The Borg are back for the final Star Trek Online event that will complete progress towards the reward of a coupon for a free T6 ship, the highest ship tier in the game. This new Borg Resurgence Event begins on Jan. 7 and will continue until Jan. 28.
As part of this resurgence, three different Task Force Operations involving the Borg have been updated and remastered. Those TFOs are Infected: The Conduit (Space), Khitomer Vortex (Space), and Into the Hive (Ground).
Cryptic Studios, the developer of STO, decided on these three task forces because they were considered the most popular amidst the playerbase.
As part of the updates, the task forces will get new voiceovers and improved presentation and mechanics in order to provide a smoother and better player experience. This does not mean that the TFOs will be more difficult, instead, it means that Cryptic has examined the play flow to streamline messaging and change fail conditions with margins instead of binary conditions that can suddenly happen without warning.
In short, Cryptic wants these missions to feel less frustrating to players.
“Vortex could use some better messaging regarding stopping the various borg from getting through,” Cynicman, a veteran STO captain, told Vox Ex Machina. “Infected the big issue was the optional to not allow the borg to repair the transformers, which led to things like getting the outer parts down low then pop them at the same time, or just DPS rush the hell out of one (if your DPS was high enough).”
“With Vortex the messaging needs to make clear that both sides need to be monitored for borg moving toward the portal,” Cynicman added. “Infected, I think, the messaging needs to focus on the objectives and optionals. In both cases, some clearer instruction could lead to less frustration with new players who have not run them before.”
Many of these communication issues from the game could lead to increased toxicity in the community, he commented. This is because between veteran and new players it meant that someone in the group didn’t know not to kill something particular in the mission and that often lead to finger-pointing and rage.
“Given that Infected tends to be the DPS measure used for builds I’m curious to see if these remasters affect that in any way,” Cynicman said.
The new event will also introduce Elite versions of all the re-mastered task forces.
Rewards for participating in the Borg Resurgence event include a Cyclic Modulation Ground Weaponry Pack, three featured TFO Reward Boxes, and 50,000 dilithium ore. Each TFO Reward Box contains a choice of a specialization point or an Enhanced Universal Tech Upgrade.
These rewards will be earned after acquiring a total of 14 days’ worth of daily progress in the event.
Once the Cyclic Modulation Ground Weaponry Pack is earned, every character on a player’s account can claim a set of ground weapons for themselves. These weapons include a compression pistol, sniper rifle, and a blast assault variant. These weapons operate normally with primary and secondary attacks, but will have a tertiary firing mode (usually for melee attacks) that will instead cycle the energy type.
This functionality is a well-known method for fighting the Borg, who adapt to energy weapons. The cycle is as follows: Phaser -> Disruptor -> Plasma -> Tetryon -> Polaron -> Antiproton -> Phaser (etc.) Every time a weapon has its energy-type cycled it will also gain several charges of a shield-penetration buff.
The new Cyclic Modulation weapons will have a special model never seen before in STO.
For players who have already claimed the Grand Prize, the free T6 ship coupon, there will be continuing rewards of dilithium that begin at 2,500 ore. This amount scales up for each subsequent bonus completion.
For further details about the event check out the Borg Resurgence event blog post.
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