While the I-mod from elite force got all the glory and attention, the developers added Star Trak Armada Borg designs.
There are some absolute awesome designs from Armada i would love to see in game,
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
The Red alerts didn't have any cubes in them anymore though, as far as I could see.
It would be better if they had added them alongside the Assimilators, instead of totally replacing them. The cube is, after all, the Borg's standard design and well-known by non-trekkies as well I think.
I remember those.
Once you noticed that Borg vessel it became a priority to take out before it could use that.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
The Red alerts didn't have any cubes in them anymore though, as far as I could see.
It would be better if they had added them alongside the Assimilators, instead of totally replacing them. The cube is, after all, the Borg's standard design and well-known by non-trekkies as well I think.
The borg red alert no longer has their iconic cube?
Should we maybe expect a name change to Mirrorverse fanfic online
It's not just Red Alerts, all Borg TFO got their cubes replaced by assimilators. It's especially noticeable with Hive Onslaught.
According to Thomas, it's intentional (minus some assimilators still called cubes in a couple of TFOs) and an attempt to make the next cubes scarier and more challenging.
Replacing an iconic design with a window squeegee so you can make the known ones better is fair enough IF you do both at the same time.
Although I kind of suspect that by tougher it will be some immunity nonsense combined with massive hit point pool, perhaps with some visual spam to add to the rest of the junk on screen. The games difficulty curve flatlined years ago so they won't have many options to combat the years of power creep
As someone who played Star Trek Armada regularly, I for one welcome the torpedo-spamming, crew stealing parallelograms, enough so that part of me hopes they'll become playable at some point (they're one of the only Borg ships that have a definitive front and back, so they'd be feasible)
More so, this has me hoping we'll see more ship designs from Armada as playable ships. Klingons (Qeh'Ral, SuQ'Jagh, Fek'Lhr, NuQ'Duj, Chava'Kal), Romulans (Shrike, Griffin, Raptor, Shadow, Veles, Draconarius, Venator) and Cardassians (Sartan, Rasilak, Brinok, Gul Vystan, Vasad, Janissary, Legate, Kulinor) have ample options that'd fit very well into STO.
"[GARBLED ELECTRONIC NOISES]"
- Thot Gar - Commanding Officer of the Braaktak Kaan
As someone who played Star Trek Armada regularly, I for one welcome the torpedo-spamming, crew stealing parallelograms, enough so that part of me hopes they'll become playable at some point (they're one of the only Borg ships that have a definitive front and back, so they'd be feasible)
More so, this has me hoping we'll see more ship designs from Armada as playable ships. Klingons (Qeh'Ral, SuQ'Jagh, Fek'Lhr, NuQ'Duj, Chava'Kal), Romulans (Shrike, Griffin, Raptor, Shadow, Veles, Draconarius, Venator) and Cardassians (Sartan, Rasilak, Brinok, Gul Vystan, Vasad, Janissary, Legate, Kulinor) have ample options that'd fit very well into STO.
Would be nice to see some new ships but I don't have faith in them adding many of the playable races...even during the "year of the klingon" we never really got much other than story and graphic revamps
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
The devs got permission to make some of the ships (and apparently at least one energy rifle), but it is not likely that they could get permission for the unique races from other games.
So, even story missions' cubes are replaced by Assimilators, which is a problem since they're still called cubes in dialogues.
What they should do, IMO, is add the Scout Cube as a Battleship tier enemy, alongside the Assimilator.
Have the Scout Cube appear where appropriate, while mixing and matching the two during TFOs or whatever. That way, true Borg Cubes can be used as proper "Boss" enemies.
"[GARBLED ELECTRONIC NOISES]"
- Thot Gar - Commanding Officer of the Braaktak Kaan
On the one hand, I can see why they wanted to replace the cube. Some missions had so many of them, they weren't that scary or special anymore.
It seems that enemies that used to be tactical cubes, are now normal cubes (the Red Alert used to have one T-Cube, that one is now a regular cube).
But, as noted above, the Assimilator ship was also very threatening. It became the highest priority target as soon as it was sighted indeed. And they weren't easy to take down.
So although I can understand the wish to replace some of the cube spawns, it doesn't really feel right to use the Assimilator model everywhere instead, thereby trivialising that design.
