Sci-fi's most ineffectively used technologies...

[MJ12 Commando]

1) You are assuming that someone who deployed a projectile weapon against the Borg would use the same kind of weapon that we would use today, ie- a small-calibre rifle. Why? If the Borg started to make whatever trade-offs are necessary in order to produce forcefields that can push away bullets, why wouldn't they use shotguns firing large-calibre slugs?

The same reason nobody today uses a .50 caliber machinegun as a man-portable weapon. Because conservation of momentum works both ways. If you fire a rifle that is capable of injuring a target with momentum transfer you will injure yourself with momentum transfer-dislocated shoulders, broken wrists, that kind of stuff. And a weapon that can only be used once before it makes you combat ineffective is a weapon that is not very useful. But long before that, the weapon becomes too bulky and hard to control to use effectively without a stationary brace.

2) If you could punch someone directly in his internal organs, you would injure him significantly.

Yes but nothing says the Borg have to put the shield generator right next to a vital organ, it'd be bad design. Putting it on top of the breastbone or something like that is generally going to be enough bracing since I doubt the Borg have osteoporosis and punching someone really hard in the chest generally doesn't significantly injure people.

You're still committing the common sci-fi mistake of assuming that your pet idea will not be met by any adaptation from the other side. When the only thing they need do is switch to heavier ammo, it's hardly a complicated problem to solve. And every new system you add onto something must involve some kind of trade-off, even if that "something" is a Borg drone.

All they need to do is violate conservation of momentum, you mean, because modern rifles are pretty much at the edge of firearms that can be effectively wielded and used by human beings without either powered armor, cybernetic enhancement, or other such modification that is nigh-nonexistent in Star Trek. Armor technology today is superior to weapons technology on an infantry scale because firearms are essentially at their limits of performance. Note that a .50 caliber MG round's momentum is still comparable to being hit by a fist, and well... a semi-automatic weapon using it masses almost 14 kilograms, is ~1.5 meters long, and generally needs to have the wielder stop and set up first before attempting to fire.

You could use a railgun type weapon with soft-recoil features and the like but you're looking at an antimateriel weapon then, not anything that can be effectively turned on humans or human-sized targets outside of long-range sniping.

[CaptJodan]

Do we even know if they have a practical range of greater than a couple of kilometers? I don't recall them being used for orbital bombardment yet.

No less than the rail guns mounted on Atlantis for defense. Point is, they've not had any contingencies for if something were to mysteriously, stupidity happen to their main method of planetary defense.

Actually, if I were to guess, I'd say the possibility of atmospheric dispersion would be a greater problem than range, which could be solved by having a satellite defense network in place.

Science does not work that way. Tactical stuff (they're writing down the locations of our guns!) is one thing, but if your theories about quantumn physics are dead-wrong, you're not going to be inventing anything like an FTL drive. Or making funk-tastic personal phase shifters.

Guess that's why Earth still doesn't have FTL, or that when Sam or Rodney uses quantum physics to solve a problem it never works, or that they continue to NOT bring up QT every time it's a multi-universe situation Oh wait... Your argument is basically that Earth scientists are not using advanced Tollan theories, but rather still using quantum theory, and that this entire theory is useless (like we threw out Newton because he was useless when Einstein came along), even though Earth has used quantum theory effectively to solve problems. The very fact that Earth continues to use it, and it continues to work disproves the Tollan's claims. It may not be the "best" theory for what they are trying to do, but it works much of the time.

The other aspect is that some of the Tollan theories ARE now known, as they can build some of these devices, but you say that's not true so...

Spoiler

C'mon, don't you pity the poor life suckers? The poor sods have been humiliated and starving for four years. Oh, and starvation hurts them more than us, apparently.

Well, that's not exactly a spoiler there. As you said, it's been happening for 4 years. I feel more sorry for the viewer, that we haven't been given a truly powerful and dangerous enemy. The Wraith are generally good for a Genni type storyline, but not good as the main villain. So...more sorry for us than for the Wraith. *

Their primary mission was to defend the planet.

By primarily gaining alien technology to use for themselves. The team went to the Nox homeworld precisely for the purpose of securing one of the animals they thought had natural cloaking abilities (this is one of many, many examples). The acquisition of new technology for defense has been one of the highest priorities in their mission statement since the beginning.

They did that by bringing about the fall of the goa'uld, the hostile power determined to invade it. Everything else is just gravy.

