RAR - You command the fleet at Wolf 359

[Esquire]

My knowledge of ToS isn't as good as it might be - why is sending M5 against the Borg such a good idea?

[Simon_Jester]

Because the M5 computer is a badass that can singlehandedly (single robot-edly?) operate a ship ably enough to destroy or cripple multiple human-crewed ships of the same class.

The problem with M5 is that the computer developed an exaggerated sense of self-preservation, didn't understand the meaning of "training exercise," and wound up actually disabling two Connies with heavy damage.

IF this problem can be solved or even mitigated, throwing the M5 at the Borg cube is likely to give said cube considerably more problems than otherwise.

[Esquire]

So, if I understand properly, M5 + Loyalty Programming (TM) is effectively a recipe for autonomous starships, without the usual drawbacks one finds in the Trek universe? Neat; that could definitely help against individual Borg warships. If nothing else, it turns the contest into a pure comparison of industrial capacity, which the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, etc. might actually win; certainly they can handle an indefinite number of singular cubes, given any significant amount of time in between attacks.

[Prometheus Unbound]

In their rescue mission for Locutus/Picard, Worf and Data had to get inside the Borg's 'EM field' before they could beam aboard so blocking transporters is something the Borg are definitely capable of.

Definitely capable. They do, nearly always, but after someone has done something to piss them off. Remember in the first instance to get Picard they had a full away team on there blasting Borg away.

Voyager shows also they don't seem to mind initial beamings, it's just *after* you start doing stuff they'll start blocking it.

Q Who as well - they just ignore people.

STFC: people are wandering around the corridors in a "borg environment" and they just ignore them unless they start poking around.


It's certainly plausible to destroy a Borg vessel this way (Voyager's done it) but you have to do it at the opening conversation or before you annoy them too much.

When they had to get through the EM field to get Locutus, that was a battle situation (it's during the saucer sep sequence and antimatter bits) so they had their defenses up. Wolf 359 is certainly a battle situation so I'd imagine the same would apply.

But apparently overcoming this means just moving to within 200m of the cube and flying through it. I think this tactic could work, if they swam it.

The Borg were distracted and missed the shuttle. Do the same thing, all unpowered and then activate and beam. It's a timer on a computer, it can't be hard to do.

The cube allows ships to get that close to it (Emissary Melbourne crashes into it, STFC Defiant flying along it's hull), stuff can be beamed on I think.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The problem with M5 is that the computer developed an exaggerated sense of self-preservation, didn't understand the meaning of "training exercise," and wound up actually disabling two Connies with heavy damage.

One Connie. He disabled Excalibur and killed her crew, and damaged Lexington. Lexington, however, was still able to fight. Same with Hood and Potempkin.

[Prometheus Unbound]

The problem with M5 is that the computer developed an exaggerated sense of self-preservation, didn't understand the meaning of "training exercise," and wound up actually disabling two Connies with heavy damage.

One Connie. He disabled Excalibur and killed her crew, and damaged Lexington. Lexington, however, was still able to fight. Same with Hood and Potempkin.

^ the others weren't expecting it and had lesser defenses and weapons activated. Once they switched back they were able to destroy the Enterprise they held back though.

[Simon_Jester]

[sighs]

Okay, clearly my combination of memory of seeing the episode four years ago plus Memory Alpha is insufficient.

Do we actually have evidence that the M5 fights more effectively than a crewed ship?

If not, we at least know the M5 fights a lot better than an uncrewed ship would otherwise be able to do.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In the earlier wargame, the one M5 actually played aong with, the E-Nil managed to out-maneuver both Excalibur and Lexington, damage both enough to drive them off, and only took a single hit o her shields. Kirk commented to McCoy afterwards that he'd seen his ship perform better with M5 than her crew could have managed. So M5 is definitely better than a crew, even at 2 to 1 odds, but 4 to 1 is stretching it.

[Crazedwraith]

Yes but 6 hours is not enough to time unearth M5 if it's even still extant and install it on a ship. Much less make it sane enough to be effective. And even if you could. You've got one ship that maybe twice as effective as before? That's not enough against the Borg. They effortlessly wipe out 40 starships. Effectively 41 is not that big a jump.

I'm skeptical that even mass firing tactics on the whole fleet is going to be effective if the Borg have already adapted to phasers and photorps from the E-D.

