Replicators invade Star Trek galaxy

[Gurgeh]

What would first contact between the Replicators and the Federation be like if the first ship to make contact with the Reps was a Nebula class starship what would the Federatoin think of the Replicators technology. By this point the Reps have about 170 ships (just a random number)

[Molyneux]

Oh, wait wait wait wait. We're using the Star Trek Online setting? Not the period of the shows?

Replicators are fucked. The STO Federation is on a constant-war footing, with a fleet numbering in the tens of thousands of ships - and they have no compunction about using Borg tech, or anything else they come across. This is not the pacifist Federation of TNG - they use whatever weapons are available, have no qualms about using overwhelming force, and they try diplomacy first, but if that doesn't work they send in the attack fleets. Look what happened when the Romulans tried to start using Borg tech, for instance.

Hell, look what happened in the Devidian episodes. A month, tops, after first encountering a serious Devidian threat, Starfleet designed and distributed an infantry weapon tailor-made to exploit their weakness.

[Johonebesus]

Only the human form Replicators nano-machine colonies and they achieved this by copying and modifying the makeup of their android creator for thousands of years. The lego-block Replicators are not, they're just...lego-blocks held together by technobabble.

I thought the wave weapon made the bugs dissolve into dust just like the humanoids.

[Mercenario]

@bilateralrope

This keeps building until it has sucked most of the fluid down a black hole.

Ähm, no. There are other forces at work two, you know?
Earth is also not beeing reduced to a tennis ball by gravity.

@avatarxprime

They can claw up some individual Replicators in infantry level combat, but anyone doing so will eventually be torn apart and killed, their matter being used to produce new Replicators.

Or the other way round.
Since 8472 biology is known to eat nanotech for breakfest unless you adept it to hide itself.

And sorry, the replicators can be shot with handguns. The stuff Worf is able to jury rig an shield against using his comunicator.

And really numbers do not quite matter in space.
Have 10% more range and the enemy might not even get to fire a shot at you.

[avatarxprime]

However, none of this applies to phasers, which are not conventional particle beams. They are also not DEWs.
The effect on the target is created by the funky reactions of nadion particles with the target matter. Though, there's little we can do analysis-wise with real science, as nadions are an imaginary particle created by ST writers. None of which helps answer the question- why should the Replicators be immune to them? We don't know how nadion particles actually work. My point was that they would not be immune to them "just because", as they are not an energy weapon per se.
A better weapon for examination would be Romulan disruptors. A particle beam firing antiprotons is also not a DEW weapon, as the damage is going to be caused by M/AM annihilation.
In both cases (nadions and antiprotons) the damage is most certainly done by the matter being fired and the resultant reaction. This likely applies to many other weapons in ST, which tend to have a habit of being reaction-based.

Ah, I see, that's what you were after. Ok, well you might have a point about the nadion particles and anti-protons, but it's still not much of a game changer. Phasers and Disruptors are still DEW. A phaser functions as laser-like -> particle beam -> matter streamer as you go through it's settings. That was the explanation for all the differing effects of a phaser, the higher the setting the more nadion particles it releases so the phaser can trigger it's NDF effect. There was a Star Trek the Magazine issue that discussed all of that in some detail, I think my friend might have a copy of it. Regardless, that change in the scope of the beam is from stun to heats stuff up to blows through rock to vaporizes a person shows that something must be changing, the obvious culprit is the amount of nadion particles in the beam itself.

Heck, we know that the NDF effect has problems with dense matter and the Ida stock Replicators should shrug off full nadion blasts too. ST has material that can do that too so it wouldn't take much to develop Replicator bodies that are immune to the effect. So at the highest setting, where a phaser is firing a matter stream of nadion particles you have a point, but at anything else it changes nothing.

