Borg Weapon Adapting

[Monroe]

You may be right about the mass drivers being too military. I'm not even sure if Mass Drivers are possible in Star Trek. Since a mass driver operates by accellerating a bullet to warp / hyperspace speeds (depending on the universe) and slamming them into the target at near or past the speed of light I don't know if Star Trek could have them.

The game Galactic Empires II goes into depth on mass drivers pretty deeply.

[Teaos]

I don't think there is any tech like that in star trek.

[Sionnach Glic]

Okay, for the first one, why waste energy on a shield when you can just push them out of the way?

Maybe because by letting them get that close they could harm you?

And 8472 seem to have abilities different then our most species, and may not be effected by sheilds,

In Voy: Prey we see that 8472 are not imune to shields.

In Descent those weren't exactly normal Borg drones.

I don't remember this episode too well, what ways did they differ?

Worf Rifle Butting was the first time he hit them with kinetic weapons, not enough time to adapt.

How can you possibly adapt to being whacked with a gun? It dosen't have a frequency which is, IIRC, what drones need to adapt.
If they work like the Feds forcefields the gun should have litteraly bounced off it. It didn't.

Same goes for the snapped Neck and with the knocking drones down, while sheilds can deflect energy that doesn't stop the projector from being knocked around.

If it had a shield then Data shouldn't have even been able to touch him.

The Tommy Gun wasn't a melee attack and was a different type of weapon killing both Borg in a matter of seconds.

Tommy guns use bullets. Which use KE to injure people. If they had KE shields they should have been immune. There was no need to adapt.

The Borg beaten up one, may be there it was the no point in wasting energy thing again.

No point in wasting energy to keep your troops alive?

Worf hits them with a new weapon once.

Its a knife. Hardly a technological breakthrough. Also, Worf hit him three times. That should have been more than enough time to throw some sort of defence up.

Data's attack on the queen may be the Queen's overconfidence letting herself get caught off guard. She's not exactly a normal Borg either.

You'd think the leader of the borg would be smarter than that. It would have been no effort to throw up a shield.

Picard wasn't in his right mind.

He still knew more about the borg than anyone else, also I don't recall any of the crew finding this order to be completely stupid.

And Plasma is high energy gas and caught many of the Borg before they could adapt.

This isn't my strong point, so I'll coceede it for now.

The only one who doesn't have a real excuse is the Queen but from the earlier incident with Data's attack on the queen she may not have her own sheild for some reason, or it doesn't have total coverage.

What possible reason can you think of that would excuse the leader of the borg from having a defence that, in your opinion, is standard on every other member of their race?

Or even the Borg sheilds have a limit of what they can take.

Of course they have a limit. Unless you think drones could adapt to starships scale phasers.

I don't care how many stupid things Starfleet's done, they would be sure to have produced weapons to take advantage of that, like the standard TR-116.

The federation seems to focus completely on space warfare at the expense of ground warfare. One need only look at the hideously designed phaser to see that. It's quite possible Starfleet didn't see the need for properly arming their personell. After all, they haven't encountered the borg on many occasions, so why arm your entire navy with something designed to fight them?

Even with some of Starfleet's stupid ideas they wouldn't be that oblivious to such an advantage.

The Federation apears to be oblivious to common sense. They rely on an active system to keep their ships from falling apart. They issue their crew with a horribly designed weapon. They apear to have no ground force.
They put civilians on their warships, including children.

I would not be surprised if they thought the idea of the borg being vulnerable to projectile weapons to be laughable without even testing it.

[Mikey]

Has any eplanation ever been offered for why the Borg personal shields are so susceptible to ballistic a/o impact attacks? I mean in "A Fistful of Datas," a jury-rigged force field was able to deflect a holographic bullet - something the Borg were completely unable to do in "First Contact."

[Teaos]

Different types of shields. Maybe they would need a refit to instal that kind of hardware. Given time they could adapt to that.

[Mikey]

Doesn't that seem a little simplistic for a Borg drone to have to get refit in order to accomplish?

[Teaos]

Not really. They have a generic design that they find works best in most situations. They come across something different they have to take time to adapt to that.

[Sionnach Glic]

Are you honeslty trying to claim that the borg have never encountered projectile weapons before? Or fists and badly designed swords? I would hardly call any of these weapons 'different.'
And how do you explain the fact that the borg adapt using frequencies, which no KE weapon uses?

[Teaos]

No what i said is that they have a Generic design that works for the mojority of the time. Since the majority of culture they encounter dont use kenetic weapons they don't defend against it. When they come across someone who does they adapt to it.

[Captain Seafort]

No what i said is that they have a Generic design that works for the mojority of the time. Since the majority of culture they encounter dont use kenetic weapons they don't defend against it. When they come across someone who does they adapt to it.

Species 8472 were chopping them up with claws for six months - you call that adapting?

[Teaos]

I though 8472 had some ability to resist Borg technology. Their immune system could expel nano probes and their bodys were high resistant to beam weapons. Doesnt seem that unlikely that they could be uneffected by forcefields.

[Captain Seafort]

I though 8472 had some ability to resist Borg technology. Their immune system could expel nano probes and their bodys were high resistant to beam weapons. Doesnt seem that unlikely that they could be uneffected by forcefields.

So they've got a hyperactive immue system and tough skin. How does this deonstrate an ability to ignore forcefields - forcefields that have demonstrated an ability to resist significant powerful directed-enegry weapons? The only reasonable conclusion is that Borg do not have KE shields.

[Sionnach Glic]

If you had actually read one of my previous posts you would have seen this;

In Voy: Prey we see that 8472 are not imune to shields.

Perhaps their blood is slightly corrosive, that would stop nano-probes easily. There is no need to attribute powers to them that have never been shown.
They are afected by forcefields, they use claws. Even the borg could put two and two together.
And there should be a fair few races still using slugthrowers.
Why would they not just arm drones with these shields when one of their standard tactics seems to be boarding enemy ships? HTH combat would be rather likely to occur in such cramped locations.

[Mikey]

Absolutely on target. Even leaving aside Species 8472 for the moment, the Borg have no prime directive - it doesn't matter what level of tech their potential victims have, sol probability states that they would more than likely have attempted to assimilate a culture which used melee weapons a/o ballistic weapons. Can they have never analyzed such attacks and come up with a defensive solution?

Additionally, we have seen that tech varies in form from civilization to civilizatrion in the 'Trek universe, but often very little in substance - everyone has shields, everyone has beam directed energy weapons, everyone has transporters, etc., etc. If a simple Fed force field is proof against both energy and kinetec weapons, why shouldn't a Borg version?

[Monroe]

I don't think the Borg can adapt to plasma either. In First Contact how many borg drones get eaten away by the Plasma before the queen falls into it. She knows exactly what it is because she knows its source and several Borg have already died to it.

Makes you wonder if projectiles like mass drivers are out of the question why doesn't the Federation begin experimenting with heated plasma shots?