Borg Drone Shielding - WTF?

[Timo]

Regarding "dampening fields", if one can make those effective against machinery, they should automatically be effective against biological structures, too. And conversely, it shouldn't be too difficult to build a gun that cannot be jammed unless one simultaneously jams the heart and lungs, or spleen and brain, of the user. After all, biology is just machinery and vice versa.

I gather the Borg would take care to "EMP proof" both their biological and mechanical components against anything as subtle as a "dampening field". One'd have to hit them with something more properly considered a "crushing field" or an "annihilating field" to get the desired effect...

They may do so, but their understanding of the Collective (at least until 7 of 9 came onboard) was fairly superficial. Even when 7 joined the crew, we saw her dispensing info about the Borg when the need arose.

But Seven gave them true "inside info" about the Borg hierarchy or Borg abstract secrets such as technologies or doctrines. The ability by the Drones to drain the energy of the starship the Drones are boarding is something said starship could and would measure, and literally automatically so. Alarms on LaForge's panels would be triggered by the unexplained power drain, and once the excitement was over, LaForge would make sure the drain would no longer remain unexplained. He might not learn how the Borg did it, but he'd notice they were the guilty party.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

As I said, I was merely coming up with an explanation that supports the premise of another poster who mentioned the drone's shields require an external power source (even though I'm personally leaning towards a different opinion that the shields are independent of the ship and therefore can easily use a person's own bio-electric field or energy).

 

[Search4]

You may recall that the original Space Amoeba in TOS was believed to be able to feed on phasers. Evan if that's a biological function... it should be possible to adapt that to a technology-based version. That sole capability would go a long way to explaining the invulnerability of the Borg shields, and isn't something we have seen the UFP be able to do.

 

[Dac]

Well, Voyager had the alcoves running - that could have provided the power?

 

[seekertwo]

Well, Voyager had the alcoves running - that could have provided the power?

That was my premise....since Seven's alcove was on Voyager, it provided the mechanism by which power was broadcast from Voyager to Seven's shield. Borg don't drain power from any ship...just the one its alcove is located on....

Interrupt the power flow, the shield is useless...and the drone is defenseless....

 

[FordSVT]

We've never actually seen several hand phasers shooting at a single drone for a prolonged period of time. It's entirely possible that they do weaken like any other shield seems to, though the length of time it takes might make their shields as good as impenetrable in close combat. No one is going to have the opportunity to concentrate fire on one drone for two minutes in the kind of situation one usually finds him or herself in when fighting the Borg.

It would be interesting to see what would happen to a "tuned" drone hit by a shuttle-craft or even a Starship phaser array. My guess is that all the tuning in the world wouldn't prevent the drone from being obliterated by a sufficiently large amount of energy.

 

[Deks]

Which begs the question, would a Borg ship even if fully adapted to SF weapons be able to withstand a constant barrage of those weapons from a fleet of ships?

We've seen it could.
We don't know entirely what the 'adaptation' in Borg term means.
It could range from absorbing and converting incoming energy into a source of power for the shields, or it could be a combination of factors that it doesn't matter just how much energy you pour into it, they will keep coming.

Then again... we've seen how 8472 destroyed a planet and a shockwave destroyed 2 Borg cubes.
Possibly, the cube tractoring Voyager could have easily been destroyed... or it simply retreated because it knew Voyager could not even though they might have already adapted.

My guess is that big enough stellar phenomena can easily squash any ship (unless it's ridiculously advanced).
The Borg are probably there in terms they can cope with numerous stellar phenomena that the Feds have not ever encountered...

 

[blssdwlf]

Which begs the question, would a Borg ship even if fully adapted to SF weapons be able to withstand a constant barrage of those weapons from a fleet of ships?

We've seen it could.

I've seen small groups fire at a cube, but never a coordinated 30+ ship "fire everything at once and keep firing" type barrage. It might have been implied off-screen but given how uncoordinated fleet combat was in DS9 I doubt that they were any better with Borg engagements, IMHO.

 

[Deks]

Which begs the question, would a Borg ship even if fully adapted to SF weapons be able to withstand a constant barrage of those weapons from a fleet of ships?

We've seen it could.

I've seen small groups fire at a cube, but never a coordinated 30+ ship "fire everything at once and keep firing" type barrage. It might have been implied off-screen but given how uncoordinated fleet combat was in DS9 I doubt that they were any better with Borg engagements, IMHO.

Agreed... fleet animations were a bit poorly executed in DS9 given the technology presented and everything else.

