Before Starting:

• New comments from the last major revision in red and newest comments in a minor revision in redish-brown to help those who've read this before.
• If you've never played a game of VGA Planets before (either Version 3 or Version 4), then play another race first unless you don't mind losing early. As of the time of writing, I think that the best five races for a newbie to play in order are the Rebels, Stormers, Robots, Borg, and Lizards. See Paul's guide.
• Register your copy of Planets 4. Without registering, in addition to the usual effects, the only chunnelers you have are the starting 2 Fire Storms and if something happens to one of them you can no longer chunnel until your King assimilates 100K Humanoids after you hit the shareware limit and in addition, you will need to assimilate lots of Ghips in 100K packages after hitting the shareware limit to build decent engines and can't build decent weapons or shields at all, and would need others to build them for you.
• Be sure that you have enough time for the turn frequency. Borg need more time than most other races. (Don't join a daily game if you don't have every evening free.)
• Ensure the host is giving you the useful normal free ships. If your not getting the 2 FireStorms, there better be something major to compensate.
• The lower the contraband the better, the higher the natives the better. (Don't join a high contraband/low natives game.)
• Native populations far overshadow the effects of starting colonist populations. But low natives makes low colonist pop worse while high natives makes low colonist better.
• Optional: If playing on a known map, print out a hard copy of the map. For Epsilon, ideally it would be 9 pages (3 X 3), to ensure a spaces to write in the dense core.
• Find out how the home worlds are being placed. (Especially how close.) Being far from everyone benefits you, but you also want to have some clusters of unowned planets nearby. Read any race guides about the other races that are going to be in the game. Paul's site has a nice race index that can be used.
• Download the most current version of diplomat and ship calc. These are both highly useful utilities and ship calc even has a button to start Diplomat. Keep your copy of host fairly current as well for simulating things that don't directly involve combat.
• The following assumes "default starting conditions", which is currently 300,000 drones no natives on the home world, limited cash and no advanced tech levels. If starting with more drones or if your lucky enough to have natives on your home world, you will need to speed up everything. And if there's advanced tech levels, that may require major changes in strategy. Yes, most games seem to start with 1 Million colonists and 20K cash allowing for several Kings Palaces to be constructed right away.
• Tight maps tend to hurt you, especially if your neighbors are very aggressive, but Andrew has "played them to very good effect on small dense maps."

• Set tax rate to Enslavement. (Happiness is irrelevant)
• Increase Planet Tech to level 2 and all cheap ones except Hyper drive.
• Use the minister to set all your ships to the same attack vector. (Consider changing this every turn after wars start.)

• Build as many farms as the soil rating will allow.
• Build the most cities you can use. (Hint: Ministers can build the farms and cities.) Each city only knocks .2% off your growth rate while producing an extra 100 MC each. (100 MC can buy a Cyborg type 1 fighter or about 1/3 rd Cyborg Mini Assimilator or be converted into 100 supplies.)
• Build to get 500 factories, 101 mines, but don't build any smelters. (With mines also performing some refinery tasks, there's no need for smelters at all; your first builder cube will take care of the backlog of ore in one turn.)
• Ensure that all factories and mines are all on and fully functional. (Especially factories.)
• Start stockpiling ordnance & repair kits now, 5000 ord and 1000 repair kits per turn should be sufficient for now.
• Turn and keep the Medical Center OFF! Most races, including Borg can no longer use medical supplies at all.
• Turn off the training center, all the center does is turn tax paying drones into freeloading drones. Actually, it doesn't appear to have any affect at all.
• Turn on the terra former and set to 65. This will make all worlds you visit have temperatures favorable to you and perhaps more importantly make the entire area unfarmable for the Privs and Stormers. (Exception: if your lucky enough to start with 2 Million+ drones, keep them off for now to save supplies for building more cities, factories and Kings Palaces.) Consider a minor adjustment if your neighbor's max. unfarmable range is between 63 and 75 to make more worlds unfarmable to him. OTOH, in a team game, if other members start nearby, you might want to set the terraformer range to 50 (or some other temperature that results in worlds being farmable to all.)
• DON'T build Cyborg Mini-Assimilators for now. They really only pay form themselves if your going to assimilate enemy colonists from the ground or else assimilate a lot of natives with only a few drones present and no plans to send the King there.
• Ensure that all defense systems are on.
• Switch to Roaming Defense.
• Build several Small Deep Space Freighters with the starting FTL-2 engines to assist with exploration / planet claiming. Exact amount to build will heavily depend upon the map.
• Keep the starting fighters at home for defense.

• Turn on all their Bioscanner devices. Normal scanners will tell you very little about planets that you don't have bases (or at least ships in orbit. Without visiting it or Bioscanningit you don't know where the natives are.) This makes the Bioscanners on B 200s that much more important in locating where large quantities of natives are. A later host also added bioscan results directly in the the native tab.
• Look at the local map. Count how many planets you have between about 230 ly and 400 distance from your home world. Secondly consider the ones up to about 600 LY, offsetting for what is known about where other races start.
• Consider that your going to what to spread them out as well to maximize area covered by both regular scanners and long range scanners. Ideally they can barely be reached in one turn.
• Also remember that you only have enough fuel to hyper jump one time and are going to be on slow 20 ly drives the rest of the way.
• Ensure it has 100 colonists and fuel. Have 1 unit of food per colony you intend to establish. (The rest can be gathered up on the planet.) (Even the largest colony established with a B200 probe is going to need revisited unless there are lots of assmilatable natives or lots of assmilatable enemy colonists present.) If there's neither natives nor colonists and the ship can reach another planet there's no point dropping anything but 1 colonist + 1 food. But if there's a large population to be assimilated and the Kings Hive isn't coming by, it's probably best to drop a full load of colonists and all food and have brought some supplies.
• Beam up a full load of ordnance and repair kits.
• Beam down the stuff your colonies won't need.
• Launch the ones your going to. If your lucky, they'll be more good targets than you have B200s. But if your on other maps, there might well be left over B200s. Remember to turn on the hyper drives.
• Turn on Long range sensors. On the first jump, your better off with these on. These do increase how easily the enemy can see these when their engines are on and are in deep space, so try to limit the time these spend with the warp engines on. Remember that when hyping all their scans are pre-Hyp.
• On Turn 2, build as many B 200 probes as you have hyp drives! (From Lazol) New to Host 161+, Lazol's advice is absolutely essential now. Don't worry about these ships rapidly being stranded in the middle of no where, they are the only way to get info on natives.
• Remember that hyp movement is currently half way thru warp movement and that almost all hyp ships, including the B 200 can NOT use it's warp engines after hyp if the hyp drive is on.
• Also remember that scanners on ships with hyp drives on don't seem to work after hyp.
• It seems to be unpredictable when the King has been onboard the B-200 if he arrives on the new base in time to instantly assimilate natives, so you may find yourself waiting an extra turn.
• If the King is BDAing down to a base whose planet has natives, the King will arrive after the base has tried to assimilate the natives, and so you won't get a tech increase. (Gabor Toeroe discovered this.) I'm of the opinion that even if a manual transfer down is given, the King would still miss the party (except perhaps if the ship is within transporter range of the base before any form of movement at all.) Bottom line is don't do this.

