can they adapt to say, a shotgun or a katana? if not, couldnt starfleet rig up a hand-to-hand device just for them?
Inconclusive. In FC Worf chopped them up, and Picard shot them up. In BOBW, Riker seemed confident that the collision course at the end would do some damage (otherwise why not run away and try to fight again later?). So there is no on-screen evidence that they can or do adapt to physical attacks, but it defies reason to expect that such primitive modes of attack are beyond the Borg's ability to handle.
I would say yes. In the briefly seem alternate timeline in First Contact, the Borg starting in the mid 21st century were able to take over the Earth by the 24th. There certainly would have been opposition from Humans using the weapons of the time.
If Star Trek has forcefields that don't allow physical entry through a door, then the Borg could have something like that as shields against physical attacks. I assume, however, that they'd only engage it if they were dealing with a species that used a lot of physical attacks....like the Klingons, say. Such a shield might cause problems for the drones attempting to work on equipment.
I think the Borg body shield has to be "tuned" to what is anticipated, this is why Picard's tommy gun attack worked. The Borg body shield can't provide protection against all threats, all the time. Might have to do with energy, or the capacity of the emitters.
It always made me wonder as a 'fan-boyish' idea of destroying the Borg with conventional fragmentation weapons.....
You need folks with different weapons, slug throwers, phasers, flamethrowers. Best go with the Zorg EF-1:
Would be funny if the reason the Borg were so unstoppable is because no one ever thought to fire a bullet at them.
The Borg have allegedly been out there doin' their thing for a long time.Presumably there isn't much that they haven't come up against before. Hard to devise countermeasures against something physically brutal like those power-lifter suits in "Aliens". I always thought it funny that the Borg were depicted as being able to adapt and overcome at light speed while poor old Starfleet was always depicted as ploddingly doing the same old thing time after time.