With the help of alien technology, as well as alien alliances. They have always had a convenience of enemies beyond the Goa'uld to justify their need to continue to gain new knowledge and technology to defend the planet from other threats.

*As an aside, to be fair to Atlantis, it has, on the whole, kept the Ancients as the overall pinnacle of tech in the Pegasus galaxy. With SG-1, there was a constant one-ups-man-ship going on between Goa'uld, where Apophis was bad, but then we have this Goa'uld who has better tech, then he's trumped by Anubis, who is is then trumped by the replicators which are more powerful who are then defeated and replaced by Baal, who is trumped by the evil Ori, the most powerful of powerful, etc. The wraith have remained relatively consistent in their tech, and any advancements have generally been with the help of Ancient tech itself, not some new super race that is "even better than the ancients". Even the Asurans were ancient based, as were the 2 episode "Assgard". I've always counted this as a positive in Atlantis' favor, for I was getting sick of the constant one-up behavior of SG-1. We just needed an enemy from the start that was more powerful or more capable than we got.

[Samuel]

Teleportation doesn't work through shields, so that wouldn't work.

Anyways, why would putting the shield emitter whatevers inside muscle or bone be a good idea?

They can beam through shields if they do technobabble or if the shield is weak enough- not to mention you don't care if it comes out correctly on the other side...

The same reason nobody today uses a .50 caliber machinegun as a man-portable weapon. Because conservation of momentum works both ways. If you fire a rifle that is capable of injuring a target with momentum transfer you will injure yourself with momentum transfer-dislocated shoulders, broken wrists, that kind of stuff. And a weapon that can only be used once before it makes you combat ineffective is a weapon that is not very useful. But long before that, the weapon becomes too bulky and hard to control to use effectively without a stationary brace.

So you just have multipule people per target.

Yes but nothing says the Borg have to put the shield generator right next to a vital organ, it'd be bad design. Putting it on top of the breastbone or something like that is generally going to be enough bracing since I doubt the Borg have osteoporosis and punching someone really hard in the chest generally doesn't significantly injure people.

Thats how you knock the wind out of people.

All they need to do is violate conservation of momentum, you mean, because modern rifles are pretty much at the edge of firearms that can be effectively wielded and used by human beings without either powered armor, cybernetic enhancement, or other such modification that is nigh-nonexistent in Star Trek. Armor technology today is superior to weapons technology on an infantry scale because firearms are essentially at their limits of performance. Note that a .50 caliber MG round's momentum is still comparable to being hit by a fist, and well... a semi-automatic weapon using it masses almost 14 kilograms, is ~1.5 meters long, and generally needs to have the wielder stop and set up first before attempting to fire.

You could use a railgun type weapon with soft-recoil features and the like but you're looking at an antimateriel weapon then, not anything that can be effectively turned on humans or human-sized targets outside of long-range sniping.

And yet people can weild and fire bazokas and recoiless rifles, even though they have greater momentum. There are ways of getting around the restrictions- they do have rockets for handguns.

[Formless]

And yet people can weild and fire bazokas and recoiless rifles, even though they have greater momentum. There are ways of getting around the restrictions- they do have rockets for handguns.

You mean Gyrojet, right? They never went into production, but in theory they could work. You could even add a small explosive warhead to the tip and really screw over the borg! The only problem is that they are inherently a mid to long range weapon since the bullet has to accelerate constantly to the target rather than instantly in the chamber.

[NecronLord]

Guess that's why Earth still doesn't have FTL,

And those systems are alien systems with a USAF sticker slapped on the side. Recall how easily Vala started finding goa'uld standard crystals and similar on the Prometheus? Same with the hyperdrive on the 304; it was designed - and even said to have been - by the Asgard.

or that when Sam or Rodney uses quantum physics to solve a problem it never works,

We've actually seen demonstrations that QT isn't accurate. Foresight exists, thus, the uncertainty principle is indequate to explain known and observed phonomena. Carter simply had to be a stereotype 'disbelieving skeptic' in both of those occasions, because they assume it's an accurate theory, when she's been told it's fallacious. She certainly shouldn't have been the 'disbelieving skeptic' the second time; quite obviously QT is inadequate in these circumstances, and she ought to bloody know it.

or that they continue to NOT bring up QT every time it's a multi-universe situation Oh wait... Your argument is basically that Earth scientists are not using advanced Tollan theories, but rather still using quantum theory,

My argument was that the human understanding of the technology they use is probably woefully incomplete, and they shouldn't be dicking with stuff on the assumption they fully understand it. Right now, what they need to do is get, not just the technology, but the science. At least the goa'uld understood their stuff, for all they might have stolen it. For the Tau'ri to progress, they need to work on establishing the proper education to make use of what they now have.