As someone who played Star Trek Armada regularly, I for one welcome the torpedo-spamming, crew stealing parallelograms, enough so that part of me hopes they'll become playable at some point (they're one of the only Borg ships that have a definitive front and back, so they'd be feasible) ...
I still play Star Trek: Armada II. Really enjoy doing so. It would be nice to see some of the other ships from that IP come over to STO. I don't think it will ever happen but If we don't ask then the answer is automatically, "no.".
These new Borg are an improvement, yes. And thank you, Cryptic for buffing them along with improving the meshes and textures. But I still don't think the Borg are powerful enough. Which true of any Star Trek based game they've been included in. They fail to invoke that sense of inevitable doom or horrific terror so prevalent and so strongly featured in the series and the films.
I've always viewed the Borg as similar to a force of nature. Such as an earthquake or a hurricane. A sensible Starfleet captain should run away from the Borg at Warp 9.97. I know you guys have to make the game playable by everyone and enjoyable to all as well. I understand not everyone plays this game at the same skill or resource levels.
These Borg are definitely a move in the right direction to portraying them closer to what we've seen in the series and the films.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
My eyes lit up and I shouted "Are those Assimilators!?" when I first saw them - quite pleased to see them show up in STO and I think they're a pretty good borg analogue for where the Borg are on the powerscale in the game these days.
My two remaining questions are:
-Has the Queen's ship/Diamond/Octahedron been changed?
-Does this open the door for Tactical Fusion Cubes in the future as mega-boss encounters?
8 Tac cubes stacked together into a super-cube
It would very easily be of a similar scale to the Voth Citadels(not as long, but definitely taller).
Having to break them apart, cube by cube would probably make it an interesting boss encounter.
As someone who played Star Trek Armada regularly, I for one welcome the torpedo-spamming, crew stealing parallelograms, enough so that part of me hopes they'll become playable at some point (they're one of the only Borg ships that have a definitive front and back, so they'd be feasible) ...
I still play Star Trek: Armada II. Really enjoy doing so. It would be nice to see some of the other ships from that IP come over to STO. I don't think it will ever happen but If we don't ask then the answer is automatically, "no.".
These new Borg are an improvement, yes. And thank you, Cryptic for buffing them along with improving the meshes and textures. But I still don't think the Borg are powerful enough. Which true of any Star Trek based game they've been included in. They fail to invoke that sense of inevitable doom or horrific terror so prevalent and so strongly featured in the series and the films.
I've always viewed the Borg as similar to a force of nature. Such as an earthquake or a hurricane. A sensible Starfleet captain should run away from the Borg at Warp 9.97. I know you guys have to make the game playable by everyone and enjoyable to all as well. I understand not everyone plays this game at the same skill or resource levels.
These Borg are definitely a move in the right direction to portraying them closer to what we've seen in the series and the films.
Personally, I don't think it's really possible to increase the Borg's scare factor by much more.
The main problem is that we've simply run into them a lot - and that we're used to being able to destroy them rather easily. That past experience is very difficult to remove, or forget. Even if they made the Borg much tougher, parts of our minds are still going to associate 'the Borg' with that enemy you easily destroyed for the past ten years.
Games like Star Trek Armada are much different because they didn't continuously grow and expand, resulting in them being more balanced. The fact that they are strategy games also influences how easily you can destroy your opponent. You need resources, you need to spread your forces as you need to defend your base as well as ensuring that no Assemblers escape while you're destroying an enemy station. You can't just throw everything against a single enemy.
In STO, we get more powerful with each update. And it's much more possible to focus your entire range of abilities against that one single enemy like a cube, so they are always going to be less impressive.
If we look at the series, the Borg were threatening and scary when they were barely used (in TNG, and at the start of DS9). In Voyager, they were used - and thus had to be overcome - so often, that they lost that scariness. Only with some meaningful losses and drawn-out fights like in First Contact, did the Borg become a real threat again. But that's not easy to do in STO, because it would mean that many players are just going to be there so they can be one of the many casualties, to heighten the experience for the surviving players.
It would be very enjoyable for the surviving players, not so much for those who are just there so they can die, like we see in many series and movies. That just doesn't work really well in interactive media like games, where everyone needs to feel they can be the hero.
