General Empire vs Borg musings

[Lord Insanity]

Except you weren't talking about raw total production capacity at all, you were very explicitly talking about their ability to learn and make SW tech to begin with, and this was highly obvious in my posts, your insistence on it taking 'decades' to catch up tech wise (and the Borg couldn't catch up in total production in decades without gaining vast amounts of new territory, and also mentioning technical knowledge from experts, so you were very clearly talking about tech level not raw production output). Are you trying to tell me you accidentally framed all your posts as about being the tech level and time it takes to learn the technology when you really meant total industrial output the whole time?

Did you not read my arguments and posts at all? About how once the Borg gain SW tech their key is to steal production capacity by Assimilation so they don't have to get into a straight production contest? New numbers or old, "The Borg use their existing facilities to try and out-produce the Empire" is a losing strategy, while "trying to take Empire worlds and ships so it's production becomes theirs" is the one I and everyone else have been debating for some time.

Or are you just trying to change what you were arguing about?

Whatever the case, you're a seriously bad debater.

Apparently I mistakenly assumed we were talking about the same thing. In your first couple posts you suggested the scenario that the Borg could covertly take some undefended worlds (like they did in the neutral zone) to gain Wars tech. Then "lay low" till they upgrade their fleet so they can go all out. All of my responses were related to either; the Borg would have a difficult time actually acquiring useful knowledge in the first place (most Wars ships have mechanics not engineers) with out provoking an Imperial response, or that they need to actually upgrade their entire infrastructure and logistics to produce and support Wars tech in their ships.

The second part of that is directly related to the massive industrial production disparity. It's not that they would need to match the Empire's production straight up but at least be competitive relative to their own fleet. That is where assimilating to steal the Empire's own production would then come into play. If that massive disparity doesn't exist they don't have to do nearly as much if any industrial and logistics upgrading of their own.

Unsure. What is canon, and has been declared ex-cathedra by Pablo - now that he can do that - and put in reference books again, is the much smaller size of the DS2, not reflective of the numbers on SDN's main site.

The 160 and 900 km sizes are being considered an effects glich - for instance a 120 km death star is present in Rogue One, and WEG numbers are canon again.

Odd, the Rogue One visual guide has the Death Star listed as 160 km. Why would he switch the "official" numbers to ones that are objectively wrong?

[NecronLord]

Unsure. What is canon, and has been declared ex-cathedra by Pablo - now that he can do that - and put in reference books again, is the much smaller size of the DS2, not reflective of the numbers on SDN's main site.

The 160 and 900 km sizes are being considered an effects glich - for instance a 120 km death star is present in Rogue One, and WEG numbers are canon again.

Where did you find that info, honorable Necron? Hidalgo's Twitter says he'd "bank on" a 160 km DS1, and I think that's what SW dot com says. Further, the latter source still pegs the Executor at 19 km, so I'm not seeing a rollback to WEG numbers. Maybe you're talking about armament figures?

The rollback was originally presented in the 2nd edition of Complete Locations, which restates as canon 120 km and 160 km. I was in fact mistaken, Pablo has since stated that the 160 is an error in the book, but seems to defend a 100 mile DS2 on twitter also. Hidalgo also says that 900km is not the VFX size here.

Complete Locations is also what gives us the microbial 660 km for the Starkiller planet(oid).

Of course, now that we know that top-canon movies emphasise death star sizes by 'virtual' telefoto lenses and things, we can toss out scaling done on the actual movie of RotJ as 'obviously this was also a virtual telefoto lens like Rogue One' and accept the canon figure. 160km for DS1, same size for DS2.

Odd, the Rogue One visual guide has the Death Star listed as 160 km. Why would he switch the "official" numbers to ones that are objectively wrong?

He answers this question here, while my previous post was based on what I'd read up to 2015 when the 900km was junked by LFL - looks like they're both around the same size.


I should note that I think this is all dumb-fuckery, because the opening crawl for RotJ outright states the new death star is more powerful than the first, so it ought to be bigger to accommodate that, but hey, mobile-games are canon these days.

