See also: Tim Wisseman's Borg Guide , which concisely describes their special abilities and limitations, and gives you a good feel for their style; and Jon Nunn's Borg Guide , which has a useful  summary of What To Do Turn-By-Turn; a different description of each ship and its uses; and further notes on dealing with alien races. Jon keeps his guide up to date with Host changes.

Overview

Borg are an easy race to play with little micromanagement as they do not use Contraband, Spying, Happiness, or Pods. They are a good beginner's race, although setting up Chunnels can be a little tricky. They grow by Assimilating enemy colonists and natives. The galaxy rapidly converts into a sea of Borg if they are not stopped. They have more cash than most races in the early game, and though their Cubes aren't the biggest ships in the game, they are very economical to build and can usually swamp enemies. Also, their Cubes bristle with useful Devices, and can operate independently once they have left the Hive (they can extract fuel from planets directly, generate new crew by Assimilation, repair themselves, etc). The other wonderful thing about Borg is their ability to Chunnel, ie, move entire fleets vast distances in one turn.

In many games, experienced players used to unite against the Borg Threat before everyone is overpowered one by one, because almost no one is powerful enough to take on a good Borg player alone. (Though as new races have been released, opinions have diverged on Who Is Most Dangerous, so everyone-against-the-Borg alliances are rare these days.)

Borg need to be played aggressively. Every time I've seen Borg players wait until their techs were all maxed out and they were ready to move, their victims had time to disperse, build up techs, form defensive alliances, and eventually overpower the Borg. Borg are far more powerful than most rivals in the early game. In the late game, enemies are using contraband to generate more cash than the Borg, and most of your advantage is lost.

So, whereas I used to advocate in this guide that your best strategy was hiding quietly until you were ready to strike on turn 30, building maybe 4 Castles, I have learnt by watching and talking to good Borg players that I was completely wrong. This is partly because as VGAP4 has evolved over the last 2 years, [this guide was last updated in September 2000!], a lot of rules have been refined... new races / threats have appeared... some of these can find you very quickly so you can't hide for long now... other players have discovered strategies to accelerate their own races' development (such as using contraband in new ways) so they are more dangerous very quickly. So strike fast! See the strategy section below.

Therefore the Borg strategy should not be to expand as fast as possible, because that wastes fuel etc. Instead, successful Borg players set up a small, easily defensible core and attempt to get tech levels up as quickly as possible, by building as many Palaces as possible (the Borg equivalent to a Government Centre). Whilst building up, send out some B200 probes to scout, pester the enemy and divert their resources into guarding instead of hunting down your home and stomping you whilst you're weak.

Around turn 12 or earlier you will reach hull tech 10, and can drop minefields to protect your ships. Suddenly you can burst out with Cubes and you are unstoppable. The Cubes zoom up to enemy worlds, Assimilate an entire homeworld population in maybe 2 turns and drop it back on the surface as a Borg base; use the Cubes' Laser Drills and built-in alchemy devices to refill their vast fuel tanks; and barge off to the next planet. Minefields are swept aside by the Cubes' Minefield Destabilisers. It's not that Cubes are the hardest ships in the game... in a one-on-one battle, they can be destroyed (just!) by enemy ships armed with Superweapons. But the Borg can churn out loads of Cubes, and keep them fuelled and full of Ord on the move, which means they can advance incredibly quickly once they reach a critical mass. And of course Assimilation means they are never short of colonists to hold territory they have conquered.

Borg do well in games with low amounts of contraband as this hampers other races. Borg also do well in games with low starting populations (less than 1 million) because other players cannot catch up with the Borg population. Lots of natives and large maps also favour Borg.

Assimilation (and other efficient colonisation techniques)

Concentrate on planets with natives, so you can grow your population rapidly by Assimilation. Even if the colony is killed by the enemy, you have denied the enemy those natives. Ghipsoids and Humanoids are particularly valuable to you.

If there are between 20 and 20,000 Borg on a planet with Natives or enemy Colonists, Borg approximately double their population every turn by Assimilation. At hull tech 6 you get the Quietus, which can Assimilate 100,000 enemies a turn with its Assimilation Beam (not natives).

