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Al Borland Corp. posted:I'd like to see them use the game from The Game as a weapon against The Borg. They'd keep adapting to each level and get in an infinite loop of all being stimulated and doing another level. The collective would just keep voting one more.  Of course, that's assuming the collective has any give-a-poo poo at all about what drones are enjoying or doing. The super-organism that is an ant colony gives precisely zero fucks what particular ants are doing and they don't exactly vote. How the collective even works is a really interesting thing that was never properly explored (probably for the better, admittedly) but I like to think that the collective was an emergent intelligence that doesn't really regard individual drones in any way.
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Jan 4, 2018 17:43
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The borg were at their best when they were ants instead of zombies imo. Picard's assimilation should have stayed a thing the borg rarely do and only for a specific reason, rather than how they say hello
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Jan 4, 2018 18:53
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I also preferred their pale white faces to the zombie monster faces that they got starting in First Contact... Also, I hate "Borg nano-probes". It was way cooler when I imagined the Borg drilling their implants into Picard, rather than them just growing from a simple injection. Bucswabe fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jan 4, 2018 |
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Jan 4, 2018 19:03
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Bucswabe posted:I also preferred their pale white faces to the zombie monster faces that they got starting in First Contact... Well, how else do you expect people to know that they're bad guys, huh Mr. Smartey-pants?
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Jan 4, 2018 19:08
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Mass effect has a good robot species that a collective. Forget the name. They are a collective of programs and can move in and out of different bodies they've built for themselves, the more that cram in one the more intelligent it is.
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Jan 4, 2018 19:11
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Al Borland Corp. posted:Mass effect has a good robot species that a collective. Forget the name. They are a collective of programs and can move in and out of different bodies they've built for themselves, the more that cram in one the more intelligent it is. The Geth 
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Jan 4, 2018 19:11
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Borg concept way cooler than what we actually got: Each cube is a separate collective. Functionally, a cube and the drones on board are a single organism--they may communicate and trade with other cubes but they aren't the same being. When a cube conquers a planet, it starts harvesting all of its resources, both biological (to make new drones) and mineral (for the implants and cubes) and pumps out as many cubes as it can, like a virus. They integrate the technology of the conquered world into the new cube designs so each generation is incrementally scarier than the last. Picard was turned into Locutus in order to gain insight on how to get the maximum number of humans to cooperate with this process because killing them is wasteful and battles are potentially costly.
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Jan 4, 2018 19:12
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An oldie but goodie
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Jan 4, 2018 19:20
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Bucswabe posted:Also, I hate "Borg nano-probes". It was way cooler when I imagined the Borg drilling their implants into Picard, rather than them just growing from a simple injection. Well, that's kind of the common problem with enemies based upon horror: The more you show and explain, the less intimidating they are, and eventually they become parodies of themselves, like Voyager-era Borg or the later Halloween movies that delved into Michael Myers being a mythical cult figure. After BOBW1, I don't think Trek ever recaptured the feeling of "OH poo poo IT'S THE BORG  ," not even First Contact (and especially not loving Descent or Voyager), with I, Borg being the only one that even came close--and that was in large part because of Picard's PTSD manifesting itself. First Contact in particular really started that off, both with the stupid Queen concept as well as the space battle that lasts for about 30 seconds once the Enterprise shows up and one-shots the cube into oblivion.
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Jan 4, 2018 19:35
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cheetah7071 posted:Borg concept way cooler than what we actually got: This is good. Kinda reminds me of the alien invaders in the book Pandora's Star. A big tripod-thing comes down and pillages the planet to produce more tripod-things, and they just spread and spread and evolve
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Jan 4, 2018 19:40
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The Borg should have been that one cube. Only ever that one giant cube. Picard should have told them to forget the alpha quadrant than to sleep to stupidly blow up the cube. They could have basically puttered off and been a vague threat for the future.
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Jan 4, 2018 21:14
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cheetah7071 posted:Borg concept way cooler than what we actually got: Didn't Birth of the Federation do something like this? I dimly remember that a Borg cube was one of the random "natural disasters" that could occur in a game, and if you didn't have a giant teched-up fleet to take it down, it would wipe out everything in a system, then spawn another cube. Come to think of it, the various games also followed the decline of the Borg. In BOTF they're a force of nature, but a couple years later in the two Armada games they're just a beefier version of the other factions with assimilation. (There was also supposed to be this planet-based 4X game called Borg Assimilator, but apparently that was cancelled for "having too tenuous a connection to the Star Trek universe," or so the press release went.)
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Jan 4, 2018 23:34
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Don't you gun down hordes of cubes effortlessly in STO too
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Jan 4, 2018 23:37
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I feel like tactically, the Borg can adapt faster than the Federation, but strategically, long term, the federation would have an edge until the Borg assimilate something new they can't deal with. One-shotting cubes after decades of fighting them seems plausible right up until they have some new super weapon they get by assimilating the Breen or something.
