General Empire vs Borg musings

[Flight Recorder]

Hey guys,

Whenever I see this topic, I keep on seeing Trekkies use no limits fallacies. For example, here on this page alone, they are trying to say the Borg can assimilate the Force.

Apparently referring to S8472 is out of context and their weapons would have been adapted to if they weren't biological in nature.

What are the best examples from the show that actually show limits to this assimilation/adaptation wank?

Personally, I see the Borg as one of the most overrated sci-fi races of all time. They can't even beat the Federation, or deal with a bumbling Worf.

[Q99]

Personally, I see the Borg as one of the most overrated sci-fi races of all time. They can't even beat the Federation, or deal with a bumbling Worf.

Worf is hardly bumbling, and they didn't beat the Federation when they sent *two ships*. They have, reportedly, a million. If they went for conventional war tactics, there's little to no doubt they could take the Federation. There's a strong theory they're more into farming it for techs and tactics- if they send just-enough, they force the Federation to innovate and get to learn more. Practice against a foe that's tricky to assimilate, and you gain experience for future hard targets.


Lesse, though, limits, I do agree with you that people no-limits them way too much... 8472 is the obvious one, though it's not biology, it's active defense from the immune system rapidly killing nanites (similarly, non-bio nano defense should work).... and the weapons of the Bioships are not biological in what they send out, they're energy attacks! Iirc the effectiveness of the beams did go down a little against Cubes over time (as in, the Cubes were still gone, but the chunks of debris got larger), suggesting they were still trying stuff, it's just trail and error was all they had and the simple raw power was too much.

Oh yea, Descent, a solar discharge at close range brute overwhelmed a Borg ship. No way that that's unfamiliar to them (and indeed, hanging out near the star before the discharge was no biggie), just too much.

Data was also able to keep them out of programs with advanced encryption. Likely not indefinitely, but it shows that even having direct access to an advanced computer, a prepared foe with good enough defenses can prevent it from being assimilated.


The Borg's base capabilities are insufficient to win IMO, even with adaptation, but tech yanking is part of their thing as well. Obviously the thing to do if facing the Empire is, rather than try and take them on in ship battles right out, to assimilate Imperial tech via sending drones onto ships in boarding actions (I mean, assimilate the technicians and engineers who run a ship + a sample ship or few, and then Borgify those ships/modify the existing Borg ships to use Imperial tech. Clearly within their realm to learn, since humans can understand, build, and modify ships well). Gaining Wars powerplants, shields, and weapons is more critical than adapting to them.

Honestly I feel the outcome is largely one of tactics. Try and brute force things and their ships and such will all be blasted apart by high firepower of large fleets, obvious fail. Lay low until they can convert their ship and have picked up some isolated Imperial ships, and they can win.

Heck, a nightmare scenario is any number of Drones get on a Death Star, it's got more hiding place than most planets. One or two Drones? You start to miss people over a matter of weeks, sending people down to find out what happen either fails to find them or has the searchers go missing, then critical mass is reached suddenly everyone gets swarmed with drones and all vital areas taken over.

[FaxModem1]

In Enterprise, it's shown that overwhelming firepower can overcome Borg shields. Reed is able to overcome Borg shields by cranking a phase pistol's power levels to the upper limit. Though, this was in a controlled environment, as opposed to the heat of battle.

[Lord Revan]

In Enterprise, it's shown that overwhelming firepower can overcome Borg shields. Reed is able to overcome Borg shields by cranking a phase pistol's power levels to the upper limit. Though, this was in a controlled environment, as opposed to the heat of battle.

It should be noted that borg still adapted to the cranked up Phase Pistols just signifigantly slower, if Brian Young is to be belived it took 7 or 8 deaths for the borg adapt to the phase pistols and 1-3 deaths to adapt to 24th century phasers. So this suggests that cranked up phase pistols where fairly close to the limit of what a borg personal shield can endure. Borg assimilating Force, not a chance, we don't even really what the Force is and it was never said in the movies that midiclorians are the source of the Force but rather the means by which humans (and presumbly other sentients) know about the Force, in essense they Force is even more alien the Undine are (yes I'm using the STO term, it's easier for me to remember)

[Thanas]

Honestly I feel the outcome is largely one of tactics. Try and brute force things and their ships and such will all be blasted apart by high firepower of large fleets, obvious fail. Lay low until they can convert their ship and have picked up some isolated Imperial ships, and they can win.

