• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Old style Borg killing

Oddish

Oddish

Admiral
Admiral
It's established that old style weapons (Picard's Thompson M1928 submachine gun, Worf's mek'leth) kill Borg very efficiently, while they adapt to directed energy weapons in seconds. The presumption is that Borg cannot adapt to simple kinetic weapons: half-ounce chunks of lead moving at 275 m/s.

Why didn't Picard outfit his people with weapons of that type? Something like the TR-116 seen in "Field of Fire", or even something older like an AK-47? There was ample time to have a supply of them replicated, while the Enterprise was warping to Earth. And I'm sure the guns could be outfitted with Borg-slicing bayonets, too.
 
Oddish said:
It's established that old style weapons (Picard's Thompson M1928 submachine gun, Worf's mek'leth) kill Borg very efficiently, while they adapt to directed energy weapons in seconds. The presumption is that Borg cannot adapt to simple kinetic weapons: half-ounce chunks of lead moving at 275 m/s.

Why didn't Picard outfit his people with weapons of that type? Something like the TR-116 seen in "Field of Fire", or even something older like an AK-47? There was ample time to have a supply of them replicated, while the Enterprise was warping to Earth. And I'm sure the guns could be outfitted with Borg-slicing bayonets, too.
Click to expand...

First Contact clearly shows the Borg drones had some sort of shields, you could see the phaser impacts and the shields absorbing them - I would imagine they would adapt to ballistic weapons at some point. Picard only killed one drone with the machine gun, I doubt he would have been as lucky if he had tried to kill more in this way.
 
Smellmet said:
First Contact clearly shows the Borg drones had some sort of shields, you could see the phaser impacts and the shields absorbing them - I would imagine they would adapt to ballistic weapons at some point. Picard only killed one drone with the machine gun, I doubt he would have been as lucky if he had tried to kill more in this way.
Click to expand...

I don't think I agree with this. Adapting to energy weapons is more of a software adaptation, things like shield harmonics and other Treknobabble handwavium. Adapting to taking a slug is more like a hardware adaptation/refit, i.e., analyze the attack, design a countermeasure system such as ablative armor, beam the drone back to its cube, add ablative armor around crucial systems, and even then you're hoping for the best that there aren't a lot of slugs hitting one crucial spot, like, say, the head.
 
We see the gun used once. We also know that Borg can generate personal force fields that they can use to repel an attack once they adapt to it. The math basically does itself.
 
ChallengerHK said:
I don't think I agree with this. Adapting to energy weapons is more of a software adaptation, things like shield harmonics and other Treknobabble handwavium. Adapting to taking a slug is more like a hardware adaptation/refit, i.e., analyze the attack, design a countermeasure system such as ablative armor, beam the drone back to its cube, add ablative armor around crucial systems, and even then you're hoping for the best that there aren't a lot of slugs hitting one crucial spot, like, say, the head.
Click to expand...

It's hard to say isn't it - I guess a point of reference is the piece of the Romulan ship striking the Enterprise's shields in Nemesis - the energy from the shield stops the debris hitting the nacelle, so with the Borgs adaptive capabilities, having assimilated thousands of world's technology, said shields adapting to stop a crude ballistic weapon doesn't seem like such a stretch to me.
 
Yeah, there's a ton of variables there. How do shields interact with matter, i.e., what exactly are they doing to divert energy? Where is that energy going? How is it being managed?

I remember reading a story a long time ago (can't recall who wrote it or the title), but the gist was that an Admiral-ish kind of character was making his claim to a review board that he had lost a battle (or maybe war?) because his side had superior technology. He then went on to show how superior technology had gotten in the way of victory. I think that there's a common thread of thinking that says that "Shields are more advanced than bullets, therefore bullets wouldn't stand a chance" but I don't think it's that simple.
 
Tosk said:
We see the gun used once. We also know that Borg can generate personal force fields that they can use to repel an attack once they adapt to it. The math basically does itself.
Click to expand...

The problem is, people have to have swing blades or fired projectiles at the Borg before. If they're capable of adapting to simple kinetic weaponry, shouldn't it have happened long ago? Or do they forget over time?
 
For all we know, they have already adapted to regular bullets. But Picard fired simulated bullets at them. Which I guess no one ever tried before.

Otherwise, someone would need to rationalize why the Borg can stop energy weapons, but not energy pretending to be a weapon. ;)
 
I thought the holodeck/replicator duality (and turning the safeties off), meant that the bullets were real bullets, not light pretending to be bullets?

dJE
 
Smellmet said:
It's hard to say isn't it - I guess a point of reference is the piece of the Romulan ship striking the Enterprise's shields in Nemesis - the energy from the shield stops the debris hitting the nacelle, so with the Borgs adaptive capabilities, having assimilated thousands of world's technology, said shields adapting to stop a crude ballistic weapon doesn't seem like such a stretch to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have to imaging they would adapt. Their shields can adapt to photon torpedoes, which while there is an energy component are basically physical bombs.

