pgamesfood's borg tips and observations for stellaris stnh mod
(im not a super expert, but just based on my own experience with borg so far, using the latest version of the mod, which was made for v3.14 of stellaris) :o)

- try to harvest colonies from Independent empires, ideally ones that you feel you can defend against (or attack) if they declare war on you.

- try not to harvest colonies from allied empires (federations etc), if collectively, (no pun intended) you are weaker than all of those empires together. (i made the mistake of queuing up a colony harvest against the romulans, who were only slightly above me in victory score, but before it completed, they made an alliance with the klingons, who were also slightly higher than me, and then suddenly both empires declared war on me and sent huge fleets to attack me, and they also brought all their small vassal empire ships with them) :o) (i think the only way to save me near the end of that war, is to quickly attack some planet colonies, to try and force them to sign a White Peace, which should hopefully give me a 10 year breather, to plan out the future and to grow stronger somehow) :o)

- use the resource buy & sell tool, to help you Balance your economy. (ideally selling your surplus values -1, so that they still increase slightly over time, while buying your negative values +1 per month)

- also dont be afraid to make minor monthly adjustments to your buy/sell market, (even quickly pausing the game if needed), because catching any imbalance quickly, will be less costly if you have to suddenly correct a bigger mistake which didnt get noticed until much later)

- some resources do not appear to be needed in large quantities for the borg, at least in the early or mid game, such as Food (having about 500 too 1000 stored, seems to be enough to cater for several months of low negatives, such as when assimilating the pre-assimilated pops into borgs)

- some resources are quite useful for the borg, and can be beneficial to have a good stockpile. (500 kemocite crystals CHK, can be used once per planet/colony you take over, via a Decision, which results in that colony getting a free Feature, which will start continuously generating about 30+ Nanites (goods) per month. this is a good way to increase nanite production, which can help reduce the amount of nanite building/sector slots you might need, and nanites are a main upkeep resource for borg pops, but the Decision takes about 5 years i think to complete)

- related to the above 'decision', if you dont build outposts to control a system which has a habitable planet, you can let another empire build there, and wait for them to colonise it, even with at least 1 pop, you can then later invade it, and benefit from the 'nanite descision", essentially obtaining about 30+ nanites per such small colony, as well as being able to build it up over time, including with unity-producting buildings. (however, if that system happens to have a special resource, or resources you need, in large amounts, it could be building an outpost there to grab it, for the resources meanwhile, and you can always release it in future if needed, to let someone else colonise it etc)

- if you are not at war, getting access to tech which unlock the mining of special resources is worth getting, especially if that resource is nearby because the sooner you can mind it, the sooner you can start collecting it, using it, and/or trading it for energy

- in the early game, there is an option to purchase a cloaking device from the separate klingon houses, for about 5k Latinum. (apart from that, i had been mostly selling my latinum to help stabilise the economy, but after they merged, it looks like the option changed to get some cloaking buffs for 12 months, at a cost and negative opinion from them, but the technology seems to be geared towards espionage operations, rather than actual cloaks. (maybe if i saved up my latinum and/or bought 5k of it to buy the cloaking device, it might have given me actual cloaking tech - but maybe i can get that via assimilation from romulans or klingons later on?)

(also in early and mid games, i have not been able to get any shields for the borg (maybe they dont by design, or maybe it can happen via assimilation later?)


- some borg intelligence operations, require a large amount of Influence (300-400) to harvest a colony for exmaple, so it can be useful to scout your target empire's colonies first, to make sure that they have large-enough colonies for you to harvest, so that you dont waste the influence on just harvesting a 1 or 2 pop colony. (you still get a pop-up just before you successfully harvest them, to select which eligable colony to harvest, but if the choices only include low-pop colonies you will find out too late, but if you have spare influence you might as well still capture it since there is a limit to how much influence you can store)

- securing interesting systems via building outposts, might seem very appealing, but have a quick think about how many influence points it might cost, especially if far away from your border, versus simply re-capturing it later, especially if it looks like it will be grabbed by a nearby empire that you are soon going to be fighting etc.

- borg unity is an important way to speed up early game traditions, so try not to exceed your Edicts too much in the early game, unless you really need to activate more edicts, but once you start getting enough surplus, it is possible to go over the free edict points, and get a small reduction in surplus unity.

- when encountering new species for the 1st time, i think its always better to go with the "will be assimilated" option, because there are more chances to get alloys and unity etc CHK.
(it might have some ramifications such as other empire opinions against you, and maybe if your monthly Society research is low, you might benefit from more boosts by choosing another 1st contact option, but i think the assimilated option worked best for me, plus is more like the borg) :o)

- every pop you assimilate, can bring benefits to the borg, but the first time you assimilate any new species, it gives you a huge amount of unity and research etc, so always try to harvest a colony which has more unique pops (even if there is a slightly larger one but having duplicate race pops). (if your unicomplex needs a lot of pops, maybe harvesting the larger one could benefit you, but i still feel that trying to get more unique races first, is better because it can often help you instantly unlock a trait/tradition).
(also, getting pops appears to increase the baseline generation of monthly research)

- try building orbital research stations as soon as possible, because i built one a bit later on, and when i tried to build another one, there was a message which popped up saying that orbitals can only be built every so often. (maybe a future update can actually speficy what this waiting duration actually is, such as every 5 years etc?)

