Would Starfleet still be Starfleet if they had marines?

[bilateralrope]

And ya, the effectiveness of these tactics would depend on them being practiced... which is why they should be practiced, if they do indeed work. But they should at least be attempted first, especially the ladder after the Borg have adapted to being hit from a single weapon.

Which then gets into the question of how much training should be devoted to fighting a single enemy faction. Especially a faction that rarely comes into Federation space and has been dealt with each time with existing tactics.

Replicating anti-borg weapons can be done between detecting the borg and engaging them, only costing the space of a few replication patterns for the times when borg aren't present. Training people in anti-borg tactics is something that needs to be done with every cadet going through the academy.

If you want to hit a drone with multiple phase beams at once. Rather than coordinate mutliple redshirts at once, build some kind of phaser volley gun. Strap the guts of seven hand phases to a stock and call it a day.

If we were going full on fanwank equip federation marines type deal. I'd give them some kind of very reliable firearm as a base and give it and underbarrel phaser for the diversity of effects and stun option if needed.

A combination firearm and phaser seems the best choice if the borg can deploy defences against kinetics. The firearm to force the borg to keep whatever disadvantages come with those defences or pick off any borg that aren't using them, with the phaser reserved for the drones that can withstand bullets.

Unless they can figure out how to have phasers change frequency while in the field, which is what a few Trek games have done.

There was an episode of Discovery recently where they decided to send one of their DOTs into a negative space wedgie and the audience had to watch the cute robot scream, rather than someone saying 'launch a type V probe.'

Those DOTs might be the standard probe in Discovery's time. Though I do remember asking why Discovery only launched their flare in a single direction instead of a wider spread.

For probes, they might be useful in some situations.

[madd0c0t0r2]

Are jokes from the joke show really considered reliable sources of information?

In this case, I think they're all refernces to First Trek. The Mugato, the Armus and the spores on Omnicron Ceti III (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Th ... _(episode))

[Crazedwraith]

Huh, I'd have assumed the third one at least was a joke they'd made up for Lower Decks. I stand corrected.

[Adam Reynolds]

What tickles me about these conversations, is why they come up much more often than why starfleet doesn't use probes more.

There was an episode of Discovery recently where they decided to send one of their DOTs into a negative space wedgie and the audience had to watch the cute robot scream, rather than someone saying 'launch a type V probe.'

And of course, every away team should be preceded by a probe, as someone mentioned Stargate, something like a MALP or an goa'uld or imperial probe droid would be ideal.

That would however make it harder for the away teams to get into danger.

The thing about probes/robots is that this applies to virtually all of science fiction. Given that we clearly see a level of automation that allows this, why does Star Wars ever use organic armies or pilots? Given that The Expanse has computer tech that is somewhat more advanced than our own, why does the Rocinante exist as a manned warship when it would make more sense to use automated picket vessels that can pull extended 10+G burns while actively engaging in combat? Why does Bobbie Draper wear powered armor when it would be safer to have a humanoid robot do the job instead, as currently humanoid robots seem easier than exoskeletons? The obvious answer is that we want to see humans being the ones who solve problems and have adventures rather than robots.

The thing that makes Star Trek different than the other two examples is that they also have a fundamental lack of prudence in the way they operate. Starfleet Away Teams don't have proper infantry weapons, survival gear, or environmental protection in plenty of cases in which they should. At the starship level they also have extremely limited redundancies and are reliant on things working as intended or on ad hoc improvised solutions. This is compounded by doctrinal flaws in which they don't have fairly reasonably protocols like searching prisoners, quarantining and giving medical checks to returning away teams, or having backup communications protocols.

Starfleet is too reliant upon their high tech toys to the point of having almost blind faith in them. While the same can be said about Jedi in Star Wars(though in their case it is more about trusting The Force), this was meant as a sign that they were arrogant and had become dogmatic in their beliefs. For Starfleet is is just normal.

[NecronLord]

If you're going to suggest that the Doylist limits of storytelling make that ubiquitous, again, I'll just point out that stargate exists, where they do habitually use probes of various sorts.

I assume when you say they don't have proper infantry weapons, you are talking about ergonomics as people have rarely accused starfleet of having insufficient firepower in smallarms. As to the smallarms of starfleet, again, that's a really antique take in 2022, the phaser rifle has been ergonmically fixed since Star Trek FC and we know that the current generation sidearm has better ergonomics and a whole range of features we've not yet seen.