How? There is no adapting to the brute power of SW ships, not with the tech base they have. Also there is no manufacturing capability of theirs that is enough to keep up with the Empire.

[Q99]

How? There is no adapting to the brute power of SW ships, not with the tech base they have. Also there is no manufacturing capability of theirs that is enough to keep up with the Empire.

By obtaining Star Wars ships (by subtlety and tactics ala First Contact) and incorporating that tech into their own, like I said. Stealing other people's technology is what they do.

It's not like one cannot figure out how to make Star Wars tech, Star Wars humans do, that's what a combination of assimilating SW people who do as well as physically taking ships do. If you do not know how to do something, assimilate someone who does.

Then once you have Star Destroyer engines in Borg ships... or Borg tech incorporated into Star Destroyers... it's a matter of building + assimilating more vs just building. If they're fortunate, once they know how they'll have all one million of their existing ships spend time modifying themselves (with picking up whatever resources are needed to make the kind of reactor a SD has).

Because yes, a Borg Cube with it's own power source cannot adapt to the brute force of a Star Destroyer. A Borg Cube with power equal to a Star Destroyer because it has literally the same technology reactor (or multiple, it's a bigger ship after all)? Well then, being outpowered is no longer such a concern, they can match power joule for joule. Maybe better, since they're combining tech bases and normally work bigger.

Once they're on the same level of SW in terms of power generation, then they have the advantage of self-repairing ships and being able to capture ships (Star Destroyer's shield flicker, beam in a bunch of drones and either take it, or further disable the ship while the crew's distracted allowing the beaming of more drones until it's taken. Focus on lone Star Destroyers - as they often function - at frontier systems as much as possible to accumulate ships before being forced to fleet battle).

Borg tech can't win fleetbattles with SW. Borg+SW tech, obviously, can, and trying to get better tech is literally the Borg modus operandi, as is using assimilation to katamari their forces upwards in size. If they're stupid in their attempts to get it, and you can make a solid argument that they may be, they lose, but if they're smart and play a slow game, they can win.

[Shroom Man 777]

Is it even in the Borg mandate to defeat and extinguish enemy civilizations after/aside-from assimilating their cool shit?

[Thanas]

How? There is no adapting to the brute power of SW ships, not with the tech base they have. Also there is no manufacturing capability of theirs that is enough to keep up with the Empire.

By obtaining Star Wars ships (by subtlety and tactics ala First Contact) and incorporating that tech into their own, like I said. Stealing other people's technology is what they do.

This makes as much sense as people from ancient rome trying to incorporate a modern battletank.

[Q99]

This makes as much sense as people from ancient rome trying to incorporate a modern battletank.

Aside from the difference not being that great (and Replicator and Nanite technology allowing the fabrication and shaping of practically any part), they literally will have Star Wars engineers and technicians. They aren't even really reverse engineering things at that point, just using their technology to build examples of something that members of their hivemind are familiar with.

This is the point of assimilation. If someone is more advanced, gain not just examples of their technology, but expertise. There's a reason why I mentioned it in every post, they can use the same knowledge base that people in Star Wars themselves use to build it.

All they need to be able to figure out and make Star Wars technology is for Star Wars people to know Star Wars technology.

We also known that a lot of star war tech can be made in surprisingly sparse conditions. The rebels make their stuff in whatever machine shops and similar they can. Scavengers cobble together ships out of wreckage, and the Star Wars universe has a fair amount of wreckage to use too.

[Shroom Man 777]

If you suppose that the Borg assimilation tactics can go beyond "inject random schlub with nanites, hijack random ship" and can include them going to some graveyard of Clone Wars-era droid shit like Kalani's operation in Rebels... or even some disused autonomous or not-so-autonomous Von Neuman-y factory-vessel... or even some Rusteroid Belt planet Detroid or the Tiorted system and reactivate some abandoned starship factories that got bankrupted by Kuat Drive Yard competition (and Imperial bias!)... then...