Explosion ram-ships or some manner of technically trickery to beam anti-matter on board seems the best bet. I wonder if you can use shuttles inside the em field to relay transports. Or perhaps store a lot of antimatter pods in the transporter buffer to beam in. (Though tbf developing this technical trickery may run into the same time limit I criticised the M-5 plan for)

[PREDATOR490]

Logically, mass firing should work. Enterprise gave us an indication that Borg adaption has an upper limit when Reed's solution was to crank up the phase pistol power.

I suppose the best option is to make sure that every Fed ship in the fleet cranks up their weapons to max and opens up with the best alpha strike they can produce on a singular point. If you want to go further in-depth have every ship rotate their frequencies independently in the hopes that the combined fire overwhelmes the Borg's ability to process what is happening. If the fleet waits for the Klingons to arrive with their different weapons then that could tip the balance further against the Borg.

That was the whole concept behind Riker's gamble to get Picard back. The Borg cube seems to jitter back and forth between the saucer and stardrive while they play a tag team match. It is possible that 40 ships hitting the cube will be too much for the Borg to suitably respond to and that would be the best point to slip in a silver bullet in the form of a ship loaded with explosives.

If you are looking for a reasonable vehicle to use as a ram - The E-D has a saucer section that could be evacuated and slammed into the Cube with far more destructive power than a shuttle is going to manage.

[Lord Revan]

the know that the cube can be overwhelmed if hit with consentrated firepower at a vunerble spot (we see that happen in First Contact), from what little we've seen in canon about the actual battle of Wolf 359 is that Starfleet didn't focus their fire (though that still might have not been enough as most of the ships were old and/or experimental).

[Prometheus Unbound]

the know that the cube can be overwhelmed if hit with consentrated firepower at a vunerble spot (we see that happen in First Contact), from what little we've seen in canon about the actual battle of Wolf 359 is that Starfleet didn't focus their fire (though that still might have not been enough as most of the ships were old and/or experimental).

Well that's the point of the OP in a way - no the fleet didn't focus fire, they went in several waves of 3-5 ships at a time which promptly got swatted down.

They should have gone all out alpha striking them, it may have worked.

[Lord Revan]

the know that the cube can be overwhelmed if hit with consentrated firepower at a vunerble spot (we see that happen in First Contact), from what little we've seen in canon about the actual battle of Wolf 359 is that Starfleet didn't focus their fire (though that still might have not been enough as most of the ships were old and/or experimental).

Well that's the point of the OP in a way - no the fleet didn't focus fire, they went in several waves of 3-5 ships at a time which promptly got swatted down.

They should have gone all out alpha striking them, it may have worked.

True but then at time Starfleet was working on limited intelligence that suggested that borg had no weak points you could focus on. All too often when critizing combat tactics people forget the importance of intelligence, just because something turns out to be false in hindsight, it doesn't mean the ship/fleet commanders at that point knew it to be stupid or false.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Oh we can all play Armchair Admiral at Wolf 359, we know stuff they didn't. And we know what didn't work.

Hansen never came across to me as stupid or incompetent. They just didn't realise what they were up against. And they hadn't counted on Picard being captured - that really made a dent in the fleet efforts. Without the Borg having pre-adapted to all starfleet technology at that point, it may have worked as the Admiral planned.

But since we do know - well as everyone has more or less said - everyone fire at once, rotate all frequencies all the time, if that fails try beaming explosives onboard (or beam them onboard during all this)... failing all that ram it.

Failing that self destruct because I ain't being assimilated.

[Crazedwraith]

Massed Fire on a point Target doesn't seem to happen an awful lot in Star Trek. ST:FC is the only time I really remember it.

I do wonder if it's possible to explain why without invoking 'everyone in Star Trek is stupid'. For the Borg, for example, it's possible concentrating fire on a single point, also allows the concentration of defences into a single facing, counter acting the advantages.

[Tribble]

A big part of the mass-firing's success was Picard's identification of the damaged section as a weak point. This actually went against the sensor readings, as Data noted that there didn't appear to be any vital system in the area. Even we as the viewer do not know enough about Borg tech to make that kind of judgement call. Also, if all of the ships are firing in a single location the Cube may be able to concentrate its shields there, or at least rotate that facing out of the way if it starts taking significant damage.

[FedRebel]

The Borg arrive in 6 hours. If you manage to avoid combat for an additional 6 hours, you get Klingon reinforcements. What do you do?

With the Enterpise's news of Picard's abduction, all command codes change, I think tank with Commanders and Tactical officers new tactics and instruct that everything currently 'by the book' is off the table.

I'd send off a couple of the Nebula's to be rearmed with Tricolbalt devices and have them fall back to Mars.

