Questions about Borg scooping and tech extraction

[Unimatrix Q]

1) If the Borg cut out entite cities from the ground, how deep do they cut into the ground with their beams and how do they prevent the collapse of buildings and the destruction or damaging of the technology from their actions?

2) What happens to all the buildings and the acquired technologies inside a Borg cube?

3) Do they always scoop up all of the cities and settlements on a planet chosen for technology extraction. If not how do they decide which ones to take?

4) How do the Borg decide which planets they scoop and which they assimilate to set up a presence?

 

[Deks]

1) If the Borg cut out entite cities from the ground, how deep do they cut into the ground with their beams and how do they prevent the collapse of buildings and the destruction or damaging of the technology from their actions?

2) What happens to all the buildings and the acquired technologies inside a Borg cube?

3) Do they always scoop up all of the cities and settlements on a planet chosen for technology extraction. If not how do they decide which ones to take?

4) How do the Borg decide which planets they scoop and which they assimilate to set up a presence?

1.) They likely tear out the city from orbit using a tractor beam which also shields the buildings from collapsing by projecting dampening fields along the beam (not impossible, considering that Federation ships can easily manipulate all kinds of fields, etc.). As for how deep they cut into the ground... 100 to 300 meters perhaps? Just a wild guess...
We've seen the craters they leave in place of colonies were rather deep.

2.) They are likely absorbed for raw materials. Either disassembled using transporters which store it as energy or just convert it into raw material or necessary resources which are stored somewhere on the cube.

3.) I guess it depends on which city seems like a more attractive target from a technology/resources point of view.

4.) Level of technology and biological development of the species in question. Even if technology is relatively underdeveloped, it can be used for raw material... but if the species is biologically evolved to have certain aspects the Borg could find worthy of adding to the Collective, they might just decide to scoop them up.

I don't necessarily think the Borg would establish themselves on planets unless really needed... or such presence could be temporary at best.
They do seem to use ships and large interconnected complexes in space.

 

[SpyOne]

Scooping up settlements seems to be something the Borg only do during the early intelligence-gathering stages of contact, and I don't believe we've seen them do it where they didn't do it to every settlement on the planet.

 

[Timo]

...Or even to every part of a scooped settlement. At Jouret, our heroes beam to the quoted middle of the lost settlement, yet they stand at the edge of the pit, not at the bottom. Plenty of infrastructure is visible behind them, including road surfaces and underground pipes if not standing buildings.

Possibly the Borg only scoop up

1) representative samples, of minimum sufficient size,
2) acutely needed raw materials (including concentrations of people to be assimilated), or
3) objects of specific interest, such as local powerplants or observatories or weapons?

Or then their scooping tools are of fixed size, and not every surface community is a neat integer multiple of scoop footprints - sometimes stuff gets left over.

Whether the scooping missions we know of, at the Neutral Zone, at J-25 and at Jouret, were for scouting, we don't know. Might have been missions of pure destruction, too (since as per "Dark Frontier", the Borg love to mop up). Might have been replenishment missions, with an additional element of eliminating witnesses. Might be something else altogether.

...I lust love how alien the Borg are.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

I don't necessarily think the Borg would establish themselves on planets unless really needed... or such presence could be temporary at best.
They do seem to use ships and large interconnected complexes in space.

One wonders, then, what those 9 billion Borg were doing on Earth, after they had assimilated Earth about 300 years before. (First Contact).

I think the Borg do both, establish themselves on planets and in those huge interconnected ships and complexes in space, whatever suits their purposes best.

 

[Deks]

One wonders, then, what those 9 billion Borg were doing on Earth, after they had assimilated Earth about 300 years before. (First Contact).

I think the Borg do both, establish themselves on planets and in those huge interconnected ships and complexes in space, whatever suits their purposes best.

A brief version of history which didn't persist once the Enterprise-E stayed in the temporal vortex and dealt with the Borg in 2063.
Also, we don't know how far back the Enterprise-E traveled into the past when they saw the assimilated Earth.
But lets explore that scenario anyway:
Only 1 lone sphere made it back... which is relatively small in comparison to a cube, or a fleet of them for that matter (regardless, that 1 sphere could probably wreak havoc across the entire Alpha Quadrant given the technological advantage the Borg had).

Assimilating Earth was their priority, and they would have needed resources to construct more ships unopposed.
The SOL system is teeming with needed raw matter in asteroids for example (far more in comparison to what Earth has).
But with a relative 'base of operations on Earth' established and 9 billion assimilated Humans at their disposal, the Borg managed to muster needed numbers to increase their collective potential in the A.Q. so they can man all those new Borg ships they would have constructed to assimilate other species if they desired to do so.

Still, the whole concept of FC starts falling apart with Trek temporal mechanics, because the Borg would have vanished the moment they started attacking Earth in 2063 and assimilating Humans without Enterprise-E to intervene - unless travelling through the temporal vortex protected the Borg from changes in the timeline like the Enterprise was and allowed both to 'integrate' into the changed timeline.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

...Or even to every part of a scooped settlement. At Jouret, our heroes beam to the quoted middle of the lost settlement, yet they stand at the edge of the pit, not at the bottom. Plenty of infrastructure is visible behind them, including road surfaces and underground pipes if not standing buildings.

