Gungans VS Borg

[General Brock]

How is the databank proof of anything? It contradicts TPM on this issue. How does a cost-cutting, frugal corporation strike deals with shady men for absolute power then launch planetary blockades and invasions?
In TPM we saw well maintained, fully equipped, well armed, fully staffed giant starships all under the control of the Trade Federation. Not to mention one of the key points in TPM is that large, corrupt organisations like the TF were running rings around the bloated Republic government and making fat profits in the process.

To the OP no; ite Gungans vs. Borg, not cheap TF battle droids.

Don't be dishonest. The entire strength of B-1s issue was brought up because you want to discredit the sole battle we've seen Gungans take part in.

No dishonesty intended. If you can't believe Lucasfilm's Databank bursting your bubble, far be it from me to try.

The Trade Fed and CIS lost every big movie encounter, usually very badly. Whatever their bluster and polish they couldn't deliver without overwhelming numbers, not skill.

[Stark]

Enough with the postcount padding, Brock. Stop posting four or five times in a row because you're too lazy to cut and paste.

[Cao Cao]

There is little wrong with my argument.

1. TPM B-1s are low-level constructs applied in the worst possible way. Gungan defeat to such an opponent reveals significant weaknesses in the character and capability of the Gungan military, of a nature potentially exploitable by the Borg.

Again with your conclusion before the dilemma bull. You work from the ASSUMPTION that B1s are crap even though movie evidence says otherwise.

In fact, a better TF army wouldn't have revealed these weaknesses, because it would have been over too fast to make them apparent. At that range, a squad of Republic regulars would have simply shot out the generator.

What movie were you watching? The droids did shoot out the generators once inside the shield.

[General Brock]

IOW you don't KNOW no such source exits.

Obviously not, but given the level of resistance here from people who must know for sure, it must not exist. Unless you are intentionally withholding it, for no reasonable reason.

But is not mentioned anywhere in the canon.

No movie mentioned that Alderaan had shields, but everyone knows they did. It is a reasonable assumption.

Yeah, right. Increased resistance to enemy fire is nothing worthwhile to enginerr into a battle droid.

Those battle droids dropped pretty easy from shots that left no mark. That's not a good sign of quality manufacture.

That doesn't seem to keep you from assuming a lot of OTHER stuff that was never written down, either.

If it were written down, would it seem unreasonable?

Hogwash. Upgrading the alloys DOES make sense. Improving the electronic resistance to concussive force (which electronics, I might add, aren't all vulnerable to to begin with) doesn't either when the main problem apparently was the mechanical joints giving out under superhuman strength induced stress. Not once in the entire trilogy does a human inflict HtH physical damage to a B1.

When the Jedi kicked down droids, they didn't get up, and Padme shot them with a searing concussive bolt, they didn't get up - despite bearing no obvious marks and significant holes, sometimes even after a blaster hit, I am to conclude concussive force didn't do something to their electronics?

Yes you are, until and unless there is a mention of this actually being the case in the canon. The ONLY modifications made to the B1s are the ones the canon explicitely SAYS were made.

I am not making stuff up out of thin air, I am extrapolating from popularly available canon. Which, admittedly could be misconstrued from a certain point of view as a fancy way of making stuff up.

But its not as dastardly as you make it seem.

Besides, why the hell would they bother to improve the physical structure especially WRT the joints when the ONLY situation that'd be relevant in would be melee combat, which simply doesn't HAPPEN on a modern, leave alone SW battlefield outside extremely freakish circumstances?

Which is close to what I asserted; they don't need to be strong to just wield a blaster. However, if you want a quality battle droid, you have to assume its going to have to battle without a blaster from time to time, like real soldiers sometimes do, and perform heavy manual labour, like a GI unit sometimes has to.

It would really help if programming and construction allowed it to be able to do this better than likely opponents whenever possible. Hence, the development of the Super Battle Droid after civil war, not a planetary blockade, became a near-certainty.

[Ritterin Sophia]

No movie mentioned that Alderaan had shields, but everyone knows they did. It is a reasonable assumption.

Yeah, I guess Tarkin saying Alderaan had defenses as any in the Empire has nothing to do with it, you know what with many Core Planets being part of the Empire and having a planetary shield. Fucking Retard...

[The Original Nex]

>snip<

If you can't tell the difference that's your problem. I'm not giving them a space colony when cononically they didn't even have a space program going without Naboo human help. If I can't say they must have bought what they needed, which is a logical assumption, then I guess they shouldn't have that space colony, using your standard of rigour.

What's that? A strawman? From you?

Show me where I ever commented in this thread on Gungans and their capabilities at all? Here's a hint, don't bother, because I didn't. And here we are, with you conviniently ignoring my entire post by inserting some blather Gungan space colonies and my "standard of rigour." Here's a clue buddy; my post was on BATTLE DROIDS and your baseless claims that the B1s in AOTC had upgrades in their alloys and joints, simply so that you can justify your previous claim that TPM B1s are weak, again, so that you can prove that Gungans are weak. Stop being such a brick wall.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

1. TPM B-1s are low-level constructs applied in the worst possible way. Gungan defeat to such an opponent reveals significant weaknesses in the character and capability of the Gungan military, of a nature potentially exploitable by the Borg.