As to the disruptors, they clearly don't use up that much anti-protons seeing as everyone in the room when one is fired is not killed by the gamma radiation produced, nor is there a brilliant and bright light generated on the target (or in the air the beam passes through) from the resulting annhiliation reaction. Again, just like with the nadion particles it really doesn't change much. However, you do introduce a way for ST races to fight the Replicators without resorting to Treknobabble with them developing newer versions of their weapons that fire far more concentrated matter streams. Since we all know projectile weapons and Star Trek don't mix I won't bother bringing up that idea

Do we have any reference as to the effectiveness of sonic weapons?

As far as I know we don't, but I would ask what type of sonic weapon do you have in mind? Something that uses sound to generate a ton of force on the target or something that uses high speed vibration to shatter the target? A sufficiently powerful version of the former should work like a projectile weapon as far the the Replicators are concerned while a version of the latter would likely work by causing the blocks to break up. I could see both options potentially working out as weapons against them.

Oh, wait wait wait wait. We're using the Star Trek Online setting? Not the period of the shows?

Yeah, but at the very beginning (2400) so the Federation is not at a war footing yet, the Klingons are not enemies yet, etc... As I said in my initial post in this thread I find it likely that the intervention of the Replicators will likely prevent the fracturing of the AQ powers and change the power dynamics vastly from what we see in the game.

They can claw up some individual Replicators in infantry level combat, but anyone doing so will eventually be torn apart and killed, their matter being used to produce new Replicators.

Or the other way round.
Since 8472 biology is known to eat nanotech for breakfest unless you adept it to hide itself.

Yeah, their immune system was capable of fending off Borg nanoprobes, that's great while they're still alive, less so when they're dead. Replicators are not the Borg, they don't assimilate a target, they eat it (figuratively speaking). A dead 8472 is just biomass, and the Replicators have shown time and again they can use any matter available to them to produce more Replicators.

And sorry, the replicators can be shot with handguns. The stuff Worf is able to jury rig an shield against using his comunicator.

Not sure if this was directed at me or not, but I never said otherwise. Projectile weapons are one of the Replicators few consistent weakness (pre Human form of course) since they damage the blocks and scatter them preventing them from being repaired and reassembled. However, ST races tend not to use projectile weaponry. We've seen that the Borg don't adapt to being punched in the face or having a mek'leth drawn on them, yet no one among the major AQ powers has arrived at the conclusion of using slug throwers against them. Heck as far as we know they haven't even tried testing the idea out. Note, Picard in First Contact does not count.

[Darth Tedious]

Do we have any reference as to the effectiveness of sonic weapons?

As far as I know we don't, but I would ask what type of sonic weapon do you have in mind? Something that uses sound to generate a ton of force on the target or something that uses high speed vibration to shatter the target? A sufficiently powerful version of the former should work like a projectile weapon as far the the Replicators are concerned while a version of the latter would likely work by causing the blocks to break up. I could see both options potentially working out as weapons against them.

Sonic disruptors popped up in TOS:'A taste of Armageddon'. I believe they were ultra-ultra high frequency weapons, breaking targets up at a molecular level.
However, they weren't widespread, only being used on one or two planets.

It's highly unlikely that anyone would figure out that sonics worked, saving the few who already use them. One of the Trekverse's biggest disadvantages is not trying different weapons. As you said, the Borg are known to be vulnerable to KE weapons, yet nobody bothers attacking them with bullets- excepting Picard's holodeck antics.
On that thought, is it worth pointing out that Worf's communicator shield was defending him from holographic bullets?

[Molyneux]

Do we have any reference as to the effectiveness of sonic weapons?

As far as I know we don't, but I would ask what type of sonic weapon do you have in mind? Something that uses sound to generate a ton of force on the target or something that uses high speed vibration to shatter the target? A sufficiently powerful version of the former should work like a projectile weapon as far the the Replicators are concerned while a version of the latter would likely work by causing the blocks to break up. I could see both options potentially working out as weapons against them.