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Jan 4, 2018 23:42
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cheetah7071 posted:Don't you gun down hordes of cubes effortlessly in STO too
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Jan 4, 2018 23:42
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Timby posted:After BOBW1, I don't think Trek ever recaptured the feeling of "OH poo poo IT'S THE BORG Haggard Riker did.
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Jan 4, 2018 23:52
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Q Who is great because on the initial encounter, the Enterprise damages the gently caress out of the cube. If they would have went full bore with everything, they may have been able to destroy that cube right upfront. But, being the federation, they didn't. It allowed them to adapt, and then all attacks became ineffectual. That's what made them great. You have one shot to take them out with a new weapon. Beyond that, you have to stay the gently caress out of their way and hope they don't notice you. All of TNG really kept with that idea. I, Borg did. They knew they couldn't go up against a cube in any capacity. The best they could do is hide. Descent doesn't really count due to Lore and Hugh's influences. They weren't "real" Borg by that point. Even some of Voyager was ok. The Brunali were a cool idea, keeping their tech level low to stay out of the Borg's attention sphere. The problem came with loving First Contact when suddenly the Federation were an enemy to be defeated rather than a source of biological and technological distinctiveness to be harvested. The Borg wouldn't even want to stop First Contact! Stopping first contact sets back the federation's technical level which hurts the Borg since they need outside species to innovate for them.
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Jan 5, 2018 00:20
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bull3964 posted:The Borg wouldn't even want to stop First Contact! Stopping first contact sets back the federation's technical level which hurts the Borg since they need outside species to innovate for them. I can buy that the collective had some game theory calculation that after you try X number of times or encounter Y threat level, it's better for survival to simply obliterate rather than assimilate. Stopping first contact would (did) do that.
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Jan 5, 2018 00:33
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Marshal Radisic posted:Didn't Birth of the Federation do something like this? I dimly remember that a Borg cube was one of the random "natural disasters" that could occur in a game, and if you didn't have a giant teched-up fleet to take it down, it would wipe out everything in a system, then spawn another cube. Yes, a Cube would strip each planet in star system entirely bare (it would actually ruin the planet so it was less valuable if you tried to recolonize later) one-by-one and spawn a new Cube once it wiped out the whole system. Which was awesome, because it would take BoBW sized fleets to beat a single Cube. Unless you were the Romulans, or sufficiently teched up Klingons.
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Jan 5, 2018 00:39
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Marshal Radisic posted:Forgot that one, but yeah it's pretty much the nadir of the Borg as a threat at that point. The part where you do that in the tutorial at least had an explanation: courtesy of time travel, the players had already badly hosed up the Borg in question. The Borg were STO's original endgame enemy. Probably for the best that the Borg didn't show up in the Delta Quadrant expansion at all, beyond an appearance by the peaceful Borg Cooperative.
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Jan 5, 2018 00:40
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One thing I really liked about the BoBW cube is that it literally never stopped chasing the Enterprise after Q Who. That's tenacity almost to the point of absurdity and it's chilling to think that even if you survive the Borg you'll never be safe because they'll chase you forever. First Contact hosed that up too unfortunately.
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Jan 5, 2018 00:41
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Brawnfire posted:Ew, this just makes me picture the same exact conversation Data had, but with a circle of drones around him alternating the Queen's lines. Not sure this would have worked because it would have been almost exactly like Sisko Describes Anything to the Prophets
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Jan 5, 2018 00:53
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cheetah7071 posted:Borg concept way cooler than what we actually got: Borg cubes are all greebly on the outside because they just slap the crunched-up remains on whatever ships they kill on the outer hull and start wiring them up to experiment.
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Jan 5, 2018 01:15
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Remember in Q Who when their collective psyche was powerful enough to heal their ship through force of will? Good times.
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Jan 5, 2018 01:30
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I want to say that First Contact hosed up the Borg irrevocably the instant they retconned the queen into BoBW because that gave her permission to show up anywhere anytime with no explanation to be the eeeeevil recurring villain you could never kill like Skeletor. But really thinking back it was Descent because that was the first time someone decided the Borg were too alien and interesting and needed an Evil Master to make them into boring Saturday morning cartoon villains, and also started the trend of the Borg constantly hitting themselves in the dick with absurd weaknesses that make no sense, because why would Hugh's memory of being an individual infect the collective and make them into individuals, when the Borg were already shown to have the ability to assimilate an individual with full memories of being an autonomous self-determined being and suppress all of that personality with zero problems for the hivemind. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 02:05
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I won't fault First Contact for what later writers did with the Borg. First Contact is still good, and Borg Queen is a memorable villain.
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Jan 5, 2018 02:13
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HD DAD posted:I just stand in the middle of the sidewalk screaming at the top of my lungs 
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Jan 5, 2018 02:52
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VitalSigns posted:that gave her permission to show up anywhere anytime with no explanation to be the eeeeevil recurring villain you could never kill like Skeletor. I am Kathryn Janeway. Captain of Voyager and defender of Fairhaven. This is Chakotay... my fearless friend. Fabulous secret orders were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic mug and said... There's Coffee in that Nebula!