Excuse me? The Gungans defeated the Trade Federation army? Which version of the Phantom Menace did you watch?

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Oops. I read that wrong. Ignore that.

[Batman]

There is little wrong with my argument.

Oh really.

1. TPM B-1s are low-level constructs applied in the worst possible way.

As per your completely unsupported and directly contradicted by the movies assumption.

Gungan defeat to such an opponent reveals significant weaknesses in the character and capability of the Gungan military, of a nature potentially exploitable by the Borg.

Hogwash. Not only do the B1 canonically NOT exhibit the weaknesses you desperately want to burden them with, but even if they DID they'd still be vastly superior to the Borg thanks to having ranged weapons , being nonorganic, and having tanks and support weapons.

In fact, a better TF army wouldn't have revealed these weaknesses,

No shit Sherlock. A better Army not exhibiting weaknesses it doesn't have. I'm shocked. Really. Of course, you have so far yet to show the TF Army actually HAS those weaknesses...

because it would have been over too fast to make them apparent.

...if one assumes the Gungans are as bad as you desperatly try to make them out to be.

At that range, a squad of Republic regulars would have simply shot out the generator.

Because there definitely wasn't a shield in the way. Oh wait, there was. One that shrugged off the fire from the TF tanks. And once they had gotten UNDER the shield (which the Borg might be utterly incapable of achieving) the droids were a tad busy.
Oh, and they DID blow out the shield generator, genius.

You are hung up on the idea that the Gungans have all the elements of the rest of SW experienced spacefaring, space-fighting species.

Given that they manage to stand up to an army that DOES (if not for long), that's not all that far-fetched an assumption.

I'm being accused of making stuff up, building on existing canon for a double-fictional VS encounter, but have to expect the Gungans built their scenario lunar colony themselves without having a canon space program at all without Naboo humans? I won't concede on arguments like these.

Wether the Gungans developed space technology on their own or filched it off the humans is irellevant, asshat. They have GROUND technology on par with the Republic, the Naboo have SPACE technology on par with the Republic, thus any space technology the Gungans filch off the humans is on par with the Republic, too. And thus hopelessly beyond anything the Space Zombies can hope to match. IF they developed space technology of their own, it grows on a tech base more or less level with the Republic, which in turn means...

2. Tangetial assessment of TF droids, used to illustrate poor Gungan fighting ability; interesting but not directly related to the OP:
B-1s do not fight well. Fighting well would mean their 1:1 match to Clones includes being able to match group encounters,

as per-your say so. B1s not being a 1:1 match for a force that was explicitely devised to be superior to them. Yeah, that's really sucky performance.

since the entire Clone wars was not a series of 1-1 duels.
If a fire team of five battle droids is not an even match for a fire team of 5 clones, that is not fighting well. If B-1 are chaff meant to win with overwhelming numbers, that right there says they are inferior droids regardless of superficial 1:1 stats.

Inferior to-what? Inferior to a force that was explicitely designed to be superior to them? Vee, what a shock. No wonder they were royally trounced every time they went up against the clones. Oh wait, they weren't.

Plus, they were built to overwhelm normal organics, not clones.

Yes. And your point is?

3. The Gungan is tall, thin, and gangly, not necessarily a physique of strength. If it so important that they be stronger than humans, then so be it. However, there is no reason to expect them to be stronger than Borg, which are also stronger than humans.

That would actually require a deeper analysis of Borg feats vs Gungan feats. It is entirely possible that Gungans ARE stronger than Borg. Not that I see why this is important since there's no need for the Gungans to let the Borg come within grappling range in the first place.

None of the additional B-1 upgrades applied to improve the B-1 are outside reason, and I never committed to those as having definitely happened - beyond saying that if I wanted to improve the B-1s, that's what I would change.

Bullshit. You repeatedly assumed the B1 WOULD have those upgrades in a desperate attempt to support your initial completely unsupported claim that they sucked by Wars standards.

4. Battle of Grassy Plain alternate VS scenario:
How did the Gungans fare against B-1s... Overwhelming numbers marched right up to them through their range fire and the only way they could avoid outright slaughter by blaster was to grapple with the leading droids, preventing them from shooting, and by accident more than design, prolonging first rank impediment of fire from trailing ranks.
Borg can stab as well as grapple,

Borg can actually do NEITHER thanks to the Gungans having the range advantage even in melee and being considerably faster, and that still blithely assumes the Borg can penetrate the shield in the first place, oh, and thanks to the Borg not having blasters, the Gungans don't NEED to grapple with them at all,

their nanites are quickly incapacitating, if the injection isn't completed, the Gungan is still stabbed and bleeding,

assuming the Borg should for some reason survive to get into assimilation range, and I can't recall the Borg EVER stabbing, they inject nanites with NO EFFECTS WHATSOEVER NOT related to the nanites,

Borg don't wait in line to take a shot,

Actually yes they do, or at least move so slow as to achieve the same effect. The Gungans can if need be simply run away from the Drones.

and although many will be felled by boomers, none will have fallen to deflected fire.

But scores of them will fall to the spears.