Sonic disruptors popped up in TOS:'A taste of Armageddon'. I believe they were ultra-ultra high frequency weapons, breaking targets up at a molecular level.
However, they weren't widespread, only being used on one or two planets.

It's highly unlikely that anyone would figure out that sonics worked, saving the few who already use them. One of the Trekverse's biggest disadvantages is not trying different weapons. As you said, the Borg are known to be vulnerable to KE weapons, yet nobody bothers attacking them with bullets- excepting Picard's holodeck antics.
On that thought, is it worth pointing out that Worf's communicator shield was defending him from holographic bullets?

Note that at least shortly after the time period specified in this (2406, I believe?), the Federation started using every weapon available to them in a big way - at least, if the game mechanics are anything at all to go on. Everything from phasers to disruptors to polaron weapons is fair game.

[Stofsk]

As far as I know we don't, but I would ask what type of sonic weapon do you have in mind? Something that uses sound to generate a ton of force on the target or something that uses high speed vibration to shatter the target? A sufficiently powerful version of the former should work like a projectile weapon as far the the Replicators are concerned while a version of the latter would likely work by causing the blocks to break up. I could see both options potentially working out as weapons against them.

Sonic disruptors popped up in TOS:'A taste of Armageddon'. I believe they were ultra-ultra high frequency weapons, breaking targets up at a molecular level.
However, they weren't widespread, only being used on one or two planets.

The Klingons fielded a disruptor which was the exact same prop as the one that was used in the above episode (maybe barring a slight alteration), and IIRC they never had a 'beam' effect emanate from them.

It's highly unlikely that anyone would figure out that sonics worked, saving the few who already use them. One of the Trekverse's biggest disadvantages is not trying different weapons. As you said, the Borg are known to be vulnerable to KE weapons, yet nobody bothers attacking them with bullets- excepting Picard's holodeck antics.
On that thought, is it worth pointing out that Worf's communicator shield was defending him from holographic bullets?

As far as the Borg are concerned, they've only had limited encounters with them, and it's more important to destroy their space vessels than go hand-to-hand with them. So it doesn't overly concern me that they don't replicate 20th century slugthrowers to counter the Borg at every opportunity. But even if they did, why are we assuming the Borg wouldn't adapt to that? I mean they do so relatively easily to phasers, losing one or two drones doesn't matter to the Collective as a whole, and they can use that experience to analyse the weapon's effects and build a countermeasure to them. EDIT On that note, just because Picard killed two drones in the holodeck doesn't necessarily mean the Borg have a 'vulnerability' to holographic bullets. Remember - in 'QWho' the first Borg drone who beamed onto the Enterprise was taken care of by Worf's phaser. The next one had already adapted. By 'Best of Both Worlds part 1' they had developed a randomiser that allowed them to fire a phaser a couple of times before the Borg could adapt to that as well. I think people are kind of overstating the implications in the holodeck scene from 'First Contact'.

The Borg also have a vulnerability to nerve gas and chemical warfare too; should starfleet arm itself with those weapons as well? That is how Picard and Data managed to save the Enterprise at the end of First Contact after all.

As far as the Replicators are concerned, I am not a huge SG-1 fan so I don't feel comfortable talking about them, but still if SG-1 could handle the Replicators I don't see why Starfleet can't figure out a course of action either.

[Darth Tedious]

On the topic of the Borg- flamethrowers.
PS. I know, fucking lightning from the roof will mess it up for everybody. Stupid fire prevention tech.

That is all. Derailment ended.

Back to Replicators...

[Metahive]

As far as the Replicators are concerned, I am not a huge SG-1 fan so I don't feel comfortable talking about them, but still if SG-1 could handle the Replicators I don't see why Starfleet can't figure out a course of action either.

They couldn't actually handle the Replicators, they needed an ancient superweapon, introduced one episode before the final showdown, that conveniently killed all Replicators in the entire galaxy at once with some tweaking. The mother of all DEMs.

