RAR - You command the fleet at Wolf 359

[Borgholio]

You are in command of the Federation fleet at Wolf 359, replacing Admiral Hansen. You have 6 hours until the Borg cube arrives. At your command are the 40 Federation ships that were said to have taken part in the battle. Here is a partial list:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star ... t_Wolf_359

Feel free to use your imagination and make up the rest of the fleet (within reason...no 25 War-Galaxies for instance). As a Starfleet Admiral, your orders will be obeyed to the best of the fleet's ability, but certain extreme orders such as "All ships ram the cube at warp speed" will be met with resistance.

According to dialogue from the show, the Klingons were sending ships but they didn't arrive in time. If you manage to avoid engaging the cube for an additional 6 hours after it arrives in Wolf 359, you can assume to have 20 Klingon warships to assist you in your defense. Assume a mix of battlecruisers and Birds of Prey.

The Borg arrive in 6 hours. If you manage to avoid combat for an additional 6 hours, you get Klingon reinforcements. What do you do?

[Elheru Aran]

I put all my ships' engineers, Ops, and weapons officers on a party-line conversation to think-tank the hell out of it.

Either we need to brute-force the Borg shields and keep taking down the material of the Cube before it can regenerate, or take it down by technological means.

Is retrieving Picard a priority or not?

[Darth Tanner]

I suppose my strategy will depend on if the Borg are willing to chase my fleet like they did the Enterprise or will simply bypass me for Earth if I attempt to lead them on a chase to give the Klingons the chance to meet up.

Assuming the Borg don't take the bait to let me wait for the Klingons I mass my fleet in a wall and concentrate all fire on a single face of the cube to try and do as much damage as possible, none of these attack runs to let the Borg pick me off. Suicide tactics are authorized with some ships, especially the older less well armed ships setup to be fire ships loaded with all the spare antimatter I can get hold off. I see no reason to bring the Orbeths and Constitutions to the fight for instance except as suicide ram ships, hopefully without any crew on board if the engineers can rig something up to autopilot them into the cube at high speed.

I would if possible prepare mines as the Borg Cube is on a known course but I'm guessing as I lack the ability to cloak them the Borg are not going to just fly into them and doing so removes my option to attempt to evade the cube to permit the Klingons to arrive. Also the antimatter for the mines is likely better served on my ram ships.

If I can delay until the Klingons arrive I perform the above strategy but with more ships and more firepower, assuming the Klingons will submit to my command, otherwise they can swoop about as they like to provide a distraction to my massed fire and ram ships.

I also for the love of god offload all the civilians on the nearest habitable planet or star base.

I'm not sure if I withdraw to the Mars defense perimeter to make my stand there, from the episode it doesn’t appear to add much in the way of firepower but there could be significantly more unseen assets… retreating to make a stand alongside space dock would also be an option presuming it has the firepower from the various non cannon sources.

[Tribble]

IMO the outcome boils down to whether or not the Borg are adapted to Klingon weapons.

If the Borg are not adapted to Klingon type weapons it's likely that the combined fleet would be enough to take the Cube down. The E-D damaged over 20% of the Cube in Q-Who with just three full powered shots from its phasers and forced the Cube into a regeneration mode; I doubt the Cube would do well against a fleet of 20 ships that it has not adapted to, especially since the wolf 359 fleet would be assisting.

However If the Borg are adapted to Klingon type weapons, short of getting all the ships together and having them ram the Cube at the same time, I don't think the outcome could be changed all that much. Perhaps if the fleet concentrated fire all at one point they might be able to do some damage, but I doubt it would be enough to stop them. That tactic only worked in STFC because Starfleet had several more years worth of tech development, the Borgs shields were already down and Picard knew exactly where the damaged section was. If the fleet starts firing all at one point the Cube might be able to concentrate its shields at that point and/or simply rotate that section out of the way if a failure becomes imminent. If that is the case, the best I could hope for is what we already saw on screen- the fleet battle delays the Cube long enough for the E-D to catch up, rescue Picard and use his connection to disable the Cube.

[Borgholio]

Is retrieving Picard a priority or not?

Up to you. Your orders from Starfleet Command are to prevent the Borg from assimilating Earth. Naturally they would be quite grateful if you can rescue their most famous captain, but they will fully understand if he is considered a casualty.

IMO the outcome boils down to whether or not the Borg are adapted to Klingon weapons.

Assume that Picard knew enough about how Klingon weapons worked to allow the Borg to at least partially adapt to them.

[Simon_Jester]

The Borg seem to have trouble defending against multiple phaser frequencies at the same time, or the "randomly cycle frequencies" trick wouldn't work very well. Massed attacks are likely to work much better than individual attacks because we can present multiple types of threats at the same time; the Borg don't seem able to adapt their defenses against all those different threats simultaneously. Otherwise, they would just invent a defense that provides immunity to all phasers forever.