You'll find the Borg homeworld is not short of cash! Because there are no pods to ship them off with, the population justs breeds and grows, quickly exceeding a million. Probably aided by Assimilation of Natives over the first few turns. That's 10 cities or 1000mc / turn. And there's a population growth rate boost if the Borg King is there. Meanwhile you cannot spend it on Tech, like normal races, because you earn a fixed 1000mc / turn / Castle. This rapidly allows you to ship out 5,000mc / turn to startup colonies to build new Castles.

 If your high guard (King) is at the base the megacredits on the base will increase by 8%. For example if you have 1,000,000 megacredits sitting at the base they will be increased by 80,000 to 1,080,000.  But nearby, cloaked Privateers can steal any excess at a Base above 10,000mc with their Money Tap device.

Borg homeworld needs as many factories as you can build as fast as you can. Due to ord usage of weapons,  mine laying and cities. Except the first 1000 supplies which are spent for KPs (King's Palaces) you must qickly invest all supplies to build up 1000-2000 factories because then you can build 1.5 KPs every turn. And later you can alchemy the supplies for the mineral hungry cubes.

Strategy suggestions

  Using special racial abilities

The key racial abilities are based on clever use of the Borg King converting Ghipsoids and Humanoids.

The reason people hop their king around is to bring him to all the worlds to assimililate all the native instantly and get the huge cash bonus. My advice is to simply hop the main king base around to all the good native planets around.

Having tons of king's palaces is also a big key to winning as the borg, They fuel your tech advances and later ET purchases. I try to at least build one KP per turn for the early stages of the game. More as I can afford it.

I think right now (Host 116) there is a bug with ground combat that makes the borg always surrender. I have seen a borg home base with 50 million colonists, 18 million troops, 5 odd million crew and the HG along with starting AA guns and assorted mechs and fighters surrender to a CoM base with only 7 million lifeforms. And then had the same thing happen to me in other games. Very annoying. And it kills the basic borg strategy of dumping their homeworld on enemy bases to assimilate them and get the 10% MC from the enemy colonists (provided the borg have the mini-assimilators though). - adb

People are forgeting a big benifit of the Borg King. Spare Cash on the planet the King is on increases 8% per turn, compounded every turn. Per the rule of 72, a one time contribution on this world doubles every 9 turns. Placed on the planet with the most Borg, with triple income, with judicious saving and chunneling spare cash for colonies in, the Borg can build cubes off the interest alone in late game. This is quite an impressive bond rate if we are treating each turn as one year due to no inflation in Planets 4. - Jon Nunn

Using special ship devices

Hyperdrive (B200) tips:

• When jumping there are three ranges for different masses. This refers to the hull mass, not the mass of hull + cargo.
• Different Hyperdrive engines have different ranges.
• If your speed is (e.g.) 12 light years a turn and you turn on Hyperdrive, you will end up (1 hyperjump) + 12LY away. 
• See the EE page's hyperdrive quick reference table to help choose tradeoffs between different hyperdrives

Remember that the Range of a hyperjump engine is a maximum range. If a waypoint is nearer than this, the ship will land exactly at the waypoint. This is quite different to VGAP3, where the destination had to be within +/-10LY or so of the hyperjump range.

Chunnelling:

Note: Borg often ally with Scavengers, or otherwise attempt to obtain plans to the Scavengers' Forgotten Class Junk. This is a very cheap ship which, although it cannot chunnel itself, can be used as a chunnel target if you own it. This is a safe ship to send into enemy territory as it doesn't really matter if it gets killed or even captured.

Warp Chunneler: Moves the ship and all ships at the same point to another warp chunnel ship no matter how far away the other ship is. A warp chunnel jump uses 100 kt of fuel. To use the warp chunnel device set your waypoint 1 to the target ship and turn on the chunnel device. Warp chunnel jumps take place before normal movement. Ships which chunnel cannot move for the remainder of a turn after chunnelling, and their shields are at half-strength for the rest of the turn. [But hyperjumping should be possible.]

