Borg Weapon Adapting

[Teaos]

The Borg adapt very fast when they can. New things work very well against them since they can't think what might come next only react.

[celeritas]

I meant that the Borg drones won't act against a Feddie until the Feddie actually takes some action to bring it to the Collective's attention. A bacterium can float around inside your body for as long as it wants and your immune system won't do a thing - UNTIL that bacterium starts messing with things.

No a bacterium can't float around inside your body for anytime at all -- it has to actively avoid the immune system on purpose and at great expense of energy and resources in order to escape destruction. Most of the time, all that work is only good to temporarily avoid destruction because just being inside your body is enough to signal an immune response. Otherwise, if you think about it, you would have your insides lined with benign bacteria just like your outsides. But you don't. In fact, if you are healthy, your insides are completely sterile because the human body won't tolerate anything other that itself; a pregnant woman's immune system would even attack her own fetus, treating it as a parasite, if given the opportunity.

So the analogy would follow that in order to avoid being destroyed in a borg cube, you don't have to be borg per say, but you'd better try very very hard to dress like a borg, act like a borg, and smell like a borg. No way should a feddie be able to stroll through a cube in a redshirt. The presence of a feddie, even if they don't do anything, should immediately result in his or her destruction (or at least detainment). The episode about seven of nine's human parents studying borg using some sort of personal cloaking mechanism would be the sort of thing you should have to do if you want to hang around a borg cube without getting your butt kicked.

The conclusion, in my mind, is that the borg collective is far less efficient than the human immune system because it has trouble recognizing "self" and, after being exposed to "non-self" feddies, it has no mechanism to remember what "non-self" feddies are; instead, borg must relearn what a feddie is every time they get exposed to a feddie.

[Tiberius]

Well, it's not a perfect analogy, but my point is that the Borg wouldn't take any action against a Feddie who's just standing there because they haven't taken any action to bring them to the notice of the Collective.

[celeritas]

Well, it's not a perfect analogy, but my point is that the Borg wouldn't take any action against a Feddie who's just standing there because they haven't taken any action to bring them to the notice of the Collective.

I know, that is precisely how borg behave. But doesn't that strike you as inherently inefficient and un-borg-like? Presumably, the borg should have learned by now that non-borg on their cubes is usually not a good thing so why haven't they any built in system to actively root after intruders? To me, this is a massive oversight in internal security. Its not a perfect analogy but its not perfect security system either, if you will.

I'm sure that this is a result of the borg being fleshed out more and more since their original introduction. Each time, the borg become less menacing and increasingly vulnerable. Not only have they failed to assimilate the federation or any of the major species, the borg haven't really adapted to any of them in terms of weapons (e.g. generally, the good guys can still blow up cubes) or tactics (e.g. internal security problems mentioned above). I mean, at first, they kicked federation butt at wolf 359 but, by the end of voyager, they can't even destroy one measly intrepid class feddie ship strolling through their backyard without supplies, reinforcements, or googlemaps.

[Tiberius]

One could make the similar argument that it's inefficient for our bodies to start making antibodies only AFTER the infection has been detected... It would be innefficient for the Borg to constantly be searching for intruders on their ships. Once they know that there is something on the Cube messing around, then they take action. But only after.

In any case, remember that there has never been an instance of the Borg being defeated simply through massive firepower. In First Contact, it took Picard's knowledge to target a particular point on the Cube tro destroy it. Species 8472 was never able to be assimialted, so the Borg couldn't even begine to adapt as they would with conventional weapons. Voyager survived precisely because they DIDN'T use conventional attacks. They either ran away or used unconventional attacks. The Borg are unstoppable when you use conventional tactics, which is precisely why Voyager never used them to defeat the Borg.

[celeritas]

One could make the similar argument that it's inefficient for our bodies to start making antibodies only AFTER the infection has been detected... It would be innefficient for the Borg to constantly be searching for intruders on their ships. Once they know that there is something on the Cube messing around, then they take action. But only after.

Why would that be inefficient? Your immune cells take up a small percentage of all the cells in your body and are sufficient to ward against a rather impressive number of infections. Having some borg hang around to ward off intruders would seem to me to be a practical course of action to say prevent the loss of all the borg in a cube, which usually number in...i don't know...a big number...we should ask Graham.

A further inquiry to this interesting line of discussion (this forum is great! i get to ask all the questions i've always wondered about): why haven't the borg taken over the federation yet? So Picard and others have been able to blow up a cube or two, but how many ships can Picard take out by himself? How many unconventional tactics does Janeway have up her sleeve? Just drop in 100 or 1,000 borg cubes and the borg should easily be able to overwhelm and assimilate federation.

I think that the trek universe skirts the issue by simply having the borg unable to totally commit with war against the federation probably because they're not interested only in the federation but must commit to all species they encounter that worthy of assimilation. Spread thin across their territory, they can't just drop a bunch of cubes and smother the federation.