- alloys are very important, and if you have surplus energy (after balancing the other resources), try to also buy some monthly because in the mid game i was able to build up my fleet command and naval capacities, but was always low on alloys to build the actual ships i needed more of. (minerals are important too, but they are easier/cheaper to stabilise)

- in the early game, getting some Duranium income is nice, because it is needed especially for starbase upgrades, but after a while, you can sell a bit on the market, (while still gaining a little), because there could be a significant delay between unlocking (approx by mid game), the tech for larger starbase upgrades, and then you will start needing a larger income of it, in spurts etc.

- try to keep a small buffer between you and fluidic space, and try not to send ships near there too early, in case it triggers an encounter with them (this was the theory i used, until i could get some traditions that help me against them). (also having a small buffer of say at least 1 race between you and the largest empire could help with reducing border friction, but that wil only likely buy you a little bit of time if they do decide to attack you).

- sometimes a nearby large faction who is approximately on equal footing with you, might suddenly split into 2 factions (like a civil war etc), and that could be an opportunity to attack one of them, while they are at half strength (because individually, they might not feel comefortable declaring war on you now that they have half your power). maybe letting them fight it out for a while, could reduce both of their military capabilities further, but there could also be a risk of them re-uniting, or possibly somehow joining another/larger empire if you wait too long.

- borg starbases (and large ships), are not actually that good when going up against fleets of ships, even if your relative estimated fleet power is for example double that of the enemy fleet, for example 1 enemy fleet with 1 large ship and 4 small ships, can beat 1 solo borg cube (the basic cube, not tactical), and can beat a starbase which had more power. but if you add even just 2 or 3 borg probes it can help a lot, since the enemy attacks are split across your ships/starbase, giving them more time to regen between being hit)

- most battles i win with the borg, usually end with only a partial destruction of the enemy ships, with most of their ships actually retreating. (this could be because i installed the modules on my larger ships, which boost my ships regeneration values, instead of the usual Disruption tractor beam which would usually lower their ship's speed and combat disengagement chance ... i may have to modify my ships to add this effect, so that i can destroy more of them, otherwise the enemy will just keep re-appearing and re-grouping into fleets to attack me)

- the borg seem to be Unable to build an outpost on any system which has a Time Crystal. (it can still be worth surveying those systems, but probably not worth sending construction ships specifically there, untill later in the game, or if you have plenty of construction ships). maybe after i invade the Krennim, time crystals could be mined and those systems claimed?

- the Omega Particle resource seems to not have any use yet (up to mid game), and does not seem to benefit from storage silos (it still stays at about 10k of 10k)

- it is not clear how "stored research" in each of the 3 scientific fields works. (there is a window which pops-up every several months, allowing us to obtain a boost in some tech research levels, to try and unlock something, or gain Unity (usually by about reducing by about 2 months off the next tradition time, for a Level 1 option), but am not sure exactly what drives this window to popup (or how it obtains enough values, or Stored research is actually obtained in general) - maybe from each pop we assimilate, or each spy mission where we Assimilate New Data, or maybe it is from stored research, but i usually always have "stored research" in many games and many different mods, (sometimes in huge amounts) and never fully understood how it can be used :o)

- fleet manager can actually be useful for borg fleets, such as having 1 of each ship type in a fleet, and then extra amounts of smaller ones etc and reinforcing them.

- trellium-D in the early to mid game (does not seem to have a big need for it yet), so if you are low on resources, selling most of it can help you a lot with energy and alloys

- some rare resources (like magnecite etc) cant seem to be unlocked in early or mid game yet for borg (it never appeared in the list but maybe it was locked behind a seemingly-small Cities/districts +2% size boost tech etc that i didnt pick yet), however, if you let another race start mining it, you can capture that sector and obtain the resource each month that way, including to sell some too)

- some resources dont appear to be tradable on the market, such as the blue icon water ice, but converting it into duterium, lets you sell surplus duterium on the market (but you can obtain it via mining fairly easily) (ideally the blue icon Water ice would be tradable, as well as omega molecule, but maybe the borg would never sell 'perfection' in their Lore?) :o) but if it's so perfect, why do they only want to store 10k of it, and not having more options to store more?
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- because of the above, once you are getting enough water as a strategic resource, it is probably not worth building mining stations for them any more, because that will just add an upkeep cost of energy etc that you have to pay, with little or no return. (or once you have maxed your storage of it, it can be worth disbanding a few water mining stations, to save some energy in the long term - but, if anything changes in game, or your max storage increases considerably, it might be worth re-visiting your water mines status.)

- some techs, which seem to boost districts in small ways, can be hard to actually tell "how" they will benefit your colonies, i think partly due to the small percentages such as how will +2% benefit you to district size, on a planet which onmly has 8 districts etc, but also, because the borg wording is different from the vanilla classifications (such as consumer good being nanaites for borg), that some of the tech wording does not match the borg classifications, which i think made me sub-consciously (or consciously) pick other tech to unlock first :o)

(if it is too difficult, or not possible to change the tech wording to make it easier to understand how those district-related techs work, then maybe a steam discussion page could be created which helps to explain how they actually work, and to show how certain wording/district bonuses relate to borg wording/district bonuses. also some wording help for colony classification CHK?)


check:
- if you invade a planet, but later lose control of it, you can re-colonise it if you later own the system via a button on that planet.
but it seems that regular habitable planets can only be obtained / colonised (by attacks/invasions) for borg, and not via actual re-assimilator (colony ships)?
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my borg owned planets, seem to have the 1st building never upgradeable? (unlike that on the different unicomplexes, which does have upgrade options, several of which, if i have enough pops.?