borg qouestions

[Batman]

Faster Warp doesn't necessarily mean more maneuverable, even assuming the Borg understand the concept of 'evasive maneuvers' (you sure couldn't tell from their on-screen behaviour). Doesn't mean they'll be able to dodge the fireships.

[Borgholio]

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).

I meant after the Borg had dropped out of warp to engage a fleet or assimilate a planet or something. When the cube was sitting still in orbit of Earth would have been a perfect time to hit it with a ship traveling at warp speed and loaded with enough explosives to shatter a small moon. Like in my example, that Oberth class ship at Wolf 359 would have been more useful as a bomb than a combat vessel.

[Lord Revan]

I agree that the Oberth has no use against the Borg cube as a combat vessel, hell I'd argue that it has no use as combat vessel period as it seems to be Science vessel aka essentially a set of sensors strapped to a warpdrive (or in case of the Pegasus a test bed for experiment technology) same way the Defiant class is essentially a set of guns strapped to a warpdrive.

how ever I don't think using fireships would be effective use of resources against the Borg. Besides Wolf 359 wasn't a battle the federation could pre-plan so they had effective possible fleet there, it was a major point in the episode that 39 ships at Wolf 359 was all they could get in such short notice.

[Batman]

I think what Borgholio is trying to say is that with the benefit of hindsight that's what he would have done, not that he expected Starfleet Command to do so (especially given the jury-rigged nature of the Wolf 359 fleet).

[biostem]

Heck, you would have been better off having something like an Oberth hang back and just act as a rescue vessel or as a place for other ships to offload civvies before actually engaging the Borg vessel...

[Batman]

Not that you can fit all that many civilians on something as tiny as an Oberth.

[Borgholio]

I think what Borgholio is trying to say is that with the benefit of hindsight that's what he would have done, not that he expected Starfleet Command to do so (especially given the jury-rigged nature of the Wolf 359 fleet).

Yea, my apologies for not being more clear. Yeah the Feds truly thought they would win at Wolf 359 with conventional tactics. In FC, they changes tactics and it worked better, but the Borg still made it to Earth. Given how dangerous the Borg are, they should have opened up the floor to other ideas than just throwing more ships into a conventional firefight.

[biostem]

I think what Borgholio is trying to say is that with the benefit of hindsight that's what he would have done, not that he expected Starfleet Command to do so (especially given the jury-rigged nature of the Wolf 359 fleet).

Yea, my apologies for not being more clear. Yeah the Feds truly thought they would win at Wolf 359 with conventional tactics. In FC, they changes tactics and it worked better, but the Borg still made it to Earth. Given how dangerous the Borg are, they should have opened up the floor to other ideas than just throwing more ships into a conventional firefight.

I wonder how well one of those Cardassian "cruise missiles" would have worked against a Borg cube...

[Borgholio]

The Dreadnought is stated to have a 1,000kg Matter / 1,000kg Anti-matter warhead. Using the same figures as the ones used to calculate photon torpedo yield, we're looking at a bit over 42 gigatons theoretical maximum yield. So while the actual deliverable yield would be quite less than 42 gigatons, still...after it hit people would be asking, "What cube?"

[DarthPooky]

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.

That actually takes me back to might original question in which I don't think was answered directly. I Already new that if the shields get hit with more fire power than what they can take they will go down. But dose the fact that the Feds ware most likely changing Frequencies nullify the first contact example. That the Feds overcame the Borg shields with brute force but that simply thare Wepons mostly ignored the shields because they ware switching frequencies.

[Borgholio]

Actually they did not overcome the shields with brute force, except when they all focused fire on the one spot at the end of the fight. The rest of the time they appeared to be spreading out their fire over several faces of the cube. What made the attack so effective was the fact that they had too many ships for the Borg to adapt to, so if a few ships had their attacks totally blocked, many more could still inflict damage to the hull.

[Batman]

Which is supported by...nothing in the movie. We know they managed to do heavy damage to the outer hull and affect their power grid to the point that it was fluctuating. We have no idea whether they did that by brute force, frequency shenanigans, the intervention of Q, Clark popping in to lend a hand, whatever.
And the fact that every single hit on the Cube we see did some damage means that yes, the Feds managed to either out-adapt or overpower Borg defenses.

[Borgholio]

Which is supported by...nothing in the movie.

Which part...the brute force or the frequency swapping?

We have no idea whether they did that by brute force, frequency shenanigans, the intervention of Q, Clark popping in to lend a hand, whatever.