I'd expect the battle to last just long enough for Klingon reinforcements to arrive, by employing tactics Picard is unfamiliar and new Command codes, it won't be as prompt a curb-stomp. Still Heavy losses.

The Cube would be fighting it's way to Sector 001, likely dispatching the last of the 359 fleet/Klingon task force by the time it reaches the Martian Defense Perimeter. The Reserve Nebula's then engage and spam Tricobalt warheads into the cube.

The Cube is destroyed, the Enterprise having the opportunity to join in the battle is severely damaged.

[Venator]

The Borg arrive in 6 hours. If you manage to avoid combat for an additional 6 hours, you get Klingon reinforcements. What do you do?

With the Enterpise's news of Picard's abduction, all command codes change, I think tank with Commanders and Tactical officers new tactics and instruct that everything currently 'by the book' is off the table.

I'd send off a couple of the Nebula's to be rearmed with Tricolbalt devices and have them fall back to Mars.

That's not a bad place to start, though did they have tricobalt weapons at that point?

Similar to what others have said, start by getting every warp-capae shuttle, runabout, scow and other small craft available and load them to the absolute gills with antimatter. Figure out how to run them remotely, or worst case with controls slaved to one lead unit. Then, have them wait outside the engagement area and, when the cube approaches, mat the throttles and run at maximum sustained sublight acceleration.

The bulk of the fleet will focus fire on a single side of the cube, while weaving and evading as much as possible without compromising the focus fire.

As soon as they've engaged, the shuttle fleet warps in, and impacts the cube at extreme sublight speed - on a different facing. I don't know if the Borg focus their shields on a single facing, but if they do and are focused on defeating the fleet's fire they're going to regret it.

Meanwhile, a small number of the older ships are on "aggressive deadline research" duty. They fire random energy bursts from the main deflector, vent warp plasma, and fire/emit/broadcast every potentially dangerous thing in the cargo hold, nacelles, and database. Throw enough eggs at a wall and all. Even if the fleet is destroyed, there's a chance the last of Earth's defenses, or worst case the Earth relief force, can use the data they broadcast.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Borg would almost certainly detect the warp shuttles as a threat, and use their own superior warp speed to evade them or destroy them. Remember they know everything Picard knows, which would include 'shuttles suck as a weapon, so this must be a trick' conclusions. And they were fast enough at warp that E-D could barely keep up with them, which considering the age of some of the federation ships present probably means they could have avoided the engagement completely if not so confident of victory. Certainly they would be able to avoid a swarm of shuttles.

It also seems questionable that such small vessels would actually be effective, or at least any more effective then a full salvo of photon torpedoes would be. How much anti matter you really going to be able to add on hours of notice?

I'd use them and the oldest ships to evacuate as much crew as possible from the best ships. Then employ the best ships at suicide rams. The battle may well have been impossible to win given the Borg ability to negate Federation shields and lack of armor on the ships, but ramming immediately and in multiples would have the best chance of success.

Concentrating fire on one side has a big disadvantage , which is that Federation ships explode, so if they group up too much the Borg will just explode one as a weapon against the others. Spreading out in small groups, with the best ships leading as physical blockers, would be the way to go. Ram from all directions and hope for the best.

Of course this plan is a bit insane, but hindsight is hindsight.

[Venator]

The Borg would almost certainly detect the warp shuttles as a threat, and use their own superior warp speed to evade them or destroy them. Remember they know everything Picard knows, which would include 'shuttles suck as a weapon, so this must be a trick' conclusions. And they were fast enough at warp that E-D could barely keep up with them, which considering the age of some of the federation ships present probably means they could have avoided the engagement completely if not so confident of victory. Certainly they would be able to avoid a swarm of shuttles.

The Battle of Wolf 359 happened entirely at sublight speed, after the Borg had dropped out of warp. Outside of escaping imminent destruction of the Borg world in Scorpion part 1, I'm not aware of the Borg ever jumping to warp mid-battle to avoid a threat, actual or perceived. Notably, they did not use warp to escape the Enterprise-E in STFC, or the future-torps from Voyager in Endgame.

It's baseless to assume they would break off from firing on the capital ship fleet and go to warp in this case.

It also seems questionable that such small vessels would actually be effective, or at least any more effective then a full salvo of photon torpedoes would be. How much anti matter you really going to be able to add on hours of notice?

Option 1 - load them with as many primed photon torpedoes or warheads as they can carry. They tend to have a fairly capacious cargo hold, and based on historical engagements, the capital ships can expect to be destroyed or crippled before firing their entire complement.

