All seems reasonable but for me a Borg version of Sci's ship Sensor analysis would be more in keeping with the Borg ability to adapt to your defenses. Honestly can;t remember the Borg using a weapon other than those weird green beams.
Well, that's the beauty of games, Borg Phasers can be green if the Developers have any loyalty to consistency.
The borg nolonger seem intrested in asimalating me or my ship even though im more advanced than them even when i don't fight back they seem bent on mine and everyone elses destruction why is this, why have Cryptic developed a futeristic zombie death cult instead of the lovable "you will be asimalated" collective we once knew !? ..
The borg nolonger seem intrested in asimalating me or my ship even though im more advanced than them even when i don't fight back they seem bent on mine and everyone elses destruction why is this, why have Cryptic developed a futeristic zombie death cult instead of the lovable "you will be asimalated" collective we once knew !? ..
Funny... the ordinary drones seem hellbent on trying to inject me with nanoprobes and assimilate me. :rolleyes:
The thing is, if you attack the Borg they percieve you as a threat to be destroyed, unless you have some pretty darn unique technology that they may find interesting.
They only assimilate when they intend to assimilate or when it is opportune to do so, but they do not go out of their way to assimilate an uninteresting unintended target.
Harry Kim: "How about a phaser shot across their bow? Might grab their attention."
7 of 9: "No, the shuttle would be perceived as a threat and they'd destroy it."
Invention and temporal warfare. The Borg have almost run out of species they can assimilate for new stuff and they are completely unable to invent new things. .
This.
Its pretty clear that while adaptation is something the Borg do very well, actually inventing new things is not something they´re very good at (but which the federation EXCELS at). Maybe because the hive mind supresses the individual creativity needed to push for the next innovation?
As to their overall tech lvl, they start with overall better engine, and shield tech but I never see any indication that they´re really farther along than the general Alpha Quadrant in anything else. I say this because they don´t have anything the feds didn´t have, no radical new tech; just the same tech only slightly better (no SDF-1 main reflex cannon or Stargate ancient drones, for example). Borg weapons don´t vaporize enemy ships in one hit, and we don´t really know what the feds could come up with if they weaponized nannites. The Borg don´t even have cloaking devices (be it from compatibility issues or other unsurmountable problems)
My guess is the Borg simply ran out of high tech races or powers to asimilate in their sector of space, no new asimilated races means no new tech for them. They´re stagnated and they know it, hence the push on the Alpha Quadrant races.
Finally, the Borg are scary because they´re space zombies, simple as that. They have a fancy word "asimilation" for zombifying but its the same thing. Their hive mind is really the same as becoming mindless and they are/were an unstoppable advancing horde (their ships are packed full of hordes of drones and had impenetrable shields). The problem is that in an MMO adequately representing a zombie threat is practically impossible because your character can´t get permanently zombified. If you want tough borg they are represented as such in the STFs, instead of zombifying they CC a lot which makes sense. If I was the federation the first thing i´d do is develop defensive nannites to prevent asimilation.
Edit: after giving it a little more though I don´t think their ship shields are particularly impressive after all. The borg cubes are using starbase lvl shields (as they're mobile starbases in size and presumably in power generation) so even a whole fleet of ships failing to destroy one is no surprise. Now a HUGE borg cube with a small support fleet attacking ESD (starbase 1) would make an amazing STF. Starbase phaser cannon anyone?
Voyager Endgame(Since you want to use that as a reference of why the Borg suck so badly)
Admiral Janeway: "While you're all standing around dreaming up fantasy tactical scenarios, the Queen is studying her scans of our armor and weapons. And she's probably got the entire collective working on a way to counter them."
Borg Queen: "I may have assimilated your pathogen, but I also assimilated your armor technology."
After several sustained strikes from both Borg Phasers and Borg Torpedos
Tuvok: "Integrity holding at 90%." Referring to the armor.
After the Borg scan the armor
Tuvok: "Port armor integrity down to 50%, 40%"
During their flight through the transwarp conduit and fight with the sphere
Tuvok: "Aft armor is down to 6%."
