Borg Nanoplating is a Rare Forbidden Tech built entirely around Solo Armadas. Every one of its four buffs carries the same “against Solo Armadas” condition, and the headline effect stacks Armor Pierce, Shield Pierce, and Accuracy up to 1,400% at max tier and level. If you run solo armadas regularly it is one of the more direct upgrades available to that crew. Outside of solo armadas it does nothing at all.
What Borg Nanoplating does
The piece unlocks with a small critical hit chance bonus and adds three more buffs as you tier it up. The offensive pierce and accuracy line arrives at tier 3 and does the heaviest lifting, since armor pierce and shield pierce cut straight through the mitigation that makes armada targets tanky. Defense and critical damage follow later, so the item gets meaningfully stronger as a whole rather than just scaling one number.
| Buff | Unlocks at tier | Unlock value | Max value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Hit chance against Solo Armadas | 1 | 1% | 25% |
| Armor Pierce, Shield Pierce, and Accuracy against Solo Armadas | 3 | 100% | 1,400% |
| Armor, Shield Deflection, and Dodge against Solo Armadas | 6 | 100% | 1,800% |
| Critical Damage against Solo Armadas | 8 | 25% | 265% |
Values are current as of the latest game data. Read them as a package: the pierce and accuracy line raises how much of your damage actually lands, the defensive line raises how much of the armada’s damage you shrug off, and the two critical buffs raise both how often you crit and how hard those crits hit. A fully built piece is doing all four jobs at once on the same target type.
How to get Borg Nanoplating
Forbidden Tech is unlocked with rarity-matched fragments in the Forbidden Tech refinery, so this one takes Rare Forbidden Fragments. The game points to Q’s Trials and special rewards as where those fragments come from. You will also need Forbidden Tech Fusion Rods, which unlock Forbidden Tech slots on a ship and are also what you spend to pull a piece back off a ship later. Fusion Rods come from the Forbidden Tech refinery and the store.
Excess parts are not wasted. Duplicate Forbidden Tech material converts into Forbidden Tech Credit Pieces, which exchange for Forbidden Tech Credits in the refinery. If you are collecting toward a specific piece, that exchange is worth checking before you spend anything else.
Upgrading Borg Nanoplating
Tiers and levels are separate tracks. Tiering up raises the level cap and switches on the later buffs at the tiers listed above, while leveling scales the values you already have. Borg Nanoplating caps at tier 12 and level 60. Tier-ups cost Forbidden Tech Reactor and Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst; levels cost Forbidden Tech Reactor and Forbidden Tech Protomatter. Reactors are spent on both tracks, which makes them the real bottleneck.
| Ebene | Level cap | Kosten |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | Starting tier, no cost |
| 7 | 35 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 4,200 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
| 12 | 60 | 32 Forbidden Tech Reactor, 4,900 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst |
Taking the piece from tier 1 to tier 12 costs 352 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 57,000 Forbidden Tech Tier-Up Catalyst in total. Leveling from 2 to 60 costs 1,856 Forbidden Tech Reactor and 475,975 Forbidden Tech Protomatter. Reactors are attempt currency for upgrades rather than a guaranteed purchase, and Probability Devices exist to raise those upgrade chances, so budget more reactors than the flat totals suggest.
Best ships and uses for Borg Nanoplating
This goes on your solo armada ship and nowhere else. Because the condition is written into every buff, the piece is inert against regular hostiles, in player combat, and on mining runs. Put it on whichever ship your solo armada crew actually flies, and if you rotate ships for different armada types, keep the Fusion Rod cost of moving it in mind before you commit.
The tier gates shape when it earns its slot. At low tiers you are getting a modest critical hit chance and the pierce line, which is already useful on tanky armada targets. The defensive buff at tier 6 is what lets a marginal crew survive a harder solo armada, and the critical damage buff at tier 8 is where the piece starts changing clear times rather than just clear rates.
Borg Nanoplating in Star Trek
Borg nanoprobes are canon and central to how the Collective works: microscopic machines that assimilate biological tissue, repair damage, and rewrite the systems they infest. Borg adaptation is equally well established, since drones and vessels reconfigure their shielding mid-fight until an attack that worked a moment ago stops working entirely. Voyager’s crew took on Borg-derived technology after Seven of Nine joined them, most visibly in the transwarp coils and astrometrics work that shortened the trip home. Hull plating grafted from nanoprobe armor is the game extending that idea rather than something shown on screen, but the logic behind it is straight out of the Collective’s playbook.
Is Borg Nanoplating worth it?
Worth it if solo armadas are part of your routine, and skippable if they are not. As a Rare piece it is cheaper to unlock than the Epic tiers of the system, and its ceiling on pierce and defense is high enough to matter. Take it to tier 8 to get all four buffs online, then keep leveling only if solo armadas stay in your weekly rotation.