You can prevent ships at the start point chunnelling by using command code "NCH" (No CHunnel)

Crystal X-Field blocks all Cyborg starting chunnels at a range of 100 LY (and non-Cyborgs at a range of 200 LY).

Ground Base Chunnel: Moves the base under the ship to another planet. This device will NOT move the ship. Moving a base takes 100 kt of fuel and two chunnel ships. To use the device park the first Ground Base Chunnel ship (Firestorm) over the base you wish to move. Set the ship's speed to zero and its waypoint to the target planet. The target planet needs to have a Firestorm or Firecloud ship in orbit to recieve the base. If there is already a base on the target planet the moved base will merge with the existing base forming a larger base. The event takes place after all normal movement, so the ships must end movement over the base and target planet for this to work.

One nice trick with Ground Chunnel is to chunnel captured bases to your own major ones. (In general this is less risky than chunnelling a major base into a combat zone.) In this way you can add valuable structures to your repertoire.  If you can add a Government Centre to your homeworld, you can divert up to 10,000mc / turn of excess cash into your central account. (This is particularly useful since Borg always end up with lots of excess free cash, and other races target your Palaces so you might end up, towards the end of the game, with only half a dozen well defended Palaces, which isn't enough to fund many Exotic Techs.) Another nice structure to add to a shipyard is a Pod Launcher. Using this you can, among other things, use Outfit pods to upgrade your ships - which Borg normally can't do. Note that some structures ("racial specials") can't be acquired in this way.  Nor can you get more than one Kings' Palace on a base by merging 2 bases.

When merging bases in this way, beware:

• Mining efficiency decreases if you have over 100 mines on a base. Ie, 101 mines is much less effective at extracting minerals than 100 mines. (It drops in effectiveness to the square root of the number of mines. This was introduced because Borg players were building thousands of mines on their worlds and stripping them in one turn - because happiness is irrelevnt!) Also, Gabor Toro and Ralph Gerwert (two very experienced Borg players) have the feeling that above 100 mines the drones get confused and don´t pay the taxes they should pay. So they always burn down their mines with the base command code "EPA" when they have more then 100 mines on a base with a reasonable number of drones.
• If a base with 100 farms was chunnelled to a planet with a soil rating of 40, the extra farms will show up for a turn. But they will be removed at the end of the turn. This also applies to other structures which have a maximum number per base. (It is unclear from my correspondence, but I think you might get one turn's worth of extra output from these structures before they disappear. A book-keeping error in Host due to the order it resolves events in.)

Hacker Droids: To get these to work you have to tow the ship you want to hack. No matter if the nav screen tells you the ship under tow is too massive. The droid works, but only with ships your race cannot build already. A bird player who captured a Cube found to his delight that he could extract the Cube's plans by telling it to tow itself.

Be careful if you use the DTMS-N converter device. This device activates before armour creation and uses metal in the order of Duranium, Tritanium, Molybdenum. So if you are carrying (say) 100kt of Duranium for armour and 600 kt of Tritanium for fuel and have (say) room for 400 kt of fuel, the device will consume all your Duranium and 300 kt of your Tritanium leaving you with nothing to create armour with.

Borg Hulls and recommended equipment

Remember: don't bother armouring your ships. Eg 3000 armour on a Cube = 3000mc. Instead, just build the ships, then beam up Duranium (just 30kT for a Cube) and they'll armour themselves for free! [A special racial ability of the Borg's.]

