nBSG Cylons vs Borg What are Your Thoughts?

[FTeik]

How powerful are the nukes a Raider can carry?

And how much damage by torpedos/missiles can the shields of a Borg-cube take before going down? In FC it looked like it took less than a dozen to take out an admittedly already weak spot after an unknown time of fighting and blow the cube up.

[Turin]

How powerful are the nukes a Raider can carry?

See the last post on the previous page. Also, I mention the problem with any jump-shoot-jump tactics on behalf of the cylons.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Is there any reason to expect the Borg and Cylon to indulge in a War of the Hackers? The Borg are known for hacking systems if I recall.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

About Centurions vs. Drones - it wouldn't matter. Borg are shown in FC to engage in orbital bombardment against outposts they plan to destroy - despite the pathetic power of the one heavily damaged Sphere - and in Voyager to beam things they want to assimilate straight into their Assimilation Chambers surrounded by Forcefields.

If the Raiders can get off a total of 119 Mt in a battle, the Cylons are bugfucked. The Borg destroyed 39 capital ships at Wolf 359, and all of them presmably had dozens of photonic torpedoes, and would have used them. Also, Starfleet is capable of getting its weapons off in bursts of up to 5 at a time.

In short, the Cylons are simply atrociously out-teched, outgunned, and outclassed by the Borg. They have nowhere near the industrial capacity to crank out even a fraction of the ships that would be necessary to fight they Borg, who have thousands of ships more than the Cylons, each of which would be totally invulnerable to any sort of conventional attack, and, even if it was neutralized by a hacking attempt, would insulate the rest of the Collective from said attack.

So basically, this is just Star Wars vs. Star Trek in a nutshell.

[DrMckay]

Cylon FTL? How effective would that be in close combat? as a tactical advantage...

It should be quite an advantage to flit in and out of real space. The raiders apparently can make rapid jumps. Unfortunately, much like the much-derided "well the Federation can just beam a PT on board the enemy ship! LOLZ!", we never actually see the cylons use this in combat. Stupid, but there it is.

Actually, a Cylon Raider completed multiple rapid jumps in: "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," when it was pretending to be a 'wounded bird' to gain information on Galactica.

Also, in: "Lay Down Your Burdens," Caprica Sharon used an FTL computer from a Cylon Heavy Raider to calculate rapid jumps to take a Raptor squadron back to Caprica.


In the Miniseries, after jumping into (andout of) a formation of Civilian ships right after the attacks, a Raider jumped out, returned to get more ships, and multipule raiders jumped back in to launch a nuke attack on the non-FTL-capable vessels.

[Turin]

Cylon FTL? How effective would that be in close combat? as a tactical advantage...

It should be quite an advantage to flit in and out of real space. The raiders apparently can make rapid jumps. Unfortunately, much like the much-derided "well the Federation can just beam a PT on board the enemy ship! LOLZ!", we never actually see the cylons use this in combat. Stupid, but there it is.

Actually, a Cylon Raider completed multiple rapid jumps in: "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," when it was pretending to be a 'wounded bird' to gain information on Galactica.

Also, in: "Lay Down Your Burdens," Caprica Sharon used an FTL computer from a Cylon Heavy Raider to calculate rapid jumps to take a Raptor squadron back to Caprica.

In the Miniseries, after jumping into (andout of) a formation of Civilian ships right after the attacks, a Raider jumped out, returned to get more ships, and multipule raiders jumped back in to launch a nuke attack on the non-FTL-capable vessels.

Sorry, I wasn't more clear. These were the examples I was thinking of when I said "The raiders apparently can make rapid jumps." When someone mentioned the tactical uses, I was assuming that we were talking about jumping into the system, then jumping right on top of the borg (rather than the ~100's km range we typically at most in the show), unload missiles, jump right over to the next cube, unload missiles, etc. In a real combat situation, we always see the raiders leave the cube and then fly towards the Big G, having to cross through all the Vipers and PD. We never see them leave the basestar and then jump right on top of the Big G, even though (as your examples show) there's no particular reason for them not to.