[Q99]

The key factor on the Death Star in my mind isn't how big it is, but how hard it is to get an infestation off once it's on

[DarthPooky]

The key factor on the Death Star in my mind isn't how big it is, but how hard it is to get an infestation off once it's on

If you mean by infestation you mean there are Borg aboard I think once the imperials figure out what's going on the balance would tip in there favor and for that matter I think the same would be true for any planet even with a token garrison unless the Borg manage to overwhelm the ground forces with numbers. Remember the same frequency thing goes for Borg drones as well so there will be bleed through with there personal shields. Also star wars weapons would probably be better able to bring down a drones personal shield because they rely on conventional fire power and not on the NDF chain reaction. Also don't for get all the other weapons at the empires disposal like grenades, E webs, and on planets of cores walkers tanks artillery air support turret emplacements not every thing on everything on every planet but you get my meaning the imperials are naturally more equipped than the Borg who only use drones.

Talking about this i wonder how many shots would it take to down a drone with the shield up with say an E 11 on max power.

[Q99]

If you mean by infestation you mean there are Borg aboard I think once the imperials figure out what's going on the balance would tip in there favor and for that matter I think the same would be true for any planet even with a token garrison unless the Borg manage to overwhelm the ground forces with numbers.

Remember First Contact, where a few Borg rapidly expanded their numbers from 'a few' to 'most of the ship.'

Also remember that the Death Star is the size of a *moon*. There's more hiding places than I could count. You can outnumber the borg a thousand to one but have to spread them out to ten thousand places, so. Send an army of a million after a hundred drones and you might find nothing, or a few thousand of the army mysteriously missing.

Remember the same frequency thing goes for Borg drones as well so there will be bleed through with there personal shields.

Yea, that's... honestly a good thing for the Borg. Hand blasters don't pack all that much power to begin with, humans survive being hit by them. Them only doing a little per shot is great. Note also that the Federation introduced pulse phasers which fire balls of energy (somewhat like blasters!) rather than beams and that still left them with limited shots before the weapons were nigh-useless, and while we can safely assume that drone shields can be overwhelmed (since they can't pack all that much power), we've never actually seen drone shields fall to a weapon they've adapted to.

And the Borg'll be doing their 'xenomorph' reenactment, sneaking through vents and all that. Even with working weapons, they'll be running around, sneaking people, and gaining number.

Also star wars weapons would probably be better able to bring down a drones personal shield because they rely on conventional fire power and not on the NDF chain reaction.

Lacking frequency, blasters won't be able to be tuned to bypass the shields completely. Every hit will be at reduced power.

(Also at lower settings, phasers just cause thermal effects anyway. NDF is if you crank the settings to high, normally unneeded in infantry situations)

Also don't for get all the other weapons at the empires disposal like grenades, E webs, and on planets of cores walkers tanks artillery air support turret emplacements not every thing on everything on every planet but you get my meaning the imperials are naturally more equipped than the Borg who only use drones.

Oh, sure, you can kill them with heavy weapons- Drones aren't set up to handle that level of brute force I can't imagine. But in tightly urban environments, or worse, a space station, heavy stuff is much harder to deploy, especially if one is trying to be on offense, which gives a lot of room for the Borg to work.

Though I will note we've never seen the Borg in a land engagement that's not small scale (every big scale encounter of Borg vs Land has involved a ship and, well, those tend to be resolved rather more definitively) and there shouldn't be any problem with them assimilating walkers and artillery either. Or making weapon emplacements out of assimilated buildings and such, they do like to redecorate their territory and upgrade it with their tech. A few Drones turned a basic shuttle into a pretty good warship in Enterprise. No reason they couldn't do so to planetary vehicles either.

Talking about this i wonder how many shots would it take to down a drone with the shield up with say an E 11 on max power.

At first, one or two, but once adapted? I'd think anything below a half-dozen is definitely out, and maybe twice or more that. You'd want to pour on fire to kill individual drones, which makes drone clearance quite difficult.

[NecronLord]

we've never actually seen drone shields fall to a weapon they've adapted to.

