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New STF suggestion: Battle of Bepi 113
captainpirko
Member Posts: 270 Arc User
Reason for idea: Borg have been previously seen in Eta eridani, (kerrat and otha war zones for example) and STO needs a new STF. Hive elite, while yes it is a challenge, is merely a DPS challenge, and doesnt have the flavor of a true conflict with the borg. so here is a genuine idea designed to be a reenactment of Wolf 359 if it took place in STO.
however: a straight up battle vs the borg would not be a considerable challenge normally, almost all of us can solo a cube, and changing the borg's settings to be 100% more hull and damage then a elite tactical cube does not make it fun, just annoying. so understanding what makes an STF fun, i've attempted to construct a story/mission idea that takes what is fun and repeatable about Infected space, khitomer accords, and cure found space maps, and put them together into a mission that hopefully fulfills the roll of "final STF". since i'm pretty sure cryptic has no real plans to make many more STFs in the future. hopefully, this can be a satisfactory finish, and give a unique one of a kind wolf 359 experience.
plot:
while the federation and klingon empires have been distracted in the delta quadrant, a new threat closer to home has been stumbled on by a romulan scout ship in the federation/klingon neutral zone. a hidden borg base was discovered in a classified sector that normal ships arent generally allowed into (reference to the fact this system is used for time travel in story missions).
this relatively new borg base seems to be a foothold location for a future borg strike, and their new weapon is specifically designed for assimilation. before the scoutship was destroyed, they got off a brief scan of the system and sent the report to new romulus. according to the report, the borg a siphoning energy from the sun to power a transwarp aperture device.
the aperture device is being powered by 4 syphon probes on 4 corners of the sun. Task force omega is sending you to stop them before they can bring in a fleet.
mission play out:
starting:
10 players start a small distance from the sun and have 30 seconds to get ready
part 1:
4 borg syphons on each corner of the planet sending energy to the transwarp device (not a gate as that'd take too long for the borg to build, but a small device that isnt self sufficient for power, hence the syphon probes). each probe is protected by 4 spheres, to provide a small challenge for the players attacking, however reinforcements of 4 spheres come out of the aperture to each probe as reinforcements. destroying a probe makes 2 more come out. destroying a second probe makes an additional 2 more come out (so the final two probes are now up to 8 spheres of defenses) after the 3rd probe is destroyed, the remaining probe will be at 10 spheres acting as defense. (that's assuming the 10 players didnt split up into two groups).
This part has a optional timer of 10 minutes.
part 2:
with the aperture no longer receiving power, it has shut off, but it's still a threat. players must destroy this even though this aperture device is heavily armored and uses alot of science skills (should be mostly power drains and nothing hugely offensive. example being power syphon, tachyon beam (that restores it's own shields) tykens rift, and maybe viral matrix.)
part 3:
now that the easy part is over, a new ship has warped in. a borg dodecaheadron (something like this: http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/68/Dodecahedron_petrie.png ).
this appears to be what built the aperture device, and features an assimilated voth as the borg who hails you. (helping to emphasize this borg has assimilated alot of defensive technology, and therefore is tougher.)
Fighting this ship will take a while, as it should have the ability to use multiple tractor beams, will be able to act as a gravity well to suck unsuspecting players in real close and take damage the longer they're in contact with the borg ship. a form of scramble sensors called "assimilate sensors" could be used that causes your ship's sensors to temporarily view all allies as hostiles.
the borg ship would also have a beam attack, basically as powerful as the antiproton beam fired by the crystalline entity in elite, but would not be an AoE. as it's special AoE attack, (aside from it's assimilate sensors power) this borg ship will also have a AoE 360 degree torpedo attack that fires three heavy torpedoes to each target (max 5 targets). this means you dont want to stay close to it, and will also encourage you to keep moving as this ship can spam torpedoes frequently, but this heavy torpedo attack will be the most powerful one.
players have 10 minute optional objective on this part.
that's the basics of this mission idea. fairly simple, but gives a nice powerful boss fight at the end. no ridiculous over kill attacks, but plenty of moves that can kill players who arent paying attention. as a target with alot of shields, it'd make science ships a bit more helpful as well. i'd especially like it if a mechanic was added detected if a player was flying a science ship, and give them the option once per player to drop the borg ship's shields for a brief period. this would give science a very helpful team role in the mission without actually making them overpowered as they can only do it once for 5-10 seconds.
with a ship that does alot of damage, but not an AoE, nor one that cant be tanked, it gives very tank oriented cruisers a role too without feeling like they have to do damage to be of worth. making it hard for an escort to tank to boss, but not so hard a decent cruiser cant do it, gives cruisers a helpful roll in the mission.
last note i want to make is that as a 10 player mission, it helps drive home that epic borg fight feeling as you have many ships whizzing around a single ship that takes the beating for a while. more then 5 players anyway makes it feel like a canon battle with the borg.
i'm curious what other people think of this suggestion, especially the last part with fighting a strong boss ship like this.
