Just for the hell of it, I thought we might take a look at the Borg and their ability to adapt to weaponry. The main argument about Borg adaptation not being fully able to stop weapons they've already adapted to is in First Contact where we see a cubes outer hull damaged by the Federation fleet. The only problem with this scenario is, we just don't know what happened in that battle... did some ships ram the cube to cause the damage? Was it the actual weapons which damaged the cube? That's unknown, but we DO know that the weaponry of the fleet, when concentrated on a weakened/vulnerable area of the cube (why it was like that, we dunno), they managed to tear through its outer hull quite well... I guess another example would be the Enterprise firing its main deflector weapon at the cube in The Best of Both Worlds. This beam was set at frequencies which apparently the power distribution nodes of the cube were somewhat vulnerable to. We know this beam contained energy that was FAR more powerful than both phasers and photon torpedos combined, and the amount of energy outputted was generally accepted to be enough to destroy the cube (and the Enterprise too, if they were too close). By assimilating Picard, the Borg knew all about the plan, were able to adapt, and suffer absolutely no damage from the deflector pulse. Of course this also depends on just how much power the deflector was outputting... the upper limit would be based on just how much power the Enterprise can produce - but apparently some people have problems with the 2 sources of Starship power we have, so I dunno... BUT just for the hell of it, I'll use the figure from True Q (12.75 billion gigawatts while the ship was at impulse speeds) as a minimum number just to see what the cube adapted to. I've been told 1 megaton = about 4,15E15 Joules, so work that out, and I believe we have about 3.072 gigatons/second hitting the cube. I believe the firing sequence was about 40 seconds, so that means the cube took at LEAST (since the power figure was from the ship at impulse, but in this case they used warp power, so far more powerful)... so the cube took at LEAST 122,891 gigatons, or over 0.122 teratons of energy slamming into it... and walked away without a scratch due to their adaptation abilities... This by FAR outnumbers the numbers assumed for Trek weaponry (phasers, photon torpedos)... Now I'm 100% sure this'll escalate quickly, so I guess the things to talk about are the following: 1) is there a chance the cube in First Contact suffered most of its damage from the weapons, or from such things as starships ramming it? We have 2 examples of ships willing to ram a cube when destruction was imminent, or as a last resort (the Enterprise in TBoBW, and the Defiant in First Contact) 2) I'd like to re-address this whole thing about the 12.75 billion gigawatt number stated by Data. Of course he adds the word "per" after it, but then we need to think, "per what". By the statement, we already know the warp core was outputting 12.75 billion gigajoules per second, then per ... something else... so what if there WAS something else? How does this POSSIBLY negate the first part? And yes yes, I know the script says, "per second" which is just redundant, but that still changes nothing since the script isn't canon... So in light of these 2 examples, what can we gather about Borg adaptation skills? We know they couldn't adapt to 8472 biobeams, couldn't adapt to planetary debris hitting cubes, adapt to a uber-powerful newly forming nebular from crushing a sphere like a tin can, couldn't adapt to a massive solar flare directed right at the ship (which looks just like a multi-kinetic neutronic mine)... to name a few examples... EDIT. Just to note, going by the 122 GT figure from above, if we translate that over to the HIGHEST possible photon torpedo calc I've ever seen (500 megatons for the Skin of Evil torpedo), that would equate to 245,782 photon torpedos having to be fired at the cube in First Contact... personally, I'm of the thought that it wasn't entirely all weapons which did the damage to the cubes surface. Of coruse we still have the fact that the ships concentrating all their firepower onto 1 spot was able to overpower the adaptation abilities, but then again, we don't know WHY that particular area was weak... so it could go both ways there...
