Using projectile weapons versus the Borg.

[Alien-Carrot]

One thing i noticed is, when worf beat on the drone with his gun, he attacked the un-armored head. When random redshirt #5 hits a drone, he hits in in the armored sternum.

Punch someone in the head, and the neck snaps back, causing minor whiplash, or a broken neck.

Punch them in the sternum, through a kevlar vest, and you have a one in a million chance of stopping their heart.

One day some trektard will get in a real fight, and understand the difference between bat to the head, and bat to the chest.

[The Yosemite Bear]

One day a trek writer will understand conservation of momentum. (or recoil is a bitch, and a personal kenetic or other energy defector/damenor will still have to pay the cost somewhere)

[Ryan Thunder]

Purely out of curiosity, would it be possible to convert the kinetic energy into some other form, like heat?

Of course, this still leaves the momentum to be dealt with, but if the kinetic energy of the projectile is reduced sharply then it should slow down, unless I'm mistaken.

[Ryan Thunder]

Hmm yes. Momentary lapse in thought; there are a few examples I've been taught as examples of kinetic energy loss while conserving momentum.

Oops.

[Sea Skimmer]

Dealing with the momentum of a projectile is generally accomplished by spreading it out over more mass and area (like what armor does). Spreading it over time is also an option (like using springs as shock absorbers). It can't just magically disappear though; it does have to go somewhere.

It can’t disappear, but under the right circumstances you can deflect kinetic projectiles using hard armor, without absorbing all the energy they had. That’s not the most practical thing to do with armor on a human, but the slow moving and already metal clad Borg would be able to make some up of rounded armor sections.

[Alien-Carrot]

but the slow moving and already metal clad Borg would be able to make some up of rounded armor sections.

Metal clad? The chest armor of borg isnt metal, its far too weak. We see picard dig around in the chest of a drone, and he easily moves the "armor" bare handed. If it's metal, it would have to be aluminum foil.

[Jark]

Metal clad? The chest armor of borg isnt metal, its far too weak. We see picard dig around in the chest of a drone, and he easily moves the "armor" bare handed. If it's metal, it would have to be aluminum foil.

There are different types of Borg drones, presumably with different designs. I got this quote from the Voyager episode Dark Frontier when Seven of Nines parents were inspecting a Borg drone

ERIN: Species six nine six one, Ktarian. Tritanium infrastructure. He's a tactical drone.

Going by memory that drone had some pretty thick looking armour on him.

[hawkwind]

We have 50 years old or older cartridges which are perfectly capable of shooting through most of types of contemporary body armor, when steel cored bullets are used. 7.62X54 shot from Dragunov rifle, with steel core penetrator goes right through 18 mm armour grade steel plate.
Small tokarev 7.62X39 cartrdige is original 7.63 mauser and that with steel core shoots through most kevlar only body armor and that is now 110 years old cartridge.
Body armor is meant to improve one´s chance, not render him invulnerable. Historically artilery always had edge over contemporary armor. Or gained that edge soon once deployed and the technology battle tested.
Even modern ceramic plated west cannot stop sustained burst and most starts shatter after a burst of 3 rounds.
We can expect that trek material science is better than ours, that is right, but they also should be able to design railgun rifles or even improve obsolete guns to decent performance level.
Given their penchant for forcefields, they could even make rifle which will shoot insanelly high KE projectiles and use inertial compensators to stabilise rifle, so that the recoil wont liquify the shooter.


J.

[montypython]

Even particle energy streaming weapons would be effective against the borg, no frequencies to cancel out.

[The Yosemite Bear]

just imagine Tessla Magnetic Repulsion based weapons.

you have kenetic transfers, enough electro-magnetics to play holy hell with borg implants, though they would be trying to resonate at optimal frequencies....

[hawkwind]

I guess that will result in Borg-medium-rare.

J.

[Darth Wong]

I love the way it doesn't occur to any of the Borg-wankers that even if they did deploy some kind of neutral-particle shielding (or good old fashioned body armour), people could simply use bigger and more powerful projectile weapons to overcome them. It's the same stupid "no limits" logic fallacy that Trekkies have employed since day one.

PS. How does the penetration of modern armour-piercing military ammo compare to the kind of rounds that would be fired from a typical handgun in the Wild West?

[Darth Wong]

Another question: why didn't anyone on the Enterprise ever think of making a spear? And if the Borg must be able to deploy physical shielding just because people can't think of a concrete reason to explain their absence, then shouldn't we also assume that they can learn to sprint? Yet no one ever assumes that. Why not?