• New to Host 161+ & enlarged capacity: This ship has gone from useless to absolutely essential in early game for forming farms away from the Kings Hive.
• These have tons of good material like supplies and foodfar in excess that a fraction of a farming colony can use so beam the surplus down.
• Load them up with a full load of colonists. DON'T actually send them anywhere on turn 1, but by pre beaming it this turn if we see a good planet on turn 2, our colonists are already loaded and can beam down the same turn.
• One option of using is to stay at the home world and waiting for it to relocate and then refound the base and then warp chunnel to the new location to repeat.

 

• Dump all their colonists and cargo onto the planet.
• Beam up a full load of ordnance and repair kits.
• Beam up 2 units of Durainum to max. out their armor.
• Turn on long range scanners to ensure you detect things.
• However, keep their warp drives off except when it's advantageous for them to travel under their own power. They are extremely visible when their warp drives are set to 90.

• Check their starting engines. If not FTL-1 or above, scrap these because they'll be too slow.
• If you don't start with any approative ones, you need to build a few for initial exploration of area's too close to be efficient to send B 200s to and also bringing back the minerals that happen to be laying around on the surface of the planet. Don't build too many though, you'll need to save some for ships with higher guest quarters. Of course, later in the game your going to need several because these are the most efficient ships for ferrying minerals & food around but by then you should have warp engine tech up to 19 or 20.
• Remember to dump the repair kits and ordnance back to the base whenever you build these. The idea is to relocate existing repair kits & ordnance from your colonies to ships that can use them, not waste them on ships that can't.

• Improve Warp Engines every turn. Also work on generators until the price goes up. Insure your at Planet Tech 3 by turn 7 so you can build new Kings Palaces without having the King present.
• Also try to improve Hull tech every turn.
• Buy the +100 shields exotic tech when this won't interfere with Engines, Hulls, or getting to Planet Tech 3. Your ships will need them if your attacked early on.

• Continue to build cities, but save up money for Kings Palaces.
• Boost factory count whenever it because a bottleneck for city and/or King's palace production. This will happen a lot on common master population settings until you reach 1000 factories.
• If supplies become a problem for building more factories, then turn off the terraformers and refrain from building new cities until the problem is resolved.
• Whenever you have 5000 MC and 500 supplies, load it onto a ship (probably a fully loaded Iron Slave to boost the farming ability at the same time.)
• On any turn your going to move the home base, don't build any ships with the exception of a Fire Cloud or Fire Storm.
• The Laser Miner Drill only mines 1000 ore per turn per ship. But only the first 100 mines are fully effective and the rest only produce SQRT(excess amount). And LMD doesn't extract fuel at all. As a result, you will generally want to first build to 101 mines and add some cheap Biocides parked in orbit when you reach hull tech 9.
• Andrew states,  "I try to never leave my home base on the same planet for more than one turn in the beginning of a game. I try to leapfrog my firestorms with a slave and go from native world to native world. Lots of mines help clean out the planet (or used too...) and then the second firestorm arrives and drops a king's palace on a nicely terraformed world. Works well." My response is I do the same thing but without the Iron Slaves.
• Food is an extremely important commodity and requires the most colonists. I'm calculating that for every 100K colonists, you'll need 3K colonists farming. (2K for the cities, and 1K for the general population.)
• Ground Chunnel is after just about everything (including all mining and assimilation), so if you ground chunnel to another planet and there's currently assmilatable natives in the current planet, you will assimilate them before the ground chunnel takes place.

• Keep one at home as an anchor point for ground chunnel.
• Send the other to the closet target with natives detected, especially Humanoid and Ghipsodial.) Speed has become very important since the Rebels were released.
• If you can afford it, beam up 5000 MC and 500 supplies for a Kings Palace and a full load of drones onto sufficient Iron Slaves / Quietuses to fully farm the world you are leaving with sufficient additional money and supplies for the farms the turn your ground chunneling. (Exception: if your coming right back to the same world.)
• After ground chunneling (which takes place at end of movement), drop off the drones and 5000 MC and 500 supplies and start moving the former anchor to the next turn.
• Nearby X Fields prevent both warp chunneling (200 LY) and ground chunneling (100 LY.)
• Any ship going thru a warp chunnel involved in combat that turn, only has half shield power. With the exception of the Ahni, all our ships have very little armor (including FC's and FS's), and so such ships are much more likely to be destroyed. So plan chunneling ahead.
• Yes, a pair of Fire Storms can both travel via warp chunnel and ground chunnel that base over the planet it arrived in a single turn. Requires the first Fire Storm to have both Warp Chunnel and Ground Chunnel on, waypoint 1 set to current location of the other Fire Storm, way point 2 set to the same as the other Fire Storm's way point 1, warp engines OFF, and at least 200 units of fuel on board. For the other Fire Storm remember to turn ON the warp engines as well as check the distance to the target planet.
• In addition, in a tightly packed area, where FS1, FS2, and P3 are each within 90 LY, you can leap frog with the Fire Storms to keep the base moving every turn.
• Finally, if an opponent (or a kind host) places a jump gate (or exit to a wormhole) over a base, your Fire Storm heading to the base will get there in time for your other Fire Storm to ground chunnel your base there. Considering that Jump Gate and Worm Hole movement are both after all combat, your opponent is in for a rude suprize the following turn if you've had the foresight to build lots of Mini Assimilators.
• Disadvantage of the ships escorting FCs / FSs thru a warp chunnel. While such a FC or FS will continue to move that turn after chunneling (if given a second waypoint, and speed > 0), under host 140, this confuses the escorting ships and they will come to a complete halt. So if you really want the other ships to move that turn, JOE can't be used or else there must be ships at the destination point capable of towing the ships that escorted the chunneling ship thru the warp chunnel.
• Warp Chunnel is before fast hyp, so an enemy Meteor trying to steal your FC / FS by hyping to a FC / FS that's warp chunneling away will miss the chunnel.
• Technically, a Fire Storm can currently move under it's own power to waypoint 1 to chunnel the base away (set to waypoint 2) if the speed is set exactly (Gabor Toeroe), but due to round off errors moving, this could be highly risky behavior due to possibility of overshooting the base you wish to have moved. It's much safer to have the FS already be in position (or at the very least Warp Chunnel or else have it towed in so it's engines can be off) when your ready to move a base.

• As they discover their target, set up a transfer down of colonists + 1 food to them. You may get unlucky and have to wait an extra turn or two or else get lucky and be able to do a fly-by colonization.
• Have smallies beam up the surface minerals to drop off at the home base whenever it's nearby.
• Beam up fuel for the B 200's.
• Since the B200 has a limited guest quarters and cargo space, on planets with no natives, I like to just beam down 1 drone, 1 food and nothing else as a pure listening post. There's plenty of time to develop that planet properly with a freighter later.
• Make a note of the planets with natives detected by the B200. I like to use the notepad and turn on all 3 colors for these planets and when I arrive at the planet, check to see which natives were actually there.
• I like to use the notepad to designate planets that haven't been colonized yet that have Humanoid and/or Ghip natives with Green. For Amorphous and Chups, I use red, and for other other natives, yellow.
• After hull and engine techs are maxed out I change the colors. Green for very large assmilatable native populations, Yellow for most other assmilatable natives. Threshold is very dependent upon native settings. I mark bases seen with natives inside in the same color scheme.
• Are you playing against conservative players? In that case aggressive behavior like proceeding ASAP to the core of Epsilon can pay off big divendeds when they finally reach the area and discover your dug in too deep to remove.
• If on the other hand, you are playing against aggressive players, you may arrive at a key area just in time to semi develop it but have no defenses and therefore they capture your planets.

