How do SW weaponry waste Borg shields?

[Shroom Man 777]

Since they adapt how DO they waste the Borg?

Do they actually damage the shields after the Borg adapt to the turbolasers?

Or the force of the impact of the TLs will rip the shield generators from their attachments and cause actual damage to the ship itself?

Or will the gigatonnage of the blast be too much for the Borg to handle?

[Sea Skimmer]

The Borg cannot adapt to raw power, which is how turbolasers work. One 200 gigaton shot would blown any Borg vessel to hell, though it might simply punch clear through and keep going into another ship, much as happened to a few Iraqi T-72's.

[Darth Balls]

One turbolaser bolt exceeds the total power output of the borg cube. Borg shield optimizations are useless against that kind of firepower.

[Shroom Man 777]

So the frequency mombu jumbo is utterly defeated by a pure show of super powerful brute force, right?

Good. Makes me feel great.

But IF the Borg gain a higher energy output, then the shields COULD withstand TL blasts and whatnot, right?

It's like some fancy alloy armor with some composite plastic thinggy ma bobs being hit by a 1 ton cube hurled at mach 12 by a rail gun cannon, right? The fancy armor thing is vapourized.

[Solauren]

Heheheh.


Let's see

The seer amount of kinetic energy (Gigaton's is in the terrjoule range if I remember correctly. Go check the Turbolaser commentaries on the main part of the site) would just punch through the Borg armor like a bullet through paper.

Also, in the strictious sense, the Borg don't have shields. I fail to recall (correct me if I'm wrong) actually seeing a shield on a borg ship. Every weapon impact I can remember seeing on a Borg ship was against its hull armor. Borg "shielding" is a rat's nest of tricks like "technobabble to neutralize there weapon"

Even there "electromagnetic field" that preventing Transporting in "Best of Both Worlds" is just a electromagnetic field. Translation: Magnets and light stopping transporters

However, back to the question at hand.

Most Star Trek weapons work on exotic principals. (i.e Nadion effects for Phasers and Disrupters).

Star Wars Turbolasers work on pure kinetic energy.

Much like the machine guns and knifes we have seen make corpses out of Borg.

Makes you wonder something. Has the Federation thought of firing a few god old Nuclear Weapons at the borg, and letting the kinetic energy do the rest?

Or rather, didn't that occur to the writers?

[Sea Skimmer]

So the frequency mombu jumbo is utterly defeated by a pure show of super powerful brute force, right?

Yes. That's why the Federation fleet could damage and then destroy the First Contact cube, even though it and other Borg vessels had had ample time to adapt to Federation weapons.

[Master of Ossus]

Heheheh.


Let's see

The [sheer] amount of kinetic energy (Gigaton's is in the terrjoule range if I remember correctly. Go check the Turbolaser commentaries on the main part of the site) would just punch through the Borg armor like a bullet through paper.

A gigaton is several orders of magnitude larger than a terajoule. The conversion factor between tons and joules is:

1 MT=4.2 x 10 15 joules

Also, in the strictious sense, the Borg don't have shields. I fail to recall (correct me if I'm wrong) actually seeing a shield on a borg ship. Every weapon impact I can remember seeing on a Borg ship was against its hull armor. Borg "shielding" is a rat's nest of tricks like "technobabble to neutralize there weapon"

Not really. The Borg do have shields that can adapt to weapons fire from ST. The problem that they have is two fold:

1. It is possible to knock out Borg shields with sheer firepower, as demonstrated by the Federation fleet in ST:FC. This is possible even after the Borg have "adapted" to a weapon.
2. SW weapons, even if they have frequencies, are not frequency dependent. Therefore the Borg shields would probably not have an ability to adapt, even if given an opportunity which would prove sufficient to adapt to other weapons from ST.

Even there "electromagnetic field" that preventing Transporting in "Best of Both Worlds" is just a electromagnetic field. Translation: Magnets and light stopping transporters

However, back to the question at hand.

Most Star Trek weapons work on exotic principals. (i.e Nadion effects for Phasers and Disrupters).

Star Wars Turbolasers work on pure kinetic energy.

Well, we aren't really sure how exactly SW weapons work and how they transfer energy to a target. What we do know is that it doesn't particularly matter. The Borg simply cannot stand up to the kind of energy being thrown around by SW warships.

[Master of Ossus]

So the frequency mombu jumbo is utterly defeated by a pure show of super powerful brute force, right?