• Small Deep Space Freighter : Because of the spending of the 1000 starting supplies for Kings Palaces and the lack of mine building and a high mineral requirement when you build your first cube in turn 10-15 you MUST build ~ 13 SDSF in the first turn to collect surface minerals and bring them to the chunnel targets of your homebase. Use the starting FTL drives.
• B200 : The other 13 free start-up engines should be invested into 13 B200 probes in turn 2 to prepare a straight, exact and fast B200 King tactic. Swarms of B200 probes (5-10) with PL (pulsed laser) and +100 shield exotic burn down most of the enemies' starting ships except the ones with fighters or photon torpedoes. The small cheap hyperjumping B200 Probe ship can be used to find natives and can carry enough colonists to begin the assimilation process (which kicks in at 21 colonists on a Base). Its 190 control system, and engine Vulnerability modifer makes it easy to capture, but with a huge soft spot opinon is divided on whether it's easy to capture or will blow up first. Probes burn lots of fuel, so use Iron Slaves instead when you can, but B200's are good for buzzing round behind enemy lines, scouting and Assimilating and worrying them, in the early game when there's still free fuel on planets.They DO have groovy sensors, and I don't just mean the bioscanner, which has a 500LY range (though only picks up 20% of targets), and will find planets which you can't even scan. Their main sensors have a 400ly long range, send them out as a picket line, they're cheaper and lower tech than planetary scanners. A probe with engines off sitting over a planet is almost invisible and has a good scan range. Don't get caught by surprise.
• Iron Slave Class Fueler : essentially a lightly armed LDSF with no pod bays, smaller passanger load, and some weapons, including 100 fighters. It's only tech 4, and fairly cheap. Factor in the fighters' 100ly range, and this could be your best low tech weapon platform. Treat it like it is: a light carrier (second wave). Suggested armament: 100 fighters, 2 Plasma Guns, 3 Micro Missile Launchers (anti fighter PD), 3 Intercepts. If short of money, use 6 turbolasers for point defense.
• B41 : No one has ever found a use for these.
• B222 : You'll need this for minesweeping even without the weapons. A good escort ship in fleets for killing fighters (because it has 10 PD weapons, mount turbolasers and a couple of multimissile launchers); but it will die in one-on-one (non-fleet) fights as it lacks any real punch of it's own (no Large Weapons).
• Quietus Class Cruiser : with 4* 150 kt L.W., 10 S.W., and 6 P.D. Is the best true warship an unregistered player is going to have. But its true strength is the Assimilation Beam; which can steal up to 100,000 enemy colonists when you park it over an enemy Base. (The beam can assimilate more enemies using a Cube, but with a Quietus you are limited by its "mere" 100,000 guest capacity. But Quietuses are relatively cheap.)
• FireCloud : Tech 7. Only 2 point defenses = no room for anti-fighter ones, just use anti-ship.  The Firecloud's Warp chunnel can move fleets of ships unlimited distances. Some people don't bother to build Fireclouds because they have so few weapons. In a fight, a Firestorm is more likely to survive. (Andrew de Boer advised: "I usually only put disrupters on my Fireclouds and Firestorms as I don't like to put them in fights so why spend the big money on the good guns." But I'm not sure how you would keep them out of a fight.)
• Fire Storm : A glorified Fire Cloud with ground chunnel. It can be scanned from half way across the galaxy due to its warp signature of 310 (Fireclouds are almost as bad, WS = 290) so escort it with at least the firepower of a cube. The Firestorm's Ground Chunnel device can move ground bases to other planets. Firestorms and Fireclouds are the most sought-after hull in the entire game.  They have low crew complements and are easily captured. Guard them well, and try to make it difficult for cloakers to steal them by keeping them moving around (in deep space behind screens of mines if possible).
• Biocide / Annihilation class Cubes - general notes: both loaded with lots of goodie devices. Your first one in a given area is hard to build, but the alchemy devices in these help along the next ones.  The self fueling, self repairing, ordnance making Biocide Class and Annihilation Class ships never have to return home for repairs. They can attack and use the spoils to rearm for the next fight. Warning: I have seen Birds capture Cubes using boarding lasers (to kill some crew), and transferring thousands of High Guard into the Cube. But those weren't loaded with a full load of colonists. I haven't simulated it, but I suspect 100,000 troop passengers on a Cube would usually be a sufficient defence against such tricks. (Host 4.000.115: When a Cyborg loads troops onto a ship they are no longer converted into colonists, they remain troops.)
• Annihilation Class Cube: At first sight this is a little disapointing. There are ships in the game with more weapons, mass etc. But looking deeper, you notice the Vulnerability To Weapons Fire modifers: Parts / Hull 60 Control Systems 5 Engines 10 Hyperdrive 100 Lifesupport 15 Critical (Soft Spot 0). You can just forget about disabling it, killing the crew [except by boarding it - see general notes above], or destroying the engines.  Weapon loadout: as this ship will be fighting mainly other maxed-out heavy warships, I suggest you equip it with 9 Intercepts and 1 turbolaser (just in case it comes across fighters). For large weapons, there is unanimous agreement amongst my contributors on what to use: 1 sandcaster (anti fighter) plus 19 Pulsed Phasor Cannon. Small Weapons = Pulsed Lasers for maximum fire rate. Take specialised B222's along for covering fire against fighter wings. Later in the game, when minerals rather than cash are in short supply, it is worth building these with 1 SC + 19 Gatling Phasors (better rate of fire than PPC's, this is the best weapon a Cube can mount, particularly when Exotic Tech bonuses are added in at this rapid rate of fire). I'm not convinced it's worth improving  small weapons above Pulsed Laser tech.
• Biocide Class Cube : You will find one of these per 4 Annihilations is a good mix for fleets. Loaded with 2000 of the Borg's fighters, which are not bad fighters, this is an awesome asset. Set it to attack on the 2nd wave (because like all carriers it is not up to exchanges of fire with massed volleys from big ships). Use combat settings which keep the Biocide out of trouble if possible. Losing the Biocide in a fleet is awkward mainly because this strands up to 2000 fighters in the middle of hostile territory, and the fighters are worth much more cash than the Cube. I suggest its Point Defence is a mix of 3 Intercept / 2 Micromissile Launchers / 5 turbolasers, as it will usually beused against fighter races. For large weapons, use PPC's or, if you can afford them, Gatling Phasors.