Kim: "Hull breeches on decks 6 through 12!" ((That's one hell of an adaptation curve, after only one scan by three simple cubes))
Admiral Janeway talks to the Queen directly with a synaptic interface
Janeway: "If I were you, I wouldn't waste my time trying to trace the signal. For the moment it's beyond your abilities."
The two talk for a while, and then...
Queen: "You underestimate me Admiral. While we've been talking my drone's have triangulated your signal." ((Again, I would have to say, really good adaption curve for a ten minute(or so) conversation.))
And let's not forget Admiral Janeway's shuttle and it's database from the future, complete with fully functional armor and cloaking technology.
So yes, woo hoo. The Federation has advanced tech from the future. So do the Borg. You might want to research a little more before you start quoting episodes.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
To be honest, after that first post where someone tried to kill the thread by saying this had been discussed before, I didn't expect my post to last this long. Let alone reappear at the top of the list on the front page.
When I went through the tutorial, I thought I was fighting rogue Borg like in TNG series after Hugh was re-introduced to the collective. While in TNG once the rogue Borg got situated under the leadership of Lore, they fought very well. However at first, when a Hive Mind goes down, Borg drones are lost, naive, confused, and weak.
There are a couple parts in the tutorial where NPC's state that some of the Borg drones seem confused and just stand around, or wander aimlessly. It really seemed to me that something went critically wrong with their Hive Mind, which is why all the Borg in the tutorial were unusually weak. I think that that would have been a sufficient enough explanation to support the tutorial as it is.
However I haven't read anything official from Cryptic about the tutorial mission, so I don't know what backstory they wrote about it. If what wd_harding said was true, about a time travel story, it does seem like a bit of a cop out.
Since I don't see anyone spelling this out and I see a lot of people who haven't seen or had a chance to read the way the game explains it:
Hard Canon:
- Future Janeway did major damage to the Borg; the full extent is not described on screen
STO:
Pre game:
- The extent of the above damage was "reduced to rubble and had to rebuild". The collective was so diminished in capacity that the Federation did not see them again and dismantled the Borg Task Force, causing Seven of Nine to quit Starfleet and continue the work on her own.
So, in the context of this game, the Borg did not have years and years to advance like the Federation was doing. The future tech destroyed them before they could assimilate it to the point they could not turn around and assimilate it after the fact, for many years.
Tutorial:
- Now, finally, Borg have shown up again and are attacking the Vega Colony. They are "different" somehow; they are damaged, many ships are unshielded, drones wander around without purpose. Here and there are "uber" drones you can watch the NPCs talk about and note that if there had been more of those, we'd all be dead. The STF was not a copout or a retcon, the below was all setup from the beginning.
Khitomer Accords:
Highlight below to see spoilers of what this mission reveals:
- The ground Borg at KA had been there in stasis for a very long time, probably pre-Janeway, perhaps left there before the attack of First Contact.
- Borg from your STO Admiral present went to activate and upgrade these drones. They choose to go to the past to do it to increase their chance of doing it before the Federation could stop them. The past they chose was your STO Ensign present. Why didn't they go back farther? Speed of plot, nothing new to the Trek franchise.
- Your STO Admiral follows them through time and stops them before they could upgrade the new drones.
- The non-functional and damaged probes, spheres, and cubes you fight in the tutorial were put in that state by me when I did the STF. You're welcome. The sniper rifle you got from the crate? Beamed down from my ship before I went back to the present to avoid seeing my past self. Fortunately I had just enough time to make them weak enough for my past self to kill.
- The nerfed drones you fight in the tutorial are nerfed because they're older models who just woke up from stasis and have had their ability to connect to the collective inhibited.
- The uber drones you see Starfleet freaking out about are regular drones from your Admiral future--they reach that state by adapting to what we're throwing at them in STO's present.
I am with those who were angry when we started the game and found ourselves fighting Borg already. But I have to agree, the hard canon did this to them much more than anything else. The story Cryptic is telling with them, starting from where VOY left them, is a quality one. You just have to see STF content to get the details, which has predictable results that many don't see it and most that do probably don't read/understand what's happening. Doing KA the first time though was pretty amazing on the reveals.
