Why so Hard...
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Regarding multi-Cube megadeath, that's actually the only type of Borg operation we have seen to suffice for assimilating a resisting culture.
I mean, yeah, a single Cube was found at the ruins of the J-25 culture in "Q Who?". But zero Cubes were found at the RNZ in "The Neutral Zone", or at the single-scoop Jouret site in "BoBW"; the departure of assimilation forces was implied, and thus could also have hapened in "Q Who?", save for a single vessel. In contrast, the operations in "Hope and Fear" and "Dark Frontier" were multi-Cube invasions very different in style from the two attacks at Earth.
How does that scoop-a-city thing work, anyway? Is it transporter technology? Bombardment? Do Borg ships land to scavenge? Do pieces of Borg technology invade the city and grow some wings for it? It doesn't sound like something a single starship, no matter how big and geometrically satisfying, could achieve on short notice. And certainly not while under fire.
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, yeah, a single Cube was found at the ruins of the J-25 culture in "Q Who?". But zero Cubes were found at the RNZ in "The Neutral Zone", or at the single-scoop Jouret site in "BoBW"; the departure of assimilation forces was implied, and thus could also have hapened in "Q Who?", save for a single vessel. In contrast, the operations in "Hope and Fear" and "Dark Frontier" were multi-Cube invasions very different in style from the two attacks at Earth.
How does that scoop-a-city thing work, anyway? Is it transporter technology? Bombardment? Do Borg ships land to scavenge? Do pieces of Borg technology invade the city and grow some wings for it? It doesn't sound like something a single starship, no matter how big and geometrically satisfying, could achieve on short notice. And certainly not while under fire.
Timo Saloniemi
3D Master
Rear Admiral
Are you crazy? One could hurt the Nazi war machine. You can NOT hurt the Borg.
Actually he would have won, if he had invaded Britain, he just never did. He though the British would join him on their own because "they donated the money needed for him to come to power." You see, back in 1933 the NSDAP was just about bankrupt. They needed to close shop if a miracle didn't happen. Then the miracle came, large sums of money deposited on their bank accounts by London banks. Problem was, it wasn't any British that made the payments, it was Americans. The Americans just moved their money through London banks.
And if you didn't, the first cube will assimilate the Federation on its own. It's nice that you want to have something in reserve for a second engagement, reality however is, that there won't BE a second engagement, if you do not win the first one!
So you commit everything, and hope the Borg don't have another cube right behind the first one, or nobody around you makes use of your weakness. In fact, this is what pretty much happened. The Borg attacked, and almost immediately afterwards, the Dominion deployed large amounts of forces to Cardassia and readied to finish what the Borg started. If Dominion already had forces there, the Federation and the entire Alpha/Beta Quadrants would have been screwed.
No, not 200 ships, those 200 ships would be destroyed less then fifteen minutes into the battle. There would be many, many, many more. Everything essentially.
Janeway whooped them dozens of times - you just have to know HOW to hurt them, the same essentially applies to both I'm afraid!
Err no - the Royal Navy would have slaughtered his invasion fleet in the channel if the invasion had launched as planned in late 1940, and if they had attempted an invasion earlier, after dunkirk as has often been mooted as a possible way ot vicxtory, it would likely have ended in a slaughter. Even if the RAF was totally destroyed there is little or no chance the Germans could have neutralised the Royal Navy easily.
Also of course there would still be an RAF to cover the naval bases - even if they gave up air superiority over 11 Group's area to the Luftwaffe (i.e the BoB was won).
An invasion of Britain in 1940 was borderline impossible and in any circumstances horrifically risky, the advantages the Germans had which allowed them to defeat France so easily were totally negated by the English channel. Also, for all the talk at the time about German Paratroops - they could not even jump with a rifle because of how they attached their parachutes! The invasion of Crete summed up their true weakness.
Well he certainly hoped and believed the British Empire would come to terms, but he was of course a deluded madman, and the odds of anyone being sold a pup twice by Hitler were very slim. The base master of treachery he was proved again and again, even to Germany in the end.
Nope - on-screen evidence from Voyager suggests that a single cube facing the Starfleet of the FC era is not a totally indestructable force. Is there a single real-world example of any military commander doing such a thing and winning? You cannot win any battle without careful deployment of forces and reserves.
Or you do what real military commanders do and commit a balanced force to effectively meet the enemy with local superiority like real commanders do.
