"The War Is Over". Oh Really?

[Rye]

Hm, the only way the feddies have any kind of a chance would be to fight seriously dirtily, let's face it.

The start: federation appears to give up very quickly, claiming federation rebels have split away for a guerilla war. Imperial rule ensues.

In secret, the federation had time to make a few moving factory vessels, crewed only by soong(sp) style droids, which make federation style ships that broadcast "We surrender" on all frequencies (when near imperial forces)so when the isd sends out it's shuttles, or whatever, they find out the entire core of the ship is antimatter, as it it explodes.

The factory vessels should be cloakable, and manned by droids only so even if the imps detect it, they'll read no life signs.
The factory ships would of course make other factory ships as well as the bomb ships.

The bomb ships should also be cloakable.

What do you think?

[YT300000]

1. CGT scans. Or IR scans. Or just any scan for that matter.
2. How do they build the factory ships that fast?
3. Were do they get all the Soong androids?

[Rye]

1. CGT scans. Or IR scans. Or just any scan for that matter.

Regarding which ship? the factory vessels or the bomb vessels?
Factory vessels have droids working on them, so if they're scanned, no life signs. Bomb vessels have a large amount of antimatter on board, but if you throw enough algae or something around they shouldn't think they are kamikaze or trojan vessels.

2. How do they build the factory ships that fast?

They could build one which could build more while the empire are finding their bearings perhaps.....and because i say so dammit! I'm at least TRYING to find an inventive way out of this for the feds.

3. Were do they get all the Soong androids?

I'm sure they could make it an automated process, they have data's requirements somewhere im sure.

[YT300000]

1. CGT scans. Or IR scans. Or just any scan for that matter.

Regarding which ship? the factory vessels or the bomb vessels?
Factory vessels have droids working on them, so if they're scanned, no life signs. Bomb vessels have a large amount of antimatter on board, but if you throw enough algae or something around they shouldn't think they are kamikaze or trojan vessels.

The cloaked ships.

I'm at least TRYING to find an inventive way out of this for the feds.

OH!! I know! Go back in time to the 22nd century. Since 27th century people fighting the temporaral cold war seem to like going on the Enterprise (NX-01).

Kill a 27th century dude and steal his time travel gear. Use it to go to the 174th century. Get a fleet and come back to the 23rd century. Teach everyone how to use the tech. When the 24th century rolls around, the Imperials are as good as dead.

[Rye]

The cloaked ships.

They're all cloaked. The bombships decloak when near imp vessels and broadcast their surrender.

All this hinges however on the idea that the imperials won't shoot first ask questions later...in itself quite a feat.

Maybe the androids could have battle hacking stations, if there's a way to hack isds...

[Robert Walper]

I think us Trekkies best bet is to go with the Borg. They have manpower, resources and some impressive ships(in the Trek universe at least). We have a great deal of information to work with, thanks to Voyager. The Borg are considered the most powerful "conventional" power in the Trek universe so far as I know(at least, the one we know the most about).

http://h4h.com/louis/borgs.html

Unfortunetely, I think that debate is quite badly done, on both sides. Many of the pro Borg arguements are silly, but some of the replies aren't very accurate either. For example:

"Star Destroyers are far more powerful than Fed starships, and it only took 20 Fed starships to blow up a Borg cube."