The Borg can equip themselves with peer-level SW tech. Yes.

But mass producing a galaxy's worth of fighty SW-grade shit or 25,000 Star Destroyers worth of kill is still another thing entirely.

If you're lucky they can pull of a CIS or Republic "spawn a galactic war's worth of gear and killy shit in a handful of years out of nowhere like an RKO" but the Empire still has a galaxy's worth of pre-existing gear AND the logistics and fabrication chain and system for its galaxy-grade military that can shit out a new Death Star every few years.

[NecronLord]

I actually started work on a fanfic along these lines a year ago, where in essence the borg were raiding outlying colonies for people and then aimed to go after a university world with an emphasis on science and engineering, they then planned to retreat for a decade or two to revolutionise their industrial base. And use it to harvest the star trek galaxy. The star wars natives did not know where the borg wormhole was and could not meaningfully track them at first.

[Lonestar]

Is it even in the Borg mandate to defeat and extinguish enemy civilizations after/aside-from assimilating their cool shit?

There was that species with the Slipstream tech that the Borg basically wiped out, from several billion to 10-20 thousand

[Q99]

If you suppose that the Borg assimilation tactics can go beyond "inject random schlub with nanites, hijack random ship" and can include them going to some graveyard of Clone Wars-era droid shit like Kalani's operation in Rebels... or even some disused autonomous or not-so-autonomous Von Neuman-y factory-vessel... or even some Rusteroid Belt planet Detroid or the Tiorted system and reactivate some abandoned starship factories that got bankrupted by Kuat Drive Yard competition (and Imperial bias!)... then...

The Borg can equip themselves with peer-level SW tech. Yes.

Quite, there's a lot of very useful junk laying around.

I mean, get that commander droid that showed up in Rebels and you gain it's knowledge of Clone War battles and tactics to boot. That'd be super-useful, and no-one would notice or care if he went missing.

But mass producing a galaxy's worth of fighty SW-grade shit or 25,000 Star Destroyers worth of kill is still another thing entirely.

If you're lucky they can pull of a CIS or Republic "spawn a galactic war's worth of gear and killy shit in a handful of years out of nowhere like an RKO" but the Empire still has a galaxy's worth of pre-existing gear AND the logistics and fabrication chain and system for its galaxy-grade military that can shit out a new Death Star every few years.

Which does leave the question of whether they can convert Cubes to SW power planets- use their internal production to adjust and modernize them over the course of however long that takes. Because that'll start them with a full million ships of various sizes and classes, if ones not optimized for use of the tech. I assume a lot are smaller scout ships like from I, Borg or Sphere, but still, that is a not inconsiderable starting point.


Once they're on par, they don't have to strictly out-produce, they can aim for a longer term conflict of capture and attrition. If they beat a fleet, after all, then they can gain a chunk of that fleet, and the Empire will always have it's traditional problem that a ton of it's fleet has to be tied down simply defending such a huge area, it's hard for them to concentrate, and thus a lot of garrisons are somewhat vulnerable to attack. So something of a war of raiding and preserving / building forces. They can target Imperial production facilities- we've seen them use suicide tactics before, so maybe just have a couple dozen Cubes with SW shields do suicide runs to crash into KDY and similar facilities, since attempting assimilation there would be met with too much resistance.

Borg production is decentralized, every Cube can build, one ship is all that's needed to convert entire worlds if the defenses can't stop them, so they can stay mobile and fight differently, they don't have to be tied down.

Another small tool in their toolbox is their transwarp drives are pretty good (inferior to hyperspace of course, but not nearly as bad as warp drives), and go off hyperspace routes, so they can hide in the galaxy fairly well. They can go and hang in the places with the crappiest hyperspace routes and set up production there.


That said, it's still a rather tall order and requires the Borg to fight a smart game, and SW has some X-factors that could mess them up, but there are tactics and strategies they could use with their capabilities to help the odds.

