Borg History (Sourced from Memory Alpha)
The Borg were a pseudo-species of cybernetic beings, or cyborgs, from the Delta Quadrant. No single individual truly existed within the Borg Collective (with the possible sole exception of the Borg Queen), as all Borg were linked into a hive mind. Their ultimate goal was the attainment of 'perfection' through the forcible assimilation of diverse sentient species, technologies, and knowledge. As a result, the Borg were among the most powerful and feared powers in the galaxy, without really being a true species at all.
Changing the Borg from Version 1.0 to CTA
I truly loved working on version 1.0 and the many Borg abilities but as we began work on CTA i almost begged the lead devs Max and Chris for the opportunity to change the Borg and Romulan factions.
With this in mind i worked closely with all the devs and especially Rick (draconis) to begin drawing up ideas and features that felt more in line with canon and previous Armada games.
What were the concepts you may ask?
- Getting rid of shields... it never made sense although we knew they had shields per say for the sake of haveing shields as you never saw those impacts in the series we thought we would remove them as well and toughen their armour values.
- Fixing shield penetration... Why should my beloved romulans and the iconic federation be punished for being shield based it made sense to remove shield penetration.
- Removing reliance on specific anti borg abilities... Such as the nebulas shield disabler...i mean it forced people to build that one capital far to much.
- Making Borg capitals feel like they were worth their weight... for experienced players the cubes didn't bring enough to the table compared to Borg cruisers so we set about fixing that.
- Making Playable Borg actually fun to play... You could get rushed pretty badly at the early game but became unstoppable late game so we set about balancing the borg out, the ships feel strong like the series but as a player you can field less capitals than any other race but with the new additions we've given you a better arsenal to deal with pesky early game rush tactics, Probes anyone?
- Keeping AI Scary and get them building capitals...Yes they really do build capitals now!
And i like to think we achieved all this and more which you will see in our official dev diary video further below so rather than produce a wall of text this week ill simply ask you, our supporters to decide whether we made the Borg Faction we all love and want to see more of based on the ideas above.
Let us know your thoughts below in the comments section and see you all at our next dev diary.
Bane Out.
Still having trouble running the current 1.0 version of STA3? Here's a quick run down of how to install it since the 1.0 update. Note that the 1.0 download is an .exe file and does not require extracting.
Let me know your thoughts guys :)
I just wanna say that the ONLY thing that really bugs me in STA3, and this is a very minor thing, is the Borg Progenitor titan. Aesthetically, it just looks... well, not Borg. Sorry for being crude, but to be frank, it looks like a double-sided space *****. Tactically, its abilities are passable, but the damn thing just doesn't fit with the Borg aesthetic. Because of this, I never build it and I just fill the cap ship slots I'd use for the titan with a couple more Cubes. I don't suppose you'd consider replacing the model? No offense intended to the modeler, but I think something along the lines of a Fusion Cube from STA2 would be more appropriate. Hell, if you really wanna balance the Borg, just remove their titan altogether and give Locutus and the Borg Queen a sizable buff. Again, I could continue to just ignore it I suppose, but I'd much rather play the Borg with their full roster and ferocity. I love this mod regardless, and I'm really looking forward to the next release. Thanks for everything, and keep up the good work!
The Borg Progenitor titan is actually the Borg Command Ship in a fleet action queue on Star Trek Online. I believe the designation for the ship class is a Unimatrix followed by several numerical digits that escape me at present. So the ship is actually quite real (well, as real as things in sci-fi GET).
Thing is, it's much, MUCH bigger in STO than it is in STA3.
The progenitor isn't based on the borg it is based on their creator V'ger
Hey guys, why not just make it a Borg-ified V'ger model?
The Progenitor model and the V'ger model are actually pretty different, aesthetically, and not just in the texturing. Maybe something like this?
Trekmeshes.ch
that moddles pretty chilling, it would be awesome to see it ingame but im not sure how well it would fit in with the rest of the borg vessels unless its textured differently
I love the changes especially the assimilation of the ships. It's fantastic. I would really like the ability to assimilate capital ships but I understand why this has been excluded. I would love to see something included that would let you assimilate a capital but perhaps there could be a limit of one or two max. I don't know if that's possible. I see the Borg as purely a capital ship based faction and not a race that travel around in large fleets. Looking at the series, the only time you see a fleet of Borg ships is when they were fighting species 8472 and that was all cubes. I would prefer to see the AI use the same approach with low numbers of non-capital ships. In version 1.0, it feels like the AI builds far too many smaller ships.
