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 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-18 10:22am 

I gave an example in my previous post. Here it is again:



Some clue that the borg would do this can be found in episode "prey". Seven beams species 8472 off the ship in order to save voyager. She had been an individual for about 6 months at this point. That's an interesting tactic for someone raised by the borg, a race whom you claim never used (and are incapable of using) a transporter to defend themselves, violating the captain's orders when doing it no less.

The borg have been accused of not being capable of using a transporter as a weapon because they lack ingenuity. How about when:
- rammed into species 8472 with a cube to save voyager
- negotiating with voyager to fight species 8472
- firing blindly to hit a cloaked shuttle
- initiating a self destruct on a cube in an attempt to destroy voyager and the defecting borg sphere
- assimilating earth by going back in time to just after WWIII
- beaming to the enterprise E just before the Enterprise E destroyed their ship
- beaming aboard voyager just before their cube got destroyed
- two borg drones sabotaging enterprise's weapons right before enterprise's confrontation with the borg
- adapting to the main deflector dish weapon
- idea to put a biogenic charge in Earth's atmosphere with nanoprobe viruses to infect everyone on Earth
- assimilating picard to gain knowledge of starfleet defenses
- choosing to retreat after a few borg cubes were handled swiftly by photonic torpedoes
- sending drones to unimatrix zero to wake them up early and to find them in the real world
- borg sphere inverted voyager's phaser beam with a feedback pulse after having their phasers upgraded by One
- Voyager tried to transport the crew off of a sphere but the borg blocked them, tapped into voyager's transporter beam,.and sent drones to voyager instead

You should get the point but I have a feeling not The borg can strategize when they have to. I would fully expect them to think to use the transporter especially the queen.

At this point it's just an appeal to ignorance to just assume they borg won't use the transporter.



That a fact.. What about that borg cube they reactivated in episode "unity"? The borg attacked the boarding party immediately after they turned the ship back on. What about when the borg attacked archer and malcolm shortly after they beamed aboard in episode "regeneration".

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-18 11:17am 

While the list you provide does contain some creative tactics, you should keep in mind:
As you yourself pointed out- these are Star Wars Borg, not Star Trek Borg. They would most likely behave differently. Making assumptions about how they would act or react in any given situation based on what we have seen in Star Trek would be a mistake.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-18 02:32pm 

Maybe you could explain this to Azron_Stoma (don't have time at the moment) who thinks the Borg behave differently regardless of who composes its hive. Kinda defeats the purpose of sending hugh back to the borg.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-18 04:10pm 

There's a difference between transporting an actively moving, destructive boarding party to an area of Borg advantage, and tranporting a KO'd boarding party to an area of Borg advantage. You provided an example of the later, but not the former.



I never claimed that they have never used a transporter to defend themselves or as offensive action, only that we've never seen the Borg (or any ST faction for that matter) use the transporter to easily dispose of boarding parties.



I have not claimed once that the Borg lack ingenuity, since they obviously have some, even if they don't execute it as well as we'd like to believe (But then again, modern armies use textbook responses as well, there's no reason to assume then Borg don't have their own equivalent.)



I don't think so, since we've never seen them use the transporter in the manor you've been relying on.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-18 09:32pm 

Do you realise that this single piece of logic (which you presented) overrules any argument you've made thus far based upon the Borg's actions in Star Trek?

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 12:36am 

I know where you were going with your point, I just used it against you to form a concession that the borg hivemind would have a slightly different personality based on the members of their collective. Getting people to agree with me about the obvious in star trek is like pulling teeth around here so I'll take what I can get. Most likely some of the borg in this collective will be from the milky way galaxy and some will be from the star wars galaxy. Additionally, each individual drone will have much useful knowledge of the borg from the collective back in the milky way since 7 of 9 and other borg we've seen contain the knowledge of other drones themselves.



Yeah species 8472 boarded voyager and was considered an intruder. It broke through the forcefield. Seven of nine used the transporter to beam it away. This is a pretty weak way to argue you know. You should have said "even if the borg tried to do this..." then maybe mention something about those jammers you spoke of.



It's been done before

TNG "devil's due"



In TNG episode Rascals, when picard and other crewmen became children they and other kids used the transporter to beam the ferengi boarding party behind a forcefield in the transporter room.



It's appeal to ignorance in the form

There is no evidence for X.
Therefore, not-X.

Where X is the borg using a transporter against boarding parties. What that means is that the borg could have used on a previous occasion or would decide to use this strategy in the future even though we've never seen them use it on screen before.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 02:23am 

Which makes no difference, because:It doesn't matter that some of them would have come from the Milky Way. As you've said- this hive mind would behave differently. The Borg that we saw in Descent are a perfect example of this- regardless of their origins, they behaved almost nothing like any other Borg. They weren't even interested in assimilation- the single goal it seems other Borg strive to achieve.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 09:13am 

Fine then.




