Alpha Quadrant Map

[jfby]

Marla, my 'solution' to the Borg issue has been to make their ships until Light IV be more or less in line in terms of power with the other ships, and then beyond that make them considerably more powerful and more expensive. The result was better than normal, but I still play without them.

 

[deanej]

It is a constant balancing act. The current chance is 1%, so on the average, you need to win 100 battles to gain a tech this way.

Keep in mind that while the Borg start out with strong ships, while the other civs are researching better ships, you're stuck until you can capture a few techs. The tech chosen isn't entirely random; it's a copy of the goody hut code, so you still need all the prereqs for a tech.

Quick question about the starbase issue: are the AIs at least building sensor posts? TC01 asked that in the Final Frontier Plus forum.

 

[Nytran]

It is a constant balancing act. The current chance is 1%, so on the average, you need to win 100 battles to gain a tech this way.

Keep in mind that while the Borg start out with strong ships, while the other civs are researching better ships, you're stuck until you can capture a few techs. The tech chosen isn't entirely random; it's a copy of the goody hut code, so you still need all the prereqs for a tech.

Quick question about the starbase issue: are the AIs at least building sensor posts? TC01 asked that in the Final Frontier Plus forum.

Have nvr seen them build sensor posts either. Then again, I also dont feel the need to build em, usually just build starbases instead. So not sure the AI is even trying to build those at all.

Regarding the Borg, I have played on this map with the Borg twice up to future era and I nvr once got a tech by wining combats, I didnt even knew it was possible till I read your patch's changelog.

The Borg when played by the player are not nearly that strong, takes alot of work to keep up with the rest of the civs, the problem seems to be with the AI research speed, it is able to keep up with other civs atm and since on the same eras the Borg ships are stronger it obviously gives them an edge.

Oh and I have noticed that resources dont "go through wormholes", for example the Borg and Dominion on my map are surrounded by nebula, the only access to the main area is by wormholes, but any resource that you extract on the main area doesnt add up on the Borg or Dominion area, only to colonies they build on the main area.

 

[deanej]

Yes, God-Emperor posted a rather lengthy bug fix that gets the AIs to find and send ships to build the stations... however the code that actually orders the ships to build them is still not tested.

The reason the Borg use the wormholes is likely due to the transwarp conduit. The AI doesn't have a clue about wormholes, so they only stumble into them. All they do is magically teleport units... there isn't an actual link between the plots. All the game does is when a unit hits one, it finds a plot with the target feature type (the other "end" of the wormhole) and moves the unit there.

 

[Nytran]

Yes, God-Emperor posted a rather lengthy bug fix that gets the AIs to find and send ships to build the stations... however the code that actually orders the ships to build them is still not tested.

The reason the Borg use the wormholes is likely due to the transwarp conduit. The AI doesn't have a clue about wormholes, so they only stumble into them. All they do is magically teleport units... there isn't an actual link between the plots. All the game does is when a unit hits one, it finds a plot with the target feature type (the other "end" of the wormhole) and moves the unit there.

I see, then I'll probably add transwarp to the dominion aswell, see if that gets em to move.

 

[God-Emperor]

It looks like there are already pre-made routes that go to the wormholes for the Borg. When going places, they will tend to follow the routes since it is faster. The Borg will, therefore, sometimes move onto the wormholes and be moved over to the regular part of the map. They don't do it on purpose, it's just that they will tend to do so accidentally a lot more often. So perhaps you could add some sort of route connecting at least one of the Dominion area star systems to their wormhole and you should see more ships accidentally go through - or you might get a similar effect without that by repositioning the wormhole so that it is on a direct path between two of their star systems. I think you could probably position it so that it is in the middle so that it is on a direct route between two different pairs of star systems. That would probably help some too.

Alternatively, I am wondering what effect you would get by opening up a one plot hole in the border and putting the wormhole in the hole. I think they would try to move out through the opening but always hit the wormhole and get shifted through it. That would make it a lot less random. They would still never come back except by accidentally moving onto the other end of the wormhole, but getting them to come back is a lot less important than getting them to go (they might try to come back, but then they hit the wormhole from he other side and get shifted away again). Of course, the other civs would see the opening and hit the wormhole from the other side from time to time too, and ships with long enough ranged attacks could shoot across it, but that sounds like a minor concern.

 

[LordRuin]

I'm a little concerned over the idea of letting the Borg gain tech by defeating enemy vessels. While I fully appreciate the realism of "assimilating" technology, as they do in the series, I find myself worried that they would be able to advance too rapidly compared to everyone else.

If you think that to begin with they have vessels with a strength of 4 while everyone else doesn't have even Warp 5 ships you can see that for a long stretch their Cubes are going to be unstoppable. Granted this is how they should be, but consider that if everytime they win in combat (which will be 95%, if not higher, of the time) and that each victory brings a possibility of a tech (in addition to conquering systems) then they will quickly become irressistable. Since the techs gained are random and not tied to the civ's vessel they could easily advance through the "light" vessels until they have strengths of 16+ before most civs have Light I's!!

The Borg ARE supposed to be superior with Transwarp conduits allowing them to reach all corners of the Galaxy in hours and vessels which could wipe out a fleet of 40 odd starships, but remember that the creators of Star Trek got round this problem by ensuring that they only appeared in a few episodes and when they did that they only ever attacked with ONE Cube!!! (So much for Guinan stating that "When they come, they're gonna come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal.")

In fact the first time that we see multiple Cubes approaching the Federation, when 15 approach Voyager, in "Scorpion", they passby and ignore it!

Naturally in Civ they don't just have one Cube!

It's an extremely difficult balancing act between making them powerful and yet not letting them go bananas and wipe everyone out everytime they're in the game.

Solution?

I can't think of one. I usually play without them, unless I play as them! However, sometimes I simply use the Worldbuilder and create a system for them surrounded by Nebula so they cannot be reached (except by the advanced probe) nor they enter "normal space". Then when the civs are advanced I place a few Cubes at random in the Galaxy and see what happens...


On the subject of Technology though, I find that even playing "Marathon" that I usually have all techs within 600-700 turns (Even earlier when playing the Borg) yet on normal Civ even by turn 1000 I still haven't got close to the end of the tech tree, usually being at beginnings of flight / tanks stage.

Would adding more technology, in line with the numbers of techs in normal civ, be considered perhaps? Of course this would mean adding more buildings / military units...


Marla x

I'm not trying to nay say or anything. But, Everytime I've played a game the Borg always end up the last in rank. Also, their AI always makea them so peaceful with everyone when I play. I've never seen them attack/ declair war (with is probably the reason their always last in ranking).

 

[LordRuin]

sure

I'm sorry. I thought I had the entire map. But, I do have a map detailing everything surrounding Sol. But, this map doesn't include the areas of Tholia. If I can find it online, or find out how to upload it, I'll post a link.

 

[RickCall12]

I'm confused, did you actually create a Alpha Quadrant map or just one-city type map?