Possibly the Borg only scoop up

1) representative samples, of minimum sufficient size,
2) acutely needed raw materials (including concentrations of people to be assimilated), or
3) objects of specific interest, such as local powerplants or observatories or weapons?

Or then their scooping tools are of fixed size, and not every surface community is a neat integer multiple of scoop footprints - sometimes stuff gets left over.

Whether the scooping missions we know of, at the Neutral Zone, at J-25 and at Jouret, were for scouting, we don't know. Might have been missions of pure destruction, too (since as per "Dark Frontier", the Borg love to mop up). Might have been replenishment missions, with an additional element of eliminating witnesses. Might be something else altogether.

...I lust love how alien the Borg are.

Timo Saloniemi

Same with me. I love the alienness of the Borg. The interesting thing imo is that the Borg apparently seemed to care to not destroy the network of roads on the planets in the J-25 system. Taking away every building and piece of technology on the planet with cutting- and tractor beams and not damage and destroy the streets between the buildings seems to be a very difficult task. I also wonder why they took allmost everything in this system but not at Jouret IV.

One wonders, then, what those 9 billion Borg were doing on Earth, after they had assimilated Earth about 300 years before. (First Contact).

I think the Borg do both, establish themselves on planets and in those huge interconnected ships and complexes in space, whatever suits their purposes best.

The interesting thing is that altered Earth in FC looked at some places like the Borg did some scooping and then set up new structures above the craters imo.

 

[Timo]

In one model of ST:FC, the Borg attacked Earth solely to lure some 24th century engineers into the past so that they would build a working warp rig for Cochrane and thereby create the UFP which then keeps the Collective supplied with new weapons and other useful ideas. In that model, Earth would be temporarily Borgified solely to scare Picard into acting... Something the Borg could trivially afford to do, like they could afford to lose Queens or Spheres.

At J-25, we might witness a mop-up after a "Dark Frontier" style "end assimilation". Leaving the intercity highways in place would not call for much finesse, as Data never claimed the city streets would remain. But the Borg might also have been in a process of putting down roots - perhaps every hole was to receive Multinexing Node and every highway an Isoplastic Dataway coating, but Picard rudely interrupted this global improvement program. For a moment.

The Borg use a small set of tools for many tasks - their tractor beams appear to be shield drainers, too, say. Possibly scooping has multiple uses as well, even if the creating of big jagged holes on the surface is not always perfectly optimal for the goal.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unimatrix Q]

I wonder how often it happens that there are unassimilated survivors on planets where the Borg scooped, as the Brunali homeworld seemed to be such a case...

And if the Borg in some cases are just interested in the tech, do you think they try to keep the people on the scooped pieces alive when they have a lack of drones?

 

[Search4]

They scooped up a piece of the Enterprise you may recall. Somehow I think it’s their version of the tricorder.

 

[Deks]

I wonder how often it happens that there are unassimilated survivors on planets where the Borg scooped, as the Brunali homeworld seemed to be such a case...

And if the Borg in some cases are just interested in the tech, do you think they try to keep the people on the scooped pieces alive when they have a lack of drones?

There could be instances in which the Borg assimilate majority of the population, but leave the rest intact for the purpose of taking any new technology they might develop in the future.
It could vary from one species to the next.
The Brunali seemed to present such a scenario.

I think the Borg simply assimilate any scooped up people even if they are more interested in the technology.
They likely have more than enough empty space reserved for assimilated individuals, and lack of drones wouldn't be an issue most of the time.
If a typical Borg cube is manned by 5 000 drones as 7 of 9 described in 'Collective', and we've also heard in 'The Dark Frontier' dialogue that a cube received a transfer of 50 000 new drones from another Borg ship... it suggests the possibility that Borg ships cycle through assimilated individuals, then if a Borg ship is directed towards a different potential target, it offloads certain amount of drones and goes on to take care of it.
In 'Unimatrix Zero Part II', one of the cubes was manned by 64 000 drones... so, they have a huge amount of internal volume.
A galaxy Class ship can easily carry up to 10 000 people... but the Enterprise - D usually had 1200 people at any given time.
This probably leaves space for evacuations, etc.
Though, given such a large ship, I'd likely say the Galaxy class could easily carry about 3000 people for long term missions, and they'd still have enough capacity to evacuate 7000 people at any given time should the need arise.

A lot of the space on the Galaxy class seemed under-utilized.... but that could be down to the premise of potential evacuations, etc.
Most of the labs might be in function.

 

[Timo]

Are the Drones a resource or a burden for a Cube?

I mean, they might be useful in intruder control - but they aren't. Sometimes they push buttons (!) but the ship itself should probably be able to handle that. Self-repair seems quite hands-off in "Q Who?". And so forth.

Then again, Drone brains or other Drone thinking bits may be an important computing resource for the entire Collective, and especially for isolated Cubes.

Timo Saloniemi