Then I was mistaken there, but then, it doesn't happen a lot. And the Federation doing it is different than the Borg doing it.



I'm not arguing that, I'm arguing this:

If there is no evidence for X at all, even if the capability for X exists, there is no reason to assume that X will happen when convenient. Of course, it is possible that X can happen, but since we don't know whether or not it will, then there is no reason to assume that it will happen, since it is equally likely that it will not at best, and at worst it's rare to happen because of the numerous times we've seen that it would benefit the Borg to simply beam Federation boarding parties out to space or wherever, but they did not.[/argument]

But, I think it's time we end this tangent and go back to my counter-scenario to yours:

An Imperial boarding party of soldiers and battle droids boards the station with the intent of destroying it. The droids are equiped with transport-jamming equipment that protects the group.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 11:46am 

I'm not assuming the borg will use their transporters as a certainty. This is exactly what I said






We don't know if the jammers protect against transporters because star wars doesn't have transporter technology so how would they know how to combat it? There are ways around transporter interference too like transport enhansers, skeletal locks, Isolinear tags.



just because it's possible for someone to walk through an energy field on star wars doesn't mean they can do it with star trek energy fields. Many star wars fields have a property to them which allow someone to walk through them while not allowing weapons fire to. The borg themselves have an ability to walk through force fields but Crosis and Hugh weren't able to pass through the brig's force field. Having an ability to pass through some fields does not inheritly give them the ability to pass through them all.

At best I think you would have to claim: "borg fields have been proven to operate on (insert technobabble here) while imperioal troopers and/or battle droids have been proven to have the ability to be impervious to such phenomena which operate on (insert lechnobabble here)". Which all assumes the borg cannot adapt their containment fields to stop a boarding party from star wars using knowledge of star wars technology.

It was suggested that in the event that they could not pass through the fields that they could overload them with their weapons. This also assumes their weapons have the power to along with the ability for the borg to adapt their fields to prevent that.

I think you also said that in the event of containment they could blast through the floors or walls. Can you provide evidence that they have the weapons to penetrate a wall, celing, or floor on the death star? The only thing I remember was being able to shot into a garbage chute and land in trash compactor 32-6-3827. Plus the main reactor is located at the center of the death star a distance of 80km or 50 miles from the outside. That's quite a hike. I'd expect a tactic like that to be used by the rebels not the empire. Since this thread has become obsessed with proving behavior over capability, do you have evidence that the empire would use a boarding party to take out the main reactor rather than something else to destroy the death star?

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 12:01pm 

It matters because it's a mixing of minds from both galaxys. Since the borg fully assimilated a death star, it's reasonable to assume they still desire to achieve perfection by assimilating people and technology or they wouldn't have done it. These borg might behave more like the borg in episode "descent" in some ways like being able to move faster and be more aggressive while still having the desire to assimilate.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 09:06pm 

So we are given a couple of options here which I think I am being pretty unbiased when I say this:

First Option No vaporization is taking place. An assumption has to be made that what current science suggests and what's commonly known vaporization has to look like is true anything else is false which the visuals don't support vaporization then. All of the dialogue stating a target is vaporized is false because the ones who use the weapons are either ignorant of how they really work or vaporization is just a figure of speech or outright lying.

A lack of imagination fallacy is committed with the assumption made in this option.
P = vaporization of someone with tons of heat and vapor afterward
P is too incredible therefore P must be false.

Second Option Vaporization is taking place. An assumption has to be made that an explanation exists why we don't see as much vapor or heat as we would expect to see from a target getting vaporized. This assumption is supported by visuals by definition. All of the dialogue stating a target is vaporized is true.

An argument from ignorance is committed with the assumption made in this option.
P = an explanation exists beyond our knowledge why someone can be vaporized without tons of heat and vapor afterward
If P has not been disproven, then it cannot be considered false and must therefore be considered true.

The first option makes an assumption which does have some logical flaws in it along with conflicts in dialogue with the visuals. The second option makes an assumption which also has some logical flaws in it too but no conflicts between the visuals and dialogue. I default to the explanation which allows no conflicts between dialogues and visuals.



We know it can't always work that way. When characters get replaced by different actors we wouldn't be able to tell it was them without the dialogue. The visuals (and credits) show that they are different people. Tora Ziyal was played by 3 different actors for example.

Universal translators allow people to hear foreign languages in their native language. The fact that they are foreign languages and not english contradicts visuals because we see their lips move as if they are speaking english.