• If you transferred drones to a world but don't see a colony, there are probably AMORPHS on the planet. Mark this planet with a big red Lethal avoid sign. Later you can use a Laser Mining Drill to extract any and all minerals present. Or trade them! Admiral Quixote suggests "looking at the data pad BEFORE transferring the drones." which of course is a good idea.
• I wouldn't worry about the Chups, I have yet to see them join a Borg base.
• If there are no natives and low minerals : Mined out no native planets are optimum for a Kings Palace. Send 5000 MC, 500 supplies plus sufficient drones to farm from Iron Slaves and/or Quietuses plus additional money and supplies for the farms and build the palace.
• If there are Humanoids and/or Ghips : Excellent planet to chunnel your King to. (Or if discovered very early on [see B 200 King Tactic] hyp your King there.) Don't bother developing it yet, but send without delay 1 Firestorm there keeping the other at your home world, and relocate. This has the major advantages of keeping your King productive breeding drones and maximizing income with the minor drawback of it taking longer to get there.
• If there are natives you can assimilate there far in excess of amount of colonists that can be used farming there : Mark the planet as a very good spot to chunnel to. Don't bother with much development yet.
• If there are natives you can assimilate but less than the amount that can be used to farm, treat it like the "no natives" cases below, except that they are even better to develop as farming colonies / Kings Palaces.
• If there are no natives but high minerals : Mark the planet as a potential spot to chunnel to after getting the natives for strip mining. (Note: currently in all but the lowest mineral setting, minerals are so abdunant there's little difference between a high and medium level mineral planet.)
• If there are no natives but medium level minerals: These are the odd ball planets that are relatively low on both strip-mining and founding of Kings Palaces queues, develop them as farms and/or mines as approative.
• Note: While your King can instantly assimilate Humanoids and Ghips the same turn on the same planet, your drones can't assimilate two different types of natives (such as Amphibians and Bugs) the same turn. You also assimilate in the same order as the races appear.
• Colonists needed to fully farm a world within farmable range = farming rating * 1000. Probably rounds at 500 like other things. Remember to bring 10% extra unless you are willing to wait a few turns because of the crew conversion upon landing.
• Colonists needed to mine a world full of minerals that is unfarmable at max. efficiency: 10K. Remember to bring an extra 1K that converts to crew.
• If you don't bring enough supplies to build all structures and want to build some locally, there is a SQRT (2 * colonists) limit on factories, but given the above limits, it's not likely to be an issue.
• Worlds fully farming >= 250 farms can also support 3 cities. Those running >= 150 farms < 250 can also support 2 cities. Even those running >= 50 farms < 150 can support 1 city. A world running less than 50 farms can't really be called a farming colony, so this basically means you can have at least one city on every farming world.

• Don't bother building armor. Just beam up Durainum after your stockpile runs out. (Disadvantage: creation of armor is after combat.)
• The Fire Cloud won't actually consume the Duranium. Beam 1 unit up, it will produce 50 armor and the Dur will still remain.

• The minimum must haves for defense is: Quietus armed with Disrupter Cannons, Pulsed Lasers, and Flake Cannons, and the starting fighters. Without the starting fighters, you need Cubes.
• These fighters will perform much better in combat if pre formed into small wings with good settings for their types, but if you do this remember to chunnel them when your hive moves or else they are defending an insignificant world while leaving your Kings hive wide open.
• If a kind Rebel or Privateer player agrees to send X number of care packages of 100K Humanoids, research up to 10-X hull tech level prior to the packages arriving for optimum value of the humanoids.
• If a kind Rebel or Privateer player agrees to send X number of care packages of 100K Ghips, refer to an engine tech level cost chart to ensure optimum value of the Ghips.
• In either case, these care packages can allow you to speed up research of Large Weapons, other normal techs, and perhaps even Cloning Tanks!
• Note that only one such package should arrive at your Hive a turn (techs can only advance once), he must NOT have a base on a planet (or else they'll end up in his base), and he must also have control of the pods the turn they drop, because if you own the pods and drop them onto a planet you have a base on, you won't get the tech advancement nor the 5000 MC. In an area with several very close planets that you haven't settled any of yet, him landing a pod on each planet followed by you leap-frogging ground chunneling works well, if somewhat expensive fuel wise.

• If you spot anything, do NOT advance much further in that direction for now, but jump out on tangents to attempt to determine the direction they are coming from and the width of their empire.
• Mark the most likely approach vector as the first priority for a Fire Cloud / Storm net and the default location of the first cubes.
• Perhaps send a message to try to determine their intentions.
• Prepare for war, but hope for peace.
• (Preparing for war often brings peace, but preparing for peace often invites attack.)

• Without Quietus in your fleet, your fleet is all too easy to be captured by an opposing one armed with Disrupter Cannons and mixed Disrupter/Pulsed Lasers.
• If you must fight, a good one to use is :
• 3 Quietus armed as above + 5 B 222 + the starting fighters.
• This has a very high probability of winning battles against small task forces, a small chance of capturing another ship, and the Quietus often manage to recapture (rather than destroy) any B222 temporarily captured.
• B222's with 10 PD slots can use 2 slots for Holo Decoys to decrease enemy small weapons and fighter effectiveness.

Harassment and Combat tactics :

• B 200s can be used as harassment either separately or in groups against undefended colonies, freighters, and fleeing pods! Optimum is War hops and FTL 1s, but those left over B 200s will still have some use!
• First 500 colonists assimilate the enemy on a one to one basis! Can you say a group of B 200s hyping out or a B 41 flying high speeds to under defended colonies?
• However against a prepared opponent, there is a good chance that your probes will be captured. But just about every hyp ship is better than the B 200 anyway & having a B 41 captured wouldn't be a big deal either.
• Ground units prevent bases from surrounding. Major Exception : Borg Assimilation Beams. I've assimilated many a ground base from orbit that had Agro Tanks or Plastrons in them and even an abandoned EE home world full of Battle Droids.
• The Cyborg Tank is now a lot more useful. If your fighting an opponent that can get large quantities of mechs on your main collective relatively undetected, (CLOAKING RACES with minesweepers! HYP RACES with minesweepers!), a certain number are absolutely critical. You might even want to consider adding Laser Cannons if your opponets are in the habit of sending large quantities of troops.
• You might also find it useful to send three waves of forces in a invasion. The front line (Cubes) just sweeps thru enemy fleets on the way to shipyards. The second wave  (10 to 20 Quietuses and 1 or 2 cubes or else 4 or 5 cubes alone) assimilates enemy colonists from orbit.
• DON'T have your first wave of cubes park in orbit over a large enemy colony; if you can't have a second wave come by soon and take care of it, just blast it from orbit! Free floating wings can be warp chunneled. If you have the upper hand, maximize your advantage now, because who knows what the next host will bring.
• Watch out for TNT / GBA traps when you capture a base from orbit. It doesn't execute the same turn as your assimilation, but if you forget to change the code ...
• Greg Rae's Combat Tactics