[Shroom Man 777]

And the Empire could just send BDZ-ing ISDs into Borg territory to shitkick them ala Species 2309428304.

[Thanas]

It is just complete nonsense to assume the Borg could just "adapt" to SW tech and have their cubes manufacture stuff. That is like asking an ancient nation to replicate modern tech. It won't happen, it cannot happen. You cannot create MBTs with ancient tech.

Borg production is decentralized, every Cube can build, one ship is all that's needed to convert entire worlds if the defenses can't stop them, so they can stay mobile and fight differently, they don't have to be tied down.

Really? All it apparently takes is one freighter to nuke a Borg cube. And the Empire might be stretched thing but they can easily send a scout class ship to take a long why planet XYZ is not responding.

[Q99]

It is just complete nonsense to assume the Borg could just "adapt" to SW tech and have their cubes manufacture stuff. That is like asking an ancient nation to replicate modern tech. It won't happen, it cannot happen. You cannot create MBTs with ancient tech.

You keep saying this, but small planets and rebel outposts can build SW tech, and this is with SW engineers and examples of machining and such, and SW stuff is higher in power scale but the relationship between them isn't so simple as one < the other, they each have techs the other doesn't as well as techs where they have direct equivalents.

Even if they can't build directly- and replicators and nanites are incredibly flexible tools- they can build the parts to make the parts (etc. until desired result)... because with SW engineers they know what they need, and their own technology base is quite sophisticated and can produce machine tools.

Once they figure out the chain of upgrade they need, what's preventing them from sitting around and having ships spend a few weeks working through it in uncharted systems?

The Borg stole much, possibly nearly all of their current tech base, and 'steal people to gain inside knowledge of their technology' is one of their shown tactics.

Really? All it apparently takes is one freighter to nuke a Borg cube.

How do you figure? I mean, freighter weapon yields aren't particularly high even by Borg standards to begin with (medium turbolasers are just double-digit MT iirc, and that's on the high end of freighter armament. They're nothing on warship firepower), before getting into any possible upgrades.

And, again, Borg Fleet is a million ships at start. They can burn a fair number of ships getting started.

Then there's the matter that they don't need to beat ships head-on- First Contact showed that just a few drones on a ship is very dangerous and will normally result in a total takeover even by an armed crew of trained officers who have experience with Borg. A freighter crew? Pssh, unless there's a Jedi on that freighter then drop a drone or two and the whole crew gets assimilated.

And the Empire might be stretched thing but they can easily send a scout class ship to take a long why planet XYZ is not responding.

Sure, and then when they arrive, the target's not there. When you steal something you don't normally stick around for a few days- as we saw in The Neutral Zone where both the Federation and Romulans are scratching their heads about these silent worlds where entire cities were scooped up. This is a scenario that happened in canon.


Now, one can argue that the Borg may not be together enough to pull this all off and would think to play it low for long enough, but the methods involved are applications of shown tactics and capabilities.

And the Empire could just send BDZ-ing ISDs into Borg territory to shitkick them ala Species 2309428304.

Which requires them to scout out Borg territory, which for Wars takes a fair amount of time thanks to hyperspace route mapping being not the quickest and simplest of matters, which means they have time to act and so on.

8472 was able to drop fleets all across Borg territory direct from Fluidic Space, and didn't have weak frontier worlds to attack in return, nor individuals that could be assimilated.

It's also unknown how important worlds are to the Borg. We've seen some, but they seem pretty fleet based, the Queen is always on ships or stations.

[Shroom Man 777]

Fair point about SW vessels' need to map out hyperspace routes... then again even if the ISDs do slower hyperjumps for "unmapped" regions, that'd still be way faster than ST warping.

But I don't think the Borg mass-replicating hyperdrives just because they assimilated some shitkicker freighters is a fiat accompli.

[Q99]

Fair point about SW vessels' need to map out hyperspace routes... then again even if the ISDs do slower hyperjumps for "unmapped" regions, that'd still be way faster than ST warping.

Definitely, but Borg space is big so they can do 'trade land for time,' just fine. Voyager spent some time bumping into the Borg even after Kes skipped them past years of travel through the core of Borg space.