On top of that, there's the literary message that the conformity of borg thinking is inherently inferior to the adaptability of individuality in the federation, etc. Presumably, our individualism gives us the creativity and flexibility to out-think the borg, giving the borg the Achilles' heel necessary to make them defeatable, no matter how many impressive technologies they assimulate.

[Monroe]

My problem with the Borg being able to adapt to all tactics is look at the Voth and Hirogens. Both have sizable empires right next to the Borg and neither seemed concern.

The Voth in theory should have been neighbors to the borg throughout their thousands of centuries. And as far as we know the Voth use conviential weapons, just more advanced ones.

I was reading a different site that proposed the theory that the Borg do not expand and conqueror at all. Instead they merely polish their special perfect gem and occationally assimilate things to make it a little better. They aren't in it for conquest at all.

[Tiberius]

Why would that be inefficient? Your immune cells take up a small percentage of all the cells in your body and are sufficient to ward against a rather impressive number of infections. Having some borg hang around to ward off intruders would seem to me to be a practical course of action to say prevent the loss of all the borg in a cube, which usually number in...i don't know...a big number...we should ask Graham.

But that would be like your body constantly producing anti-bodies for all diseases it new about. In real life, however, your body only starts making the anti-bodies after the infection has begun.

[I Am Spartacus]

Why not build specialized kamikaze ships that can be sent into battle fully automated, loaded up with torpedoes and explosives and protected by the most advanced shields and toughest armour possible? One shot could take out a Borg cube.

Or why not train and arm special federation marines for hand to hand combat against Borg drones? The Klingons should have the edge here, because you can't "adapt" to a swing of the Bat'Leth.

[Teaos]

Why not build specialized kamikaze ships that can be sent into battle fully automated, loaded up with torpedoes and explosives and protected by the most advanced shields and toughest armour possible?

Federation does not use computers to run ships. They learnt their lesson with the M5.

[Captain Seafort]

Why not build specialized kamikaze ships that can be sent into battle fully automated, loaded up with torpedoes and explosives and protected by the most advanced shields and toughest armour possible?

Federation does not use computers to run ships. They learnt their lesson with the M5.

Actually I think they've already tried it, albeit not for full scale starships - the Mars Defence Perimeter. It didn't work very well.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Or why not train and arm special federation marines for hand to hand combat against Borg drones? The Klingons should have the edge here, because you can't "adapt" to a swing of the Bat'Leth.

Um... I think we covered that already. Borg have been seen with shields deflecting Worf's physical attack. A few physical attacks might take out a few borg, but then they'll adapt. The misconseption that physical weapons work stems from First Contact. The one time Worf used his Mek'leth weapon was one incident. I don't think we've ever seen the Borg adapt to a weapon before it was used. The same goes for the gun in the holodeck. It took out two borg very quickly, too fast for those two to adapt.

[Captain Seafort]

Um... I think we covered that already. Borg have been seen with shields deflecting Worf's physical attack. A few physical attacks might take out a few borg, but then they'll adapt. The misconseption that physical weapons work stems from First Contact. The one time Worf used his Mek'leth weapon was one incident. I don't think we've ever seen the Borg adapt to a weapon before it was used. The same goes for the gun in the holodeck. It took out two borg very quickly, too fast for those two to adapt.

The shield that stopped Worf was part of the cube, not a personnal shield, and the problem with Borg adaptation is that it relies on weapon/shield frequencies - KE weapons don't have frequencies and therefore can't be adapted to.

[Sionnach Glic]

We've seen one melee attack blocke, and there could have been extra factors in that situation. We've seen borg get beaten in hand to hand hundreds of times.

[celeritas]

But that would be like your body constantly producing anti-bodies for all diseases it new about. In real life, however, your body only starts making the anti-bodies after the infection has begun.

yes, b cells only start making antibodies them after an infection. but you actually have a whole bunch of other cells that you've already made that are designed to activate b cells (which are also already made), initiate plasma cell proliferation, and antibody production. And this is just the humoral side of your immune system (and grossly simplified).

you actually need to have every type of immune cell present for your immune response to work -- if you are missing any one type of cell, you are in deep crap. so your body constantly must produce all your immune cells all the time, even when there is no infection, so that you can have an immune response (during which you produce even more cells). Now this sounds like an inefficient investment in resources, but its still somehow efficient enough to be an adaptive system that you would want have.

What the borg seem to be missing is the equivalent of the memory b cell to remember past-pathogenic agents (feddies). They shouldn't need to relearn these things.

If you don't like the idea of a pseudo-immune system on borg cubes, another option is to have automated ship defense systems (fancy talk for guns on the walls). Or have security teams. Or good ol' fashioned booby traps.

We've seen borg get beaten in hand to hand hundreds of times.

Now if the borg were able to remember that, they should be able to develop better hand-to-hand combat skills.