(Note that they tried to re-create some of the desperation from First Contact in the opening fight in the latest episode - but even there, with most of the casualties being unknown to us, the battle just isn't as impactful as it was when watching First Contact.)
As someone who played Star Trek Armada regularly, I for one welcome the torpedo-spamming, crew stealing parallelograms, enough so that part of me hopes they'll become playable at some point (they're one of the only Borg ships that have a definitive front and back, so they'd be feasible) ...
I still play Star Trek: Armada II. Really enjoy doing so. It would be nice to see some of the other ships from that IP come over to STO. I don't think it will ever happen but If we don't ask then the answer is automatically, "no.".
These new Borg are an improvement, yes. And thank you, Cryptic for buffing them along with improving the meshes and textures. But I still don't think the Borg are powerful enough. Which true of any Star Trek based game they've been included in. They fail to invoke that sense of inevitable doom or horrific terror so prevalent and so strongly featured in the series and the films.
I've always viewed the Borg as similar to a force of nature. Such as an earthquake or a hurricane. A sensible Starfleet captain should run away from the Borg at Warp 9.97. I know you guys have to make the game playable by everyone and enjoyable to all as well. I understand not everyone plays this game at the same skill or resource levels.
These Borg are definitely a move in the right direction to portraying them closer to what we've seen in the series and the films.
A long time ago when i upgraded my pc Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 stopped working.
Tried for a long time to get them working again, but to no avail.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,595Community Moderator
As someone who played Star Trek Armada regularly, I for one welcome the torpedo-spamming, crew stealing parallelograms, enough so that part of me hopes they'll become playable at some point (they're one of the only Borg ships that have a definitive front and back, so they'd be feasible) ...
I still play Star Trek: Armada II. Really enjoy doing so. It would be nice to see some of the other ships from that IP come over to STO. I don't think it will ever happen but If we don't ask then the answer is automatically, "no.".
These new Borg are an improvement, yes. And thank you, Cryptic for buffing them along with improving the meshes and textures. But I still don't think the Borg are powerful enough. Which true of any Star Trek based game they've been included in. They fail to invoke that sense of inevitable doom or horrific terror so prevalent and so strongly featured in the series and the films.
I've always viewed the Borg as similar to a force of nature. Such as an earthquake or a hurricane. A sensible Starfleet captain should run away from the Borg at Warp 9.97. I know you guys have to make the game playable by everyone and enjoyable to all as well. I understand not everyone plays this game at the same skill or resource levels.
These Borg are definitely a move in the right direction to portraying them closer to what we've seen in the series and the films.
A long time ago when i upgraded my pc Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 stopped working.
Tried for a long time to get them working again, but to no avail.
I know how frustrating that can be, the same happened to me with SWTOR when I upgraded monitors (they don't have manual override for aspect ratio and their automatic sensing is bugged, and their kludges to fix it just don't work for everyone).
A long time ago when i upgraded my pc Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 stopped working.
Tried for a long time to get them working again, but to no avail.
@questerius Both Armada games are available on GOG, and should be rigged to work on modern systems. Might be worth a wishlist to watch for a sale.
What is GOG?
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
A long time ago when i upgraded my pc Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 stopped working.
Tried for a long time to get them working again, but to no avail.
@questerius Both Armada games are available on GOG, and should be rigged to work on modern systems. Might be worth a wishlist to watch for a sale.
What is GOG?
The 'Good Old Games' site/store. They sell older DOS and other games with the appropriately configured batch files to allow them to run on more current/modern PCs. If they sell it, they've tested to be sure what they've done WILL allow the game you bought to run on a Win 10/11 OS PC.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
@fleetcaptain5#1134 - Wolf 359 makes your point perfectly. One Borg Cube destroys 40 Starfleet vessels. Whenever I hear the words, "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and...", in a series episode or a film, I still get that frisson of excitement and fear down my spine. We've seen, and shot up, too many Borg in too many games now to be frightened of them.
The Borg in the new Missions and TFOs made me check my builds. For both Ground and Space. I haven't done this in a very long time. I dug out some old gear from deep in the Bank and dusted it off to use against the 'New' Borg. Some of it worked well. Some of it immediately went back into long term storage. ("Welcome, Captains! To Inventory Management Online!)
