Darth Vader inside a Cube

[Alyeska]

10 MJ phase pistol > Borg

Only to a point. The Borg did finaly adapt with trouble.

[Metrion Cascade]

No, it doesn't. "Heavy blast door" isn't a value. What does it take to get through that door in some actual unit of measure?

If lightsaber can go through said HEavy Blast door, which stands up to blaster fire from Droidekas, which can be proven to defeat drone shields, then it stands to reason Lightsabers would be more effective than a shield

So. You're saying:
lightsabre>heavy blast door>Droidekas>drone shields.

But nobody has proven that Droidekas>drone shields. And the lightsabre didn't go right through. It needed some time (close to a minute as I recall). Meaning that the Droidekas put out less energy per blast than the lightsabre did over that minute, but there is no proof that they couldn't have penetrated the door given the same amount of time as the lightsabre.

There is no queen on a run-of-the-mill cube. And I already conceded that individual drones could be tossed around. Too bad there are thousands of them.

I said "A queen or wherever Vader's force sense lead him, I was merely giving Vader some sort of Objective on the cube which has been undefined. As for there being THousands of borg, its not like those Borg can all crowd nto the same corridor at once, what you percieve as one large battle is actually a thousand smaller battles that Vader will win every time.

And how long does Vader have to win thousands of skirmishes before he starves or needs maintenance?

The lightsabre is not a kinetic weapon. It's an energy weapon with a massless blade (canonically stated according to YT300000). Hence no momentum at all.

then why is it when two lightsabers strike each other they act as actual swords, notices how when a lightsaber weilder uses the saber, and strikes a solid object, his reaction is as if he was using a metal blade. If a drone can adapt to the energy of a lightsbaer (which is probably impossible) then a saber strike is going to do something, since it cannot just simply pass through the borg or at the shield.

Assuming that lightsabres use some type of forcefield that would bounce off of drone shields as off another blade, this is still not an advantage. The blade would have to have some mass to impart any more impulse to the drone than Vader's wrist exerted. Blunt force weapons have to have some mass to increase the amount of work done by you in swinging it. Swinging a massless forcefield will be even less effective than a Styrofoam baseball bat. Vader's strength would be better applied via sucker punches.

The Borg may not even have what Vader would sense as a mind. I'll not even guess at this one.

Isnt that the same sort of speculation I just put out? Get over yourself.

I presented it as speculation, just as you presented your musings on the effectiveness of mind tricks.

[Metrion Cascade]

Want a chuckle? Not only do I think they adapt to pure energy, but I think it's the ONLY thing Borg have any defense against. Okay. Here's my argument for Borg adapting based on phase modulation instead of frequency modulation. It's made possible by the fact that the modulations the Borg were adapting to were never called frequencies.

Incoming transporters, weapons, and tractor beams matched to a ship's shield frequency are always made MORE effective by the match (ask the E-D or Captain Maxwell). Why would the same match in frequencies make phasers and torpedoes LESS effective against the Borg? It wouldn't. But a match in phase would.

And we still don't know if a lightsabre can be stopped by forcefields in the SW universe. If it can't be, and SW forcefields are stronger than drone forcefields, Vader can kill drones. He still can't survive, as the cube needs those drones simply to stay in one piece, but he would be able to destroy it.

Red herring. You are taking the exact wording out of context and basing your entire argument off of it.

No, it's not a red herring. A red herring is an off-topic argument presented as relevant where it's not. This is very relevant. If the Borg are adapting based on frequency (never stated), this would directly contradict everything else we've seen about frequency matches between shields and weapons.

Actually, no. Thanks to ENT we begin to gauge the level of firepower Drones can take. At 10 MJ it takes a considerable number of shots before they can eventualy adapt to the weapon. This is compared to the much lower numbers of the weaker weapons. This means any weapon that can put out singificantly higher then 10 MJ will break the theoretical threshold of a drone.

Did the weapon work against them at 10 MJ AFTER their shields were up? You're not pointing out a shield limit - you're pointing out that it took longer to raise them (and the drones were already damaged). And what's the power output? 10 MJ per what? Second? Hour? Unless you can answer that, the 10 MJ figure is useless, because my pinky finger can take 10 MJ if it comes slowly enough.

Actually we have seen them destroyed by energy weapons. Phase pistols are very much energy weapons. 10 MJ shots did them in nicely.

After they raised their shields?

. Can a drone survive KT level? No they can not. Logic tells us their shield capabilities are far below that of their ships.

