Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS*

[flandry84]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

/\If,by chilling you mean stupid.
Space is (at the least)three dimensional.
Nobody thought to orbit "above","below" or "behind" the spatial apeture.
Nobody thought to divide their forces or position themselves outside the direct line of the anomoly.
If this were an all Starfleet task force,I would understand..it seems quite the thing to portray Starfleet as incompetent but there were some cold-eyed Cardassian and Romulan commanders present too.

Look,if you are writing a war story and the Destiny books(and some of their prerunners)were war stories,they should be written with at least an eye to credible tactical/strategic concerns.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

I never got the impression that the ships were just smashed into because they were "in the way" of the Borg -- I think that's taking a figure of speech too literally. Rather, they attempted to hold the line against the oncoming Borg armada, to cut them off at the bottleneck, but the Borg's counterattack was so vicious and overwhelming that it was as if they simply smashed through the defending ships. I took it as a figurative description of a totally one-sided and very short battle, not a literal account of a mere traffic accident.

 

[Cybersnark]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

The Borg formation was described as a "sphere" moving outward from the nebula, so clearly someone was thinking in three dimensions.

The Borg are described coming through the aperture one at a time, which suggests that the fleet spent some time massing inside the nebula until they were ready to ride off in all directions. "Clearing the ramp" would be a big part of that (and getting "behind" the opening was probably exactly what they did).

That's probably when the fleet got trampled.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

clearly the best strategy would've been to put teams aboard the cubes armed with TR-116s and destroy each Cube's Vinculum and plant an anti-matter bomb on board and destroy it from within.

I think that was attempted (once in simulation, where it was found the ship would even attack troops) and again, where Zelik Leybenzon led a suicide mission...and failed...

In addition to the ship being active in attacks, the Borg drones themselves were more agile and quick....

though in Zelik Leybenzon case he was pretty much just standing still trying to get the Borg to assimilate him, so the cube and drones wouldn't have had to do much..

By the time of Destiny, Seven of Nine has been separated from the Collective for seven years. Her knowledge is woefully out of date by that point; she's more reliable than most, and certainly a valuable advisor, but this does not mean her knowledge is infallible.

And even Seven never gave any guarantees that the thalaron weapon would work.

7 of 9 determining that the thalaron weapon will work does not mean, of course, that there is absolute certainty about the weapon effectiveness.
It does mean, however, that the weapon will most likely be effective.

No, it means that Seven of Nine regards it as the Federation's best chance. That's not a guarantee or a statement of probability, just an acknowledgement that all other options are without any hope whatsoever.



There's no evidence of that whatsoever, and there's certainly evidence against the idea that a Borg vessel cannot be operated remotely without drones aboard. We saw the Borg probe being operated remotely by the Queen in Destiny, even with no drones aboard.

I'm afraid that it's incontrovertible: Any Borg vessel lacking drones is still operable by the Collective and could still be used, quite easily, to participate in the annihilation of the Federation. Thalaron weaponry would not be useful.

I have no memory of there being any indication whatsoever that Hernandez would have information on how to modify Starfleet shields to protect against thalaron weapons.

Erica Hernandez modified the Titan's shields to make them resistant to metaphasic radiation before the ship took the subspace shortcut to the Azure Nebula.
Metaphasic radiation turns organic matter into dust - thalaron radiation is metaphasic radiation.

We have no idea if thalaron radiation is the same thing as metaphasic radiation. Bullets and knives can both stop your heart if they hit it, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing at all. Thalaron radiation was never referred to as a form of metaphasic radiation, and considering that its properties were never enumerated and that it's essentially a technobabble name for "magic kill-you energy," I think it's silly to presume they're the same thing.

"Metaphasic" is a very generic word, and not even a real one. It just means "beyond phase," whatever that's supposed to mean. It's a word that could apply to many different types of thing, and indeed already has; it was one of the more common bits of gibberish in later Trek (metaphasic radiation, metaphasic shields, metaphasic sweep, neural metaphasic shock). So it doesn't have a specific narrow meaning, or really any meaning at all. (Aside from "pertaining to the stage of cell division between prophase and anaphase," but that certainly isn't applicable here.)

Um, Sci and Christopher while this is all very interesting stuff about metaphasic radiation. The subspace passageways the Borg used in Destiny were filled with hyperphasic radiation not metaphasic radiation.

 

[NickInABox]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

^ Oh wow. You're one of THOSE fans.

During the Destiny novels, it seemed like various commanders just wanted to 'ram' their vessels into cubes in order to stop Borg that were orbiting whatever Federation world.

After the transphasic torpedoes didn't seem to work, especially since ships were quickly being heavily damaged...why didn't some commanders break off and retreat?

Because if they had, the cubes would've annihilated the populations of the planets they were attacking. These ships had hours or minutes to try to save billions of lives, and thus they didn't have the luxury of retreating.

Boom, roasted.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

^ Oh wow. You're one of THOSE fans.

Well not really it just that someone in this thread already pointed that out and everyone just didn't seem to notice.

 

[NickInABox]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

^ Oh wow. You're one of THOSE fans.

Well not really it just that someone in this thread already pointed that out and everyone just didn't seem to notice.

D'aw. I was really impressed.

 

[Sci]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

Um, Sci and Christopher while this is all very interesting stuff about metaphasic radiation. The subspace passageways the Borg used in Destiny were filled with hyperphasic radiation not metaphasic radiation.

"I am ashamed."

"Metaphasic," "hyperphasic." Whatever. From a real-world perspective, it's just one name or another for a magic spell that turns a character into dust, since we're talking about fictional energy fields.

And either way, that doesn't mean that within the fictional world of Star Trek, either metaphasic or hyperphasic radiation works the same way as thalaron radiation unless the authors say they do.

 

[justcorbly]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

Looking back, it seems the Federation erred in not deciding to destroy the Borg as soon as they understood the Borg's raison d'etre. They should have understood that the Borg would stop at nothing. The only defense against an enemy that does not behave rationally is to seek out and destroy that enemy.

 

[doublegood]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

Looking back, it seems the Federation erred in not deciding to destroy the Borg as soon as they understood the Borg's raison d'etre. They should have understood that the Borg would stop at nothing. The only defense against an enemy that does not behave rationally is to seek out and destroy that enemy.

Well, technically, for us here in 2009 it would be 'looking forward.' And sideways, I guess, to a dimension where Star Trek is real.

 

[Strider]

Re: Federation duty/Common sense during the Destiny novels...*SPOILERS

Why not? If failing to withdraw condemned mankind to extinction, then wouldn't every starship crew mutiny; murder their captains who callously refused to let, say, Earth die; and then sail to the rearming point that allowed them to do their duty and save mankind?

Some weaklings might just "follow orders" like proper unthinking concentration camp guards, but others would see that Earth had to die so that there would be a tomorrow.

Timo Saloniemi

Gross. Some things are worse than dying. It doesn't matter how useless their weapons were, Starfleet ships weren't withdrawing because that's the coward's way out. Better to die than run. Glassing your own worlds in some kind of fucked up scorched earth policy, Timo, would have been the psycho's way out. Glad you're not in charge of much more than an internet browser