Vorlons/Shadows vs Borg

[Rye]

According to Brian Young's site, the upper limit for Shadow defensive capability is 60 megatons delivered over a few seconds, and twelve megatons sends a shadow ship shrivelled up and spinning out of control.

Well, I certainly can't recall a time when a single cube has delivered that amount of energy at one target, can you? And what makes you think that borg shields will even work against shadow/vorlon weapons from the outset? As I recall, in the first borg episode, they just sort of sat there and took damage initially before they adapted. If a slizer beam burns clear through a borg vessel in one go, presumably aimed at a vital system, followed by more blasts in quick succession, will the borg have chance to adapt to it?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

One thing that gets me is the assertion "lately the Borg have a bad track record assimilating biotech". Based on what? Species 8472? For fuck's sake, the Borg have encountered and classified over ten thousand species, with one from another dimension being resistant to typical assimilation attempts. I hardly call that a "bad" track record.

"Encountering and classifying" a species does not mean they've assimilated it.

Also, one planet has millions of species on it.

[brianeyci]

Well, I certainly can't recall a time when a single cube has delivered that amount of energy at one target, can you?

Sixty megatons is the highest upper-limit of the Shadow Crab. The main body just needs to absorb 12 megatons send it spinning out of control. A few torpedoes, or disruptor shots should do the trick. Now,

Phasers are extremely effective for planetary bombardment and asteroid mining activities. Against shields, phasers appear to be tactically equivalent to 300 TW plasma cannons and 30,000 to 40,000 TW laser cannons. Against dense armor, phasers appear to be much weaker, in the 1-10TW range. <snip>

So if I understand my units correctly, take the 30,000 TW figure and the 200,000 TJ figure from Young's site, it would take five to six seconds for a phaser blast from a Borg ship to destroy a Shadow Crab -- and that's taking a high figure (Young shows that 50,000 TJ is enough to send a Shadow Crab spinning out of control with a direct hit) with a low figure using Federation phasers and not Borg disruptors, which are more powerful. I don't see how you could use the 1-10TW figure, since Shadow Crabs and Vorlon ships don't have dense armor.

And what makes you think that borg shields will even work against shadow/vorlon weapons from the outset? As I recall, in the first borg episode, they just sort of sat there and took damage initially before they adapted. If a slizer beam burns clear through a borg vessel in one go, presumably aimed at a vital system, followed by more blasts in quick succession, will the borg have chance to adapt to it?

No matter how good Borg "adaptation" is, they still have to deal with the yield of the photon torpedoes. If you give a yield of 5 megatons, and take Wolf 359 into account, and say ten torpedoes were fired by each ship, Borg ships are already hundreds of megatons more resilient than Shadow Crabs. The incident you were talking about, the Borg likely had their shields down because they recently beamed a drone on board and off board. The Borg wouldn't be so moronic all the time, especially if directed by the Queen. Borg "adaptation" has always been associated with Federation phaser frequency, and if they can't adapt, oh well do things the old fashioned way and slug it out. The Borg can't just magically deflect energy with their adaptation, their shields have to be able to deal with it somehow. It is not "either they adapt, or they die", there is a middle ground.

Brian

[brianeyci]

I'm really sick of people saying that Borg cubes can maneuver quickly because they zipped past Voyager. The fact that this is a huge non sequitur does not seem to occur to them; do they even recognize the distinction between velocity and maneuverability, for fuck's sake?

Fine, I used the wrong word. In the context I was using it for, I was not discussing whether a Borg cube would be maneuverable or not against a Vorlon ship, but discussing the acceleration of the Borg cube as relevant to the construction of the Borg cube. I am fully aware that Borg do not maneuver at all in combat and just sit and shoot. Sorry about that.

Brian

[Rye]

Sixty megatons is the highest upper-limit of the Shadow Crab. The main body just needs to absorb 12 megatons send it spinning out of control. A few torpedoes, or disruptor shots should do the trick. Now,

Did the borg use torpedoes in Voyager at some point? Because when I think of "Borg" and "torpedoes" i think of those used by the borg sphere in FC. They're decidedly not in the MT range. Hell, the torpedoes all the feds shot at the cube weren't in MT range, easily, so I seriously doubt the Borg do have torpedoes in that range till it's shown they do, and that they use them.

Phasers are extremely effective for planetary bombardment and asteroid mining activities. Against shields, phasers appear to be tactically equivalent to 300 TW plasma cannons and 30,000 to 40,000 TW laser cannons. Against dense armor, phasers appear to be much weaker, in the 1-10TW range. <snip>

So if I understand my units correctly, take the 30,000 TW figure and the 200,000 TJ figure from Young's site, it would take five to six seconds for a phaser blast from a Borg ship to destroy a Shadow Crab -- and that's taking a high figure (Young shows that 50,000 TJ is enough to send a Shadow Crab spinning out of control with a direct hit) with a low figure using Federation phasers and not Borg disruptors, which are more powerful.

Where was this established?

I don't see how you could use the 1-10TW figure, since Shadow Crabs and Vorlon ships don't have dense armor.

I'm not sure what this is about to be honest, so I'm going to give upo there and leave it to someone better versed.

