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OK, so Voyager would normally require about 70 years to complete the 70,000 light-year journey back to the Federation from their starting point out in the Delta Quadrant, giving them a cruising speed of about 1000c.

In "Scorpion", we find that it would normally take Voyager about 2 months to pass through the heart of Borg territory under their own power.

Assuming that their cruising speed is still 1000c and that I'm doing my math right, that makes Borg territory about 167 light-years across.



Even if Voyager screams through Borg space at ten times their normal cruising speed, Borg territory is still smaller than Federation territory. That's just sad.

They were also described as being within five days of leaving Borg space in "Scorpion" Pt 2, Kes' 10,000 ly push in "The Gift" was described thus: "She's thrown us beyond Borg space, and ten years closer to home", and they were still encountering the Borg for the remaining four years. Presumably Borg space is either an extremely strange shape (as posited by DITL's map), or it's non-continuous.

I'm not all that surprised Borg territory is physically small. As shown in The Neutral Zone, Borg don't necessarily leave a presence on planets they conquer - they're scavengers first and foremost. Neither do they seem to be planet-dwellers; the Unicomplex carried "trillions" of drones while Borg-Earth had a scant few billion. I'm not even sure if, apart from Borgified Earth, there are any direct references to Borg planetary facilities.

That leaves the Borg as relative nomads, operating between hubs such as the Unicomplex(es) and the transwarp stations seen in Endgame. In that respect, a Borg-controlled "territory" of 167ly surrounded by a sphere of influence where they have a minority presence (clustered around transwarp "highways", as indicated by episodes such Child's Play) doesn't seem unreasonable.

I suppose it might also simply have been the part of space where the Borg were the most densely settled, whereas most of their facilities were rather scattered.

"Territory" in this case is rather a vague term. The Borg aren't politically recognized, and the Borg themselves don't seem to have a concept of territorial integrity, so it must refer to an analysis Seven herself made; and without knowing what parameters she used, "territory" can refer to anything from "furthest settled planet" to "this is roughly the area where most of the Borg hang out". It's akin to the "territory" of pirates; sure, you can point out where you're most likely to run into them and where their home ports are, but that doesn't mean they have control over that whole area, nor does it mean they operate only in that area.

Bounty wrote:"Territory" in this case is rather a vague term. The Borg aren't politically recognized, and the Borg themselves don't seem to have a concept of territorial integrity, so it must refer to an analysis Seven herself made; and without knowing what parameters she used, "territory" can refer to anything from "furthest settled planet" to "this is roughly the area where most of the Borg hang out". It's akin to the "territory" of pirates; sure, you can point out where you're most likely to run into them and where their home ports are, but that doesn't mean they have control over that whole area, nor does it mean they operate only in that area.

The crew of Voyager were talking about passing through "the heart of (Borg) territory" before 7of9 ever came on board.

Ted C wrote:The crew of Voyager were talking about passing through "the heart of (Borg) territory" before 7of9 ever came on board.

Ah, my mistake. I was sure she commented on Borg space at some point...

Bounty wrote:I'm not even sure if, apart from Borgified Earth, there are any direct references to Borg planetary facilities.

IIRC, the planets Species 8472 destroyed were mentioned to have had significant numbers of drones on them, and were evidently valuable enough to be worth destroying in the first place.

Given how small the Vaadwar considered the Borg territory of the 13th century, one could speculate that Borg planets represent a previous phase of (slow) expansion from their current ship-based one, and that these planets are part of a small 'core' territory, where the Collective had cooled its heels for most of the 'thousands of centuries' Guinan claimed they'd existed.

The Borg are more interested in acquiring what benefits them rather than being an expansionist empire with borders etc.
The rather loose and spread out nature of their ships and facilities would tend to support that idea. The area Voyager was traveling through would most likely be explained as their original starting point when they had different priorities. The Borg we know are retarded and slow in their operation but it seems reasonable to conclude they werent ALWAYS like this and at some point they may have actually been effective enough to secure this territory before grinding into a collective bunch of mindless zombies who lost the majority of their creativity when they started assimilating knowledge rather than learning it themselves.

That and you can go down the route of logistical problems with the Borg to explain the rather small nature of their territory. They have Transwarp tech obviously but the Collective may have issues that prevent aggressive expansion beyond a certain level. If only one Queen operates the Collective then it could simply be that she has to keep the Collective like it is to maintain control and keep it working properly. Doing that will be considerably harder if the Collective link is further hampered by having to account for signal lag across the entire galaxy for large Borg populations.
Essentially like being a player of an RTS. Sending a single Borg cube 'unit' to assimilate the Federation with a right click and leave it to the onboard AI to do the rest is the only option when your too busy having to micro-manage the Borg Empire at home and the various resources bases etc. Trying to expand Borg territory with multiple bases is going to be even harder to manage on TOP of maintaining the current Empire and may simply be beyond the Borg's resources.