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Personally I've been nagging them to give us the Photon Burst bazooka from Elite Force. Also trying to get them to do the Romulan Shadow and Phoenix classes from Armada 2. Phoenix as a Sci Dread would be super nasty.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Personally I've been nagging them to give us the Photon Burst bazooka from Elite Force. Also trying to get them to do the Romulan Shadow and Phoenix classes from Armada 2. Phoenix as a Sci Dread would be super nasty.
While the micro torp launcher would probably not really fit as a weapon, it would be good way to rewamp the micro torp powers players have instead of those torps just magically appearing from just wrist you pull out what's essentially a scifi bazooka to fire them. You can even make Klingon, Romulan or Jem'hadar versions of those if that's an issue for people.
Personally I've been nagging them to give us the Photon Burst bazooka from Elite Force. Also trying to get them to do the Romulan Shadow and Phoenix classes from Armada 2. Phoenix as a Sci Dread would be super nasty.
While the micro torp launcher would probably not really fit as a weapon, it would be good way to rewamp the micro torp powers players have instead of those torps just magically appearing from just wrist you pull out what's essentially a scifi bazooka to fire them. You can even make Klingon, Romulan or Jem'hadar versions of those if that's an issue for people.
Personally, I would prefer keeping the "magically appearing" bolt/torpedo over the yet-another-bazooka idea. In STO we already have tons of (often ridiculously ), oversize weapons but very little that can simulate alien weapon-like powers or stealth weapons like the Romulan wrist disruptors/glove disruptor/etc. from other games like FASA and some novels. Something like a cricket phaser is so small that it probably would not be visible in STO's resolution and minimum range limits for instance.
Comments
It would be better if they had added them alongside the Assimilators, instead of totally replacing them. The cube is, after all, the Borg's standard design and well-known by non-trekkies as well I think.
Once you noticed that Borg vessel it became a priority to take out before it could use that.
Now if the launcher ever gets done patching i will get to see it happen lol
The borg red alert no longer has their iconic cube?
Should we maybe expect a name change to Mirrorverse fanfic online
According to Thomas, it's intentional (minus some assimilators still called cubes in a couple of TFOs) and an attempt to make the next cubes scarier and more challenging.
Though, you'd expect them to actually ADD those tougher cubes somewhere.
Although I kind of suspect that by tougher it will be some immunity nonsense combined with massive hit point pool, perhaps with some visual spam to add to the rest of the junk on screen. The games difficulty curve flatlined years ago so they won't have many options to combat the years of power creep
More so, this has me hoping we'll see more ship designs from Armada as playable ships. Klingons (Qeh'Ral, SuQ'Jagh, Fek'Lhr, NuQ'Duj, Chava'Kal), Romulans (Shrike, Griffin, Raptor, Shadow, Veles, Draconarius, Venator) and Cardassians (Sartan, Rasilak, Brinok, Gul Vystan, Vasad, Janissary, Legate, Kulinor) have ample options that'd fit very well into STO.
- Thot Gar - Commanding Officer of the Braaktak Kaan
Would be nice to see some new ships but I don't have faith in them adding many of the playable races...even during the "year of the klingon" we never really got much other than story and graphic revamps
What they should do, IMO, is add the Scout Cube as a Battleship tier enemy, alongside the Assimilator.
Have the Scout Cube appear where appropriate, while mixing and matching the two during TFOs or whatever. That way, true Borg Cubes can be used as proper "Boss" enemies.
- Thot Gar - Commanding Officer of the Braaktak Kaan
It seems that enemies that used to be tactical cubes, are now normal cubes (the Red Alert used to have one T-Cube, that one is now a regular cube).
But, as noted above, the Assimilator ship was also very threatening. It became the highest priority target as soon as it was sighted indeed. And they weren't easy to take down.
So although I can understand the wish to replace some of the cube spawns, it doesn't really feel right to use the Assimilator model everywhere instead, thereby trivialising that design.
I still play Star Trek: Armada II. Really enjoy doing so. It would be nice to see some of the other ships from that IP come over to STO. I don't think it will ever happen but If we don't ask then the answer is automatically, "no.".
These new Borg are an improvement, yes. And thank you, Cryptic for buffing them along with improving the meshes and textures. But I still don't think the Borg are powerful enough. Which true of any Star Trek based game they've been included in. They fail to invoke that sense of inevitable doom or horrific terror so prevalent and so strongly featured in the series and the films.
