Borg ship construction?
- Thread starter Civ001
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I think Borg both assimilate other vessels in the field as well as build their own at various facilities within their domain. Both methods probably involve a central structure serving as the control node surrounded by layers of salvaged and repurposed parts.
One thing I am curious about- the Borg cubes are all the same size. If they constantly assimilated other craft you would think the older vessels would be larger.
Also- why a perfect cube shape? If you were adding things all the time the exterior should not be that flat and all surfaces equal.
"We are the Borg- Oh crap, we just assimilated Species 227564 and our ship is now a rectangle- we need to find four more alien races to make it even again"...
Also- why a perfect cube shape? If you were adding things all the time the exterior should not be that flat and all surfaces equal.
"We are the Borg- Oh crap, we just assimilated Species 227564 and our ship is now a rectangle- we need to find four more alien races to make it even again"...
You're thinking about it wrong. An assimilated ship is not added onto the ship that assimilated it, the ship simply takes on the shape of the one which assimilated it. For example, if a Galaxy class were assimilated by a cube, than later you'd have another cube with the remains of a Galaxy class at its centre. The cube or sphere or whatever is built around the original ship. This is what was in the original script for Enterprise's Regeneration, portions of a sphere would gradually grow around the arctic transport until it was eventually a full-formed sphere.
Also, the Borg do have rectangular ships.
I think you are missing a step here. If an assimilated ship doesn't assimilate further ships, then the seeds can never grow.
What we see in "Regeneration" is a seed ship accruing layer upon layer of parts from other ships in order to grow. The objection then is valid that a cube would be a very difficult shape to accrue upon. Assume the Cube 2.7 km per side in "Q Who?" decided to assimilate the tiny E-D. It would be quite a bit of effort to spread that material thinly across all the six faces - but applying it on one face only would immediately distort the cube shape.
Of course, the same is true of every symmetrical shape in three dimensions; growth by assimilation would happen the most easily in a one-dimensional ship design, essentially a long rod that grew longer with each acquisition. But it's unclear why the Borg insist on symmetry in the first place.
Personally, I think the Cubes and Spheres principally grow by leaps and bounds: when a great amount of material is assimilated, it is used to significantly increase the outer dimensions symmetrically, but the interior is left rather hollow. Further, piecemeal assimilations then result in the density of the Cube or Sphere growing, so that the lace-like Cubes of TNG gradually evolve to the denser ST:FC or solid-plated VOY models.
Incidentally, assimilated starship seeds evolving into Borg ships is the easy explanation for how people and knowledge from Wolf 359 ended up in the Delta Quadrant.
Timo Saloniemi
What we see in "Regeneration" is a seed ship accruing layer upon layer of parts from other ships in order to grow. The objection then is valid that a cube would be a very difficult shape to accrue upon. Assume the Cube 2.7 km per side in "Q Who?" decided to assimilate the tiny E-D. It would be quite a bit of effort to spread that material thinly across all the six faces - but applying it on one face only would immediately distort the cube shape.
Of course, the same is true of every symmetrical shape in three dimensions; growth by assimilation would happen the most easily in a one-dimensional ship design, essentially a long rod that grew longer with each acquisition. But it's unclear why the Borg insist on symmetry in the first place.
Personally, I think the Cubes and Spheres principally grow by leaps and bounds: when a great amount of material is assimilated, it is used to significantly increase the outer dimensions symmetrically, but the interior is left rather hollow. Further, piecemeal assimilations then result in the density of the Cube or Sphere growing, so that the lace-like Cubes of TNG gradually evolve to the denser ST:FC or solid-plated VOY models.
Incidentally, assimilated starship seeds evolving into Borg ships is the easy explanation for how people and knowledge from Wolf 359 ended up in the Delta Quadrant.
Timo Saloniemi
There's probably a set schematic for optimal ship design, and ship generation is able to analyze the least cost route from current state to optimal state.
I think that a cube has all technologies spread out. Part of why drones have shielding is that the whole vessel is a nacelle of sorts.
A cube is like a slab of jello--a phaser beam a needle. You can stab it as often as you like, and it knits up.
A good design for orbital antenna farms perhaps. SDI proof.
A cube is like a slab of jello--a phaser beam a needle. You can stab it as often as you like, and it knits up.
A good design for orbital antenna farms perhaps. SDI proof.