While this is true, it is painting the wrong picture. After all, a single X-wing fighter destroyed the Death Star, but that was under special circumstances, agreed? We know the Death Star can apparently wipe out whole fleets of enemy ships, but it was destroyed by a single tiny fighter. But that doesn't make the equation: "X-wing destroyes Death Star; Star Destroyer obliterates X-wing; Star Destroyer destroyes Death Star". Not a very good anagloy. Same situation in First Contact. It may have been twenty starships that in the end destroyed the Borg cube, however, they only did so because they knew exactly where to hit it(still requiring signficant firepower, which in the end initatied a chain reaction that bascially made the Borg cube destroy itself). And where they hit it was reported "Sir, the coodinates you have indicated do not appear to be a vital system." Assuming Imperial sensors scan Borg cubes effectively, are they going to target non vital systems, or weapon emplacements, power generating sections, etc? Let's not forget the Enterprise didn't show up to the battle at the very least for several hours, at which point the cube could have potentially engaged hundreds of Federation starships. In Insurrection, Picard mentioned the Borg inflicted casualties were comparably significant to the entire Dominion war! (Quoting Picard: "Due to our losses to the Borg and the Dominion, Starfleet feels we need all the allies we can get." I believe it's significant to note he mentions Borg casualties before the Dominion ones, hinting large losses were taken against that singe cube, despite their weaponry upgrades and such.)

Another example referring to First Contact:

"But the cube wasn't invulnerable to their phasers and photorps, was it? They couldn't adapt to the weapons, could they? Even though they've seen them many times before."

It's been made abundantly clear that rotating Federation phaser modulations and/or frequencies can confuse Borg adaptations(side note, Borg adaptation is not limited to adjusting shield frequencies or modulations), and I for one don't assume the Borg can adapt to unlimited numbers of frequencies and modulations, or that their shields can support unlimited combinations at any one time.

Watching the First Contact movie closely, you can see at least one Akira class starship fire mutiple phaser shots at the cube, but they do no damage and hit with the charactieristic shield flareup. If the fleet had indeed overwhelmed the cube's shields, why did that ship's mutiple shots have no affect? Obviously, they had been adapted to.

So my current theory is that Starfleet brought enough starships to the battle not to overwhelm the shielding capacity of a Borg cube, but to have enough ships with different weaponry modulations each to limit how many ships the Borg can adapt to at any one time. And even so, they barely slowed it down(ie: Borg cube still reached Earth orbit, before the special circumstances event happened).

Just a few examples there, but I think the debate you pointed to isn't very reliable from my point of view other than to deal with the typically ignorant Borg arugements that rabid Trekkies can employ.

[AdmiralKanos]

"Star Destroyers are far more powerful than Fed starships, and it only took 20 Fed starships to blow up a Borg cube."

While this is true, it is painting the wrong picture. After all, a single X-wing fighter destroyed the Death Star, but that was under special circumstances, agreed? We know the Death Star can apparently wipe out whole fleets of enemy ships, but it was destroyed by a single tiny fighter. But that doesn't make the equation: "X-wing destroyes Death Star; Star Destroyer obliterates X-wing; Star Destroyer destroyes Death Star". Not a very good anagloy.

Right, because they took advantage of a design flaw and gross overconfidence. Seal that flaw and they're impotent.

Same situation in First Contact. It may have been twenty starships that in the end destroyed the Borg cube, however, they only did so because they knew exactly where to hit it(still requiring signficant firepower, which in the end initatied a chain reaction that bascially made the Borg cube destroy itself).

You forget that the ship was already quite seriously damaged by the time the E-E arrived, so no design flaw was necessary to demonstrate reasonable parity between Federation weapons and Borg defenses. Data reported that its entire internal power grid was fluctuating, and their concentrate attack merely provided the coup de grace. Take a single ship with orders of magnitude more firepower than that entire fleet, and it doesn't matter where it shoots.

And where they hit it was reported "Sir, the coodinates you have indicated do not appear to be a vital system." Assuming Imperial sensors scan Borg cubes effectively, are they going to target non vital systems, or weapon emplacements, power generating sections, etc?

It doesn't matter. Unload thousands of times more firepower than that fleet at once, and they don't have to target any particular system in order to destroy that ship.

Let's not forget the Enterprise didn't show up to the battle at the very least for several hours, at which point the cube could have potentially engaged hundreds of Federation starships. In Insurrection, Picard mentioned the Borg inflicted casualties were comparably significant to the entire Dominion war! (Quoting Picard: "Due to our losses to the Borg and the Dominion, Starfleet feels we need all the allies we can get." I believe it's significant to note he mentions Borg casualties before the Dominion ones, hinting large losses were taken against that singe cube, despite their weaponry upgrades and such.)

