In answer to the original question. There's a scene where Reed is overcharging the phase pistols and pushing em as far as they'd go to the point where the puncture a 1 inch piece of magic metal stuff.
Firstly, apparently A next gen phaser at full power could blow up a street in one shot, so its hardly reaching next gen levels of pohwah.
Secondly, like it's been said, these are Borg who have spent 100 years frozen in ice. They should have been cut off from the collective and alone allowing a chance to regain their individuality, but they didnt. This leads us to assume that their connected to the collective in the 22nd Century. That's like going from Wikipedia to Encarta 95 for information gathering, their information pool shrunk exponentially. Thus, its reasonable to assume that while they had shield technology, they had no idea what "frequencies" to adapt them too, even for low power weaponry. Eventually, the Borg adapted to the phase pistols once they had a chance to analyze them, but this took a considerable amount of time for the Borg, again, probably due to their limited numbers and resources due to being in the 22nd century.
As for the Borg against bullets, you have inconsistencies within the same movie. Data takes a full mag of what we can assume is high powered/high velocity ammo from Lilly in the Phoenix launch bay and is unscathed. The Borg on the other hand not only suffered from holographic bullets, but holographic bullets of a lower calibre than that of the mid 21st century high power rifle.
The only technobabble explanation I can think of is that the holodeck projection systems somehow screwed with the Borg's shielding (via adapting to a million and one different energy frequencies created by the various holograms all at once) long enough for the holographic bullets to penetrate the shielding.
Yeah, what i've just wrote it all bullshit, but its bullshit to explain the bullshit which is upsetting the shit of the OP and if the shoe (or shit) fits....
Firstly, apparently A next gen phaser at full power could blow up a street in one shot, so its hardly reaching next gen levels of pohwah.
Secondly, like it's been said, these are Borg who have spent 100 years frozen in ice. They should have been cut off from the collective and alone allowing a chance to regain their individuality, but they didnt. This leads us to assume that their connected to the collective in the 22nd Century. That's like going from Wikipedia to Encarta 95 for information gathering, their information pool shrunk exponentially. Thus, its reasonable to assume that while they had shield technology, they had no idea what "frequencies" to adapt them too, even for low power weaponry. Eventually, the Borg adapted to the phase pistols once they had a chance to analyze them, but this took a considerable amount of time for the Borg, again, probably due to their limited numbers and resources due to being in the 22nd century.
As for the Borg against bullets, you have inconsistencies within the same movie. Data takes a full mag of what we can assume is high powered/high velocity ammo from Lilly in the Phoenix launch bay and is unscathed. The Borg on the other hand not only suffered from holographic bullets, but holographic bullets of a lower calibre than that of the mid 21st century high power rifle.
The only technobabble explanation I can think of is that the holodeck projection systems somehow screwed with the Borg's shielding (via adapting to a million and one different energy frequencies created by the various holograms all at once) long enough for the holographic bullets to penetrate the shielding.
Yeah, what i've just wrote it all bullshit, but its bullshit to explain the bullshit which is upsetting the shit of the OP and if the shoe (or shit) fits....