Even if you want to confine yourself to the TNG era, the dolphin/dustbuster has been retired as of Picard in favour of this contraption with a trigger guard.

You may be amused to know that Jonathan Frakes and Patrick Stewart, having used the dustbuster, abolished it out of universe.

Star Trek as a franchise has gone out of its way to show a whole range of ergonomic gun designs since TNG.

Really crucifying starfleet on gun ergonomics in 2022 is just burying your head in the sand.

[bilateralrope]

Starfleet Away Teams don't have proper infantry weapons, survival gear, or environmental protection in plenty of cases in which they should.

I'd like you to name a few episodes were they went in without sufficient environmental protection or survival gear for what they thought the conditions would be before going down.

As for proper infantry weapons, I'll ask you to be more specific about your complaints.

At the starship level they also have extremely limited redundancies and are reliant on things working as intended or on ad hoc improvised solutions.

They are constantly rerouting around various bits of damage and faulty systems. That sounds like a lot of redundancy to me.


Now, about The Expanse:

why does the Rocinante exist as a manned warship when it would make more sense to use automated picket vessels that can pull extended 10+G burns while actively engaging in combat? Why does Bobbie Draper wear powered armor when it would be safer to have a humanoid robot do the job instead

The first problem is telling friend from foe. How would you propose their systems manage that ?

Especially in cases where who they perceive as their friends/foes changes over the course of the engagement.

[Lord Revan]

Yeah, that IFF issue is why automated defense Turrets aren't really thing now, it's very hard for automated system to do that without an active signal to help with identification. Also why use bipedal bot if you're gonna use one anyway, a tracked, wheeled or 4 or more-legged design would be much better.

The most advanced option is not always the best.

[bilateralrope]

Come to think of it, The Expanse does have one example of someone knowing exactly how the computer decides which targets to shoot and exploited it for their own gain at the end of season 5.

[Tribble]

Which then gets into the question of how much training should be devoted to fighting a single enemy faction. Especially a faction that rarely comes into Federation space and has been dealt with each time with existing tactics.

Replicating anti-borg weapons can be done between detecting the borg and engaging them, only costing the space of a few replication patterns for the times when borg aren't present. Training people in anti-borg tactics is something that needs to be done with every cadet going through the academy.

"When encountering a target that resists phaser fire, try using more than one phaser at a time" and volley firing shouldn't be that difficult of a tactic to teach. It doesn't have to be restricted to just the Borg either.

And I'm running on tactics based on existing weapons rather than specialised ones, though of course specialised weapons may be more effective and/or could be used in combination.

If you want to hit a drone with multiple phase beams at once. Rather than coordinate mutliple redshirts at once, build some kind of phaser volley gun. Strap the guts of seven hand phases to a stock and call it a day.

If we were going full on fanwank equip federation marines type deal. I'd give them some kind of very reliable firearm as a base and give it and underbarrel phaser for the diversity of effects and stun option if needed.

A combination firearm and phaser seems the best choice if the borg can deploy defences against kinetics. The firearm to force the borg to keep whatever disadvantages come with those defences or pick off any borg that aren't using them, with the phaser reserved for the drones that can withstand bullets.

Unless they can figure out how to have phasers change frequency while in the field, which is what a few Trek games have done.

IIRC that's what they were doing in STFC:

WORF: I have ordered all weapons to be set on a rotating modulation. The Borg will adapt quickly. We will be able to fire twelve shots at most.

IIRC in one scene we also see a crewman trying to change the frequencies of his rifle after the Borg adapt to the ones he was using, but he gets assimilated before he can finish.

[bilateralrope]

"When encountering a target that resists phaser fire, try using more than one phaser at a time" and volley firing shouldn't be that difficult of a tactic to teach. It doesn't have to be restricted to just the Borg either.

How would you suggest they communicate which drone is the next target and the timing of the shot ?

IIRC that's what they were doing in STFC:

WORF: I have ordered all weapons to be set on a rotating modulation. The Borg will adapt quickly. We will be able to fire twelve shots at most.

IIRC in one scene we also see a crewman trying to change the frequencies of his rifle after the Borg adapt to the ones he was using, but he gets assimilated before he can finish.

I wonder why they only get 12 shots. My first guesses are either that's how long before the frequency is too far away from the optimal frequency from a phaser to do much damage or that that's how long before the borg will be able to predict the frequency shifts because it's not entirely random.

Still, it does suggest that the Federation is working to build anti-borg features into their standard weapons.