I hope you realize the difference between hopeful speculation and evidence, Robert. At no point did Picard actually state that the two were similar in magnitude; he only listed them. Besides, even if a Borg cube were capable of destroying a hundred Fed starships, it wouldn't match up anywhere close to an ISD. And their poorly co-ordinated piecemeal attacks mean that it did not have to engage them all at once, even if your speculation is valid.

Watching the First Contact movie closely, you can see at least one Akira class starship fire mutiple phaser shots at the cube, but they do no damage and hit with the charactieristic shield flareup. If the fleet had indeed overwhelmed the cube's shields, why did that ship's mutiple shots have no affect? Obviously, they had been adapted to.

So? Even after adaptation, the Fed weapons can knock down their shields with enough power, and damage their ship.

So my current theory is that Starfleet brought enough starships to the battle not to overwhelm the shielding capacity of a Borg cube, but to have enough ships with different weaponry modulations each to limit how many ships the Borg can adapt to at any one time. And even so, they barely slowed it down(ie: Borg cube still reached Earth orbit, before the special circumstances event happened).

Nice theory. Now explain why these extra ideas are NECESSARY in order to explain what we see (see logical principle of parsimony).

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Actually, I do believe there were more then one Borg attack, since one was mentioned in DS9 before FC.

[The Silence and I]

Easy Wong, he was only pointing out that trekkies and warsies debate the borg poorly, not saying "the borg waste Imperials". And if the cube was damaged when we saw it, yet still had shields, why have you concluded in the past that the Federation ships had overwhelmed its shieds!?!!??!

If it still had shields, then clearly weapon modulation caused the damage, probably early in the battle, with a slow continuation of the damage as the battle progressed. Frankly, I don't think an upper limit on energy handling has ever been estableished for the Borg. It can't be all that high, or their weapons would be more powerful, but I think it is capable of more than I have heard from this board.

[Darth Wong]

Easy Wong, he was only pointing out that trekkies and warsies debate the borg poorly, not saying "the borg waste Imperials". And if the cube was damaged when we saw it, yet still had shields, why have you concluded in the past that the Federation ships had overwhelmed its shieds!?!!??!

If it still had shields, then clearly weapon modulation caused the damage, probably early in the battle, with a slow continuation of the damage as the battle progressed. Frankly, I don't think an upper limit on energy handling has ever been estableished for the Borg. It can't be all that high, or their weapons would be more powerful, but I think it is capable of more than I have heard from this board.

I suppose this convoluted argument makes more sense to you than simply concluding that the Borg cube has sector shields and some of them were down while others still had a bit of power or were being brought back up by Borg damage control during the battle?

[YT300000]

The cloaked ships.

They're all cloaked. The bombships decloak when near imp vessels and broadcast their surrender.

All this hinges however on the idea that the imperials won't shoot first ask questions later...in itself quite a feat.

Maybe the androids could have battle hacking stations, if there's a way to hack isds...

All ISDs have a backdoor hack code, a top-secret design specification put there by the Emperor. Even Thrawn didn't know about it.

I doubt the Soong androids could take advantage of it.

[Ted C]

Hm, the only way the feddies have any kind of a chance would be to fight seriously dirtily, let's face it.

And since when has the Federation excelled at fighting dirty?

The start: federation appears to give up very quickly, claiming federation rebels have split away for a guerilla war. Imperial rule ensues.

In secret, the federation had time to make a few moving factory vessels,

It takes years to construct a Federation starship; how much lead time are you planning to give them?

crewed only by soong(sp) style droids,

The Federation can't duplicate the one Soong android they've got! How are they supposed to get whole ship crew of them?

which make federation style ships that broadcast "We surrender" on all frequencies (when near imperial forces)so when the isd sends out it's shuttles, or whatever, they find out the entire core of the ship is antimatter, as it it explodes.

