Borg life on planets

[Six of Twelve]

We've seen that not all Borg drones travel in space. The mention of Borg planets indicate that some live on planets.

Obviously, the prime function of planet dwelling drones is not assimilation, as everyone on a Borg planet is a drone. So, I'm curious as to what functions planet dwelling Borg serve and what determines whether a drone will be a space faring or a planet dwelling drone. Is it a simple matter of where one was assimilated, or something more complex?

As to the functions planet dwelling drones serve, I'd say research, such as what Seven of Nine describes in the omega episode might be one such function. Another might be the incubation of new drones. Yes, Seven said in Drone that the Borg don't reproduce that way, and perhaps it's not the usual thing for space faring drones. But obviously Borg can and did reproduce this way on this episode, as Seven also said that nanoprobes can adapt to any technology available. Perhaps, incubation is routine on Borg planets, as there's no one to assimilate. Not being a planet dwelling drone, Seven might not have known this, as she stated in another episode that the Collective only had each drone retain such knowledge as would be relevant to their functions within the Collective and that no individual drone would carry the sum total of the Borg's knowledge in their heads all the time.

What other functions do you think planet dwelling drones served?

 

[Timo]

It might well be that most drones are simply allowed to exist, that is, to lead free lives. They just happen to be hooked up to a collective consciousness all the time, but they still basically wake up in the morning, have a healthy breakfast of high frequency alternating current and a bit of plasma, scan the collective for the latest news, write a few thousand new pages to their poem or build, decorate, paint and creatively destroy a virtual Late Gruboxian cloud palace, then debate with a small circle of two million best friends, and get back to sleep, vaguely disappointed that the Collective had no real use for them today. The drones can't rebel, and their individual thought doesn't amount to much in the big picture, but it's not as if they are forbidden from living, not in terms of explicit canon.

It's not the planets that ought to matter, anyway, probably. Earth as assimilated in ST:FC only had nine billion Borg. Unimatrix One, floating in deep space, had trillions...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I doubt any Borg exists who isn't given some duty or function that benefits the directives of the collective as a whole. It shouldn't be surprising there are Borg on planets, from an efficiency standpoint. The only thing that is more efficient to do from ships than on planets are conquering/assimilation, scouting or maintenance activities related to conquering/assimilation or research of unknown things that can only be found in deep space. Anything else such as shipbuilding/designing, research, resource development and mining, etc probably happens on planets simply because it's more energy efficient.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Maybe the Borg who live on Planets are used as kind of a think tank for contemplating the future of the collective and decission making.

 

[Spot261]

I'm imagining scenarios where whole planets have been assimilated and the populations are in the many billions. What practical means could the borg use to remove the population into space without devoting ridiculous numbers of ships that are needed elsewhere?

This ties into the age old problem in sci fi of how one would evacuate a planet, you would have to remove people at a staggering rate simply to accommodate the birthrate.

Can drones still procreate? Could such a planet be used as a pool of spare drones to be dipped into when needed?

As Unimatrix points out they would still contribute their cognitive capacity to the hive mind and could doubtless strip mine the planet for resources.

 

[Cheapjack1]

It would be an epic journey to gaze in wonder at such things.

 

[Timo]

I'm imagining scenarios where whole planets have been assimilated and the populations are in the many billions. What practical means could the borg use to remove the population into space without devoting ridiculous numbers of ships that are needed elsewhere?

Having the Borg build their own ships, probably. It shouldn't take all that long - in "Operation: Annihilate!", mere millions of unaugmented mortals brainwashed into doing the Flying Pancakes' bidding were considered a threat for their supposed ability to build interstellar spacecraft and spread the Pancakes.

This ties into the age old problem in sci fi of how one would evacuate a planet, you would have to remove people at a staggering rate simply to accommodate the birthrate.