In Enterprise Regeneration, they counter borg adaptation by in one instance, by just increasing the firepower of phase pistols. At 10 megajoules (far more than a TNG Phaser rifle) per shot, the Ent Phase pistols were able to take out - including a tactical drone - seven borg with guns that had previously been adapted to.

On a macro-scale, borg ships suffer death by overwhelming firepower a lot in Scorpion, and the same with Voyager vs the borg probe in Dark Frontier.

And of course, the commander of ground forces on the original Death Star is the General Tagge, the only man smart enough to take the Rebellion seriously on-screen and thus the Smartest Man in the Empire (TM).

[Q99]

In Enterprise Regeneration, they counter borg adaptation by in one instance, by just increasing the firepower of phase pistols. At 10 megajoules (far more than a TNG Phaser rifle) per shot, the Ent Phase pistols were able to take out - including a tactical drone - seven borg with guns that had previously been adapted to.

Ah, point, I had forgotten about that. Still, we've seen it overwhelmed but not really worn down.

I'd think you'd want stuff like Bowcasters and E-Webs. E-11s just don't pack all that much power.

And of course, the commander of ground forces on the original Death Star is the General Tagge, the only man smart enough to take the Rebellion seriously on-screen and thus the Smartest Man in the Empire (TM).

Still, the DS is *so big*, what is the proper response?

[NecronLord]

Still, the DS is *so big*, what is the proper response?

Sergeants win wars; free the local NCOs to take what action they deem necessary to win; this is where it comes down to small unit tactics, and even for the Star Wars rebels grade Keystone Kops stormtroopers, they'll still have vastly more advantages than picard and crew.

[Q99]

Sergeants win wars; free the local NCOs to take what action they deem necessary to win; this is where it comes down to small unit tactics, and even for the Star Wars rebels grade Keystone Kops stormtroopers, they'll still have vastly more advantages than picard and crew.

That's kinda vague, small unit tactics aren't the main issue as I see it. What is the proper strategy again a foe that can pick on targets spread across over a million cubic miles?

The Death Star has a crew of 1.2 million. That means a ton of assimilation targets aside from troopers, and as the same time less than one person per cubic mile of station- and that's crew total. There's 25,984 troopers and 342,953 military personal, the majority of the crew is thus non military and not likely trained for action to boot, plenty of potential drones.

This crew must maintain many locations spread out across the Death Star, from high importance stuff like reactors- and the Death Star does include numerous sub reactors the Borg can tap into and assimilate (Han talking about a reactor leak near the detention block)- to low importance locations like the gunners for all the guns across the surface, where one or two drones could likely be expected to take and assimilate a small gunnery crew by surprise pretty easy?

Do you spread out the Stormtroopers to guard as much crew as possible and risk defeat in detail, or concentrate them and leave much of the station uncovered? How do you find the Borg when they're good at hiding from scanners? When the Borg retreat into the depths of the Death Star, do you pursue and follow, risking running into locations where more drones lie in wait to grab targets in close range before retreating further, and where the Borg will control the doors and such for both protection and to trap forces? Do you take it slow, giving the Borg more time to build, or move fast with the risks that involves?


Heck, how much logistical chain is needed to send an army of tens of thousands into the depths of the Death Star? Will elevators have to be working consistently to keep them fed? What are the bottlenecks, considering we're mostly dealing with hallways plus the odd wide-open room/cargo elevator and standard spaceship/station type doors that can be closed and locked?

It's sort of like fighting in a city, but with much less open space, indefinite room to retreat, and lost potential Stormtroopers *or* non-combatants adding to the opposition count, potentially by the hundreds of thousands.

[Q99]

Or to put it another way: Saying "Let's find 1,000 Borg drones in the Death Star," is of a much lower scale of difficulty than "Let's find 1,000 people in all of earth." Even people who aren't hide and seek championships (and FC shows the Borg really aren't bad at it) are tricky on this scale.

Granted, there will be stuff to narrow it down a good amount, you look to places where people go missing (unless the Borg set up an internal transporter inside the DS, in which case, yeesh, things'll get even nastier), but it's one of the best places to work in the SW universe. Just have a ship travel under stealth to extreme transporter range and wait for those shields/jamming to go down (because neither are up all the time).

