From: tsang@cs.washington.edu (Donald Tsang)
Subject: Re: Lack of borg hosts
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 00:51:51 GMT

In article <> mel1@soc6.acpub.duke.edu (Douglas Melamed) writes:
>I feel the need to clarify a few things regarding borgs.

Me too.


>1. Using a Borg is not cheating. It is much more realistic than having one
>person try to dodge, fire phasers and torps, det and, tractor/pressor at the
>same time.

Shall we repeat the mantra again?  "Netrek is not Real Life.  Netrek is
not Star Trek."  I know I've been told that enough times...

The _fair_ way to do it would be to have the Co-piloting Client.
That would be fine with me.


>2. Borg users are not all scummers and dogfighters, many are great team
>players.  It's not the client but the player that makes the difference.

A lot of borg users are scummers (VERY few are dogfighters).
And it's REALLY hard to avoid a borg ogg.


>3. Using a Borg does not take the skill out of the game.  On the
>contrary, it de-emphasizes dog fighting and allows one to concentrate
>on team play.  It adds a new dimension to the game.

Part of the "skill of the game" (as you put it) is the dogfighting.
Else we wouldn't have tactical scale at all, and only strategic.
What new dimension?  Seems to me it removes the dimension of "player
hand-eye coordination" in favor of... well, nothing.


>4. Borgs are not hard to kill. An average player can easily kill a bad borg
>player. It's as easy as charge-run dodge charge-run dodge, and when they
>run out of fuel they're very easy to kill.

Borg starbases are hard to kill.  Very hard.  In fact, an info-borg (show
cloakers) is enough to make a starbase twice as hard to kill, in good
hands.


>5. Anti-borg complainers worsen things more than they help them. They
>taunt the other player taking away from everyones enjoyment of the
>game.

I don't understand.  We on the Net complain about borgs because the
borg authors aren't content to program them and use them themselves;
they have to distribute them so all sorts of weenies have access.


>6. In my experience Anti-borg players are mostly clueless players who
>are much more rude and obnoxious than any borg player I've ever met.

Either you play on clueless servers (say, sturgeon), or you just
haven't met the obnoxious borg players (say, at utoronto).


>7. MOST IMPORTANTLY CHILL OUT IT'S JUST A GAME! I believe that the
>standard client should contain many of the so called borg features such
>as number of armies next to planets and shield energy shown by color of
>shields and auto compute trajectory. It will help emphasize TEAM PLAY
>not hurt it.

"Netrek for Morons"(tm)

You have a very skewed view of "team play".


>8. Lastly, Give me a damn good reason why borgs are Satan reincarnate as some
>of you seem to think.

Many people play netrek as a test of their reflexes and small-scale
tactical ability, as well as medium-scale strategic ability.  Team
captains (typically, the SB) do a lot more strategic planning ("take
Eri, then come back and get armies and reinforce it...")

Borgs threaten to remove tactics from the game entirely, because there
are many things a borg can do that a human either physically can't
(fire two weapons in completely different directions simultaneously,
detect and immediately fry a plasma, det individual torps), or that the
most highly-skilled humans have problems doing (fire perfect torp arcs
to hit a warp 12 scout at medium-long range).

Borgs "see" coordinates, speeds, etc. as numbers.  Humans have to look
at a screen and "guess".  There's a difference.  When you figure that
out, you will be more human.  :)


Ahwell, enough rambling...

-- 
Donald Tsang                    "Ho!  Haha!  Guard!  Turn!  Parry!  Dodge!
tsang@june.cs.washington.edu     Spin!  Ha!  Thrust!"
..!uw-beaver!june!tsang                       -- Robin Hood Daffy