Borg don't need ranged support as long as they have numbers.

Numbers hopelessly in excess of anything they've ever deployed anywhere, and if the Gungans have so much as a single Carrack are in no position to get on planet even if they bother to try.

Borg will take longer to win than the TF droids, doing it all by melee, without doubt

Especially as thee is no reason for the Gungans to let them get this close to begin with, and again, blithely assuming they can even get through the shield in the first place.

They will take casualties. Though Borg tactics are slow, they are too simple to screw up.

Curious how the Borg managed to do exactly that practically every time they went up against the UFP, then. Who are abysmally stupid themselves, I might add. Borg tactics aren't only simple, they're braindead. If you stick to them, you screw up by definition against anybody but the most retarded or hopelessly inferior opponent.

It doesn't even matter if a Gungans pick up Borg and tosses them,

which again assumes they actually let the Borg get that close,

because they've just opened themselves to being stabbed by another pressing Borg.

Because we all know the standar Borg tactic is the mass Drone wave attack. Oh wait. And because that wave will be so massive plenty of Drones will live through Gungan ranged attacks. Oh wait. And all of them can pass through the shield. And close to grappling range with the Gungans...

The initial lack of Borg range support isn't a problem once the shield beasts get injected with nanites,

Which is never going to happen, even if the Borg ever bothered to think that far ahead,

after which low-powered ST weapons can be used on unarmoured, unshielded Gungans

Yeah, because the Borg always use orbital bombardments in ground engagements.

and their animals and Borg can be transported amidst whatever semblance of Gungan ranks remain and Gungans beamed out.

Whatever semblance of Gungans is going to be virtually all of them while the number of remaining Borg is going to be nothing much.

The way things stand with TPM Gungans, they could only win against Borg by accident, luck,

plus ranged weapons, artillery, theater shields, much better individual speed and melee weapons that severely outrange the Space Zombies,

and failure of the Borg to swarm,

which so far has been exhibited exactly ZERO times in Trek history and would be cut to ribbons regardless.

like ST protagonists do. They won't win like the best or even average SW spacefaring species, because they don't fight like those space faring species.

They use theater shields and ranged weapons on the ground, they have artillery...yeah, completely unlike spacefaring Wars species.

Gungan VS TF revealed poor weapons

as evidenced by nothing whatsoever,

depth of training and spontaneous reaction during a planned campaign.A wormhole and Borg appearing right on their doorstep, immediatly commencing hostilities, isn't likely to inspire a better performance.

Thankfully the displayed perfomance is more than adequate to trounce the Borg.

TF droids at least could mow down Borg as fast as they appeared, with just the front rank firing, and Gungans can't even do that much.

That's right. The Gungans can simply snipe at the Borg with impunity until none are left.

[Batman]

IOW you don't KNOW no such source exits.

Obviously not, but given the level of resistance here from people who must know for sure, it must not exist. Unless you are intentionally withholding it, for no reasonable reason.

IOW you are arguing a position you yourself are convinced to have no canonical backing whatsoever.

But is not mentioned anywhere in the canon.

No movie mentioned that Alderaan had shields, but everyone knows they did. It is a reasonable assumption.

I would rather think showing Alderaan having a shield on the fucking silver screen constitutes a mention in the canon.

Yeah, right. Increased resistance to enemy fire is nothing worthwhile to engineer into a battle droid.

Those battle droids dropped pretty easy from shots that left no mark. That's not a good sign of quality manufacture.

I never said they HAD them. I was contending your stupid assumption that such an upgrade wouldn't have been worth it.

That doesn't seem to keep you from assuming a lot of OTHER stuff that was never written down, either.

If it were written down, would it seem unreasonable?

Irellevant. If it is written down and not overridden by higher canon, unreasonable or not we have to somehow make it work. You assume a shitload of stuff that ISN'T written down.

Hogwash. Upgrading the alloys DOES make sense. Improving the electronic resistance to concussive force (which electronics, I might add, aren't all vulnerable to to begin with) doesn't either when the main problem apparently was the mechanical joints giving out under superhuman strength induced stress. Not once in the entire trilogy does a human inflict HtH physical damage to a B1.

When the Jedi kicked down droids, they didn't get up, and Padme shot them with a searing concussive bolt, they didn't get up - despite bearing no obvious marks and significant holes, sometimes even after a blaster hit

Yeah. Valen forbid that a blaster bolt hitting metal in a universe with pseudo-EMP weapon effects and thermal superconducting armour have heat or EMP effects on the interior without leaving visible marks. As for the Jedi, not only does that rather fall under the superhuman strength category, it already involves the Force so Valen knows what else the Jedi did in that instance, but we already know the B1s suffer from part separation when sufficient physical force is applied to them. I fail to see why we have to assume it's internal damage when a severed connection via, say, a snapped neck amply suffices to explain the shutdown.

I am to conclude concussive force didn't do something to their electronics?

The term YES comes to mind.

Yes you are, until and unless there is a mention of this actually being the case in the canon. The ONLY modifications made to the B1s are the ones the canon explicitely SAYS were made.

I am not making stuff up out of thin air, I am extrapolating from popularly available canon. Which, admittedly could be misconstrued from a certain point of view as a fancy way of making stuff up.