I've always viewed the Borg as similar to a force of nature. Such as an earthquake or a hurricane. A sensible Starfleet captain should run away from the Borg at Warp 9.97. I know you guys have to make the game playable by everyone and enjoyable to all as well. I understand not everyone plays this game at the same skill or resource levels.
These Borg are definitely a move in the right direction to portraying them closer to what we've seen in the series and the films.
My two remaining questions are:
-Has the Queen's ship/Diamond/Octahedron been changed?
-Does this open the door for Tactical Fusion Cubes in the future as mega-boss encounters?
It would very easily be of a similar scale to the Voth Citadels(not as long, but definitely taller).
Having to break them apart, cube by cube would probably make it an interesting boss encounter.
Personally, I don't think it's really possible to increase the Borg's scare factor by much more.
The main problem is that we've simply run into them a lot - and that we're used to being able to destroy them rather easily. That past experience is very difficult to remove, or forget. Even if they made the Borg much tougher, parts of our minds are still going to associate 'the Borg' with that enemy you easily destroyed for the past ten years.
Games like Star Trek Armada are much different because they didn't continuously grow and expand, resulting in them being more balanced. The fact that they are strategy games also influences how easily you can destroy your opponent. You need resources, you need to spread your forces as you need to defend your base as well as ensuring that no Assemblers escape while you're destroying an enemy station. You can't just throw everything against a single enemy.
In STO, we get more powerful with each update. And it's much more possible to focus your entire range of abilities against that one single enemy like a cube, so they are always going to be less impressive.
If we look at the series, the Borg were threatening and scary when they were barely used (in TNG, and at the start of DS9). In Voyager, they were used - and thus had to be overcome - so often, that they lost that scariness. Only with some meaningful losses and drawn-out fights like in First Contact, did the Borg become a real threat again. But that's not easy to do in STO, because it would mean that many players are just going to be there so they can be one of the many casualties, to heighten the experience for the surviving players.
It would be very enjoyable for the surviving players, not so much for those who are just there so they can die, like we see in many series and movies. That just doesn't work really well in interactive media like games, where everyone needs to feel they can be the hero.
(Note that they tried to re-create some of the desperation from First Contact in the opening fight in the latest episode - but even there, with most of the casualties being unknown to us, the battle just isn't as impactful as it was when watching First Contact.)
A long time ago when i upgraded my pc Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 stopped working.
Tried for a long time to get them working again, but to no avail.
@questerius Both Armada games are available on GOG, and should be rigged to work on modern systems. Might be worth a wishlist to watch for a sale.
I know how frustrating that can be, the same happened to me with SWTOR when I upgraded monitors (they don't have manual override for aspect ratio and their automatic sensing is bugged, and their kludges to fix it just don't work for everyone).
What is GOG?
The 'Good Old Games' site/store. They sell older DOS and other games with the appropriately configured batch files to allow them to run on more current/modern PCs. If they sell it, they've tested to be sure what they've done WILL allow the game you bought to run on a Win 10/11 OS PC.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The Borg in the new Missions and TFOs made me check my builds. For both Ground and Space. I haven't done this in a very long time. I dug out some old gear from deep in the Bank and dusted it off to use against the 'New' Borg. Some of it worked well. Some of it immediately went back into long term storage. ("Welcome, Captains! To Inventory Management Online!)
We can make mockups of the Hazard Suit at least. Odyssey Excursion uniform + a certain Engineer Kit chest piece + a belt = Odyssey style Hazard Suit.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
While the micro torp launcher would probably not really fit as a weapon, it would be good way to rewamp the micro torp powers players have instead of those torps just magically appearing from just wrist you pull out what's essentially a scifi bazooka to fire them. You can even make Klingon, Romulan or Jem'hadar versions of those if that's an issue for people.
Personally, I would prefer keeping the "magically appearing" bolt/torpedo over the yet-another-bazooka idea. In STO we already have tons of (often ridiculously ), oversize weapons but very little that can simulate alien weapon-like powers or stealth weapons like the Romulan wrist disruptors/glove disruptor/etc. from other games like FASA and some novels. Something like a cricket phaser is so small that it probably would not be visible in STO's resolution and minimum range limits for instance.