Borg Cubes coming in multiple sizes?
- Thread starter Kamen Rider Blade
- Start date
They can scan and get brain dumps of individuals or literally steal their brains and put them in a brain case to retain information into the collective and harvest the body for biological material.
I know that might sound gruesome, but it would be efficient and brains are probably one of the most power computers and if you can extract all the information out of it, then the personality wouldn't be necessary.
They can literally format the brain to be a form of biological computer to supplement their computing power like in that one ep of ST:ENT where the space repair station used people as computers.
Why do that when you can assimilate and get additional drones in the process? You can't exactly send a bunch of brains down to a planet...
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...though now I wish we'd seen an episode like that...
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...well, there are "The Gamesters of Triskelion", I suppose...
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...though now I wish we'd seen an episode like that...
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...well, there are "The Gamesters of Triskelion", I suppose...
Q Who: No males, no females ...
Also Q Who: The Borg are born as biological life form
Ironically, the canon 28 cubic kilometres (~ 3,000 m per side) statement comes from VOY.
Not impossible, but in-universe I think there is only one type of large standard cube, this is presumably an issue comparable to the Klingon Bop.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/bop-size.htm
While there are probably two variants (small, common + large with wings up), the other ones obviously result from artistic style.
When do the Kazon do more damage?
Extremely fast growing of clones in a matter of days is pretty much general knowledge in the AQ, the Borg most likely have similar or better capabilities.
...And supposedly they don't do Drones for manpower - but as charity, to improve the lives of the victims. Cloning a Drone would be as counterproductive as giving birth to children for the purpose of sending them to Ghana so that there would be more kids there to send food, mosquito nets and school supplies to.
Do the Borg feel the same way about ships, I wonder? Do they assimilate vessels the way they did in "Regeneration" so that the poor things could enjoy vastly improved performance, while a different branch of the Collective helps out the carbon units of those ships the same way?
Timo Saloniemi
Do the Borg feel the same way about ships, I wonder? Do they assimilate vessels the way they did in "Regeneration" so that the poor things could enjoy vastly improved performance, while a different branch of the Collective helps out the carbon units of those ships the same way?
Timo Saloniemi
The Borg, fittingly, seem to think in terms of groups, not individuals. "Uplifting" an individual into a drone could be described as an act of charity to win over the prospective drone, but from the Borg perspective, individuals are irrelevant. They want to absorb/subsume/consume the culture, the species, the technology. It's only valuable to them for its distinctiveness. The actual sum of its parts is just meat for the machine, and if the machine has had its full of meat, well, I'm sure there's any number of other horrifying uses the Borg could put excess biological material to. My read is that assimilating drones is primarily utilitarian; drones are useful, even when they're just sitting in their alcoves contributing to the operation and maintenance of the ship in a way that wasn't satisfactorily explored. Assuming they age or wear out, clones (or some other method of growing drones from scratch) would be a reasonable way to keep the supply going, especially deep within Borg space, where there are thousands of planets and ships all full of drones thousands of light-years from any convenient source of fresh meat.
As for the question of the topic, the idea of standardization is entirely anathema to the Borg as we've seen them. Drones are always individually outfitted, the ships are said to be entirely decentralized and their compartments and sections are not arranged in any logical order, we've seen in "Q-Who" the ship actually growing and knitting together hull plates and piping. The identical cubes and spheres we've seen should be chalked up to production limitations, and in "reality," every Borg ship would be entirely bespoke, arranged all higgledy-piggledy depending on power needs, materials available, mission, prior missions, whether it was built at some sort of Borg facility or grew from an assimilated "seed" ship like we saw in "Regeneration," and so on.
As for the question of the topic, the idea of standardization is entirely anathema to the Borg as we've seen them. Drones are always individually outfitted, the ships are said to be entirely decentralized and their compartments and sections are not arranged in any logical order, we've seen in "Q-Who" the ship actually growing and knitting together hull plates and piping. The identical cubes and spheres we've seen should be chalked up to production limitations, and in "reality," every Borg ship would be entirely bespoke, arranged all higgledy-piggledy depending on power needs, materials available, mission, prior missions, whether it was built at some sort of Borg facility or grew from an assimilated "seed" ship like we saw in "Regeneration," and so on.