On a separate note, is there any plans to have Q in the game? Perhaps he could randomly drag one of your ships into a hostile or unknown territory. I know a lot of people have also asked for the Constitution class to be included and I agree with it being out of the time period but perhaps a random event could have either past or future ships appear from the alternate universe and cause havoc. Again just an idea and I don't know if it's practical.
Really looking forward to the next release. First class efforts from the Dev team as always.
I'm so glad they didn't add assimilating capital ships it would make it so so much harder to fight the Borg and just no fun having them steal capitals
Yeah, I know what you mean but playing as the Borg and stealing the AI capitals would be fun.
Wow, those assimilated ships look amazing!
I'm glad you guys worked on the Borg early game as well. I tried playing them vs. the AI and was quickly overwhelmed before I could get enough planets and tech stations.
And that Progenitor is even more terrifying now!
Awesome. This addon makes the Borg a bit more real. Shields on Borgs is sure not canon but massive amor. Great that you changed it. And that you will balance them.
But i have a Idea for a new hero-Captal ship (or Titan) what about this ship here? It was in Armarda II and i love the Idea to see it in Armarda III to!
Link: Img2.wikia.nocookie.net
Let me know what you think about :)
Nice work always again. Keep it up :)
i believe that was disused a while ago but they decided it was impractical to add such a massive ship, i dont know the details though
We did discuss it, but the Fusion Cube is just too massive. It would take up the space of 8 cubes combined.
Hmmm, but ts borg, they always take a lot of space. Like the Unikomplex. And The New Romulan Base looks very large too Sure the Tactical Fusion Cube should be very slow^^
I don`t know the Details in the Game Program. Does a Tactical Fusion cube a lot of laggs or whats up with it than?.
But thanks that you discussed it :)
Imagine an Unicomplex moving around, it would get stuck everywhere. One of the reasons we did not do that. There is still plenty of borg to throw around though.
hmmmm and a small fusion cube?
a small fusion cube is a cube.
Yes, but we could call it "Cubey" and it could follow us around like a Baloonicorn in TF2. I like the ship's abilities but I'm not enamoured by the model. I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm even watching the Captain Shack videos to listen and learn of the coming Cardassian Apocalypse (sponsored by Kanar, "It will be your drink of choice, in time."). However, as a true friend, I will tell you what I really think and not what you want to hear. See you in battle.
Great work on this mod, and I must say I bought sins just to play it! Back in the beta release I had a big match as the federation going up against a few ai, but in particular was an ai borg that I had allied with in-game.
I managed this by flooding the borg with my diplomacy ships (as I was rapidly losing my main fleet and had nothing left) which then got assimilated, allowing both me and an ai klingon to set up a peace treaty with the borg and each other.
I know that was the case because we both had assimilated borg diplomacy ships by our planets and we didn't attack each other. Has anyone else seen this happen or has it been addressed?
i like the borg but i have a few questions:
With max capitals + the titan how many additional ships/ ship slots will the borg have remaining, how big will the support fleet be?
how will a cube stand up to a fleet? i remember i was once playing against the borg as the klingons and a cube + some dimonds with a massive support fleet warped in and destroyed my defence fleet but then i built abut 50 bel'rels and in one pass they wiped out the cube and the rest of their fleet turned and ran, this was very late game.
Will the AI actually build the borg titan now?
oh and i would love to see dukat cooking :)
You will be able to build a few support ships depending on which capital ships you build. Also if you build the titan you would have less slots left. It is a decision. If you only get cubes/tactical cubes you won't have much left to build a support fleet, but those cubes are quite powerful. The AI also builds the titan, we had it in one of our test games.
ah good, it always seemed to me that the borg, especially in the alpha and beta quadrants, never had the massive fleets we see in version 1 instead it would just be a cube or two and some other caps plus only a few frigates and cruisers to fill the gaps but that would be more than a match for the powers on those quadrants. i like it
Alot of questions alive! Essentially capitals are far tougher, especially the tactical cube, also the AI have their secret research, they will build support fleets but they are nowhere near as big as before, they do tend to favor capital vessels and you should expect to see lots of these even trapezoids throughout the game.
