I was wondering if someone could explain some of the Borg, adaptation wankage to me?

So there is the standard Trekkie claims that they can adapt to anything. And they can bypass shields because of it. Now I admit I'm not that great on the science side of things, but I am willing and want to learn.

Now in general from what I tend to see in the debate regarding the Borg and ST technobabble in general. Is the standard shields, are energy, all energy has resonance, thus matching that and you can by pass it all together.

Now I know that smacks of BS, I have read the page on it on the main site. But I still can't really fully get my head around why it's wrong.

Mainly what throws me is I don't fully understand the whole resonance and frequency things, and the whole 180 degree frequency difference thing.

Now I would rather not have people jump down my throat about being a noob or anything, or not wanting to do research I would love some good links about this where I can figure this out better(Just had poor luck finding ones that are actually helpful for me). Really this is the more annoying carp about debates that I get into involving the Borg, is the whole weapons/shields frequency wankage, that I don't know well enough to effectively refute(yet).

Any help will be much appreciated.

Borg adaption depends on the attacker using an energy weapon on the Borg. In "Q Who" Worf fired a phaser set to kill at a drone, which promptly killed the drone. Then another one beamed aboard, having a shield adaption to the frequency Worf used so he couldn't kill it on that frequency. I'm not sure about the way it works, but it seems that Borg drones have equipment on them that allows them to process the frequency and power of the energy weapon used, which is then spread throughout the Borg nearby, possibly the whole Collective as well. Once that frequency is used a certain number of times, the Borg have studied it enough to modify their shields in order to become resistant to this frequency. Photon torpedoes work in a similar way.

The Borg's shields have been proven to fail under heavy attack. Watch First Contact where a Fed fleet comes into combat with a Cube around Earth. You see that the Borg shields fall and don't prevent the destruction of the Cube despite the Cube already having known about and adapted to Fed phasers and photons. Similarly the Borg sphere is destroyed/damaged (haven't watched the movie, sadly) by the E-E's quantum torps despite having adapted to them from the E-E's use of them on the Cube.

As for the personal shields. It's been discussed before, but the main message was that the Imperial forces weapons don't have frequencies, so the Borg can't adapt to them. Presumably even if they could the Imps could simply combine their weapons to break the shield or simply shoot at the walls around them to produce shrapnel (physical weapons like bullets have never been adapted to by the Borg) which will kill the Borg.

The Borg would likely not be able to study the Wars technology due to the sheer difference in advancements they have made. Additionally they might never be able to beamed aboard due to Imp ships hulls being made out of stuff like duranium, which regular Trek transporters don't work on.

Besides, Borg drones don't show initiative on their own when part of the Collective, merely lumbering forward out in the open. This tactic is a complete failure, since they don't move out of the way to avoid weapon blasts. If Borg cannot adapt to their enemies (and are too stupid to try to, watch Scorpion to witness their incompetence) then they quickly fall apart as a threat. I doubt Borg tubules would be able to penetrate Stormtrooper armor. I'm not the best debater on all of this, but all of this has been dealt with at one point or another.

I would appreciate the help of other Wars debaters on here.

Wow. They're even dumber than expected if that's true. "Hey guys, that beam from the phaser? Despite it being almost exactly the same as the one that killed Bob of Five, I bet it's just a harmless light. Let's not adapt this ti-"

I believe the whole thing with frequency was rationalized as such that there will be points in the shield's waveform where the shield strength will be zero (or close enough), and so that if you know the frequency your computers can fire through the shield at the optimum point. However if you are slightly off with the frequency you will probably hit the shield as it is in a low state, which may be where phenomena like seeing shield interactions occur even when they are essentially shooting through the shield. They may be off by a few nano seconds and a weakened but insignificant reaction occurs instead of going through when the wave is at zero.

Ghetto edit:

I found the piece on the main site, quoted here for ease of reference:

Hardly a worry if the calcs about the average turbolaser volley are correct. The Borg have their shields ready, suddenly a blast from an ISD and no more Borg Cube. Brute force works better than frequency modulation in this case.