• Starting Value: 15 (low, but it's modified by)
• Happiness: We Borg always get the +50% growth happiness bonus. (Happiness is irrelevant, and constantly reset to 100.)
• Exotic Techs: These are added first to the starting value
• Borg King : Multiply by 8 after almost everything.
• Food : Remember to have 100 food per 100K colonists (or whatever food settings host is using) present for maximum growth. Otherwise, it's prorated. And the amount needed for maximum growth is independent of how many cities there are on the planet, except to the extent there is more food that needs replished in bases each turn for bases with cities.
• Climate : Is irrelevant except that food won't grow below 30 nor above 77, which is why we Borg have both ground terraformers and orbital terraformers.
• Cities: Each City takes away is -0.02% growth towards the end of calculation. 500 cities = ZPG
• Max. Population: The latest I've heard from Tim on this states that you can exceed 50 Million colonists, but this will also result in ZPG. (30 Million for shareware.) and if natural breeding that turn would result in more than 50 Million you'll stop at 50 Million. Given that 10% of your hive is always crew members, this is a 55 Million hive. (More if you've had drones converted into troops.)
• King, no cities, and large food stockpile : 15 * 1.5 * 8 = 180
• King, no cities, large food stockpile, and first Exotic Tech: (15 + 20) * 1.5 * 8 = 420
• King, 300 cities, large food stockpile, and first Exotic Tech: 420 * .4 = 168.
• King, 300 cities, large food stockpile, no Exotic Tech: 180 * .4 = 72
• Large food stockpile, no King, No cities : 15 * 1.5 = 22.5
• Large food stockpile, no King, No Cities, and first Exotic Tech: (15 + 20) * 1.5 = 52.5
• As you can see from the examples, the Growth Exotic Techs main benefit is to the Kings Hive and not to other planets.
• (Thanks to Andrew for the calculations and others in the planets 4 group for the inspiration to write this section.)

• I like the localized cluster approach. Basically designate a central permeant planet that a local group of planets within roughly 200 to 240 LY will send all it's stuff to. This planet should have a Fire Cloud permeantely parked in orbit and increasing defenses as time goes on. I'd recommend also picking planets that are productive in it's own right to cut down the ferrying. Calculate how many freighters could be used relocating stuff to this world without either backlogs building up on the producing worlds nor these ships running around empty. Do this for each cluster.
• Next, have a Fire Cloud set to JOE and a fleet of smallies permeantely escorting it. Calculate how many smallies could be used without a backlog building up of the most importent cargo in the local cluster without running half empty. Bounce this fleet between a local cluster and the current location of the Kings Hive.
• When the Kings Hive is close enough to a local cluster, the ships normally assigned to ferrying stuff to the cluster can instead ferry from the local cluster to the hive.
• Need more freighters after this starts in a local cluster (world was just terraformed into farming range)? Just build them at home and ferry the extra freighters there the next time it visits.
• Or has several worlds in a cluster just been mined out and therefore not as much are needed? Just send it to either an adjoining cluster that can use it or ferry it home to the hive.
• Eventually when secondary collectives become needed, these localized clusters make good choices.
• If the number of productive clusters gets too big, just build another Fire Cloud and split the smallies between them.

Techs:

• Planet Tech: Level 4 is adequate for a long time. The next useful planet tech after 4 is tech 6 for terraformers. Tech 7 is a nice to have scanner, and tech 8 will give you AA guns for anti fighter defense, if you have enough ordnance. Tech 12 and 13 are the most useful (assault plant and Ion Cannons), but very expensive compared to the below items.
• Super Weapons: Can't use any; don't research at all unless you capture a ship that can use them.
• Large Weapons: Key LW techs are levels 2 (Disrupter Cannons), 3 (Sand Castors), 7 (Photon Torpedoes), 9 (Particle Cannon), 10 (Pulsed Phasor Cannons). Tech 13 (Gatling Phasors) is very expensive to research and worse yet more than double the costs of cubes. I'd recommend stopping at level 10 until you have enough money to afford this and most of the combat exotics.
• Small Weapons: Key SW techs are levels 3(Disrupters), 4 (Streak Missiles), 9 (Tachyon Guns). You can stay at level 2 quite a while. Once you research level 3, you might as well keep on researching each turn until you reach small tech 9. I see no point in Plasma Guns given their limited range, and how much Tachyon Guns benefit from the Small Weapons exotics for Borg ships. (Plasma Guns are much more effective on Centauri ship designs and other medium priced ships with a several small weapons mounts but no large one)
• Point Defenses: Key PD techs are levels 3 (Flake Cannons), 5 (Micro Sand castors), 6 (Auto Blasters), 7 (Turbo Lasers), 9 (Micro Sand Castors), 10 (Interceptors). Levels 3, 5, and 6 make good stopping places. Once you have 7 though, you might as well finish researching the rest ASAP.
• Generators: Might as well research the first 3 techs in the first 3 turns for a total of 15 MC. Once you research 4, research to 6 and stop until small weapons need more and then max. out.
• Engines: Second highest Borg Priority: Research every turn you can until maxed out. (New to games starting in host 166: Default Starting Engine tech is now 7! The primary effect is warp engine tech advancement has been moved up six turns by everyone.)
• Hulls: Top Borg Priority. Research every turn you can until maxed out.
• Hyper Drives: A medium Borg Priority, keep on investing until you reach level 9 as long it won't interfere with higher priorities. B 200's mounted with the Warhop can hyp back to where they started without refueling.
• Shields: A very high Borg Priority. Research whenever it won't interfere with Engines and Hulls.