Well, yes, I guess you can see it that way. The way I always explain it is that the Borg term "adaptation" most nearly means "optimization." They can greatly improve the efficiency with which their shields stop weapons fire from different sources, but they cannot dramatically increase the power of their shields. Normally, this adaptation is very effective, since most starships in ST do not have the firepower required to punch through the adapted shields consistently. Only against large fleets, like the one seen in ST:FC, do the Borg shields demonstrate such a weakness. Against SW ships, however, the disparity in firepower and shielding would be demonstrated almost immediately.

Good. Makes me feel great.

Good. I'm glad.

But IF the Borg gain a higher energy output, then the shields COULD withstand TL blasts and whatnot, right?

Probably. Shields in ST have deflected or stopped any number of different kinds of energy, and there really isn't a reason to believe that SW weapons could bi-pass their shields without first overloading them.

It's like some fancy alloy armor with some composite plastic thinggy ma bobs being hit by a 1 ton cube hurled at mach 12 by a rail gun cannon, right? The fancy armor thing is vapourized.

I have absolutely no idea what this analogy is supposed to show. The Borg shields would simply be overwhelmed by the firepower of SW ships, even if they were "adapted" to them, first.

[Solauren]

It's like some fancy alloy armor with some composite plastic thinggy ma bobs being hit by a 1 ton cube hurled at mach 12 by a rail gun cannon, right? The fancy armor thing is vapourized.

That's right.

The best comparison I can think of would be medieval armor vs early small fire arms

Plate Mail armor was great for stopping swords and staffs and arrows (for the most part) or at least lowering the effectiveness of those weapons (sorry, I have never been shot with an arrow while wearing armor, nor do I intend to).

However, armor was abandoned as useless after firearms became practical (i.e Flintlocks) because the bullets from them just punched right through the armor.

Like Borg shields vs Turbolasers

To much power.

Or just like the "Mach Railgun" vs "Plastic Composite Armor" example above

Brute force will always win a fight of this kind. No matter how fancy the defense is, unless it has the power to stop an attack, it will fall.

Better example

Bulletproof vests can "stop" bullets, but they are pretty useless against a Rocket-Propelled Grenade, Tank shell, or even a ballista or catapult if they hit the target.

[Slartibartfast]

The following just occured to me:

Borg shields are actually WORSE than Federation shields - from a working mechanics POV - because they need to adapt even to do anything at all (= block incoming shots). Once they adapt, they act as common AQ shields. The thing is, they are bigger and more powerful, a volley of AQ weapons only makes about 1% of damage, required literally hundreds of Fed ships and weapons to start draining it, hence the illusion that they "adapt" to the attack making it "immune".

First shot = no shields
Second shot = shield have adapted. fire goes into shield instead of hull

Federation shields do the exact same thing, except that they don't need a first shot to be able to block further shots. But they are also weaker, and only able to resist 3 or 4 volleys of standard AQ weapons.

So Fed shields work better, but Borg shields have higher energy outputs.

[NecronLord]

Plate Mail armor was great for stopping swords and staffs and arrows (for the most part) or at least lowering the effectiveness of those weapons (sorry, I have never been shot with an arrow while wearing armor, nor do I intend to).

However, armor was abandoned as useless after firearms became practical (i.e Flintlocks) because the bullets from them just punched right through the armor.

Actually they did stop the bullets, there are large numbers of armour pieces with bullet depressions in them (if you don't believe me, go see the British Royal Armoury museum.). Didn't much help the man inside though, as the momentum though a watery object (humans) does serious shit to internal organs. Consider the wave, now consider that happening to your insides due to a bullet hitting your armour.

[Solauren]

I stand corrected on the bullets vs plate mail.

(Going to the British musuem is out, since I'm in Ontario. I haven't been to a musem in quite some time, like 18 years or so)

However, it was just to demonstrate a point

But the Bulletproof vest vs Balista is hard to argue

[seanrobertson]

The following just occured to me:

Borg shields are actually WORSE than Federation shields - from a working mechanics POV - because they need to adapt even to do anything at all (= block incoming shots). Once they adapt, they act as common AQ shields. The thing is, they are bigger and more powerful, a volley of AQ weapons only makes about 1% of damage, required literally hundreds of Fed ships and weapons to start draining it, hence the illusion that they "adapt" to the attack making it "immune".

First shot = no shields
Second shot = shield have adapted. fire goes into shield instead of hull

Federation shields do the exact same thing, except that they don't need a first shot to be able to block further shots. But they are also weaker, and only able to resist 3 or 4 volleys of standard AQ weapons.

So Fed shields work better, but Borg shields have higher energy outputs.

Yeah. Pretty much my thoughts as well, Slarty. The Borg are so obsessed with being "perfect" that they seem to try and optimize their defenses to a single threat. The result is that their shields are probably barely drained by that threat, but such strong protection against it is to the blatant exclusion of the same weapon at rapidly-varied frequencies, or an altogether different weapon type.