Edit: And I completely disagree with the notion that "some marketing person happened to hear about Borg and thought it was cool" or something as a reason they're here. Cryptic knows the canon--the utter mess that is the canon. They're doing as well with it as anyone has since TOS was done. I really have to suggest you look at all the canon to see what got the Borg where they are. We're a long way from Q's original attempt to convince us we weren't ready for what's out there.
Actually, one might argue that if we WEREN'T able to start taking the Borg on by now, Q would have been right, and those that argued that humanity was prepared to deal with whatever it found were wrong. So who is missing the point of Star Trek?
Comments
Well, that's the beauty of games, Borg Phasers can be green if the Developers have any loyalty to consistency.
Funny... the ordinary drones seem hellbent on trying to inject me with nanoprobes and assimilate me. :rolleyes:
The thing is, if you attack the Borg they percieve you as a threat to be destroyed, unless you have some pretty darn unique technology that they may find interesting.
They only assimilate when they intend to assimilate or when it is opportune to do so, but they do not go out of their way to assimilate an uninteresting unintended target.
Harry Kim: "How about a phaser shot across their bow? Might grab their attention."
7 of 9: "No, the shuttle would be perceived as a threat and they'd destroy it."
This.
Its pretty clear that while adaptation is something the Borg do very well, actually inventing new things is not something they´re very good at (but which the federation EXCELS at). Maybe because the hive mind supresses the individual creativity needed to push for the next innovation?
As to their overall tech lvl, they start with overall better engine, and shield tech but I never see any indication that they´re really farther along than the general Alpha Quadrant in anything else. I say this because they don´t have anything the feds didn´t have, no radical new tech; just the same tech only slightly better (no SDF-1 main reflex cannon or Stargate ancient drones, for example). Borg weapons don´t vaporize enemy ships in one hit, and we don´t really know what the feds could come up with if they weaponized nannites. The Borg don´t even have cloaking devices (be it from compatibility issues or other unsurmountable problems)
My guess is the Borg simply ran out of high tech races or powers to asimilate in their sector of space, no new asimilated races means no new tech for them. They´re stagnated and they know it, hence the push on the Alpha Quadrant races.
Finally, the Borg are scary because they´re space zombies, simple as that. They have a fancy word "asimilation" for zombifying but its the same thing. Their hive mind is really the same as becoming mindless and they are/were an unstoppable advancing horde (their ships are packed full of hordes of drones and had impenetrable shields). The problem is that in an MMO adequately representing a zombie threat is practically impossible because your character can´t get permanently zombified. If you want tough borg they are represented as such in the STFs, instead of zombifying they CC a lot which makes sense. If I was the federation the first thing i´d do is develop defensive nannites to prevent asimilation.
Edit: after giving it a little more though I don´t think their ship shields are particularly impressive after all. The borg cubes are using starbase lvl shields (as they're mobile starbases in size and presumably in power generation) so even a whole fleet of ships failing to destroy one is no surprise. Now a HUGE borg cube with a small support fleet attacking ESD (starbase 1) would make an amazing STF. Starbase phaser cannon anyone?
That made me laugh.
@K-Tar and The_Collective
Michael Okuda claims, in the Star Trek: First Contact Special Edition DVD, that they weren't destroyed
Voyager Endgame(Since you want to use that as a reference of why the Borg suck so badly)
Admiral Janeway: "While you're all standing around dreaming up fantasy tactical scenarios, the Queen is studying her scans of our armor and weapons. And she's probably got the entire collective working on a way to counter them."
Borg Queen: "I may have assimilated your pathogen, but I also assimilated your armor technology."
After several sustained strikes from both Borg Phasers and Borg Torpedos
Tuvok: "Integrity holding at 90%." Referring to the armor.
After the Borg scan the armor
Tuvok: "Port armor integrity down to 50%, 40%"
During their flight through the transwarp conduit and fight with the sphere
Tuvok: "Aft armor is down to 6%."
Kim: "Hull breeches on decks 6 through 12!"
((That's one hell of an adaptation curve, after only one scan by three simple cubes))
Admiral Janeway talks to the Queen directly with a synaptic interface
Janeway: "If I were you, I wouldn't waste my time trying to trace the signal. For the moment it's beyond your abilities."