Until and unless there's evidence for what you're extrapolating you ARE making stuff up. There's no misconstruing involved.

But its not as dastardly as you make it seem.

Yes it is. You are downgrading the tech level of the TF by several orders of magnitude to support the notion that they were weak enough for the Borg to be able to beat the Gungans.

Besides, why the hell would they bother to improve the physical structure especially WRT the joints when the ONLY situation that'd be relevant in would be melee combat, which simply doesn't HAPPEN on a modern, leave alone SW battlefield outside extremely freakish circumstances?

Which is close to what I asserted; they don't need to be strong to just wield a blaster. However, if you want a quality battle droid, you have to assume its going to have to battle without a blaster from time to time

Hogwash.

, like real soldiers sometimes do

Again, hogwash,

,and perform heavy manual labour, like a GI unit sometimes has to.

And once more, hogwash.

[Stark]

So, B1s suck because he says so, thus Gungans suck due to losing to them (lol blasters lol tanks lol organisation wat lol) AND B1s should have been built to do manual labour? This is awesome stuff.

I think it's pretty awesome that Brock has got ~100 posts out of simply stating his preconceptions as fact. The most amusing ones are where he talks about his speculation about, say, Gungan army training or Tradefed industrial design like it's so true he doesn't have to back it up. I hear the borg can beat guys that hide under theatre shields, because ... well... Brock says so. LOL!

I'm not sure why a borg 'army' would be 'advancing' on the shield - the borg would do what they always do, and drop drones a few at a time. They'd get killed, and they'd drop some more. Talking about battlefield initiative vs the borg is absurd - they're famously stupid and slow to react to changing situations unless a Queen is present. Could borg teleport directly into the undersea bases, through the shields, or would they be forced to beam to the surface and attempt to assault the Gungans from there, thus giving the Gungans plenty of time to rally their armies and prepare to counterattack?

[General Brock]

So, B1s suck because he says so, thus Gungans suck due to losing to them (lol blasters lol tanks lol organisation wat lol) AND B1s should have been built to do manual labour? This is awesome stuff.

I think it's pretty awesome that Brock has got ~100 posts out of simply stating his preconceptions as fact. The most amusing ones are where he talks about his speculation about, say, Gungan army training or Tradefed industrial design like it's so true he doesn't have to back it up. I hear the borg can beat guys that hide under theatre shields, because ... well... Brock says so. LOL!

I'm not sure why a borg 'army' would be 'advancing' on the shield - the borg would do what they always do, and drop drones a few at a time. They'd get killed, and they'd drop some more. Talking about battlefield initiative vs the borg is absurd - they're famously stupid and slow to react to changing situations unless a Queen is present. Could borg teleport directly into the undersea bases, through the shields, or would they be forced to beam to the surface and attempt to assault the Gungans from there, thus giving the Gungans plenty of time to rally their armies and prepare to counterattack?

Take away the usual fighting versus scenario, and using conservative early Borg canon, they don't do anything in a new encounter but watch, wait, and react, then investigate or attack, the last two actions pretty much undiscernable for Borg.

Naboo has no planetary shields; Borg could beam in and look around where they could, assimilate stray Gungans and examples of technology where they could, and avoid escalating hostilities and well defended areas. In this scenario, the Borg can bypass SW tech they can't overcome and pick off random Gungans and tech samples on the surface of their planet, then probably leave once scans of surrounding space indicate they are more than a little outgunned. They can even wait until a landing party of Gungans shuttle over in their non-indigenous spacecraft to see why their visitors aren't responding, taking them with them before they leave, collapsing the wormhole behind them. Jar Jar would probably be with them, because without Naboo humans he's still exiled to the swamps where he could be easily taken as a specimin.

My scenarios are based on definite, conservative possibilities drawn from extrapolating popular canon behaviors, not oxymoronic 'preconceived fact'. Its easy enough to exploit ST weaknesses, but to deny there are problems in SW to play with isn't going to make for a balanced VS sceanrio. I'm not even upgunning Borg beyond allowing them numbers to do the job in a way best exploiting their known capabilities.

Pro-Gungans are determined to discount any possiblity of Borg victory, without addressing the problem of Gungan deficiencies that I believe make it possible. They recognize the value of ranged weaponry, then assume the Gungans have enough because they are SW. They recognize the value of good training and equipment, and say Gungans have them by default of being SW. They assume Gungans will respond intelligently, because they are not all Jar Jar, even though Jar Jar was the only Gungan to innovate, by accident, the SW version of the old 'roll burning logs down the hill' trick seen in the 1950s film Sparticus.

The only good rebuttal is to say Borg don't swarm, because even though Guinan's people may have fell to a Borg swarm at once, the Borg sent in units piecemeal in the episodes where they skirmished with the Federation. In warfare again, you don't commit all at once without skirmishing. The possibility of all out UFP-Borg war was one of the unrealized ongoing threads of TNG, because the writers couldn't find ways for the Federation to win against an opponent they had initially constructed so well.