In some ways the lack of frequency-specific weapons on the SW sides is also an advantage. It means that once first contact with the Borg is had, their weapons will always produce the same results, consistently, so there will be none of the "fire several effective shots, watch as rest of shots are useless", unless the Borg get a hold of SW shielding technology.

What are the stats for the strength of the blaster? I demand evidence for them needing to gang up.

Even then the Borg as I said just lumber forward with no tactics in mind. All the Stormies need do is blast away at the drones until they break the shields and destroy them, having the stormies be the guards for the unarmored people because the Borg tubules can't penetrate their armor. If the Borg could beam them aboard their ships then it gets tougher, but again their tactics don't change. The Stormies blast away on rapid fire at the Borg until they're dead. And they can throw thermal detonators and shoot to create shrapnel at the Borg. They might lose but they'll do a load of damage to the Borg before then. Nevermind most Imp ships being strong enough to easily crush any random Borg vessel.

EDIT: Admittedly the Borg have a hell of a lot of drones to throw at the Imp parties onboard. Even so, a lot of dead drones are on the way. The only time I recall them using energy weapons was when Hugh's buddies were working for Lore.

Actually, Storm trooper armor does seal, enough that one wearing it can survive being spaced until their oxygen runs out. Unfortunately the suit itself has only minute's worth of recycling capability, since most of its functions for air quality is filtering assisted by recycling rather than pure recycling or an on-board air supply. However I believe that the black body glove is rather fragile and wouldn't stop Borg nanite-injection tubules.

True that. The Borg seem to aim for the neck or chest rather than the hands. Add this to their atrocious initiative and tactics and the chances aren't looking good for them aiming for the hands.

It never penetrated the armor, just the body glove. Of course, like you said, they don't really need to penetrate the armor. They can just poke through the body glove if they get close enough.

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Um, the helmet doesn't cover the back of the neck. The helmet itself just mates with the body glove, so the Stormtroopers can still be gotten in their necks. Just look here:



Now that is more coverage than we've seen worn by Federation personnel, and while that will to an extent be an advantage the standard Stormtrooper armor is not a super-anti-borg suit. It's an improvement over the Starfleet uniforms, but it's not that decisive relative to assimilation.
Armor such as those worn by Darktroopers or other specialist stormtrooper unites, however, such as Snowtroopers, offer much more cover.

How strong are the necks? Do we have information about their strength? How about Borg tubules? How strong are they?

Guess what? The Imps have been proven to create shit like ground vehicles on-board an ISD, for example. They could probably create guns and swords, which have been shown to kill Borg in First Contact. Don't forget how 8472s' claws slashed through all those drones.

The Ewoks used big honking stones and stone hammers. Try recovering from being hit in the head (or anywhere else) by those things. And yet the Stormies actually were able to get up and keep fighting, so much for that idea. Even then they didn't actually penetrate the suits.

Since when have tubules been shown to penetrate armor?

And the only time the Borg I remember sneaking up behind was in the BOBW, when they did something to Picard to restrain him. Otherwise everybody heard them coming and zapped them. That was a one time thing before the Borg canonically became the retarded zombies we all know. So they won't be likely smart enough to try that.

Besides, if the Borg attack the Imps, they aren't likely to be caught off guard- as per the rules, we have to rule out things like Imps being surprised by transporters, so they could just fight back to back to prevent them being attacked up from behind. Then when a group of drones shows up they just shoot around at the stuff near the drones, so it produces shrapnel to kill them. Hell, the Imps could probably build weapons on-board the imperial ship, perhaps actually building regular guns instead of blasters in case they don't work against the drones. And since Borg can't adapt against physical weapons, the Borg lose.



Again all baseless accusations. Turbolaser barrages from ISDs have been proven to cause BDZs, whereas all the Borg seem to do is drill out a few cities. This drilling is a process that takes a long time even when their target (the Enterprise, for example) is literally right in front of them with very little range between and they don't even take out a large chunk. When they do take out big chunks (the Meleborne I believe) they have already known where the flimsy Fed ships are weakest at. And the Federation ships are on par with the neighboring AQ powers, and it takes a fleet of them (around forty ships) to do some weird scarring of the surface that hardly constitutes immense destruction. Consider that one measly megaton-range torpedo from Voyager was enough to take out a Borg ship, albeit a small one. Hope that the Imps don't get control of a transporter and put one Imperial missile into a Borg ship. Bye bye Borg if that happens.