By primarily gaining alien technology to use for themselves. The team went to the Nox homeworld precisely for the purpose of securing one of the animals they thought had natural cloaking abilities (this is one of many, many examples). The acquisition of new technology for defense has been one of the highest priorities in their mission statement since the beginning.

Your argument was that the stargate program's continuing justification was to bring back technology. Right now, they have the complete knowledge of the Ancients and Asgard available to them. Aside from their distant, out of range, technologically inferior enemies, they have no real defence issues to worry about. The program can no longer justify itself based upon technology it brings back; the planet is safe, and it's holding back a massive amount of technology (and education needed to use it) from the public. With what they have, they could start working toward making people freaking immortal and immensely more prosperous.

The stargate program cannot justify itself on the technology it's bringing back, if that technology never sees the public domain. There's no pressing need to try and find new weapons right now - they have all the knowledge they can use.

That doesn't mean there's no role for the stargate: of course it would continue to be useful, but they have no pressing need to find new technologies. They have an in-box of new technologies that's bulging at the sides. It's time to go public, so that the technologies and knowledge they have got can begin to be exploited, and for the Stargate's use to be geo(stellar?)political engagement with the other governments of the galaxy, and continuing operations against existing enemies in the form of the Wraith. The wars in the Milky Way, are over; there's no rational reason to think that anarchy would break out if it went public. Protection from the Wraith would be best achieved by using resources available to a public program to expand Pegasus operations.

*As an aside, to be fair to Atlantis, it has, on the whole, kept the Ancients as the overall pinnacle of tech in the Pegasus galaxy. With SG-1, there was a constant one-ups-man-ship going on between Goa'uld, where Apophis was bad, but then we have this Goa'uld who has better tech, then he's trumped by Anubis, who is is then trumped by the replicators which are more powerful who are then defeated and replaced by Baal, who is trumped by the evil Ori, the most powerful of powerful, etc. The wraith have remained relatively consistent in their tech, and any advancements have generally been with the help of Ancient tech itself, not some new super race that is "even better than the ancients". Even the Asurans were ancient based, as were the 2 episode "Assgard". I've always counted this as a positive in Atlantis' favor, for I was getting sick of the constant one-up behavior of SG-1. We just needed an enemy from the start that was more powerful or more capable than we got.

That's true.

Frankly, I'd like to see something like the 'Foothold' aliens (re-designed somewhat) as the main adveseries in the next series. They didn't need shiny super technology to be a threat; they were smart. An enemy doesn't even need much better-than-human technology to be a serious threat, they simply need to be written as being as smart and resourceful (or more so) as the heroes. This is part of why I like the Asurans so much; until Be All My Sins, those guys were universally depicted as smart and committed, you didn't want to mess with them. Their response to an attack on their world was immediate, and killed a main character.

As I believe I mentioned on SDN, I expected Todd to steal at least bits of the Asgard Core when he was on board the Daedalus. And I was also hoping for the ship to be destroyed. The problem with Atlantis, to my mind, has been that the adversaries never seem to win; and are simply out-classed by the heroes in most encounters.

[MJ12 Commando]

So you just have multipule people per target.

Not particularly practical. You want to be able to drop a target now, without faffing about with more than one guy shooting at one enemy for a prolonged period of time.

Thats how you knock the wind out of people.

Knocking the wind out of people by punching them hard is technically injuring them, yes, but how many people get killed by being pummeled in the chest or even the head (IOW: is it significant enough to kill someone in a timely and practical fashion)? It's not easy to kill or significantly injure someone by momentum transfer, even less so when you want to drop the target now instead of kill them hours later from gross organ damage. And being knocked down with the wind out of you is, I would believe, a far better outcome than having a large hole in you.

There are reasons not to give everyone a shield generator (cost for effectiveness, power drain, etc) but in Star Trek where they have replicators to build things I'd presume that the cost for a shield generator is fairly low (so it's basically stupidity not to give someone a shield system that'll stop shrapnel and the occasional bullet, since IIRC they could build one from a combadge which everyone has). Anything on how fast that improvised shield drained power?

And yet people can weild and fire bazokas and recoiless rifles, even though they have greater momentum. There are ways of getting around the restrictions- they do have rockets for handguns.