Then there is the B-1 chaff. My tendency to chase red herrings badly obscures my position but didn't undermine the position itself. If obscuring my main point, the Borg can swarm inadequately armed and trained Gungans, is the best you can do, that is not going to bring about a concession in a discussion arbitrarily turned into a debate demanding winners and losers.

My main mistake is assuming versus discussion is an honest yet silly attempt to envision Gungan vs Borg scenarios, not an invitation to join a 'SW is teh uber always and forever' fundie amen chorus affirming SW is always better even at its worst against ST.

[General Brock]

Ghetto edit: Um. hmmm.

Change "the last two actions pretty much undiscernable for Borg." to "the last two actions pretty much indifferentiable for Borg."

[General Brock]

IOW you are arguing a position you yourself are convinced to have no canonical backing whatsoever.

Even if I had read every scrap of SW material the odds of me remembering such a detail are rather remote. I'd go by common sense, which tells me there are some ways to improve a TPM B-1; put back the cut corners.

I would rather think showing Alderaan having a shield on the fucking silver screen constitutes a mention in the canon.

Given the controversy over that, I'd say perhaps Bail Organa didn't bother to raise them in the ret-con, Alderaan being disarmed and pacifist. A last ditch demonstration for mercy, versus a last act of defiance.

I never said they HAD them. I was contending your stupid assumption that such an upgrade wouldn't have been worth it.

.... I said the droids were cheap and could be made better...

That doesn't seem to keep you from assuming a lot of OTHER stuff that was never written down, either.

If it were written down, would it seem unreasonable?

Irellevant. If it is written down and not overridden by higher canon, unreasonable or not we have to somehow make it work. You assume a shitload of stuff that ISN'T written down.

So when I say the TF or Gungans could have done better, but didn't because they were clueless, its just my assumption they were clueless, not because they were clueless, because even though that is a reasonable assumption extrapolated from their performance, it wasn't written down that they were clueless?

Yeah. Valen forbid that a blaster bolt hitting metal in a universe with pseudo-EMP weapon effects and thermal superconducting armour have heat or EMP effects on the interior without leaving visible marks. As for the Jedi, not only does that rather fall under the superhuman strength category, it already involves the Force so Valen knows what else the Jedi did in that instance, but we already know the B1s suffer from part separation when sufficient physical force is applied to them. I fail to see why we have to assume it's internal damage when a severed connection via, say, a snapped neck amply suffices to explain the shutdown.

When some of them fall down in one piece? And aren't you are making the same educated guesses as I am as to what caused the problem of visibly intact unmarked droids going down? Better educated, at that? (Only not saying the broken connections were cheap and of inferior manufacture, but hopefully not implying that was an example of the good stuff).

But its not as dastardly as you make it seem.

Yes it is. You are downgrading the tech level of the TF by several orders of magnitude to support the notion that they were weak enough for the Borg to be able to beat the Gungans.

Well, at least I'm extrapolating a conclusion from basic canon material.

If the Gungans did that kind of damage on the way to being routed to a first rate, Republic-equivalent army, the Republic is in sad shape.

All those millenia of peace didn't dull their edge; they completely misplaced it.

And once more, hogwash.

And the Army is all guns and war games involving no heavy lifting? Construction? Moving crates of supplies? Digging entrenchments? And ... never mind.

[Cao Cao]

Take away the usual fighting versus scenario, and using conservative early Borg canon, they don't do anything in a new encounter but watch, wait, and react, then investigate or attack, the last two actions pretty much undiscernable for Borg.

Naboo has no planetary shields; Borg could beam in and look around where they could, assimilate stray Gungans and examples of technology where they could, and avoid escalating hostilities and well defended areas. In this scenario, the Borg can bypass SW tech they can't overcome and pick off random Gungans and tech samples on the surface of their planet, then probably leave once scans of surrounding space indicate they are more than a little outgunned.

First of all, that does not constitute a victory.
Second of all.. when have the Borg ever been this subtle? That's right, never. Their standard MO is to charge in, use their standard repetitive greeting/threat and then attack starships and/or scoop up cities on planets before trying to take it over. Any of these actions would put the Gungans on full alert.

My main mistake is assuming versus discussion is an honest yet silly attempt to envision Gungan vs Borg scenarios, not an invitation to join a 'SW is teh uber always and forever' fundie amen chorus affirming SW is always better even at its worst against ST.

You want to find something an ST power can beat in SW? Go right ahead. But stop doing it by manufacturing weaknesses that only exist in your head. Your reaspnong is that Gungans LOOK goofy and silly, and must therefore be weak. They stood up to B1s, but B1s also LOOK goofy and silly and must therefore be weak. Do you honestly not see the problem people have with this?

[harbringer]

You know we have looked at this all wrong if we judge the Gungans and the Bore(g) by their opponants I will point out that the federation beat the borg every time thus the borg must be crap because this is a reasonable line of logic bock says so.

Thus problem solved as anyone in star wars can flog the federation the borg must lose (yawn) all the fuzzy thinking has me sleepy. thanks for the LOGIC lesson brock

[Starglider]

Second of all.. when have the Borg ever been this subtle? That's right, never. Their standard MO is to charge in, use their standard repetitive greeting/threat and then attack starships and/or scoop up cities on planets before trying to take it over.