In Star Trek, the interstellar trip itself would be trivially short: warp is very fast, and there are plenty of empty or near-empty habitable planets available. Loading and unloading is also fairly trivial with transporters (especially if the planet to evacuated is a civilized one and has transporters of its own). So the bottleneck would be shipboard space. Now, UFP Starfleet already has warships with the capacity of taking at least a thousand people per sortie, and DS9 would suggest it has at least ten thousand of those. Let's gloss over downtime and the like by assuming those minimum figures and saying that a back-and-forth trip takes a week. So, ten million per week with military hardware alone, and thus ten billion (which is a lot for canonically known Trek planets) in a thousand weeks, or two centuries.

Now, call in a Dunkerquesque fleet of civilian ships to double the capacity, and you get a century, which means you still have to mind the birthrate issue: people not yet evacuated will not agree to having their bloodlines terminated. But enter another Trek superpower, stasis (or its clunkier predecessor, cryosleep), and you can have those people remain waiting for a century without bearing any kids, eating any food or organizing any revolutions. Plus you can probably stack them tighter on the ships with stasis-like aids.

If a push really comes to a shove, you probably have to abuse transporters. We know they can keep people in nonphysical form for the required week (VOY "Counterpoint"), so the ten thousand ships might evacuate billions in one sortie or at most ten.

Can drones still procreate?

Q says they are "not a he, not a she", but the Borg are masters of manipulating the physical body, no doubt both back and forth, so the inhibitions would be abstract. If the Collective wanted them to, they probably could breed, not only in conventional ways but unconventional ones as well.

Could such a planet be used as a pool of spare drones to be dipped into when needed?

Probably. But does the Collective need Drones? It claims people are turned into Drones in order to improve their quality of life; creating Drones just for the sake of numbers would deny future assimilees this blessing.

As Unimatrix points out they would still contribute their cognitive capacity to the hive mind and could doubtless strip mine the planet for resources.

The more, the merrier is certainly a likely Borg policy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

More drones more computing power, or for whatever they need to regenerate ships and other things. One network of trillions upon trillions of bodies that make up the Borg, a singular collective.

 

[UnknownSample]

I think that once you start contemplating what the Borg living on a planet do, or are like, this demolishes the Borg idea instantly. A space ship is a big machine. You can plug people into a space ship as components to serve some goal like assimilating more, Here already you're starting to run into problems... assimilated why? For what?
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A planet is not a machine. It can't go and assimilate more people if the planet's assimilated already. What you do on a planet is live and Borg don't do that. I suppose they could all be plugged into devices that keep the utilities and sustenance going, for their collective benefit. It all still screams out why. Well, maybe it's not so different than cubes. It would all be very circular. We keep the machines running to sustain us, and the machines maintain us to service them, around and around.
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Just because they're mechanical doesn't mean they're at all rational. Maybe someone just needs to take some crazy command out that's been stuck in the program for eons, that set them in this insane course.

 

[Spot261]

So, ten million per week with military hardware alone, and thus ten billion (which is a lot for canonically known Trek planets) in a thousand weeks, or two centuries.

Seems pretty impractical

 

[Timo]

It would be little different from commuting in the end, I guess. And in the meantime, Starfleet could build modern ships for its usual needs.

The proper way to fight the birth rate issue is of course to go nonlinear with the solution, too. If people breed, then so can the means of their salvation: if the evacuation indeed involves a century or so, the building of a massive number of starships which then go to nearby worlds to erect massive numbers of starship factories is worth the while. It won't need to be much of a starship in the end, either: just something that can hold a million people in appropriate discomfort while being towed to the next system over. The technologies are at least foreseeable today, ITRW.

The difference in Trek is that they can afford to remain linear, using only their existing resources in creative ways. Would the Borg go linear? Even if procreation were important to the Drones, they could be made to see the big picture and put the project on ice for a century or two - frozen embryos or something more refined would be waiting until these supposedly more or less immortal parents-to-be had left the planet-to-be-emptied. But the Borg probably would prefer to go viral instead, building ships and breeding and not seeing any point in emptying the planet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Six of Twelve]

Can we get back to the point of this thread, please? That is to talk about Borg life on planets and how it differs from Borg life aboard ships. Talking about the logistics of evacuating a planet, what Starfleet might do, etc, is irrelevant to the point of this post.

 

[Timo]

...Except as regards the Borg using the planets as a bulk source for Drones, that is.