Doesn't matter, though. The borg shields can take anything the cylons can throw at them. Maybe the cylons have a chance if they can bring down the borg shields via "uber haxx0r", but I'm not seeing any solid evidence of that.

[NecronLord]

The Borg can learn -- they isolated all their critical systems so Data couldn't access weapons, shields, and had to go a different route.

No they can't. They learn by assimilation, not reasoning. This is hammered home repeatedly in Voyager. They had security against Data just exploding their ship, but that hardly proves they're capable of deductive reasoning and inference.

It's hard to imagine the Federation wouldn't exploit the same vulnerability come Borg Cube Mk. II, so the Borg do patch holes.

Because second time around they swiftly got their hands on the Supreme Commander of the Borg Offensive and physically interfaced with him to gain root level access - something Data actually explicitly talks about - to their network.

Oh wait...

[brianeyci]

The Borg can learn -- they isolated all their critical systems so Data couldn't access weapons, shields, and had to go a different route.

No they can't. They learn by assimilation, not reasoning. This is hammered home repeatedly in Voyager. They had security against Data just exploding their ship, but that hardly proves they're capable of deductive reasoning and inference.

Like I said, before Voyager. What did you think the Borg were doing in Q Who when they were beaming onto the Enterprise-D? Assimilation? The ship didn't have to purge any nanoprobes, and wasn't under threat of assimilation. Back then, assimilation was a sliver in some writer's eye and the Borg weren't space zombies. It's not my fault that the canon is not consistent. Besides, in Voyager the Queen did decide to make some cloud to assimilate earth with, as as far as I know she came up with that idea on her own. So the Borg can learn, as long as the Queen, an individual is around to make decisions. It is not a far stretch to say the Borg Queen would go in a rage and destroy infected cubes or have cubes fire on other cubes, given oh, that's what she did in Voyager.

Because second time around they swiftly got their hands on the Supreme Commander of the Borg Offensive and physically interfaced with him to gain root level access - something Data actually explicitly talks about - to their network.

Oh wait...

Well they had Picard. Nothing in a movie's supposed to be pure coincidence, and I saw the dream as Picard still having some connection. If you buy the idea Picard had some special knowledge of the Borg cube, rather than focus fire, then Picard did have some access to the collective then. Plus ST:FC retconned, so Picard was not the leader of the Borg invasion, but the Queen was, always there. So it appears access to any drone could've started the sleep program, especially since the Borg are supposed to be a collective with no one drone more special than another.

Anyway NecronNitpick, it doesn't really matter, since the Cylons automatically taking over the Borg is just not going to happen. Do you dispute this, or were you just pointing out alternative interpretations which are no more reasonable than mine?

[NecronLord]

Like I said, before Voyager. What did you think the Borg were doing in Q Who when they were beaming onto the Enterprise-D? Assimilation?

As a matter of fact, yes. That's precisely what they were doing. They beamed over one at a time, had a look 'round, and jabbed their arms into the computers to procure knowledge. The special effect was different, but they may as well have used their vampire tubules, the behaviour was the same. This behaviour falls under the later category of assimilation.

The ship didn't have to purge any nanoprobes, and wasn't under threat of assimilation.

Really? Tell that to the seventeen Enterprise crewmembers who were taken into the borg ship. The fact that they were 'assimilating' hardware, not wetware here, doesn't mean they were engaging in a different behaviour. The only evidence you have for them being engaged in non-assimilative learning behaviour is that they make a visual inspection of the warp core before interfacing with the Enterprise computer. Hardly impressive.

Besides, in Voyager the Queen did decide to make some cloud to assimilate earth with, as as far as I know she came up with that idea on her own.

That's not learning from experience as you would claim. That's implementing an attack mechanism. And she requested outside aid with that, too.

So the Borg can learn, as long as the Queen, an individual is around to make decisions. It is not a far stretch to say the Borg Queen would go in a rage and destroy infected cubes or have cubes fire on other cubes, given oh, that's what she did in Voyager.