That's assuming the ships preserve a rigid cubical shape during the merger. If they shuffle around their mass, then two equal-sized cubes of edge E could form a new cube with edge 2^(1/3)*E ... assuming the same density. If the occupants are willing to create interior voids, then the result could be even larger.
That's the sort of fancy variable-geometry thing you can do with CGI. Maybe not with the CGI during ST:VGR circa 1998 when state-of-the-art was still a chore to rig a fixed skeleton for Species 8472, but certainly nowadays with some procedural trickery ... although the result might be something like the Allspark from Transformers (2007) origami-shrinking itself by a linear factor of 1000x. Hopefully fancier than the Suliban composite ships from ST:ENT.
Of course, our only evidence of "fluid" architecture is the self-repair during "Q Who?", and the voracious Borg supercube in Peter David's post-Nemesis pre-Destiny novel, Before Dishonor (2007).
The renegade Borg ship of "Descent" might also be taken as an example of a Borg ship growing out of a seed, only this one was horribly malformed due to lack of collective coherence. The ultimate goal in every case might still be a "standard" Cube; perhaps the Borg aim for the size and shape first, and only later fill in the hollow interior till the Cube is truly completed. The "fluid" shapes would then only be in evidence for a brief while before the outer shell was grown.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Not a catchall explanation, though. I'm pretty sure the makers of "Descent" intended the ship to convey exactly that: that the aimless Borg couldn't even put together a decent Cube. But then the same design reappears as part of the Borg plans in "Scorpion", either as a mine or then as a minelayer ship that the Borg plan to use for distributing anti-Species-8472 nanoprobes across entire star systems.
I might postulate that the Borg were planning on using ship seeds rather than complete ships for their anti-8472 desperation project, closely analogous to how navies of the past centuries would have chosen half-built or half-dismantled hulks as their fireships, rather than complete and still useful warships... Or I might give up and concentrate on rationalizing away the latest Discovery or Picard twists and turns. Sigh.
Timo Saloniemi
I might postulate that the Borg were planning on using ship seeds rather than complete ships for their anti-8472 desperation project, closely analogous to how navies of the past centuries would have chosen half-built or half-dismantled hulks as their fireships, rather than complete and still useful warships... Or I might give up and concentrate on rationalizing away the latest Discovery or Picard twists and turns. Sigh.
Timo Saloniemi
Looking at the shape of the Descent ship with the idea that it’s a “standard” Borg design, I remembered an article I read about evolutionary algorithms that would experimentally design antennas or something. The most efficient design it would find would usually be all lopsided and weird. It could be that for warp dynamics or shield strength (could be important for a minelayer trying not to blow itself up) that that shape at that size is extremely efficient, enough for the Borg to make an exception for their normal geometric affectation.
The Cube shape makes for easiest method to lay out decks with IMO.
Designing and implementing floor plans out of a Cubical volume is what we already do right now with most tall buildings that are of standard Rectangular Tube shaped buildings.
Using the Cube as the basis for your StarShip seems to offer certain advantages that we may not easily Understand.
Designing and implementing floor plans out of a Cubical volume is what we already do right now with most tall buildings that are of standard Rectangular Tube shaped buildings.
Using the Cube as the basis for your StarShip seems to offer certain advantages that we may not easily Understand.
Umm...no? The original TNG cube ship model was sold at the big Christie's auction alongside DS9 and the 1701-A, B, C, D and E miniatures. The FC cube sold later for about 40x the expected price (100K vs 2.5K). Which is why they NEVER blow up the nice models. They toss together cheaper kits for the boom shots.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Borg_cube_model
Were Spheres hollow?
For the sphere is hollow and I have touched the ceiling.
