be doms. They spam the ships like hell. The cube cant handle more than 2 ships at the same time. If you build 2 cubes, the doms have another armada to send to you.

I played lots of matches against every single race and i cant really figure out, why the borgs are too powerful. A fully upgraded "war" cube costs more then 4k Di. Without 5 moons its a mess. And on big maps, where did you get 5 moons so easily without being attacked?  :sweatdrop:

Edith: serpicus, you sad it

posted on March 26th, 2009, 7:00 pm

exactly.

posted on March 26th, 2009, 7:07 pm

personally serpicus i have to disagree, borg is one of my most favorite race, but playing with them and agaisnt them, there assimilators can asimilat small ships so easily, making early game attackes against borg or defending agaisnt borg, very hard to do

and on large maps, with a temate its easy to get moons and have your teamate protect you with there smaller faster ships,

as for cubes not being good at takeing out a large number of ships, what the heck are you talking about? with a few cubes i took out over 30 ships, easily, and a starbase or two plus stations, its easy, for large ships you use beam cutter, and the sheild thingy and boom, there down

posted on March 26th, 2009, 9:11 pm

I can take out a Cube with 4 ships. Seriously. Give me two support generixs with weapon disabler... and whatever two other ships you care. Or... any number of veqlarg with engine disabler... or a few defiants microed plus a few excelsiors with anti capital ships torps...

Cubes are not hard to incapacitate and then destroy over time... which is why you must go for a mix of diamonds, spheres and a few cubes if you can afford it. Essentially you have to build a fleet as Borg, if you want to survive.

As for assimilators? Read the other thread  (the jist of it was that you require high priority, large amounts of resources .... and patience, as the assimilator is quite slow and has small range)

Out of all the races, I find multiplayer Borg to be the easiest to take down.