Option 2 - DIY containment fields packing said cargo space with pure antimatter. Considering the nightmarishly poor design of TNG-era reactors, one thing that the Federation can do is contain antimatter.

I'd use them and the oldest ships to evacuate as much crew as possible from the best ships. Then employ the best ships at suicide rams. The battle may well have been impossible to win given the Borg ability to negate Federation shields and lack of armor on the ships, but ramming immediately and in multiples would have the best chance of success.

Why throw away your best ships without even trying other tactics first? Why would ramming immediately be more effective than ramming after focused and intense bombardment with normal weapons?

Concentrating fire on one side has a big disadvantage , which is that Federation ships explode, so if they group up too much the Borg will just explode one as a weapon against the others. Spreading out in small groups, with the best ships leading as physical blockers, would be the way to go. Ram from all directions and hope for the best.

Space is big, and also three-dimensional. You can space out ships enough to not be an immediate threat to one another and still hit one facing of something the size of a large Borg cube - either in a vertical grid, relative to the target facing, or in horizontal "ranks" with relatively low vertical dispersion, or better yet both. Six hours should be enough time for a remotely competent group to work out a formation to prevent, or at least drastically reduce, friendly-fire incidents.

Of course this plan is a bit insane, but hindsight is hindsight.

Considering it relies on throwing away your entire fleet immediately, without recourse of actually attempting to fight them conventionally, or discern weaknesses that your allies or surviving elements of your force can exploit, and directly contravenes the OP's stipulation that "extreme orders will be met with resistance", yes, I would call it a bit insane.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Battle of Wolf 359 happened entirely at sublight speed, after the Borg had dropped out of warp. Outside of escaping imminent destruction of the Borg world in Scorpion part 1, I'm not aware of the Borg ever jumping to warp mid-battle to avoid a threat, actual or perceived. Notably, they did not use warp to escape the Enterprise-E in STFC, or the future-torps from Voyager in Endgame.

It's baseless to assume they would break off from firing on the capital ship fleet and go to warp in this case.

No it isn't. STFC the Borg sphere had already reached its objective and was firing upon it, causing serious damage, and allowing it to beam over the E-E before it could fix its shields. Not a bad result for a small sphere.

The original cube meanwhile must have been mostly fighting at warp to get from the border of the Federation to Earth in less then thousands of years. While in Engame Voyager was the objective in the first place, and the Borg of course would not expect actual future weapons. The Borg would outright flee at warp from species 8472 meanwhile, they are not complete morons.

Meanwhile in the case in play, the Borg were perfectly happy to leave an intact Enterprise-D behind and continue on to Earth at warp speed, even though they would have known it could pursue. They did destroy the fleet at Wolf 359, but they did so with casual ease and Picard's full understanding, as well as E-D files, on Federation capabilities. Encountering a different situation they would act differently. Certainly it's absurd to assume they'd remain dumb and blind when facing obviously modified ships. The ability to remotely detect weapons and explosives is well established for Trek sensors and it's not like small boat tactics are a new idea.

Option 1 - load them with as many primed photon torpedoes or warheads as they can carry. They tend to have a fairly capacious cargo hold, and based on historical engagements, the capital ships can expect to be destroyed or crippled before firing their entire complement.

Given that the torpedoes are supposed to be loaded with anti matter before firing that may not work so well. Or at least they'd need some kind of power supply wired up. Six hours is not a vast amount of time to do anything.

Option 2 - DIY containment fields packing said cargo space with pure antimatter. Considering the nightmarishly poor design of TNG-era reactors, one thing that the Federation can do is contain antimatter.

You want people with that poor of design skills to improvise bombs while working on board their own ships hangers? The fleet might not survive in time to fight the Borg! Its not an unreasonable idea, but since I'd have zero faith that a shuttle would ever impact the Borg it does not seem like a great use of time. I'd use the shuttles to evacuate children.

Why throw away your best ships without even trying other tactics first? Why would ramming immediately be more effective than ramming after focused and intense bombardment with normal weapons?

Because were operating with hindsight, as your plan utterly requires, and we already know the fleet lacked the clear conventional firepower to win, duh. Hindsight says the Borg could cripple these ships after just a few hits, sustained fire from phasers is highly unlikely to matter and your plan requires weakening the torpedo batteries of the capital ships, in exchange for targets we know the Borg can engage, shuttles.

If you wanted a compromise then trying to improvise a way to actually launch torpedoes would make more sense, because per the rules of the TNG Franchise people can't try to shoot them down.