One way to look at it is to note that a planet is just an immobile Cube. Doesn't mean it would encounter threat forces any less seldom, at the rate those are moving. A planet might get to explore a bit less than a Cube, but OTOH might get more research done. A planet might produce more, per ton or cubic kilometer, than a Cube - but in the era of replicators, essentially a post-raw-materials era, that's far from said. Beyond that, it's just a matter of scale.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unimatrix Q]

I wonder how do the Borg decide if they scoop a planet or assimilate it for settling in?

 

[Katie_nyc_]

Their goal is to attain perfection and assimilation is a big part of the process. Maybe all the perfecting happens on the planets.

 

[JesterFace]

I would imagine that Borg life on planets is just a ”think tank”, the Borg is trying to create new technology, new scientific discoveries and things like that by connecting all the minds they've assimilated and combining ideas from those minds. There's a lot of knowledge to go through after each time they assimilate something. Gazillion people combined to create one ”superbrain”.

 

[Plutodawn]

I think Borg life on a planet is just a terrestrial reserve force, like a billet fort was, Fort Necessity during the French and Indian Wars (Seven Years War) was just that.

If Borg Offensive Power was weak, for a overall Area of Operations, they could just go in deep past the main line of resistance and take out a strategically pointless spot as far as the regional Balance of Powers would be concern, smash it, assimilate it, use it as a logistics hub.

If you look at First Contact, minus the time travel, that's exactly what the Borg were doing. They leaped well outside their Area of Operations just as far as they could reasonably go to build a new powerbase. Time Travel was the only reasonable way to avoid Federation interference in their setup.

A planet can be resource stripped, specialized non combatant operations can be performed. Many colony species are subterrarean and take to the ground, while having flying drones.

If you consider this method of offense, with the Round Scout Ships differing from the Smash It All Cubes, this method of expansion would make a lot of sense.

You wouldn't go after asteroid outposts, nor necessarily capitals (though Earth was a capital, but the targeted pre-federation earth), but weaker species first, perhaps even lacking warp drive knowledge. The drive for higher technology doesn't mean they couldn't read a map and know Planet Hicksville isn't the wiser foothold.

You take Hicksville, turtle the defenses in odd spots Humanoids usually don't like, such as the star itself, or random deep space, build yourself up, launch another deep space thrust.... establish another billet fort.

Only then, do you start expanding.

You'll have forces able to meet your outpost forces as backup, if under attack from locals, in a oblique attack from the distant rear.... or you can call on forces from the even newer outpost you just made.

I doubt Borg Earth would of started seriously expanding till a further outpost or two in Romulan or Klingnon space was started for backup and flanking operations.

Also, I don't think Borg drones thought on the basis of Why, but only How. I'll make a psychology post soon (if I don't get banned) in regards to my opinion here.

 

[Prax]

Can we get back to the point of this thread, please? That is to talk about Borg life on planets and how it differs from Borg life aboard ships. Talking about the logistics of evacuating a planet, what Starfleet might do, etc, is irrelevant to the point of this post.

I think this person may have provided the best answer.

As Unimatrix points out they would still contribute their cognitive capacity to the hive mind and could doubtless strip mine the planet for resources.

Planets would be used for their resources. "Borg planets" may or may not be heavily populated. The may be mining their planets for every last drop of usable resources. They may be experimenting with "perfecting" a planets habitat/environment. Think of all the poor cats and dogs! And cute little bunnies!

They may do to their planets what the "machines" in the Matrix did to earth.

 

[Plutodawn]

You need a athmosphere to build a proper ship from scratch. Borg taking over a ship doesn't automatically lead to a cube.

An ocean on each can have a Borg ship floating, or on land built up enough.

Think Borg mostly preferred to colonize uncontested spots though, deep space, stars themselves. Not a lot of reason to be intimidated by such a method of habitation till it's too late.

 

[The_Baroness]

I imagine Borg planets like what we see in the Matrix films. Humans plugged in in huge banks.

Stacks and stacks of regeneratiojn alcoves and drones used mostly for processing power.