Their track record against the Federation is;
1) try to assimilate GCS. GCS gets teleported away.
2) send cube to attack earth. destroyed by technobabble.
3) send cube to attack earth. destroyed by focused firepower.
4) eject sphere to either rewrite history or take the queen to a parallel borgified reality (depending on how Trek time travel works). destroyed by firepower, individual combat and their own arrogance.
5) try to assimiliate Voyager repeatedly. fail due to an even mix of firepower and technobabble.

At this point the Borg finally decided to try something subtle; the nanovirus the Borg queen wanted Seven to design to assimilate most of the Earth humans before they realise what's happening. We don't know whether that would have worked, as Voyager destroys her before they can proceed, but clearly this is very unusual for the Borg. Maybe after failing to assimilate the Gungans repeatedly they'd try that, but if the wormhole still exists at that point it would presumably be guarded by proper military starships.

Any of these actions would put the Gungans on full alert.

My main mistake is assuming versus discussion is an honest yet silly attempt to envision Gungan vs Borg scenarios, not an invitation to join a 'SW is teh uber always and forever' fundie amen chorus affirming SW is always better even at its worst against ST.

You want to find something an ST power can beat in SW? Go right ahead. But stop doing it by manufacturing weaknesses that only exist in your head. Your reaspnong is that Gungans LOOK goofy and silly, and must therefore be weak. They stood up to B1s, but B1s also LOOK goofy and silly and must therefore be weak. Do you honestly not see the problem people have with this?[/quote]

[Stark]

Take away the usual fighting versus scenario, and using conservative early Borg canon, they don't do anything in a new encounter but watch, wait, and react, then investigate or attack, the last two actions pretty much undiscernable for Borg.

What.

Naboo has no planetary shields; Borg could beam in and look around where they could, assimilate stray Gungans and examples of technology where they could, and avoid escalating hostilities and well defended areas.

You're a retard. The Gungans live under the ocean, in shield-dome cities. The borg won't be able to assimilate SW tech. When have they ever 'avoided escalating activies' instead of just sending wave after wave?

In this scenario, the Borg can bypass SW tech they can't overcome and pick off random Gungans and tech samples on the surface of their planet, then probably leave once scans of surrounding space indicate they are more than a little outgunned.

What? How? They never avoid engagement. How can they 'bypass' SW tech when it's unlikely they can even interface with it? I don't remember Borg ever leaving when they're outgunned - they've had cubes destroyed by overwhelming firepower before, and didn't even try to retreat.

They can even wait until a landing party of Gungans shuttle over in their non-indigenous spacecraft to see why their visitors aren't responding, taking them with them before they leave, collapsing the wormhole behind them. Jar Jar would probably be with them, because without Naboo humans he's still exiled to the swamps where he could be easily taken as a specimin.

You're a retard. You've gone from 'lol no gungan spaceships lol' to 'gungans are stupid enough to LAND ON A BORG CUBE because i desperately need them to be assimilated'. Why the hell would they do this?

My scenarios are based on definite, conservative possibilities drawn from extrapolating popular canon behaviors, not oxymoronic 'preconceived fact'. Its easy enough to exploit ST weaknesses, but to deny there are problems in SW to play with isn't going to make for a balanced VS sceanrio. I'm not even upgunning Borg beyond allowing them numbers to do the job in a way best exploiting their known capabilities.

That's why you're not convincing anyone, I guess - because you're such a good debator! Sure, the gungans are a terrible example of SW militarism. Guess what? The borg are cripplingly retarded and massively out-teched. I hear you think they could assimilate SW tech? I'd love to see you defend that claim. Point out where people are denying that the Gungans are a primitive SW society with an unremarkable military? Perhaps the borg drones are just so useless and the Gungan doctrine so dominant there's little chance of them losing. Oh wait, we're all biased because we think shields and firepower = win over lurching zombies. Nobody ever beat the borg with melee weapons! I love how you think you're the rational, 'definate' one.

Pro-Gungans are determined to discount any possiblity of Borg victory, without addressing the problem of Gungan deficiencies that I believe make it possible. They recognize the value of ranged weaponry, then assume the Gungans have enough because they are SW. They recognize the value of good training and equipment, and say Gungans have them by default of being SW. They assume Gungans will respond intelligently, because they are not all Jar Jar, even though Jar Jar was the only Gungan to innovate, by accident, the SW version of the old 'roll burning logs down the hill' trick seen in the 1950s film Sparticus.

Are you a martyr? Are you fighting the good fight? Are you the lone voice of reason?

No, you're a retard. Gungans have ranged weapons and the luxury of a secure base and the ability to disengage at will. Their training, however bad by Clone Wars standards, is almost certainly enough to defeat borg drones one-on-one. Oh damn, I guess the borg just famously suck.

The only good rebuttal is to say Borg don't swarm, because even though Guinan's people may have fell to a Borg swarm at once, the Borg sent in units piecemeal in the episodes where they skirmished with the Federation. In warfare again, you don't commit all at once without skirmishing. The possibility of all out UFP-Borg war was one of the unrealized ongoing threads of TNG, because the writers couldn't find ways for the Federation to win against an opponent they had initially constructed so well.