• +100 shields : Research by turn 5, only 100 MC to maintain, a no brainer
• All other Exotic Tech should wait until you've maxed out Hulls, Engines, Shields, generators are at 6, planet is at 4, and you have enough money where they won't interfere with discovery of other techs above. In order
• 20% less fuel : Low maintenance costs, useful in hostile territory where the fuel has been stripped.
• +100 scanners : Makes your B 200 scanning net more powerful.
• +10 attack bonus: Low maintenance cost makes it worthwhile. Can wait if your not at war.
• Stealth mines: Very nice tech, there is a good chance that they won't even get an unknown contact if you have this on unless they have long range mine detectors. But no point in researching until you plan on laying mines.
• +5 Large Weapon shield bonus: Makes all Large Weapons quicker at knocking out shields. Can wait if your not at war.
• +10 evasive bonus: Low maintenance cost makes it worthwhile. Can wait if your not at war.
• first level of small weapon shield bonus: Very worthwhile for the cost. Can wait if your not at war. Note that it has no effect on Lasers nor Pulsed Lasers.
• first level of small weapon armor bonus: Ditto. Same note about not working on Lasers nor Pulsed Lasers. DOES allow Tachyon Guns to drain armor.
• 50% less fuel: Reduces fuel needs during warp movement to a bare minimum. Extremely useful once you have a cube.
• +200 scanners: This results in a very big boost to your scanners on board cubes, reducing the chance of missing enemy ships to a minimum.
• +20 attack bonus. While it has a very high initial cost (40K), it's maintenance cost is only 400 MC. The best time to turn this on is while your investing in Planet Tech trying to get techs 12 and 13 and don't want to turn on the 3000+ MC maintenance cost ones yet. Can wait if your not at war.
• First cloning exotic! Extremely cost effective as long as food supplies are adequate. Can be switched off and restarted at no penalty in case a war breaks out and you start needing combat exotics, or if food stockpile on Hive drops too low to be cost effective.
• The next batch of exotic techs starts to become expensive to maintain, appear to require creation of several additional Kings Palaces, and value depends upon the situation. If the Robots, false collective, EE, or anyone else invests in the S-Pulse, be sure to turn off the cloning tanks to avoid wasting money.
• Shield boosting techs (+300 and +500) these are both no penalty to restart exotics, so can be activated right when you expect the heaviest combat and dropped right afterwards. (Particularly the +500.) Their primary benefit is too Quietuses, Fire Clouds, and Fire Storms.
• Second LW anti shield tech: Extremely cost effective against shields. Lower to maintain than second SW anti exotic! Gatling Phasors shouldn't even be considered until you have this tech.
• Second SW anti shield tech: This tech is most useful when anticipating expecting an enemy with a lot of hulls with either natural 3000 shields as well as an enemy that has +500 shield boosting exotics on.
• +20 evasive. An all purpose combat tech for somewhat reducing the effectiveness of enemy fire.
• While the +50 attack bonus tends to result in all your weapons hitting the enemy even at long range (unless shot down by a PD) this is particularly effective against the Aczanny and other races with naturally evasive hulls. This will also be a big help against fighters.
• Both LW anti armor (and second SW anti armor) are best against enemy's with a lot of Ironclads [except the Lizards who have partial immunity to these exotics.] Prime examples are against the CoM Virgo, EE Super Gorbi, Cylon Vlat, and Rebel Rush.
• PDs 50% faster recharge is very useful against not only the standard fighter races, but against whichever worlds several non fighter races (particularly the Stormers) have based their starting fighters (usually their HW.) Note that this only affects PDs that take more than 1 sec to recharge.
• The Anti Fighter Point Defense exotic is highly recommended if your facing a true fighter race that has sand shields on. This startup cost is extremely high, so you'll need to save up well in advance. This will fit in well with existing fleets and it's maintenance is quite reasonable. (Well, Tim greatly increased this price after I wrote this so the maintenance isn't quite the bargain it was before..)
• I'm not a big fan of the Enhanced Sand shields tech. This only benefits one weapon, and it's use seems to require a reconfiguration of the fleet, and it's maintenance cost  is much higher.
• S Pulse : Very important to be able to maintain this (either yourself, or if in a team, rotating the cost among your team) before starting. Activating this tech may incur the wrath of other players, so not recommended if there's a nearby powerful player that is currently neutral that you didn't want to fight. It's also recommended to have nearly every single useful combat exotic on first.
• (Usually) Non Useful exotics for you
• All pod boosting techs. Since you can only acquire pod launchers by capturing enemy ones (or having an ally build them to be captured) you will have very limited use of these. Even with all of these, your pods would only go 80 LY a turn compared to the 120 LY your Smallies and Quietuses are traveling (or towed at 190 LY by or cube or warp chunnel on board a FC/FS). These techs are in the game primaly for EE & Rebels.
• +300 scanners. It's not that they don't work, but more that it overloads the amount of data you have for the range of your ships. It's in the game because it's a must for Hyp races who would otherwise be flying faster than their headlights. It's still not a complete waste of money, but I feel there's several other exotics that are worth more, especially since they no longer reveal natives on planets.
• Ion Deflectors. It's rare to face an opponent with sufficient Ion Cannons on their bases for your cubes to worry about, but if your opponent ever does decide to place several hundred of them, it would be useful.
• Borlox Armor. You can instantly regenerate armor with Dur so this tech has no point for you. (Something like 100+ ahnis needed a full load of armor each on an ongoing basis needed for the maintenance to cost less than alchemy.) It's in the game for the other races that can't do this.
• Transwarped World Crusher. Unless you aquire a ship with the WCM, it has no use for you at all. Birds tend to love this exotic.
• Stealth Fighters. Chances are you won't be flying wings solo. It's in the game for the Rebels.
• Nem Shields. Even against an opponent that can launch nems, it's much more efficient for you to simply not bring any fighters along. It's mostly in the game for fighter races facing the Stormers.
• Sand Shields. You probably won't have enough fighters for this to matter. In the game for all fighter races, who tend to make this a priority.
• Omega Pulse. Base shields don't stop assimilation, so they can generally be ignored. A wing of 1000 of your type 2 fighters would also take down the base shield if you don't want to park a fleet in orbit.
• Second and Third cloning exotics. The 100 turns needed for max. growth virtually destroyed the usefulness of the second one. Basically, to run the second one efficently, you first need a lot of room for them all on the home world. (No more than 33 Million drones if they were no above ground cities and food not an issue.) With 30 Million living in above ground cities and lots of food then you don't want more than 43 Million in the base.) Second, you'll now need a place to move the newly created drones to unless you have 500 above ground cities [which results in ZPG when all are full anyway.] there even if you turn off all cloning the next turn. (Because otherwise normal non-enhanced growth bumps into the limit.) Even more need removed to maintaign A and if you wish to maintaign B, I hope there's a pod laucher and some very close worlds to pod off these colonists to. (Or ahni cubes.) Any planets that get these new colonists will also need food. (Those placed on cubes won't need any.) Consquently the second cloning tech really only makes sense if your getting food via non-Borg means. (Agrodomes! GD of worms! Friendy Priv stealing food from other players and donating it to you.) (The third was never useful given it cost the same as the S Pulse.
• Propaganda Techs. They are way too expensive for their effectiveness.

Ships roles:

