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Suggestions to Upgrade the Borg Collective
thunderfoot
Member Posts: 4,545 Arc User
What the title says. The Collective should be like a force of nature. Impossible to delay or survive. Now, after many years of playing STO, I find myself harvesting Borg Cubes. Which take at best two or three attacks from my chars before being destroyed. The meshes and skins for the various drones look silly. The female drones in particular. Who look more like a fevered thirteen year old's dream of alien women rather than members of the Hive. Happily, the Drones act much more like what I expect Borg to be like. I have to think to be successful against them.
What I am asking is make the Borg ingame be more like the Borg in the series and films. Where they are presented to us as an existential threat to all other lifeforms and cultures.
I've no idea how this could be done. Or even if it can be considering the age of this MMO and its current state of coding. I've started this thread to see what some other players might suggest. There are lots of people far smarter about Star Trek Online than I am. I'm hoping these players will contribute in a meaningful, positive fashion to this thread.
One of the things I think would improve the Borg in Ground missions is to activate the 'Adapted' mechanism earlier and to extend its duration significantly.
What I am asking is make the Borg ingame be more like the Borg in the series and films. Where they are presented to us as an existential threat to all other lifeforms and cultures.
I've no idea how this could be done. Or even if it can be considering the age of this MMO and its current state of coding. I've started this thread to see what some other players might suggest. There are lots of people far smarter about Star Trek Online than I am. I'm hoping these players will contribute in a meaningful, positive fashion to this thread.
One of the things I think would improve the Borg in Ground missions is to activate the 'Adapted' mechanism earlier and to extend its duration significantly.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Then you have STOs gameplay nature, which is a horde style hack and slay in essence. You cut up countless trash mobs until you face a boss, and that requires a bit more skill.
To make Borg a bit more menacing abd stay within STOs defined rules I'd use cubes as stage bosses only, whereas the tactical cube would be a STO like chrystalline catastrophe. Also, space Borg should adapt like on the ground. Yes, that meabs you either use dedicated anti-Borg gear or remodulate. That'd be a start.
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Cubes seem to be their mainline heavy ship though. And Tac Cubes are technically smaller than normal Cubes, but more heavily armored.
And there are really no indications of Borg adaptation in space. Most of the time its just shrug off the attacks and regenerate damage. The only time they technically adapted was in Best of Both Worlds, where they were pretty much immune to a Deflector Pulse from the Enterprise, and highly resistant to modulated phaser fire. We never see that again. After that Borg ships just... shrug off damage because of their decentralized nature.
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that said apparently the borg are getting a bit of a revamp in May, my guess is this is going to be due to revelations from Picard, and I'm eager to see it
I won't say what this new Queen is thinking, yet it could be game-changing... ...well potentially.
The game already scales NPCs based on player level. So, game balance?
As to the rest of your comment...you either didn't read or cannot understand the part of my post about,
Instead you deliberately chose to take a cheap shot in front of the crowd while trying to score points with them.
How's this working out for you, BTW?
As to the rest of the contributors so far? Thank you.
I remember years ago when the devs improved the Spheres in Infected Space by granting them with some sort of Emergency Power to Engines ability. Made them zip around the map like a two year old who just power slammed Mommy's double mocha espresso. Caught me off guard and I had to put some thought into how to deal with them. I don't think this was a good response to making the Borg scarier. Nor do I think making them Hit Point sponges is good either. I guess what I'm thinking about may not be possible in STO. I'd like to have that, "Oh TRIBBLE!" moment Riker and Shelby had when the Cube with Locutus aboard dropped out of warp right in front of good old ENT-D.
you are not wrong. not just the borg. there are many missions where you had to do several things to get to the objective but they were removed to make it easier
She didn't take a"cheap shot". are you that egocentric? Game balance is everything. players HATED Delta rising because the vaadwaar used a completely new set of combat tactics, and you are asking the devs to do it again. I do hope they have found a way to make the Borg more challenging, withotu breaking it for new players and non-whale casuals.
I don't think it's a coincidance that they are reportedly revamping the borg a bit so shortly after the final episode of Picard season 2
STO just wont be canon...never will be and honestly it's probably better that way
Here's the thing... we already diverged before Picard anyways. We have a cutscene with a character heavily implied to be Data meeting Sela to talk about Tasha Yar. In fact its all but confirmed to be Data because of how the character appears (despite never seeing his face) and the fact he had the little Tasha Yar memorial hologram. And that is in... what? 2410 at least? We know Data basically ultimately died in 2399 per Picard s1.
And then we have the lack of Fed-Klingon War that starts in 2405, but I believe tensions were high as far back as 2401. So far we have no canon indication of high tensions between the Federation and the Empire.
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[/quote] Game balance is everything. players HATED Delta rising because the vaadwaar used a completely new set of combat tactics, and you are asking the devs to do it again. I do hope they have found a way to make the Borg more challenging, without breaking it for new players and non-whale casuals. [/quote]
Not quite true, not all players hated delta rising, i and quite a few other voyager fans actually enjoyed it, it just seemed to be a few vocal members mainly complained on the forums persistently due to a few of the delta species having new abilities that were unexpected at the time. Especially the Vaadwaar and Heirarchy, but we quickly adapted and learned how to take them on (that's where the delta space set came in truly handy for me)..
