Does anyone else find it strange... (Borg content)

cbrjwrr

...that the Borg just aren't a threat now?


At Wolf 359, 39 Starships were lost and 11,000 people died, and the Cube ignored every attack apart from one via the Borg's own hive mind - the most catastrophic defeat in Federation history.

By the battle of Sector 001, a Federation Fleet could actually bring down a normal Cube, with not quite as many ships lost.

By STO, even an average player ship has the ability to comfortably 1 vs 1 a Cube, and most of us on here could solo a Tactical Cube, with varying amounts of ease. And it isn't just the big stuff, even a remake of Archer's NX-01 could take on a Sphere and win now.


The Borg started off as one of the most dangerous opponents the Alpha Quadrant had seen, and now a team of 5 ships can destroy a Transwarp Gate Assembly, a Tac Cube, 2 normal Cubes and lots of Spheres in about a minute and a half.

A mere 90 seconds or even less!




In 43 years, the Borg have gone from only needing one Cube to assimilate the AQ, to needing a small fleet of their own to stop a single AQ ship. That's progress, and pretty soon we will need a new ultimate threat, because the Borg just aren't suitable now...

belidos

To be honest I noticed something I found strange watching First Contact the other night, in that scene where the Borg chase Pickard and Lily into the holo-deck he uses a tommy gun to kill the Borg following him.

That's when it hit me that when he used a projectile weapon their shields didn't adapt, why the heck didn't he just replicate a ton of projectile weapons and give them to the crew instead of abandoning ship?

Maybe it's along those lines, we just figured out how to fight them better now

cbrjwrr

because Starfleet haven't used bullet-based weapons, they were out of date before Starfleet was formed...


Also, Borg can't adapt to a good pointy metal stick. Klingons FTW.


Trouble is, look at the progression - A Tac Cube is now weak. The Borg need Tac Diamonds...

bobbydazlers

cbrjwrr wrote: »

...that the Borg just aren't a threat now?


At Wolf 359, 39 Starships were lost and 11,000 people died, and the Cube ignored every attack apart from one via the Borg's own hive mind - the most catastrophic defeat in Federation history.

By the battle of Sector 001, a Federation Fleet could actually bring down a normal Cube, with not quite as many ships lost.

By STO, even an average player ship has the ability to comfortably 1 vs 1 a Cube, and most of us on here could solo a Tactical Cube, with varying amounts of ease. And it isn't just the big stuff, even a remake of Archer's NX-01 could take on a Sphere and win now.


The Borg started off as one of the most dangerous opponents the Alpha Quadrant had seen, and now a team of 5 ships can destroy a Transwarp Gate Assembly, a Tac Cube, 2 normal Cubes and lots of Spheres in about a minute and a half.

A mere 90 seconds or even less!




In 43 years, the Borg have gone from only needing one Cube to assimilate the AQ, to needing a small fleet of their own to stop a single AQ ship. That's progress, and pretty soon we will need a new ultimate threat, because the Borg just aren't suitable now...

i take your point but if you had the kind of resilliance and weaponry of a lore based cube it would be too dificult to make the game fun, theres got to be a balance between how much the game sticks to what we see in the episodes and what is achivable or playable that can feature in game.
this means that some things in the game are only a shadow of what we see on tv otherwise it would make the game too dificult even for a team of 5 let alone a single player.

there is also the point that weapons and ships have been developed and enhanced way beyond the ships that were arround when wolf 359 occured.

aelfwin1

cbrjwrr wrote: »

...that the Borg just aren't a threat now?

Yes ... , but it depends on how you view "now" .

The Borg are not a threat since this game went F2P .
Before that , when the STF's were 1+ hour raids and we had to face them with MkXI weapons , no doffs , no "traits" , no Scimitars or Lockbox ships or Lobi consoles or any of the other BS that we have today -- back in those days the Borg were a threat .... (especially if you flew a BoP or the like) .

Back then this game was fun !