No matter how good Borg "adaptation" is, they still have to deal with the yield of the photon torpedoes. If you give a yield of 5 megatons, and take Wolf 359 into account, and say ten torpedoes were fired by each ship, Borg ships are already hundreds of megatons more resilient than Shadow Crabs.

I've seen nothing onscreen that agrees with the idea that at any time a photon torpedo has crashed into a borg cube, it's had megatons worth of explosive power.

The incident you were talking about, the Borg likely had their shields down because they recently beamed a drone on board and off board. The Borg wouldn't be so moronic all the time, especially if directed by the Queen.

I suspect they'd be exactly as stupid, at least to begin with. The Enterprise was something completely alien to them so this was a first contact situation, and in the bits of the 8472 episodes I saw I didn't see any decent tactics going down that should be there if the queen was involved.

Borg "adaptation" has always been associated with Federation phaser frequency, and if they can't adapt, oh well do things the old fashioned way and slug it out. The Borg can't just magically deflect energy with their adaptation, their shields have to be able to deal with it somehow. It is not "either they adapt, or they die", there is a middle ground.

Just to note, in the opening fight of FC, focusing their (decidedly small-yield looking)photon torpedoes on an area that didn't appear to be a vital system made the cube blow in short order. Since the slizer is a precision weapon, I'd imagine it'd be a tactic reproduced frequently.

[brianeyci]

Batman this took me over 20 minutes to reply to. For the points that I agree with or concede to you, don't reply to them, or if you want to you can condense points, thx.

That figure is way out of line. Babtech has the VPK at 4.5 miles long. As your link has the Whitestar at 476 metres long their B5 sizes at the least are dubious.

Good, that figure is more believable. Do you have the size of a Borg tactical cube handy?

Anyway the point was NOT that the Borg have more advanced materials science than the Feds-I frankly don't give a damn either way-but that the ship size does NOT indicate they have more advanced materials science than the Vorlons.

You haven't addressed my VPK could just be a huge building flying in space. As well, your point about non-Newtonian physics can apply to the Vorlons as well, I don't see Shadow crabs or Vorlon ships firing any thrusters. The point about SIF and AMRE, so what, Borg haven't been shown to use SIF to the degree the Feds do. AMRE lets them have quasi-Newtonian acceleration, not to ignore the effects of acceleration completely. So what, does size not matter now? We should just throw away all of this because of it? We know that ships have "thrusters". The best way to resolve this is to compare Borg "thruster" speed with Vorlon "thruster" speed (as opposed to impulse or whatever the Vorlons use for sublight).

Because making a vessel larger just because is incredibly stupid?

No. Smaller is not better, especially if you can build ships the size of VPK and get away with it.

Or maybe unlike you they understand that making a vessel larger than it needs to be is a useless waste of resources.

Pure speculation -- when is something "larger than it needs to be"? By your assumption SSD's are a stupid idea if you could build many more ISD's for the same amount of resources. Their battlecruisers, their main workhorse, is far smaller than the VPK. By Occam's Razor, they cannot make larger combat vessels. The VPK is the exception, not the rule, and we haven't seen it move in combat IIRC, so it is a large building in space that uses hyperspace to move around.

Why? Especially since the only thing that heavy cruiser CAN'T anihilate in passing is a Shadow BattleCrab?

Sure. If the Vorlons were capable or resourceful enough to build larger combat vessels, they would. They don't, and the VPK is the exception and is not a combat vessel. The Borg cube is the rule for the Borg.

Uh-huh. Your point being?

VPK is the equivalent of a big building in space, especially given the size disparity between the largest Vorlon battlecruiser and the VPK. If they could build larger combat vessels, we would see some of them especially at the final gathering at Zha'Dum (sp). If you think that point is invalid, that's like saying "The Feds could build larger combat vessels but they don't -- but wait, here is Spacedock, so they could build a larger ship if they wanted too because of SIF and AMRE."

Pressuposing that they actually have the materials that allow them to go without SIF. The ammount of stress put on the hull (which IIRC as of VOy if nothing else does apply to full-size starships) is quite simply indeterminate without knowing the physical strength of the hull. They may simply have no other choice. As you are assuming that
a) Warp travel puts considerable stress on the hull,
b) Borg hulls can withstand that stress, and
c) do so without SIF support,
burden of proof is on you.

That warp puts stress on a hull is canon, Paris and Janeway talk about not changing course with a shuttle because it could cause microfractures. Considerable stress is up for debate, but warp causes stress. I never said that the Borg do not use SIF at all, I said that the Borg have never been demonstrated to use SIF to the degree the Feds do -- the Feds use SIF to keep together walls on a stationary space station, our own materials science is better than that! Size matters, whether you like it or not the Borg's main combat vessel is more massive than the Vorlon's battlecruiser.What we really need to do to settle this is to see a Vorlon ship moving out of B5, which would probably be using thrusters rather than their advanced whatyoucallit, and a Borg ship moving on thrusters, and compare the speeds.

Which doesn't mean they actually have them.

Fine, point to you about the torpedo ships. But the point on me brining up the micro-torpedoes is that every armed Starfleet ship has been seen to fire torpedoes. Most if not all of the ships at Wolf 359 and ST:FC would have had torpedoes by Occam's Razor.

I have no idea what you're talking about but so what? If the TM information meshes with what's seen on-screen, there's nothing wrong with bringing it up. The information from the TMs is simply not canon. Unless you wish the return of the 1.02 GW type 10 phaser on the Galaxy class...