[Tribble]

How would you suggest they communicate which drone is the next target and the timing of the shot ?

When concentrating fire, keep picking the 1-2 drones (or other enemy resistant to phaser fire) that are closest to the team and shoot them first? One would think that would be more of the natural tendency anyways (since you would want to get the drones about to assimilate you vs ones further in the rear).

Again, we don't know how many phasers it would take once the Borg adapt since the tactic has never been used on screen. If it takes several phasers then it wouldn't be very practical, but if it only takes 2-3 it should at least let a team thin out some of the drones, even if the team is forced to withdraw.

I wonder why they only get 12 shots. My first guesses are either that's how long before the frequency is too far away from the optimal frequency from a phaser to do much damage or that that's how long before the borg will be able to predict the frequency shifts because it's not entirely random.

Still, it does suggest that the Federation is working to build anti-borg features into their standard weapons.

It's not stated, though it's plausibly due to both? By the end of the movie the Borg had apparently adapted to every modulation:

DANIELS: They're on the move again. The Borg just overrun three of our defence checkpoints. They've taken over decks five and six. They've adapted to every modulation on our weapons. It's like we're shooting blanks.

On a somewhat related note, would Picard's initial plan have worked? He didn't know about the Queen until the end of the movie, and it was her death that killed(?) all the other drones. Best case scenario was that they opened the door, hit the coolant tank and liquified all the Borg in Main Engineering, while avoiding being killed by the other drones and/or the coolant. Problem is, by that point it seemed like the Borg had already taken over the rest of the deck including Sickbay, and there were likely drones in other nearby areas (like the Jeffries tube they started in). What was he planning on doing after that? Get rid of the coolant, go into main engineering and try to fight off surviving Borg counter attacks?

[NecronLord]

"When encountering a target that resists phaser fire, try using more than one phaser at a time" and volley firing shouldn't be that difficult of a tactic to teach. It doesn't have to be restricted to just the Borg either.

And I'm running on tactics based on existing weapons rather than specialised ones, though of course specialised weapons may be more effective and/or could be used in combination.

This is indeed sensible, and it's exactly what we see Archer's crew do with success when they encounter the borg. It's entirely possible it's happened on other occasions too, we have only seen an actually very small number of borg/starfleet ground encounters.

IIRC that's what they were doing in STFC:

WORF: I have ordered all weapons to be set on a rotating modulation. The Borg will adapt quickly. We will be able to fire twelve shots at most.

IIRC in one scene we also see a crewman trying to change the frequencies of his rifle after the Borg adapt to the ones he was using, but he gets assimilated before he can finish.

On the link regarding the ST Picard phaser rifle above, there's mention that the screen on the new phaser rifle is supposed to make it easier to remodulate the rifle in the heat of combat.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well in the mirror universe alternate timeline Picard the Borg seemingly had been defeated. Somehow. Which implies they must have gotten their shit together when it comes to fighting the Collective.

We saw in Regeneration that even after increasing the power of the phase pistols, the Borg adapted in the same way they always do after a few shots.

[madd0c0t0r2]

Well in the mirror universe alternate timeline Picard the Borg seemingly had been defeated. Somehow. Which implies they must have gotten their shit together when it comes to fighting the Collective.

We saw in Regeneration that even after increasing the power of the phase pistols, the Borg adapted in the same way they always do after a few shots.

headcanon - that version of the Borg collapsed USSR style. Their growth was akin to this wonderful paper on droplet lichens, but in 4d not 2d and reliant on diffuse finite resources (or limited number of times a warp can be taken in the same place) not C02 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ ... .2018.0063

[NecronLord]

Well in the mirror universe alternate timeline Picard the Borg seemingly had been defeated. Somehow. Which implies they must have gotten their shit together when it comes to fighting the Collective.

Or 8472 did it, and the Confederation just claims the glory.

A lot of the Confederation timeline just seems like Q wangled it.

You'll notice, mind you, that the Confederation uses basically the same tactics and equipment as the Federation.

As to the adaptation, eventually, yes, but even the borg have hard limits to power output, that doesn't mean they have no limits.

[Solauren]

More then likely, 8472 took out the Borg.

After all, the Borg only survived that because of Janeway.

And with the way the Confederacy acted, well, I can't see Voyager doing nearly as well with that attitude. Odds are, 'conquerer' style Janeway would have pissed off the Kazon quickly enough, they attacked Voyager enmass.