Which is why you will hear from time to time ppl asking for " the old STF's " back ... --- even if they'd be only half the fun with today's power creep BS ... -- which is one of the reasons I find the idiots with parsers that came in after F2P amusing ... , thinking that they are actually doing something bad TRIBBLE with their high DPS numbers . :rolleyes:

verlaine11

I want to see a nightmare level of play in STF's or even in missions where the Borg are really difficult to battle and are very tough, at the moment its pretty much a walkover in ISE and it should not be that way.

snoggymack22

cbrjwrr wrote: »

...that the Borg just aren't a threat now?

Were they ever really a threat?

artan42

sophlogimo wrote: »

Obvious answer: They would have adapted to that, too. It was just too unexpected in that moment to react in time to tune their shields for it. It was a extraordinarily small collective, after all.

Borg adaption doesn't work like that, they adapt to energy weapons by matching their shield frequency to the same as the weapon being fired.

Kinetic attack don't have a frequency, hence why bullets and blades can kill them.

mirrorchaos

belidos wrote: »

To be honest I noticed something I found strange watching First Contact the other night, in that scene where the Borg chase Pickard and Lily into the holo-deck he uses a tommy gun to kill the Borg following him.

That's when it hit me that when he used a projectile weapon their shields didn't adapt, why the heck didn't he just replicate a ton of projectile weapons and give them to the crew instead of abandoning ship?

Maybe it's along those lines, we just figured out how to fight them better now

holodeck, holo emitters. you forget something?

sophlogimo wrote: »

Obvious answer: They would have adapted to that, too. It was just too unexpected in that moment to react in time to tune their shields for it. It was a extraordinarily small collective, after all.


Regarding the OP: I agree. Borg should get a rework and be a lot, lot, lot more dangerous. For example, they should have versions of all the special console abilities their enemies have. They assimilate such stuff, after all.

Fighting a tac cube should be a 20-player-fleet action. IMNSHO.

oh not this argument again. that borg can adapt to projectile weapons or can not adapt.

as for fighting cubes, on sto it was severely dumbed down for balance sake unfortunately.

angrytarg

Regarding the actual gameplay, what aelfwin1 said. The game has been dumbed down massively to avoid any kind of frustration which would lead to stop playing immedeatly, appearently. Also, keep in mind they reduced the map size and blocked pathways in the early singeplayer mission during the "revamp", appearantly because the average F2P target audience cannot be expected to complete a linear level without total and utter confusion and ragequitting. Their official (BS) excuse for removing the star clusters is that new players would regularily get lost on a square shaped, empty 2d map with a single entry/exit point for crying out loud.

Regarding the in-lore Borg, you have to go back a bit. When they first appeared in TNG ("Q, Who?") the Borg were or better was a coimpletely different entity with a completely different purpose. It was their "relaunch" with First Contact and Voyager that transformed them into generic villians and basic zombie cannon fodder to catch the zombie bandwagon and new action oriented content of the franchise. While the original Borg had some kind of theme, message and consistensy in it's actions and appearance, the "new Borg" fall apart the moment they are introduced in FC (a queen that verbally adresses individual drones? A "hive mind" that forgets things and oversees stuff because mommy wasn't paying attention? A "hive mind" you can parlor with (and outwit with basic trickery)?). It was made due to the writers didn't trust the cinema audience to follow the storyline if the Borg weren't easy to grasp villians with a sexy vampire leader.

cbrjwrr

bobbydazlers wrote: »

i take your point but if you had the kind of resilliance and weaponry of a lore based cube it would be too dificult to make the game fun, theres got to be a balance between how much the game sticks to what we see in the episodes and what is achivable or playable that can feature in game.
this means that some things in the game are only a shadow of what we see on tv otherwise it would make the game too dificult even for a team of 5 let alone a single player.

there is also the point that weapons and ships have been developed and enhanced way beyond the ships that were arround when wolf 359 occured.

That's the thing - Wolf 359 was fought with equivalents to white Mk VI/Mk VII equipment, Battle of Sector 001 with Mk VIII/ Mk IX, and now we have VR Mk XII Rep and Fleet gear.

Hence why the Borg aren't a threat anymore, they haven't kept up as they are still the Borg of Wolf 359.



Thing is Aelfwin1, all that means is the best ships of 4 years ago are an average ship today - that's just progress.

snoggymack22 wrote: »

Were they ever really a threat?