The two talk for a while, and then...
Queen: "You underestimate me Admiral. While we've been talking my drone's have triangulated your signal."
((Again, I would have to say, really good adaption curve for a ten minute(or so) conversation.))
And let's not forget Admiral Janeway's shuttle and it's database from the future, complete with fully functional armor and cloaking technology.
So yes, woo hoo. The Federation has advanced tech from the future. So do the Borg. You might want to research a little more before you start quoting episodes.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
To be honest, after that first post where someone tried to kill the thread by saying this had been discussed before, I didn't expect my post to last this long. Let alone reappear at the top of the list on the front page.
There are a couple parts in the tutorial where NPC's state that some of the Borg drones seem confused and just stand around, or wander aimlessly. It really seemed to me that something went critically wrong with their Hive Mind, which is why all the Borg in the tutorial were unusually weak. I think that that would have been a sufficient enough explanation to support the tutorial as it is.
However I haven't read anything official from Cryptic about the tutorial mission, so I don't know what backstory they wrote about it. If what wd_harding said was true, about a time travel story, it does seem like a bit of a cop out.
Hard Canon:
- Future Janeway did major damage to the Borg; the full extent is not described on screen
STO:
Pre game:
- The extent of the above damage was "reduced to rubble and had to rebuild". The collective was so diminished in capacity that the Federation did not see them again and dismantled the Borg Task Force, causing Seven of Nine to quit Starfleet and continue the work on her own.
Missed those details? They are the text at the bottom of your loading screens. Or read it here: http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1771
So, in the context of this game, the Borg did not have years and years to advance like the Federation was doing. The future tech destroyed them before they could assimilate it to the point they could not turn around and assimilate it after the fact, for many years.
Tutorial:
- Now, finally, Borg have shown up again and are attacking the Vega Colony. They are "different" somehow; they are damaged, many ships are unshielded, drones wander around without purpose. Here and there are "uber" drones you can watch the NPCs talk about and note that if there had been more of those, we'd all be dead. The STF was not a copout or a retcon, the below was all setup from the beginning.
Khitomer Accords:
Highlight below to see spoilers of what this mission reveals:
- The ground Borg at KA had been there in stasis for a very long time, probably pre-Janeway, perhaps left there before the attack of First Contact.
- Borg from your STO Admiral present went to activate and upgrade these drones. They choose to go to the past to do it to increase their chance of doing it before the Federation could stop them. The past they chose was your STO Ensign present. Why didn't they go back farther? Speed of plot, nothing new to the Trek franchise.
- Your STO Admiral follows them through time and stops them before they could upgrade the new drones.
- The non-functional and damaged probes, spheres, and cubes you fight in the tutorial were put in that state by me when I did the STF. You're welcome. The sniper rifle you got from the crate? Beamed down from my ship before I went back to the present to avoid seeing my past self. Fortunately I had just enough time to make them weak enough for my past self to kill.
- The nerfed drones you fight in the tutorial are nerfed because they're older models who just woke up from stasis and have had their ability to connect to the collective inhibited.
- The uber drones you see Starfleet freaking out about are regular drones from your Admiral future--they reach that state by adapting to what we're throwing at them in STO's present.
I am with those who were angry when we started the game and found ourselves fighting Borg already. But I have to agree, the hard canon did this to them much more than anything else. The story Cryptic is telling with them, starting from where VOY left them, is a quality one. You just have to see STF content to get the details, which has predictable results that many don't see it and most that do probably don't read/understand what's happening. Doing KA the first time though was pretty amazing on the reveals.
Edit: And I completely disagree with the notion that "some marketing person happened to hear about Borg and thought it was cool" or something as a reason they're here. Cryptic knows the canon--the utter mess that is the canon. They're doing as well with it as anyone has since TOS was done. I really have to suggest you look at all the canon to see what got the Borg where they are. We're a long way from Q's original attempt to convince us we weren't ready for what's out there.
Actually, one might argue that if we WEREN'T able to start taking the Borg on by now, Q would have been right, and those that argued that humanity was prepared to deal with whatever it found were wrong. So who is missing the point of Star Trek?