Space is big, and also three-dimensional. You can space out ships enough to not be an immediate threat to one another and still hit one facing of something the size of a large Borg cube - either in a vertical grid, relative to the target facing, or in horizontal "ranks" with relatively low vertical dispersion, or better yet both. Six hours should be enough time for a remotely competent group to work out a formation to prevent, or at least drastically reduce, friendly-fire incidents.

Federation ships always close in to employ weapons at close range. Given how bad their torpedo accuracy is even at close ranges stand off tactics will obviously fail here. You want to start citing examples of what the Borg do, you can't ignore Federation limitations either.

Considering it relies on throwing away your entire fleet immediately, without recourse of actually attempting to fight them conventionally, or discern weaknesses that your allies or surviving elements of your force can exploit, and directly contravenes the OP's stipulation that "extreme orders will be met with resistance", yes, I would call it a bit insane.

We know conventional battle will fail. You seriously think the Federation lost only because they didn't concentrate firepower? That's absurd and makes precious little sense. Ramming is the oldest naval tactic and a highly successful one. Go with what works. Everything in Trek has proven vulnerable to ramming, which only makes sense since momentum is momentum.

[Solauren]

#1 - All Civilians Off! I don't care if I have to cram them all into a single 100 year old ship, but get them off. Essential crew only.
#2 - Turn off all equipment not needed in battle. If that means someone's pet goldfish freezes to death, to damn bad. It's a civliian, and should have left on that 100 year old ship. I mean lights, gravity, heating, everything. Empty decks don't need power.
#3 - All power to the shields and weapons.
#4 - Arm everyone with ballistic weapons (i.e guns). If we have time to put a really big mass driver on the ships, and pick up a few 10meter diameter asteroids, great. If not, how many can I grab and hold with tractor beams?
#5 - Shuttles are to be waiting without power (and preferably hiding behind something). When they get in range, beam over assault teams, armed with guns and explosives. Trash the Cube from the inside.
#6 - All Ships go in at full power, and just keep firing. Ram at full speed. Oldest ships with minimal crew go first, on automatic beam out. Their warhead launches keep firing the entire time, and after ramming, the entire weapon magazine detonates. Newer ships, as they get close, automatic beam over to the Borg ship. If all the crew end up on the Borg cube, hopefully, we can cripple it and hold out until the Enterprise arrives to evac us. If not, at least we die knowing we probably saved Earth.


And, assuming I keep my Trek Knowledge......

How fast can I my people make an Interdimensional Invertor? (ref: Episode Dr. Crusher got kidnap. I'm to lazy to look).
They appear to ignore shields. (Either that, or Pichard and Riker need to be court martialed for not raising shields to stop an enemy boarding action.)
And how fast can I equip Photon Torpedoes to use them? Aim at borg cube, fire. Photon teleports over, explodes.

[Prometheus Unbound]

How fast can I my people make an Interdimensional Invertor? (ref: Episode Dr. Crusher got kidnap. I'm to lazy to look).

They can't. They never got it to work properly. The research and device is banned. They won't get it up and running in 6 hours.

They appear to ignore shields. (Either that, or Pichard and Riker need to be court martialed for not raising shields to stop an enemy boarding action.)

They go through shields.

And how fast can I equip Photon Torpedoes to use them? Aim at borg cube, fire. Photon teleports over, explodes.

Just use a normal transporter for that. Until battle starts, the Borg don't tend to put up any defenses. (Q Who, TBOBW, Dark Frontier).

[Solauren]

How fast can I my people make an Interdimensional Invertor? (ref: Episode Dr. Crusher got kidnap. I'm to lazy to look).

They can't. They never got it to work properly. The research and device is banned. They won't get it up and running in 6 hours.

Actually, IRCC what Data said was "The theories were proven to be inaccurate, and all research was abandoned." In that episode, the invertor was causing DNA damage, and it was considered irreversible.

Also, the Enterprise crew got data on it, and everyone knew about it when it was brought up, even Dr. Crusher. Hell, it was studied in Wesley's non-starfleet science class.

Sounds like a working tech, that's just dangerous.

But, that's neither here nor there, if I can get shuttles close enough to beam over Photons past the Borg Electromagnetic field (which prevented transporter boarding during the Enterprises solo engagement where they kidnapped Locutus)

[Prometheus Unbound]

Well they have 6 hours to find the research and build and test the devices. I don't see them having time for it given there's a Borg Cube heading toward them.

And in any case, until weapons start firing, you can beam to a Borg Ship using normal methods. Just beam 100 torpedoes in the middle of it when it gets in range. No need to over-complicate.