I think 39 ships and 11 thousand dead is enough of an answer.

snoggymack22

mirrorchaos wrote: »

as for fighting cubes, on sto it was severely dumbed down for balance sake unfortunately.

I thought the tweaks were made to get the STFs in line with their standards of quality? And to keep new players from being confused?

I mean, that's how the devs present it.

If I were some conspiracy theorist, I'd be all crazy and left field whacky thinking they made the borg the way they are so they could be utilized in an endless reputation grind that they then time gated.

But that's crazy talk.

The current borg manifestation in STO is all about file size, player confusion, and very high standards of quality design work by the crack unit of game developers over at Cryptic. These are the guys responsible for big timey raid content like Hamidon after all. They know end-game!

snoggymack22

cbrjwrr wrote: »

I think 39 ships and 11 thousand dead is enough of an answer.

That was ages ago. Wolf 359 was like a rag tag bunch of Connies, Cheyennes and the USS Saratoga for crying out loud. One Kar'Fi could do the same amount of damage. Let alone a Scimitar.

cbrjwrr

snoggymack22 wrote: »

That was ages ago. Wolf 359 was like a rag tag bunch of Connies, Cheyennes and the USS Saratoga for crying out loud. One Kar'Fi could do the same amount of damage. Let alone a Scimitar.

And that is exactly my point - we've progressed to a level far beyond Wolf 359. The Borg haven't.

angrytarg

cbrjwrr wrote: »

And that is exactly my point - we've progressed to a level far beyond Wolf 359. The Borg haven't.

Which makes absolutely no sense, mind you.

snoggymack22

cbrjwrr wrote: »

And that is exactly my point - we've progressed to a level far beyond Wolf 359. The Borg haven't.

Yeah, but they were never a threat in STO.

And since Wolf 359 was like the ladies auxiliary of Starfleet I'm not even convinced they were much of a threat back then.

cbrjwrr

angrytarg wrote: »

Which makes absolutely no sense, mind you.

Well, look at the shows and movies - the Borg of Wolf 359 were just as powerful as the Borg of Sector 001, who were just as powerful as the Borg of STO.

snoggymack22

sophlogimo wrote: »

But just like all spacefaring species in Trek, they do know how to make force fields that stop kinetic attacks, to stop micrometeorites and such. Modifying their personal force fields so that it stops them, too, would certainly not be a big issue for them. Because if it was, all those species in the Delta Quadrat who fight them would use nothing but kinetic weapons.

You would think but that apparently doesn't seem to be the case. Look at how they are completely incapable of dealing with kinetic attacks in STO.

capnmanx

Based on the Dyson rep cinematics, I'm kinda hoping the Borg bag themselves some Voth tech and get an upgrade.

I'd love a Wolf 359 style fleet action. 20 starships vs 1 super cube; with the odds in the Cube's favour. :cool:

angrytarg

cbrjwrr wrote: »

Well, look at the shows and movies - the Borg of Wolf 359 were just as powerful as the Borg of Sector 001, who were just as powerful as the Borg of STO.

Like I said, this is a fault of their rewrite. Borg were not supposed to be beaten by force or technology. FC decided they had to be villians you just have to shoot long enough. A simple example: The drone in "Q, who" adapts to the ensign attempting to touch it before he even does that with superior speed and strength. Nu-borg would just walk up to their "victims" and get shot and beaten in melee combat. What sense does that make?

artan42

sophlogimo wrote: »

But just like all spacefaring species in Trek, they do know how to make force fields that stop kinetic attacks, to stop micrometeorites and such. Modifying their personal force fields so that it stops them, too, would certainly not be a big issue for them. Because if it was, all those species in the Delta Quadrat who fight them would use nothing but kinetic weapons.

Yet they would have them up all the time if that were the case, they don't need to adapt to a blade, as soon as they saw Worf they should have popped their anti kinetic shields on.

timelord79

An easy fix would be to reserve the Cubes, Tac Cubes and Diamonds for boss fights and let us fight spheres and probes at every other encounter.

So you know when you encounter a cube you really are in trouble without backup.