Assuming I don't have OOC knowledge of Borg weaknesses, I can still go over the reports from Enterprise about both the anti-Borg tactics they've actually implemented and the ones they have in mind.

Mass and concentration of force are a basic military principle, so insofar as Starfleet training allows I definitely order my ships to attack in waves. This also increases the chance that ships can (for instance) help each other if they get caught in tractor beams.

[Alferd Packer]

Ramming speed.

It's as simple as that. Presumably, all civilians have been offloaded. I'd further offload as many crew from the ships as possible while retaining full combat effectiveness (I'm thinking science, operations, maybe even extra medical staff, extraneous command staff, etc.) and issue a standing order to jump to warp straight at the cube upon receiving terminal damage, or, failing that, best impulse speed. Show the crews footage/data from the Enterprise's away missions to the cube, as well that of Locutus so that they know what fate awaits not only them, but the 6 billion people on Earth (plus the many millions scattered across Sol) if they fail.

Remember, the goal is to defeat a single ship, not a fleet of comparable size, at any cost. You can't count the Enterprise being able to swoop in the save the day, so you must operate under the assumption that you are the last line of defense between Sol and the Borg ship. You can try overwhelming it with the fleet's combined firepower, but in the likely even that that doesn't work, you have to hit with something orders of magnitude stronger.

[The Romulan Republic]

Trying to stall the Borg as long as possible for the Klingons to arrive is one approach. If we can use evasive maneuvers, hit and run attacks, whatever to keep them focussed on us rather than flying straight to Earth but without committing to a pitched battle, that'll be helpful. Another option to stall for time would be to wait for them in Earth's solar system and engage their, rather at Wolf 359, although that depends on the position of Earth relative to the Klingon fleet- we wouldn't want to be further from the Klingons.

Obviously, change any command codes Picard might know (though hopefully they did this anyway when Picard was taken).

Self-destruct any vessel the Borg manage to overrun.

Most likely, though, it'll come down to ramming them. I am loath to order personnel on a suicide mission, however, so if I can rig up some of my biggest ships (we'll likely need more than one to ensure that a ship makes it through any Borg attempts to shoot the rammers down) for remote control or a limited AI programmed to ram the cube, that would be ideal. Its also possible, as in Voyager's "Caretaker", to have just one person pilot a ship and then beam them off just before impact. Maybe load the ram ships with any spare munitions/fuel, for the biggest possible bang.

If the Klingons arrive in time, having the Klingons (who are a lot less fussed about dying in battle if it comes to that) ram while cloaked might be a way to end the battle before the Borg know what hit them (unless the information Picard gave them lets them counter Klingon cloaks).

[Prometheus Unbound]

You are in command of the Federation fleet at Wolf 359, replacing Admiral Hansen. You have 6 hours until the Borg cube arrives. At your command are the 40 Federation ships that were said to have taken part in the battle. Here is a partial list:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star ... t_Wolf_359

Feel free to use your imagination and make up the rest of the fleet (within reason...no 25 War-Galaxies for instance). As a Starfleet Admiral, your orders will be obeyed to the best of the fleet's ability, but certain extreme orders such as "All ships ram the cube at warp speed" will be met with resistance.

According to dialogue from the show, the Klingons were sending ships but they didn't arrive in time. If you manage to avoid engaging the cube for an additional 6 hours after it arrives in Wolf 359, you can assume to have 20 Klingon warships to assist you in your defense. Assume a mix of battlecruisers and Birds of Prey.

The Borg arrive in 6 hours. If you manage to avoid combat for an additional 6 hours, you get Klingon reinforcements. What do you do?

1) Tell the ships to evacuate the civilians first, please. We have 6 hours. Off you go.

2) Take what info we could from the Enterprise's updates so we'd be rotating shield frequencies (which I think they did anyway, to be fair).

3) All weapons would be set to fire at different frequencies and all this science shit Starfleet carries on their ships will be set to monitor that stuff Geordi was doing when they noticed the "upper EM band" weaknesses. Coordinate automatically across the fleet and look for *any* kind of pattern on the fly and if something looks promosing, jump on it.

4) Engage the cube all at once with all 39 ships, firing on one single spot roughly 1/3 along and 1/4 up from any particular side (for a random chance at a ST:FC style thing, which probably wont work but why not try it). None of the wave tactics we saw in Emissary. Also do we have to be so close?

5) Modify as many navigational deflectors as possible and have them set up to fire half all at the same spot. If that does something the other half do too. If it doesnt the other half fire all over to "stress" the entire thing.

6) Oh yeah, and since they Borg don't seem to mind beaming, beam ... I don't know, say.... ten thousand photon torpedoes inside it? Or antimatter storage pods with a dynamite stick and a ticking clock or whatever.

7) If none of that works, beam the warp cores next to it and blow it up.