Cubes - general note on armament: Don't overlook Photon Torpedoes on the occasional Cube for fleet battles. Excellent range, allowing you to get some early shots in on the enemy fleet as you close, and a salvo of 18 of these (include one Sandcaster and one Blaster Cannon on these ships) will overwhelm most medium ships almost immediately. Also, they are much cheaper than PPC's or Gatling Phasors so are good when facing swarms of enemies when you are likely to lose many ships.

Fighters

• The type 1 fighter gets a slight benifit from its 120% attack bonus -> theoretically, 20% better odds against convential point defenses on top of it's 20% evasive bonus.
• Borg type 1 and 3 fighters are not as good as type 2 vs ships.

Miscellaneous notes

Q. Base Shields are Forbidden technology for Borg. However, the Home Base (the Hive) always gets a Base Shield.

The two acknowledged Borg Experts are Jon Nunn and THRAWN.

How do you boost Tech levels if they can't build a Gov centre (or is this how the Kings Palace works?)

• The King's Palace generates 1000 MC of central bank money a turn. You can build one at each of your ground bases.

How do you get crew and Highguard (or is this how the Kings Palace works?)

• You have only one highguard unit at a time. This one unit is your king. If he dies he will be replaced by another.

"Why state what their pod speed is, if they can't build pods, and if they can't build pods, how the hell do they get fighters onto the Biocide? With no contraband to sell how can they even afford to build fighters?"

• If a pod pad is captured they can use it. They must make their money with colonist taxes and assimilation. Fighters are placed on Biocides by docking a fighter wing with the ship. You make fighter wings at your fighter base on the ground.

On the subject of Borg not being able to Refit hulls: "The Borg way will be to recycle the outdated ship and use the minerals to build a new one. 'Recycling' destroys the hull which the Cyborg wants to keep, and retains the outdated components which the Cyborg wants to replace. That's like throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater. So, what's the point?" - "When you first start the game you have no decent hulls but some decent engines/weapons. Recycling is a good way of recovering those parts and putting them on a decent hull."
Cyborg can have only one high guard unit. (The Cyborg king). The Cyborg king at a base will give the base a 300% increase in income. The Cyborg king at a base will give the base a 400% increase in population growth.
When colonists are beamed up onto a Cyborg ship they will be automatically converted to crew, if the ship is not already fully crewed.
Cyborg maintain a 10% crew population on every ground base
Cyborg converted to troops / crew (ie by ground combat or crew beamed down by ships) change back into colonists at the rate of 5% per cycle.
If the Borg are boarded, colonists are not converted at all.  They are ONLY converted to troops when they do the boarding.