Oooh... that should work maybe ONCE!

The factory vessels should be cloakable, and manned by droids only so even if the imps detect it, they'll read no life signs.
The factory ships would of course make other factory ships as well as the bomb ships.

The Federation simply doesn't have the manufacturing capabilities to do this.

The bomb ships should also be cloakable.

While the Federation apparently knows how to make a cloaking device, they're in no position to mass produce them.

What do you think?

I think it's an ill-conceived idea all around.

[Rye]

And since when has the Federation excelled at fighting dirty?

Since i took over and made it a military dictatorship.

It takes years to construct a Federation starship; how much lead time are you planning to give them?

i already gave them time to make a few. Who cares?

The Federation can't duplicate the one Soong android they've got! How are they supposed to get whole ship crew of them?

Magic. Resurrect Soong maybe.

Oooh... that should work maybe ONCE!

then i killed at least 1 isd. Better than you so ner

The Federation simply doesn't have the manufacturing capabilities to do this.

seriously are they THAT shit? If so, replicate a shitlaod of self replicating nanoprobes to do it or something...Then send them off into space.

While the Federation apparently knows how to make a cloaking device, they're in no position to mass produce them.

why not? the klingons and romulans did.

I think it's an ill-conceived idea all around.

Let's hear yours then.

[Slartibartfast]

What do you think?

I think it's the same problem with disguising yourself as a civilian then shooting people in the back. Soon, the enemy (empire) will catch up, and lower their tolerance to surrendering ships. Not only your tactic will work less and less, but you would be responsible for thousands of innocent deaths on ships that are truly surrendering. Even boarding after scanning for lifeforms would be a high risk for the Imperials.

[Slartibartfast]

"Star Destroyers are far more powerful than Fed starships, and it only took 20 Fed starships to blow up a Borg cube."

While this is true, it is painting the wrong picture. After all, a single X-wing fighter destroyed the Death Star, but that was under special circumstances, agreed?

Agreed. The Borg are like the DS designers, except that every time a cube gets destroyed, they make another one with the exact same design flaw.

[Ender]

How long did the E-D charge up before firing the shield generator beam at the cube? Because then would could put a lower limit on borg shields. If it charged for 6 hours and we use the 3E16 max Rx output from Deja Q, then it's shields would be atleast 154 GT strong. 1/1000th of what I estimate the strength of an ISD's low end shields rate.

[Solid Snake]

Who was it who first coined the phrase 'Oberths of death' or some such? Lots of Oberth class ships, laden with anti-matter- big flying bombs in essence .

I coined the phrase "huge fucking missiles with shitloads of antimatter"
lol

[Robert Walper]

"Star Destroyers are far more powerful than Fed starships, and it only took 20 Fed starships to blow up a Borg cube."

While this is true, it is painting the wrong picture. After all, a single X-wing fighter destroyed the Death Star, but that was under special circumstances, agreed? We know the Death Star can apparently wipe out whole fleets of enemy ships, but it was destroyed by a single tiny fighter. But that doesn't make the equation: "X-wing destroyes Death Star; Star Destroyer obliterates X-wing; Star Destroyer destroyes Death Star". Not a very good anagloy.

Right, because they took advantage of a design flaw and gross overconfidence. Seal that flaw and they're impotent.

Fighters undoubtably would have been impotent against the Death Star if the design flaw hadn't been there. If things had been different, they wouldn't be the same. No arguement here.

Same situation in First Contact. It may have been twenty starships that in the end destroyed the Borg cube, however, they only did so because they knew exactly where to hit it(still requiring signficant firepower, which in the end initatied a chain reaction that bascially made the Borg cube destroy itself).

You forget that the ship was already quite seriously damaged by the time the E-E arrived, so no design flaw was necessary to demonstrate reasonable parity between Federation weapons and Borg defenses.