[hawkwind]

Mike wild west era guns dont fare vry well for penetration only in comparition to modern ones. They use rather heavy soft slugs with alot of powder which burns more slowly. The rifles are big bore, slow twist rate.
But the powder charges in those old cartridges and even in some old black powder rifles are very high. Also old .45 caliber cartridges were made with different technology and they have rather thin bottom, which gives them alot more internall space. Most of these cartridges can also be hot loaded. They are extremelly effective on soft targets and very accurate even up to today standarts, but the will tend to flatten and dissipate all KE into target rather than penetrate armour. That doesnt mean that somebody hit into vital area and having protective garment will feel very well. I did some research on traumatology in terms of chest hits, because of my job and 60 Joules blunt hit on unprotected torso is generally considered incapacitating with results like broken ribs, pneumothorax, kidney rupture etc, (or just shock) depending on exact place of hit and its interesting that most anti knife wests used by police is rated for that figure behind the knife thrust, because that is what most fit men can generate in terms of punch.

I think that WW I is advent of really modern cartrdiges with smaller caliber ogival-pointed steel jacketed and/or cored bullets like .303 british, later .308 winchester or 8 mm mauser...

J.

[hawkwind]

Also modern anti armour penetrators for cartridges like 50 BMG can be CNC machined solid bronze alloy slugs, since we can make better gun barrels.

[Lancer]

Even particle energy streaming weapons would be effective against the borg, no frequencies to cancel out.

Unless you're brute-forcing a particle beam instead of amplifying a coherent beam, wouldn't you still have significant wave characteristics like frequency and amplitude?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Also note a sharp's rifle would still take the fight out, if not kill you under a modern Bulletproof vest. There's something about a rifle designed to stop a buffalo.

Also for Wild West tech and slightly beyond...

Magnum catrage nitro express .454 rilfes

come on, tell me you can get back up after getting hit with a round designed to stop a two ton animal.

[Darth Wong]

Were those guys using rifles in that TNG episode? I haven't seen it in years, but I was pretty sure they were using pistols.

[Aaron]

Were those guys using rifles in that TNG episode? I haven't seen it in years, but I was pretty sure they were using pistols.

I'm not sure which episode your referring to but I looked through the screencaps for Descent on Trekcore and there was a security guard carrying a rifle with Picard. He gets killed by the Borg before getting a shot off.

That's the only episode with the Borg in TNG that I recall seeing a rifle in use.

[Darth Wong]

Were those guys using rifles in that TNG episode? I haven't seen it in years, but I was pretty sure they were using pistols.

I'm not sure which episode your referring to but I looked through the screencaps for Descent on Trekcore and there was a security guard carrying a rifle with Picard. He gets killed by the Borg before getting a shot off.

That's the only episode with the Borg in TNG that I recall seeing a rifle in use.

No, I was talking about that silly Holodeck episode with Worf and the Wild West cowboys. I seem to recall that Worf actually got shot earlier in that episode and was still able to function (thus making one question just how powerful these rounds were), but perhaps it's been too long and I have it confused with something else.

[montypython]

Unless you're brute-forcing a particle beam instead of amplifying a coherent beam, wouldn't you still have significant wave characteristics like frequency and amplitude?

I was thinking along the lines of a high-density Anti-neutron packet stream, something like that wouldn't have any waveform characteristics, rather more like a continuous projectile impacting effect.

[Aaron]

No, I was talking about that silly Holodeck episode with Worf and the Wild West cowboys. I seem to recall that Worf actually got shot earlier in that episode and was still able to function (thus making one question just how powerful these rounds were), but perhaps it's been too long and I have it confused with something else.

Oh that abortion. I'll go check out Trekcore and try and find out what he was shot with. I seem to recall that one of the Data banditos had a shotgun and there was a guy on the roof with a lever action. But I think Worf got shot with a pistol.

[Aaron]

This looks like the scene where he was shot, given that four screencaps later Troi is checking out his wound.

You can clearly see the guy on the left is using a pistol and though the hand on the fellow on the right is cut off, we can see that his holster is empty. So two pistols.

Here's the sequence of events for the final shootout. Looks like Worf takes three hits from a pistol before he fucks over Evil Data.

The script on Trekcore states that the shield takes six rounds from Evil Data's pistol before failing and Worf does his thing.

Whether he actually takes six rounds in the show, I can't remember. Like you I saw it years ago.

[hawkwind]

Oh - the stopping power of these old guns is no doubt. As I said old .45 cartridges have more internal volume, so they were loaded with more powder than their todays versions.
Colt Dragoon, percussion revolver, can load 60 gr of black powder, that is huge load. It very nearly to modern .44 magnum cartridge in terms of power.

When there was a competetion for new US army handgun in early 1900´ (in which colt automatic pistol won over the revolvers, they tested the stoping power of the guns on live horses, since cavalry was still force in consideration.
It was found that 5 to 6 hits with .45 ACP (which was new cartrdige by John Browning by then) unaimed to vitals, just torso hits drops the horse.

J.

[Stark]

He asked about armour penetration, not 'stopping power'.

PS another genius who signs his goddamn posts. The sig, the avatar and the screen name aren't enough for him.