They use swarms within or near their own territory, apparently - VOY showed larger cube groups. At long range or for probing attacks they appear to use small forces. This doesn't help the Borg magically deciding to send a massive force and beam down thousands of drones at once.

Then there is the B-1 chaff. My tendency to chase red herrings badly obscures my position but didn't undermine the position itself. If obscuring my main point, the Borg can swarm inadequately armed and trained Gungans, is the best you can do, that is not going to bring about a concession in a discussion arbitrarily turned into a debate demanding winners and losers.

So you were only arguing that the borg could take on - for instance - undefended Gungan civilians? How is that even relevant? The gungan army can standoff and kill drones. The drones probably can't teleport into their ocean bases, meaning the bulk of the gungans are safe.

My main mistake is assuming versus discussion is an honest yet silly attempt to envision Gungan vs Borg scenarios, not an invitation to join a 'SW is teh uber always and forever' fundie amen chorus affirming SW is always better even at its worst against ST.

Oh we're all biased and unthinking SW fanboys for thinking the gungans can win! That's why you're able to demonstrate why everyone in this thread is wrong instead of waffling on about borg behaving unborg, suddenly being powerful melee fighters against armed opponents, assimilating SW tech, and being able to assimilate random unprepared gungans, right?

The gungans are a weak SW force, but they can handle a borg ground assault. So what? Why does this bother you so much? People have argued fricking Spartans can handle the borg on the ground! They're THAT HOPELESS.

[Bounty]

When have they ever 'avoided escalating activies' instead of just sending wave after wave?

First Contact. But that was a situation where they were down to at best one or two drones - they hid, lured single targets into the service ducts and assimilated them one-by-one until they had the numbers for an assault.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread--

[Stark]

First Contact. But that was a situation where they were down to at best one or two drones - they hid, lured single targets into the service ducts and assimilated them one-by-one until they had the numbers for an assault.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread--

They were also controlled directly by the Queen - but I admit I was thinking more of starship operations, rather than the activities of a small group. The initial attack on Earth was indeed a borg-standard bullrush sort of thing, they only got cagey later when they were in deep shit.

[Starglider]

In this scenario, the Borg can bypass SW tech they can't overcome and pick off random Gungans and tech samples on the surface of their planet, then probably leave once scans of surrounding space indicate they are more than a little outgunned.

What? How? They never avoid engagement. How can they 'bypass' SW tech when it's unlikely they can even interface with it? I don't remember Borg ever leaving when they're outgunned - they've had cubes destroyed by overwhelming firepower before, and didn't even try to retreat.

I think he means the Borg will beam up any random Gungans they detect wandering about the surface and assimilate them. That's not unreasonable, the Borg did assimilate Captain Picard partly for his knowledge of Federation fleet tactics and defences, and faced with a hard-to-reach primary population I could see them scooping up some easy targets (they did this with minor colonies of the AQ powers before sending a cube to invade, and the intelligence from the assimilated humans probably convinced them that one cube could do the job - it would've worked if the Enterprise hadn't technobabbled them to death). The question is whether they'd actually learn anything useful about Gungan tech from scooping up Gungans caught on the surface. I doubt they'd get many before the Gungans realised something was up and retreated behind shields, and it seems unlikely that any of those would be the technicians and scientists who'd have technical details. That's assuming Borg transporters actually work on Naboo, which isn't assured given how often transporters are blocked by the most trivial things.

I hear you think they could assimilate SW tech? I'd love to see you defend that claim.

There are plenty of bits of super-advanced tech kicking about the Trek universe that the Borg haven't assimilated. The evidence suggests that their usual procedure is to incorporate people who understand the tech into their collective. When faced with something like the Guardian of Forever or an Iconian gateway they'd be just as stumped as the Federation, probably moreso given that reverse engineering requires imagination to invent theories of how the thing might work, and creativity isn't exactly a Borg strong point.

[Cao Cao]

At this point the Borg finally decided to try something subtle; the nanovirus the Borg queen wanted Seven to design to assimilate most of the Earth humans before they realise what's happening. We don't know whether that would have worked, as Voyager destroys her before they can proceed, but clearly this is very unusual for the Borg. Maybe after failing to assimilate the Gungans repeatedly they'd try that, but if the wormhole still exists at that point it would presumably be guarded by proper military starships.

Yeah, I was talking about opening gambits. And secondary. And tertiary. And so on.
Sure maybe after the 5th time they get repelled they try something else, but by then the Gungans are prepared for them and their nature. Wormhole or not.

As for the nanovirus.. I don't know.. that seems a remarkably stupid stunt even for the Borg. The Queen is bamboozled as to why Earth won twice and must resort to such tactics? It's called sending insufficient forces, you stupid bitch! That and 8472 prove the Borg have no imagination.
Even First Contact proves this if you think about it.. why not secretly beam drones down to Earth as well as/instead of the E-E? Yes. Let's send drones to the one location in this time period that knows how to fight them.

[Starglider]

As for the nanovirus.. I don't know.. that seems a remarkably stupid stunt even for the Borg. The Queen is bamboozled as to why Earth won twice and must resort to such tactics? It's called sending insufficient forces, you stupid bitch!

