Fighting a Borg Cube...

[Bosch571]

It isn't possible to adapt to kinetic energy.

Why not? I think they can, or bullets would be the ultimate anti Borg weapons. I know it’s scientifically questionable but so is most of sci-fi.

Using kinetic force to destroy a target is something we never saw anyone do in Star Trek. If they did it would make space stations instantly obsolete from a military point of view. Luckily the dominion never thought about it when attacking DS9 (would make a great planet destroyer too now that I think about it).

Even at high sub-light speeds the kinetic energy stored in a object would be enough to penetrate any defense we’ve seen on ST.

 

[Lindley]

Picard did just fine with that tommygun on the holodeck.

 

[DanCPA]

Picard did just fine with a gun against one borg. What I don't get is this... if you can beam aboard, why not beam all the borg into space and off the ship!

 

[Hermiod]

^You can't establish a lock very easily.

Remember, when the Enterprise first encountered a Borg ship their sensors detected no lifesigns aboard.

 

[Bosch571]

Picard did just fine with that tommygun on the holodeck.

Sure but would the tommygun continue to work if he tried to kill all borg with it?

 

[DanCPA]

^You can't establish a lock very easily.

Remember, when the Enterprise first encountered a Borg ship their sensors detected no lifesigns aboard.

True, but by the time of Voyager, the sensors had evolved and adapted and we saw CVoyager scan borg all the time

 

[Lindley]

Picard did just fine with that tommygun on the holodeck.

Sure but would the tommygun continue to work if he tried to kill all borg with it?

Don't see why not. If the Borg could adapt to kinetic energy, they would have done so long before that.

Well, there is the ammo issue.

 

[Cyke101]

I dunno, the Borg adapted to photon torpedoes before, and those things are chock-full of kinetic energy, what with being warp-speed projectiles.

 

[Plecostomus]

The Borg work best as a force-of-nature type of threat. Assume that given enough time they will adapt to anything. That's how we play them in our RPG. They would have eventually adapted to 8472, they would adapt to the Krenium, and the Voth as well as they encountered them. The Dominion would offer them a challenge but they too would eventually fall.

Really the only way to handle the Borg is to do something totally outrageous and catch them off guard. They were expecting phasers, not holo-bullets. They weren't expecting humans and Klingons in EVA suits with swords. Hell catch them when they are busy and ask them to calculate the final digit of PI, I'm sure that'll cause some sparks.

 

[Jimmy_C]

Picard did just fine with that tommygun on the holodeck.

Sure but would the tommygun continue to work if he tried to kill all borg with it?

Don't see why not. If the Borg could adapt to kinetic energy, they would have done so long before that.

Well, there is the ammo issue.

Remember: he wasn't even firing real bullets then. He was firing photons trapped in forcefields... probably similar to a phaser or a torpedo. As for adapting to them, all the Borg needs to do is project another forcefield around itself.

As for a ship ramming the Borg at warp speed, I doubt it works well otherwise it would be a common tactic.

 

[Timo]

If the Borg could adapt to kinetic energy, they would have done so long before that.

But it isn't even an issue of "Borg adaptation". Kinetic energy is irrelevant in the Trek universe in general. Newton has been exhumed, brutally desecrated and reburied in a clown suit, and even the most primitive Trek species can now turn momentum on and off at the switch of a button.

Killing people with bullets in Star Trek requires that the person not be prepared against the attack. With minimal preparation, 23rd century Starfleet can defeat a bullet-based attack by using futuristic riot shields, but a shot from a Derringer in a dark alley will still kill the unprepared victim.

And the thing with the Borg is that they are never prepared. The Borg don't think ahead much - instead, they react, and adapt. They don't haul along defenses they developed decades, centuries or millennia ago. They activate such defenses only when the need for them becomes acute.

