borg qouestions

[DarthPooky]

I was looking under search and I couldn't find this topic discussed directly. This came up in a discussion with another friend. He of course agrees that the imps would waste the feds but likes to bring up the Borg. Saying that ones the Borg adapt that they would basically give the imps a run for there money. I of course bring up the fact that Borg adaptation is frequency based and brought up the battle in sector 001 in first contact to show that as always brut force can over come Borg shields. But he said that they probably were changing frequency's. Now I no that this shows that adaptation isn't a no limits thing like what some trekkies believe but wouldn't the change frequency's part show that the feds didn't just use brut force but change the frequency's to negate the shields. Like they generally do and would mean the FC battle dos not demonstrate brut force against Borg shields. If I have mist some thing then feel free to say some thing. If this has been discussed before then feel free to provide the link to the necessary thread.


Another thing iv wondered about the Borg is the ENT episode regeneration they in crease the fire power of there phase pistols but the Borg adapt. Dose that show the Borg can adapt to fire power at least a little bit I'm sure iv mist some thing but I'm but not sure what curious to hear all of your thoughts thanks.

[Borgholio]

First part of your question - Adapting the frequency of the shields doesn't magically make the incoming weapon fire go away. It just prevents it from bleeding through and striking the hull. The energy still has to be absorbed and deflected by the shield, so even if the Borg adapt perfectly, a strong enough weapon hit will still at least damage the shield generator or possibly punch straight through if the energy impact is more than the shield can deflect. It makes sense that the Feds will be changing weapon frequencies randomly and the Borg will keep trying to adapt but there's a limit to how many frequencies the Borg can adapt to at any given time. This is why it is shown that a fleet of ships attacking all at once is harder for the Borg to combat than a few ships at a time attacking in waves.

Second question - Adaptation doesn't just mean changing frequencies. It could simply mean transferring more power to the shield or focusing all the emitters towards the front of the drone. Take your question about the Imperials, for instance. If you were to talk about the Borg trying to adapt to Imperial weapons...once they realized turbolasers don't have frequencies, the Borg would adapt by adding more shield generators, adding thicker armor plating, things like that.

[Lord Revan]

Brian Young explained it quite well on his vids about this, to paraphrase and summerize what he said borg are the best "tuning in" at right frequency to fully block the incoming shot but if the power of the shot is greater then the power of the shields it will go thru, also borg suck at adapting to attacks that can't be blocked this way which is why the Undine (or Species 8472 if you want go by the canon name) were such a threat, since the undine used hand to hand which is something the borg have never shown to be able to adapt to (well the main collective anyway, there was that 1 special drone made with future tech).

[Eternal_Freedom]

On the hopping frequency thing vs brute force: I think it's safe to assume that the Fed ships were randomly changing frequencies, as this was apparently standard enough procedure against Borg ships that Doctor Crusher knew about it in "Descent" and it was Shelby's first order to Data in combat in BOBW.

Of course, all that will do is make it easier to block weapons fire, not make the ship impervious. Especially since you rotate one shield grid to stop a particular ship's fire...but are then no longer adapted to a different ships weapons...or the first ship switching back to an old frequency.

In summary, First Contact still shows us a brute-force attack, since the Borg didn't seem to have much luck adapting to the Defiant's pulse phasers or all the torpedoes being fire at them.

How do you adapt to torpedo fire anyway?

[lord Martiya]

How do you adapt to torpedo fire anyway?

Some trick to make it blow up away from your ship and shields. We have a number of countermeasures to trick the guidance system and point defence missiles and guns to just take them down, and in TBOBW the Borg showed what appeared to be the ability to detonate photon torpedoes at distance and/or reduced power.

[Borgholio]

The in-universe explanation is that torpedoes have shields (glowing red aura) so they can be frequency matched with the shields and pass through instead of smashing against the inside of the shield bubble.

However, this does not explain how the Borg can simply shrug off a ~32 megaton explosion, since the torps were designed to smash into the enemy shields anyways. They might be able to pre-detonate the torpedoes away from the hull but you still cant avoid the whole explosion. So...no idea.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well there adaptation clearly isn't all that effective since in First Contact we see torpedos hitting the hull before detonating.