[Solauren]

The Borg on the Death Star could be very interesting.

How much empty space is there on the Death Star, and how well the interior materials screw with Borg transporters, if at all?
(Borg transporters have been shown to beam through shields, so they might not have all the weaknesses of Federation transporters)

Depending on the tactic taken, the Borg could present a serious security threat.

Right up until It's determined where the Borg are not, and whomever is in charge orders the rest of the station destroyed to contain them.

[Shroom Man 777]

You know... this should have a scene where the Queen grafts tissues onto C3PO or R2 and inexplicably has a makeout session...

Why the heck does the Queen want to snog Data anyway? Whaat.

[Q99]

The Borg on the Death Star could be very interesting.

How much empty space is there on the Death Star, and how well the interior materials screw with Borg transporters, if at all?
(Borg transporters have been shown to beam through shields, so they might not have all the weaknesses of Federation transporters)

Depending on the tactic taken, the Borg could present a serious security threat.

Right up until It's determined where the Borg are not, and whomever is in charge orders the rest of the station destroyed to contain them.

Can you blow up segments of the station, is it set up to do there? What if there's something vital there? Or, also importantly, what if the Borg get enough control to stop that- trying to get enough control of the E-E to prevent self destruct was one of their shown main goals, so we know they think about that as high priority during a takeover, and if you want to blow up, say, Slice G by telling it's subreactor to blow up, the Borg don't need full control, just cut off or take over the computers of that reactor (ideally, seize control of *all* the computers eventually, but making sections unblowupable)

We know that the Death Star's systems are fairly linked- the killer torpedo, after all, did not hit the main reactor, but hit something else in the reactor system that hit a chain reaction- so partial destructs may also be tricky/only possible in some areas. Make a dead zone 20km x 20km x 20km and you've left the commander with quite a poser.

You know... this should have a scene where the Queen grafts tissues onto C3PO or R2 and inexplicably has a makeout session...

Why the heck does the Queen want to snog Data anyway? Whaat.

Aside from Picard's speculation, or possibly him just being a valuable addition to the collective, the Queen wanted access to the E-E's computer, which Data had encrypted. Get Data, no encryption, E-E is assimilated, Earth is assimilated, Borg win. Don't get Data, Picard self destructs ship if Borg victory looks too likely.

It's not hard to speculate that the Queen's role in the collective is to do psychological approaches when other approaches are less likely to work, be it snogging Data or lure Seven back.

[Shroom Man 777]

Was Data nanite-proof?

Just flood the vessels with flesh-eating gas. It worked in First Contact.

[Batman]

It worked in the engine room where that gas was readily available and I'm not sure that murdering your crew along with the Borg is such a hot defensive strategy.

[Shroom Man 777]

They can lock out the un-Borged areas... or use chemical weapons in small areas.

[DarthPooky]

Remember First Contact, where a few Borg rapidly expanded their numbers from 'a few' to 'most of the ship.'

Also remember that the Death Star is the size of a *moon*. There's more hiding places than I could count. You can outnumber the borg a thousand to one but have to spread them out to ten thousand places, so. Send an army of a million after a hundred drones and you might find nothing, or a few thousand of the army mysteriously missing.

Lacking frequency, blasters won't be able to be tuned to bypass the shields completely. Every hit will be at reduced power.

(Also at lower settings, phasers just cause thermal effects anyway. NDF is if you crank the settings to high, normally unneeded in infantry situations)

As I remember the Borg were taking advantage of all the numerous Jeffries tubes that seem to be a part of Starfleet ship design philosophy. We have never seen Imperials use maintenance tubes like that. Not that there wouldn't be places to hide but it would be allot harder for them. As far as the hole few thousand going missing thing that's assuming the Stormtroopers let the drones get close enough to use the tubes.

Yea, that's... honestly a good thing for the Borg. Hand blasters don't pack all that much power to begin with, humans survive being hit by them. Them only doing a little per shot is great. Note also that the Federation introduced pulse phasers which fire balls of energy (somewhat like blasters!) rather than beams and that still left them with limited shots before the weapons were nigh-useless, and while we can safely assume that drone shields can be overwhelmed (since they can't pack all that much power), we've never actually seen drone shields fall to a weapon they've adapted to.