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Jan 5, 2018 03:21
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VitalSigns posted:But really thinking back it was Descent because that was the first time someone decided the Borg were too alien and interesting and needed an Evil Master to make them into boring Saturday morning cartoon villains, and also started the trend of the Borg constantly hitting themselves in the dick with absurd weaknesses that make no sense, because why would Hue's memory of being an individual infect the collective and make them into individuals, when the Borg were already shown to have the ability to assimilate an individual with full memories of being an autonomous self-determined being and suppress all of that personality with zero problems for the hivemind. It never bothered me that much. The whole thing is dependent on the order of operations. I took it as Picard got his Locutus software installed first, that allowed the Collective to shout him down in his own mind. So the Borg set it up to crush an individual's will as they enter. But "waking up" that individuality for someone inside the firewall was bad news. Hugh had a megaphone and could shout over the crowd, spreading the idea of being "I" inside the Collective. Since this was inside the local network, the Collective was like "something wrong with that cube, get rid of it before this new 'they' mess us up." Now you've got Borg that were unprepared to be individuals mixed up with these defiant guys that decided to be individuals before that cube was cut off from the Collective. They break their ship badly, Lore shows up, and he's all "you guys miss THE AUTHORITY telling you what to do? I'll help!!!!!!"
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Jan 5, 2018 03:49
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Here's my fanfiction idea. One day the Borg just up and announce (they announce this so that things can go more efficiently in the future for everyone) that they have started getting diminishing genetic and technological returns assimilating humanoid species and they are going to stop and focus their efforts on some of the weaker energy beings and move up the chain of being. The Borg are now just eerily and awkwardly present all over the place; you don't attack them and they won't bother you, and with this new softer form of pressure they just sort of seep in around the cracks of the galactopolitical powers. Only now there's occasionally catastrophic outcomes from their attempt to storm heaven, with more of the ascended beings seeing reasons to interact with the Federation and other major empires. edit: Now that they no longer want us, cults spring up that seek union with the Borg as the only transcendent experience left in this miserable little universe. None are taken. Dr. Video Games 0081 fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 04:34
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Eh it didn't ring true to me, because from what we're shown of the Borg everyone is just a part of a single mind, everyone has the same thoughts about everything, and their singular purpose and collective conclusions on everything are irresistible because their thoughts are your thoughts and you can't tell the difference between your own ideas and everyone else's and everyone has everyone else's memories anyway because how else would they know everything Picard knew about Federation tactics. Chakotay's experience with the Borg Cooperative made way more sense. He didn't want to help them as an individual because he couldn't predict what they might do, but once they used their link with him to force him into the collective, their reasons were his reasons and they were all having the same thoughts. Nobody is getting shouted down, you're just now all the same being who has everyone's memories at the same time and makes decisions based on that collective experience for the good of what this new collective being considers its own interests. Descent pretty much turned the Borg into zombie mind control rather than the much more interesting phenomenon we're shown earlier (and occasionally later). First Contact did that too with its poo poo about "you didn't want another drone, you wanted a human being with a mind of his own" which makes no sense unless the Queen is just some kind of Castlevania vampire queen, although I guess it's left ambiguous whether Picard was actually right since (a) it was shown the Borg Queen was just loving with him and was only interested in Data so she could have been lying when she confirmed Picard's suspicion and (b) we don't know for sure whether she was actually interested in making Data co-Borg-emperor or whether it was all just a ploy to social-engineer his passwords after trying to physically crack him failed, after all Locutus dismissed Data as "obsolete" back when he had no reason to lie about such things and apparently he had been hanging out with the Queen so if Data was obsolete tech to the Borg then he still ought to be now. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jan 5, 2018 |
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Jan 5, 2018 04:45
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Basically if your inhuman hive mind species is less alien than real life hive insects you hosed up as a sci fi writer
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Jan 5, 2018 05:53
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What if like, a Borg cube was just fulla bees
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Jan 5, 2018 05:55
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Al Borland Corp. posted:What if like, a Borg cube was just fulla bees
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Jan 5, 2018 06:03
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Allergies
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Jan 5, 2018 06:10
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beesistance is futile
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Jan 5, 2018 06:16
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Al Borland Corp. posted:What if like, a Borg cube was just fulla bees So THAT'S how their ships keep getting faster
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Jan 5, 2018 06:35
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For your collective amusement, here was an ad for TNG on my local Fox station. It's corny as hell, but I always enjoyed it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bDk3eaeao8E
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Jan 5, 2018 07:01
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Epicurius posted:For your collective amusement, here was an ad for TNG on my local Fox station. It's corny as hell, but I always enjoyed it. Thank you.
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Jan 5, 2018 07:22
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That ad has always stuck with me. It got aired ridiculously often during TNGs run and that stupid Billy Joel-rework song would get stuck in my head for days.
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Jan 5, 2018 07:49
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