however: a straight up battle vs the borg would not be a considerable challenge normally, almost all of us can solo a cube, and changing the borg's settings to be 100% more hull and damage then a elite tactical cube does not make it fun, just annoying. so understanding what makes an STF fun, i've attempted to construct a story/mission idea that takes what is fun and repeatable about Infected space, khitomer accords, and cure found space maps, and put them together into a mission that hopefully fulfills the roll of "final STF". since i'm pretty sure cryptic has no real plans to make many more STFs in the future. hopefully, this can be a satisfactory finish, and give a unique one of a kind wolf 359 experience.
plot:
while the federation and klingon empires have been distracted in the delta quadrant, a new threat closer to home has been stumbled on by a romulan scout ship in the federation/klingon neutral zone. a hidden borg base was discovered in a classified sector that normal ships arent generally allowed into (reference to the fact this system is used for time travel in story missions).
this relatively new borg base seems to be a foothold location for a future borg strike, and their new weapon is specifically designed for assimilation. before the scoutship was destroyed, they got off a brief scan of the system and sent the report to new romulus. according to the report, the borg a siphoning energy from the sun to power a transwarp aperture device.
the aperture device is being powered by 4 syphon probes on 4 corners of the sun. Task force omega is sending you to stop them before they can bring in a fleet.
mission play out:
starting:
10 players start a small distance from the sun and have 30 seconds to get ready
part 1:
4 borg syphons on each corner of the planet sending energy to the transwarp device (not a gate as that'd take too long for the borg to build, but a small device that isnt self sufficient for power, hence the syphon probes). each probe is protected by 4 spheres, to provide a small challenge for the players attacking, however reinforcements of 4 spheres come out of the aperture to each probe as reinforcements. destroying a probe makes 2 more come out. destroying a second probe makes an additional 2 more come out (so the final two probes are now up to 8 spheres of defenses) after the 3rd probe is destroyed, the remaining probe will be at 10 spheres acting as defense. (that's assuming the 10 players didnt split up into two groups).
This part has a optional timer of 10 minutes.
part 2:
with the aperture no longer receiving power, it has shut off, but it's still a threat. players must destroy this even though this aperture device is heavily armored and uses alot of science skills (should be mostly power drains and nothing hugely offensive. example being power syphon, tachyon beam (that restores it's own shields) tykens rift, and maybe viral matrix.)
part 3:
now that the easy part is over, a new ship has warped in. a borg dodecaheadron (something like this: http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/68/Dodecahedron_petrie.png ).
this appears to be what built the aperture device, and features an assimilated voth as the borg who hails you. (helping to emphasize this borg has assimilated alot of defensive technology, and therefore is tougher.)
Fighting this ship will take a while, as it should have the ability to use multiple tractor beams, will be able to act as a gravity well to suck unsuspecting players in real close and take damage the longer they're in contact with the borg ship. a form of scramble sensors called "assimilate sensors" could be used that causes your ship's sensors to temporarily view all allies as hostiles.
the borg ship would also have a beam attack, basically as powerful as the antiproton beam fired by the crystalline entity in elite, but would not be an AoE. as it's special AoE attack, (aside from it's assimilate sensors power) this borg ship will also have a AoE 360 degree torpedo attack that fires three heavy torpedoes to each target (max 5 targets). this means you dont want to stay close to it, and will also encourage you to keep moving as this ship can spam torpedoes frequently, but this heavy torpedo attack will be the most powerful one.
players have 10 minute optional objective on this part.
that's the basics of this mission idea. fairly simple, but gives a nice powerful boss fight at the end. no ridiculous over kill attacks, but plenty of moves that can kill players who arent paying attention. as a target with alot of shields, it'd make science ships a bit more helpful as well. i'd especially like it if a mechanic was added detected if a player was flying a science ship, and give them the option once per player to drop the borg ship's shields for a brief period. this would give science a very helpful team role in the mission without actually making them overpowered as they can only do it once for 5-10 seconds.
with a ship that does alot of damage, but not an AoE, nor one that cant be tanked, it gives very tank oriented cruisers a role too without feeling like they have to do damage to be of worth. making it hard for an escort to tank to boss, but not so hard a decent cruiser cant do it, gives cruisers a helpful roll in the mission.
last note i want to make is that as a 10 player mission, it helps drive home that epic borg fight feeling as you have many ships whizzing around a single ship that takes the beating for a while. more then 5 players anyway makes it feel like a canon battle with the borg.
i'm curious what other people think of this suggestion, especially the last part with fighting a strong boss ship like this.
[SIGPIC]Timelords Fleet [/SIGPIC]
Post edited by captainpirko on
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Comments
also the point of this mission is more to have a wolf 359 encounter in STO. however i couldnt think of a good reason why a borg cube would suddenly be a threat when we pop them like balloons. i've also heard for a long time how alot of people wish there was a 10-20 man STF. while i personally think hive elite should have been that way, i'm just as happy seeing 10-20 players try and stop a borg cube as seeing a fleet of ships storm the queen.