But I don't think the Borg mass-replicating hyperdrives just because they assimilated some shitkicker freighters is a fiat accompli.

Oh, not just one or a few freighters, no.

But, a lot of SW worlds don't have much defense forces, just some fighters or smaller ships for anti-pirate work, many don't have any capships at all and the ones with ISDs or ISD level defenses are a definite minority. And there are a lot of technicians, and repair droids and so on. Capture every small ship on a minor world *and* all the fighters, gunships, freighters, and similar, and that's a nice base to at least begin upgrading.

Tatooine, for example. Very little in the way of defenses on the surface or in space. Everything in Watto's junkyard (which included high-end hyperdrives for some reason), every droid in Jabba's palace and in the hands of Jawas, everything at Toshi station and Mos Eisley. It'd be pretty easy to scoop up a lot of technology samples and ship pieces (including from ships not actually present) and tons of people who are technically adept at some areas of SW technology- a ton of whom know how to work on hyperdrives, as every Astromech droid knows that, Han and Chewie had some experience, etc.. Plus it's centrally located in just a few settlements that are easy to scoop up wholesale and get every bit of technical expertise. It's a one-cube one-day job and that could happen to dozens of small worlds and gives a good sized chunk of the picture.

Cloud city, another place full of technology and technical knowledge and zilch defense.

Which isn't getting into the goldmine of some of the old war battlefields to get warship samples- scavenging off of warships is something often done decades after a war in SW, so there you can almost certainly find mostly intact heavy turbolasers and similar.

Once they have a couple hundred engineers, plenty of droids in the engineer fields (get droids designed to work on big starship engines, that tells you a *lot*), plus a variety of samples, every Borg Drone is effectively a Star Wars engineer.



Also they could very much capture good sized warships even before they upgrade if they catch it by surprise and transport drones on before it has it's shields up. The ship doing the beaming can get blown up and that won't stop a capture attempt (as FC showed), Star Wars ships have a lot of hiding places and Stormies may not be enough to prevent a First Contact situation, especially if the Borg beam in a number to start with and especially if it's a smaller ship.

Send, say, 200 cubes out, a small, expendable force that can spread out a lot. If a dozen make it back (and I think they'd only take that much casualties if they're quite aggressive and attempt the 'send Borgs to capture tough ships' tactic a lot rather than avoiding conflict), then they should have plenty to uptech.

Plus even getting one or two freighters should give them a fairly good sense of local star maps and where the Empire *isn't*.

[Patroklos]

SW is pretty cosmopolitain. There are all sorts of unknown aliens roaming around pretty much every locality we have in cannon. The Borg should just act benign and seed as many worlds as possible before hostilities start. Hire themselves as cyborg labor to get on stations and ships a al Bespin. Subverting droid networks would seen up their ally. Then in one coordinated effort begin assimilating all at once. They are a hive mind so there is no trouble with betrayals of the plan or timing of the takeover. Of course this is what they should have done from the get go with all their enemies that are not in the know.

The only problem with the above is the possible detection of the Borg carrier wave. The Empire is hyper sensitive to subversive communications and I doubt some ubiquitous signal permeating the Empire would be be ignored. I am also curious about how a hive mind would be perceived in the force. Obiwan could sends the death of billions in one event. How would a Jedi perceive the aligned common existNce of billions acting in unity? I'd imagine it would a least be percieved by powerful force users.

[Q99]

SW is pretty cosmopolitain. There are all sorts of unknown aliens roaming around pretty much every locality we have in cannon. The Borg should just act benign and seed as many worlds as possible before hostilities start. Hire themselves as cyborg labor to get on stations and ships a al Bespin. Subverting droid networks would seen up their ally. Then in one coordinated effort begin assimilating all at once. They are a hive mind so there is no trouble with betrayals of the plan or timing of the takeover. Of course this is what they should have done from the get go with all their enemies that are not in the know.

That'd be really smart, but we've never seen the Borg do that kind of thing.

Poaching border worlds and isolated ships is the best we got.