Not necessarily. The nanovirus sounds like it's pretty efficient in resource terms (presumably just a few scout ships to disseminate it), but has a long development time - I wasn't clear on this, but it seemed like the whole convoluted 'put Seven into the Voyager crew and then retrieve her' was necessary to have a chance of this working, though maybe that was rationalisation from the queen. But anyway, long development time but low physical asset commitment. People have pointed out previously on this board that the Borg not sending heavy forces to the AQ might be because they simply couldn't do this without compromising their DQ security; there are many races there that hate them and have effectively resisted them for centuries, and weakening their forces could've caused serious problems (particularly after they lost so many ships to 8472).

Even First Contact proves this if you think about it.. why not secretly beam drones down to Earth as well as/instead of the E-E?

Small collectives tend to disintigrate; we saw that in the Voyager episode where Borg-Seven tries to force her group of borg crash survivors to stay Borg, and later guilt-trips about it. Groups of less than ten drones probably wouldn't have survived, and the Queen couldn't make a larger commitment without significantly impacting the chances of her own survival/success of her own scheme.

While we're on the subject of First Contact, the Borg failure to assimilate Data is the trump card for the 'can the Borg assimilate advanced tech' debate. They couldn't even assimilate a single droid brain that represented one researcher's advance over the Federation state of the art (and even that seemed to be mostly minaturisation, compared to the M5 in Kirk's era). Why? Because none of the Enterprise crew they assimilated knew how it worked, and the Borg are used to advancing by mindripping captured engineers and scientists rather than doing genuine reverse engineering.

[Batman]

IOW you are arguing a position you yourself are convinced to have no canonical backing whatsoever.

Even if I had read every scrap of SW material the odds of me remembering such a detail are rather remote. I'd go by common sense, which tells me there are some ways to improve a TPM B-1; put back the cut corners.

Why don't you show me the quote which actually tells us which particular corner has been cut even if we assume the Databank is correct.

I would rather think showing Alderaan having a shield on the fucking silver screen constitutes a mention in the canon.

Given the controversy over that,

Which doesn't exist, ANH shows Alderaan having a planetary shield.

I'd say perhaps Bail Organa didn't bother to raise them in the ret-con

despite the visuals showing it was up,

I never said they HAD them. I was contending your stupid assumption that such an upgrade wouldn't have been worth it.

.... I said the droids were cheap and could be made better...

Oh really.

They may have upgraded the body alloys, but there is no reason to,

Yeah upgrading the body armour of a battle droid is totally not worth it.

That doesn't seem to keep you from assuming a lot of OTHER stuff that was never written down, either.

If it were written down, would it seem unreasonable?

Irellevant. If it is written down and not overridden by higher canon, unreasonable or not we have to somehow make it work. You assume a shitload of stuff that ISN'T written down.

So when I say the TF or Gungans could have done better, but didn't because they were clueless, its just my assumption they were clueless, not because they were clueless, because even though that is a reasonable assumption extrapolated from their performance, it wasn't written down that they were clueless?

Not that your definition of reasonable is anywhere within hailing distance of the one the real world uses but yeah, you finally have gotten the general idea. Especially as a lot of your 'reasonable assumptions' are directly contradicted by the movies.

Yeah. Valen forbid that a blaster bolt hitting metal in a universe with pseudo-EMP weapon effects and thermal superconducting armour have heat or EMP effects on the interior without leaving visible marks. As for the Jedi, not only does that rather fall under the superhuman strength category, it already involves the Force so Valen knows what else the Jedi did in that instance, but we already know the B1s suffer from part separation when sufficient physical force is applied to them. I fail to see why we have to assume it's internal damage when a severed connection via, say, a snapped neck amply suffices to explain the shutdown.

When some of them fall down in one piece?

Yes?

And aren't you are making the same educated guesses as I am as to what caused the problem of visibly intact unmarked droids going down? Better educated, at that? (Only not saying the broken connections were cheap and of inferior manufacture, but hopefully not implying that was an example of the good stuff).

Of course I am. Unlike you however I'm not assuming those assumptions are right.

But its not as dastardly as you make it seem.

Yes it is. You are downgrading the tech level of the TF by several orders of magnitude to support the notion that they were weak enough for the Borg to be able to beat the Gungans.

Well, at least I'm extrapolating a conclusion from basic canon material.

Quite the contrary, actually. You are blithely ignoring the highest canon there is and even the sources you quote don't support your position.

If the Gungans did that kind of damage on the way to being routed to a first rate, Republic-equivalent army, the Republic is in sad shape.

Again, presupposing your assessment of Gungan and TF strength were accurate, when 100% of available evidence shows that is level with general Star Wars technology.

All those millenia of peace didn't dull their edge; they completely misplaced it.

That your argument falls to pieces without all those not only baseless but clearly contradicted assumtions doesn't make those assumptions any more true Im afraid.

And the Army is all guns and war games involving no heavy lifting? Construction? Moving crates of supplies? Digging entrenchments? And ... never mind.

All of which are naturally done by front line soldiers all the time and not by specialized equipment designed for that purpose-oh wait.

[Ritterin Sophia]

despite the visuals showing it was up,

And Tarkin saying so!