Why didn't the Borg...

[Melakon]

...implant ranged weapons into the Drones? They're usually slow moving, have personal shields, yet they have to close to melee distance to engage combat. Seems a built in phaser or something would reduce their number of casualties. Of course, the Borg don't seem to care about casualties. Even some sort of crossbow weapon would have been better than letting the enemy shoot at you until you could touch them.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Or better yet a weapon that was saturated in nanoprobes so the instant it hit someone they wouldn't be killed or stunned but assimilated--would be a for more efficient means of conquering the galaxy.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

It's gonna be a fanwanky answer, so proceed at your own risk. Let's just go ahead and say that the amount of power needed to generate phaser shots would be damaging to the tissue of a borg drone. The casings on hand phasers and rifles allow for safe usage.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Lore's drones used energy weapons affixed to the back of their hands without any problems--I suspect a race as advanced as the Borg could come up with ways and means around such a problem.

 

[Melakon]

Bry, yes, exactly. I was going edit the post later to include nanoprobes but worried someone might be replying at the time. So I went back to the episode I watching when the idea for the thread hit me (ENT: Regeneration).

Lobster, that could be a consideration too. Though nano-probe projectile weapons Bry suggested seem to make the most viable weapon. It's just sort of strange these guys close to arm's length and shove a cordless drill or saw into your face, instead of a welding torch.

Edit: I forgot about Lore's bad boys.
Edit 2: This is sort of an open ended title I guess, so maybe we can come up with other seemingly obvious things they should have done.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Edit 2: This is sort of an open ended title I guess, so maybe we can come up with other seemingly obvious things they should have done.

In that case, why didn't the Borg send 150+ cubes into Federation space, one for each member world? Starfleet would never have the numbers possible to defend against each one.

 

[Jono]

Not only do the Borg don't care about casualties, but they benefit from you trying to kill them as each successful attack gives them something to adapt to, making them more perfect and reducing their targets ability to resist them to a point where it is truly futile.

We've also seen that assimilation can be reserved by reasonably advanced species, such as the Federation. Infecting a person at range gives that person a chance to be evacuated and receive medical treatment. However, if you overwhelm a position and start assimilating there is no escape.

Edit 2: This is sort of an open ended title I guess, so maybe we can come up with other seemingly obvious things they should have done.

In that case, why didn't the Borg send 150+ cubes into Federation space, one for each member world? Starfleet would never have the numbers possible to defend against each one.

Given the distant from the Borg territory in the DQ and the Federation's technology level there probably isn't a strong reason for the Borg to launch a significant effort to conquer the Federation. However, the Federation is advanced enough/interesting enough that sending a test every now and again would be worthwhile.

 

[DonIago]

Why do things the Borg don't need to do to achieve the goal they're attempting to achieve?

The Borg sent 1 cube because if they lost the cube it was a pittance and they'd learn something about whomever destroyed it, and if they didn't lose the cube then then they had an extra cube lying around.

The Borg didn't invent ranged weapons because they didn't need them. They simply dont' care if they throw away the lives of 100 drones. And in all likelihood they won't because they'll have adapted to whatever their enemy is using to attack them in any case.

Sometimes I think people simply fail to grasp exactly how vast the Borg Collective is and, given their mentality, how little even thousands of lives mean to them. Hell, there's a VOY episode where the Queen is blowing up her own ships almost casually.

 

[Commishsleer]

Edit 2: This is sort of an open ended title I guess, so maybe we can come up with other seemingly obvious things they should have done.

In that case, why didn't the Borg send 150+ cubes into Federation space, one for each member world? Starfleet would never have the numbers possible to defend against each one.

Yes the Borg could have quite easily destroyed the Federation if just one Borg cube kept most of the Federation finest ships at bay.
If we hadn't had the insight into the Borg world in VOY you could just explain it as being one of the mysteries of the Borg. Now it just doesn't make sense.

 

[Melakon]

I bet when the Vulcans were watching their version of Star Trek in their universe, it was a Borg cube attacking Vulcan.

For "Best of Both Worlds", that first cube may have just been a scout investigating the signal sent by those in Cochrane's timeline, as speculated in other threads. In ST: First Contact, they definitely should have launched a massive invasion force. But then we get into a predestination paradox.