I thought the wave weapon made the bugs dissolve into dust just like the humanoids.

No, they disintegrate into a pile of lego blocks.

[Mercenario]

@avatarxprime

However, ST races tend not to use projectile weaponry. We've seen that the Borg don't adapt to being punched in the face or having a mek'leth drawn on them, yet no one among the major AQ powers has arrived at the conclusion of using slug throwers against them.

Well, I guess they would adept to them too. And they have quite a lot of armor, speaking of tactical drones.

Thats more like a works once thing, before they grow themself armor at the exposed areas.

It is quite easy for each ST ship to get a lot of Handguns, thanks to the replicators on board.
(And hell, as if replicators could board ST ships in the first place, they will just be beamed in the sun. Also a technic not often used but still duable considering how effectiv the teleporter is able to work in similar situations.)

Yeah, their immune system was capable of fending off Borg nanoprobes, that's great while they're still alive, less so when they're dead. Replicators are not the Borg, they don't assimilate a target, they eat it (figuratively speaking). A dead 8472 is just biomass, and the Replicators have shown time and again they can use any matter available to them to produce more Replicators.

Well, partly. There cells try to eat everything else too.

Heck, we know that the NDF effect has problems with dense matter and the Ida stock Replicators should shrug off full nadion blasts too. ST has material that can do that too so it wouldn't take much to develop Replicator bodies that are immune to the effect. So at the highest setting, where a phaser is firing a matter stream of nadion particles you have a point, but at anything else it changes nothing.

They still had problems with bullets. And there are a lot of materials in Star Trek taking care of that.
So to assume that the replicators would be able to adept is quite a far shot, since they were not even able to adept to a freaking handgun.

As to the disruptors, they clearly don't use up that much anti-protons seeing as everyone in the room when one is fired is not killed by the gamma radiation produced, nor is there a brilliant and bright light generated on the target (or in the air the beam passes through) from the resulting annhiliation reaction.

Well, I guess the hand disruptors have different setting too.
But all of this may be explained away. Beeing contained in an energy field, burning the victim form inside, better med tech taking care of radiation damage. The guys in Star Trek generally do not care much about radiation. Data was once able to cure people close to the walking ghost phase with some primitive tools. So having eaten some plutonium would probably just get you one sick day.

[Swindle1984]

There was a DS9 novel, I forget the title, where DS9 got attacked by cactus-faced aliens whose ships and spacesuits were immune to phasers. Photon torpedoes worked, but there were too many aliens attacking and once the station's shields went down, boarders started killing everyone on the station. Since phasers were useless but photorps worked, someone had the idea of setting phasers to overload and tossing them like grenades. It worked, but they were running out of phasers (and people to throw them), so they tried replicating phasers but remembered belatedly that the replicator can't generate energy, meaning they had phasers with no charge in them. Useless.

Then Kira hit on the idea of replicating projectile weapons (which I think is what the aliens were using) and replicated the most powerful firearm she knew of, the Klingon "Glassbreaker" (least impressive name for a gun ever), and used it to kill a bunch of aliens.

Everyone on DS9 died horribly regardless, until a time-traveling Quark and Odo (who started this whole mess) fixed things.

[Batman]

@avatarxprime

However, ST races tend not to use projectile weaponry. We've seen that the Borg don't adapt to being punched in the face or having a mek'leth drawn on them, yet no one among the major AQ powers has arrived at the conclusion of using slug throwers against them.

Well, I guess they would adept to them too.

Except they never actually did, of course. They get their asses handed to them by KE/momentum attacks for the entirety of the franchise.

It is quite easy for each ST ship to get a lot of Handguns, thanks to the replicators on board.

Which is why this is the standard response to Borg incursions. Oh wait.

(And hell, as if replicators could board ST ships in the first place, they will just be beamed in the sun.

