Borg Assimilator Class MK I

Built around a shield cube core, the Assimilator class is the second ship of the defensive oriented series and fulfills the role of a salvage/resource hauling vessel.

Slightly bigger than it's sister ship, the Immortal Class, the Assimilator doesn't use the defensive series ablative shield technology, instead using most of the internal space between the inner and outer hulls, for an enormous array of Salvage Cannons. After some extensive testing however, I didn't feel the cannons performed as well as I'd hoped, and their firing orientation was worse than I'd expected. They will however, earn you credits extremely quickly and chew through anything with relative ease, decimating regular asteroids in seconds.

Something to work on for the Mark II design however, a lot of optimisation can be done with the salvager set up.

Onto the stats, one thing to note before going further is that because of the slightly larger dimensions compared to the Immortal Class, and the spaces between the hulls being used for solid shield blocks instead of ablative plates, the Assimilator sports a higher base defense than it's sister, though the Immortal will perform much better defensively in a real fire fight because of the way it's built, the Mark II version of the Immortal will also be scaled up slightly to meet the dimensions of the Assimilator - the standard I'm aiming for with the shield series.

Mass: 17,765.3 (Blocks: 177,653)
Dimensions: L: 61m, H: 61m, W: 61m
Power: 284,142.8 (509,223.8 e/sec)
Thrust: 14,828
Turning Speed: 1.1 on all axis
Shields: 1,917,160 (38,053 s/sec)
AMC Array: 13,263.8 DPS
Price: 94,103,450

For the aesthetics, I wanted the Assimilator Class to look a bit more classically "Borg" than it's sleeker sister ship. Not being a super artistic person, I generally find small detailing quite difficult - in that nothing quite looks right to me when I'm doing it. After browsing around for some ideas, I stumbled upon this excellent guide posted by mindlord0013 who outlines the process in a step by step, easy to follow format. This kind of detailing I thought would be perfect for a classical Borg look, and decided to give it a go myself. After the detailing was complete, I switched the texture pack I'm using from "Cartoon" to "Realistic" and turned on the shadow effects in my Starmade client. I'm pretty happy with the result, and think it will look even better on my future planned (much bigger) Borg vessels. I'll be using a mix of this classical Borg look and the sleeker versions seen in the Immortal Class where I feel it's appropriate. It should be noted however, that the internal spaces of the Assimilator are MUCH darker than intended after switching to the realistic texture pack, as the battery blocks don't give off as much light. This will be addressed in future versions and builds, as the realistic texture pack will be my default going forward.

Please remember most importantly, that this fleet I'm creating is for my own personal interpretation of a Borg Collective, and not meant to be 100% canon to the Star Trek series/movies in terms of looks, ship functionality and size - though I will aim to be accurate enough for them to be unmistakably Borg.

Once again, thanks for reading my big wall of text, and here, have some pictures! ^^

The basic wire-frame takes shape around the core, and the first array of Salvage Cannons are fitted.


The Salvage Cannons completed, I started filling in the gaps between them with shield blocks, and created the small control bridge for ship operation.


All cubed up!


An internal view of the airlock after switching texture packs, the room on the right side is one of two areas with massive amounts of item storage for hauling trips. The passage leading off to the left leads to the control room where the ship core and computers are located.


The completed Assimilator Class MK I.