Game Mode: Assimilation

[Reziffy]

 

So I know that Ponies has been looking into other game modes and I had an idea that I thought he and others might possibly enjoy. I was sitting here watching one of the episodes of Star Trek Voyager relating to the borg and I thought that might make for a neat addition to the game. While a full out assault might be impractical, something along the lines of one individual being infected with a borg virus and getting transformed could be interesting. Alternatively, a random person could be chosen as a borg antagonist and when ready get flung at the station, landing somewhere on it to start the process.

 

There's quite a few episodes for reference material showing ships that have borg drones enter the vessel. After entering the station, they would be tasked with assimilating key station systems and converting individuals to their collective. Taking over Atmospherics they might disable life support since they can exist in a vacuum (no plasma, they don't want to damage the station after all since they are trying to convert it). With the engines under their control they might disable power output to APCs which have not been uploaded with their specific access program. Converting a console would prevent it from being accessed by members of the crew. Conversion would be similar to the existing mechanics in use by the malf AI borgifier. Subjects would need to be stunned or disabled before being brought to the device to be converted and enhanced.

 

To keep the borg from being too powerful, I would see them as essentially a kind of cross between existing cyborgs and humans. Essentially, a borg with hands. They would not be able to wear non-vanity items or backpacks, but they would have access to built in tools similar to borgs. Additionally in the Trek universe, the borgs usually had specific functions so they could pick modules like existing cyborgs as well.

 

To fight back against them, the crew have the standard armory loadouts and additional items could be provided in order to counteract the uploaded viruses such as computer resequencers or something along those lines. I think it would be important for there to be sufficient means to allow for the station to be restored if the borg is fully eliminated.

 

Specific objectives could vary a bit. Some ideas would be converting a certain percentage of the crew, controlling a certain percentage of the ship with them constructing borg structures similar to the way that the blob currently does (there's the potential here for a borg setting up an assault outpost on the mining colony which could be really cool), controlling a key objective such as the AI or the nuke, or even perhaps something more specific such as seeking to add a specific individual to their collective such as a changeling to gain it's biological abilities. The latter here could be extended to include members with superpowers from genetics, though that might be tricky since at the start of a round you couldn't be sure someone would obtain the powers unless the borg was activated after a game start delay (say 15 minutes?).

 

Anyway, just some thoughts and I hope people enjoy them.

 

[Reziffy]

Actually on re-reading this it sounds rather similar to the existing xeno stuff and the new xeno additions that are already being made. Perhaps some of the concepts could be adapted and added there to do the same thing. Well, was just a random idea I had before coffee.