So Starfleet lost thousands of ships in that battle? Why? Surely unless you have a death wish you wait until your shields are weakening, break off, recharge them, then go back into the fight. A balanced hit and run strategy is very effective against large targets in historal naval combat as you use your manoeuverability to counter the enemy's superior firepower (like a Destroyer attack on a Battleship).
Your strategy seems to involve a lot of rather unnecessary risk and loss for Starfleet.
Picard already did that in "Q Who?", of course, setting a precedent: overkill always works - once.
Which is how most of Hitler's victories went... He'd do an insane operation in a stupid way, and lose key assets in doing so, but would emerge as the clear victor and gain a disproportionate reputation.
Perhaps the Borg are a bit like that, too. Our heroes attribute humanlike cunning to what in fact is just a stupid automaton doing stupid and thus surprising things...
As for the other side of the argument,
But our heroes had great difficulties gathering even dozens of ships, let alone hundreds, at a couple of days' notice in "BoBW" or "Redemption". And that was next to the capital world and a Klingon/Romulan border hot spot, respectively. Gathering a fleet of thousands in a random direction of Borg approach would probably take years, like it seemed to take when an anti-Dominion fleet was assembled...
Timo Saloniemi
In this case the "key asset" would probably have been his whole invasion force. The wooden, flat-bottomed canal barges that Hitler intended to use were totally unsuitable for the task. They'd have been lucky to make a successful crossing if they'd been unopposed, nevermind under fire.
In a restricted space like the Channel the RN's destroyers would have made mincemeat of the flotilla.
...Of course, the British succeeded despite these exact same hardships when evacuating their expeditionary forces from France.
Hitler could have gone over on an exceptionally calm day; Churchill might have gotten cold feet and left the main assets of Home Fleet at Scapa out of fear of the Luftwaffe and the U-boats; the RAF might have been too inexperienced to oppose a landing in coordination with the feeble ground forces available; and so forth. After securing a port or two (which weren't particularly well fortified) and demoralizing the local defenses with their 1:50 "superiority" and lots of nerve (like they did in Norway and to a degree in the Netherlands), the Nazis might have had a breeze in confiscating the local fuel reserves and marching to London, or close enough to make Churchill call for a truce.
I mean, the bastard's absolutely crazy luck had to run out at some point, but Seelöwe might not have been that point yet...
Timo Saloniemi
Hitler could have gone over on an exceptionally calm day; Churchill might have gotten cold feet and left the main assets of Home Fleet at Scapa out of fear of the Luftwaffe and the U-boats; the RAF might have been too inexperienced to oppose a landing in coordination with the feeble ground forces available; and so forth. After securing a port or two (which weren't particularly well fortified) and demoralizing the local defenses with their 1:50 "superiority" and lots of nerve (like they did in Norway and to a degree in the Netherlands), the Nazis might have had a breeze in confiscating the local fuel reserves and marching to London, or close enough to make Churchill call for a truce.
I mean, the bastard's absolutely crazy luck had to run out at some point, but Seelöwe might not have been that point yet...
Timo Saloniemi
No, she did not.
The USS Voyager engaged in combat with Borg vessels in "Drone," "Dark Frontier, Parts I & II," "Collective," "Child's Play," "Unimatrix Zero, Parts I & II," and "Endgame, Part II." In only two -- arguably three -- of these episodes, "Dark Frontier, Part I," "Child's Play," and "Dark Frontier, Part II" (the arguable case) does Voyager defeat a Borg vessel in combat without an unusual advantage.
In "Drone," a Borg sphere is defeated when One, the Borg created based upon 29th Century technology, hacks into the sphere's control systems and directs it into a dangerous nebula, causing its implosion. In "Dark Frontier, Part I," the Borg allow Voyager's crew to steal a transwarp coil as part of a plot to lure Seven of Nine into willingly rejoining them. In "Collective," Voyager is able to defeat the cube because there are no adult drones, only five neo-natal drones that have been disconnected from the rest of the Collective. In "Unimatrix Zero, Part I," Voyager attacks a tactical cube as a diversionary tactic and is clearly losing; it withdraws once the away team has been "assimilated." In "Unimatrix Zero, Part II," Voyager and a liberated Borg sphere attack the same cube, and are once again unable to defeat it; the cube is ordered destroyed by the Borg Queen in retaliation for the destruction of Unimatrix Zero before the Collective could introduce into it a virus to allow them to kill all Unimatrix Zero-liberated drones, as she is hoping that Janeway will die in the cube's destruction. (Janeway and the away team are beamed away at the last moment.) And, of course, in "Endgame, Part II," Voyager defeats several Borg vessels only after being outfitted with advanced ablative armor and transphasic torpedo technology from an alternate timeline's future.