However, what about the fleet at Wolf 359?

We know that SF lost about 40 ships there.
Ds9 established that two SF ships were rushing to join the fight (and ambassador and nebula classes) at the last minute before Sisko's Miranda took a hit.

We do know that the Galaxy class deflector trick never worked because Picard knew about it.
So the Borg were able to adapt to it... but, that was just an energy blast from 1 Galaxy class ship directed towards a humongous Borg cube.
It's possible the cube would be able to absorb that blast either way.
But if hit with 30+ such blasts?

Dunno.
We were never given a reference on-screen whether the cube would be able to withstand concentrated weapons fire from say 30 SF ships.

 

[FordSVT]

^Weren't we though? AFAIK, the Borg cube in First Contact wasn't hit by anything but run of the mill phasers, photon and quantum torpedoes. The Borg cube began to weaken, but not much, and then Picard ordered concentrated fire on a particular spot on the cube, and that allowed them to destroy it. Now you can say that Picard simply exploited a weak point on the Cube that the collective had previously neglected to correct because it had never been exploited before, but they obviously managed to negate the shields at that point on the ship in order to start literally gutting it. It's the closest example I can think of to a large number of ships concentrating fire on one spot and overwhelming the shields.

The fleet at 359 were Borg virgins. It's small wonder a single cube was able to pass through them with little resistance. Nearly a decade of ship and tactical and weapons development allowed the FC fleet to perform far better.

But remember this is just one cube, in the end these tactics, like five people firing at a single Borg drone for two minutes trying to overload its shields, is a futile gesture. Against, say, a half dozen cubes? I think the events of the novel "Destiny" pretty much sum that up: the Federation would be screwed.

 

[TheF0rce]

First Contact novel sheds light on why Picard was able to destroy the Borg cube by concentrating fire on one spot, & that reason is when Picard began to hear the Borg collective, he heard they (Borg) were planning to drop shields in that spot (he ordered all ships to target) so as to redirect energy for repairs elsewhere.
In the movie, you can see Picard waiting to give the order to fire as he waited for the Borg to lower shields in that area, and as he waited patiently...2 more streamrunners were blown up on the viewscreen lol.

 

[blssdwlf]

^Weren't we though?

You mean to see 30+ ships all fire simultaneously and keep a sustained firing rate on a single target at a time (like a Borg cube)? Not on screen in Borg battles or DS9 fleet actions, AFAIK. Perhaps described in some dialogue, maybe.

 

[Dac]

But the Borg cube's shields were all but gone in FC though? "The cube has sustained heavy damage to its outer hull" is the line I remember Data giving, implying the shields had to have been bypassed somehow?

 

[blssdwlf]

It probably was all gone. Funny that the E-D could blast away 30% of an unshielded cube's mass in 3 shots that a small fleet of supposedly better ships couldn't do much better with dozens of shots in "First Contact"

 

[Timo]

They call it "adaptation"...

Probably the Cube is so invincible in places because it skimps on invincibility in other places - and it really, really helps to know where and when this is going to happen!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Or the Borg in the intervening years assimilated better building materials (adaptation)...

Or Starfleet issued Borg-specific weapons/settings that are high on penetration but low on explosive power...

 

[Deks]

It probably was all gone. Funny that the E-D could blast away 30% of an unshielded cube's mass in 3 shots that a small fleet of supposedly better ships couldn't do much better with dozens of shots in "First Contact"

After the cube adapted to Enterprise-D weapons, it probably insulated the hull to be more effective against phasers.

Then again, the cube was probably already created out of nifty and highly advanced materials (given the Borg's level of technology).

Perhaps it was a plot hole?

 

[Timo]

More like a plot point. That's what the Borg do - adapt and thus become even more invincible. The victory in ST:FC might be a hollow one if it allowed the Borg to shrug off a hundred starships the next time around...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

yeah, but that still doesn't explain away why would the enterprise-D be able to vaporize 30% of the Cube if it had far more exotic and advanced materials that made it's hull?

 

[Timo]

Why not? As far as we know, the E-D can vaporize 100% of the hull of a rival, non-advanced-material starship in similar circumstances.

...The circumstances apparently being that the target is not shielded by forcefields, probably because it knows it won't be crucially harmed even by a shields-down hit and will gain more of the all-vital intelligence from being hit that way than from raising shields. But the power of the E-D phasers may still have surprised the Borg somewhat, because they seldom are seen taking quite that much damage voluntarily.

Timo Saloniemi