Borg Design strategy. WTF!!?

[victorhadin]

Now I, a non-trekkie, have just heard something.
"A Borg ship can continue to function at 100% efficiency even when 80% of it's mass has been blown away."

Sounds impressive, no? What I'm wondering is:

"Is 80% of it's mass just surplus spare parts, then?"


After watching that TNG episode when they first encounter the Borg, I find myself lamenting Borg design strategy.

1) The vast majority of the mass of each vessel is, effectively, spare parts to allow massive redundancy.
2) Decentralised design, to allow rapid repairs.


Now call me a cynic, but has someone EMP'd the Borg engineers or something?

*Such massive redundancy in each ship is stupidly wasteful. The Borg are clearly arrogant and complacent arseholes, as they see their superiority such that they can get away with such ridiculous levels of concern over individual ships, hampering overall abilities to construct more.
*Surely four to five less-redundant vessels would be infinitely more useful in a firefight, offering a multiplicity of times the firepower in any engagement.
*Their decentralised design strategy sucks too. Picture this:
-Instead of, say, four large impulse engines, regularly ordered they might have 550 or something scattered throughout the ships mass. Again; this is redundancy taken to extremes. You need to coordinate all these decentralised engines with a vastly greater level of computing power and wiring, plus the fact that they will be in less than deal positions for use. Every time more engines come online within the ships mass, replacing old ones, you need to redesign the way in which they coordinate with each other. This is massively wasteful.
-Instead of one or two large ship-killing weapons, what about many many smaller ones? You don't have to be arocket scientist to see how stupid that is.
-Shielding. Instead of one powerful shield, what is the advantage of many short-ranged smaller ones?

Why on Earth do the Borg not centralise ther design strategy and get rid of the extreme redundancy in each of their ships? Centralised and organised powerplants, weaponry, communications, control and shielding leads to far greater efficiency.
And by chucking the '80% mass redundancy' stupidity you could build many more smaller ships of equal (or more likely superior, considering the increased efficiency of properly organised and centralised designs) capability?



Why?
Arrogance and complacency. The Borg are smug bastards who think that they can get away with this precisely because they assume absolute superiority over any enemy.

Begging your pardon, but what was Species 8472? If they had chucked this ridiculous decentralised design strategy and redundancy-taken-to-extremes they could have met each battle with Species 8472 with some five times more firepower to play with!




Sorry; just my rant.

[victorhadin]

Disclaimer: I have oversimplified a couple of times in the previous post, but you get my drift.



Incidentally, if they must go for decentralised design, why not use a sphere instead of a cube?

[RayCav of ASVS]

I personally assume that the "80% mass = 100% efficency" thing really means that its still able to repair itself to 100% efficiency with only 20% mass, either

1.)relative to the remaining mass.
2.)completely rebuild itself to 100% full size with mass replicating technology (that many Trekkies and indeed B&B claim the Borg have, strangely enough done with nanoprobes! Unfortunately, since B&B claim this, this is canon, so it's true).

In conclusion: no matter how ridiculous it may be, a Borg Cube can fully rebuild itself back to 100% of its original structure if a full 80% of the original structure was blasted away, thereby restoring 100% efficiency relative to the original structure. As if it matters because an ISD will still blow away 100% of the original structure in 20 seconds

[seanrobertson]

Guys,

No such thing was actually ever said about Borg cubes.
Shelby said "...can sustain damage to" 80% of the ship
before it's nonfunctional--NOT that the ship could
survive from losing 80% of its mass.

Remember that in "Q Who?" the Enterprise-D
"sustained damage to 20%" of a Borg cube by making
a few craters on its surface. They were good-sized craters,
to be sure, but they were *not* equivalent to a full
one-fifth the cube's volume.

Sean
Analyst http://www.babtech-onthe.net/

[Vympel]

Trekkie distortion. The cube in First Contact sustained 'severe' damage to its outer hull (signified by the sections of glowing green)- but it sure as hell didn't blow up after some 80% of it was gone. Its structure was still very much intact when it was blasted to atoms.

Typical dialogs over visuals bullshit.

[NecronLord]

Disclaimer: I have oversimplified a couple of times in the previous post, but you get my drift.



Incidentally, if they must go for decentralised design, why not use a sphere instead of a cube?

The reason for the cube shape is simple, when they made q-who they blew the budget and could only make half a model for the exterior shots, so they make three sides of the cube and cheat

[NecronLord]

also if they have to fly around in cubes at least fly with a point in the direction of travel, thus maximising the weapons they are able to bring to bear on a target vessel. And for some inexplicable reason in ST;FC and onwards the feds develpoed this showy tactinc of flying around the cubes, instead of all facing one face of the cube and minimising the weapons the borg can bring to bear. Of couse more recently there have indeed been spheres, which is a vast improvement.

[CJvR]

I think the Borg and SF have a similar approach to ship construction. Neither is building pure warships. The Feds are building reaserch ships, armed but that's a secondary design consideration. The Borg are building factory ships, only with enough weapons to secure rawmaterials and replacement workers.

[seanrobertson]

Trekkie distortion. The cube in First Contact sustained 'severe' damage to its outer hull (signified by the sections of glowing green)- but it sure as hell didn't blow up after some 80% of it was gone. Its structure was still very much intact when it was blasted to atoms.

Typical dialogs over visuals bullshit.

Actually, I don't think that's the case.

You're certainly right on the "First Contact" count. The cube had "sustained heavy damage to its outer hull," which is certainly, as you said, a far
cry from 80% of the ship being "gone."

However, it needn't be a case of dialogue vs. visuals. I don't know
if you were telling me that my qualification was a "Trekkie distortion,"
but it really doesn't matter. I say again:

In "BoBW," NO ONE EVER SAID a cube could continue to run after 80%
of its entire mass was *gone*.

No, no, no: they said that a cube could continue to function after 80% of the craft had been damaged, rendered combat ineffective. You have to admit, there's a BIG difference between damaging something and making it cease to exist! Even destroying something and making
it non-existent are potential worlds of difference; e.g., Iraqi tanks
that, though little more than hulks, were "destroyed" in the Gulf War.

Also, I'll point out yet *again* what Worf said in "Q Who?": "They have
sustained damage to 20% of their vessel."

THAT was from several phaser blasts, all of which taken together
did NOT make one fifth of the cube gone, vanish, kaput--whatever.
They might've phasered out 10% of the cube's total volume, and that
attack *damaged* another 10% of the vehicle.

As such, it is entirely possible that Shelby's quote about Borg ships'
endurance is correct; however, I think it's important to keep in mind,
that was a Starfleet Intel. *projection*. They well could've been wrong,
not having enough information at hand (with only the J-25 encounter
to really draw data from).

Still, it needn't stand in contradiction to the cube in "FC" being blown
to hell. Picard *did* have some intimate knowledge of the thing's
condition, something that alluded Mr. Data/his sensors. It might be
the case that one would need to severely damage 80% of a Borg
cube through some "conventional" means, whatever that entails
(probably blasting through the surface), before that ship died.
But if you can detonate something *inside* the cube, as done in
FC...that's a little different.

Sean
Analyst http://www.babtech-onthe.net/