Q: Do people use ground settings other than peaceful or killx3? Usually, you either don't want to fight, or you have a superior force and want the enemy gone. The only time you might want differently is if you are an inferior force, and want to wear down your opponent. And chances then are that he will be set to killx3.

A: I have used lower than Kill x3 settings in my bases playing the Borg as a defensive measure against enemies landing bases on my planets. That way I get the benefit of assimilating them and also doing them some damage when they are most vulnerable without getting my defenders (well, attackers locally) totally slaughtered. The difference between Kill x3 and Hit and Run for example is only that when the attack is not going to succeed (in overrunning their base) you're not losing that many troops. - Sidewinder

The False Borg

Unlike VGAP3, you may not be the only player running a Borg colony..
Host 55: New rule: Cyborg King can take over ONE enemy Cyborg ship that is within 10LY of the base he is at or 25LY of the ship he is in, if the enemy's King is more than 300 LY away.
As Jon Nunn puts it - 
The one and only true collective is of course yours. All others are False Borg Collectives.  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.

Anti-Borg tactics... and anti-anti-Borg tactics

See also: the end of Jon Nunn's Borg Guide, he has some relevant comments there, under "dealing with other players"

Unresolved Borg questions from writing this guide

• Do you get mc from instant King-assimilation of Humanoids? (I know you shouldn't)
• "If a base has more highguard than the Cyborg can assimilate in a turn the highguard will NOT be assimilated and the base will NOT be taken." - an old an ambiguous comment by Tim, perhaps overtaken by later ground combat rules
• "The Cyborg king at a base will give the base a 300% increase in income." Does this mean instead of 1000mc you get 3000, or 4000? (Not particularly impotant - you get whatever you get.)

Known Borg Bugs (As of January 2003)

• Q.  Do Palaces still have that annoying bug where they couldn't be turned On  in the Structures screen, only in the Overview screen?
• A. Yes.
• (To expand on this point: "Turn on (or activate - choose your term) the Palace by clicking in it in the overview screen. It'll be in red, meaning inactive, clicking it will turn it green. Then the lightning bolt will go away on it's icon. Switching it "on" in the normal manner doesn't work right now. It's an aphid." - Pinched from mailing list.)
• Host 42 was meant to fix a bug where people still got money when the King instant-assimilated Humanoids and Ghipsoids. But I suspect you still get cash from these events, ie 1 million humanoids = 50,000mc.I don't think this is quite what Tim intended.
• Borg (and indeed many races) are vulnerable to the excessively easy capture of many ships by cloakers
• The Assimilation Beam - a very old report states: "there is still an issue on how this works. I have a Quietess in Feds Space with 'attack Enemy ships' ON, Assimilation Beam ON, Fire at Ground Targets OFF. The base is still blown away during the combat even though I'm trying so hard not to attack it - so how can you assimilate an enemy base and defend your ship at the same time?" - Was this fixed too well in Host 40-something? Later reports claim that it is now impossible to attack Cubes in orbit even as they assimilate your homeworld. Even Home Guard Wings won't attack them. Probably because if the ship isn't initiating combat, no fight starts. It's been suggested that "Assimilation" should count as "an attack" for the purposes of triggering defensive action from ion cannon etc

Credits

I've had a lot of help, feedback and tips for this page. I'd like to thank the following folk for sending in comments and tips: Jon "Borg" Nunn, Mark Cowper, Gray Stanton, Dave Powell, Greg Bahr, Gabor Toro, Manuel Volpi, John Gardner, Andrew de Boer, Axel, Admiral Quixote and that Tim Wisseman bloke. Gabor got some info from Ralph Gerwert (THRAWN), so some stuff here is from THRAWN indirectly.

The previous version of this guide was posted in September 2000 (!) when the Borg were still new and unknown. This version contains two years' worth of Host tweaks and accumulated lore.

