When A Tac Cube Just Isn't Enough....

astarte05

*le me, derping around the house, when I get an idea for a new STF....

It's simple. Many of you played Star Trek: Armada, many many manymanymanymany moons ago. And its sequel had "fusion cubes", literally, eight cubes fused into one. There was also a tactical fusion cube, which was, as the name implied, the same thing made up of tac cubes.

Now obviously the Borg know, by now, a tactical cube isn't all it's cracked up to be. It just means It can't be blown in half like its smaller cousin - literally, as some of you know, a well-placed Omega or destabilized Romulan torpedo, or tricobalt mines, will shave like 70% hull off of one. No, with tactical cubes, we have to actually, you know, pretend to concentrate on destroying it. So, the Borg get to thinking, see. Cause really, they're tired of messing around with us. All this talk of "The Borg are prepping for a major invasion of the Alpha Quadrant!" is old, dead, nobody cares, it's like on cartoons when the Big Bad of the Week cackles "I WILL RULE THE WORLD!" and the viewers are at home like "Pfft. Yeah. Okay."

So....they do like Plankton when he went in that file cabinet and pulled out Plan Z - and if you don't know what movie that's from, I feel sorry for your childhood - and come up with the Tactical Fusion Cube.

PART I: ENGAGE THE TACTICAL FUSION CUBE

Blahblah backstory, X command has detected a massive energy reading in X system, warp in and investigate. Okay, so we're off. So we warp in, right, and there's this omgwtfmassive cube looking at us like, "....Sup."

So, we engage. There's pewpew and bangbang, and at first the TFC is as big of a #iwin as it was in Armada II. But if you weaken it enough, it shuts down, like there's some emergency regeneration state that it enters, or maybe you have to stick close to it and survive while your Science officer transmits some anti-Borg virus that shuts down its shields and weapons for a few seconds.....just long enough for you to beam an away team in, and take the fight to them on the inside.

PART II: BOARD THE TACTICAL FUSION CUBE

As a call back to the beginning of STFs, where all three missions were space AND ground, not one or the other, after pewpewing in orbit, you beam onto the actual cube. And this cube is just epic, I mean, it looks like somebody folded up Unimatrix One and now it's flying around. I mean this is "what is this, I don't even, what" material. But, we can't stop and analyze anything, as there's about like ten thousand drones ready to pwn you.

So, ground pewpew. Now I'm thinking there's a way to weaken the "bonds" between the eight cubes. Like, if you interrupt this power flow, or destroy this bulkhead, or something, the cubes can no longer pool their collective power.

So you're running around, showing off your new Adapted gear, or maybe cursing out the guy who's down here with a Mk VIII lirpa going "i thought this mission was only space lol".
Eventually, you blow up whatever, and the cube is sufficiently weakened for your ships to come in and finish the job. One to beam up!

PART III: DESTROY THE TACTICAL FUSION CUBE

Cue a cutscene that shows an NPC ship being destroyed, just to show this monstrosity is down, but not out (I wouldn't mind another Odyssey destruction, just saying).

Anyway, the battle is rejoined. The cube is still lethal, but much, much easier to combat due to your valorous efforts when you beamed over to pwn stuff in person. And, finally, after what seems like a week, the cube explodes like the one in First Contact. Debris goes flying, lesser ships are obliterate by the shockwave, and when the dust settles, you're once again the savior of the Alpha Quadrant! AMAGAAD YAY LOL!

***

You cannot tell me, none of you can tell me, that this mission wouldn't be epic.

It'd need to not be like Hive, where you go through this horrible meat grinder of a mission for the same rewards as Infected or Cure. This is like "Here's 1920 dil, 25 Borg Processors, 1000 Marks, etc." rewards. In other words, well worth the time and effort required. And of course, you can't have DPS Scimmies and Elite Fleet decked-out J-Dreads and....what's this? A Bortasque.....with rainbow....turrets? WAT!? No, you'd need a team that knows what they're doing, and has the gear to do it in.

Personally, I'd say make it 20-man, just because I've always wondered what a 20-man STF would be like, but....meh.

Anyway, would it ever happen? Probably not. And if it did, it'd be more broken than the combined hearts of Amy Lee and Taylor Swift. But if they ever did it, and it ever worked....ughhhhhhhhhh

Okay so like discuss

kamenriderzero1

Epic, but not part of PWE/Cryptic's license.

baelogventure

Sounds epicly epic.

Needs to be some boss guarding whatever thingamajig that you need to disable to weaken the Fusion Tac Cube.

flash525

I'm not so sure about Tactical Fusion Cubes to be honest, not in this game. If you're struggling, why not take on a couple of them Command Ships?

asardetemplari

Aww man, but I just finished painting several command ships on my hull ;_;

bpharma

So this is what you do when you're quiet on pestf.

Sounds alright, my problem is I don't want 960 dilithium and 100 marks for all that....especially due to the very accurate ground description involving a lurpa where it shouldn't be.