Instinct has to be used when determining what star trek canon is or when dialogue overrules visuals or vice versa. As a general rule of thumb, if you don't think a phaser can vaporize then you don't have that instinct.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 09:38pm 

.
..
...
I think I need to lie down for a while. A 'lack of imagination' fallacy? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
The entirety of hand phaser visuals says they don't vapourize anything. Yes, there not[/i ]being any vapourization visuals [i]does mean no vapourization happened?

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-19 10:50pm 

Actually, there is such a fallacy.
It refers to people refusing to believe something because they find it to be inconceivable. It is often used by Creationists when disputing evolution.

However, it doesn't apply in this case, because noone has claimed that phasers couldn't possibly vapourise people- the matter is being disputed based on visual evidence to the contrary.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 12:23am 

Fine i'll say techno-babble since you want to hear it so bad. The phaser beam puts a type of subspace field around its target pushing them ever so slightly out of phase and pumps sufficient energy into the target to vaporize them while all the heat and vapor enter subspace instead of normal space. What we would expect to see if this happened is the subject disappearing and maybe some dust or some puffs of smokes left behind. Hey! That's exactly what we see. The visuals support the conclusion in this case. The dialogue is correct when they say vaporize and the visuals now support it. Understand now?

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 12:40am 

Maybe you should write the next tech manual instead of letting the idiots working for Paramount do it...

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 08:59am 

More likely that The NDF reaction converting the target into neutrinos is incomplete, leaving residue that is being vaporized. The subspace field theory is, quite simply, preposterous.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 11:08am 

Just a small note, I've received some complaints about this thread and the other. So I'll be watching from this point forward. I might go back a few pages and review to see if anything else needs be done, but frankly I'm busy and that might take too much time That said:-



Leaving aside this is just fanon speculation, I do not see where this ... novel ... explanation doesn't explain why the process continues after the weapon has stopped firing?

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 12:11pm 

Yeah I just made it up. We don't need to know how a phaser vaporizes only that it does. How does a replicator make something appear out of nowhere? That violates the law of conservation of mass. But the point is, if you just assume that an explanation exists then there's no contradiction in the visuals. It's the interpretation of the evidence that's in dispute here, not the visuals.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 05:22pm 

I believe this page sums up what we know about phasers.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-20 05:25pm 

Actually, we need to know both. Especially as visuals say they don't to begin with. They make stuff glow funnily and dissapear in a manner completely incompatible with vapourization.

It would be if replicators did that. They don't.

Those visuals being completely incompatible with vapourization.
And did this guy seriously just use 'if you just assume an explanation exists there's no contradiction' as an actual point?

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-21 12:34am 

Yeah like I said, you're assuming that modern science or whatnot is good enough to verify with absolute certainty whether vaporization is not taking place with 24th century technology. Plus any alternative explainations about what is really happening when someone disappears when shot seems pretty silly in itself. It looks like an excuse just to come up with a way to say that phasers don't vaporize. We can tell that the writers want us to believe that the phasers are vaporizing or they wouldn't keep hammering it with dialogue that they are.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-21 01:16am 

You don't need modern science to know that boiling water produces steam. People have been aware of this for thousands of years.
Although you're willing to gamble that your understanding of future science is good enough to put forward this explanation-
As opposed to preposterous, made-up-on-the-spot explanations to justify how they possibly could, in spite of visual evidence to the contrary.
There is another explanation which reconciles the difference between dialogue and visuals- the term 'vapourised' is being used as slang. Very little slang actually matches its literal interpretation (E.G. 'Burning' a CD/DVD, when it is in fact being laser etched). This would account for the discrepancy, and not involve gross stupidity on the part of every character who's ever said 'vapourise', nor require ridiculous explanations that still don't match the visuals. Occam's razor would favour this theory.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-21 02:27am 

We saw in episodes "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" and "Gambit part 1" that a transporter was used to create the illusion of someone being vaporized. Maybe the vaporized matter along with its heat is contained using a technology similar to what transporters do in order to protect the person that's doing the shooting.



hmm bad example but it kinda proves my point. The material is being etched with a laser but in the process it is burning the alumnium material on the cd. Back in the day someone might have said "that's not burning there's no smoke and science says bla bla bla".



don't forget incinerated, that'd have to be a figure of speech as well. Hey maybe gigatons and teratons are a figures of speech in star wars too.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-21 03:02am 

Indeed it would.That would be a possiblity if they were used in character dialogue, and not in the ICS and other analyses based on visual evidence.

 Post subject: Re: Fully Built Borg Assimilated Death Star II vs Star Wars

Posted: 2011-03-21 03:07am 

It may have been the authors intent but that doesn't mean it cannot be interpreted as a figure of speech just like vaporization can be.