Sure, but you (or someone else awhile back, you didn't disagree with it) brought up the TM anyway about the phaser rifles and hand phasers. If it stands alone on screen, there should be no reason to bring it up at all. We'll just leave it at that.

As the Nimitz does NOT carry approximately a 1000 SM-2s, not it doesn't. Payload is as required by the ship's mission, nothing more. Size factors into it only as a larger ship naturally has room for a larger payload. Wether or not it carries one is not decided by its size. Case in point: Enterprise-D, which is about an order of magnitude larger than Voyager, has only two torpedo launchers, and carries only 275 (IIRC) torpedoes. Why?

Fine, my comment was moronic. However, every armed Starfleet ship has been seen to fire torpedoes, and a ten torpedo payload is not too much to ask. Anything less than 50 would be far too little for any kind of extended mission IMO.

Which was specifically designed as an answer to the Borg threat, was a dedicated warship which the Feds apparently didn't have until then, and wasn't around for Wolf 359 to boot,

Fine. But shield strength did not increase dramatically from Wolf 359 to ST:FC, unless there is evidence otherwise. Defiant relies on maneuverability and firepower. It still lasted quite long enough to fire torpedoes. And there were Galaxies at Wolf 359, and the Ent-D fired at least six torpedoes at the Borg cube from these screencaps in the short while we see Locutus's perspective. The Ent-D wouldn't have ceased firing those torpedoes. Considering they can launch one torpedo per second, ten torpedoes per ship is a conservative estimate.

None of which were at Wolf 359, assuming they even existed back then (the Sovereign definitely didn't.

I'm also talking about ST:FC, the Akiras and Steamrunners lasted long enough to circle the Borg cube. Long enough to lob several dozen torpedoes, since Federation launchers can fire one per second. Shield strength didn't increase by an order of magnitude from Wolf 359 to ST:FC, so it is reasonable to say that at Wolf 359 ships would have had more than enough time to fire several dozen torpedoes each, which is why the 10 torpedo figure is a conservative estimate.

As they're not around, no.

Man I know that, I'm also referring to ST:FC, we see Akiras and Steamrunners last long enough to circle the Borg cube.

Which is pure assumption, unless you know the refire rate for every class present at Wold 359.

Man there is no way to know that. Fed launchers fire at a rate of one per second, Excelsiors and Connies fire at one per second 150 years ago, Ent-D fires at one per second, Defiant fires its quantums at around one per second, Sovereign fires at one per second, similar technology would have been installed on Federation ships with torpedo bays. For example, an often used argument is that the Death Star's technologies exist in scaled down forms on ISD's. Occam's Razor tells us that other Fed ships have similar torpedo launch technology.

The battle lasted long enough for the E-E to get there, that's all we know. Furthermore, as we have no clue how may and what kind of ships there were, how many of them were attacking at any given time, and how often they attacked, that information is quite simply worthless. Any estimate based on FC is 100 percent pure speculation.

I will try to bring up a quote, but for some reason the 10 hour figure sticks out.

We could limit it to the shots actually seen fired and assume the lowest torpedo yield ever witnessed (which if we include ST V would be none whatsoever). Ten torpedoes each at 5 MT apiece is not overly conservative.

That's TOS torpedoes, not TNG torpedoes. Using the lowest figures for torpedo figures from Pegasus would be correct, I don't know these figures, is it around several hundred kilotons?

Which is still rather high-end,

Fine, we'll use the figures from Pegasus. Still several hundred megaton shields, more endurance than a Shadow Crab that takes 12 megatons to go spinning out of control and 60 to be utterly annihilated.

For which there is no evidence one way OR the other,

Fine, the battle may not have been continuous. But will you accept that there were at least two engagements, one at the Typhonis Sector (where they said they engaged the Borg) and one at Sector 001? The Typhonis Sector battle lasted at least as long as the Ent-E heard the distress calls, and the Sector 001 battle lasted as long as several minutes. More than enough time for ships to lob torpedoes.

:roolseyes: No. I went through the calculations out of sheer boredom. I already said I agree with single-figure GT shielding. You were just getting them the wrong way.

Okay fine. Let's see how you got them. I did it the lazy way -- at first 25 x 40 x 10, then as you suggested 5 x 40 x 10, and if we take really low end estimates of TNG torpedoes, .1 x 40 x 10, still tougher than a Shadow Crab by far.

Brian

[brianeyci]

Did the borg use torpedoes in Voyager at some point? Because when I think of "Borg" and "torpedoes" i think of those used by the borg sphere in FC. They're decidedly not in the MT range. Hell, the torpedoes all the feds shot at the cube weren't in MT range, easily, so I seriously doubt the Borg do have torpedoes in that range till it's shown they do, and that they use them.

I was taking DW's liberal figures dervied from the TM. If we take far less liberal figures and a yield of several hundred kilotons,

Where was this established?

30,000 TW figure from DW's site, 200,000 TJ maximum Shadow Crab endurance from Brian Young's site.

I'm not sure what this is about to be honest, so I'm going to give upo there and leave it to someone better versed.

Well the page is here, DW does a good job of explaining it. I am not a physics buff myself (see my sig), but its not too hard to divide two numbers.