In TNG when the Borg are first introduced, and they show the Borg Cube "repairing" itself, it definitely gave the impression of a "healing process," akin to something being "grown." There were no borg bodies floating around, welding, or replacing parts. Pipes just stretched out and reconnected, the edges of holes closed on their own, and so on. It was a neat idea, but so strange and awkward in its execution, I didn't really buy it ...
I don't think cubes assimlate the vessel per-se. The technology from their data bases and from the occupants, but the ship itself is not needed nor desired.
In FC, the queen and her minions were in the same situation the Borg were in ENT: Regeneration. Just using what they have available to stay alive, complete the mission and/or return to the collective.
In FC, the queen and her minions were in the same situation the Borg were in ENT: Regeneration. Just using what they have available to stay alive, complete the mission and/or return to the collective.
That seems like a plausible explanation. There is also the possibility that at one time they assimilated other vessels. Then, as they got more technologically advanced and as their resources grew they built shipyards in order to build their ships there. It probably also depended on their needs at the time. If they weren't near a shipyard, but needed a ship, they'd just commandeer one and assimilate it!
I'm ok with it. Since the Borg rely heavily on nanoprobes, I think it's likely that the "meat" of both their ship-building and repair processes is accomplished by variant nanoprobes (nanomachines). They'd swarm in such numbers that a repair process as seen in "Q Who?" could look much like accelerated cellular healing.
I don't think that an assimilated alien ship could ever be the "center" of a Borg vessel for two reasons: 1) the Borg require the Vinculum, and 2) an alien ship is not likely to have transwarp capability. In any case a Borg vessel shouldn't need to have its most essential components at a physical center of some kind; we were told originally that their ship design was undifferentiated. However, it does make sense that the most important ship components would be farthest from where energy fire or other weapons could hit.
I see alien ships as being assimilated on an ad hoc basis; some designs would be incorporated, some not. The actual physical ship that they've taken over doesn't have to be incorporated. The Borg wouldn't actually use an alien ship as the "seed" for a new ship unless for some reason they had no other choice, eg, they're stranded far from Borg space. Most of the time, I see Borg cubes as bringing captured alien vessels back to Borg space so that the collective could more easily examine and assimilate useful designs.
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They also mentioned in VOY: "Dark Frontier" that a sphere damanged by an ion storm was "regenerating". I assume from these descriptions that the Borg use industrial replicators to repair/build their hulls.
Of course, capturing vessels saves time. That works too.
I'm sure an assimilated ship quickly loses its basic nature: its warp drive may be split into a shield generator and a heat sink, its impulse engine may become a tractor beam coil, etc. But at the initial stages, the Borg may use what they have and gradually improve upon it, just like the ship from "Regeneration" seemed to gradually achieve a better warp drive. Eventually, the seed and the add-ons would mutate into standard Borg technology, but it might be dramatically interesting if the origins of a Cube had some sort of an influence on the eventual characteristics of the Cube.
Data can tell in "Q Who?" that the Borg systems are distributed, but whether he can tell where exactly each system is distributed, we don't know. Perhaps only the Collective itself knows, which is why Locutus could defeat the Cube in ST:FC: he could tell that targeting coordinates XYZ at moment T would achieve what firing at those coordinates at moment T-50 sec or T+50 sec would not. No starship sensor could tell where the vital functions were at a given moment, much less where they were going to be fifty seconds from now.
The same seems to go for Drones. The ultimate policy may be to assimilate every living being everywhere so that they can all reach paradise, but in the meantime, only the warm bodies that are immediately needed, or the bodies that become available as collateral when assimilating a civilization, are collected.
Timo Saloniemi
Some adversaries might have the capacity to hit targets at any coordinates without going through the intervening coordinates first - say, a transporter could potentially strike at any depth, and the core wouldn't be safer than the surface. Hiding key components in unlikely places and constantly shifting the activity between a set of a dozen alternate components would then be the way to go.
Data can tell in "Q Who?" that the Borg systems are distributed, but whether he can tell where exactly each system is distributed, we don't know. Perhaps only the Collective itself knows, which is why Locutus could defeat the Cube in ST:FC: he could tell that targeting coordinates XYZ at moment T would achieve what firing at those coordinates at moment T-50 sec or T+50 sec would not. No starship sensor could tell where the vital functions were at a given moment, much less where they were going to be fifty seconds from now.
The same seems to go for Drones. The ultimate policy may be to assimilate every living being everywhere so that they can all reach paradise, but in the meantime, only the warm bodies that are immediately needed, or the bodies that become available as collateral when assimilating a civilization, are collected.
Timo Saloniemi
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