Irrelevant. I'm disputing your claim that they are capable of learning, not whether or not they'd self destruct compromised vessels.

Well they had Picard. Nothing in a movie's supposed to be pure coincidence, and I saw the dream as Picard still having some connection. If you buy the idea Picard had some special knowledge of the Borg cube, rather than focus fire, then Picard did have some access to the collective then.

Yes. He could hear their thoughts. He was, however, no longer Locutus.

Plus ST:FC retconned, so Picard was not the leader of the Borg invasion, but the Queen was, always there.

Actually, if anything, it elevated Picard, from a simple 'speaker' (Locutus) for the collective, to 'an equal' for the Queen.

So it appears access to any drone could've started the sleep program, especially since the Borg are supposed to be a collective with no one drone more special than another.

See above

Anyway NecronNitpick, it doesn't really matter, since the Cylons automatically taking over the Borg is just not going to happen. Do you dispute this, or were you just pointing out alternative interpretations which are no more reasonable than mine?

Pardon? No more reasonable? You're claiming the borg learn from direct experience. They do not. They assimilate new sources of knowledge, and they adapt to weapons frequencies. That's it.

[brianeyci]

Okay, so the Nitpicker decides to question what learning is. You also want to go with the general definition of assimilation rather than injecting nanoprobes into shit. Okay, here's something for you. I just read two pages of my Calculus book, and "assimilated" the knowledge. Now when it comes to problem solving, I will have to apply that knowledge. If the Borg find prefix codes in a huge database, that doesn't tell them shit about what to do with them. Knowledge doesn't automatically imply problem solving. So by the very use of information to solve problems, they are problem solving and capable of independent action. This might not always be the most rational or intelligent action, but they do make choices, if neutered by their collective consciousness and the whims of the Queen.

Why the fuck are you taking some dialogue where Seven says the Borg learn only by assimilation as proof positive the Borg don't learn at all? Is that the only place it comes from? If anything, there was a period where the Borg were still growing where they had to learn just to achieve spaceflight. Like it or not, back in Q, Who the Borg were not space vampires, and when they took the seventeen crewmembers it was collateral damage compared to cutting away a huge chunk of the hull for oh, I don't know, analyzing the Enterprise-D's hull composition. I already preempted the Voyager criticism, and whether you like it or not I can choose parts of canon to be more important than others, necessary in a self-contradictory material like Star Trek.

[Sidewinder]

Sorry, I wasn't more clear. These were the examples I was thinking of when I said "The raiders apparently can make rapid jumps." When someone mentioned the tactical uses, I was assuming that we were talking about jumping into the system, then jumping right on top of the borg (rather than the ~100's km range we typically at most in the show), unload missiles, jump right over to the next cube, unload missiles, etc. In a real combat situation, we always see the raiders leave the cube and then fly towards the Big G, having to cross through all the Vipers and PD. We never see them leave the basestar and then jump right on top of the Big G, even though (as your examples show) there's no particular reason for them not to.

Maybe FTL jumps consume uneconomical amounts of fuel or energy, and that's the reason the Cylons avoid using FTL jumps tactically, in the manner you describe.

[NecronLord]

Okay, so the Nitpicker decides to question what learning is. You also want to go with the general definition of assimilation rather than injecting nanoprobes into shit

No. Borg 'assimilation' was seen before it was said to be nanites. BoBW depicts Locutus' assimilation as simple surgical violation. Borg 'assimilate' cultures, technologies, and people. That was always the idea, though 'people' appears to have only come in later, with their second appearance - remember what they did with the bases on the Neutral Zone? They already, before they'd even been on the screen, were a species that grew and developed from what they absorbed from other species.

The Borg do not learn by experience, nor do they preform experiments to gather more data. They acquire data from other species, from their brains, their computers. You made up an example of the Borg 'learning from their mistake' after BoBW and fixing a flaw in their network, for which you have no evidence. You made up evidence. You are therefore a lying cunt, Brian.