As for their attacks, the Fed photons are in the megaton range while a ISD can withstand heavy torpedoes within the gigaton range, carried by a fighter no more! Imagine how many gigatons or more could a Imperial ship withstand from other Star Wars ships who have much more firepower.

Oh, by the way, ISDs can move very fast. Are you so sure that if a Cube goes into warp the Imp fleet won't be able to pursue? The Falcon was able to rapidly leave Tatooine and evade the ISDs. There's no guarantee that the Imps can't maintain a similar speed and have the advantage in firing everything they've got on them while the Borg can only fire those pathetic energy drainers.

DOn't forget that the Cubes have been destroyed by planetary debris. And think of the Saratoga, brought down by a simple cutting laser to part of its hull which (I think) caused the beginning of a warp core breach, later another cutting laser to a engine of the Saratoga caused it to go asplody.

Come to think of it, even if your points are as valid as you think, then why haven't more people become pro-Trek debaters in SWvsST? Surely your debating skills would convince them that the Imps can't win, no?

A hit from one of the things on human flesh did not result in death (Return of the Jedi).

Do you mean the shot that hit Leia? Pretty sure they were trying to capture her and reduced the power. After all she's a important target that the Empire would want to interrogate once again, this time with better techniques to force her to reveal her knowledge of the other Rebels. Besides consider all the times blasters resulted in death to other people.

Wow, you're actually admitting coming to this website for the main purpose of it is waste of time. Gee, what a brilliant deduction.

As for the rest of the quote, you should actually try answering my question- mainly why other people don't announce they're pro-Trek in one of the debates. That would answer my question. Either they're ignorant, supportive but don't announce or... what? They can't be terrified of being the recipients of a Imperial Smackdown if Wong and the others' reasoning is BS.

The rest of your post will be dealt with tomorrow.

Yeah, shame she died instantly of being flash boiled by the mini-nuke that hit her, isn't it?

If that was the goal, why didn't they use the stun setting? You know, that thing that has worked against her previously in the first movie that has a totally different visual effect?

Knowledge of what rebels? The plan is to destroy the entire rebellion with the Death Star today. She will have no useful information about anything but space dust according to the Emperor's plan.

Have you seen the most common result from being hit by a phaser?

Hell, you should see how often being shot with bullets results in death to people in real life and in movies.

Why do I need to announce my affiliation? Isn't the content of my argument enough for you to work it out?

Crateria's question is pretty revealing isn't it? 'Why don't people announce their allegiance' - very cliquish mentality. This leads to us vs them attitudes towards debating, where it's all about winning and using the rules to rig the game. There are actually interesting scenarios that can be debated but they get overlooked or even sabotaged by the guys who jump in and cite 200 GT turbolazors = ARGUMENT OVER I WIN OK

Cliquish mentality? WTF? I wanted to know who supported which side since the implications I got were that aside from Cesario and DXIII and a few other people everyone here believed that Wars would dominate the Trek galaxy's forces.

Why do you want to know and also why is it relevant?

'The implications I got were that aside from a handful of guys everyone else believes Wars>Trek.' This isn't important to any kind of logical argument. Indeed, it's like you're saying that the prevailing opinion that happens to be popular is somehow the right one or the correct one. You're treating it too much like it's a contest.

I'm not treating it like a contest. I said that because it seems to me that if Trek was as great a foe to the Empire as they make it out to be it would have more support among the denizens of SDN. More people in the discussions would be saying, "Wait, the Empire can't really win a war with any power in Star Trek unless the situation is rigged in their favor, it's too weak, stupid and has too many things going against it." After all, we're supposed to be the logical intelligent guys, right? The ones who look down on the stupid people of the world by using logic and SCIENCEEEEEEEE!

I haven't been reviewing SWVSST for very long, but the implications I got were that Wong was correct in what he wrote. In which topics did the great unwashed masses of the forums rise up and say, "You know, your estimates were full of crap" and give evidence to their claims?