If they're within 40,000 km of the sun (the canon range limit for transporters from what I know) the replicators are the least of their problems and why don't they ever use that ability in-universe? Feel free to show me a single incident of the E-D dealing with intruders by beaming them off the ship.

[Darth Tedious]

I find it very hard to believe that the Borg, in all their experience, had not come up against KE weapons before. FFS, had noone ever thrown rocks at them? If they could adapt to it, they would have. And fuck armour, why don't their personal shields work against it, hmm?

Merc's false logic is hilarious.
Federation > handguns.
Handguns > Replicators.
Therefore, Federation > Replicators.

Let's apply that to the most basic Vs. scenario possible-

Rock > scissors.
Scissors > paper.
Therefore, rock > paper!

Oh noes! Rock pwns all!

[Stofsk]

So how many times have Borg demonstrated a vulnerability to slugthrowers? How many times have they been shot with for-real bullets?

[Darth Tedious]

So how many times have Borg demonstrated a vulnerability to slugthrowers? How many times have they been shot with for-real bullets?

A total of none. That's why everybody has been saying "Picard in FC didn't count".

For the same reason, I say Worf's combadge shield doesn't mean much. Have we ever seen a combadge-based shield deflect real weapons?

[avatarxprime]

I think people are kind of overstating the implications in the holodeck scene from 'First Contact'.

It's not just the holodeck scene though, Borg have had their necks snapped (Data), limbs cut off (Worf) and literally torn apart (S8472) without ever adapting to physical damage. The conclusion draw from all of those incidents is that Borg shields cannot protect them from physical weapons. Now I will say that the Borg do eventually get around to dealing with this particular weakness, but that's not until the 29th Century as shown by One. He had a shield that repulsed physical attacks as well as protected him from energy weapons and was a "29th Century Borg drone," or at least one developed with 29th Century tech in mind. Now it is possible that this new Borg shield that One sported came in earlier then the 29th Century, but it's certainly not around by the timeframe specified for this scenario.

and it's more important to destroy their space vessels than go hand-to-hand with them.

Although you are correct that it's more important to be able to destroy Borg ships than focus on drones, Starfleet doesn't have the necessary firepower in the series to do so just yet. Even by the time of First Contact when the various anti-Borg ships are online they still just barely took a Cube with a purposefully deployed defensive fleet around the Federation Homeworld. They also know that the Borg assimilate targets by personally engaging them, and they have no reliable way to actually kill drones. Why then shouldn't they invest some small percentage of resources into ways to kill drones? The phasers Worf sets up in STFC are expected to be able to get off a couple shots at most, why would you leave such a gaping hole in your defenses? With weapons that can reliably kill drones you could always send a team over to a Cube to blow it up with an antimatter charge or something.

However, ST races tend not to use projectile weaponry. We've seen that the Borg don't adapt to being punched in the face or having a mek'leth drawn on them, yet no one among the major AQ powers has arrived at the conclusion of using slug throwers against them.

Well, I guess they would adept to them too. And they have quite a lot of armor, speaking of tactical drones.

Thats more like a works once thing, before they grow themself armor at the exposed areas

It is quite easy for each ST ship to get a lot of Handguns, thanks to the replicators on board.
(And hell, as if replicators could board ST ships in the first place, they will just be beamed in the sun. Also a technic not often used but still duable considering how effectiv the teleporter is able to work in similar situations.)

Batman has already responded to your post in much the same way I would have so I'll just add a bit of information and deal with parts he didn't. I already gave multiple examples of the Borg meeting physical weapons where they never adapted, I even threw in one example where they did. Please provide an instance where they did that doesn't cite a 29th Century drone.

Also, as to the transporter, who says that the energy field Replicators emit won't make "unbeamable?" Also, since the Asgard use that same trick, who says the Replicators won't do as they always do against the Asgard and cut the sensors that could detect them? Seriously, the Asgard transporter works better than any ST equivalent (more reliable, can handle far more mass, already been weaponized, etc) and the Replicators have found ways around that problem, the idea that they won't do so against the AQ powers is silly.