Or, Confederacy Janeway said 'fuck the Occompa, not our problem', and they took the Caretaker's Array home.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I could imagine Warship Voyager wiping out the Kazon ships before turning their attention to the Caretaker Array. Assuming they were brought to the Delta Quadrant in the first place- they were only dragged there because they were hunting for the Maquis in the Badlands. The Con!Federation wouldn't have allowed territory containing their citizens to find themselves on the wrong side of the Cardassian border. Assuming they didn't simply invade and defeat the Cardassians outright, which means no demilitarised zone and therefore, no Maquis.

The Undine weren't going to stop once they'd dealt with the Borg, they were going to go on to sterilise the entire galaxy so the Con!Federation would have had to figure out how to defeat them without the bio-molecular warheads.

[bilateralrope]

Then there was the topological anomaly that the Enterprise created in I Borg, but refused to deploy because it would be genocide. The Confederacy would have used it.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

If they didn't simply terminate and disassemble Hugh the moment they found him of course.

[Crazedwraith]

Yeah, judging by what ended up happening with Hugh and similar incidents in Voyager it seems the mostly likely result would be the engram would shut down one cube and the collective knows how how to cut it's losses there.

[Evilchumlee]

Starfleet is too reliant upon their high tech toys to the point of having almost blind faith in them. While the same can be said about Jedi in Star Wars(though in their case it is more about trusting The Force), this was meant as a sign that they were arrogant and had become dogmatic in their beliefs. For Starfleet is is just normal.

Ru'afo comments on something like this in "Insurrection"...

There may be an actual in-universe explanation that people tend to forget about...

The Khitomer Accords.

Even though things got disrupted in ST6, they still happened, and were a MASSIVE arms limitation treaty.

We might not see Starfleet Marines because dedicated Marines might be outright illegal.

It's why "Starfleet isn't a military." it WAS, one point, but their "scientific and exploration programs were unaffected."

There's some canon-supported observations here about how different powers dealt with this... the Klingons had the most ingenious way to side-step treaty stipulations...

At the some point before TNG, the "Klingon Imperial Fleet" became the "Klingon Defense Force." Makes sense, given a disarmament treaty. But they still seem to be military focused? It seems... they essentially privatized their military.

Khitomer Accords may put limits on what weapons are legal in general, but REALLY put limits on what type of forces governments can field. The Federation just stripped alot of the military stuff out of Starfleet and just made them "explorers" with dustbuster gun-tools. The Klingons? They seem to have just said "fine, the government can't field a military? We won't." and then dispersed military assets to directly control of the Great Houses as private forces. Khitomer Accords may not have had provisions of private military forces.

The Houses definitely field their own forces. We don't know what the greater structure of the KDF is, but it seems like in times of war, the Klingon Houses essentially voluntarily cooperate with each other, but command structure is largely based around honor/respect of individuals rather than an actual formal command hierarchy. I.e. the Klingons follow Gowron because they respect him, and they follow Martok's orders because they respect him. They don't really HAVE to, they choose to.

[Evilchumlee]

double post sorry

[Batman]

Interesting thoughts on the Klingons sidestepping the Treaty stipulations about demilitarization (assuming there were any) by essentially feudalizing their military.

[Evilchumlee]

Interesting thoughts on the Klingons sidestepping the Treaty stipulations about demilitarization (assuming there were any) by essentially feudalizing their military.

I feel like they all did it somewhat in their own way.

The Klingons just split their forces up, so they could claim "The Empire has no military!" Realistically, given what we know from DSC, the "Empire" as it stands in it's modern form was only about a century old. The forces were feudalized prior to that anyway, it's nothing new for the Klingons. This time around, they retained the overall structure of the Empire. Post-ENT and DSC-era Klingons seemed to be only very loosely aligned, the "Empire" proper only uniting once L'Rell takes over.

The Federation came closest to actually honoring it, but in alot of ways just got more creative "No, no you see we stopped making "Cruisers", this ship is an "Explorer". No, that's not a "Battleship" it's an "Escort". See, Starfleet totally is just science and exploration, not a military! They kept damn near all of their infrascture actually intact, they just... PR'd the hell out of all of it, changing their uniforms, styling their phasers differently. Same stuff, just "nicer" looking.

The Romulans just... turtled up and nobody could really check on them.

[Ralin]

I don't have a lot to add, but they sounds like a very plausible theory and also could easily have evolved into something people genuinely believed.