Yes you are treating it like a contest. As pro-trek as he is, even Adam would readily concede that the Empire would win a war against the Federation simply because the former has an overwhelming advantage in numbers and industrial capacity. But that's not the full story. Many of the assumptions that underpin the debate are just that: assumptions. Many are also cherry picked examples of Wars being great vs Trek being bad (while ignoring the examples of Trek being good at the same time as ignoring or making excuses for Wars being bad). There's bad analysis from both sides. The rules are weighted towards visuals only when dialogue gets ignored almost entirely (which is hilarious because 200 GT turbolazors never happens visually but it is written in a book somewhere). There's also a question of context for many of the bits of evidence that get thrown around. Connor Macleod once remarked that we know big capships in SW have 200 GT weapons but we don't know anything else about those weapons; how they are used; what their rate-of-fire is like; what circumstances those weapons are used etc.

I mean you even go on about how no-one has really challenged Wong's conclusions, when this is rubbish. Plenty of people have, over many years. Some of them have been right, some of them have been wrong, and yet almost all of them have been piled on by forum members. And of these, very few ever make any arguments of their own. It's very interesting that I can look at a debate between Warsies and Trekkies and go 'both sides are being dumb' yet I can look at a debate between Connor and Adam for example and go 'hmm what they're talking about is actually interesting.'

What I actually think is that it's a fun war to imagine.

I think witnessing Darth Vader getting his hands on a Trek time machine then force choking Annakin Skywalker into submission to get him to not save Palpetine, and instead get Padme competent prenatal care from Voyager's holodock that he stole would be a great scene and very true to the characters.

I think the look of dread on Picard's face as he begins to comprehend the true scale of the Imperial Fleet pouring through the wormhole would be terrific character drama.

I think that Barkley, LaForge, O'brien, and Rom forced to work up more and more ridiculous applications of their already incredible technology just to hold the line against this overwhelming force would be fun.

I think Luke Skywalker meeting Spock and talking philosophy as Obi-Wan's force ghost looks on proudly would be just the sort of quiet scene that would see Luke graduating from the mere weapon against Vader and the Emperor he was prepared to be, and into a true Jedi.

I think a redeemed Darth Vader (patched up by Trek medicine) and Captain Picard would have a lot to talk about when discussing the nature of betrayal, redemption, and having your personality subsumed by a malevolent force larger than yourself.

I think Data's elation at discovering the massive numbers of droids would turn to righteous outrage at seeing the lengths to which Wars factions, even the good guys, go to in order to keep their droids stupid and subservient.

I think the clash of philosophies between the Borg and the Vong would be far more interesting than any military confrontation between the two.

I think watching the efforts of the Emperor to corrupt the humans of Trek, and failing because these people really are fundamentally good at heart, would be a testiment to how far they've come, and a wonderful scene to showcase at humanity's trial by the Q.

I think a sublight race between Tom Paris and Han Solo would be something both they and the audience could really enjoy, especially since some crisis would come up that they'd need to pull together to solve and thus put the race on hold until the rematch.

I think old enemies in the Trek galaxy being forced to put aside their petty differences in the face of this new and overwhelming threat would be a beautiful contrast to the continued squabling and internal politics in the Empire, even as it continues to fight its own civil war trying to crush the rebel alliance.

I don't particularly think it's interesting to posit a curb stomp that's over in half-an-hour because the particular versus scenario was set up to ensure such a result.

I hope that clarifies my position.

In regards to the OP, here's a thought:

Perhaps Borg personnel shields are incredibly energy-intensive and quite inefficient to keep active for any length of time. So when they talk about 'adaptation to frequencies', what they're really talking about is a measurable signal the phaser gives off right as it fires the beam. Basically 'adaptation' means the Borg can now identify that signal, so whenever a phaser goes off their computers can identify it and raise their shields a fraction of a second before it hits them, then lower them again a fraction of a second later, saving energy.

This also explains why modulating frequencies is so effective: A new signal means the computer has to do a few more test runs before it can add it to the library and start raising shields in reaction to it.

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