Yeah, their immune system was capable of fending off Borg nanoprobes, that's great while they're still alive, less so when they're dead. Replicators are not the Borg, they don't assimilate a target, they eat it (figuratively speaking). A dead 8472 is just biomass, and the Replicators have shown time and again they can use any matter available to them to produce more Replicators.

Well, partly. There cells try to eat everything else too.

Eh, again, only effective so long as they remain alive, but I will give you that their claw attacks will also introduce their destructive cells onto the Replicators' bodies. Also IIRC that was stated to be a function of their immune cells being passed into the target.

Heck, we know that the NDF effect has problems with dense matter and the Ida stock Replicators should shrug off full nadion blasts too. ST has material that can do that too so it wouldn't take much to develop Replicator bodies that are immune to the effect. So at the highest setting, where a phaser is firing a matter stream of nadion particles you have a point, but at anything else it changes nothing.

They still had problems with bullets. And there are a lot of materials in Star Trek taking care of that.
So to assume that the replicators would be able to adept is quite a far shot, since they were not even able to adept to a freaking handgun.

Replicators don't adapt (with the 1 exception that is the anti-Replicator gun), they have a high resistance to energy based weaponry and are vulnerable to physical weaponry (except for the Human forms) as I've stated repeatedly in this thread. Asking why they never adapted to energy weapons is like asking why a Redwood never adapted to fire even though you can punch one all day long and do all of jack and squat.

As to the disruptors, they clearly don't use up that much anti-protons seeing as everyone in the room when one is fired is not killed by the gamma radiation produced, nor is there a brilliant and bright light generated on the target (or in the air the beam passes through) from the resulting annhiliation reaction.

Well, I guess the hand disruptors have different setting too.

Disruptors are canonically stated as having 2 settings, kill and stun. Anything we see where the target ends up dead is the kill setting and since we don't see the visual effects of tons of annhiliation reactions going on, they aren't. At most the m/am reaction is used to ensure the target dies, but a sufficient quantity of anti-protons are not released to cause everyone in the room to have radiation exposure or produce any other effect.

But all of this may be explained away. Beeing contained in an energy field, burning the victim form inside, better med tech taking care of radiation damage. The guys in Star Trek generally do not care much about radiation. Data was once able to cure people close to the walking ghost phase with some primitive tools. So having eaten some plutonium would probably just get you one sick day.

Doesn't matter. All of those are after the fact (i.e. exposure) and not once have we see people involved in a firefight in ST have to go to Sick Bay after for anti-radiation treatments. It's far simpler to say that the disruptor beam does not contain sufficient anti-protons to do much more than kill the target of the beam with gamma radiation given the lack of all other evidence. If you have an example that would refute this please provide it, but as far as I can recall nothing we've seen supports your interpretation over mine.

[Stofsk]

I think people are kind of overstating the implications in the holodeck scene from 'First Contact'.

It's not just the holodeck scene though, Borg have had their necks snapped (Data), limbs cut off (Worf) and literally torn apart (S8472) without ever adapting to physical damage. The conclusion draw from all of those incidents is that Borg shields cannot protect them from physical weapons. Now I will say that the Borg do eventually get around to dealing with this particular weakness, but that's not until the 29th Century as shown by One. He had a shield that repulsed physical attacks as well as protected him from energy weapons and was a "29th Century Borg drone," or at least one developed with 29th Century tech in mind. Now it is possible that this new Borg shield that One sported came in earlier then the 29th Century, but it's certainly not around by the timeframe specified for this scenario.