If the Borg find prefix codes in a huge database, that doesn't tell them shit about what to do with them.

This would be precisely why they made a priority of assimilating Picard, in order to gain his knowledge of human protocol.

Why the fuck are you taking some dialogue where Seven says the Borg learn only by assimilation as proof positive the Borg don't learn at all?

Not just Seven. But various other characters. And direct observation. See Scorpion's scene with a drone preforming the same action over and over again, and getting stung over and over, because trying some other means of data gathering is alien to it.

Is that the only place it comes from? If anything, there was a period where the Borg were still growing where they had to learn just to achieve spaceflight.

You assume a cybernetic race started its existance on one planet... why?

Like it or not, back in Q, Who the Borg were not space vampires, and when they took the seventeen crewmembers it was collateral damage compared to cutting away a huge chunk of the hull for oh, I don't know, analyzing the Enterprise-D's hull composition.

No. They were space locusts. They already at that stage, grew and expanded by absorbing the resources and information of other cultures. In their second appearance, we saw them augmenting this by extracting knowledge from pertinent brains.

[Turin]

Sorry, I wasn't more clear. <snip> We never see them leave the basestar and then jump right on top of the Big G, even though (as your examples show) there's no particular reason for them not to.

Maybe FTL jumps consume uneconomical amounts of fuel or energy, and that's the reason the Cylons avoid using FTL jumps tactically, in the manner you describe.

Actually, that makes some sense, as in the episode where there was a mounting fuel crisis (can't remember the name right now), there was talk about fuel "for X number of jumps" which probably indicates that's their big fuel use.

Still, in this case one would think either the cylons or the colonials would be more likely to use it when the chips are really down, as the Galactica did (to awesome effect) during Exodus part II. Actually... wait a second, that's actually a really good example of the sort of tactical-FTL I was talking about.

I suppose tactical FTL is possible after all, but again, it will only help the cylons if they can get their hands on some more serious weaponry. Just out of curiosity, do we ever see the borg use torps (I can't seem to remember them using anything other then their "lasers")? Colonial/cylon point defense is pretty impressive... we might be able to give the cylons a few points on that side.

[NecronLord]

Brian. I'll put this straight, and in a seperate post for you. You made up evidence for a behaviour which does not exist. Borg take the knowledge of others, they do not develop their own.

Your claim that 'Discounting Voyager' makes them substantially different is intellectually dishonest. You are attempting to make them appear different by taking one and only one episode into account. By that standard, we could take the first appearance of the Shadows from Babylon 5 into account only, and say they are a benevolent race who seek only to give people what they desire, and whose actions solely consisted of rescing a valuable artifact for one of the main characters, and saving his career.

In thier very next appearance we see that the Borg gain information from the assimilation of people. They then say 'Preparation is irrelevant. Your people will be assimilated as easily as Picard has been.' At that stage - right in story #2, episode #3, they're assimilating populations. It's not just a Voyager thing. It is part of the Borg concept from BoBW onward.

[PREDATOR490]

Unimatrix Zero had a woman that was assimilated at Wolf 359 didnt it ?

In addition, this episode introduced the Tactical cube which was apparantly more combat orientated that the others so realistically any incursion into Borg territory is going to yield the possibility of encountering more of those.

The Borg have demonstrated an aggressive defense of their own territory with entire fleets of cubes engaging S8472. Dozens of ships defending their planets, Hubs unicomplex and the single S8472 ship that was encountered had some damage inside when the Voyager crew went aboard indicating that the Borg drones may have been using their disrupters. I also thought that Seven used an energy weapon when she and fellow drones got trapped on a planet.

My spotchy memory not withstanding, Borg vessels have demonstrated 5 types of weapons.

