Gil Hamilton wrote:
"Earth Orbit" is quite large. Remember that the Moon is more than a light second from Earth and it's definitely in Earth orbit.
Yes but Borg cubes don't mass the same as Luna. Generaly speaking Geosynch is considered the highest orbit for ships.
Did you take a bong hit? Once the Borg cube completes orbital insertion, it's ready to attack the surface of the planet directly.
And it never made it to that point, the fleet was still blasting away with abbadon at it and their attacks were still effective enough. At the rate the cube was progressing towards Earth, it was still some distance away. Borg ships have an extreemly straighforward MO, they target the greatest threat and kill it. Currently the fleet was that threat and they were causing damage. While the fleet attack, they don't attack Earth. Its not like they were blasting towards Earth at a significant fraction of C here.
At that point, it's going to bad things to the planets surface with it's guns.
IF it got that close, yes. It was still nowhere near that close and was busy dealing with the fleet. You will MAKE Earth a target to the Borgs one track mind if you start shooting, especialy given that the fleet still has a good chance of taking it down short of its target.
I very much doubt that the commander of Earth's defenders is sitting in the C&C wringing his hands worried that opening fire upon an attacking invasion force will scare the citizens and "wreck paradise", especially when the trademark of said invasion force is scooping cities out of the ground with tractor beams and pulling them into orbit.
And given that the Cube came nowhere near doing that, its a moot point. This wasn't an 'All or Nothing' issue here. If the spehre is any indication, Borg planatery assault weapons have a relativly short range. The cube was in no shape to assault Earth, there was still a considerable fleet blasting at it. If BOBW was any indication, the Cube has to get to quite a low orbit to begin its operations.
The point of defending the planet is to quickly destroy their foe before it reaches the planet, not after.
And again, the Cube has not REACHED the planet as yet, the fleet is still engaging it and is still effective in damaging it.
The Earth defenders should have opened up on the Borg Cube during the battle.
Possibly. Of course THAT might have gotten the Borg to actualy fire back AT Earth to supress the defences as the Borg ignore msot things until they BECOME a threat. Currently the fleet is that threat. You break them off and have Earth open up, the Cube may well start with blasting a few cities. The smart thing is to make Earth a minimal target UNTIL you NEED to use its firepower, as shown in FC they did not need to use the firepower.
Typo, I meant the sphere. And it isn't risking the flagship. The Enterprise could have been hundreds of kilometers behind the sphere while in pursuit.
Eh? It flew right past the Ent then Picard orders a pursit course. When it entered the tempral wake, the particles hit the E-E a matter of seconds after they were generated. Given the relative velocities of the two ships, she could not have been very far behind.
That's a great time for the defense force to blow the shit out of the sphere.
Except that the E-E is in pursuit and Picard is in charge and again, you do NOT want to make Earth a target. Frankly I don't know why Picard didn't fire when he was chasing the Sphere. But Picard and his weapons are at point blank range to the sphere, Earth and its defences are far further away.He has the ball.
Evidence that they had their fingers on the trigger?
What you think when the Borg are bearing down on Earth they don't have the defences manned? Hell YOUR the one who has been arguing through the thread that the planet does have surface to space weapons. Just because they DIDN'T fire does not mean they were not capable of it. If the fleet had been destroyed or the sphere not under hot pursuit, they probably would have engaged it.
It's space combat, not close combat dogfighting.
Irrelevent. In fact its far greater in terms of difficulty After all, even with the distances involved, accuracy is going to be even more difficult with the fleet swarming around the target.
The Fleet could have easily spread out a little and continue bombarding the Cube, while giving the defense force of Earth room to shoot at the Cube too. There is plenty of Borg cube to go around.
COULD have, yes. DID NOT, which is why the weapons did not FIRE. Quite possibly because with the Admirals death, C4I had broken down and the fleet was uncordinated at the time.
Federations weak ranges, they are bound to be able to hit a Borg cube moving in a straight arc.
I am not disputing their ability to do so, I am showing why they did not do so. Specificaly because the battle was not that desperate as yet and focusing a Borg Cubes attention ON EARTH is the last thing you want to do when you have other options.
And it's common sense to fire at targets of opportunity, which includes the Sphere, which wasn't exactly a small object, not ignore it. Space is big, no matter how StarTrek tends to depict it, hitting something on purpose is hard enough. Accidently hitting your own forces with guided space weapons is nearly impossible, or should be, unless you are claiming that their targetting really is that bad.
In the chaos of battle the most sophisticated guided weapons can easily harm targets, even if they don't HIT it. A simple near detonation could toast a damaged ship if not co-oridnated. Swarming the cube at close range is all that lets the ships survive that long, because each facing of the Cube holds 1/6th the ships firepower. If however you decide to break away, you could have three or more sides firing at you as they gain LOS.
Hell we don't even know the exact specification of Earths defences. For all we know they only HAVE those big missiles we saw in BOBW and had fired them all. They could only have phasers which have a shorter effective range and are far more prone to Friendly Fire accedents. This entire debate is mostly pointless bassed on this lack of knowledge, but regardless, I am unconvinced that it was IMPERATIVE that the surface bassed defences open fire in FC, they that had some down to the final line of defence, that it was all or nothing...
