Borg vs Dominion

[Prometheus Unbound]

Thought this would need a new thread as it's wildly off topic from the original thread, but also warrants discussion.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 7#p3893670

they [The Borg] would learn of the Dominion

Here is a story that I have always would have loved to hear. What would a fight be like between the Dominion and the Borg? I'd wager a single cube would be easily dealt with through ramming bugships, but if they sent several cubes, would that be enough to defeat the Dominion in their own space?

Assumption / topicy bit: The Borg, previously for [reason] have no presence in the Gamma Quadrant. They assimilate some Starfleet ship which has a database containing information on the Dominion - their rough location, that they are powerful, control vast areas of space. But it does not give any specific tactical information. Nothing on how the weapons work, shields, armour, Ketracel White etc. It does mention shapeshifting. This is a civilian vessel that had a "light wikipedia" page in the databanks.


What happens.

[Baffalo]

First, the Borg would be in for a rather rude shock. Even if the Dominion didn't know to modulate shields or weapons, I'm almost certain that the Borg would be off guard when a bug ship or whatever rams them. The sheer number of suicidal fighters would be enough to give them pause. And god forbid Jem Hadar get loose inside a cube where they fight hand to hand. Seriously, the Borg have a distinct disadvantage there, and would be cut down one by one. Sure, some Jem Hadar would be assimilated along the way, but I imagine they'd kill themselves before it could take hold. Any information the Borg have would be gathered from corpses.

[Borgholio]

Yeah the Jem Hadar would slaughter the Borg in hand to hand combat. Any of them who were assimilated would not likely have much useful information...since even the Firsts are pretty much grunts. If the Borg managed to grab a Vorta they might get something out of them. I wonder if a Founder can be assimilated...

[bilateralrope]

I doubt the Founders would go anywhere near the Borg once they realize that their skills at infiltration would be useless. That would make assimilation rather difficult.

[Baffalo]

If I were a Founder, I'd honestly give an order that if a Vorta is about to be assimilated, execute them immediately.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Borg are incredibly powerful, but so is the Dominion. Ramming is known to be an effective tactic against the Borg, and unless that changes, the Dominion can and will overwhelm a Cube with suicide attacks. However, the Borg have transwarp and the Dominion do not, which means that the Borg don't really have to fear offences into their space while the Dominion can pretty much just defend, not attack.

[Borgholio]

I would not put it past the Dominion to try and capture a cube or a sphere and figure out this transwarp tech or whatever else they can. Unlike the Feds, the Dominion would have no issue throwing ten thousand soldiers into the meat grinder so they can capture a cube mostly intact.

[Baffalo]

I would not put it past the Dominion to try and capture a cube or a sphere and figure out this transwarp tech or whatever else they can. Unlike the Feds, the Dominion would have no issue throwing ten thousand soldiers into the meat grinder so they can capture a cube mostly intact.

Yes but would the Borg allow a cube to be taken? Or would they simply self destruct if all the drones are lost?

[Borgholio]

Well we do know they CAN self destruct but we've only seen it happen twice...when the Queen did it to prove a point, and when the E-D made them overload and explode. There was one cube that was caught in a lightning storm in Voyager and the drones were disconnected from the collective. They formed a new community on a nearby planet and the cube remained where it was, mostly intact.

[Tribble]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 8&t=159399

[Prometheus Unbound]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 8&t=159399

yeah but we can't talk there.

[Enigma]

But it will come down to a war of attrition. One that the Borg would win at.

[Crazedwraith]

But it will come down to a war of attrition. One that the Borg would win at.

interesting, Care to back that up?

I mean The Borg have the advantage that assimilation is plus one soldier for them and minus one for the enemy at the same time. But he Dominion cheif tactic does seem to be that it clones crap loads of Jem Hadar and built lots of cheap ships to spam the enemy with. And we just don't know what their full size of industry is. They were bottlenecked by the wormhole and were operating out a third rate power like the cardassians and still gave the alpha/beta quadrant powers a run for their money.

of course, we don't know the borg's full might/size in the delta quadrant either but they do seem more reluctant to use their forces en mass at such a remove. The famous one federation, one cube tactic. Their chief advantage that I can see is transwarp allow them to attack the dominion but the dominion can't attack borg territory. So the best the dominion can really hope for is the same kind of stalemate the federation has: you can send your ships and we'll blow them up but we can't stop you for good.

[Ted C]

If I were a Founder, I'd honestly give an order that if a Vorta is about to be assimilated, execute them immediately.

I believe that Vorta have standing orders to use the "kill switch" in their neck if captured.

[Ted C]

I doubt that the ramming approach would work for long. Borg cubes are robust enough that I expect it would take more than one bug ship ram to destroy one, and when the Borg shoot to destroy instead of capture and assimilate a ship, they can be pretty efficient. They couldn't succeed with just one cube, but if they actually mobilized, I think a fleet of cubes would cut through bugships fast enough to win a space battle.