Though regarding Earth, their goal seems to be to occupy it, and we see artificial structures, sea bridges and the like that weren't there before.

Here's what I mean

I wonder if the Borg operate with far flung clusters of outpost planets which are permenantly populated, from which they build/resupply/etc. to assimilate nearby species?

An explanation might be the Borg want to assimilate Earth due to the very fact the Federation has grown to such a level. The Borg's operations around Earth all leave the impression they have an above average intrest in it's assimilation although the reason why is left to supposition. At the very least the Queen has an intrest in humans and she told Data the Borg used to be like them. Perhaps a case of the Borg wanting to assimilate the Federation because they see them as what they used to be and want to try and re-capture their 'glory' days of building a large empire etc.

The simpler explanation could simply be that the attempts to assimilate Earth were the Borg trying to aggressively expand but they no longer have the edge / capability to properly engage in that kind of warefare let alone against the increasingly growing defenses of the Federation. The main reason the Borg do so well in the DQ is because the Borg have had plenty of time to decimate the local species to a point that even in their retarded state they still hold an unfair advantage over everyone else. The same is not so for the Alpha and Beta Quadrants who have been able to develop technolgically without interferance from the Borg.
Ironically, the Borg thorougness in fucking over their own area of space probably destroyed any proper opponent they had to encourage them to keep advancing which in turn made them stagnant in their development to the point they no longer know how to think or fight for themselves without help.
A.K.A Scorpian, Dark Frontier

Realistically, why would they want to expand in the DQ ?
The majority of the space is full of morons with crappy technology or shitty resources compared to the effort the Borg would expend getting it and Voyager would indicate the Borg have much bigger concerns to deal with throughout the show. They would be too busy attempting to rebuild their forces from the S8472 war or devising shitty plans to assimilate the Federation with Nano-Tech etc.

What are the pros and cons of settling on a planet?

If they need the resources to build ships and the parts for more drones, you could mine asteroids from the relative safety of your big impenetrable starship. Periodically nick a planet to serve as the network router for the region, and you're set.

Gandalf wrote:What are the pros and cons of settling on a planet?

If they need the resources to build ships and the parts for more drones, you could mine asteroids from the relative safety of your big impenetrable starship. Periodically nick a planet to serve as the network router for the region, and you're set.

Pro-
automatic life support
easier to defend due to heat sinks

Con-
bottom of a gravity well
opportunity cost
inefficent to access materials
rust
geological activity and natural disasters

NetKnight wrote:IIRC, the planets Species 8472 destroyed were mentioned to have had significant numbers of drones on them, and were evidently valuable enough to be worth destroying in the first place.

It depends on what you consider "significant". The actual snippet of the quote is "Eight planets destroyed. 312 vessels disabled. Four million, six hundred and twenty one drones killed." If you reject any drone figures from the vessels and use only planets, it represents an average of slightly over half a million drones a planet.

Ted C wrote:

Bounty wrote:"Territory" in this case is rather a vague term. The Borg aren't politically recognized, and the Borg themselves don't seem to have a concept of territorial integrity, so it must refer to an analysis Seven herself made; and without knowing what parameters she used, "territory" can refer to anything from "furthest settled planet" to "this is roughly the area where most of the Borg hang out". It's akin to the "territory" of pirates; sure, you can point out where you're most likely to run into them and where their home ports are, but that doesn't mean they have control over that whole area, nor does it mean they operate only in that area.

The crew of Voyager were talking about passing through "the heart of (Borg) territory" before 7of9 ever came on board.

Which could be based on talking to other species who tell them "you go there you die, no one comes out of that area" and took this as meaning its the heart of Borg space where they have exterminated or assimilated every other species.

TO me it would be logical that there is a core region that the Borg control and travel through all the time then large swathes of territory often in finger like shapes that poke out from this central region where there is nothing but dead worlds the Borg have wiped out.

For all we know Voyager never hit the heart of Borg space but merely crossed one of these "fingers".

Ted C wrote:OK, so Voyager would normally require about 70 years to complete the 70,000 light-year journey back to the Federation from their starting point out in the Delta Quadrant, giving them a cruising speed of about 1000c.

In "Scorpion", we find that it would normally take Voyager about 2 months to pass through the heart of Borg territory under their own power.

Assuming that their cruising speed is still 1000c and that I'm doing my math right, that makes Borg territory about 167 light-years across.



Even if Voyager screams through Borg space at ten times their normal cruising speed, Borg territory is still smaller than Federation territory. That's just sad.

