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I wonder if projectile weapons would always be effective against Borg drones... I also wonder why Starfleet ships don't keep small stockpiles around in case their phasers are ineffective. I can't think of many situations in which this would happen, but still...

We have had this discusion twice, both times it came down to 'yes they are vulnerable, yes Stafleet are idiots'.

Here is the main one. Beware, its long!
And, as always, we ended up talking about something completely different in the end.

Cpl Kendall wrote:

Mikey wrote:What about the Jem'Hadar's Borg-esque tactics? Even if they are big lumbering morons (which they aren't supposed to be,) shouldn't there be a Vorta with half a brain somewhere around?

Wasn't he dying?

You are thinking of the Season 6 Episode, Rocks and Shoals

Welcome to the site, Ivan.

Ivan_Only wrote:

Cpl Kendall wrote:

Mikey wrote:What about the Jem'Hadar's Borg-esque tactics? Even if they are big lumbering morons (which they aren't supposed to be,) shouldn't there be a Vorta with half a brain somewhere around?

Wasn't he dying?

You are thinking of the Season 6 Episode, Rocks and Shoals

Yes, Hi Ivan...You're doing one of my favourite tricks...restarting ancient threads ^__^

Welcome, Ivan.

Ivan_Only wrote:
You are thinking of the Season 6 Episode, Rocks and Shoals

Than the Jemmies have even less excuse for their idiocy.

Reliant121 wrote:

Ivan_Only wrote:

Cpl Kendall wrote: Wasn't he dying?

You are thinking of the Season 6 Episode, Rocks and Shoals

Yes, Hi Ivan...You're doing one of my favourite tricks...restarting ancient threads ^__^

Eh...sorry about that.

Thanks for the Welcomes.

This is one of my favorite Episodes in DS9. It is just a shame that Starfleet "appears" to have very little tactics and only cloth for armor.

A belated welcome, Ivan.

Ivan_Only wrote:It is just a shame that Starfleet "appears" to have very little tactics and only cloth for armor.

Yes, but the good news is that no potential enemies have done any better.

Well, the Klingons and Cardassians both seemed to recognise the importance of armour, and the latter even seemed to use vehicles of some description, with several references to mechanised infantry and APCs. Of the former's unparalleled genius in ground combat, the less said the better.

Mikey wrote:A belated welcome, Ivan.

Ivan_Only wrote:It is just a shame that Starfleet "appears" to have very little tactics and only cloth for armor.

Yes, but the good news is that no potential enemies have done any better.

HAHA, too true!

We saw a guy in Nor The Battle to the Strong that was wearing what *looked* like some sort of armour.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:N ... Strong.jpg

This guy has some sort of outer coat-like thing on. You can see it's multi-layer, kinda like layers of rubber or something.

Actually I kind of liked the idea that there is no armour in future. I took the implication to be that the weapons were basically so powerful that armour wasn't worth bothering with any more. If you look back through history there has been something of a see-saw in whether and how much armour people employed. I read somewhere that what typically happens is that weapons get more and more powerful, so the armour needed gets heavier and heavier, until it reaches a point where it's just not practical anymore. Then armour vanishes almost completely. Then it reappears when somebody invents a better materials technology that makes it effective again.

I took the implication to be that the weapons were basically so powerful that armour wasn't worth bothering with any more.

Armour is always useful. We've seen shots bounce harmlessly off simple boxes before. Even if the enemy could raise the power of their weapons to blast through armour, that'd still take them time, and run them out of ammo much quicker.
Also, armour is excelent against either glancing shots, or shrapnel.

GrahamKennedy wrote:We saw a guy in Nor The Battle to the Strong that was wearing what *looked* like some sort of armour.

Actually I kind of liked the idea that there is no armour in future. I took the implication to be that the weapons were basically so powerful that armour wasn't worth bothering with any more. If you look back through history there has been something of a see-saw in whether and how much armour people employed. I read somewhere that what typically happens is that weapons get more and more powerful, so the armour needed gets heavier and heavier, until it reaches a point where it's just not practical anymore. Then armour vanishes almost completely. Then it reappears when somebody invents a better materials technology that makes it effective again.

Like what the Navy pretty much does. While armor does provide some protection, it's useless or at least ineffective against most modern weapons. While body armor might weaken phaser blasts, higher phaser setting could wipe out half a building according to Riker, even a fraction of that would crush or vaporize personal armor.

Stopping shrapnel is the key thing - that is, after all, what body armour (particularly head protection) has been used for most of the last century, before it was developed to the stage where man-portable armour could stop high-velocity rounds. There's also hand-t-hand combat (common in Trek) to consider, along with the risk of randomly walking into things, having things fall on you, etc, which a helemet would also be useful in stopping.

Captain Seafort wrote:Stopping shrapnel is the key thing - that is, after all, what body armour (particularly head protection) has been used for most of the last century, before it was developed to the stage where man-portable armour could stop high-velocity rounds. There's also hand-t-hand combat (common in Trek) to consider, along with the risk of randomly walking into things, having things fall on you, etc, which a helemet would also be useful in stopping.

Excellent point. Even modern infantry brain-buckets aren't proof against a typical rifle round. The idea of wearing them is to protect the wearer from other types of damage, as Seafort described.