 

[DonIago]

^And since the Borg are presumably smart enough to realize that, the only sensible reasons they could have for sending one cube is that they only -wanted- to send one cube or, inexplicably, they could only afford to send one cube and didn't want to wait.

Or, if you want to get particularly creative and think outside the box, it wasn't the Borg's decision.

We know the Borg aren't stupid, so if they're doing something it's safe to assume some thought went into the decision.

Put another way, the question shouldn't be "Why don't the Borg send more ships?" but rather "Why are the Borg only sending one ship?"

 

[R. Star]

Put another way, the question shouldn't be "Why don't the Borg send more ships?" but rather "Why are the Borg only sending one ship?"

Well the answer to the question there is because the writers wanted the good guys to win.

An inverse answer to that is more tricky and as mentioned earlier gets fanwanky... it gets even more tricky when we see them send several ships against a planet less advanced than Earth in Dark Frontier.

 

[DonIago]

It kind of works if you assume the Borg are probing Earth's defenses (and maybe even deliberately spurring Earth to develop better ones), but in the case of a less advanced civilization figure there's nothing left to learn from them (at least with regards to their defenses), but neither would they be completely unworthy of assimilation.

 

[Melakon]

In "Dark Frontier"'s case, it could merely be due to the planet being in the Delta Quadrant relatively close to the Hub, where there would be multiple Cubes available.

The transwarp conduits appear to be limited to single ships at a time, unless there's a scene with a Borg fleet going through I'm not remembering.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Yes the Borg could have quite easily destroyed the Federation if just one Borg cube kept most of the Federation finest ships at bay.
If we hadn't had the insight into the Borg world in VOY you could just explain it as being one of the mysteries of the Borg. Now it just doesn't make sense.

VOY ruined the Borg. They told us too much about them and one solitary little ship was able to best them multiple times. By the time the series ended the Borg were little more than a toothless old Grishnar cat.

 

[Timo]

The only real alternative to that would have been to stop telling Borg stories, though.

One thing to consider regarding ranged weapons on individual Drones is that we have never seen the Drones in a situation where they would need those! Drones are only ever tackled at extreme close quarters, typically inside their own ships or installations. The heroes have ranged weapons there, but those do them no good, because there is no range - a sidearm can be wrestled out of their hands in no time flat.

If one were ever to encounter Drones in open country, perhaps one would witness their "infantry weapons" in action... Funnily enough, Lore's rogue Borg with ranged weapons were operating in open country! Although they also used their weapons in an indoors situation where impenetrable armor combined with zombie walk would actually have been tactically more effective.

Sometimes I think people simply fail to grasp exactly how vast the Borg Collective is and, given their mentality, how little even thousands of lives mean to them.

This, and also how much time they have for doing things. They are supposedly hundreds of thousands of years old. If they upped their response to the Federation all the way to lethal levels within the mere twenty years they have been openly dealing with the hero culture, it would necessarily follow that they would have assimilated the entire galaxy already a million times over. But there's no hurry - and no need to go for 100% assimilation anyway, as that would present them with the Alexander Problem of there being no more knowledge to conquer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DonIago]

Pretty much. The one time we see the Borg actually "live up to their potential" is in the "Destiny" trilogy of novels, and for the most part that goes exactly the way you'd expect a large-scale incursion of the Borg into Federation space to go.

Spoiler: Borg Tactics in Destiny

Among other things, the Borg are more than willing to simply ram their ships into enemy vessels since, after all, they have plenty to spare.

 

[bbjeg]

I was curious why the Borg (in "First Contact") didn't send a cube back in time in the Delta Quadrant, with enough time to travel to Earth before or around the time Zef launches the first warp ship. Why did they have to go back near Earth?

 

[DonIago]

I think the main theory about this is that the time travel was a hastily-constructed Plan B.

There was a technobabbled explanation in one of the novels that in order to time travel successfully you need to do so near the planet or what-not that you intend to impact. Hey, I didn't say it made sense.

The first DoTI novel speculates that the time travel in First Contact wasn't the Borg's idea either, which I alluded to upthread.

 

[jpv2000]

VOY ruined the Borg. They told us too much about them and one solitary little ship was able to best them multiple times. By the time the series ended the Borg were little more than a toothless old Grishnar cat.

I am once again glad I never watched much Voyager.