The gyrojet has its own issues, explosive rounds are by default not good in confined quarters when you don't have much armor, and bazookas are worse. They have all the disadvantages of a grenade launcher plus the potential to kill you if you fire them in an enclosed space without the round exploding. Recoilless rifles are even more unwieldy than .50 caliber sniper rifles and the former is already not a weapon you can use effectively if at all in tight confines, which is from what I recall generally where one fights the Borg. If you have an easy and cheap method of violation of CoM that doesn't have its own impracticalities it stands to reason the other guy would also use it.

[Samuel]

Not particularly practical. You want to be able to drop a target now, without faffing about with more than one guy shooting at one enemy for a prolonged period of time.

This is the borg we are talking about. Not exactly speedy. Not to mention you don't need people to be shooting- auto turrets work fine as well.

Anything on how fast that improvised shield drained power?

It couldn't take more than a couple shots.

There are reasons not to give everyone a shield generator (cost for effectiveness, power drain, etc) but in Star Trek where they have replicators to build things I'd presume that the cost for a shield generator is fairly low (so it's basically stupidity not to give someone a shield system that'll stop shrapnel and the occasional bullet, since IIRC they could build one from a combadge which everyone has).

What makes you think combadges are cheap? The Ferengi are surprised the Feds use gold in them- they are more complex than you give them credit.

The gyrojet has its own issues, explosive rounds are by default not good in confined quarters when you don't have much armor, and bazookas are worse. They have all the disadvantages of a grenade launcher plus the potential to kill you if you fire them in an enclosed space without the round exploding. Recoilless rifles are even more unwieldy than .50 caliber sniper rifles and the former is already not a weapon you can use effectively if at all in tight confines, which is from what I recall generally where one fights the Borg. If you have an easy and cheap method of violation of CoM that doesn't have its own impracticalities it stands to reason the other guy would also use it.

Tight spaces only? Why didn't you say so! Flamethrowers were made for that battlefield

[Batman]

So you just have multiple people per target.

Not particularly practical. You want to be able to drop a target now, without faffing about with more than one guy shooting at one enemy for a prolonged period of time.

When the enemy is lumbering towards you at a snail's pace and needs to get into grappling range to fight back? Why the hell not?

It's not easy to kill or significantly injure someone by momentum transfer,

Yes it is. It's called throwing rocks at them.

(since IIRC they could build one from a combadge which everyone has). Anything on how fast that improvised shield drained power?

That improvised shield stopped holographic bullets so I fail to see how it would be relevant to the power consumption of a REAL particle shield.

If you have an easy and cheap method of violation of CoM that doesn't have its own impracticalities it stands to reason the other guy would also use it.

Because as we all know, not only do the Borg always shoot to kill-oh wait, they don't shoot at all, they try to assimilate you. Which is why they use stun phasers all the-oh, wait, they don't do that either, they lumber towards their intended prey until they succeed in assimilating them or are killed (whatever happens first). In short, the other guy using it too doesn't factor into it.

[Formless]

The gyrojet has its own issues,

If you are talking about the inaccuracy problem, that was an issue with shitty manufacturing.

Edit: unless you are talking about the range problem? Then I must ask you what problem you think will be brought about by explosive rounds? Small explosives do not create enough fragmentation to really be much inconvenience, especially if the charge is shaped.

[MJ12 Commando]

Well I'll concede that the borg using kinetic shields wouldn't matter because they're just zombies (and zombies are a pathetic enemy by any standard).

[Bilbo]

Well I'll concede that the borg using kinetic shields wouldn't matter because they're just zombies (and zombies are a pathetic enemy by any standard).

The strength of the Borg is the strength of all zombies. They come at you in endless waves and dont care how many casualties they take because there are 100 of them to replace each one that falls.

For all we know the Borg might be able to put kinetic energy shields on their drones. But enemies that use bullets are so rare that its not worth the cost. The Borg want a cheap fairly effective soldier they can deploy in the billions.

Why put a defense on the Borg that will only defend against one foe in a thousands weapon?

[Ryan Thunder]

For all we know the Borg might be able to put kinetic energy shields on their drones. But enemies that use bullets are so rare that its not worth the cost. The Borg want a cheap fairly effective soldier they can deploy in the billions.

It is trivial to produce weapons that could easily defeat them. They only reason they survive is because their enemies are retards.

Regardless, we've never, not once seen any evidence that the Borg field personal kinetic shields, much less that they can "adapt" their existing shields to fill that role.