Are you kidding me? Ya know ill just show you what blasters can do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omsuyE3 ... DlQxHFUJFz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Jk8fj ... Fz&index=8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fgpzeQ ... DlQxHFUJFz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC65oM6 ... DlQxHFUJFz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxgQS-7 ... DlQxHFUJFz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-ji9-B ... DlQxHFUJFz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAqHAJz ... Fz&index=9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIVnoUPB6v0
So ya blasters have tremendous power behind them on there higher settings much more so then weave seen Phasers do that's why hand Phasers are not usually used on shields in the first place. So what bleed through there will be will likely still pack a punch and will probably take down the shields with a few more shots.

Whether the Phasers use beams or bolts is not important because the assault Phased rifles still operate on frequency's which blasters don't.

[Q99]

They can lock out the un-Borged areas... or use chemical weapons in small areas.

It's not like doors will keep Borg out for long, we've seen Borg use vents for one (Well, that and take down doors), and we also saw an escape from a prison section, one of the *high* security areas, via vent, so we know the DS has pretty good sized air vents and stuff, and what consists of a 'small area' in the death star is quite relative, and is also something that can be solved if they have control of vents and doors in an area.

Chemical weapons are relatively easy to 'adapt' to, to boot, masks, covering... I mean, it's worth noting what killed them in FC was 'plasma coolant' right next to the engine. So really a completely enveloped by pressurized boiling death cloud situation there... and we also see it disperse fairly fast and Picard survived because it's heavier than air and he was able to stay above it, so you'd want something a lot more persistent and that won't just sink into the depths of the DS or form a thin film on the ground.

Was Data nanite-proof?

It's not exactly clear, but he can delete memories anyway so high odds of 'he'd just suicide'.

Just flood the vessels with flesh-eating gas. It worked in First Contact.

Remember all the giant shafts and such which'd quickly give the gas tons of exists. The Death Star is lousy with them because it's a complete three dimensional structure where one has to go vertical to access large amounts of it's systems and which needs air through very large portions of it.

I'd additionally hazard a guess and say it's very likely that a single cubic mile of poison gas is more than all chemical weapons ever made on Earth by a lot, too. It's like, even if you want to, where do you get enough gas?

The Borg can spread out quite far, and... well, sure, tactically you can use it a little when you have some in a small space, but that's not really a solution to the infestation as a whole, and you just get mask and body covering drones.

Or, heck, Borg adapt, go to the gigantic stores of deadly gas you're transporting to an enclosed station, and use that to their advantage.

So ya blasters have tremendous power behind them on there higher settings much more so then weave seen Phasers do

Huh? I mean, those aren't bad showings, but I'm not sure why you think it's much more than what a phaser's done. They've taken down stone columns with explosive force, cut open vaults and doors, made people's torsos explode (remember 'Conspiracy'? Not actually too impressive but fun), and, in one case, a single shot from a type 2 phaser destroys an aquaduct.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Point of order, the "air vent" escape from the detention area was a garbage chute not an air vent, it's directly called as such in the film. Additionally, it leads to another sealed area that can't be escaped from without outside help accessing computers, has at least one nastypredator living in it and periodically makes everything inside go squish.

I'd hardly call that a security problem.

[Q99]

Point of order, the "air vent" escape from the detention area was a garbage chute not an air vent, it's directly called as such in the film. Additionally, it leads to another sealed area that can't be escaped from without outside help accessing computers, has at least one nastypredator living in it and periodically makes everything inside go squish.

I'd hardly call that a security problem.

Point on the vent they used, but it did have a door, it did have a way for the predator to get in and out, and the Borg are known for accessing computers, so it is an applicable security problem.

And that's a prison facility- most of the station is going to have a far wider range of accesses, vents, and so on. There's going to be huge numbers of large airducts because it is required to duct large amounts of air- unless large areas of the station are kept in vacuum, which *also* works for the Borg because drones can work in space and set up facilities in areas no-one but droids will check (and droids are even easier prey).