I question your implication that the Borg cube was that seriously damaged. Quoting Data: "The Borg vessel has sustained heavy damage to it's outer hull. I'm detecting fluctuations in their power grid."

Yes, it's outer hull was heavily damaged. To me, this doesn't translate to the cube being close to crippled or defeated. Merely marked up from the battle. After all, that's where all the tractor and weapon emitters should be(note: vital targets).

Data reported that its entire internal power grid was fluctuating,

Not disputed. This would be expected if vital systems like power generators, tractor beams and weapons systems are being targeted and destroyed, then regenerating again. Thus power to these system should being turning on and off frequently(or going to a system just destroyed), accounting for power "fluctuations".

and their concentrate attack merely provided the coup de grace.

Sorry, but that's not what I saw. I saw a Borg cube reaching Earth orbit, with major Federation warships like the Defiant with exhausted weapons systems and preparing for a suicide attack. The scenes and the dialogue portrayed (to me anyhow) a Federation fleet on the brink of defeat, with the enemy in Earth orbit. Only the Enterprise's intervention with Picard's insight provided the critical piece of information the fleet required to defeat the cube. Frankly, I also believe that is what the intention of the film was as well.

Take a single ship with orders of magnitude more firepower than that entire fleet, and it doesn't matter where it shoots.

I'm not going to argue that at this time. All I'm disputing is the idea the Federation fleet had enough combined firepower to "overwhelm" the cube's shields. We clearly see an Akira class starship fire it's weapons multiple times and hit a functioning shield system on the cube. We also know fully functional Borg shields can be bypassed by weaponry with different modulations or frequency "settings" until they are adapted to. Even assuming the Borg had every modulation and frequency(M/F) the Federation can come up with, I believe it's impractical to assume their shield system can operate against every one of those M/F similtaniously.

And where they hit it was reported "Sir, the coodinates you have indicated do not appear to be a vital system." Assuming Imperial sensors scan Borg cubes effectively, are they going to target non vital systems, or weapon emplacements, power generating sections, etc?

It doesn't matter. Unload thousands of times more firepower than that fleet at once, and they don't have to target any particular system in order to destroy that ship.

If one is going to assert the Federation fleet overwhelmed the Borg cube's shields(thus gauging it's maximum potential) rather than simply bypassing them with random weaponry settings(which is what Starfleet does all the time against the Borg), then your point is correct.

Let's not forget the Enterprise didn't show up to the battle at the very least for several hours, at which point the cube could have potentially engaged hundreds of Federation starships. In Insurrection, Picard mentioned the Borg inflicted casualties were comparably significant to the entire Dominion war! (Quoting Picard: "Due to our losses to the Borg and the Dominion, Starfleet feels we need all the allies we can get." I believe it's significant to note he mentions Borg casualties before the Dominion ones, hinting large losses were taken against that singe cube, despite their weaponry upgrades and such.)

I hope you realize the difference between hopeful speculation and evidence, Robert.

I realize this is speculation. However, given Starfleet can gather 18 starships together with 6 more on the way in minutes(ref ST:VOY "Endgame"), I see no reason why they couldn't deploy a much larger force given sufficent time and their current fleet deployment and availability. And Starfleet apparently had a significant amount of time, since Picard got his message from Starfleet(assuming they had only just learned about it), was ordered to patrol the neutral zone. The Enterprise did this for a significant amount of time, and then warped to the battle which probably took close to or greater than Data's 13 hours estimate(at which point starships were probably still joining the battle).

At no point did Picard actually state that the two were similar in magnitude; he only listed them.

True. But we know the Dominion cost the Federation hundreds of starships(if I recall correctly from a DS9 episode, in one battle alone, over a hundred starships were lost with only a couple escaping). Therefore I think it's highly unlikely Picard would mention Borg inflicted casualties(first to boot) if they weren't a signifiantly large percentage of the two combined.

