Borg assimilation racial technology

Q · #1 May 26th, 2001, 08:24 AM

I like the Borg race very much from its concept, so I had the idea of a special racial technology for them, which would give the following components:
- transwarp drive: up to 5 extra-movement points (as solar sails). Borg ships are very fast and it is usually not possible to run away from them.
- assimilation drone component: converts the crew of an enemy ship to Borg (ability of the allegience subverter). Very low range of 1 or 2 but reload of 5-10, so one Borg ship could convert more then one enemy ship in a battle.
- multi-phase regenerating shields: more shield points than standard phased shield, e.g. up to 500 shield points for the highest level, and regeneration ability of e.g. 25 points per turn for the highest level. Borg ships are very hard to damage!
- repair drone component: a repair component, but much smaller than the standard one (e.g. 50kT). Damaged Borg ship repair quickly and it is also important to have the possibility to repair the converted but damaged enemy ships.

As far as I can see everything should be possible with the available abilities, but I might be wrong and its certainly quite a lot of work.

Now my question: Do you think such a racial trait would be too strong and unbalance the game?

[This message has been edited by Q (edited 26 May 2001).]

Atrocities · #2 May 26th, 2001, 08:33 AM

awsome ideas.

Vger · #3 May 26th, 2001, 09:02 AM

Hi,

Not having the full game yet (it might get here Saturday), I can't comment on balance, but I, for one, don't care.

I love the borg and would love to be able to play and face them, even if they are nigh-unstoppable (as well they should be).

I've downloaded every Borg mod I've seen and can't wait to try them.

Personally, I intend to join the modders as I have a desire to make the true Berserker race for the game, though perhaps Berserkers would be better as monsters.

Assimilate this,
V'ger gone

Q · #4 May 26th, 2001, 11:28 AM

Okay I will try to make this modification, but be aware that any new racial trait will prevent the use of the old empire file!

dumbluck · #5 May 26th, 2001, 11:57 AM

Why? the emp files don't refer to the new racial tech, so it wouldn't be a prob. S_J had emp file probs because pre-existing races had to change to include the "normal" race tech. Yours wouldn't, which is good; you wouldn't want other races using the borg race tech!

On another note, be sure to make the borg components expensive; after all, the borg never used very many ships! Or better yet, drastically increase maint. costs for the borg as an effective ship cap.

edit=typos

[This message has been edited by dumbluck (edited 26 May 2001).]

jc173 · #6 May 26th, 2001, 12:51 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dumbluck:
Why? the emp files don't refer to the new racial tech, so it wouldn't be a prob. S_J had emp file probs because pre-existing races had to change to include the "normal" race tech. Yours wouldn't, which is good; you wouldn't want other races using the borg race tech!

On another note, be sure to make the borg components expensive; after all, the borg never used very many ships! Or better yet, drastically increase maint. costs for the borg as an effective ship cap.

edit=typos

[This message has been edited by dumbluck (edited 26 May 2001).]

Err actually it does matter dumbluck, I think it's a built in safety feature of some kind. Even if the existing empires don't use that trait the number of unique racial areas don't match what was originally in the file. Try copying one of the racial tech traits then give value 1 a different number like 99, it won't let you load any of the old empires. It's probably supposed to protect the emp files from being corrupted or holding bad values somehow is my guess. But you can get around it. Try moving most the races directories into a back up directory and generate a random game with a large number of random opponents, save those new races over the old emp files, quit, move those races into the backup directory and add a new set back to the race directory and repeat until you have new emp files for all the races you want to use. I'm not sure if you need to edit the settings file to take care of the quickstart values or not though, since I haven't tried this yet, but it should work.