Borg Notes

I'm playing the 'borg for the first time and I'm finding myself in a cash crisis.

The (very few) planets I find with natives get taxed to hell and back for the few turns I can, regardless of happyness, and I get an average of about 6 thousand from it. But the best I can get from the clans themselves when all the natives have been assimilated is about 6 hundred a turn. Other races can get up 5 thou with lot's of luck.

So how does the borg get loadsa money?

Scrooge of Borg.

Subject: Re: Cyborg - how to get a good cash flow?
From: kenneth.van.kley@bbs1984.chi.il.us (KENNETH VAN KLEY)
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 96 20:58:00 -0600
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One way would be to park a freighter or something @ the planets and keep pulling colonists off... Just keep the max colonists to adequately tax the native race. You'll still assimilate the population, but not nearly as fast...

Subject: Re: Cyborg - how to get a good cash flow?
From: Robert O'Dowd <Robert.ODowd@dsto.defence.gov.au>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 11:52:15 -0800
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This depends on planetary native populations and the like.

The biggest problem is that, more often then not, you assimilate the natives and get more colonists than a planet can support. So they start dying and eating supplies, with a secondary effect of cutting into the income you can get by taxing them.

Taxing the natives until they riot is *not* the way to go. The sequence I recommend is as follows.

1) Work out how many turns it will take to assimilate the entire population. Essentially use the formula (1+assimilation_rate) ^n=native_population/initial_colonists The number of turns you are looking for is n.

2) Tax natives into the moderate yellow until about n-5 turns.

3) Tax them into the red (Only to point of rioting if you don't care about planet infrastructure) after that. Turn down your colonist taxes.

4) Once your natives are assimilated, start taxing your natives again. If they are likely to die (e.g. on a desert planet) tax them high fairly initially, and reduce taxes later. If they will survive, tax them into the yellow, but no more.

Another thing to do is suck colonists off the worlds being assimilated, bring them back to your homeworld (remember: that planet is suitable for your life form) and tax them there!

Lastly, use alliances. Give your partially assimilated planet to a (trusted!) ally, and let them tax it.

Remember one thing. In the early part of the game, you will tend to have much more money than your opponents (tax collected is based on both native population and colonist population).

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Disclaimer: Opinions above are MINE and may be worth what you paid for them.

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Subject: Re: Cyborg - how to get a good cash flow?
From: bjeter@odin.cbu.edu (Xalorous)
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 16:10:10 GMT
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Robert O'Dowd <Robert.ODowd@dsto.defence.gov.au> wrote:

>The biggest problem is that, more often then not, you
>assimilate the natives and get more colonists than a
>planet can support. So they start dying and eating
>supplies, with a secondary effect of cutting into
>the income you can get by taxing them.

Save these planets for allies, or even terraformer ships. The thing with supplies is configurable, so check on it in your game.

Use randmax. It will keep the natives happiness at 40 or above, preventing rioting, yet taxing the most possible.

>Another thing to do is suck colonists off the worlds
>being assimilated, bring them back to your homeworld
>(remember: that planet is suitable for your life
>form) and tax them there!

Good idea, bad destination. Find a nearby planet with no natives, adequate or better minerals. Set up a new homeworld there with the overflow. Doesn't even need to be nearby with chunnelling.

>Lastly, use alliances. Give your partially assimilated
>planet to a (trusted!) ally, and let them tax it.

Difficult to do unless you catch it in time. Still, this is an excellent way to give your ally a planet with a big population.

Requirements: Firecloud (yours), Scoutship (his), a fleet of freighters.

Example: I am birds, you are the borg. You've found a Bovinoid unity with ten million bov's and 49deg climate.

This is a perfect planet for me to use.

a. get the firecloud there.

b. chunnel in 4 LDSF's and a ship of mine, swift works.

c. Only one LDSF has clans, but it has a 1000 clans.

d. Drop the clans. For 3 turns build factories, mines, etc.

e. Pick up all clans but 1000 each turn. ( can't use 1200 as well, due to the fact that the clans grow in addition to assimilating).

f. When you've 3 LDSF's almost full, pick up all the clans.

g. Set ships to gs3 to give them to me.

h. I drop the clans onto a 'perfect' planet.

i. Chunnel in a Merlin to make minerals, and a Neutr. Ref. to make fuel.

j. set up a chunnel route to a starbase planet to distribute the gains.

If minerals aren't a problem, use the planet solely for it's cash ability.

Other planets to look for for cash: Insectoid, Avian, anything with Unity gov't or close to it. The highest cash producers are the Insectoid Unity's with a high population.

For borg alone, be sure to get six or seven million colonists on any planet with a climate near 50 deg. They will grow, and you can build lots of factories there. You can use such planets as 'refugee camps' for emptying the 'harsh' climate planets.

>Remember one thing. In the early part of the game,
>you will tend to have much more money than your
>opponents (tax collected is based on both native
>population and colonist population).

So build bio's early and often. Try to arrange some sort of trade with Colonies, Rebels or Robots for fighters.

Xalorous
bjeter@odin.cbu.edu
"It's obviously not his real name."

Subject: Re: Cyborg - how to get a good cash flow?
From: bjeter@odin.cbu.edu (Xalorous)
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 15:13:36 GMT
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mikebarnard@mistral.co.uk (Mike Barnard) wrote:

>So how does the borg get loadsa money?

Try using Randmax. What it does is tax heavily for one turn, then let the colonists (natives too, but this doesn't help borg much), go at 0 tax for a couple of turns to build back up happiness. This has the result of making your colonists grow, and yielding money also. This is the growth method.

It can also tax by the safetax method, where it will tax your clans down to happiness level (that you specify, default is 40), and KEEP them there.

Randmax takes into account the assimilation used by the Borg. It taxes all natives with 'safetax'. It will raise considerably more than 6000mc while assimilating. Try starting with less clans initially. Try taxing higher. You can, IIRC, take the happiness down to 40 without rioting. But if happiness is below 70, your population won't grow. Use your hyp shps and chunneling to gather up all the mc you've made.

It is true that a few planets will yield several thousand mc per turn. BUT this is strictly from taxing natives and selling supplies. Borg on the other hand have the ability to tax several hundred from colonists each turn on every planet. Most other races don't get anything from colonists except on homeworlds. Also, you should build the maximum number of factories and defenses on every planet. This takes advantage of your greater populations.

I would rather have ten planets producing 500mc per turn than one that can produce 5000.

Xalorous
bjeter@odin.cbu.edu
"It's obviously not his real name."