Assorted bits of feedback I have never got round to properly editing in:

> you wrote:
> I haven't simulated it, but I
> suspect 100,000 troop passengers on a Cube would usually be a sufficient
> defence against such tricks. (Host 4.000.115: When a Cyborg loads troops
> onto a ship they are no longer converted into colonists, they remain
> troops.)
>
> Now, Where do you get 100.000 troops from - as Borg?
> You cannot make use of trainingcentres, since your trainingfactors are 0.
> I agree, that now if you load troops into your ships as Borg, they
> remain troops, but where to get so many from?

Just chunnel your Borg homebase to an enemy base. The turn after 20% of your
drones will be automatically
convertet into troops allowing you to ground assault the enemy base or to
defend from an enemy ground assault.

Manuel

Some rubbish, probably completely outdated, removed fromt he Combat tips pages:

Borg ground assaults (a paraphrased discussion from the mailing list):

20% of Drones now turn into troops when a Borg base is ground assaulted (introduced in Host 108-ish)

- Someone asked recently: how can Borg use assault units when they have no pods? Maybe they are meant to use ground chunnel. Ie, a Firestorm can chunnel an entire ground base (with assault units) to another planet. I don't think it would work very well though, because you would have to have the Firestorm in orbit first for this to work.

- This ground base chunnel is probably the answer, remember that ground combat is not the one turn do or die affair that it was in V3. Ground combat can and does take many turns with the need for constant replenishment of forces on each side. But before you can even think of committing to a ground assault you must first clear the planet of all enemy ships to give your assault pods any chance of landing without getting shot down. So from this you can assume that the planetary assault tactics for the Borg would revolve around getting your Firestorms in orbit around the enemy planet unmolested so that you can chunnel your ground assault units to begin the assault. This compares closely with the standard tactic for most other races which would revolve around getting your troop ships with assault pods there after the area has been cleared of enemy ships and preferably complimented with a bombardment of the enemy base from space by your heavy assault vessels and fighter wings.

Some observations of my own on Borg strategies and counterstrategies:

After some simulations I can report that the type 2 fighter (the FB300) is far superior to the other two types in space combat. (Type 1 is obviously tailored towards ground strikes, I'm not sure what type 3 would be best for.) An Iron Slave with a full complement of 100 type 2 fighters can smash most medium warships, and although type 2 fighters cost 150mc each (type 1's are 100mc), they are definitely worth the extra loot. They are probably the equivalent of 2 to 3 type 1's against enemy ships. The type 3's didn't fare as well as type 2's in space combat, and cost the same.

Tip for players fighting Borg: The Borg strength at low tech levels is these iron Slave carriers. They are Hull Tech 4; it's not until they get to Tech 8 that they can build their first serious medium ship, the Firestorm, which with 4L + 8S + 6PD weapons is about equivalent to the Fed Vendetta, a Tech 5 ship. And apart from the Biocide, the Iron Slave is their only carrier. So expect swarms of them.

So, instead of outfitting your ships with a variety of general purpose weapons, use Sandcasters and Micro-Sandcasters as Large and Point Defense weapons; set the ship commands to "Sandcasters fire at Fighters"; and use your Small Weapons to take out these carriers which, without their fighters, are really just large freighters with a couple of weapons stuck on. Otherwise these bloated freighters will take out Diplomacy class cruisers (Tech 9, 6L + 12S + 5PD weapons)!

Obviously the Borg will counter with other ships such as Firestorms which will be relatively immune to these carrier-busters' weaponry. So, you'll need a mix of ships to fight them. And for every strategy there is a counterstrategy...

John Nunn on Borg combat:

Note about weapons: It's a much more meanful stat to know the expected max shield / armor damage from 60 seconds of firing of a weapon than one indivual shot. But also take amount of power and ordnance used in the same time into consideration: you don't want to run out of energy or ammo in the middle of combat because you had too many gatling phasors for your generators to keep them all charged. 100 MC for type 1 fighters is quite reasonable; I don't think of it as expensive. Even the type 2 and 3 are nice, but I'd only use type 3 against planets, given their lack of bonuses in space. (My later sims showed type 2 to be much the most effective vs ships, as mentioned elsewhere - PH.) Suggested mix: On fighter strikes against planets: 40 - 20 - 40 mix. Defending a planet against invasions: 70 - 30 - 0 mix. In space onboard the Iron Slave & Biocide: 60 - 40 - 0 mix.