Back on topic though,
I actually enjoyed getting my butt kicked in the early days of the game by the borg, scared the TRIBBLE out of me even considering going into those missions alone with my own crew at those times. But i had good people teach me how to play and got better..
Over the years we have seen many a mission washed down because people complained that they were just too hard to do.
We also lost the borg elite version stf's due to a certain person not being able to work out how to play them properly at the time and having a direct ear of the devs of the game.
So yes i have to agree, it is time for the borg to get an upgrade, strategy wise and in their looks...
I would also love to see for a major tfo where at some stage 4 cubes join and become one and becoming an even more powerful threat to go up against like the crystalline entity event in some form or fashion..
Personally I cant wait to see what they do with the queen version from picard season 2, if they make that into a tfo..
Not here to argue, just contributing my 2 cents worth..
And remember, do'nt have a good day, Have a great day...
...TIME...
Not quite true, not all players hated delta rising, i and quite a few other voyager fans actually enjoyed it, it just seemed to be a few vocal members mainly complained on the forums persistently due to a few of the delta species having new abilities that were unexpected at the time. Especially the Vaadwaar and Heirarchy, but we quickly adapted and learned how to take them on (that's where the delta space set came in truly handy for me)..
Back on topic though,
I actually enjoyed getting my butt kicked in the early days of the game by the borg, scared the TRIBBLE out of me even considering going into those missions alone with my own crew at those times. But i had good people teach me how to play and got better..
Over the years we have seen many a mission washed down because people complained that they were just too hard to do.
We also lost the borg elite version stf's due to a certain person not being able to work out how to play them properly at the time and having a direct ear of the devs of the game.
So yes i have to agree, it is time for the borg to get an upgrade, strategy wise and in their looks...
I would also love to see for a major tfo where at some stage 4 cubes join and become one and becoming an even more powerful threat to go up against like the crystalline entity event in some form or fashion..
Personally I cant wait to see what they do with the queen version from picard season 2, if they make that into a tfo..
Not here to argue, just contributing my 2 cents worth..
And remember, do'nt have a good day, Have a great day...
...TIME...[/quote]
--- edit --- For clarity, cause the quoting is messed up, this is my response:
The problem with Delta Rising was that it made a big part of the content people had played for years much more difficult overnight.
Sure, if the content and enemies were kept exactly the same as they were on the first day after Delta Rising launched, it wouldn't be a problem today as the average player has become much more powerful since then. Back then however, it was a problem and players couldn't have been expected to just deal with such large changes without having been given the possibility to gradually adapt.
The Devs have admitted as much, cause during the next couple of months there was a lot of tweaking; Spheres' rapid speed increases that made them unstoppable were removed, MK 13 and 14 weapons were made more powerful because apparently they weren't scaling as well as intended and so on.
I'm not necessarily in favour of it, nor am I absolutely opposed to it.
On the one hand, it is nice to have a few enemies that don't pull all sorts of tricks constantly. If you play patrol missions like The Ninth Rule for example, it is nice to get Gorn or Orions once in a while - sometimes it's just more enjoyable to just shoot stuff without having to worry about countering all sorts of tactics.
And this goes for a lot of content. The problem is that in most of it, we're engaging large numbers of enemies. As people have mentioned a while back about the constant SubNuc effects that were just too numerous to be effectively countered in some patrols: giving large numbers of enemies a special ability is problematic if your counters to those powers are limited.
The best way of creating content is either making a few enemies powerful and able to use all sorts of tactics - OR creating large numbers of 'dumber' enemies. Not creating large numbers of enemies that can all use tricks like immediate and total debuffing and such.
So any change that makes an enemy more interesting and challenging would also have to lead to said enemy being less numerous. And this would be fitting for the Borg, cause on TV and in the movies we never saw large swarms of Spheres or dozens of probes emerge at the same time.
To make a long story short: making the Borg more challenging could be a good idea, IF the content they feature in is also changed to complement those changes.
And to add a final note: making any enemy more interesting in my opinion also means something different than just making them more annoying. The new ability that Borg use on the ground to slow you down isn't interesting, it's just annoying. It doesn't make them more challenging, it only prolongs the mission.
Which would make sense as the adaption is a form of their shield tech not a magical "damage immunity" charm, so it should be possible to simply brute force your way thru the shields (why don't see it more often is that there a limit to just how much firepower you can put an drone (you can carry only so much weight and drones tend to attack in places where space is limited and not on open fields). In outer space on the other hand it's much easier to bring enough ships that Borg shields would even if adapted get overwhelmed at least locally.
EDIT:quoted wrong post
I still think Mirror Borg would provide the challenge you're looking for, the Terran Empire isn't the only Faction within the MU, there's other groups of enemies from that universe that we haven't faced before like the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance who would use a combination of Klingon and True Way tactics as well as ships that would kitbash Galor ships with D7s.