I've seen nothing onscreen that agrees with the idea that at any time a photon torpedo has crashed into a borg cube, it's had megatons worth of explosive power.

Okay. The most damage done to a Borg cube by single torpedoes is here. If a torpedo did crash into a Borg cube and had megatons of explosive power, you wouldn't really see it in space (at least this is the explaination I got when I first started, I can try and find a link to a previous thread if you want).

I suspect they'd be exactly as stupid, at least to begin with. The Enterprise was something completely alien to them so this was a first contact situation, and in the bits of the 8472 episodes I saw I didn't see any decent tactics going down that should be there if the queen was involved.

When the Queen was involved, there was force concentration (finally), they sent 20-30 cubes against a single 8472 ship to try and assimilate it and they were all destroyed.

Just to note, in the opening fight of FC, focusing their (decidedly small-yield looking)photon torpedoes on an area that didn't appear to be a vital system made the cube blow in short order. Since the slizer is a precision weapon, I'd imagine it'd be a tactic reproduced frequently.

They needed Picard, Picard had to know the status of the Borg cube, Vorlons wouldn't necessarily be able to duplicate what Picard did.

Brian

[brianeyci]

Batman, I searched the canon database,

If it takes almost all of the USS Enterprise's 275 photon torpedoes to do this, then we can conclude that photon torpedo yield is between 110 and 450 kilotons (keep in mind that this is a rather generous estimate since the asteroid was hollow so it was obviously not well-consolidated, thus making it easier to fragment).

So lets take the lower estimate 0.1 x 40 x 10 which gives a 40 megaton resistance by Borg cubes. This is a lower limit (using Fed torps at their worst), and the upper limit of Shadow Crabs is 60 megatons.

Brian

[brianeyci]

And the Vorlons are superior to the Shadows.

But not so much that they are an order of magnitude above the Shadows, since we're dealing with estimates that's pretty good.

Bullshit; how do the Borg have orders of magnitude more vessels than the Shadows' fleets of many thousands of ships? Don't give me this "millions of ships" garbage; that was a single line from Chakotay and it was speculative; he had no way of knowing the actual number. Moreover, the Vorlons have superior force concentration abilities; the Borg are fairly slow away from their conduits, and the Vorlons can choose the time and place of any combat by simply staying in hyperspace until they choose to attack.

Fine, the Chakotay thing was retarded. However, when the Queen was involved, the Borg are far more competent. Consider thirty cubes sent against the 8472 ship, that's concentration to me. Also, the two trillion drones on Unimatrix complex indicates that the Borg concentrated their population probably as a result of 8472's attack, since the Borg casualties were in the hundreds of thousands IIRC despite losing many planets.

Hyperspace is a big knock on the Borg, going to have to think a bit to answer that one.

Brian

[FOG3]

VPK is the equivalent of a big building in space, especially given the size disparity between the largest Vorlon battlecruiser and the VPK. If they could build larger combat vessels, we would see some of them especially at the final gathering at Zha'Dum (sp). If you think that point is invalid, that's like saying "The Feds could build larger combat vessels but they don't -- but wait, here is Spacedock, so they could build a larger ship if they wanted too because of SIF and AMRE."

What do you mean "final gathering at Zha'ha'dum?" You don't mean Sheridan's ambush at Coriana 6, intended to force the Shadows and Vorlons to see what they were really doing do you? We saw a VPK called back from Centauri Prime, but unless you can show all three were at the Coriana 6 battlefield for all you know the deployed forces can be in transit. Plus it ignores the strong possibility both sides were holding ships in reserve like the Shadow ships that had landed on Centauri Prime. They were out to beat up some YR forces not really to take out their other First Ones at that point. Some kind of big battleship is kind of overkill for them to kill YR forces and would prevent such forces if they existed from protecting their homeworld/resources. Is there some point to leaving yourself vulnerable by moving out and deploying resources you don't need to accomplish the task?

[SyntaxVorlon]

The Bork take it. No way the Shadows or the Vorlons can field enough materiél to wipe out them out. Though the Borg strategy of sending one cube at a time might be bad for them, but eventually they rethink their strategy and throw a few hundred cubes in and no more S or V.

[Batman]

That figure is way out of line. Babtech has the VPK at 4.5 miles long. As your link has the Whitestar at 476 metres long their B5 sizes at the least are dubious.

Good, that figure is more believable. Do you have the size of a Borg tactical cube handy?

Not RATM, but as I don't recollect there being any evidence against the 3 km-a-side figure, that's the one I usually use.

Anyway the point was NOT that the Borg have more advanced materials science than the Feds-I frankly don't give a damn either way-but that the ship size does NOT indicate they have more advanced materials science than the Vorlons.

You haven't addressed my VPK could just be a huge building flying in space. As well, your point about non-Newtonian physics can apply to the Vorlons as well, I don't see Shadow crabs or Vorlon ships firing any thrusters. The point about SIF and AMRE, so what, Borg haven't been shown to use SIF to the degree the Feds do. AMRE lets them have quasi-Newtonian acceleration, not to ignore the effects of acceleration completely. So what, does size not matter now? We should just throw away all of this because of it?

Not at all. However, unless you can show that Borg cubes actually use Newtonian propulsion and do NOT use SIF to live through it (I conceed the AMRE point, BTW-AMRE merely reduces the magnitude of the problem, not its nature) there's no reason to assume they're actually submitted to the physical stress that would come along with that.
The same, of course, goes for the Vorlons.