A really well build ship might be able to deal with a cube but it should still be a struggle instead of a simple space bar spam fest.

The difference between cubes, tac cubes and diamonds could be different flavors:

Cube - AoE DPS (basically capable of fighting off multiple targets), fighting it would require splitting it's damagee between multiple targets and a good healer/cc)

Tac Cube - Tank/Spike damage (can take a lot of damage with high resistance. Doesn't do much overall damage but when it spikes the attack is best avoided all together or requires a dedicated tank plus healer)

Diamond (more or less what the diamond is now in "Hive", not much hull strength but strong shields and lots of science abilities/heals, best countered with science ships plus dps)

To fulfill the current roles of cubes and tac cubes they could diversify the spheres into tank/dps/healer with minor visual differences including a size (no reason a tank sphere could not be a bit larger and have stronger armor while a healer sphere would be smaller and speedier) and keep the probes as frigates like they are now.


That leaves the unimatrix ships which could be blown up in size a bit (to make is closer to V`ger ) and reserve that for a 20 ship mass aussault scenario similar to the Crystalline Entity but a bit tougher. A unimatrix would combine the different cube's abilities and remain partially operative even when certain sections are destroyed. Defeating it could require different stages where the players have to destroy special subsystems before they could blow it out of the sky.

The current unimatrix fights would be replaced with Cube fights.


If a solo story mission requires the appearance of a cube the fight is usually scripted anyway and interupted before the player ship gets destroyed or the cube ignores the player outright due to not being a threat by itself.

cbrjwrr

snoggymack22 wrote: »

Yeah, but they were never a threat in STO.

And since Wolf 359 was like the ladies auxiliary of Starfleet I'm not even convinced they were much of a threat back then.

I never said they were a threat in STO - but way back when they were very first introduced in TNG, one Cube could easily have assimilated the entire Alpha Quadrant on its own. Very easily.


Timelord79 - the problem with that approach is a normal Cube IS no longer a challenge - the Borg need to improve and design new geometric monstrosities, not keep relying on Cubes which get killed too easily.

snoggymack22

cbrjwrr wrote: »

I never said they were a threat in STO - but way back when they were very first introduced in TNG, one Cube could easily have assimilated the entire Alpha Quadrant on its own. Very easily.

Nah, that was just hype. They were pretty soft and easily defeated back then. I mean seriously? Sleep? Put them to sleep? That's how you win?

Weaksauce. The Borg have always been weaksauce.

snoggymack22

timelord79 wrote: »

An easy fix would be to reserve the Cubes, Tac Cubes and Diamonds for boss fights and let us fight spheres and probes at every other encounter.

Removing the cubes from the STFs would make them rather inane.

Beefing them up would make the encounters too hard for most of the players and the forums would burn down.

It's a catch 22. Cryptic devs designed this mess. And now they're stuck with it.

timelord79

snoggymack22 wrote: »

Removing the cubes from the STFs would make them rather inane.

Why, as bosses they could remain, couldn't they? The boss battle would just be harder and take a bit longer than 30 seconds.

cbrjwrr

snoggymack22 wrote: »

Nah, that was just hype. They were pretty soft and easily defeated back then. I mean seriously? Sleep? Put them to sleep? That's how you win?

Weaksauce. The Borg have always been weaksauce.

And what if Data and Picard hadn't found a way to put the Cube to sleep? It would be the end of the Federation.

artan42

sophlogimo wrote: »

I suppose those shields have limits, too. They can probably only be adapted to a certain number of attack types, so they tune them for the most probable attacks at any given time. In FC, they had not considered the possibility of melee attacks coming from people who know how to build all those nice phaser toys. Also, adapting the shields takes processing time, probably depending on the number of drones in the collective... and in FC, they were only a few hundred.

The adaption takes time because they act like a bunch of processers analysing the frequencies, I don't think one drone has the computing power (or at least that's the only way it makes sense), but when the drone saw Worf with the knife he should have raised his shield immediately.

However maybe they can only have one type up at a time, kinetic or energy.

Also looking back to Picards assimilation he sets up a shield that Worf bounced off from when he tries to punch him.