The first is the standard green beam weapon like a phaser. (Scorpian, BOBW)
The second is the infamous holding beam. (Scorpian, BoBW, QWho)
The third is the cutting beam which was used to slice the E-D up ( BoBW, QWho)
The fourth is a type of torpedo ( BoBW, Scorpian Pt2, Endgame)
The last was some sort of shield breaker, Maybe a torpedo (QWho)

As for boarding a cube. They have the ability to generate forcefields when they detect an appropriate threat. One stopped Worf from getting to Picard and the Tactical Cube had some to stop the Voyager boarding team getting to vital areas so the possibility exists they will do that to any other boarders that present a threat to something the Borg wish to protect.

Can Cylons walk through Forcefields and can their weapons get through forcefields ?

Based on this. I would expect the Borg to defend their own territory against any potential invaders or threats so in either scenario if the Cylons start hitting on the Borg like S8472 you would expect to see deployments of fleets of cubes.
If cubes get compromised the Queen destroys them either by self destruct or loyal vessels, possibly capturing them inorder to identify how they are being compromised so it can be stopped. Like she attempted to do in Unimatrix Zero.

Of course the Borg have demonstrated a distinct vulnerability against those "pathagens" so perhaps the Cylons could develop something like that to take the Borg out if they can get to the Queen.

[NecronLord]

Unimatrix Zero had a woman that was assimilated at Wolf 359 didnt it ?

Yes. But he's talking about out-of-universe development of the Borg concept by the producers of Star Trek.

[Rye]

Re: borg "learning" .. anyone remember that Borg that was in a loop because he couldn't assimilate the S8472 ship? If Borg learned from straightforward stimuli like humans or even, well, animals, he would've given up, wouldn't he?

[Gustav32Vasa]

The Borg do not learn by experience, nor do they preform experiments to gather more data. They acquire data from other species, from their brains, their computers.

SEVEN OF NINE: Perhaps you should do the latter. (off her look) I will
not help you destroy Omega. It should be harnessed.

JANEWAY: That's impossible.

SEVEN OF NINE: The Borg believe otherwise.

JANEWAY: Explain.

SEVEN OF NINE: On one occasion, we were able to create a single Omega
molecule. We kept it stable for one trillionth of a nanosecond before it
destabilized. (beat) We didn't have enough boronite ore left to
synthesize more. But the knowledge we gained allowed us to refine our
theories.

JANEWAY: And the Borg have been waiting for the chance to test them
out...

JANEWAY: Sometimes fear should be respected. (back at her) Tell me...
how many Borg were sacrificed during this experiment?

SEVEN OF NINE: Twenty-nine vessels... six hundred thousand Drones. But
that's irrelevant.

[PREDATOR490]

Unimatrix Zero had a woman that was assimilated at Wolf 359 didnt it ?

Yes. But he's talking about out-of-universe development of the Borg concept by the producers of Star Trek.

Well the Borg were ruined by Voyager just like so much else, no point in going into that very old discussion. A person that was assimilated during Wolf 359 was alive despite the cube being destroyed which strikes me as a major flaw.

However...

Pardon? No more reasonable? You're claiming the borg learn from direct experience. They do not. They assimilate new sources of knowledge, and they adapt to weapons frequencies. That's it.

Wouldnt Endgame serve to suggest they CAN learn from direct experience. Admiral Janeway came back from the future with technology supposedly meant to be enough to defend against the Borg of her time frame. Yet she claimed the current day Borg would be able to adapt to the technology long before they ever destroyed the hub and the Queen would have her entire collective working on analysing the data of the first encounter.

The Borg also managed to change their strategy on breaking the armor on a single scan and the Queen was able to trace an "untraceable" single then break through stealth technology followed by assimilating the armor technology. The only person who KNEW this technology was Admiral Janeway and was only assimilated towards the end.
During this the Queen makes it a point to say a sphere has managed to assimilate her pathagen and the armor technology. Which can either mean the sphere was infected and had managed to assimilate the armor technology via the shuttle or Janeway's knowledge OR the Sphere had adapted to the pathagen and the armor technology.

My intepretation of this might be wrong but I lean more to the latter than the former since this Pathagen cut her off from everything else so if the Sphere was infected it should cut her off from it yet she was able to order it to kill Voyager.