In "Dark Frontier, Part I," and "Child's Play," Voyager is able to defeat a Borg vessel essentially by using the same trick: Getting a photon torpedo in past a Borg ship's shields and then detonating it. In "Dark Frontier, Part I," they transport a torpedo aboard a small Borg scout vessel and detonate it inside the scout before the Borg can disable it. In "Child's Play," they beam a torpedo aboard a small shuttle being targeted for assimilation that is being pulled inside of a Borg sphere. When the ship in inside the sphere, past the sphere's shields, the torpedo is detonated, and the sphere is disabled long enough for Voyager to escape.
In the questionable case, "Dark Frontier, Part II"'s finale, Voyager is able to destroy a Borg diamond that is pursuing the Delta Flyer in a transwarp conduit by destabilizing the nearest light-year's length of the conduit with photon torpedoes, destroying the diamond within that light-year's length of the conduit. The ability to replicate this trick, of course, is contingent upon the conduit in question being vulnerable to disruption and advance knowledge of a Borg vessel's presence within the area of the conduit that can be collapsed.
In short, Voyager sans unusual circumstances can be charitably said to "whoop" three small Borg vessels, one at a time. At no point does Voyager ever manage to engage and defeat a full cube prior to its being outfitted with 25th Century technology; indeed, prior to the technology introduced by Alternate Future Janeway, Voyager would never actually stand a chance in a fight with a single, fully-manned Borg cube, let alone several.
No, it does not. On-screen evidence from VOY makes it clear that a single, fully-manned Borg cube could easily defeat scores of Federation starships unless they are equipped with 25th Century technology (or Picard senses yet another Achilles Heel).
Again, your analogy is specious. You might as well talk about the Roman Navy trying to defeat the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The problem with that notion is that:
1) The Borg have typically been able to penetrate deflector shields and to incapacitate propulsion systems far too quickly for that tactic to work
2) The Borg use tractor beams to control or impede the maneuverability of hostile ships as a matter of course. If such a simple tactic was viable against the Borg, it would have been used at the Battle of Wolf 359 or the Battle of Sector 001; in neither one is Starfleet depicted as winning.
3) You are also forgetting that you are not dealing with vessels that are equally vulnerable to one-another's weapons. Starfleet ships are MUCH more vulnerable to Borg weapons than Borg ships are to Starfleet phasers and torpedoes, especially since the Borg are capable of adapting to any new weapons thrown at them. The only hope there is that the cube does not adapt before being destroyed by the new weapon they have never encountered, or that there is no other cube. If it does adapt before being destroyed, or if there are other cubes, then the advantage posed by that previously unknown weapon is neutralized.
On the flip side, we do see Starfleet vessels flying in and out in both these famous engagements, with the Borg only intercepting a select few. And it does come as news to Picard that Admiral Hayes' ship would have been destroyed at some point between Typhon and Earth - presumably close to Earth or the news would have reached Picard already. Granted that it's not 100% sure that Hayes went to Typhon - but wasn't the Defiant identified as having been at both endpoints of the battle? If that known poor warp performer can follow the Cube throughout the engagement, then the "constant harassment" scenario indeed makes a lot of sense.
OTOH, the ST:FC engagement probably involved some sort of a turning point in the battle just before our heroes arrived. The Cube could have slowed down from warp on Earth's very doorstep, and gone on a more aggressively defensive mode, explaining how the fleet that had survived so far was now taking hits...
Timo Saloniemi
OTOH, the ST:FC engagement probably involved some sort of a turning point in the battle just before our heroes arrived. The Cube could have slowed down from warp on Earth's very doorstep, and gone on a more aggressively defensive mode, explaining how the fleet that had survived so far was now taking hits...
Timo Saloniemi
THEY didn't. It was the writers that had the problem, namely: How to ensure that whenever there's a Borg episode, they actually have a series to write for again next week...
3D Master
Rear Admiral
No, she didn't, she only thinks she did.
On screen evidence from Voyager suggest they can't do a thing.
On screen evidence from FC "suggests", it WAS and indestructible force, if it weren't for a fortunate feedback loop their energy grid that Picard through his connection with the Borg could capitalize on.
Exactly, which means when you face something like the Borg, you bring it ALL, or you LOSE. Against the Borg, that's the ONLY viable "careful deployment of forces and reserves" that might - and that's indeed a BIG might - allow you to win.
Real world military commanders have never had to face with foreknowledge something as unstoppable as the Borg. Now, don't get me wrong, there have been military commanders facing something as relatively unstoppable as the Borg without foreknowledge, they all did what you're suggested; they all lost, their civilizations wiped from the pages of history.