Perhaps we should clarify what exactly is meant by brute force? When I think brute force, I think of hitting the cube with a dreadnought missile of something. Swarming the cube with a horde of ships *could* be considered brute force I suppose, if that's what you mean.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I suspect he means brute force is using actual weapons rather than technobabble or sneakiness. At any rate, I woudl say that FC shows us some pretty good limitations on Borg adaptation, because either they can only adapt to so many ships at once (explaining why the ships had managed to damage the Borg en masse) or that their adaptaion can only mitigate an attack, not completely nullify it (explaining why ever phaser shot and torpedo appeared to damage the cube).

[Borgholio]

I suspect he means brute force is using actual weapons rather than technobabble or sneakiness. At any rate, I woudl say that FC shows us some pretty good limitations on Borg adaptation, because either they can only adapt to so many ships at once (explaining why the ships had managed to damage the Borg en masse) or that their adaptaion can only mitigate an attack, not completely nullify it (explaining why ever phaser shot and torpedo appeared to damage the cube).

I think both are plausible. Matching frequencies seemed to work vs one ship but there's only so much a shield emitter can resist even if it's perfectly matched with incoming weapons fire. I think it just prevents bleed-through mainly.

[Batman]

Which is supported by...nothing in the movie.

Which part...the brute force or the frequency swapping?

Both. The movie never says a word about how they managed to wear down the Cube.

We have no idea whether they did that by brute force, frequency shenanigans, the intervention of Q, Clark popping in to lend a hand, whatever.

Perhaps we should clarify what exactly is meant by brute force? When I think brute force, I think of hitting the cube with a dreadnought missile of something. Swarming the cube with a horde of ships *could* be considered brute force I suppose, if that's what you mean.

Brute force means pouring more energy into the Cube's defenses than it could handle instead of relying on technobabble to bypapss those defenses.

[Borgholio]

Both. The movie never says a word about how they managed to wear down the Cube.

Well they DO mention changing their shield frequencies in the initial audio broadcast of the battle, changing shield and weapon frequencies should be SOP by then so I don't think they really needed to spell it out for us in the film. If they did something extraordinary like ramming it with a ship filled with antimatter pods, then that would have deserved mention.

Brute force means pouring more energy into the Cube's defenses than it could handle instead of relying on technobabble to bypapss those defenses.

Since we don't hear or see anything that could qualify as technobabble, I think we can assume it was brute force - they just dumped as much firepower into the cube as they could from as many angles as possible.

[DarthPooky]

Another Borg question occurred to me that iv been wondering about. How do they adapt to torpedoes when there adaptation is based on Frequency technobabble and the torps are physical weapons.

[Batman]

Whatever produces the torpedo glow (one of the more popular theories being the drive system) may be vulnerable to frequency adaption so thanks to that the torpedo never manages to go off to begin with. Alternatively, the frequency shenanigans merely prevent shield penetration and the Borg just manage to tough it out now the torpedoes aren't going off inside the ship.

And if you want to be anal retentive about it, photorps, being M/AM weapons, would produce mostly gamma radiation, which, being EM, does have a frequency they could adapt to (the fact that photorps are never depicted that way in the franchise notwithstanding).

[Borgholio]

Wouldn't the EM given off by an antimatter or nuclear explosion be mostly noise without any coherent frequency?

[biostem]

Another Borg question occurred to me that iv been wondering about. How do they adapt to torpedoes when there adaptation is based on Frequency technobabble and the torps are physical weapons.

There was that one episode where Roga Danar bounced his small craft off the E-D's shields, so they obviously interact w/ matter. What if photon torps use some sort of hull ionization as part of the M/AM containment system, and the Borg adapt to that.

[Borgholio]

Hull ionization would not contain antimatter at all since antimatter is only weakly magnetic. They would need to use forcefields.

[biostem]

Hull ionization would not contain antimatter at all since antimatter is only weakly magnetic. They would need to use forcefields.

Hmm... maybe the Feds can't generate forcefields that don't exhibit some sort of phase/frequency, then, and that's what they adapt to? Though why such a system would be present outside the physical casing to be able to exploit in that way, is questionable.

[Batman]

Technically antimatter isn't any more or less magnetic than ordinary matter. (One wonders why the bother with magnetic confinement to begin with given their apparent proficiency at manipulating gravity but that's beside the point).

[Borgholio]

It's fairly commonly accepted that the glow given off by torpedoes is a shield that is used to help it exit the shield bubble of the firing ship, the same way they tune the phasers to the same frequency as the shields. The Borg could possibly use their typical shield adaptations to block the torpedoes before they impact the hull.