Players currently get 2000 supply so for example a cube would take 200 of that but they are incredibly powerful of course if you turn an armada of 20 capitals and 200 cruisers on them they will melt but hey thats canon right?
finally yes the AI Borg build the Borg Titan, its rare but when they do be prepared because it is a killer.
Honestly, I think the "Borg Titan" could use a change. It's just the ugly one from STO. Why do that when you could use so many more brilliant ideas from the modding community?
Ever seen a Fusion Cube? Bunny has.
Bunny's fur wasn't always white.
Great work guys! I cannot wait until CTA, just out of curiousity - will the Borg still be keeping culture? I can probably guess yes, just cos of how the game is built - I am interested whether or not this will change, as it doesn't make sense with the Borg xD
That being said, this change to the Borg is great! So looking forward to them not having the shields :D It's the little things ;)
Think of it as their collective's signal that unifies them into the hive mind. Ruins the communications of other races and as such affects them negatively. BOOM.
Have yet to watch the diary, however, I hope we'll hear some Borg quotes 'resistance is futile etc...' when fighting them. I think I read somewhere that when an ability on a Cube is activated we near the typical quotes but I've never seemed to hear them myself. They'd add some real atmosphere to significant conflicts.
I would be more than willing to wait on a full release if it meant all of the ships getting the assimilate effect :) I'd love to launch a fleet of assimilated b'rels and mirandas
I've been waiting for this dev diary with terror and awe.
As for awe - the borg are absolutely magnificent. Those slow ponderous shapes of destruction hypnotize. I salute your modelers, they are geniuses. And all that new stuff is just super fun and super cool.
As for terror - call me a pessimist, but from this dev diary I think borg became even more OP. Their abilities and damage output are just way too powerful. In 1.0 you could at least outrun the borg, but with so many speed reduction abilities, this is hardly an option. Buffs are also extremely powerful (especially those with +armor and +damage reduction), coupled with massive debuffs to the enemy, the chances of winning a fleet-on-fleet (1vs1) engagement are pretty slim. And for dessert - I've noticed several +hull repair buffs. Do they stack? Science, progenitor, couple of capitals' abilities and even assimilators. Just for teh lulz - how many % of hull repair can you get? Wouldn't, in perfect scenario, a cube's "healing" be higher than all the punishment an enemy can unleash?
I'm sorry if all of these thought are, in fact, junk, but I can't get away from the feeling that I won't be playing borg or playing against them, because the game would lose its meaning :( I really hope I'm just wrong. You guys are doing excellent job! We all appreciate it!
P.S. Just a quick question. Players and smart AIs focus fire capital ships first, and borgs with their ultra-powerful weapons can smash them really fast. Needless to say that a fleet of 200 cruisers can't do much without the help from capital ships' abilities. Perhaps their dps/HPs and other stuff are balanced in 1000-iterations-cycle, but in every single combat, the borg have an advantage because they can quickly deny their enemy his advantage. Am I misunderstanding something? Because, its what makes borg so OP - very high damage output. And by the time reinforcements get from the shipyards to where all the fun is, the fun is gone.
im hoping to do a dev diary supplemental to show one of the many ways we balance test fleets versus fleet engagements sufficed to say AI borg are scary, but player borg are pretty balanced what we learnt long ago is that while 50% boosts may sound high in reality its not as much as you think giving their regeneration rate is low anyway at 1.6 etc per second on a 80000 hull cube... obviously these rise but its entirely possible to burst them down you also must remember we balance by supply so when tac cubes cost between 220 to 250 supply and they can only build 10 capitals total and have 2000 supply total you can see how their fleets will be a lot smaller,
what we hope to do is dev diary lets play after the faction reveals
Let's play would be awesome!! I know it's hard and takes a lot of time, but videos make my (and possibly everyone's) days! So more videos!! :D
id like the see a lets play with 5-6 devs each with a different race all against an extremely powerful borg AI or something like that, then each dev could add more insight on their faction of choice (which id hope would be their favorite faction) and show interesting strategies against the borg and discus how it would be effective against each other
In your dev diary's you usually show off a big battle with various ships in the faction fighting in this was just ships that could assimilate vs a very small force of federation ships. Also would have liked to see a demonstration of the abilities in action. AND WOULD HAVE LOVED to see a player made cube vs a fleet of vessels hope the borg cube is still the most powerful vs other faction capital/hero ships like as in 1.0
Love what you guys have done so far!!! best mod ever!!!