It may have been known tech, but it was also more primitive tech. IMO it could be comparable to a situation in Stargate SG-1. The Asgard kept trying to make more and more advanced weapons to fight the Replicators... who just proceeded to eat it and become more advanced themselves. Thor himself admitted that even the IDEA of a chemically propelled slugthrower like Tau'ri guns was "too dumb" for them to even consider. They were so advanced that primitive technology was basically beyond them.
Honestly I think the best Anti-Borg weapon Starfleet ever developed was one they made without considering the Borg in the first place.
The TR-116.
Borg have the ability to adapt to energy weapons. There is no indication they can adapt to a projectile. And its not like they can grow armor on command.
If I remember correctly there was mention in a novel of TR-116 rifles actually helping save one of the ships at the Battle of Sector 001, I think it was the Budapest, as the security teams were able to grab some TR-116s from the armory to repel Borg Drones.
Found it. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/TR-116_rifle
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No worries, it happens.
While it's not canon the Devs are trying to stick to canon as close as possible, personally I think that anything set before butterfly should be part of the Canon Prime Timeline, but everything else after that mission shouldn't be Canon since we're now part of a Different Timeline.
I think you have said something valuable here. In most movies and episodes, the adaptation is presented as a magic solution to all the Borg's problems. And, as a result, that's how it seems to be thought of usually by players.
In 'reality' of course, that doesn't make sense. The Borg can adapt because they share their experiences and can compute ways of countering weapons. It's like taking a course in karate and learning how to counter a blow of someone's fist, improving your technique gradually. But then at an increased speed and also to greater effect because there's just more data to learn from if you're linked with other minds.
Of course attacks will be less effective the more you learn, but it shouldn't render them completely useless. That last part never made much sense. A beam of highly charged particles is still going to do some damage, even if you adapt your shields, armour or whatever to limit the damage. Just like explosions, fire or freezing armour will or would always keep eating away at whatever protective layer someone's wearing, reinforcing or enhancing or whatever.
If someone's throwing rocks at you, learning how best to deflect them will cause you to take less damage and learning very well how to deflect them means you might take a lot less damage - but you're unlikely to ever be able to resist all the rocks in the world being thrown at you.
And even if some sort of charged particle can be made less damaging by changing the metallic compounds in the armour or whatever (which would likely require raw materials anyway), it is highly unrealistic that this would work against many sorts of charged particle beams at the same time. Increasing the defense effectiveness against one weapon type should automatically mean that the other weapon types become more effective, even without remodulating or similar tactics.
It makes little sense that the Borg's adaptation gives them total immunity, making it a black-and-white scenario where something either completely works, or doesn't.
And what I just described is usually given as a reason why kinetic weapons can't be countered by them - but I doubt there are good reasons why only kinetic effects would work like this. Fire, charged particles, radiation or bullets: damage is damage and each of them will keep having SOME detrimental effect to whatever protection they build. Unless they can just completely change the entire composition of what they're wearing and shielding, but that makes no sense and indeed comes closer to magic tricks than actual realistic solutions.
Ummm, the borg adapted their shields to species 10026 weapons in the Voyager episode "Dark Frontier"
The Borg Queen's vessel and the two escort Borg cubes arrive at the Species 10026 planet to begin assimilation. The Borg Queen manipulates Seven into suggesting a way to adapt to Species 10026 weapons fire, a modulating phaser pulse that can penetrate Borg deflector shields. Initially Seven refuses to provide a strategy stating, "You are the Borg, you tell me." The Queen does not respond; instead, she lets the aliens bombard the Borg diamond until Seven becomes alarmed. She then calmly looks at Seven and repeats her question: How does she propose they adapt? Not wanting to die, Seven instinctively suggests a strategy. The Queen smiles, agrees with Seven's assessment and communicates it to the drones for implementation. Immediately the weapons' fire is rendered completely ineffective.
Source: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Frontier_(episode)
Some improvements to the Borg might help offset all the power creep we've gotten over the years and if they were really scary again players would probably enjoy the Borg ground queues more.
In this case, the Borg's slow adaptation was probably due to there only being a small handful of Borg compared to how many would normally have been on even a scout ship. The Borg here also didn't have a connection to the Collective. It's also highly likely that informaton on Phase Pistols was not present, simply because it's outdated tech (by 200 years) and the schematics were probably not stored on 2360's and 70's ships.
As for overwhelming adapted shields, it would depend on if the Borg negate or absorb the energy. Considering the Cubes are capable of immense power generation, if they simple negate the energy, they can probably just sit there and have cake and tea. If the energy is absorbed, then the attackers would have a chance to cause an overload, however, remember, Wolf 359 didn't go so well with 40 ships attacking simultaniously. Numbers would only count for something if every ship fired on different rotating AND random frequencies as shown in First Contact.
Cubes also have the 'Death Star' weaknesses too. They struggle greatly with close combat, as Voyager caused alot of trouble and caused more damage than 40 ships did at Wolf 359, even the Delta Flyer was effective (though swatted eventually).
I can 'get' why the Borg don't adapt in space in STO, if you figure that all ships now are equipped with continuous remodulation circuitry, but why hasn't that happened with ground after 40 years since it was originally proposed in 'Best of Both Worlds'?