Changes to the Borg

posted on October 5th, 2013, 3:48 am

I like the Borg in concept but I HATE playing them in this mod. Some changes that would be welcome in the next version

Get rid of the giant humongous miners. It started as a April fools joke but I think using that Borg donut around a moon is much better. I just get annoyed with created a station from the miners and it ends up in the wrong spot and causes them to glitch all the time.

I like the skeleton for building the larger ships but its a pain in the ass for just making smaller borg vessels. Could the skeleton be kept just for cubes and diamonds and anything smaller can be made at a station?

Why can't I time travel?

posted on October 5th, 2013, 8:45 am

i think mining stations at moons is going to be a unique thing for one of the other races (iconian or ciadan, i can't remember which).

i'm happy with the borg having the big miners, i agree the placement of the mining station is at best hapless, that could be best fixed by having the miner select where to place the station. one more click, but would be less annoying.

as for uplinks and ship size, that's a big thing for borg that makes them unique. even scubes are big, cruiser size compared to other races. maybe allow the nexus to build scubes and adaptors (the smallest chassis types), no modules allowed, so they have base stats. but the build time and cost is slightly higher than if you did this with an uplink. also still requires conduction.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 2:59 pm

Actually since the Borg have those transwarp conduits why don't they just transwarp in ships like you did in Star Wars Empire at War where you would call in reinforcements from hyperspace.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 3:17 pm

Actually since the Borg have those transwarp conduits why don't they just transwarp in ships like you did in Star Wars Empire at War where you would call in reinforcements from hyperspace.

because then they could just transwarp in 100 cubes every battle and would never lose. plus i think that's also slated for another race. the iconians i think.

also the prerequisites for transwarp change every week. most accept that there must be a transwarp aperture at the destination. these might be expensive to build (like the transwarp building in a2).

posted on October 5th, 2013, 4:05 pm

Not sure how you get transwarping in 100 cubes. Did you play Empire at War? YOu still are limited by your resources and the more powerful the ships the more resources you need to bring them in. It makes sense for the Borg since they have those conduits and their ships are faster than everyone else's to begin with.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 4:32 pm

Not sure how you get transwarping in 100 cubes. Did you play Empire at War? YOu still are limited by your resources and the more powerful the ships the more resources you need to bring them in. It makes sense for the Borg since they have those conduits and their ships are faster than everyone else's to begin with.

never played empire at war. but it's not relevant here. if you have working transwarp conduits then the borg could just redirect a fleet from elsewhere to temporarily overwhelm the enemy in your area. paying to transwarp ships in is just the same mechanic as building them, just with a different visual effect. it's not actual variety. transwarp is almost instant travel across the galaxy. fleets of cubes could be redirected to anywhere that the collective needs them. the limiting factor has to be the cost of building apertures.

i just plain don't like the idea of borg having something as powerful as transwarp in game.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 8:03 pm

Except you could say the same exact thing for Starfleet's Warpin. Essentially what I am thinking is that for large ships the Borg would just be able to warp in cubes and such. Resource and/or time limits would prevent spamming. Assuming it takes 2 minutes and 10,000 resources (just examples, I don't actually remember the exact numbers) then just set it accordingly to the warp in menu. You must have 10,000 resources and you can't warp in a cube more than every 2 minutes. Smaller ships could be warped in every 90 seconds or every minute for the really small ones.

Even if you don't call it trans warp since Borg ships are insanely fast it fits perfectly with them that they just send in more ships.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 8:23 pm

Except you could say the same exact thing for Starfleet's Warpin.

not even close. transwarp is almost instant (a few minutes) travel anywhere in the galaxy. warp drive (for any race) is months to travel across just the federation. sfc warpin is just ships that are near enough to respond to you. starfleet won't put all its ships in one place anyway, as they are so slow that half the federation would be vulnerable.

the borg don't have that limit, they can transwarp all over the galaxy in minutes, the borg don't have any weak spots. not that anyone ever really went on the offensive against them.

literally the only balancing factor is that it requires transwarp apertures to be built at the destination. otherwise the borg ship uses normal warp drive.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 8:51 pm

i find it a little bit odd that the borg ship skeleton shatters into space as debris. seems a little wasteful for the borg who scavenge parts off of downed drones.

i understand its probably to signify that the ship is finished and ready.

perhaps it could activate and power up (like in that episode where they find and reactivate a dormant cube)

posted on October 5th, 2013, 9:14 pm

i find it a little bit odd that the borg ship skeleton shatters into space as debris. seems a little wasteful for the borg who scavenge parts off of downed drones.

i understand its probably to signify that the ship is finished and ready.