"Adapting to kinetic energy" is not the only thing that must have happened millennia ago. Adapting to phasers must have happened in the mists of prehistory, too, as everybody and his idiot cousin has a phaser in the Trek universe. But the Borg don't come "pre-adapted" to phasers, either - not even when the last phaser attack against them was in the previous episode. Naturally, they wouldn't bother to carry anti-bullet defenses, either, until required.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[doublegood]

I killed a Borg with my bare hands once.

 

[Meredith]

I say the best way of fighting the borg is to make a personnel replicator and throw a couple hundred billion people who are all the same person into the collective so that they can control the borg by influencing them and then they can gradually make the borg de-assimilate.

 

[CaptainStoner]

You have to kick them in the cubes.

 

[Dayton3]

At Wolf-359, the Borg tractor beam had no problem stopping the hard charging U.S.S. Saratoga dead in space.

I imagine it could've done the same with any suicide assault.

The thing regarding the way they fought the Borg in all of Star Trek is this:

The producers of Star Trek don't have a clue about any kind of military strategy or manuevers.

This was proven in DS9 where the entire Dominion War featured rhetoric and dialogue straight out of a World War II movie.

"The Dominion has broken our lines in two places"

What kind of idiotic dialogue is that? How do you even have "lines" in a space battle?

 

[RAMA]

It isn't possible to adapt to kinetic energy.

They can adapt to bullets, they just weren't ready for something so primitive. I bet the next time around they wouldn't have been so easily killed. Reember how many times they were killed by energy weapons before they adapted? Bullets unfortunately cannot be "phased".

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

At Wolf-359, the Borg tractor beam had no problem stopping the hard charging U.S.S. Saratoga dead in space.

I imagine it could've done the same with any suicide assault.

The thing regarding the way they fought the Borg in all of Star Trek is this:

The producers of Star Trek don't have a clue about any kind of military strategy or manuevers.

This was proven in DS9 where the entire Dominion War featured rhetoric and dialogue straight out of a World War II movie.

"The Dominion has broken our lines in two places"

What kind of idiotic dialogue is that? How do you even have "lines" in a space battle?

Absolutely true, the writers didn't know anything about strategy. However, the "lines" could have been cubic lines. Also, it may make sense for intelligent lifeforms to still group in ways they are normally used to for their perceptions in space battle, so at least some of the parameters would be the same for planet bound aerial combat...hence formations and such.

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

I'm a little confused about the Starfleet vs. single Borg cube fights. Why do the ships seem to "fly around" a lot when they fire? After all, if the Borg ship is so decentralized, why don't all the ships in combat line up and just fire at will from a stationary position, like one big wall?

I guess because they didn't want to get caught be a tractor beam.

Also, why haven't we seen the main deflector dish used as an offensive weapon more often by fleet ships? If the main deflector dish can modulate frequencies like phasers, why can't it be used just as well as phasers? After all, phasers still kill Borg, even though the Borg gained all of Picard's knowledge in BOBW...

Probably because the ship was disabled afterwards?

RAMA

 

[Dayton3]

I'm a little confused about the Starfleet vs. single Borg cube fights. Why do the ships seem to "fly around" a lot when they fire? After all, if the Borg ship is so decentralized, why don't all the ships in combat line up and just fire at will from a stationary position, like one big wall?

I guess because they didn't want to get caught be a tractor beam.

Also, why haven't we seen the main deflector dish used as an offensive weapon more often by fleet ships? If the main deflector dish can modulate frequencies like phasers, why can't it be used just as well as phasers? After all, phasers still kill Borg, even though the Borg gained all of Picard's knowledge in BOBW...

Probably because the ship was disabled afterwards?

RAMA

It is quite possible that only a Galaxy class starships main deflector dish was large enough and powerful enough to really be considered for use as a weapon.

And Galaxy class ships seemed to be in short supply when fighting the Borg.

 

[cmdr_forst]

Did anyone every try beaming a photon torpedo or two aboard a Borg cube and detonating it? I seem to recall that being used against some enemy in some episode of some series. Picard and Janeway never seemed to have any problems beaming aboard a cube just to look around.