Borg drones are pretty strong. One threw Riker and Worf around in 'Best of Both Worlds part 1' and Locutus was strong arming Worf in part 2 before Data came and gave him a hand. I wouldn't call the Borg vulnerable to physical attacks, simply because they're much stronger than any biological adversary they've encountered, with the sole exception of Species 8472. The latter case is interesting because it does show that Borg adaptation isn't a no-limits affair. But that doesn't mean, for example, that Borg cannot adapt to physical attacks. When you can literally shove a fully grown adult male human half way across the bridge of the Enterprise, why would you need a forcefield to protect against fisticuffs?

Worf cutting a drone isn't really that significant either, because drones were going around sticking needles in people's necks to borgify them. Even if you could take them out with knives, like Worf (who trains hard as a Klingon Warrior, something which 99.9% of starfleet doesn't do) you're still getting into melee range with an enemy who can turn you into one of their ranks just by sticking you once. Not exactly the best strategy to use, wouldn't you say?

and it's more important to destroy their space vessels than go hand-to-hand with them.

Although you are correct that it's more important to be able to destroy Borg ships than focus on drones, Starfleet doesn't have the necessary firepower in the series to do so just yet. Even by the time of First Contact when the various anti-Borg ships are online they still just barely took a Cube with a purposefully deployed defensive fleet around the Federation Homeworld. They also know that the Borg assimilate targets by personally engaging them, and they have no reliable way to actually kill drones. Why then shouldn't they invest some small percentage of resources into ways to kill drones? The phasers Worf sets up in STFC are expected to be able to get off a couple shots at most, why would you leave such a gaping hole in your defenses? With weapons that can reliably kill drones you could always send a team over to a Cube to blow it up with an antimatter charge or something.

Well you could always use nerve gas against Borg drones.

So how many times have Borg demonstrated a vulnerability to slugthrowers? How many times have they been shot with for-real bullets?

A total of none. That's why everybody has been saying "Picard in FC didn't count".

For the same reason, I say Worf's combadge shield doesn't mean much. Have we ever seen a combadge-based shield deflect real weapons?

Look I get that saying 'lol they'd just start replicating gunz and win ok' is a flawed argument. For one thing, firing a gun is different than firing a phaser. I doubt anyone in Starfleet has any experience with said weapon, so you can't simply replicate a bunch of them and expect to turn redshirts into rambos. I'm just saying you can argue against that flawed position without needing to go 'well why don't they do this against the Borg hmm? '

[Darth Tedious]

My actual point was merely that the Federation tends not to experiment with varied weapons much, leading to "if phasers don't work, we'll have to go hand-to-hand".
This was with regards to sonic disruptors- even if they'd work wonderfully against the Reps, how likely are they to be tried?

[Stofsk]

I don't know. I can't think of many instances where 'phasers don't work, go to plan B'. There was a DS9 episode called 'To The Death' where they beamed down to a planet and their phasers couldn't work, so they all went melee instead.

*shrug lol*

[avatarxprime]

I think people are kind of overstating the implications in the holodeck scene from 'First Contact'.

It's not just the holodeck scene though, Borg have had their necks snapped (Data), limbs cut off (Worf) and literally torn apart (S8472) without ever adapting to physical damage. The conclusion draw from all of those incidents is that Borg shields cannot protect them from physical weapons. Now I will say that the Borg do eventually get around to dealing with this particular weakness, but that's not until the 29th Century as shown by One. He had a shield that repulsed physical attacks as well as protected him from energy weapons and was a "29th Century Borg drone," or at least one developed with 29th Century tech in mind. Now it is possible that this new Borg shield that One sported came in earlier then the 29th Century, but it's certainly not around by the timeframe specified for this scenario.

Borg drones are pretty strong. One threw Riker and Worf around in 'Best of Both Worlds part 1' and Locutus was strong arming Worf in part 2 before Data came and gave him a hand. I wouldn't call the Borg vulnerable to physical attacks, simply because they're much stronger than any biological adversary they've encountered, with the sole exception of Species 8472. The latter case is interesting because it does show that Borg adaptation isn't a no-limits affair. But that doesn't mean, for example, that Borg cannot adapt to physical attacks. When you can literally shove a fully grown adult male human half way across the bridge of the Enterprise, why would you need a forcefield to protect against fisticuffs?