You guys are doing an amazing job, all the details make this better than any Star Trek game I've played before.
The one thing I'm going to gripe about like others have before me on this comment section is the borg titan. It doesn't look borg, and reminds me like the gentleman above of a certain fully functioning part of the human anatomy when it fires. Is there any possibility of changing it to something else? I wouldn't even care if it's not a fusion cube, how about making Locutus the titan as suggested before since the fusion cube is out of the question? Locutus had an amazing ability to deal damage to the federation because of his unique talent and knowledge, which could be applied to other factions too for the sake of balance.
You can Call Locutus as a Hero Ship, and i think that is enough. locutus as a Titan would not fit i find.
And more damage to federation? and whats up against the other races ;)
Aaand the Unimatrix, the Borg Titan at the Moment, is out of Star Trek Online :-/
its looking really great guys. i sort of doubt the borg would bother attempting to assimilate every little frigate there is, probably would just go after cruiser sized ships. borg exempting assimilation on inferior things has happened several time in canon, so it makes sense, and will surly save max some time lol
It was definitely a game changer having to dodge around Borg Cubes rather than face them head on as the Romulans. I do have a bit of a minor complaint: After borg assimilate a ship, it gets full hull and shields back. Can't we just have it get to say 75%-80% hull and 25% shields? It's kind of rare that the borg take over a ship without prepping for its assimilation makeover by punching some holes in it.
always happy to consider things like this :)
Hey Devs! I am not sure if you guys know about this or if it is just us. But Revirenta and me noticed that the game crashes if you set Borg Cubes to automaticaly assimilate enemy ships if you dont have enough fleetsupport.
I know its logical that you cant exeed a max number of support slots, but cant the cubes just stop assimilating by them selfes?
btw. thank you for making this mod. cant wait for the dominion. :-)
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I like the idea of having a reduced cap for borg capitols. Id even like it if the borg could just have one capitol, the dreadnought and/or special characters.
Having one capitol ship would feel more canon as in the series/movies, starships would usually be against one cube for example and it would take a hell of a lot to take one down. ( Except for picard taking command of the fleet and ordering the fleet to fire on a specific co-ordinance... ;) )
The two biggest issues ive found with the borg is:
1: their speed, very, very slow across a grav well
2: their defence platforms have a small targeting range at the start and they cost more points to build so they have less.
has the speed and the defence platforms been adjusted in CTA?
1. In Voyager there were often more cubes than just one. like in scorpion.
2. They are very, very slow in a gravity well. but they are very, very fast in phaselines. I thik it is a good balance. since you can just bypass a cube if you have to.
3. true, tha weaponsplatforms do have a small radius, but its only in the early stages of a game. In wich i defend with ships anyway. unless you are romulan. :-)
1. I know there was more than one cube in Voyager, but in all of the battles (except the last episode) voyager never combated against more than one borg vsl at a time. In all combat situations that the federation has faced, there has only been 1 borg wessel ( :P ) at a time.
2. I can understand that balance
3. it does make advancing quite slow especially if you have the pirates attacking all the time
The Borg always underestimated the Federation in the TV Shows and the Movies. They thought they were better and so they only need to seen one cube failed and then they sent one to travel back in time and destroy Earth before the Federation was form which fail so its reasonable to assume that they would start to invest more ships to destroy the Federation.
im not saying the borg to build only one ship. One capitol, and of course they would then have all of the support craft, cruisers/frigates plus the assimilated ships.
another thought i had alone the one capitol line. the more ships that the borg assimilate, the borg gain levels on a whole?
(but thats just me on those sleepless nights running ideas through the head...)
Where can i get the Dominionpatch?
right here... when its done :-)
Anyone else that is just DYING to get their hands on CTA :D?