Birth of the Empires

Playing as the Klingons on the easy level with no other major races, I nervously encountered the Xiborg homesector. It should be like taking on Prime Nexus and nigh impossible to do so. The way it's configured, they begin with good enough tech as a minor race to have destroyers and battleships, yet foolishly their massive fleet is just benignly sitting outside their homesector. That makes no sense in all honesty. They should at least defend within their homesector and maybe own several sectors ie Unimatrix 01, Unimatrix 02, etc as an extremely powerful minor race. Or be made as a seventh major race or replace the Ferengi.

[Note that I sent a fleet of midlevel mixed cruisers and destroyers of about 15 in number (6 were armored transport vessels) and the combat odds were 56% in my favor. I won but it was a pyrrhic victory as it took out a single Borg destroyer, but they damaged my own ships with a hull-virus. Thus on a subsequent attack, I lost the entire 15 vessels! 'Got a total butt whipping.
https://www.history.com/news/5-famous-pyrrhic-victories

Whereas I sent a mixed planetary invasion force of 10 Klingon troops (low to midrange) which easily took the Xiborg homesector. It was too easy by far.]

They would be very limited and just building up infastructure until say all the minor races are eliminated or all some setpoint value of whatever maximum number of colonizable sectors threshold is reached, then start invasions in the late game.

That especially would be true on the hardest levels like impossible.

Now what was peculiar was I subjugated them, yet their fleet was still intact. It would be awesome on the impossible level if once subjugated then since you controlled their homesector, you would gain that large fleet. It would be amusing if on other levels, the attack would backfire and they would subvert the invasion force (just turn whatever was sent against them into being under Borg control.

As an alternative, you could have single Borg vessels in the alien entity files to spawn say at the earlier sphere level.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1SQvgbEdNTg

You could have a kind of nebula surrounding the Xiborg homesector which limits their progress which cannot be traversed until the late game as well with advanced ships. It would be a most excellent final grand battle having totally conquering all major and minor races (or subjugating them), then deploying massive fleets to invade Prime Nexus, the Borg homesector ie hundreds of lategame advanced ships with elite invader ground troops.

As weak as you are from the start through turn 200+, you would not have a positive outcome from openly engaging the Xibren outside of the Xiborg sector...yet.

The initial response by the casual viewer of the Borg is that they are evil and a warped version of transhumanist thought that is philosophically embraced by the technocrats. The latter do not believe in GOD, but believe all can be enhanced and become gods.

As such depending on your ethos, then the Borg are violators of the philosophical belief in free will. Theologically they are as malevolent as demons who possess other races.

But if you disbelieve that free will exists and are a nihilist,then you are a biological construct who merely acts based on the programming of nature. As free will does not exist, you cannot steal or subvert what does not exist. In a way, the Borg assimilating other races is akin to forced medical compliance of the mentally ill today. Either you believe in free will...or you don't. If you believe some can be committed to mental institutions (dubiously justified as being for their own good) or forced to take mood altering drugs, when they have committed no crimes, then you don't believe in free will.

That makes the Borg the enemy of all other races and so they are the true grand threat to the galaxy and plausibly to the universe.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iArPNc-ml3I

Are the Borg evil? Well if you are a nihilist, then evil is a fallacy. Biblically they would be considered evil as violating free will is why they are considered demonic.

A philosophical case can be made that they are not evil but that the Collective cares for all in rather an egalitarian fashion and even replaces parts to allow longevity to exist indefinitely.

I would love to see the Xiborg become a 7th race or replace the Ferengi. That likely only works in a preset campaign where all major races are played for at least 350+ turns. They have maybe five sectors plus Prime Nexus. Then begin subjugation and unless the other races unify, resistence is futile.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Temporal_Cold_War
One of the amusing aspects, revealed in the Enterprise tv series and in subsequent noncanonical ersatz so-called Star Trek tv series like Discovery, is that if the Borg were not defeated, then in one timeline by the 27th century, the entire galaxy is assimilated by the Borg.

But actually in BotE, they can be easily subjugated by the Terrans with ease and by the Omega through some smart decisions. I have played so many tests (in the last 3 weeks) that it's difficult to keep them straight now. I think either the Khaoran or the Rotharians could have easily done so as well.

Yet according to Star Trek canon, the Borg were accidentally created by the Federation. And since Discovery is so in trouble by madcap noncanonical writing that outraged hardcore Star Trek fans of more than 50 years that now the Borg are supposed to rescue the timeline that wretched writing by Discovery writing nearly ruined a franchise with spore drives.

It's my hope the Xibren become an 8th slot human player empire choice, along with the TabulaRasa. The problem is they have to be very different than the Borg for copyright reasons.

Ultimately by many new tech levels, they would become incredibly dangerous. Here they provoke mirth unless facing their ships in an invasion.

Read through the minor races. Many would be worthy adversaries. And many have a synthetic origin or a bionic aspect. But imagine that the Xibren incorporate other minor races, just as the Terran Coalition does, but without free will. Then all those accumulated minor tech abilities then begin to pose a threat to every major empire. Then eventually it's inevitable that a major race like the Heyoun would fall too.

The Terran Coalition, if they lost their way, like the Terran Empire from Star Trek, would be just as bad.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Terran_Empire

I detail the TabulaRasa and the Mimics as potential eight slot empires in the modding topic. The TabulaRasa can be benign or utterly malevolent. The Mimics might be entirely peaceful but enjoy a scrap now and then and love everything to do with the martial arts, just not subjugation as it spoils the outcome. The Mimics relish in learning all technology to make the very best elite vessels, but hate bullies so can be outrageous white knights spoiling empire aspirations across the galaxy.