[Serafina]

Yes, the sheer fact that no one in ST ever applied ballistic weapons on a large scale against the Borg speaks for their stupidity.
After all, a gun is relative simple to build - heck, the holodeck could "build" one. They do not need sophisticated, high-tech guns, a simple AK or something similar seems to be sufficient.

At best, they have a weapon to kill lots of drones. At worst, they force the borg to adapt to bullets, wasting resources - still a nice strategic advantage.

[Littlefoot]

I'm new here, so I may have missed a topic in another thread that answers this, but if transporters destroy the body and reconstruct it somewhere else then it must be able to map a persons memories and "download" this information into the newly constructed or re-constructed body. That being said the transport logs would be a huge Intel source. A foreign diplomat beams aboard Enterprise and unwittingly reveals that his people are going to attack/steal/spy/whatever. On the issue of the "Transporter Highway" it may not be feasible for general use, but if the medical data is up to date then couldn't you just send a person's conciseness into a replicated body? Or download programmed soldiers into mass produced bodies? There are limitations to transporters, but would it be possible or feasible to combine this technology with replicators and a device like the game? Starfleet may have objections to these uses, but I have no doubt that Section 31 would exploit this to the max. Or as a medical device, anytime an away team is sent to a planet, their bodies are mapped and the information is saved. When they beam back up only their minds are actually brought back, eliminating the possibility of infection and also undoing any damage sustained, such as a knife in the heart.

[Bounty]

if transporters destroy the body and reconstruct it somewhere else then it must be able to map a persons memories and "download" this information into the newly constructed or re-constructed body

That assumes the information is stored in a way that is machine-readable and searchable within a reasonable timeframe.

[Littlefoot]

How could it be otherwise? I mean, If the body is destroyed, it has to be reconstructed. The computer has to know what atoms go where, or all that would materialize would be a puddle of goo. It could be a stream of information that is used imediatly, but that amount should still be storable, and most definatly readable to the computer controling the process. Now if you mean that the memories are not readable that would be different. But if they can be transfered, they can be decoded and interpreted. Otherwise, the body would be reconstructed with the mentality of a newborn, if that.

[Bounty]

But if they can be transfered, they can be decoded and interpreted.

What do you base that on?

[Littlefoot]

But if they can be transfered, they can be decoded and interpreted.

What do you base that on?

Logic. The scans necesary to transfer and reconstruct the body with its memories would be different on the return trip. With the hundreds of years that people in st have been using transporters, isn't it logical that either a doctor or a doctor on government payroll would have used the slight diferences in the brain scans to determine what those changes were? Or, to answer your question more directly, if i were to send a program to another computer that was not just like mine put perfectly like mine, then for that program to work it has to be readable and without corruption. If a human is transported and re-materializes with the exact same personality and memories, then the computer reconstructing them has to know exactly what electrical charges in the brain go where. With observation in a controled environment and with tech as sophisticated as this it shouldn't take long to do more advanced versions of the experiments universities are conducting in rl. Or consider this: put those scans into a holographic body. No laws about interegating a hologram.

[Bilbo]

For all we know the Borg might be able to put kinetic energy shields on their drones. But enemies that use bullets are so rare that its not worth the cost. The Borg want a cheap fairly effective soldier they can deploy in the billions.

It is trivial to produce weapons that could easily defeat them. They only reason they survive is because their enemies are retards.

Regardless, we've never, not once seen any evidence that the Borg field personal kinetic shields, much less that they can "adapt" their existing shields to fill that role.

Never said they could adapt their existing shields They demonstrate on their ships that they can create physical shields so it would just be a process of miniaturization and power to put one on a drone.

Or maybe they cannot. Retarded foes aside it is fairly obvious from what we see on the show that enemies that use projectile weapons are fairly non-existant. So with this in mind the Borg may not care enough to build a better drone for cost reasons.

[Ryan Thunder]

For all we know the Borg might be able to put kinetic energy shields on their drones. But enemies that use bullets are so rare that its not worth the cost. The Borg want a cheap fairly effective soldier they can deploy in the billions.

It is trivial to produce weapons that could easily defeat them. They only reason they survive is because their enemies are retards.

Regardless, we've never, not once seen any evidence that the Borg field personal kinetic shields, much less that they can "adapt" their existing shields to fill that role.

Never said they could adapt their existing shields.

Good.

They demonstrate on their ships that they can create physical shields so it would just be a process of miniaturization and power to put one on a drone.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that they could miniaturize kinetic shields to that level, either.