Photo	Name	Roles	Description	Outfit
	Small Deep Space Freighter	Freighter	A very cheap ship that has a big enough cargo hold for building Kings Places. It's also slightly faster than Iron Slaves with the starting FTL 2 engine cache. (substantially faster with FTL 5s.) But it just can't handle colonization needs more than a very minor mining colony.	FTL 5 or starting FTL 2.
	B 200	Explorer,  Scout	Excellent hyper jumping ship and good at dropping listening posts and parking over your boarder planets. Build with parts on hand as much as possible. Those assigned to garrison duty should have lousy engines. Some of the explorers should use some of the starting FTL 2 engines, (but don't go overboard.) If you don't think the ship will last until you invest in the first small weapon exotic, then pulsed lasers would be preferred, but otherwise it's best to have a small weapon that gets some benefit from those exotics. A group of these can also ground assimilate an enemy farming world with too few troops and no ground assault vechiles.	any low tech starting engine or FTL 1. Preferabely Warhops, but any hyp on hand initially. Disrupters now preferred
	B 41	Raider	1. Anti COM Warrior Assault ship 2. Ground assimilating enemy farming worlds with too few troops and no ground assault vehicles	Transwarps, disrupters
	Iron Slave	Carrier, Colonizer	1. Forming farming colonies obsolete for this purpose once there are sufficient Quietuses. 2. Can carry 100 fighters. Obsolete for this purpose with the building of a Biocide.	FTL 1 or starting FTL 2
	B 222	Mine Sweeper	Mine Sweeping operations + extra PD for holo decoys and anti fighter. Obsolete with the building of the Ahni cube except against Crystals, Robots, and those trying to out mine Crystals / Robots. Too small and weak even with anti fighter exotics for use in a fleet.	FTL 1 or starting FTL 2, Disrupters, 2 Holo Decoys, many micro sand casters.
	Quietus	Assimilator,  Colonizer First Combat ship,  Anti fighter	Carries 2X the passengers as the Iron Slave and is 1/3 rd faster, making it preferred for ferrying colonists. First ship with Large Weapons. Assimilates 100K colonists at a time. (NOT natives.) Low cost makes it still somewhat useful after building cubes. It also has a size 600 cargo, and so can be used for building Kings Palaces. Also the best ship hull to use as an anti fighter ship in sets of 9. (Cheap and plenty of ordnance room in which case use Sand castors & Micro Missiles.) The TNT code destroys empty bases if there's a ship belonging to the same player in orbit. Capture or blow up the enemy ship(s) to prevent him for doing this. This is also a combat ship to use against Privateers (with no ordnance weapons.) Note that these swarms fair very poorly against Glory Devices. Also note that this design becomes useless after the opponent has activated sand shields. (Would be useful again with engrossed sand castors if you can afford the maintenance cost.)	Disrupter Cannons, Disrupters, Primarily Turbo Lasers with a Holo Decoy and MML, FTL 5.
	Fire Cloud	Fleet Chunneler	Still useful even after Firestorms due to low cost. See Discussion on Fire Cloud vs Fire Storm.	Disrupter Cannons, Disrupters, Turbo Lasers, FTL 1.
	Fire Storm	Ground Base Chunnel! Fleet Chunneler	More weapons than Quietus.	Disrupter Cannons, Tachyon Guns, Turbo Lasers.
	Biocide	Carrier  Alchemy Food to Supply Ore Processing Assimilator Minesweeper Minelayer	The first one might be built for the numerous devices including the Laser Mining Drill, ore processing, and both alchemy devices. In addition, a food to supply converter for converting surplus food into much useful stuff. Later built for fighting when 2000 fighters are needed. This cube also has a powerful 550 scanner compared to the ahni's 250. Builder ones use dirt cheap equipment, see Ahnis for combat except use all Tachyon Guns. The Laser Mining Drill only mines 1000 minerals per turn (no fuel), but mines over 100 are only SQRT(mines in excess of 100) effective.	FTL 5, Tachyon Guns, Pulsed Phasor Cannons, half Interceptors / half Micro Missile Launchers when built for combat. Those whose job is to simply LMD the home world should have a much cheaper design.
	Ahni	Battleship  Assimilator Minesweeper Minelayer Alchemy Food to Supply Ore Processing Hackor Droid	The main line ship of the Borg fleet. Generally the most cost effective ship you have for fighting. Also has all the devices of the Biocide and a hacker droid for creating plans of captured ships. At Small weapons 4 through 8 (or if fighting the Crystals) substitute in all Streak Missiles below this substitute in Pulsed Lasers. If your at Point Defense level 9, substitute in all MicroMissles at levels 7 and 8, all Turbo Lasers, at level 6 Auto Blasters, at level 5 MicroMissles. (Hopefully your at least to PD level 5). For Large Weapons, when fighting the Crystals, substitute in Particle Cannons (uses one ordnance.) Otherwise at levels 7, 8, and 9 substitute in Photon Torpedoes and at level 6 and below substitute in Disrupter Cannons. (If you find you have money to burn you may wish to avertise this fact by building with Gatling Phasors but this more than doubles the cost of ahnis.) At LW tech 13, use Gatling Phasors. Grav mines are greatly preferred over the barb ones due to gravs ability to stop hyp ships in their tracks even after the Ahni leaves (until swept) and the larger percentage chance of being hit. May become even more so if Tim decides to make fighters immune to all barbs instead of just Cylon Nova Barbs. Some barbs mixed in are still recommended for increased security against cloakers. Note that with the Grav Well Generator and sufficient drones onboard, using some cleaver tactics you can board enemy hyp ships with slow warp drives. Primarily examples are EE and Rebs. But be careful not to outsmart yourself if the hypers are owned by Fed / Stormers or has it's own boarding laser. Obviously can be used for colonizing with the 2.5 Million guest quarters, but rather expensive to do so considering this is your best war ship.	Transwarps,  all Tachyon Guns,  half Interceptors, half Micro Missile Launchers
	Captured ships	Various	See the race guides to see if their useful at all and if so how they should be used. Remember that some races ships perform poorly when owned by a different race even for us Borg (and others with Hackor Droids) and the Privs have an easy time boarding any ship owned by a different race. We can probably safely use cloaking ships, but can't particularly use small guest quarters Boarding Lasers (except in masse where they either combine to be a large boarding force or else we are blowing up the ship with the damage done by boarding lasers.)

Base roles:
 

King's hive	Compound Interest  Major Shipyard  Farm  Strip Mining	(Ideally 30 to 45 Million)	Your biggest base but if more than 97% of your colonist population is there, you will have a farming problem. Try to build up to and keep a minimum of 30 Million drones here, also needs the most defense. Very mobile but kept in safe areas. Remember the interest the King provides to free cash. Also remember the 50 Million colonist limit. Start thinking about having a secondary collective if you haven't already at 30 Million. Above 45 Million export them to ensure you don't hit the limit.
Secondary collective	Kings Palace  Shipyard  Farm  Mining	10 to 15 Million drones	Have significant building power on their own, but they are more expendable for risky operations (especially the smaller ones.)  Can also be used as a ground attack base by adding a lot of Mini Assimilators and Cyborg Tanks along with Quietuses / cubes air cover.
Victory Points base	Kings Palace  Farm  Mining	1 to 1.1 Million drones	These are purely to inflate your VP score. (And drive another stake into the hearts of those already suffering from insufficient Resource Points!)
Kings Palace	Kings Palace  Farm?  Mining?	100+ drones	It's primary purpose is the 1000 MC per turn being sent to the Galactic Bank. It can later be upgraded. These can usually afford terraformers and/or AA guns once you have the tech. Try to get to approative drone level for approative underground minerals, particularly fuel.
.Farm	Farm Mining?	100K drones	Produces food for the collectives. Very few colonists needed because the farms produce the revenue needed for the factories. 1K per farm intended. Remember the 10% conversion.
Fuel Colony	Mining	10,051+ drones	Mine fuel so your B 200 probes can be refilled. 1 mine per 100 colonists. Can latter be terraformed into farmable range (with colonists brought in) if you wish.
Cubes	Mining  Food to Supply  Ore Processing	100K+ drones	These can be used as colonies that never need food. The advantage is of these is all their taxes go to the ship instead of being split with the GB, but the disadvantage is no growth. 100K drones will also help defend against boarding actions (poorly if most of colonist drones though!) and also allow for the possibility of offensive boarding actions. (This is much more effective than defensive actions, if target can be reached before 1/4th movement & you stay within transport range long enough.) Note that in non-pre existing games, there won't be as many HG running around, which increases the security of cubes against boarding lasers.
Listening Post	None	1 to 100 drones	It's current purpose is a place holder. Other bases move through whenever it's useful or else a Kings Palace can be added or else the planet turned into a farm or fuel colony.