We know that ships have "thrusters". The best way to resolve this is to compare Borg "thruster" speed with Vorlon "thruster" speed (as opposed to impulse or whatever the Vorlons use for sublight).

The Borg use thrusters? Where exactly did that happen?

Because making a vessel larger just because is incredibly stupid?

No. Smaller is not better, especially if you can build ships the size of VPK and get away with it.

Yes it is. Smaller means it consumes less resources. Ideally, every vehicle would be as small as possible while still being able to do what it was designed for. As that is usually somewhat hard to determine, designers usually err on the side of caution. Vevertheless there is no point in making ships large just because you can.

Or maybe unlike you they understand that making a vessel larger than it needs to be is a useless waste of resources.

Pure speculation -- when is something "larger than it needs to be"? By your assumption SSD's are a stupid idea if you could build many more ISD's for the same amount of resources.

There's speculation here all right, but it ain't mine. Please show me where I said SSDs are a stupid idea. Quite apparently somebody decided that it needed to be that large. By all means show me that the Vorlons NEED a vessel larger than their standard heavy cruiser.

Their battlecruisers, their main workhorse, is far smaller than the VPK. By Occam's Razor, they cannot make larger combat vessels.

Pure garbage. Show that they NEED larger combat vessels. By your reasoning, since the USN doesn't have any fighting ships in between the size of the Tico and the Nimitz, they're incapable of building one.
While were at it, the VPK technically IS a combat vessel.

The VPK is the exception, not the rule, and we haven't seen it move in combat IIRC, so it is a large building in space that uses hyperspace to move around.

So?

Why? Especially since the only thing that heavy cruiser CAN'T anihilate in passing is a Shadow BattleCrab?

Sure. If the Vorlons were capable or resourceful enough to build larger combat vessels, they would.

Why?

They don't, and the VPK is the exception and is not a combat vessel. The Borg cube is the rule for the Borg.

And?

Uh-huh. Your point being?

VPK is the equivalent of a big building in space, especially given the size disparity between the largest Vorlon battlecruiser and the VPK. If they could build larger combat vessels, we would see some of them especially at the final gathering at Zha'Dum (sp).

Again, why?

If you think that point is invalid, that's like saying "The Feds could build larger combat vessels but they don't -- but wait, here is Spacedock, so they could build a larger ship if they wanted too because of SIF and AMRE."

Too bad a spacedock doesn't move AT ALL, whereas the VPK DID move in realspace. While we're at it,that Spacedock argument might very well be valid if we knew how effective AMRE/SIF are. IF they are effective enough to completely negate the stresses of accelleration (or if those don't apply thanks to non-Newtonian propulsion) then YES, the ability to built large starbases DOES indicate the ability to build starships of the same size.

Pressuposing that they actually have the materials that allow them to go without SIF. The ammount of stress put on the hull (which IIRC as of VOy if nothing else does apply to full-size starships) is quite simply indeterminate without knowing the physical strength of the hull. They may simply have no other choice. As you are assuming that
a) Warp travel puts considerable stress on the hull,
b) Borg hulls can withstand that stress, and
c) do so without SIF support,
burden of proof is on you.

That warp puts stress on a hull is canon, Paris and Janeway talk about not changing course with a shuttle because it could cause microfractures.Considerable stress is up for debate, but warp causes stress.

So? The extent of that stress is the issue. Which we can't determine without knowing the durability of the hull beforehand. And that's assuming its actual physical stress and not some technobabble subspace effect...

I never said that the Borg do not use SIF at all, I said that the Borg have never been demonstrated to use SIF to the degree the Feds do -- the Feds use SIF to keep together walls on a stationary space station, our own materials science is better than that! Size matters, whether you like it or not the Borg's main combat vessel is more massive than the Vorlon's battlecruiser.

Which doesn't say beans as
a) the Vorlons are canonically able to built bigger vessels than that, and
b) until it's determined wether EITHER ship is actually submitted to any physical stress in the first place that information is useless.
Just for the record, we do NOT know that the Borg main combat vessel is more massive than the Vorlon battlecruiser. It's merely LARGER. Unless you have canon figures on the Cube's density of course...

What we really need to do to settle this is to see a Vorlon ship moving out of B5, which would probably be using thrusters rather than their advanced whatyoucallit,

Once more, why?
An just for the record, IIRC we NEVER see any Vorlon ship use thrusters. Chances are they don't HAVE any.

and a Borg ship moving on thrusters, and compare the speeds.

Which to my knowledge we haven't seen either.

Which doesn't mean they actually have them.

Fine, point to you about the torpedo ships. But the point on me brining up the micro-torpedoes is that every armed Starfleet ship has been seen to fire torpedoes. Most if not all of the ships at Wolf 359 and ST:FC would have had torpedoes by Occam's Razor.

I agree. So?

Which was specifically designed as an answer to the Borg threat, was a dedicated warship which the Feds apparently didn't have until then, and wasn't around for Wolf 359 to boot,

Fine. But shield strength did not increase dramatically from Wolf 359 to ST:FC, unless there is evidence otherwise. Defiant relies on maneuverability and firepower. It still lasted quite long enough to fire torpedoes. And there were Galaxies at Wolf 359, and the Ent-D fired at least six torpedoes at the Borg cube from these screencaps in the short while we see Locutus's perspective. The Ent-D wouldn't have ceased firing those torpedoes. Considering they can launch one torpedo per second, ten torpedoes per ship is a conservative estimate.