If none of that works and by now we're probably at about 15 ships left, fuck it, ram.



EDIT: the Klingons were destroyed before the Cube reached 359. It's not said in the episode but in VOY: Unity season 3, we see flashbacks of wolf 359 survivors and their memories - including a borg cube firing on klingon birds of prey and k'tingas. This is actually footage from Way of the Warrior with the phasers and torpedoes of DS9 recoloured to be green. Unless there was another cube somewhere that assaulted the Klingon empire off screen and never mentioned, I just presumed that was the fleet referenced by Hanson.

[Borgholio]

EDIT: the Klingons were destroyed before the Cube reached 359. It's not said in the episode but in VOY: Unity season 3, we see flashbacks of wolf 359 survivors and their memories - including a borg cube firing on klingon birds of prey and k'tingas. This is actually footage from Way of the Warrior with the phasers and torpedoes of DS9 recoloured to be green. Unless there was another cube somewhere that assaulted the Klingon empire off screen and never mentioned, I just presumed that was the fleet referenced by Hanson.

The explanation that most people seem to agree with is that there was a second cube, which doesn't make sense to me...why don't we ever see or hear anything about it? Did it just destroy the Klingon fleet and then leave? The in-universe explanation that I prefer is that after the cube destroyed the fleet at Wolf 359, the Klingons caught up to it and attacked but were destroyed as well. The ones who were assimilated were then sent back to the DQ for some reason by a Borg sphere or other smaller ship that would have been unsuitable for planetary assimilation.

The out of universe explanation is that the FX guys were just lazy and spliced several battle scenes together to make it look impressive.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I prefer the Sphere idea tbh.

It was a cube that destroyed the Klingons though so - yeah I think they were intercepted (or stupidly tried to intercept the cube on their own, being Klingons) and got destroyed. They couldn't have been destroyed after Wolf 359 as the Enterprise which followed its course all the way, would have come across the wreckage.

[FaxModem1]

Is the Borg cube vulnerable to kinetic damage? Would it be possible to strap a bunch of impulse and warp engines to asteroids and ram them by remote?

[Prometheus Unbound]

Is the Borg cube vulnerable to kinetic damage? Would it be possible to strap a bunch of impulse and warp engines to asteroids and ram them by remote?

Sometimes:
https://youtu.be/V4LR6Ev27FQ?t=35s
https://youtu.be/vPzJSBHG4pI?t=2m6s


Sometimes not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwxdT5Dqr_A
(also two clips I cant find from Q who and TBOBW of photons hitting and *not* doing any damage)

[Eternal_Freedom]

If waro-ramming is an effective strategy against the Borg ship, then use my six hours to find a way to remote-pilot every shuttlecraft, runabout, captain's yacht etc on the ships and send them all at the target in a massed wave.

[Borgholio]

Wasn't there a discussion awhile back about how warp ramming may not be as effective as STL ramming due to how warp fields mess with a ship's mass or actual velocity?

[PREDATOR490]

First Contact showed the Federation hammering a single Borg cube relentlessly for an unknown amount of time. Assuming it was hours then I do not see 40 ships in BOBW doing better than First Contact.

1) The ships in First Contact were all kinds of new combat designs with the Akira and Defiant which were designed to fight the Borg in theory. Plus the Federation seem to have significantly bulked up their forces due to the BOBW events and the Dominion War.

2) The BOBW fleet is a collection of exploration ships that had to scramble into position with little warning and that was after a year of potential fore-warning about the Borg coming.

3) The modulating frequencies trick was not in common use since Shelby seems to have come up with it on the fly during the E-D battle. Even if that information was relayed back to the fleet, no indication if they have the technology to pull it off.

That said:

Going with the situation with BOBW, the best option would be to try and focus fire the Borg cube with the best alpha strike they can muster. The snippets of battle seen in DS9 seem to indicate the Feds were not organised. Interestingly, it seems curious that in both events the Borg seemed to take out the command ships in order to screw up any organised resistance.

Failing that, one could leave the Borg alone and let them get to Earth - It sucks but the cube is going to be stuck in a fixed point over Earth while it tries to assimilate the planet. That gives the Feds the best chance to rally as much firepower they can for a fight over Earth.
Borg drones should be manageable on the ground if the cube can be dealt with and it might put the cube into a vulnerable state trying to assimilate and fight off a combined Klingon / Fed attack on the ground and in space.

[Gandalf]

Start beaming antimatter pods aboard until a sufficiently sized fleet can be amassed. Hopefully the innards are reduced to rubble.

If that doesn't work and I can use knowledge from First Contact, then compress as much warp core coolant as possible into a bomb and beam over enough to fill the cube.

[Sidewinder]

Start beaming antimatter pods aboard until a sufficiently sized fleet can be amassed. Hopefully the innards are reduced to rubble.