In First Contact, when the Federation weapons fire hits the cube, we see a fiery explosion. When the Cube latches on to the Defiant with the tractor beam, the Enterprise fires torpedos at the beam emitter and the beam shuts off...presumably due to the emitter being destroyed. I believe that the majority of the damage shown on the surface of the cube is a result of weapons fire destroying Borg weapon emplacements. Borg weapons emitters are presumably more difficult/hightech/time-consuming to be able to repair as quickly as a single solid substance (outer hull)
quite possible. We've seen from Q Who how quickly the Borg can repair MASSIVE damage to a cube (the Enterprise tore massive chunks out of it, but it was all repaired within at most, a couple of hours). But since we saw these events at the end of the battle, that brings up another question which fits into the above. IF the tactic of ramming the cube was applied, could this have damaged to cube to the point where adaptation was "weakened" or pretty much off? Hmm, wish I had the footage to look over, but ah well... But anyways, I still want to hear why everyone is so up in arms about the 12.75 billion gigawatt thing, since I don't see any problem with the whole "per" thing, or for that matter the 5 billion gigawatt comment by Kim... we have 2 seperate statements by very knowledgable people specifically stating the amount of power running through parts of their ships... the ratios work out (Voyager should be outputting less then the Enterprise...)... so what's the deal? We know the Enterprise poured their warp power (the most energy-intensive part of the ship) through their deflector dish), so the numbers I gave above are extremely safe due to the number being from the ship being at impulse speeds... and the Borg cube adapted to this enormous amount of energy without a problem...
Pretty much what I'm saying is, since the amount of energy the Enterprise spat out at a cube - one which was prepared and fully adapted, is hundreds of thousands of times more energy than what standard Federation weapons output, I find it very reasonable to look at other reasons why the cube in First Contact could've been damaged in such a way. I find it unlikely that the Fed fleet had 250,000+ photon torpedos to launch at it, and we DO know that at least 2 seperate commanders of 2 seperate ships, on 2 seperate occasions (one of which was IN this movie) were perfectly content with using their ships to ram a Borg cube, so this is a perfectly sound reason to explain why the cube was damaged...
Point 1: Deflector Energy Output And Relative Torpedo Yields in First Contact. My opinion here...and the easiest one that I can think of (KISS) is that the Warp Power coming through the deflector dish at 12.75 billion gigawatts or whatever, seeing as how the Borg had exact knowledge of it's purpose and workings, could've been "deflected" easily by the Cube. IE: It was easier for the Cube to deflect one massive burst of energy when it knew where and how it would be delievered than it was to deflect hundreds of smaller bursts of energy when it only knew how it would be delivered. Point 2: Ship Commanders in First Contact, RE: Ramming Tactics. I think you're missing something here. In BOBW, the Enterprise was going to ram the Cube because none of her weapons would slow the Cube down, and there was nothing between her and Earth. In First Contact, Worf was going to ram the Cube his ship was in tatters...shields gone...weapons gone...lifesupport gone...the ship was a writeoff...might as well use it for some good. The other commanders, depending on the condition of their ship...might have been ferrying back and forth from Earth to the battle...a fighting withdrawl as it were...recharging phaser banks...energising shields...restocking torpedos only to return to battle. I don't think Ramming Speed was an order given very often in that battle,let alone was any ship that gave the order survived to actually hit the Cube.
Well considering the monsterous difference in what the energy delivered from the deflector dish, and the guesstimates of photon torpedo yields, I can't see how torpedos should have ANY effect on a cube... think about it, the numbers I used are pretty much lowest possible for the deflector shot, and highest for torpedos, and the deflector dish STILL outpowers it by about 250,000 times... even thousands of torpedos at once would do diddly to a cube... As for ramming it, well like I said, those 2 examples were as a last resort, and when the ship was pretty much dead anyways. Now the average guess to the fleet size is about 300 Federation ships (I think of this as a lower limit). Now we know that within the first 10 seconds of the battle starting, the cube was already tearing ass on the entire fleet, and this battle went on for possibly upwards of 3 days (maybe 1 or 2 though)... the Starfleet commanders would know the stakes of letting the cube reaching Earth, and if their ships are pretty much writeoffs anyways, I don't see much problem with having them order their crews to escape pods, and setting a collision course... might as well. And since this is a demonstrated tactic already, it's definately not unreasonable to include it into the hypothetical...