[Borgholio]

The Dominion doesn't just have bug-ships, they also have capital ships twice the size of the Romulan D'deridex. I'm sure those could hurt even a cube.

[Elheru Aran]

The Dominion never really threw its whole strength into the fight against the Federation, IIRC. They lost mostly by virtue of their operations in the Alpha Quadrant being shut down and being confined by treaty to the Gamma (as well as the Founder plague hurting their leadership). So they would probably be a fairly formidable opponent to the Borg; we just don't know their entire capabilities for sure.

[Tribble]

This is a tough call.

Theoretically the Borg should have the overwhelming advantage here: one on one their ships are stronger, and more importantly their ships are theoretically much faster than Dominion ships.

Sure, the Dominion fleets may be very large... but assembling them and sending them off to battle takes time. And as vast as the Dominion is, I doubt even they have the ability to guard every single planet they own with fleets of hundreds of ships.

Theoretically the Borg have the ability to pick targets of opportunity and wipe them out / assimilate them with overwhelming force before the Dominion would be able to reinforce the area. Also the Dominion have no effective way of attacking Borg territory and assets, which severely limits their response. Under those conditions the Dominion would end up losing eventually.

On the other hand, the Borg are... not known for their tactical genius. Rather than use their propulsion to their advantage, they are likely to do what we always see and just send in wave after wave of ships and throw them at the most heavily defended targets they could find. The Dominion were able to build ships at a quick pace in the AQ, and I think its safe to assume their resources in the GQ are far greater. If the Borg employed their typical tactics I'd say the Dominion would be able to stalemate, especially if they resort to ramming.

[Prometheus Unbound]

https://youtu.be/ZMa_SUDhn7E?t=42s

apologies the sound is out of sync.

Does it look to anyone else that the excelsior class ship actually flies almost side-ways on into the edge of the cube, which seems to be turning slightly into it?

If it did miss, I think it looks like by only a couple of metres. That, to me, looks like a collision.

If it was, there was no reported or known damage to the cube. But then even if it did ram, it wasn't at full speed and full power.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I went back to my copy and made it slower and brighter. Nothing else changed.


That thing hits the cube at several hundred metres a second.

That's a 0.125x speed. 8 times slower than normal. The cube is 3km long. It's not going particularly slowly and the ship is heading toward it at a considerable speed too. We are talking +1 km/sec here - 3600 km/hour.

[Borgholio]

Nice with the slowdown on the video, but alas it doesn't actually SHOW the impact. So for all we know, the Borg used one of their dozens of tractor beams to push it out of the way or they just blew it up. Now assuming it DID impact, we're talking one unpowered ship hitting a cube sideways after being blown half to bits. Far cry from a hundred Jem Hadar fighters directly ramming the thing at full impulse.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Well, no we don't see the actual impact. But at those speeds and that range, I cannot see how it could be avoided. Either the Borg cube suddenly and violently swung to the left (which, apart from looking ridiculous, we've never seen them do) or that ship hit it at over 1km/sec. It was literally metres from the hull with no signs of any slowing down or forcefields or tractor beams - and they take, as we saw, 0.3 seconds to activate and hit the target - even if launched, do you think another 2.4 seconds of that slow down would mean a miss ?

I don't


Also the engineering section didn't blow up, the antimatter is still in there, in all those juicy pods.

But then until ST:FC, we've never seen a photon torpedo do any damage to a borg ship. Even in Q Who, the torpedoes didn't do anything.

Maybe they're just super duper adapted to antimatter or something.

[Borgholio]

do you think another 2.4 seconds of that slow down would mean a miss ?

The Enterprise managed to stop the Stargazer using a tractor beam. It was at warp speed...which is a lot faster than 1 km/s.

[Prometheus Unbound]

do you think another 2.4 seconds of that slow down would mean a miss ?

The Enterprise managed to stop the Stargazer using a tractor beam. It was at warp speed...which is a lot faster than 1 km/s.

Actually no, it wasn't. It came out of warp. The Picard maneuver is used against a ship that (for some reason) isn't using FTL scanners. They are at range, perhaps 1 light second (although on screen it was about 100km) then they engage warp and move forward to perhaps 0.2 light seconds away. On screen this was about 20km.

The idea is the light from the one further away has not caught up with the FTL warp jump, so visually and to non FTL scanners (which are apparently used for no reason because they have FTL scanners but whatever) there are two targets. The hostile ship has a 50% chance of firing on the wrong one.


The Stargazer came out of warp before the tractorbeam was engaged.

The copy I have is mkv and windows movie maker wont load it. I'm sure it's online somewhere to see though.

[Borgholio]

Found the video on youtube. You're right, it DOES come out of warp before the tractor beam engages. But it also appears to be going really fast at sublight, so the Borg stopping that broken Excelsior is still plausible.