By all means show me
a)all the ship classes at Wolf 359 displaying that 1-per-second refire rate, and
b) them maintaining it for an indefinite period of time.

None of which were at Wolf 359, assuming they even existed back then (the Sovereign definitely didn't.

I'm also talking about ST:FC, the Akiras and Steamrunners lasted long enough to circle the Borg cube. Long enough to lob several dozen torpedoes, since Federation launchers can fire one per second.

I notice you assume every one of them was in a position to fire torpedoes at the Cube all the time. I'm very much afraid they weren't.

Shield strength didn't increase by an order of magnitude from Wolf 359 to ST:FC, so it is reasonable to say that at Wolf 359 ships would have had more than enough time to fire several dozen torpedoes each,

Um-NO.
1. Shield strength might very well have increased an order of magnitude between BOBW and FC
2. UNlike Wolf 359 in FC The Feds had some extensive experience with the Borg and their Adaption mechanism. A siginificant raise in shield strength is utterly unneccessary to explain their increased resilience to Borg weapons as those do NOT rely on sheer power to overcome shields. Furthermore, we saw[/] how long the Fed ships lasted at Wolf 359 in 'Emissary'...
3. The same goes for their offensive firepower. As the Borg shields rely on the frequency shenanigans and not brute power for a lot of their effect the Feds doibg lots more damage doesn't require a single additional joule of firepower (which they might very well have had...)
4. We have NO INFORMATION WHATSOEVER about how many ships were attacking the Cube how often how long, leave alone what ships. Unless you want to base your assessment on the few moments of the battle we actually SAW? I'd advise you to stay with Wolf 359.

As they're not around, no.

Man I know that, I'm also referring to ST:FC, we see Akiras and Steamrunners last long enough to circle the Borg cube.

Um-no we don't. We see the encircled Borg cube. How long those ships lasted before is completely undetermined with the possible exception of Defiant.

Which is pure assumption, unless you know the refire rate for every class present at Wold 359.

Man there is no way to know that. Fed launchers fire at a rate of one per second, Excelsiors and Connies fire at one per second 150 years ago,

TOS launchers, which we never see fire more than six or so torpedoes in a row.

Ent-D fires at one per second,

Which also never fires more than a handful of torpedoes in a row, and you're assuming that all torpedo lauchers are the same. Evidence that they are, please?

Defiant fires its quantums at around one per second,

And didn't exist for Wolf 359.

Sovereign fires at one per second,

And didn't exit for Wolf 359.

similar technology would have been installed on Federation ships with torpedo bays.

Why, considering that the Defiant and Sovereign are dedicated warships, and the Galaxy was the next best thing to it, whereas the majority if not entirety of the ships at Wolf 359 was not?
And that's still ignoring there's no evidence they can actually maintain that refire rate.

For example, an often used argument is that the Death Star's technologies exist in scaled down forms on ISD's. Occam's Razor tells us that other Fed ships have similar torpedo launch technology.

No it doesn't. It tells us that such technology EXISTS, nothing more.
Not that that's relevant since there's no evidence they can actually maintain that ROF.

The battle lasted long enough for the E-E to get there, that's all we know. Furthermore, as we have no clue how may and what kind of ships there were, how many of them were attacking at any given time, and how often they attacked, that information is quite simply worthless. Any estimate based on FC is 100 percent pure speculation.

I will try to bring up a quote, but for some reason the 10 hour figure sticks out.

Don't bother, because UNLESS you can show how much of those 10 hours were actually spent attacking the Cube instead of regrouping, repairing battle damage, catching up with the cube in the first place etc it's useless.

We could limit it to the shots actually seen fired and assume the lowest torpedo yield ever witnessed (which if we include ST V would be none whatsoever). Ten torpedoes each at 5 MT apiece is not overly conservative.

That's TOS torpedoes, not TNG torpedoes. Using the lowest figures for torpedo figures from Pegasus would be correct, I don't know these figures, is it around several hundred kilotons?

110 to 450 KT, which is STILL generous, and that's assuming 'Pegasus' is the lowest yield for TNG torpedoes ever seen.

Which is still rather high-end,

Fine, we'll use the figures from Pegasus. Still several hundred megaton shields,

Um-no. Sticking with the 400 torpedo figure and keeping the physically impossible 50 percent energy delivered, you get 22 to 90 MT. And that's completely ignoring the timeframe.

more endurance than a Shadow Crab that takes 12 megatons to go spinning out of control and 60 to be utterly annihilated.

Over a time of several seconds. The Borg cube took the damage over a time period of what exactly?

For which there is no evidence one way OR the other,

Fine, the battle may not have been continuous. But will you accept that there were at least two engagements, one at the Typhonis Sector (where they said they engaged the Borg) and one at Sector 001?

Happily, as it makes no difference.

The Typhonis Sector battle lasted at least as long as the Ent-E heard the distress calls,

And how much of that time was actually spent by how many ships firing on the cube, and which ships were those?

and the Sector 001 battle lasted as long as several minutes. More than enough time for ships to lob torpedoes.