I can't imagine bullets would work on them for long. I think you'd be better off increasing the power of phasers and adapting them to rotating frequencies more quickly.
 
Oddish said:
It's established that old style weapons (Picard's Thompson M1928 submachine gun, Worf's mek'leth) kill Borg very efficiently, while they adapt to directed energy weapons in seconds.
Click to expand...

They never endured even whole seconds of tommy-guns or mek'leths, though. There's nothing special about those weapons: should they be reused, they no doubt would be as impotent as all the rest.

The interesting thing here is that the Borg see no value in coming prepared. Surely everybody has fired phasers at them for tens of thousands of years already, too? After all, everybody our heroes ever encounter has phasers (although sometimes with funny names), and the hero shields work just fine against those. But the Borg, explicitly capable of carrying highly effective anti-phaser armor, choose to be vulnerable to phasers. And to bullets. And to wrestling grips. Initially.

Is that

a) a doctrinal choice, an attempt to get the enemy to reveal his cards, costing the Collective nothing but a couple of worthless Drone bodies whose souls already live forever in the Vinculum anyway?

b) a practical choice, since carrying every type of protection all the time would be just as impossible as operating (let alone pocketing) a Swiss knife with every blade opened?

c) a performance issue, wherein it takes quite a bit of time to adapt to a threat, and the Borg are not merely slow in raising their shields, but also slow in realizing what types of threat the enemy is pointing at them?

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
They never endured even whole seconds of tommy-guns or mek'leths, though. There's nothing special about those weapons: should they be reused, they no doubt would be as impotent as all the rest.

The interesting thing here is that the Borg see no value in coming prepared. Surely everybody has fired phasers at them for tens of thousands of years already, too? After all, everybody our heroes ever encounter has phasers (although sometimes with funny names), and the hero shields work just fine against those. But the Borg, explicitly capable of carrying highly effective anti-phaser armor, choose to be vulnerable to phasers. And to bullets. And to wrestling grips. Initially.

Is that

a) a doctrinal choice, an attempt to get the enemy to reveal his cards, costing the Collective nothing but a couple of worthless Drone bodies whose souls already live forever in the Vinculum anyway?

b) a practical choice, since carrying every type of protection all the time would be just as impossible as operating (let alone pocketing) a Swiss knife with every blade opened?

c) a performance issue, wherein it takes quite a bit of time to adapt to a threat, and the Borg are not merely slow in raising their shields, but also slow in realizing what types of threat the enemy is pointing at them?

Timo Saloniemi
Click to expand...

I think it mostly has to do with the fact that the Borg assimilate everything they have. That leaves them one weakness and that is they don't have independent thought and they can't anticipate.

Someone uses the same weapon on them, they adapt, share the knowledge and now they can all defend against it.

Hit them with something they never seen before and they are vulnerable until they analyze it and adapt their defenses accordingly. By virtue of their collective they analyze rapidly so the advantage doesn't last long. But it's also why rotating frequencies can work for a time.

By and large, though, I think it's because of the way their hive mind works they can't anticipate things they haven't faced before.
 
The standard modus operandi we see of the Borg is that first waves tend to be vulnerable, but second or later waves have adapted to the threats faced by the first. Perhaps there's a limit on how many adaptations each drone can have active at once.
 
In my opinion, it makes little sense for the bullets to be replicated as under normal circumstances they won't be penetrating a human body. Bullets created with holography and forcefields would create the same damage once safeties are off. (Arguments about how silly the "safeties are off" cliché is aside.)
 
I see no reason to assume the Borg can't adapt to such primitive weapons. The entire scene just lasted seconds and it probably was merely an unexpected weapon to them at that point. They might just as well have adapted a second time around.
 
Tosk said:
In my opinion, it makes little sense for the bullets to be replicated as under normal circumstances they won't be penetrating a human body. Bullets created with holography and forcefields would create the same damage once safeties are off. (Arguments about how silly the "safeties are off" cliché is aside.)
Click to expand...
Yes to all of that.

at Quark's said:
I see no reason to assume the Borg can't adapt to such primitive weapons. The entire scene just lasted seconds and it probably was merely an unexpected weapon to them at that point. They might just as well have adapted a second time around.
Click to expand...
Exactly, except there was no second wave, so Picard and Lily were good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top