A blanaced hit and run strategy?
Good one, that one's funny. Did you watch First Contact? You did notice that transmission right? Where 2 seconds into the battle you hear ships being torn to shreds by internal explosions, and less then 30 seconds into the battle they requested reinforcements?
Against the Borg; especially if they wish to destroy your ships instead of keeping them mostly intact to assimilate them, there is no such thing as "waiting until your shields are weakening", there is only exploding ships.
Well that is not my view of the on-screen evidence, you can differ but your use of
does not contribute to the debate.All you are doing is typing "I fink the Borg wuld WIPE THA FLAW WIV EVERYWON" over and over - I'm not going to spend my time replying any more.
So one medium sized starship without support defeated this unstoppable enemy three times?
Are you not making my point for me?
I appreciate all the examples but it sounds to me like one ship dealt qwith the Borg quite effectively in Voyager, by your own examples.
Starfleet seem to do quite well against the Borg.
I am really grateful posters here are not in command of any real military forces. Very few well run battles are won by everyone piling in and the side with the biggest force winning - in fact the opposite is often true, Battle Of France for example.
The cleverest, most cunning and most sensible side usually wins - and the Borg seem quite terminally thick compared to Starfleet, again by your own examples.
No - though if you insist I guess you could talk about an old junker of a frigate penetrating a US carrier battle group's screen...?
Read Sandy Woodward's book "One Hundred Days" - he did that once in an exercise and officially sunk the USS Constellation!
Well that does not seem to be the situation in FC to me - I got the impression of a costly hit-and-run battle but still a hit-and-run battle, where Starfleet kept up the pressure and sure lost ships which got caught in the tractor beams or smacked by big green blobs, but also did massive damage to the Borg, Picard delivered an effective coup-de-grace but the outcome did not seem to be in doubt.
This is getting to be a rather intense discussion.
I fully agree with the Borg Queen above.
The real problem was how were the Borg so menacing, that every time that they appeared, the writers had to make sure there was still a Voyager or an Enterprise to have a show about.
The Borg ship in FC came really close to Earth and while I doubt that they would have assimilated Earth with a few dozen federation ships bearing down on it, they would have arguably succeeded to go back in time which was their purpose to begin with.
Which makes me wonder why they didn't just go back in time much further from earth and fly through 21st century space.
I fully agree with the Borg Queen above.
The real problem was how were the Borg so menacing, that every time that they appeared, the writers had to make sure there was still a Voyager or an Enterprise to have a show about.
The Borg ship in FC came really close to Earth and while I doubt that they would have assimilated Earth with a few dozen federation ships bearing down on it, they would have arguably succeeded to go back in time which was their purpose to begin with.
Which makes me wonder why they didn't just go back in time much further from earth and fly through 21st century space.
No, one medium-sized Federation starship managed to destroy two runabout-sized Borg support vessels and temporarily damage one Intrepid-class sized sphere, and roundly got its ass handed to it every time it took on a cube.
Then your reading comprehension is off, because each time Voyager encountered the Borg, they survived through sheer luck. Every single time they went up against a fully-manned cube, they were almost destroyed.
How exactly is losing at least fifty ships for every two cubes destroyed "doing quite well?"
Sure. But you're drawing false comparisons -- this isn't the real world, and the rules of modern naval warfare simply do not apply.
Yes.
Then you weren't paying attention, again. Nothing in that scene indicates that the Borg were severely damaged apart from their Achielles Heel. We saw the cube picking off ship after ship while shrugging off every single hit it was receiving. The entire fleet was desperate -- look at Worf on the Defiant and the way they all just immediately accepted Picard's assumption of command, which they would not have done if their command structure was even still intact.
It's patently obvious from First Contact that had Picard not been there to use his Jedi mind powers to suss out the cube's achilles heel, the cube would have destroyed every single Starfleet vessel one by one before transporting drones to the surface to begin widespread assimilation.
And if there had been another cube present, it would have been all over.
I was writing a proper reply but got bored of typing the same things again.
Suffice it to say there is only a certain proportion of my life I'm going to waste arguing the toss about a film on the Internet - you have your tag on it, I have mine ,so lets just agree to disagree before it gets nasty.
Introducing RL examples seems the only way to me of trying to ground this debate in the land of sense - otherwise we are talking forever about the military implications of some kewl FX in a movie set in an implausible and utterly fictional future - and I need some sleep.
So I depart the thread, au revoir.
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