I'd also recommend keeping them in fighter wings of 100, there will be a lot more Iron Slaves than Biocides, and it's easy to load 20 fighter wings into a Biocide - but you cannot load 1 wing of 2000 fighters into an Iron Slave.

My analysis of Biocide carriers is thus: the key factors are, Fighter Bays 20, Fighter Bay Size 100, Passengers 1.5 million; and lots of Devices: Alchemy Forge, Bioscanner, Gravitonic Mine Dropper, Barbitic Mine Dropper, Mine Sweeper Array, Ore Processing, DTMS-N fuel converter, Laser Mining Drill, Global Warmer, Boarding Laser, Assimilation Beam, Long Range Mine Detector, Food -> Supply Converter. Vulnerability To Weapons Fire Parts / Hull 100 Control Systems 100 Engines 100 Hyperdrive 100 Lifesupport 100 Critical (Soft Spot) 1. Max speed 120. So, basically few weapons, a pure carrier but also a bit of a mothership for setting up new colonies. Note the wings can have 100 fighters in each pod, feds are limited to 20 per pod. So I guess they could have, um, one wing of 2000 fighters if it doesn't go over some limit. Like a huge swarm of flies filling the skies... I suppose you set some wings to defend the Biocide and others to attack. Sidewinder did some simulations and reports that one SuperNova armed with a Proto-Matter-Cannon will generally destroy a Biocide, but then the fighters from the Biocide wipe it out. Chris Olin pointed out that "the borg fighter have a travel range of 100 lys, and a speed of 50 lyrs per turn. So it is not absolutlely neccessary for the Bio to actually be in combat." Harri Viitala suggested the Borg player should send his fighters in in the first wave and set the Biocide to attack in the second wave, which sounds sensible, though I don't think anyone's simulated it yet. Someone else suggested, split the fighters into several wings and tell one to Close To Point Blank to take out the Supernova ASAP, whilst the Biocide hovers at max standoff range, out of range of most of the SuperNova's weapons.

The Annihilation seems to be much harder to kill. Its top speed is 190, too. So maybe Borg should use Annihilations to tow Bios around for a killer mini-fleet. In addition to most of the Bio's devices it has a Gravity Well Generator (anti-hyperprobe?), a Mobile Ord Factory, Mobile Repair Plant and Hacker Droids. It can carry 2.5 million colonists so is a true colony ship!

Your troops have the same combat skills as your colonists so troops are not needed. When you beam colonists up onto your ships and you are lacking crew the colonists will automatically be converted into crew. Plus 10% of all units at bases will be reprogrammed to be standby crew.

April 2004: Tim changed the Farming rules (you now need 1000 colonists per farm, a lot of Borg players squealed).

I think the Cyborg do need a little help, they might to need some of their assimulation powers restored.

Allow 1 cyborg to assimulate 1 colonist up to a limit of 500 for the base.

They can assimulate at the old 5% rate as well if their numbers are above 100000.

. . . remember the good old V3 days when a Cyborg probes where sorta scarey. . .

Tim

Following this, he released a new Cyborg race pack update.

The Cyborg needed help with the bad things that hit them under the new host. I have sent help in the way of a change to their assimulation ( one cyborg can take an enemy colonist, up to a limit of 500 for the base ) They also get a new ship pack with a 50000 guest sized Iron Slave and a 100 guest size Probe. - Tim

Changed: Assimulation powers increased. Cyborg colonists can assimulate 1 enemy colonist each up to a limit of 500. If the Cyborg have over 10000 colonists on a planet they can assimulate enemy colonists at the old 5% rate and grab more than 500 a turn.

Probe can now hold 100 guests

Explorier can now hold 500 guests

Iron Slave can now hold 50000 guests