I think that was only possible because Seven of Nine was a member of Voyager's crew; as a former drone, she knew had insider info (what frequency the Borg cube's shield was at, Borg transport protocols, Borg IFF codes to trick the cube into thinking the incoming photon torpedo was a Borg boarder, etc.) to let the ship transport the torpedo aboard the Borg cube.

[FireNexus]

Can I extend a warp field (or impulse engine) from a shuttle around an asteroid? If I put the shuttle in the center and give it a nice top off of antimatter, I can turn it into a net hybrid of a mass driver and a torpedo.

[Simon_Jester]

I doubt a shuttle warp core has the power to put an asteroid into warp- if it did, then starships would be able to use shuttle-sized warp cores and probably wouldn't need antimatter reactors to begin with. Also, that kind of work generally takes more time than the fleet at Wolf 359 is likely to have, even if it were possible.

Start beaming antimatter pods aboard until a sufficiently sized fleet can be amassed. Hopefully the innards are reduced to rubble.

I think that was only possible because Seven of Nine was a member of Voyager's crew; as a former drone, she knew had insider info (what frequency the Borg cube's shield was at, Borg transport protocols, Borg IFF codes to trick the cube into thinking the incoming photon torpedo was a Borg boarder, etc.) to let the ship transport the torpedo aboard the Borg cube.

The crew of the Enterprise-D never seemed to have trouble beaming aboard Borg cubes, either during their first clash with the Borg or during the running battle of Best of Both Worlds.

Do we have reason to think the Borg have the means to design a transport inhibitor that blocks enemies from beaming a torpedo warhead aboard, but doesn't stop enemies from being random Klingons and androids aboard to kidnap valuable drones?

And in any event, it's relatively low-cost to try such a tactic. Unlike, say, having ships suicide-ram the cube on remote control, there's very little penalty for trying and failing.

Honestly, if I were a Trek captain or admiral, I'd probably have one or more officers whose entire job was to think of ways to engage in transporter-dickery against my opponents, because while it isn't always possible, when it works, it works well and hilariously.

[Borgholio]

Voyager was able to beam a torpedo on board a Borg scout ship without any difficulty. So I'd say it should have been possible during BoBW.

[Batman]

In their rescue mission for Locutus/Picard, Worf and Data had to get inside the Borg's 'EM field' before they could beam aboard so blocking transporters is something the Borg are definitely capable of.

[PREDATOR490]

The Borg do jam transporters in BOBW but it may not be intentional. Partly because if Trek lore is consistent then beaming through shields is not possible. The Borg like beaming people off and too ships so this might justify why they don't keep them on except when they need it to stop getting wrecked.

Voyager had to knock the probe shields down before the bomb trick and if you want to be reasonable, the Borg transporters should have been knocked off. Beaming a warhead into the ship would be solved quickly with the Borg beaming it out.

Not to mention that any ship that tries this stunt against the Borg needs to lower their own shields.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The Borg seem to have trouble defending against multiple phaser frequencies at the same time, or the "randomly cycle frequencies" trick wouldn't work very well. Massed attacks are likely to work much better than individual attacks because we can present multiple types of threats at the same time; the Borg don't seem able to adapt their defenses against all those different threats simultaneously. Otherwise, they would just invent a defense that provides immunity to all phasers forever.

Assuming I don't have OOC knowledge of Borg weaknesses, I can still go over the reports from Enterprise about both the anti-Borg tactics they've actually implemented and the ones they have in mind.

Mass and concentration of force are a basic military principle, so insofar as Starfleet training allows I definitely order my ships to attack in waves. This also increases the chance that ships can (for instance) help each other if they get caught in tractor beams.

The anti-Borg strategies came directly from Command and Hansen, so the admiral commanding would probably have that data as well.

Since the Borg have trouble defending against multiple phaser and photorp frequencies at the same time, have each ship set their weapons and shields at frequencies different from the others, then shifting using a completely different algorithim from the other ships.

I'd go one further on the whole robot ram ships idea, and break out good old M-5(TOS "The Ultimate Computer"). Use him to operate one of the hangar queens, cram it full of as much firepower as the hull can take, and time will allow, and send him in. Picard would have little or no knowledge of either M-5 or his capabilities(the fact that one of the Feds leading research institutes is named after Daystrom seems to imply the whole M-5 business was quckly and ruthlessly hushed up by Starfleet), so he would be a wild card, and hopefully a monkey wrench.

Yes, I know. Assuming M-5 hasn't been destroyed, he's a psychopathic killer with the blood of 431 starshipmen on Excalibur and E-Nil* on his processors, but desperate times and all that.

*Plus whatever fatalities on Lexington. I don't have those numbers.

[Simon_Jester]

Throwing the M-5 at the Borg is a very, very good idea, but fitting a 23rd century computer onto a 24th century ship may take more time than is available.