[Batman]

Point on the vent they used, but it did have a door, it did have a way for the predator to get in and out, and the Borg are known for accessing computers, so it is an applicable security problem.

Of course it had a door. You have to be able to get in to do maintenance?
We don't know how the predator got IN there and there's no evidence there was any other way to get OUT other than the door.
And I don't see how their alleged hacking skills are going to help any Borg caught in there what with Luke & Co needing R2 to shut the thing down and open the door from the outside. If the Borg already HAVE Drones on the outside in a position to do that, the security problem isn't the prison complex or the garbage disposal system.

[Q99]

Of course it had a door. You have to be able to get in to do maintenance?

Rather my point- there's maintenance paths everywhere in the DS. Almost nothing has one way in or out.

We don't know how the predator got IN there and there's no evidence there was any other way to get OUT other than the door.

It vanished before the thing started to close while the door was in sight, remember? And smushing is likely a regular thing and it doesn't have a way to open a door, so that suggests it's got some way out!

And I don't see how their alleged hacking skills are going to help any Borg caught in there what with Luke & Co needing R2 to shut the thing down and open the door from the outside. If the Borg already HAVE Drones on the outside in a position to do that, the security problem isn't the prison complex or the garbage disposal system.

The security problem is for the Death Star.

I mean, if you get all the drones narrowed down to just the prison complex or trash, you've already won or close enough to it, haven't you? Getting them all so narrowed down is the tough part.

But trying to do this when the Borg have drones elsewhere in the station, well, then some of 'em are going to be pulling an R2 (with help of having nabbed a bunch of droids too, no doubt). R2 wasn't anywhere near the compactor no less, he was just at a single computer access station, of which there's probably a heck of a lot. Unlike Luke and Co, a Borg Drone does have some hack capacity on it's own (remember when the drone was accessing the E-D's computers back in Q Who?) so they may be able to do the job on it's own, but there should be drones elsewhere to work it for them.

The DS crew didn't think to go check the compactor or do anything- it was R2 and C-3PO's messup that even started it moving, station security didn't follow up.

Also a prison unit is probably going to be pretty low-priority for assimilation unless the Borg think there's important info in the heads of some prisoners or wardens, in which case they're likely going to seize the whole block's population and then get out, not hang out there for awhile.

If there's no-one with desired information, it's that combination of high security and low priority (due to lacking important systems or resources) that makes it a not-very-likely target unless they have enough control of many nearby areas that they feel it's cut off enough to use as a drone recruitment place.

[Eternal_Freedom]

it was R2 and C-3PO's messup that even started it moving

This is a minor tangent, but where do you get this idea from? IIRC the compactor started moving while the droids were moving down to the hanger, and R2 hadn't accessed the computer since the stormtroopers came knocking on the control room door considerably earlier.

[Q99]

This is a minor tangent, but where do you get this idea from? IIRC the compactor started moving while the droids were moving down to the hanger, and R2 hadn't accessed the computer since the stormtroopers came knocking on the control room door considerably earlier.

They did? I thought they were trying to unlock it and then things began to move... ah, chalk it up to fault memory on my part, it's been awhile. So, bit more competence on their part if the DS crew initiated the compactor, excuse my slipup!

[Crazedwraith]

This is a minor tangent, but where do you get this idea from? IIRC the compactor started moving while the droids were moving down to the hanger, and R2 hadn't accessed the computer since the stormtroopers came knocking on the control room door considerably earlier.

They did? I thought they were trying to unlock it and then things began to move... ah, chalk it up to fault memory on my part, it's been awhile. So, bit more competence on their part if the DS crew initiated the compactor, excuse my slipup!

I don't think it's indicate who if anyone started it. The DS crew didn't seem to have much awareness of where they were otherwise they'd have flood the area with storm troopers and so on. Probably the compactor goes on a time or when it reaches a certain mass.

It doesn't speak much to the competence of the DS computer security that R2 can just go in and do things like shut down compactors and open doors and find prisoners and so on.