Fortunately, SW does have a lot of lightly defended worlds. Tatooine. Bespin. Naboo (there's a prize- defended by a few squadrons of fighters, but has the independent Gungans on it with their own tech and by extension entirely on-planet industrial base and technological knowledge). Jakku. The, uh, world with a bar in TFA.

Not as good as an ultra low-key method like you propose, to be sure.

The only problem with the above is the possible detection of the Borg carrier wave. The Empire is hyper sensitive to subversive communications and I doubt some ubiquitous signal permeating the Empire would be be ignored. I am also curious about how a hive mind would be perceived in the force. Obiwan could sends the death of billions in one event. How would a Jedi perceive the aligned common existNce of billions acting in unity? I'd imagine it would a least be percieved by powerful force users.

Good question. Would they be easier or harder to sense than many different minds...?

[Shroom Man 777]

The Empire can subcontract Borg hunting and/or entering Borg territory and murdering them to a reactivated puppet CIS then.

[Q99]

The Empire can subcontract Borg hunting and/or entering Borg territory and murdering them to a reactivated puppet CIS then.

Now sending droids against the Borg strikes me as a really bad idea!

Assimilate commanders and all droids under them are turned. Once you get command codes, you can have them just shut down.

Plus, unpredictability is a key weapon against Borg. Most droids are pretty bad at that.

[Thanas]

You keep saying this, but small planets and rebel outposts can build SW tech, and this is with SW engineers and examples of machining and such, and SW stuff is higher in power scale but the relationship between them isn't so simple as one < the other, they each have techs the other doesn't as well as techs where they have direct equivalents.

It is also with SW manufacturing tech.

The problem is you are using the old no limits fallacy. AKA "Borg magically assimilate everything and thus can magically reverse engineer".

So you got a few mining plants. Great. Now what?

Even if they can't build directly- and replicators and nanites are incredibly flexible tools- they can build the parts to make the parts (etc. until desired result)... because with SW engineers they know what they need, and their own technology base is quite sophisticated and can produce machine tools.

No. Not at all. An ancient Roman forge could not build a modern shipyard.

How do you figure? I mean, freighter weapon yields aren't particularly high even by Borg standards to begin with (medium turbolasers are just double-digit MT iirc, and that's on the high end of freighter armament. They're nothing on warship firepower), before getting into any possible upgrades.

The borg have never been able to resist MT level firepower (see 8472). The federation destroyed multiple cubes with MT level firepower.

And unless they know how to block all hyperspace communication the local ISD will show up within the hour.

[LaCroix]

Small question - the Borg are a hivemind.

Star Wars has shown instances of jamming where the Rebels were not even able to tell if a Death Star sized shield was up or not.
The borg hive mind signal strength is not very high, and could easily be blocked in "I, Borg" by a simple subspace dampening field
Jamming it would be a piece of cake.

I doubt drones have a lot of information stored on them, so a boarding party would be most likely useless on a SW ship if they turn their jammers on.

[Shroom Man 777]

Now sending droids against the Borg strikes me as a really bad idea!

Assimilate commanders and all droids under them are turned. Once you get command codes, you can have them just shut down.

Plus, unpredictability is a key weapon against Borg. Most droids are pretty bad at that.

I don't think the Borg have shown more tactical or strategic acumen than the CIS and whatever few clever tricks the Borg have pulled, the CIS have also done their fair share of non-predictable strategies. Frontline droid combatants might be predictable, but their commanders don't necessarily have to be predictable. Either they are managed by meatbags in command ships or just a bunch of Kalanis... and really, your "whoops, the Borg have assimilated a bunch of X-units = game over" fiat accompli is tiring.

Plus, while Palpatine has shut down codes and the CIS leadership had shut down codes and in TPM blowing up the mothership shuts down the primitive versions of the B1, I don't think it's just that easy to get the command codes. The Republic, the Jedi, ARC troopers, etc. didn't have an easy time with that. If it's as easy as you make it out to be, Obi-Wan and Anakin should've just had R2 hack droid systems whenever they entered droid territories and ships.

In retrospect, Anakin should've let R2 hack the Invisible Hand in ROTS. Like what he did on the Death Star. But... eh. Whatever.