Overall the Borg did demonstrate some ability to learn from direct experience in Endgame and definetly showed the ability to adapt to more than just weapons frequencies.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

The Main debate here seems to be focused on Borg tactics/strategies etc. while the Cylons are apparently content to jump in, launch attacks and jump out without doing much damage and getting pizowned the whole time.

What about nBSG canon suggests that when the tide turns, the Cylons won't just up and leave, run away to some hidden section of space, spend forty years building up an industrial base, developing and infiltrating sleeper agents and then just show up one day and nuke the shit out of a completely compromised enemy that didn't see it coming?

They went from walking toasters to minimally distinguishable from humans in less time than it takes to have a mid-life crisis, From there it's entirely possible that they use captured drones to go from skin-jobs to Borg-jobs, perhaps letting agents get assimilated with secure programs that will turn these agents into 'back-doors' into the hive mind on cue.

Sure, the Cylons lose this one in the short run, in the long run?

Drop shields and bend over.

[Sam Or I]

Also, I think the Cylon FTL travel has a much bigger advantage strategically vs. tactically. (I would not rule out tactical uses though.)

The Cylons could effectively choose thier battles, hitting undefended, and lower power ships.

How effective are the sensors of the Borg, and can the cyclons jump out of the range. On the flip side, the Cylon sensors are not very effective after a jump. (They cannot track the Galactica Fleet.) In real life one of the biggest advantages or disadvatages of space combat is detection.

Plus how effective are the borg ship born shields against projectiles? Raiders and Heavy Raiders primary weapons are projectile, not energy based.

[Ford Prefect]

In real life one of the biggest advantages or disadvatages of space combat is detection.

Actually no, it's really, really easy. However, Cylon sensors are limited by the speed of light, which is why they have so much trouble tracking down the Colonials; the fleet travels faster than the 'tell-tales', so the Cylons have to rely on recon and staking out potential locations of interest to the fleet.

[Thag]

One thing that comes to mind: the CPU for every Cylon baseship is more vulnerable to personal attack than a redshirt with a tapped out phaser. All they need to do is beam one drone into the hybrid's vat room, plug a few probes into her body, and they have at worst really crippled the base ship and at best taken complete control. They may catch on eventually and begin putting centurions in the room, but how long will that take?

[Starglider]

I realize that is the author's intent, to inject nanoprobes and take over circuitry. But it's rather a stupid idea that a nanoscale object can assemble in high enough concentrations to take over a computer.

Actually that's quite plausible, given a) advanced nanotech, b) detailed foreknowledge of the target and c) no special hardening against this kind of attack. The critical section needed to control a typical computer is a very, very small target; for example interrupting the traces in the L1-L2 cache interface on a contemporary processor. (a) apparently holds for the borg and Trek design is universally stupid enough that (c) probably holds for everyone, the main stretch is (b) - certainly in the mobile emitter example it seems unlikely that the processors you could fit in some nanobots would successively reverse-engineer technology centuries ahead of themselves (well enough to take it over) within seconds.

But of course the key point is the nanotubes would have to penetrate the Centurion's armor, which we see resist non-explosive rounds with not a scratch, suggesting high tensile strength.

If it is completely sealed yes. If it isn't they will get through any cracks or interfaces, though it may take some time.

As for the general question, the Cylons win on the ground, but I'm afraid that Borg space superiority is unbeatable - in particular the raiders will be completely useless. The best the Cyclons can hope for is that their jump drives will let them escape when they start losing ships in huge numbers.

[Sidewinder]

One thing that comes to mind: the CPU for every Cylon baseship is more vulnerable to personal attack than a redshirt with a tapped out phaser. All they need to do is beam one drone into the hybrid's vat room, plug a few probes into her body, and they have at worst really crippled the base ship and at best taken complete control. They may catch on eventually and begin putting centurions in the room, but how long will that take?

That's a very good point. Of course, Cylons do NOT simply ignore intruders, unlike Borg drones. So if the Borg beam themselves into the wrong room, they'll quickly be transformed into Swiss cheese.