As for the torpedos having shields you would think that they are set to deactivate after flying through your own shields to remove the problem.

[Lord Revan]

I think the red/blue/green aura isn't a shield per se but a side effect of the engine system (which is said be a kind of a low power warpdrive)

[Batman]

I don't think the nature of the glow has ever been properly explained in the canon though I admit I've done my level best to forget VOY and never even watched most of ENT so I might be flat out wrong (like that would be a first).
And the only source for 64MT photorps is the non-canon TNG TM (which, by the way, is enormous fun for all the behind-the-scenes gags, and I had to laugh out loud when I saw their cutaway view of the Big E, but moderately useless as an actual Tech manual, at least for the purpose of deriving numbers-the damned thing doesn't even give the ship's dimensions) and even that never states that yield, it just gives an antimatter payload that with perfect reactivity would result in that yield when what actually see in the series is midrange KT to low MT level... something AQ vessels, which need to gang up something fierce to even annoy a Borg Cube take on the shields all the time-just not all that many of them in one go.

[DarthPooky]

Second question - Adaptation doesn't just mean changing frequencies. It could simply mean transferring more power to the shield or focusing all the emitters towards the front of the drone. Take your question about the Imperials, for instance. If you were to talk about the Borg trying to adapt to Imperial weapons...once they realized turbolasers don't have frequencies, the Borg would adapt by adding more shield generators, adding thicker armor plating, things like that.

so the Borg can increase power to there shields some what. But probably not enough to really make an effect to imp space and ground weapons. Given what we now of Borg power generation.

[Borgholio]

Right, the whole thing is about power. Even if the Imps used frequency-based weapons, the Borg would still need to be able to generate a force shield that can resist the sheer amount of energy input from a turbolaser. This requires a power source far in excess of anything we've ever seen in the Trek universe. Now if the Borg SOMEHOW managed to assimilate hypermatter generators then they would probably be a threat to the Imperials...but that's a big IF.

[Lord Revan]

it's like this when a weapon hits a shield it more or less follows an equation of W-S=X where (S=shield power and W=weapon power) if X>0 then shot passes thru the shields, but in any other event it's stopped. when dealing with a frequency based shields only difference is that S is not a constant but a function, same with frequency based weapons, it still boils down to the same basic subtraction, well you also think of it as weapon power reducing the power of the shields in which case the equation would be S-W=X but the Basic princible remains the same aka if S is not greater or equal to W the shot passes regardless of any other considerations.

Now with functions as S and W there's some extra rules like when W=0 there's no point at looking if the shields hold as there's no weapon power present, however if S=0 is a valid observation point as it repesents a point when the shields are down.

What the borg do is match the peaks and valleys of the incoming weapon with their shields essentially reducing the base equation back to constants

[Borgholio]

it's like this when a weapon hits a shield it more or less follows an equation of W-S=X where (S=shield power and W=weapon power) if X>0 then shot passes thru the shields, but in any other event it's stopped. when dealing with a frequency based shields only difference is that S is not a constant but a function, same with frequency based weapons, it still boils down to the same basic subtraction, well you also think of it as weapon power reducing the power of the shields in which case the equation would be S-W=X but the Basic princible remains the same aka if S is not greater or equal to W the shot passes regardless of any other considerations.

Now with functions as S and W there's some extra rules like when W=0 there's no point at looking if the shields hold as there's no weapon power present, however if S=0 is a valid observation point as it repesents a point when the shields are down.

What the borg do is match the peaks and valleys of the incoming weapon with their shields essentially reducing the base equation back to constants

Nice explanation. What some Borg fanboys like to argue is that frequency adaptation is perfect and allows no bleed-through. That may be true if the shield generator can absorb or deflect all of the incoming energy. But enough incoming energy can still overload the generator and cause physical damage to it (thus dropping the entire shield in the process), or punch through and still do damage to the hull despite a portion of it being blocked.