Where have you proven they can't take KT range weapons? And yes, I already said they can't be as powerful as their ships.

evel? No they can not. Logic tells us their shield capabilities are far below that of their ships. Infact we know that internal system failures are enough to kill drones and those are going to be much less powerful then even KT range in terms of firepower.

Firepower? What system failures are you referring to that would have had to overcome the drones' shields? 50 KT computer viruses?

[Metrion Cascade]

No, it doesn't. "Heavy blast door" isn't a value. What does it take to get through that door in some actual unit of measure?

The Tradefed door was at least 1.5m deep to prevent the saber from poking through. The saber was in the door about 10 seconds. It heated the door (we'll assume iron to be conservative) up to being yellow, which makes it about 800 degrees C. The heated area was perhaps 70cm in diameter. This makes a change in temperature of about 780 degrees, through about 0.6 cubic meters of iron. About 4500kg worth. So, since we know the specific heat of iron, we can calculate that the saber put in a low-end of 1.6 GJ (recall that the iron is also giving off energy, so this is low-end). Over ten seconds, thats 0.16GW.

Howedar, thank you. I concede that Borg drone shields, even if they did adapt, would not be able to dissipate power into the drone's onboard power supply at a rate of 0.16 GW. They'd overload, drop, and the drone would get skewered.

So. The sabre works. But how does Vader stay alive long enough to kill thousands of drones, and how does the ship stay in once piece without their maintenance?

[Howedar]

Vader can kill drones for as long as his supplies last and he is not tired in a sleeping sense. Other than that, the drones are going to come at him in couple of single- or double-file lines, and barring need for rest and nourishment, he could hold that off indefinately.

[Connor MacLeod]

Simple facts regarding Vader:

- According to official sources and logic, his armor would be at least as durable as what stormtroopers possess (WOTC suggests its actually *strongeR*) WE know how durable stormtrooper armor is (what it takes to pierce it) - so unless the Borg can apply thousands of newtons of force to a small area to puncture the armor or find some unarmored part, they aren't goign to be injecting him.

- canon energy output for a lightsaber is at least a hundred megawatts very conservatively, but more probably several hundred or more at a minimum. (This is further assuming only modern materials - not the super-dense, energy-dissipating material we know SW ships employ.)

Moreover they apply this energy over an area several square centimeters (about the thickness of the blade) at most - EU sources suggest the energy is applied to a much SMALLER area.

- Lightsabers are in fact a small part of Vader's offensive capability. His energy handling ability is at least up to deflecting blaster bolts putting it in the MJ range (70 MJ minimum. If we compare him to others, like Skywalker - whose abilities he can match - he could probably handle GJ levels, possibly TJ - ref Dark Empire.) I believe he possesses Force lightning, but also an ability to unleash what is called a "Kinetite" - demonstrated in Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

His Telekinetic abilities are impressive even in his pre-Sith days in AOTC (He demonstrated the ability to decelerate his body by hundreds or t housands of gees when impacting Zam Wessel's airspeeder, levitated at a distance boulder's massive enough to crush an entire Tusken Raider hut, and demonstrated the ability to accelerate himself vertically at tens of gees.

As Vader, his abilities in TESB demonstrated telekinetic feats of thousands to tens of thousands of newtons minimum by ripping out machinery from the wall in TESB and flinging it at Luke.

Not only can he easily fling aside dozens or hundreds of Borg with this power, he can use it to create a barrage of deadly projectiles that he can atttack the Borg with directly, even IF WE ASSUME HIS LIGHTSABER AND DIRECT TK ATTACKS ARE INEFFECTIVE.

The only limiting factors I can think of is the size of the cube and his purpose. A sufficiently large cube might not be overcome by him just by sheer volume/numbers, even assuming the usual ineptitude of the Borg.

[Connor MacLeod]

Another possibility is simply destroying their "connection" to the Collective, however that is accomplished, and then controlling some, most, or all of the remaining Borg and using them to pilot the ship. If C'Baoth can do it, Vader probably can.

[Metrion Cascade]

So. Vader destroys the cube assuming he can feed and power himself long enough. I'm not convinced the armor can block the tubules, but they'd never get close enough anyway.

Anyone want to try and prove (not that it matters now) that I was wrong about Borg adaptation being based on phase modulation rather than frequency modulation? Nobody's done it yet. Alyeska thought that reinterpreting dialogue (something we all do) was a red herring, even though he couldn't reconcile the contradictions in his assertion that the adaptation is frequency modulation based, and couldn't prove that "modulation" with reference to Borg adaptation couldn't mean phase modulation.