Perhaps you might want to incorporate random elements into it to improve replayability, nothing fancy just sometimes there's a take your shields off nebula nearby as a hazard or some tal shiar warp in for the lulz.

astarte05

Or shall we just do like PWE's current shtick, and "Suddenly, Tholians/Mirror Universe/Elachi!"

And all this talk of licensing....license this, license that, they could work something, out same with....you know, my other forum post, that I won't mention here, before that one consumes this one with its levels of hatedom and rage.

We could have a tactical fusion cube in STO. No lie.

Unknown

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bpharma

Which is really weird as they reference Nero and his mining ship in certain missions, yw

Or we could use creativity and push the boundaries of newly implemented systems to make the game better. Random nebula spawns, extra enemies, sometimes allies (or more if you already have allies) spawn with you. Then a super special one that is 1 in 1000 chance of happening where a temporal rift appears and out comes Chris Pine in the Enterprise and annihilates the cube in 1 smug shot.

deaftravis05

Epic, just epic

elessym

And when a Tac Fusion Cube isn't enough, what then? Tac Rubik's Cube?

I can see it now - Solve the Tac Rubik's Cube by hitting the right faces with your weapons to rotate the panels into the correct color combinations...

tonyalmeida2

no stfs are hard enough as is much less the elite versions, they are near unbeatable.

astarte05

tonyalmeida2 wrote: »

no stfs are hard enough as is much less the elite versions, they are near unbeatable.

Not sure if trolling, or....

capnshadow27

Nope Cryptic would kust take it, make it 8 million hull to account for the 8 cubes, launch and attack as if they are 8 seperate ships.

Basically they would make it like inot the hive elite except instead of 6 tac cubes aggroing people at the same time it would be 8. i have to say Cryptics design strategy for enemies would make that no fun at all.

Unless it was some time of Dungeon type endboss. that you had to spend 4 hours getting too in the first place.

Im talking heart of the unimatrix here, you start facing probes, then probes and spheres, then spheres and a cube, then cubes, then tac cubes, resulting in you fighting this monstrosity, that spews probes and spheres....

iconians

Cryptic has many ways to make the STFs harder, judging from what we've seen. Hell, the Tholians in space were probably conceived in a board meeting with the theme, "How do we annoy the living TRIBBLE out of players in space?"

If they wanted, they could add a couple million more hitpoints to the tactical cubes, increase their heavy plasma torps speed to ungodly levels, and buff their defense and accuracy by a few hundred so even your point defense system can't shoot them down.

The tools they have can accomplish so much, and their developers went to school to create challenging and intriguing games. Dstahl is an exception, since I have no idea what school he went to who had a Professor that said "Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason."

That being said... the problem isn't Cryptic having the inability to make more challenging STFs -- it's the players that whine about how hard they are until they're watered down. I might want a more challenging STF, as would many others who can blow through an Elite STF like clockwork... but the lowest common denominator in STO simply want to smash their face on the keyboard and receive the best stuff in the game instantly.

amosov78

I'd imagine the concept art from "First Contact" is covered by the license, so why not add in larger Borg ships like the Obelisk and Tetragon?

khayuung

We don't need a Borg fusion cube, just repurpose the whole Ker'rat map.

The Queen is back... well, rather there's several of them, all in the genesis process to become the next Queen.

Move as a group, clear space trash, take down a hulk complex, beam in, clear trash, fight boss#1 (Queen Ascendent 1), move on.

Every Queen Ascendent you kill, the rest adapts by absorbing her tactics. And by the time you get to the final one, she'd have powers and tactics of all the other Queens.

mreeves7a

Instead of copying another game, why not create a new variety of Borg Cube.

My idea is this: Delta Cube, a Borg tactical cube variant using technology from their encounters with Voyager (Endgame) and the Undine. The Delta cube would have Ablative Armor that has to breached (burns off when taking damage, certain forms of damage do extra damage to it), Transphasic and Plasma torpedo launchers, Plasma-Antiproton beams and cannons (AP damage but plasma proc), standard Borg skills (Assimilate Ship, Shield Neutralizer, Cutting Beam) and many combat and survival enhancing skills: EPtS3, ET3, HE2, TSS2, TT1, FAW3, TS3, TYH3, BO3, TractorB3.

The Delta Cube would be able to occasionally summon reinforcements in the form of other Borg ships (sometimes a small swarm of probes, or a few spheres, or a regular Cube, and the probes or sphere may be of the Nanite versions which can restore some of the Delta Cubes ablative armor). The Borg reinforcements can use the Undine Energy Transfer to send weapon power to the Delta Cube to fire the Undine Planer Killer weapon at players (i.e. a big attack with visible preparation process like Donatra's thalaron burst).

The Delta Cube would be a mission like Crystalline Catastrophe (Elite) where it's a group of players versus a difficult singular target.