Edit - not saying anybody here is a Borg fanboy...I wasn't making a personal attack against anyone. Just a common argument I hear from people who ARE Borg fanboys. "Oh a Borg cube with adapted shields can withstand a Death Star shot..."

[Lord Revan]

That's the advantage of approaching these from a scientific viewpoint, instead of looking evidence to support a preconcived opinion, we ask a question, in this case the question is if "S and W are known what is X?" or "if the power of the shield and weapon are known will this weapon penetrate the shield?".

When you let go of preconsived assumptions, the whole borg adaption becomes really simple, cause really only reason there's any discussion is that some people go "I like Star Trek and therefore borg adaption must work like magic cause otherwise Star Trek might loose and that can't be true!", well ok not in those exact words but the message is clear.

Really if you truly love a franchice you must be willing to admit that it's not be the best at everything.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah. I mean, I love Star Trek...but it sucks at featuring anything approaching a competent military starfleet. I love Star Wars, but it doesn't have teleporters and, well, there are lots of really evil people. I love 40K but...that's just all evil really but it's good for the megalomania.

[Borgholio]

I think not having teleporters isn't really a negative for SW...if they were real I'd probably be more comfortable in a shuttle just like McCoy was. I think, if anything, the SW galaxy fails to learn from it's mistakes at a galactic government. They seem incapable of having a form of government that has sufficient checks and balances, while still works for governing a sprawling territory with countless quadrillions of species.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's perfectly true, it's just that teleporters were the first thing that came to mind .

[biostem]

I also look at it from this perspective - typically, the first attack against the Borg gets through, THEN they adapt. What if that first strike not only consists of a much more powerful attack, but comes in the form of a volley of fire, (vs one phaser beam). The Feds tend to "test the waters" vs an enemy, whereas the Imperials simply unleash a volley of fire...

[Borgholio]

That's the idea. The Feds could possibly have won Wolf 359 even with Picard's help if they had not used conventional Federation tactics. 40+ ships swarming a cube all at once firing everything they have...that would have done some serious damage. Instead they go in 2 or 3 at at time and got picked off.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hell, even ignoring the power grid crap in First Contact, the fleet focusing on a single point blew a pretty big crater in the cube in short order.

[biostem]

Have we ever seen an instance where multiple ships, with phasers set to vastly different frequencies, fire on a Borg ship at the same time?

[Borgholio]

Have we ever seen an instance where multiple ships, with phasers set to vastly different frequencies, fire on a Borg ship at the same time?

Star Trek - First Contact.

[biostem]

Have we ever seen an instance where multiple ships, with phasers set to vastly different frequencies, fire on a Borg ship at the same time?

Star Trek - First Contact.

So in that case, was it more a matter of the ships only attacking 2 or 3 at a time, and not concentrating fire?


I mean, if it came down to a battle of survival, I'd order the crew to load a bunch of photon torps onto a warp capable shuttle and remotely pilot the thing into the cube at maximum warp...

[Borgholio]

So in that case, was it more a matter of the ships only attacking 2 or 3 at a time, and not concentrating fire?

Yes that's why the Feds lost at Wolf 359. They attacked 2 or 3 at a time and the Borg could easily adapt to that. In FC, they attacked as one large swarm of ships and the Borg were simply unable to adapt to everything at the same time. The difference was clear. The Borg suffered practically no damage at Wolf, but by the time they got to Earth in FC, they had already suffered heavy damage to the hull and the power grid was having issues.

I mean, if it came down to a battle of survival, I'd order the crew to load a bunch of photon torps onto a warp capable shuttle and remotely pilot the thing into the cube at maximum warp...

Yeah one of my preferred tactics for dealing with the Borg would be fireships. It's seen in DS9 - Emissary that they had one of those tiny Oberth-class science ships at the battle. Those things are so useless in combat that it would have been better to load the ship with a few hundred photon torpedoes and remote-control it to hit the Borg ship at warp. If it magically somehow managed to remain intact, the rest of the fleet could probably take care of the clean-up.

[Lord Revan]

Problem with fire ships is that the Borg have better warp technology then the Federation (in Q who the cube was able to chase down the Enterprise while regenerating).