[Samuel]

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that they could miniaturize kinetic shields to that level, either.

If they get future tech (in the case of Voyager, 29th century holoemitter), they could make another One, which did have miniaturized shields.

As per the transporter, it is so contradictory, it is hard to figure out what method it uses. If it merely transports, that doesn't work- otherwise it is perfect.

[Korto]

I have often wondered why, since the holodeck technology was capable of killing with the safeties off, they didn't extend the thing through the whole ship (or large important sections), as an internal defense against intruders. Intruders? Retreat to fortified areas while the computer-controlled defense grid deals with them; if that's dangerously passive, it still makes for a great "Point-man" and "air-support" for your security teams flushing the enemy out. It can be pared down somewhat, as there's no need for the holograms, just the bullets.

I also remember some TNG episode (sorry,don't remember which. Been a long time) where a Farengi was using a teleporter that could cross light-years and ignore shields. The Federation had apparently had the technology for some time, but didn't use it because it made the people using it mentally unstable, and would occasionally destroy what it was transporting.
Just because it's not safe for people doesn't mean there's not other perfectly good uses. The Trekkie dream of bombs transported inside ships suddenly looks possible.

[Bilbo]

I have often wondered why, since the holodeck technology was capable of killing with the safeties off, they didn't extend the thing through the whole ship (or large important sections), as an internal defense against intruders. Intruders? Retreat to fortified areas while the computer-controlled defense grid deals with them; if that's dangerously passive, it still makes for a great "Point-man" and "air-support" for your security teams flushing the enemy out. It can be pared down somewhat, as there's no need for the holograms, just the bullets.

I also remember some TNG episode (sorry,don't remember which. Been a long time) where a Farengi was using a teleporter that could cross light-years and ignore shields. The Federation had apparently had the technology for some time, but didn't use it because it made the people using it mentally unstable, and would occasionally destroy what it was transporting.
Just because it's not safe for people doesn't mean there's not other perfectly good uses. The Trekkie dream of bombs transported inside ships suddenly looks possible.

Yep and now all you need is one computer expert to hack the ships core and you can have the ship quickly kill everyone onboard. Though they could do that anyway since anyone with access to the bridge can tell the ships computer to start spraying toxic gas throughout the ship.

[Darth Wong]

1) You are assuming that someone who deployed a projectile weapon against the Borg would use the same kind of weapon that we would use today, ie- a small-calibre rifle. Why? If the Borg started to make whatever trade-offs are necessary in order to produce forcefields that can push away bullets, why wouldn't they use shotguns firing large-calibre slugs?

The same reason nobody today uses a .50 caliber machinegun as a man-portable weapon. Because conservation of momentum works both ways.

Who the fuck said anything about .50 calibre machine guns? Shotguns firing slugs would work just fine. We're not talking about stopping a fast-moving cavalry charge here, and .50 calibre machine guns would be overkill.

It seems to me that you are deliberately choosing the worst possible projectile weapons to deal with the Borg, and then rhetorically asking why I think the Borg would have that much trouble devising a countermeasure. Like your previous post where you talked about what type of small-arms is most common today, as if that has any relevance at all to the question of what type of firearm you would manufacture in a hypothetical future to deal with the Borg. No, we would probably not use .22 calibre weapons against the Borg.

[loomer]

On the subject of small arms, I would be a big proponent of something in 7.62x51mm to fight the Borg. It's a fairly high powered round, versatile, likely quite capable of punching through the metal layering of the Borg. A design like the FAL would be ideal - low recoil for the cartridge, manageable on burst and even automatic, rugged and accurate.

Against the Borg, though, all you need to do is fire single shots lined up to cause maximum damage. They're slow as all hell - you really do have the time to just correct aim between each round, unless there are a lot of them and they're taking a fair few rounds to take down.

5.56 is also acceptable, but may have issues with overpenetration on a starship. While unlikely to punch through bulkheads into space, it's still a potential risk factor - you don't want a stray round blowing through half a dozen internal walls, as opposed to say, four.

PDWs would probably be a good idea for non-dedicated teams. While marines could be trained to use bullpup assault or battle rifles, the rest of the crew could be trained in lower powered, less recoil weapons like an MP5 or P90 analogue. Something with a decent rate of fire, minimal recoil, fair accuracy and a round with decent stopping power would be a hell of a lot better than phaser pistols. If nothing else, train the security detachment in such weapons.