[Darth Fanboy]

Ive always thought Borg Adaptation was Frequency based since The Feds have to switch the frequency on their phasers as soon as they adapt to a particular frequency.

[Darth Wong]

Metrion Cascade, how can you make someone choose between phase and frequench modulation, when the former is useless without the latter? Unless the frequency of waveform A and waveform B are matched, the phase angle is meaningless. In a waveform interference scenario, you need both frequency AND phase modulation.

[Metrion Cascade]

Ive always thought Borg Adaptation was Frequency based since The Feds have to switch the frequency on their phasers as soon as they adapt to a particular frequency.

That's just it. They say "modulation," but have always avoided specifying whether that's frequency modulation or phase modulation. We've heard the term "phase modulation" in reference to Starfleet weapons, but never "frequency modulation."

If it's frequency modulation, why does it make the phasers less effective against the Borg, when in every other situation a frequency match between weapons/transporters/tractor beams and shields makes the weapons more effective?

From what I can tell, phasers are both in and out of phase with the surrounding space-time, and this phase-straddling is what lets them "disintegrate" matter. The in-phase portion of the beam hits the object and causes the thermal effects, and the out-of-phase portion absconds with the matter in a chain reaction (if the material is subject to the chain reaction - rocks just explode due to the thermal effects), pulling the matter out of phase with normal space-time. This is why "disintegrated" people don't literally vaporize and kill everyone in the room with the expansion. Apparently when the Borg match phases with the out-of-phase portion, this allows their shields to more easily absorb the whole beam's power in both phases - something unshielded matter does far less easily.

[Darth Fanboy]

But they say outright phrases such as "Switch frequencies" or "Rotating frequencies". Hard to believe its anything else.

[Metrion Cascade]

Metrion Cascade, how can you make someone choose between phase and frequench modulation, when the former is useless without the latter? Unless the frequency of waveform A and waveform B are matched, the phase angle is meaningless. In a waveform interference scenario, you need both frequency AND phase modulation.

Yes. But is the term "phase," as applied(abused?) in Trek, solely a reference to waveform interference? If so, then in what sense can a weapon be "phase modulated (phase being relative to another waveform)," and how does this describe "phased matter?" If matter has properties of a wave, in what physical dimension does it have to be "in phase" with the surrounding matter to be part of Trek "space-time?"

As for the Borg, they're trying to match some "modulation" with the Fed phasers to make them less effective. If it's frequency, why wouldn't it make the Borg's shields less effective, as occurs with other shields?

[Metrion Cascade]

But they say outright phrases such as "Switch frequencies" or "Rotating frequencies". Hard to believe its anything else.

They've said this in other situations, but not in dealing with the Borg. They seem to be avoiding it, always saying "modulation."

[The Third Man]

If Vader's objective is to kill all the Borg occupants, and if he is going to achieve this by engaging them in hand-to-hand combat, then he is going to be a busy lad:

ditl.org puts a cubes crew at anywhere from 5000 to 179000. If it's the big number, and all the Borg come to Vader in an orderly line to be sliced (as they typically do), and Vader kills them (or they arrive, which is more likely the limiting factor) at an average rate of one per second, it'll take him about 48 hours to get through the lot of them. Can he go that long without a stop for a piss/force-meditation/drink?

More importantly, can the light-sabre power source last that long? We know it can last a long time shutdown, but how long in constant use? And what is it's duty-cycle ie will it need to be shut down for a while (to cool off etc) after a certain period of use?

Vader's task is even worse if the Borg don't come to him. A cube has a volume of 27 cubic kms, and it seems pretty well permeated with passageways. He'd have to scour all these to find hide-out drones. Assume 1% of the cube is passageway, and drones are evenly distributed about it. That's 270,000,000 cubic metres. Say the passageways have an average cross-sectional area of 10 square metres, then Vader had best bring his walking boots because that's 27,000km of passageway for him to cover. That assumes the Borg remain stationary (they probably will) and don't mill about.

[Sarevok]

How powerful is Darth Vader realy compared to the Emperor ?

[Chardok]

How powerful is Darth Vader realy compared to the Emperor ?

Well, let's take a look at the facts here.
1. Emporer shocks Luke.
2. Vader just got his hand cut off in a long and arduous battle with his son.
3. Emporer is still shocking Luke.
4. Vader picks up emporer, getting shocked.
5. throws emporer in a pit.