Worf cutting a drone isn't really that significant either, because drones were going around sticking needles in people's necks to borgify them. Even if you could take them out with knives, like Worf (who trains hard as a Klingon Warrior, something which 99.9% of starfleet doesn't do) you're still getting into melee range with an enemy who can turn you into one of their ranks just by sticking you once. Not exactly the best strategy to use, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, but if you shot them with a bullet you'd never have to close to melee range. The entire "phasers or fists" fighting style used by most of the ST races is silly. If snapping a drone's neck works or stabbing it or ripping it apart, then shooting it should work too. Perhaps Starfleet does eventually come to this conclusion and that's why One had shields that protected him from being gunned down rather than being mobbed. I can hope.

and it's more important to destroy their space vessels than go hand-to-hand with them.

Although you are correct that it's more important to be able to destroy Borg ships than focus on drones, Starfleet doesn't have the necessary firepower in the series to do so just yet. Even by the time of First Contact when the various anti-Borg ships are online they still just barely took a Cube with a purposefully deployed defensive fleet around the Federation Homeworld. They also know that the Borg assimilate targets by personally engaging them, and they have no reliable way to actually kill drones. Why then shouldn't they invest some small percentage of resources into ways to kill drones? The phasers Worf sets up in STFC are expected to be able to get off a couple shots at most, why would you leave such a gaping hole in your defenses? With weapons that can reliably kill drones you could always send a team over to a Cube to blow it up with an antimatter charge or something.

Well you could always use nerve gas against Borg drones.

Yeah and they could vent the atmosphere, drones don't need no stink'en air

[Stofsk]

Yeah, but if you shot them with a bullet you'd never have to close to melee range. The entire "phasers or fists" fighting style used by most of the ST races is silly. If snapping a drone's neck works or stabbing it or ripping it apart, then shooting it should work too.

Why? That does not follow. Just because you can stab somebody doesn't mean you can shoot them. Some forms of armour against guns in the real world don't confer protection from blades after all.

[Gurgeh]

How long do you think a Galaxy wide invasion of the Replicators will go down? How long do you think that it will last?

[Molyneux]

My actual point was merely that the Federation tends not to experiment with varied weapons much, leading to "if phasers don't work, we'll have to go hand-to-hand".
This was with regards to sonic disruptors- even if they'd work wonderfully against the Reps, how likely are they to be tried?

I don't know. I can't think of many instances where 'phasers don't work, go to plan B'. There was a DS9 episode called 'To The Death' where they beamed down to a planet and their phasers couldn't work, so they all went melee instead.

Again, note that this is Star Trek Online-timeframe - and in STO, using any and all weapon types available is exactly what the Federation (and Klingon Empire) do. Even taking game mechanics into account, it's not unusual to see Starfleet ships sporting disruptors, tetryon weapons, whatever - and ground teams have an even more varied set of armaments.

This setting has a Federation that has seen the necessity of violent thinking.

[avatarxprime]

Yeah, but if you shot them with a bullet you'd never have to close to melee range. The entire "phasers or fists" fighting style used by most of the ST races is silly. If snapping a drone's neck works or stabbing it or ripping it apart, then shooting it should work too.

Why? That does not follow. Just because you can stab somebody doesn't mean you can shoot them. Some forms of armour against guns in the real world don't confer protection from blades after all.

My point is concerning physical damage based weapons getting around Borg defenses. Whether or not a bullet would work or you would need to use armor piercers or a bullet in the shape of a small blade with a small explosive charge in it or whatever is not the issue. Regardless of the specific shape the weapon would take to circumvent Borg armor, a ranged physical impactor weapon should have been developed by Starfleet as part of their anti-Borg technology. We even know they still keep some bullet based weapons around, why not develop an anti-Borg version?