Besides, even if a Borg cube were capable of destroying a hundred Fed starships, it wouldn't match up anywhere close to an ISD.

Irrevelent. I'm not comparing a Borg cube to an ISD at this time. Merely disputing the idea the Federation fleet in First Contact "overwhelmed" the cubes shields rather then possessing enough ships to overwhelm their ability to adapt to mutiple weaponry settings. We saw functional shields. We know these shields can be bypassed with different M/F settings. Therefore my conclusion is that Borg shields are limited on how many M/F adaptations they can employ at any one time.

And their poorly co-ordinated piecemeal attacks mean that it did not have to engage them all at once, even if your speculation is valid.

Watching the First Contact movie closely, you can see at least one Akira class starship fire mutiple phaser shots at the cube, but they do no damage and hit with the charactieristic shield flareup. If the fleet had indeed overwhelmed the cube's shields, why did that ship's mutiple shots have no affect? Obviously, they had been adapted to.

So? Even after adaptation, the Fed weapons can knock down their shields with enough power, and damage their ship.

Of course they could. Borg shields are not invincible. Given enough offensive power, any shield system should fail. I merely dispute that the Federation fleet had enough power to do so, and relied upon their random M/F settings with enough ships to make adaptation to all of them beyond the cube's ability.

So my current theory is that Starfleet brought enough starships to the battle not to overwhelm the shielding capacity of a Borg cube, but to have enough ships with different weaponry M/F each to limit how many ships the Borg can adapt to at any one time. And even so, they barely slowed it down(ie: Borg cube still reached Earth orbit, before the special circumstances event happened).

Nice theory. Now explain why these extra ideas are NECESSARY in order to explain what we see (see logical principle of parsimony).

Because we see an operational shield system absorb enemy fire, yet weapons still hit the cube's hull. And we know why this can happen, especially with Borg shield systems.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

How long did the E-D charge up before firing the shield generator beam at the cube? Because then would could put a lower limit on borg shields. If it charged for 6 hours and we use the 3E16 max Rx output from Deja Q, then it's shields would be atleast 154 GT strong. 1/1000th of what I estimate the strength of an ISD's low end shields rate.

If there were 100 ships at FC and each fired 500 torpedoes, that's 32.5 gigatons

[YT300000]

Which is a little more than a MTL.

[The Silence and I]

<Snip>

I suppose this convoluted argument makes more sense to you than simply concluding that the Borg cube has sector shields and some of them were down while others still had a bit of power or were being brought back up by Borg damage control during the battle?

While I find it possible Wong that sector shields were brought up and down and up and down, I don't find it more likely than the other theory.

We know weapon frequencies and phases can be changed enough that they will largely bleed through Borg shields until adapted to. <This is hardly a new concept>. There were a fair number of vessels seen in First Contact, and at the rate they were dying, possibly quite a few more at the start of the battle three hours before. It is hardly a stretch to propose a majority of the damage was caused by the great number of frequencies and phases and what not, especially early in the battle. Such damage always occurs in battles with the Borg. One on one it is usually minor for the Borg. Against a fleet's worth of opening volleys............................................ do you see why this is hardly convoluted?

I admit I favor this theory because it increases the shield strength of the Borg, but it really is not any less likely than the shield sections argument. It makes sense.

[Robert Walper]

One further note in favor of my theory. In ST:TNG "Best of Both Worlds", we see the Enterprise D fire phasers at a very high rate of changing modulations/frequencies. The result is a tractor beam emitter is disabled just long enough for the ship to try and flee the cube.

Since I suspect everyone here agrees the E-D did not overwhelm the cube's shields, the remaining option is that Borg shields are limited on how many effective adaptations can be employed at once.

Thus a fleet of Federation ships performing similar attacks with different M/F settings individually would by all means be far more effective, without actually overwhelming the cube's shield capacity.

[Ghost Rider]

Sigh....No thread necromancy.

I'm locking it, until otherwise noted.