Fleet Battles:

• Your now on your own, it's going to depend a lot upon who your fighting and what they are using.
• If you can win the tech war, you'll be able to build cubes before other races can defend against them. (Andrew De Boer)

• General : All other races seem to have Minelayers available at cheaper hull tech levels than you. In addition, all other races can get Native Distress Calls from Humanoid and Ghip planets, which your allies can forward these to you. It appears you don't get bug distress calls from when the Enforcers are attacking them either. Almost everybody will want plans to your Fire Storm & want Amorphs you find. You are immune to the general bad affects like other races with Hackor Droids (except the Priv bonus stealing foreign hulls) but are subject to the several race hull disadvantages that many ships have when not owned by the intended race.
• Important: if you want to share a planet with another player and NOT assimilate him, be sure he also his attack OFF. If you have attack OFF and he has attack ON, it will disturb your drones and they will assimilate him.
• Federation : They are quite straight forward, you might want to ally with them for the Lokis. They may want to ally with you so you don't assimilate them in mid game. They have the Scotty bonus, which repairs ships in the middle of combat. Most useful ship to you: LOKI!!! IME, they seem to mostly be an early to mid game threat and once you have a couple of cubes they are easy to wipe out given the cost effectiveness of  a taskforce of cubes vs cost effectiveness of typical fed fleet.
• Lizards : The scariest ship they have is the Lizard Class Cruiser. You want to ally them for the Lokis and so you don't have to fight them before having cubes. They may want to ally with you so that after you have lots of grav mines you don't assimilate them in late game. Most useful ship to you: LOKI!!! unless you have plans to the Deth Spec and have built several. IME, they were so weak as to be considered unbalanced. Tim has since added Lizard selling of prisoners and HG, so if they aquire enough of them, particularly HG, they might be able to build enough T Rexs. Note that they won't look for you as a source of income (very low prices for Borg drones) but still have ample motivation for attacking us very early on.
• Bird Men : The ANTI BORG race! You want to ally with them to keep them from unleashing Nanoviruses upon your drones and blowing up your planets with cloaked Dark Wings. Most useful ship to you: Deth Spec! IME, time is not on your side here unless you are making much more money than they are because of their very effective cloaked Dark Wings (& Gs) that destroy bases from a distance.
• Stormers: They also have 3 cloakers all scary in their own way. You want to ally with them so you don't have to fight them without having cubes. They may want to ally with you so that after you have lots of grav mines you don't assimilate them in late game. DON'T bother using PTT's against them. Most useful ship to you: Deth Spec! Either GD ship would also be useful if facing any opponent that's gone minefield crazy. IME, Stormers are much more of an early to mid game threat because you can both see their big ships (Vickies) and the SW on the Vickie is an anti fighter weapon, which we don't build many of anyway.
• Privateers: The Meteor can travel 1130 lightyears in one turn! (750 hyp + 380 grav acel Transwarps). They are almost an efficient as we are gathering natives (Native Dust Off Device) and can gather the contraband we ignore (Counterband Dust Off Device). Do NOT let ship plans for ahnis nor chunneling ships get into their hands! Lay grav mines as soon as you can, they have a hard time seeing them (1/8th normal) & have to steal a minesweeper to sweep any they find. Don't use ordnance weapons against them just in case they try to steal your ordnance. See Greg Mislick's Privatter Story. You might ask them to acquire some care packages of humanoids in nice 100K packages, but may have a long wait while they get the tech levels and money up to additional Metors. Unless you are in a team game with no other Priv player present, you can't really use some of their ships because of their secret back doors. They also can't give you plans directly, so would need to give you a stripped down ship instead. I don't see a Self Destruct switch on the Lady Royale, so perhaps you can use it safely. IME, there are two varieties of Privateer players, the ones that don't know what they are doing, and the ones that are experts at playing the Privs. The first will generally be wiped out by their neighbors so you don't have to worry about them. The others though are a true force to be reconced with, but if talked to early in non-team games can often be persuaded / bribed into bothering your opponents.
• False Borg Collectives. The one and only true collective is of course yours. :) The only reason for allying is so that neither of you has to worry about instant assimilation with King of planets and ships away from the other. You can capture each others' Kings Palaces. You both already have all of each other's ship plans. :) Borg King powers against false collectives is after movement & ground combat and before ground chunnel. I actually don't have any experience fighting a Borg civil war. Probably will come down to tactics or economic efficiently or perhaps if one side made a major mistake the pure size of the economies.
• Crystals : Their scariest ship is the Light ship, which hyper jumps, lays webs, and has a Super Laser. The primary reason for you to allying with them to help you assimilate a difficult race. They may want to ally with you to prevent you from blasting their webs to obvious with cubes in masse and wiping them out. Unfortunately we have not figured out how to assimilate them yet so destroy them. DON'T use pure energy weapons against them. Also beware their Light Ship's X fields. Turn off mobile repair plants and mobile ord factories when not actively using them. Swarms of B222s may be needed to de-web their territory if you haven't acquired planned to a GD ship and kept them safe. You can't build any of their ships. I haven't done much fighting against the Crystals.
• Evil Empire : Expensive ships (every one hyp jumps) and dirt cheap fighters. The primary reason for you allying with them is to prevent them from hyp jumping into your designated space before you have cubes to build grav mines, they also have the scariest ship in the game: The Slayer, it cloaks, hyp jumps, and has the Super Laser. They want to ally with you to prevent you from using grav mines in masse to freeze them in their tracks and then assimilate them. Remember to include fighters against them. They get 10,000 MC on a shuttle on turn 7. Don't bother trying to stop it yourself though, even if your next door it's doughtful you can get enough firepower together to wipe them out before they get the money. You might tell the Privateers about them though. Most useful ship to you: Probably the Mig overall, but the Star Destroyer is almost as good for your purposes because those assimilators on your cubes will still assimilate those pesky Bird Men colonies your scanners didn't detect. IME, The best idea for you is to destroy the EE before they can build expensive Slayers and Gorbies. Except for those two ships, you have a big economic advantage because of how expensive the hyp drives on their ships are and you stooping their movement 50 LY from your cubes plus in grav mines. Bring some extra colonists along to board their ships with the survivors becoming troops.
• Robots:  Iron Clad Ships. Slow! Two dirt cheap fighters. Type 3 immune to Sand castors. Don't need food. Can no longer be assimilated as of host 161. Can also feed drones to the bugs! Can easily pod away Chups away and detonate them to rain chups. Native dust off device on the Automata to relocate natives away (to convert to bug food) if you don't beat them first. Nova minefields knock B 200s out of hyp. Minimum of 100K growth per turn with their starting 100K bugs. No minesweepers, but can detonate their own minefields to clear yours. Yes, they receive humanoid and ghip native distress signals, even though they often betray these natives by building a "strange looking pod launcher with bug larvae inside." Their ships can no longer be built by non-Cylons, and they can't build your ships either. New to host 161, their conversion of most natives into bugs will greatly reduce the number of drones you can get! (They convert most natives into 4X bugs, but it takes 6 bugs to make 1 drone!) Gun Zero has a range of 250 and is very deadly against Ahnis! (60% chance of a 49% damage hit : SUICIDE for you to go against 3 GZs that are all within range of each other especially in light of how little you gain if you do win.) Biocides fair somewhat better (40% chance of a 20% damage hit.) I'd strongly suggest getting the Rebels to fight them for you. Also new to Host 161+, you can't build any of their ships [as if you wanted to] but more importantly they can't build yours either. Probably best to destroy them before they can equip their empire with 40K Gun Zeros everywhere.