Firstly, you are assuming that this is the diameter rather than a secant. Secondly, whoever said that borg territory was a sphere? This could have just been an outlier from the main area - the flordia peninsula vs the United States, if you will.


But even if it is the diameter, the borg aren't restricted to a specific type of planet to colonize, and we've seen that they do the space station thing just fine. So unlike the Federation, they probably have a presence in all the systems in such a volume. And there should be ~6000 stars in a volume 167 light years across. That is more resources then any other faction can throw at each other - the Federation territory holds about 1.5 million stars but they only have 150 systems to draw upon. The rest are just there.

Samuel wrote:Pro-
automatic life support
easier to defend due to heat sinks

Con-
bottom of a gravity well
opportunity cost
inefficent to access materials
rust
geological activity and natural disasters

In light of those, I wonder if they might just scoop things out of the ground as they did with the Neutral Zone colonies and use that method for strip mining any relevant planet. If the Borg wanted to think "big picture", I could see why they may not want to be so invested in their planets.

As far as we know, the Borg have no aims other than to assimilate stuff. So why would they leave drones on planets when those drones could be assimilating something?

Gandalf wrote:As far as we know, the Borg have no aims other than to assimilate stuff. So why would they leave drones on planets when those drones could be assimilating something?

Geothermal energy perhaps?
A central construction base?
Maybe a stable spot to breed new drones?

Or maybe they're just trophy worlds - let's face it. The Borg aren't entirely emotionless and efficent; the Queen is an arrogant, despotic bitch who perhaps keeps worlds she likes occupied just because, like Earth.

Darth Onasi wrote:

Gandalf wrote:As far as we know, the Borg have no aims other than to assimilate stuff. So why would they leave drones on planets when those drones could be assimilating something?

Geothermal energy perhaps?
A central construction base?
Maybe a stable spot to breed new drones?

Perhaps I should have been a little more thorough in my post. I was wondering why such a single minded entity would have drones sitting around who aren't involved in the overall assimilation process. Essentially, Borg support personnel manning the communications, sensors, etc.

Of course, with this line of thought I can't work out why they wouldn't just have it in space in the form of a Unicomplex. Maybe they use geothermal energy to power the communications and sensors, while the Unicomplexes are more expensive and therefore aren't built as often.

I had always assumed drones were needed to maintain and operate their machinery, perhaps relatively little Borg technology is actually automated.

Edit: Another possiblity is that the Borg simply hoard drones for the sake of having them contribute to the hive mind and don't (or can't) use them all to spread out. A large number are kept on planets because they're relatively safe from attack (very few Star Trek factions have planet cracking weapons after all).

Darth Onasi wrote:I had always assumed drones were needed to maintain and operate their machinery, perhaps relatively little Borg technology is actually automated.

I always got the impression that drones are the automation. Sure, it's kinda weird that you need drones to push buttons when you could just connect your machinery to your hive-mind so you don't need to physically manipulate them all the time, but then again, what's not weird about the Borg.

apocolypse wrote:It depends on what you consider "significant". The actual snippet of the quote is "Eight planets destroyed. 312 vessels disabled. Four million, six hundred and twenty one drones killed." If you reject any drone figures from the vessels and use only planets, it represents an average of slightly over half a million drones a planet.

Also, if you take the opposite approach and assume the planets were deserted you get about fourteen thousands drones per ship - well within the capacity of a cube, given the nubers we heard of elsewhere. It's at least possible, if not likely, that those planets were deserted.

Captain Seafort wrote:

apocolypse wrote:It depends on what you consider "significant". The actual snippet of the quote is "Eight planets destroyed. 312 vessels disabled. Four million, six hundred and twenty one drones killed." If you reject any drone figures from the vessels and use only planets, it represents an average of slightly over half a million drones a planet.

Also, if you take the opposite approach and assume the planets were deserted you get about fourteen thousands drones per ship - well within the capacity of a cube, given the nubers we heard of elsewhere. It's at least possible, if not likely, that those planets were deserted.

Why would 8472 go around destroying deserted planets? Moreover if they were deserted, why would the Borg consider them a loss?

Darth Onasi wrote:Why would 8472 go around destroying deserted planets? Moreover if they were deserted, why would the Borg consider them a loss?

That's a good part of the reason why I stated it was unlikely, although it's possible they were simply destroying planets to a) show off and b) sterilise Borg space, per their apparent war aims.

The core of my point was that the assumption does not produce an unreasonable number of drones per ship, and so must be at least considered a possibility.

Perhaps the planets have huge (mostly) automated mining/refining/construction operations. Large numbers of drones aren't needed because there's nothing to be assimilated.