perhaps it could activate and power up (like in that episode where they find and reactivate a dormant cube)

i agree completely. i'd expect everything that is built to either become part of the new unit, or be reused in some way.

posted on October 5th, 2013, 9:37 pm

Except you could say the same exact thing for Starfleet's Warpin.

not even close. transwarp is almost instant (a few minutes) travel anywhere in the galaxy. warp drive (for any race) is months to travel across just the federation. sfc warpin is just ships that are near enough to respond to you. starfleet won't put all its ships in one place anyway, as they are so slow that half the federation would be vulnerable.

the borg don't have that limit, they can transwarp all over the galaxy in minutes, the borg don't have any weak spots. not that anyone ever really went on the offensive against them.

literally the only balancing factor is that it requires transwarp apertures to be built at the destination. otherwise the borg ship uses normal warp drive.

Thats why I said you could just call it regular warp. We already know that the Borg are way faster than other races so having them "warp in" larger ships would work just fine. It makes as much sense as starfleet building new shipyards all the time. Personally I would like to see ALL ships from all races warped in like in Star Was EoW since that makes more sense.

I agree with the debris stuff, wasn't something I paid much attention but now that its mentioned it will probably bug me

posted on October 6th, 2013, 9:20 am

Thats why I said you could just call it regular warp. We already know that the Borg are way faster than other races so having them "warp in" larger ships would work just fine.

don't know why you think borg have faster warp drives. they seemed to only marginally outpace a galaxy class. and they took their time getting from system j25 to wolf 359 at warp.

even for the borg, standard warp is too slow to expect fleets to be able to respond across their entire territory. that's why they wouldn't just warp in everything you need to win, as it would leave them short handed elsewhere. the exact same reasons the federation doesn't warp its fleets everyone at the drop of a hat.

the idea is bad.

it doesn't work for the other races either. if it replaces all building of ships then the need to collect resources to "buy" these ships is silly. starfleet wouldn't refuse you a ship because you can't cover its build costs, letting your base be destroyed. if the player is collecting resources to build ships, then the player should build the ship. we just have to accept that to make the game fun, ships have to be built and destroyed incredibly fast compared to the show.

posted on October 6th, 2013, 1:32 pm

The only time I've seen a Cube chase a Galaxy Class had the Galaxy pushed to the limit with the Cube casually strolling along behind it, not putting any real effort in. The episode makes it seem the Borg weren't even trying, which is quite normal for them. Not like they were in much of a hurry.

He could have been talking about the fact that Borg ships have transwap built in.

posted on October 6th, 2013, 2:14 pm

The only time I've seen a Cube chase a Galaxy Class had the Galaxy pushed to the limit with the Cube casually strolling along behind it, not putting any real effort in. The episode makes it seem the Borg weren't even trying, which is quite normal for them. Not like they were in much of a hurry

we have no idea how much of a strain their engines were under. only that they didn't immediately overtake, they had to catch up. also their warp drive was far far slower than transwarp, otherwise bobw would have happened sooner. they had to get from j25 to federation space using warp.

He could have been talking about the fact that Borg ships have transwap built in.

and that's where the "prerequisites for transwarp change every week". most of the time you only need a transwarp conduit built with apertures, voyager dabbled with the idea of transwarp coils, tiny discs which somehow conferred the ability to use transwarp. it was never explicitly stated that the resulting transwarp could operate without an already existing conduit in place. by endgame the transwarp coil concept is binned again.

also when voyager had this "transwarp coil" it moved at far slower speeds than all other cases of transwarp. conduits get you all across the galaxy in minutes, the coil only shaved some time off voyager's journey, it didn't even take them out of range of routine contact with the borg.

even if we conjecture that there are two distinct transwarp speeds (coil and conduit), coil is still not fast enough. it would presumably enable a fleet to move across the galaxy in days or weeks, rather than minutes. still not fast enough to defend everywhere at once.

posted on October 6th, 2013, 5:32 pm

"also the prerequisites for transwarp change every week. most accept that there must be a transwarp aperture at the destination. these might be expensive to build (like the transwarp building in a2)."

Myles, in Star Trek Voyager Endgame Seven of Nine clearly states to a suggest to take the Transwarp Network and destroying it in the Alpha Quadrant wouldn't work because there is only exit apertures in the Alpha Quadrant and no Transwarp structure. Only exit apertures open at the exit location and then close returning to normal space. That statement makes it official to how Transwarp and Transwarp Apertures work.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transwarp_conduit
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transwarp_aperture
http://borgcollective.wikia.com/wiki/Transwarp

what a Exit Transwarp Aperture looks like:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvqme6qYtME

This link is about the entire hub:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transwarp_hub