• Rebels :  Every ship can hyp jump, ships are cheap and weak, but boy are those fighters fast & effective! They know who has attack off for who and can fool enemy sensors and combat computers into thinking they are any player not actually in the combat. As a result, unless you have attack on for everybody, it may be difficult to get your computers to target the Rebel carriers even if you succeed in killing their wings. They fool your mines into not attacking them as well. And watch out for Rebel wings that also travel 400 LY a turn. Can KO nearby opponents very early. They sweep up natives first with those hyp ships with native dust off devices. An excellent player to get on the good side of to get those nice care packages of humanoids from as well as find out who has attack off for who. With Patriot's hulls costing 2100 MC each and the food generated from this cut from 200 per ship a turn to 50 per ship a turn in host 140, their most valuable ship in your hands in the Falcon, even when all natives are off planets and in bases. They should have a very large quantify of primitive natives for you to convert into drones by turn 20. IME, they are most powerful early on, but once you have cubes they won't be as big a deal unless contraband prices get too high and assimilating anyone's major colonies will help prevent that from occurring.
• Colonies: If they get a Warrior Scout within 10 LY of a Kings Palace, bye bye Kings Palace! Also there ships will ignore your minefields when they start in the same X,Y as the Virgo. Cheap ships that are capable of catching and beating Warrior Scouts are recommended in games the Colonies are in. A couple of their ship hulls are immune to the S-Pulse device. They start with the most powerful early ship in the game, as soon as the shield and armor get updated, the fire on the Maximus is put out, and their fleet gets repaired. In combat, their fighters are the most powerful in the game. I'm thinking that the most useful ship they have for you is the Celestra even with those devices you can't really use as the Borg. It's probably more efficient for them to own it, park it over collective (and keep moving it with your collective), and have them send down the money, so that they can make additional money at the same time. Most efficient of their ships for you to own would be the Cobol. Park one over your collective with the Fuel Drill on as a complement to your Biocides with LMDs. They were very effected by the host changes, their income took a major hit, but the prices on their ships fell as well. Timing is very critical here, if you are too early, their starting fleet as augmented destroys you. If you are too late, they overwhelm you with Virgos laughing at your mines. But in between, there is the happy medium where you can afford enough Ahnis to take them out.
• Enforcers: An easy agreement can be made for you to assimilate those nasty bugs for him and him to take care of amorphs. If fighting them, you should lay grav mines and have some extra anti fighter Quietuses on hand. They also have jump point generators which brings along an entire fleet. (They will probably welcome your help against the Robots.) Perhaps the Ranger would be nice to tow around for the Tachyon Scanner or else the Warrant for the much cheaper mine layer that also goes 190. I hear that if contraband prices are too low that they can just buy contraband and convert to other goods at a profit.
• Scavengers: They tend to use lots of medium sized ships instead of super powerful ones. Perhaps Gatling Phasors would be more useful. Also, some Scavenger players purposely don't research some techs to maintain their early game bonus throughout the whole game. The Scavengers are designed to share bases with other races (Non -Borg). (Their crawlers cause natives in all bases on the planet, not just their own to produce goodies for them.) See Drew Sullivan's Forgotten Class Junk Gambit. Their most useful ship to you though is probably the Atol though.
• University Alliance: Their ship list is slim but is Borg like in effectiveness. They even have a ship that can build jump gates. Send B 200 probes searching for jump gates so you can use them against him. Do this before he can form one on your end of the map. A skilled UA player with a Pathfinder is something to fear. Their most useful ship for you is the Incident, while it has many devices found on your ships, it's much cheaper, and it also generates some food. Given how cheap the Incident is and the extreme importance of food, the Incident is probably the most useful foreign hull in the game for you. I strongly recomend trading for it (or stealing!) Also note that UA can build Underground Cities which don't affect growth and colonists first fill underground cities, so a hostile UA with a lot of underground cities in his empire is a juicy target for assmilation indeed.
• RCS: They have a tough time getting started due to needing 3 different shipyards to build their complete ship list. The only ships that you might be able to build at all though are more expensive than your equivalent ships. Their race did undergo revisions to presumably make their startup earlier.
• Centauri: Lots of Small Weapons, few Large Weapons, both cheap and expensive fighters, light shields, NO ARMOR. With enough exotics, their fleet can become suprizingly effective, at least until countered with Gatling Phasors with your own exotics. Most useful ship to you: The Arkab! Soil Reformer permanently improves the soil rating. IME, the way they win is hire someone to take out the Borg very early on while sitting back and developing the largest economy to share several planets with allies and then donate a large quantify of cash to allies with big expensive ships, and build swarms of ships with all shield exotics on + all small weapons exotics on. (Or play in team games with complementary ship fleets.)
• Solarians: Economy highly dependent upon star heat. Can ground chunnel. Their ships in other races hands self-destructs. Can't be assimilated into drones but the same devices kill them. Their ships get stranded forever when they underestimate their fuel needs. You can't use their ships without them blowing up on you. They also have a device that can destroy fighters and swarms of loss massed ships at a distance.
• Peeps: How to fight them depends upon which subset of their ships that particular Peep player is using. Like the total number of their ships, they have an abdunant on ships that would be very useful to you. The Propaganda to boost money, The Genesis to improve soil ratings, and the Automany's Clone lab to boost colonist growth. At one point they were the most overpowered race in existence, but every major host change had the side effect of reducing their power [they own just about every device and Tim went after each overpower device in turn over the past two years] and so they are probably balanced now with the biggest weakness being deterring which ships are approative to use in which situations.
• Aczannies: Main feature is their very fast ships in both VCR combat and on the map, and high evasive ratings. I'm not familiar with what that Security Device on many of their ships does, if it keeps you from using their ships safely, then that severely limits which hulls of theirs you can use. The Digger is the most useful ship for you that doesn't have a Security Device on it.
• Note: all new 3rd party races under development are on hold until after VGA Planets goes Gold.

• Paul's borg guide
• Tim's borg guide

* About "King Nunn and the Assimilators" : Foreground: Myself. Back Ground : Men's Barbershop Quartet The Vocal Spectrum [2004 International College Quartent Champions & 2006 International Quartent Champions] (and fellow Ambassadors of Harmony [2004 International Chorus Champions & 160 men strong]) Image created by Oliver Harlow for inclusion in this guide at my request.

History:
1.11.2.1: Updated about section to reflect VS and AOH each winning the Gold in Louisville July 3, 2004
1.11.2: Added full description of warp chunneling / ground chunneling [GFM GToeroe], additional comments on UA, Cloning Tank Exotic B, minor change to recomended mines, and fixed error in Bioscanning.
1.11.1: Added "King Nunn and the Assmilators" picture, moved "Borg Cube Bumper Sticker" to bottom, added about & history section. Fixed several typos.

1.11.0: Minor reversions focusing on dealing with other races in light of new foriegn hull rules and fixing out of date material in the colonization section.

1.10.0: Reworked most of the colonization section in light of new farming requirment and minor revision to Borg ship pack. New section on empire management added as well.