Absolutely. Approximately 10 apiece

:roolseyes: No. I went through the calculations out of sheer boredom. I already said I agree with single-figure GT shielding. You were just getting them the wrong way.

Okay fine. Let's see how you got them. I did it the lazy way -- at first 25 x 40 x 10, then as you suggested 5 x 40 x 10, and if we take really low end estimates of TNG torpedoes, .1 x 40 x 10, still tougher than a Shadow Crab by far.

Then there's something wrong with your math. 5MT torpedoes gets you 2.5x40x10, giving exactly one GT of shielding (and assuming half the yield is applied to the target is already generous). 110KT torps get you 55x40x10 and therefore 22MT shields, which is definitely NOT tougher than a BattleCrab.

[Lost Soal]

Fine, the Chakotay thing was retarded. However, when the Queen was involved, the Borg are far more competent. Consider thirty cubes sent against the 8472 ship, that's concentration to me. Also, the two trillion drones on Unimatrix complex indicates that the Borg concentrated their population probably as a result of 8472's attack, since the Borg casualties were in the hundreds of thousands IIRC despite losing many planets.

Hyperspace is a big knock on the Borg, going to have to think a bit to answer that one.

15 cubes were sent to attack 8472. Claiming their tatics improve with the presence of the queen is a joke since with the queen present in FC they STILL only attacked Earth with 1 cube.
The Borg were arogant and believed completly that they would win, so its unlikely they would move their population. Becides, moving that many drones would take up most of their ships.

So lets take the lower estimate 0.1 x 40 x 10 which gives a 40 megaton resistance by Borg cubes. This is a lower limit (using Fed torps at their worst), and the upper limit of Shadow Crabs is 60 megatons.

Your assuming all the federation ships fired nothing but photon torpedoes.
That may sound like a stupid thing to say but when viewing whats seen on screen at least half the attacks against the borg were done with frequency rotating phasors and not torpedoes. Off the top of my head I can think of three reasons for this
1) The feds are really stupid. (True)
2) Torpedoes aren't really very powerfull. (Quite likely)
3) The borg adaption trick has some effect on the torpedoes. ( )

The torpedo compliment of Voyager was stated in the Ep The Cloud. I'm pretty certain Chakotay said 30.

Assimilation.
The Shadows themselves are beings of energy, similar to the Vorlons, but they decided to encase theselves in their shells, so assimilation is unlikely to work on them.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Bullshit; how do the Borg have orders of magnitude more vessels than the Shadows' fleets of many thousands of ships? Don't give me this "millions of ships" garbage; that was a single line from Chakotay and it was speculative; he had no way of knowing the actual number.

Chakotay was linked to the collective twice.

I was linked to a Collective once... remember? I had a
neuro-transceiver embedded in my spine... I know who we're dealing with.

[Howedar]

Such statements do not in any way mesh with what we've seen onscreen, which is never more than dozens of cubes.

[Eleas]

Such statements do not in any way mesh with what we've seen onscreen, which is never more than dozens of cubes.

It tells us nothing about how the cubes were distributed through Borg space. Moreover, a sizeable part of the Borg armada was rendered into scrap metal by S8472.

[Darth Wong]

Bullshit; how do the Borg have orders of magnitude more vessels than the Shadows' fleets of many thousands of ships? Don't give me this "millions of ships" garbage; that was a single line from Chakotay and it was speculative; he had no way of knowing the actual number.

Chakotay was linked to the collective twice.

I was linked to a Collective once... remember? I had a
neuro-transceiver embedded in my spine... I know who we're dealing with.

Thanks for lying through your teeth. Chakotay was linked to a small group of former Borg drones whose connection to the Collective had been severed, and who had formed their own sub-collective. That is what he linked to. The second time, he connected to a single drone; there was no evidence that he was collecting data from the whole Collective. These debates would be much easier if people didn't fucking lie about the shows.

[brianeyci]

I'm tired Batman so I'll reply to the rest of your points tomorrow. However,

Then there's something wrong with your math. 5MT torpedoes gets you 2.5x40x10, giving exactly one GT of shielding (and assuming half the yield is applied to the target is already generous). 110KT torps get you 55x40x10 and therefore 22MT shields, which is definitely NOT tougher than a BattleCrab.

Okay for the first one, 2.5 50% yield, fine. But 110kT torpedoes is around .1 megatons (unless I'm more moronic than I think) which means if you want 50% yield, go .05 x 40 x 10 which is 20 MT shielding, I don't know where you get the 55 figure from, where I come from one thousand kilotons is 1 megaton? (Unless explosive energy is not measured in SI units?)

And, according to Brian Young's site,

Therefore 250,000 terajoules of energy (60 megatons) delivered in a fraction of a second can be considered the upper limit on Shadow warship defensive capabilities. Although the main body of the ship absorbed no more than 50,000 terajoules (12 megatons) and was sent spinning out of control and destroyed, it was not completely mutilated beyond recognition. This is a powerful testament to the strength of the hull on this type warship.

