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.

Suicide Junkie · #7 May 26th, 2001, 03:24 PM

quote:
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.

I would have to suggest that you give the borg organic-style regenerating armor. Allegiance subverters are IMO too powerful, instead, think about using boarding parties that regenerate via the organic armor ability

Be sure to get the AI to build a baseship every now and then to really strike fear in the enemy!

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

IMO, Borg should be unbalanced

In Activision's ST

ada, they screwed the borg and made a cube equal to the Fed's battleships (enterprise-E size- can't remember the class). The very first thing I modded was increasing the defiant class weapons from 2 to 4 cannons (duh) and the second thing was the Borg cube. I scaled up the Cube 150%, and gave it a 0% chance of being destroyed once its shields were down. Increasing it's systems hitpoints by 100 times and its repair rate helped. I also added beam emitters on all six faces of the cube, instead of just one. To give a human player a chance of survival, the cost and build time were doubled.

So now, a war cube can take down a starbase on its own. To actually win against a single cube, you need at least 20 ships, and you're sure to lose a bunch. Tactical cubes are much smaller, but are sill tough enough to take down a starbase. 8 defiants can force the retreat of the tactical cube, but can't destroy it on their own. See Screenshots here

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

Matryx · #8 May 26th, 2001, 05:42 PM

If my memory serves me correctly (and it rarely does this) I remember no evidence of the borg ever having researched anything on their own.
They merely assimilate other cultures and gain technology that way.
In this way perhaps it would be better to start them off with -100% to research ability but still give them all of the functions you outlined below.

Comments people?

capnq · #9 May 26th, 2001, 05:56 PM

quote:
If my memory serves me correctly (and it rarely does this) I remember no evidence of the borg ever having researched anything on their own.
They merely assimilate other cultures and gain technology that way.

Well, at the very least, they had to develop enough technology on their own to assimilate their first culture. Unless it was a barbarians vs. Rome situation, which doesn't fit what little I remember of their origin story.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

Suicide Junkie · #10 May 26th, 2001, 06:48 PM

quote:
Well, at the very least, they had to develop enough technology on their own to assimilate their first culture. Unless it was a barbarians vs. Rome situation, which doesn't fit what little I remember of their origin story.

I would think that it would be easiest to start them with no research ability, but already have basic assimilation techs.

If you copy most of the components and "borgify" them (improve their performance slightly, make them regenerate and only available to borg), then you would have a really neat system.

The borg would capture a shield generator I, and they would analyse to get a Borgified Shield Generator I, which fits in with the rest of their tech.