You'd think the TRULY "perfect" shield would protect against everything until you simply exceed its power threshold Silly Borg.

[Smiling Bandit]

WHich always made me wonder if you couldn't make some "borg killers" with ST tech: put a bunch of different weapons on each ship, such as railguns, phasers, torpedoes, disruptors, and so forth. Each oen could be using less energy and still be more effective if the borg couldn't optimize their shields against them all.

Hmph. Maybe I'll make a topic out of this.

[Sea Skimmer]

WHich always made me wonder if you couldn't make some "borg killers" with ST tech: put a bunch of different weapons on each ship, such as railguns, phasers, torpedoes, disruptors, and so forth. Each oen could be using less energy and still be more effective if the borg couldn't optimize their shields against them all.

Hmph. Maybe I'll make a topic out of this.

I think it would work better simply to put out as much firepower as possible, even if its from one system. Lots of different weapons on one hull would lead to them all being fairly weak. However designing several ships with a common hull, but each with a different primarily weapon type, could work quite well.

[Solauren]

I'd like to see Star Trek/Federation ships take that approach for dealing with the Borg.

i.e Instead of 12 Phaser banks on a Starship assigned to protected against the Borg, all that power going into one really big cannon.

Also, remove crew quarters and life support and install loads of warhead launchers

[Darth Servo]

i.e Instead of 12 Phaser banks on a Starship assigned to protected against the Borg, all that power going into one really big cannon.

Except for the possibility that those 12 phaser banks ARE their biggest guns they can make with their current tech level.

[Thirdfain]

Except for the possibility that those 12 phaser banks ARE their biggest guns they can make with their current tech level.

The feds could make some nasty kinetic weapons: they can fit FTL drives on craft as small as runabouts. Imagine a missile, the size of a runabout, which is just a solid kintic weapon. This missile warps at the target, and drops out of warp and deactivates it's mass lightening field a fraction of a second before impact with a target. Bingo, a 9.99999 C kinetic weapon. Damage output wouldn't even approach SW levels, but it would beat anything they currently field.

[Darth Servo]

The feds could make some nasty kinetic weapons: they can fit FTL drives on craft as small as runabouts. Imagine a missile, the size of a runabout, which is just a solid kintic weapon. This missile warps at the target, and drops out of warp and deactivates it's mass lightening field a fraction of a second before impact with a target. Bingo, a 9.99999 C kinetic weapon. Damage output wouldn't even approach SW levels, but it would beat anything they currently field.

IOW, you think the warp driven object gets energy from no where.

As soon as the mass lightening field deactivates, the projectile immediately slows down. Conservation of energy.

[Solauren]

They'd be better off just ramming a Borg cube with something the size of the defiant, but with just shields and a high-power impulse engine. Take it to full impulse, get off the "ship" and just ram a it into the cube full force and let the Warp core breech

[Master of Ossus]

I stand corrected on the bullets vs plate mail.

(Going to the British musuem is out, since I'm in Ontario. I haven't been to a musem in quite some time, like 18 years or so)

However, it was just to demonstrate a point

But the Bulletproof vest vs Balista is hard to argue

Actually, your original point (if not your statement) still stands: plate armor of the era did not provide adequate protection for the user from firearms. The hydraulic shock created by the impact was usually sufficient to kill or injure the wearer.

[Darth Negation]

It's possible (I would say) to actually prevent most of the damage from HTL's by using protrusions from shields, as some Tl's deflect in films where they strike in obtuse angles. By linking a powerful computer, sensors and multiple low power shield generators, you can form protusions (ie spiky bits) to deflect most of the blast, surely. Although you'd need SW shields and the Borg do not have this kind of innovative tactics.

[Darth Yoshi]

Maybe it'll lessen the impact, but considering how flimsy cubes are and how powerful a TL shot is, it still won't do any good.

[Shogoki]

i.e Instead of 12 Phaser banks on a Starship assigned to protected against the Borg, all that power going into one really big cannon.

To make a weapon capable of outputting that kind of firepower, they need the materials capable of handling the production of that firepower.
If you connect the power source of all the banks into just one of them, it'll probably blow up half the ship (or, by ST standards, the whole ship) when it fails to contain all that energy, hence the need for different technologies to control different levels of power, you can't assume it'll magically work.

[His Divine Shadow]

So the frequency mombu jumbo is utterly defeated by a pure show of super powerful brute force, right?

Kinda what you saw in Star Trek: First Contact, newer more powerfull weapons, enough raw power to overwhelm the cube and kaboom!