So 12 megatons is enough to seriously cripple a shadow warship, take 30,000 TW estimate for Federation phasers and around five to six seconds of Borg disruptor fire to destroy a battle crab outright and two or three seconds to send one "spinning out of control". 30k figure is right from DW, and Brian Young is the most respected authority on B5 (I believe, I haven't been on the scene long enough but I trust GR when he says this), so unless I'm missing something I don't see how anything less than a fleet of battlecrabs could take on a single Borg cube.

Brian

[Batman]

I'm tired Batman so I'll reply to the rest of your points tomorrow. However,

110KT torps get you 55x40x10 and therefore 22MT shields, which is definitely NOT tougher than a BattleCrab.

But 110kT torpedoes is around .1 megatons (unless I'm more moronic than I think) which means if you want 50% yield, go .05 x 40 x 10 which is 20 MT shielding, I don't know where you get the 55 figure from, where I come from one thousand kilotons is 1 megaton? (Unless explosive energy is not measured in SI units?)

55 as in 55KT, which is half of 110KT. You notice that I get 22MT which is slightly more than your 20 (because you rounded down to 0.1MT). I shouldn't 've dropped the units, sorry bout that. Our calculations are essentially the same.

And, according to Brian Young's site,

Therefore 250,000 terajoules of energy (60 megatons) delivered in a fraction of a second can be considered the upper limit on Shadow warship defensive capabilities. Although the main body of the ship absorbed no more than 50,000 terajoules (12 megatons) and was sent spinning out of control and destroyed, it was not completely mutilated beyond recognition. This is a powerful testament to the strength of the hull on this type warship.

So 12 megatons is enough to seriously cripple a shadow warship, take 30,000 TW estimate for Federation phasers and around five to six seconds of Borg disruptor fire to destroy a battle crab outright and two or three seconds to send one "spinning out of control". 30k figure is right from DW, and Brian Young is the most respected authority on B5 (I believe, I haven't been on the scene long enough but I trust GR when he says this),

Brian Young IS the most respected autority, why do you think I used his VPK size?
Several things:
1. I notice how you conspiciously use the highest phaser firepwer you can find while ignoring that in the same paragraph Mike rates their effectiveness agasinst the hull at 1-10TW, and that the canon shield incidents indicate high GW to low TW shielding for a Galaxy. Are you indicating E-D can vaporize herself in one shot?
Those 30PW are clearly including NDF. Last I checked a BattleCrab wasn't made of rock.
2. 12 MT in a fraction of a second is enough to cripple it. We know nothing about their sustained durability, as Brian unfortunately uses the 12MT number for determining the power of other weapons that were used against it.
So, let's assume you have all the time in the world to do it, but then let's also assume the reduced 10TW number as actually applied to the hull,
quintuple it because the Borg ate t3h ub3r, and you have to fire at the Crab for 16min 40 seconds continuously to take it out. Oops...

so unless I'm missing something I don't see how anything less than a fleet of battlecrabs could take on a single Borg cube.

How, given you have made no effort to actually calculate their offensive firepower? If you get to use Mike's (almost certainly defunct by now) 30,0000 phasers, I get Brian Youngs 12 Million TW power generation...

[Gustav32Vasa]

Thanks for lying through your teeth. Chakotay was linked to a small group of former Borg drones whose connection to the Collective had been severed, and who had formed their own sub-collective.

So the small collective did forget everything it knew about its cube fleet after the link was severed? And the same thing for 7o9?

[Howedar]

Such statements do not in any way mesh with what we've seen onscreen, which is never more than dozens of cubes.

It tells us nothing about how the cubes were distributed through Borg space. Moreover, a sizeable part of the Borg armada was rendered into scrap metal by S8472.

So your explainations are:
A. 99.99% of Borg ships are not at their primary base and industrial system.
B. 99.99% of Borg ships were destroyed by S8472.

I'm not really impressed by either of your rationalizations. I find it much easier to assume that Chakotay was not correct.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Such statements do not in any way mesh with what we've seen onscreen, which is never more than dozens of cubes.

How many ISDs have we seen on screen?

[Stofsk]

Such statements do not in any way mesh with what we've seen onscreen, which is never more than dozens of cubes.

How many ISDs have we seen on screen?

Only a couple dozen...

...yet we see two death stars, that outmass ISDs by a ridiculous amount.

[Darth Wong]

Thanks for lying through your teeth. Chakotay was linked to a small group of former Borg drones whose connection to the Collective had been severed, and who had formed their own sub-collective.

So the small collective did forget everything it knew about its cube fleet after the link was severed? And the same thing for 7o9?

What about "connection" requires "total transference of all knowledge", fucktard? How does "he connected to 7 of 9 and sent her a message" mean "now he knows everything that she and everyone she ever connected to knows"? Why the fuck do they have to bother asking her for information on the Borg after that if he's assimilated all of her knowledge, you idiot?

Your idiot interpretation also runs into the not-insigificant problem that they need to have thousands of ships per planet in order to rationalize it, remember? And I note that you refuse ot concede that you distorted the events of the episodes in question in order to make your "point".

[Gustav32Vasa]

Your idiot interpretation also runs into the not-insigificant problem that they need to have thousands of ships per planet in order to rationalize it, remember?

Where does it say that the Borg only have thousands of planets, and even if that is all they have, so whats wrong with it?

And I note that you refuse ot concede that you distorted the events of the episodes in question in order to make your "point".

I'm sorry about 7o9, I was wrong but the first link was with a collective. And please be a little more civil. OK