I'd say that makes Vader more powerful than the emporer. Since Vader was (indirectly) responsible for his demise. (Of course all that killed vader, too But PALPY DIES FIRST, DAMMIT!)

[Darth Fanboy]

ditl.org puts a cubes crew at anywhere from 5000 to 179000.

and you believe the garbage that comes from that site? One look at his Fleet counts for the AQ powers should be indicative enough.

[Darth Fanboy]

But they say outright phrases such as "Switch frequencies" or "Rotating frequencies". Hard to believe its anything else.

They've said this in other situations, but not in dealing with the Borg. They seem to be avoiding it, always saying "modulation."

Say wha? I can recall scenes from FC and/or BoBW where they discuss "rotating frequencies" especially when handing out the specially modified phasers for fighting the borg.

[The Third Man]

ditl.org puts a cubes crew at anywhere from 5000 to 179000.

and you believe the garbage that comes from that site? One look at his Fleet counts for the AQ powers should be indicative enough.

The stuff he writes in yellow is supposed to have canon backing. It's usually worth checking his source, which in this case is:

The sizes come from the Voyager episode "Dark Frontier", in which the Hansens declare the cube they find to be 28 cubic kilometres in size, i.e. 3,036 metres on a side. Figures for the number of drones on board a cube also come direct from episodes; in "Collective" Seven of Nine says that a cube is normally run by 5,000 drones, while in "Dark Frontier" the cube the Hansens find has 129,000 lifeforms on board and later picks up another 50,000.

OK, so I was a bit inept using a 27 cubic km volume, based on a 3x3x3 km size derived from a canon 28 cubic km volume. I should have used the 28 cubic km figure directly, which lengthens Vaders hypothetical trek accordingly.

As regards the 5000 drones which run the cube and the 179000 lifeforms bit, I'd suggest that maybe 172000 drones are backup to the core crew of 5000 (Borg are known to like redundancy) and/or assimilation canon-fodder. I'd suggest the 172000 are the ones who come to Vader, the 5000 actually engaged in operating the cube would be the ones he'd have to hunt down.

[Metrion Cascade]

But they say outright phrases such as "Switch frequencies" or "Rotating frequencies". Hard to believe its anything else.

They've said this in other situations, but not in dealing with the Borg. They seem to be avoiding it, always saying "modulation."

Say wha? I can recall scenes from FC and/or BoBW where they discuss "rotating frequencies" especially when handing out the specially modified phasers for fighting the borg.

Funny. I just went through FC on DVD again and can't find one reference to phaser frequency. Only "modulation." Who's got BOBW?

[Chardok]

I don't think so. I'm with the whole, kill the controller Brog and bend the others to his force-induced will.

[Lord Poe]

I'd say that makes Vader more powerful than the emporer. Since Vader was (indirectly) responsible for his demise. (Of course all that killed vader, too But PALPY DIES FIRST, DAMMIT!)

I've always held the belief that Luke attacked Vader so furiously, that he overtaxed Vader's breathing system. You can hear Vader's breathing is different once his hand is cut off, and he is visibly gasping for air. This also is an indication of how well Maul would have done against Vader.

As for the Borg, Vader wouldn't break a sweat. First of all, Vader doesn't NEED to kill every single Borg on a cube. There's neever been aninstance where every single Borg on a cube has engaged a boarding party.

Secondly, why would Vader starve? He doesn't need to stay on the cube the rest of his life. For one thing, there are nutrient facilities which maintain Borg living tissue he could interface with if need be. There are also captured vessels on Borg cubes that he can use to escape, as seen on Voyager.

Drones are of no consequence. Vadr can close whole areas of a cube to trap them by tearing apart accessways, or make himself invisible to them, or even project a dopplegnger of himself for thwe Borg to follow around (See Dark Empire).

[Lord Poe]

and you believe the garbage that comes from that site? One look at his Fleet counts for the AQ powers should be indicative enough.

There's a few dodgy things on Kennedy's site, but on the whole his Trek related material is ok.

[Alyeska]

Where have you proven they can't take KT range weapons? And yes, I already said they can't be as powerful as their ships.

I don't have to prove that. You do.

Firepower? What system failures are you referring to that would have had to overcome the drones' shields? 50 KT computer viruses?

I am talking about internal explossions and release of plasma you dumbass.