Your Mining Are Belong to Us

posted on October 9th, 2010, 6:25 pm

Well this is a relatively minor thing ... though it can have major effects in gameplay.


  The issue is:

Losing your mining stations to a Borg Auto-Assimilator early on.


  I'll provide some counter-points so don't get all uppity yet. 


As the Assimilate Avatar auto-assimilators are pretty quick to get.  They can be put out quickly on the heels of a few Scout Cubes and Probes without much problem.  No real problem there .  The problem is that an Auto-Assimilator with full assim capabilities can strip the crew off of any mining station in one go.  Now early on ... that's a pretty rough hit.


  Counterpoints:

1.  Beam crew onto it from other starbases.  (yeah sure, that can work sometimes )
2.  Kill the stupid Auto-Assim since it has low defensive value as an AAssim.  (Sure, you can intercept it, but it's still a hefty target and only takes a few seconds to completely remove the station's crew)
3.  Assim's are slow and will never reach your station.  (they are slow indeed, but not all maps are very big )


  If an Auto-Assim does manage to reach your main base, you're almost assured to lose your mining station's crew.  This is a pretty big hit unless you can manage to stave it off.  In most cases I just start transporting from other stations to the mining, but rarely is that Assim alone.  A few scubes / probes are more than likely to be around and can outnumber the amount of transporters you have available.



  The only DIRECT solution I've come up with has been to decom the station when it's obvious that it's gonna get stripped.  That way you gain back some of the res, they don't decom it for themselves and get the res, and you can wait a few moments and rebuild.



  My Suggestion:


  Up the crew of the Mining Stations to 200 (up 50 from 150).  This will still allow it to be assimilated, but not in a single burst from and Auto-Assim.  It will take the Assimilator a short while (maybe 10 seconds tops?) to recharge the energy needed to strip the rest.  During this time the Station shouldn't really be able to recrew because there is combat going on and you can't recrew in combat.

  Making it a two-click thing instead of a one-click thing would help a lot in my opinion .  Borg can still take over mining stations, but you don't lose your entire di/tri production without really much risk to the Borg.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 6:41 pm

your fleet should be nearby. if they defeated your fleet already then they deserve to eat your miners up.

assims are slow and cant cloak so u know in advance to rally your forces. and as you said the blue beam assim wont have as much guns/defence. so all you have to fight through is a few scubes/probes then the assim is yours.

if it is decrewing a mining station its not decrewing your ships.

i dont see a huge problem here.

but more crew on stations wouldnt hurt either. make them more resistant to assimilation in general.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 7:50 pm

your fleet should be nearby. if they defeated your fleet already then they deserve to eat your miners up.

  They don't defeat your fleet.  They don't eat your miners.  READ.


They strip your station in 1 go and fire on your ships.  Pretty simple.  It totally stops your mining cold.  Only the Fed warpin can achieve the same thing in the same game-time .  And we all agree that a double steamie ain't fair .



    Anyway, I feel that with just enough crew on the stations so that you can't lose it in 1 beam, it will require a bit more thought than just "All your mining stations are belong to us" 

posted on October 9th, 2010, 8:02 pm

won't you have at least 2 to 4 ships on the field when assim just gets build if you do early assim build?  also maps are usually big so by the time you get pure assim across the map it would be detected and intercepted (maybe?) or perhaps destroyed or damaged enough for you to retreat it?

i must say assim might be powerful in offense power but their defensive power is really weak... ^^;

posted on October 9th, 2010, 8:43 pm

All these things are true.

However:  on a smaller map it functions like a Steamie warpin in that you will almost always lose that station.  Should it be that way?

  All I'm suggesting is 50 crew more so it would take maybe 16-22 seconds to strip it instead of 6-8  .

  Anyone feel that's unreasonable?

posted on October 9th, 2010, 8:46 pm

An Assim is quite slow and it takes quite a while to get to an Auto Assimilator and keep pressure up with smaller ships. You are quite likely to end up with no Scubes or Probes if you go straight to Auto-Assimilator from them in fact. Not to mention an Auto-Assimilator is pure support. It's not as if you don't know that the Assimilator is coming for your base, being one of the slowest Borg vessels  :whistling: . In fact, the worst possible thing for the Borg is if the player uses that Assimilator to take out the mining. BAM, instantly no more special energy for damaging that horde of ships that was allowed to roam free while no Borg ships were produced in the meantime. Quite a poor tradeoff.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 9:31 pm

It's also quite difficult to get the resources to make a decent number of auto assims.  You're starving for tritanium in the beginning of the game as it is.  Usually you can make one, then the next assim has to be di heavy (or make other ships), and then you can usually squeeze out another one.

However, I don't see a problem with beefing up the crew count of the mining stations, as they've always seemed rather low to me.  I would have no problem with a 50 crew increase.

[Tyler]

posted on October 9th, 2010, 9:39 pm

Last edited by Tyler on October 9th, 2010, 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

An increase in crew to Klingon and Dominion Mining stations I agree with, but not the Federation or Romulan ones.

They are more likely to have more efficient stations that don't need as many crew, and things that work for the Federation instead of Starfleet (civilian) usually tend to have lower crews that a military thing of similar size.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 9:50 pm

That's all conjecture.  An argument could easily be made that in a warzone area like the ones found in FO games Starfleet sends extra security personnel to protect the civilians in case of boarding.  Same with the Romulans.

From a gameplay aspect, the crew counts of those mining stations are a little too easy to board, as they have the lowest crew count of any station.  They're also the most exposed and easiest to capture, because they're usually at an expansion or farther away from the starbase.  So I'm not opposed to adding 50 crew to them because they are so low crewed and are so vital.  Plus, if boarding ever becomes more of a major player down the road for the races, as I believe the devs have hinted at, then crew strength could very well be more  important than it is now.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 9:54 pm

Yup, I think it's not at all a problem now, but it might be one later when the Borg have changes. Emphasis on might.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 9:57 pm

Hmm ... I guess since for some races they are very difficult to replace .

  So you're suggesting that, if an auto-assim reaches your mining you deserve to lose the whole thing by default?

posted on October 9th, 2010, 10:01 pm

I'm saying that you didn't do enough to prevent it. There is no "by default"  . Strawmen deserve to BURN  . Next what'll we do, up the crew of yards, research stations, mining ships?

posted on October 9th, 2010, 10:12 pm

There's quite a difference between losing an entire station and losing a miner .


   It's a complete stop of mining/production.


  I think for some races it's not so easily preventable.  A Romulan that does not intentionally counter an Auto-assim can lose their di station to the first one easily .  Dom can we test it some time? 

posted on October 9th, 2010, 10:41 pm

  They don't defeat your fleet.  They don't eat your miners.  READ.

fyi i did read your post. and putting things in all caps doesnt make your point any stronger.

if u let an auto assim assim get all the way accross the map, take you by surprise, spend all its energy on a mining station, and u dont kill it then u have made mistakes.

it should never capture your station, only drop its crew down to none, then u can recrew it again with your ships.

if enemy rushes to auto assim assim then that is all they will have. 5 drones per second beaming i think. u should have at least 2 ships, and a starbase shipyard and research station to beam with.

A Romulan that does not intentionally counter an Auto-assim can lose their di station to the first one easily .

any sober romulan player would see the assim chassis go up and know exactly what is coming, when its coming, where its coming from etc and would be ready for it long before it used its slow speed to arrive.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 11:17 pm

My preference on the rare occasion that I pull that stunt is to crew the freshly emptied station, and immediately begin decommision.  And make the feeble attempt to run away once that bit of evil is done.