Well, in Best of Both Worlds, we know when Data rapidly changed the frequency of the phasers, the Enterprise was able to damage the Borg cube. Now, we have to consider this a special (and unsual) process, seeing as it was done at the OPS station and with Data's quick hand movements; versus being done at tactical by Worf. Now, later the Borg did adapt to this technique. My thought was the Federation overhauled their weapons systems sometime between Best of Both Worlds and First Contact so their phasers randomly and quickly changed frequencies on their own. Presumable, if you build the phaser array with this thought in mind, it should be able to do at a higher and more random pace than Data could from OPS. Now, you add 50 or so ships in First Contact all doing this, it probably negated the Borg's ability to adapt, and therefore, the Borg had to rely on thier (considerable) shield strength to protect them, not their adaption capabilities. If you add all this firepower over time, this had to easily surpass anything the Enterprise's deflector dish could put out in a 20sec burst.
Possible. Auto-retuning phasers were introduced in the hand variants in BoBW... (Wesley developed a chip for it, heh) chances are ship phasers have gone through a similar overhaul... it's even been theorized that the Defiants phasers are constantly modulating (it WAS designed to fight the Borg, afterall)... The only thing is, phasers are powerful, but look at the scaling of the photon torpedos to the output of the deflector pulse... torpedos are generally viewed as being MUCH more powerful than phasers, so would phases, even on different frequencies, really make that much of a difference? The phaser blast that affected the cube was in a high, narrow band - it caused a 2% systemwide drop in power of the cube just for an instand. They concluded that the cubes distribution nodes would be vulnerable at such frequencies, so set the deflector dish to fire at those frequencies. If the Enterprise assumption were correct, then that means the Borg can alter their tech as part of adaptation, so that it's no longer vulnerable to frequencies they previously were - this would've all come from Picard, of course... Just as a side note, the Enterprise fired the deflector beam on the cube from 40,000 km away - just another example of extreme ranges being used for weapons in Trek
A possibly relevant question: Can the Borg adapt to photon torpedos? I mean, the shows seem to demonstrate that they can, but photon torpedos have an AM-based explosion (random, unpredictable frequencies). How could they adapt to something like that?
I haven't read the OP yet but I will. I think shields in general work in this way. If you set shields to block only one frequency they put more power behind that one frequency or become more opaque to that frequency of weapon. So what was happening is that once the Borg set their shields to the weapon's frequency they were able to stop nearly any amount of eneryg behind it, sort of like a perfectly reflective mirror. But torpedoes would be more random in the frequncies of energy produced I think, so you would have to cover more bands.
Hmm, but DO photon torpedos have variant frequencies? Phasers obviously do, but is it possible for a matter/anti-matter explosion to have different frequencies? Hmm, the deflector dish was set to some high, narrow frequencies which the Enterprise crew believed the cube to be vulnerable to, and the Borg knew this once they had assimilated Picard, so they were ready for it. But the argument I've seen many times from others is, even with adaptation the Borg would eventually be overwhelmed by sheer firepower. But then we have the instance of the deflector dish, they absorbed a HUGE amount of energy without so much as a scratch... and since the deflector dish blast should be CONSIDERABLY more powerful than any weapons Starfleet has (by a factor of hundreds of thousands), then we should take into consideration other effects which would've caused the cube in First Contact to have been damaged... and ramming is the top of my list for alterior tactics the Fed. fleet would've used. There are other possibilities, like there could've been other ships in the fleet which copied the Enterprises deflector dish trick to give the cube a pounding, but that's less likely than the ramming thing...
Bleh... I sat there bleary-eyed for 5 minutes, trying to figure out if I had gotten those calcs right, and missed that, lol... Just for the hell of it, do my calcs add up? With all the converting and whatnot, I'm sure I messed something up there... But anyways, 122 TERATONS outputted from the Enterprises main deflector makes this example even more extreme... the cube would've taken at least 250 MILLION times the power of photon torpedos (assuming 500 MT yield), without even flinching...
But is it the same type of energy? I can take 50 Billion Volts of Electricity at 0.0001 AMPs, but I'll die from 1 volt at 1000 AMPS. *Note: I'm not knowlegable in electricity, so i'm going from General knowledge here...my figures are out of my ass) Maybe the main deflector's energy is somewhat different from the energy of a torpedo/phaser and therefor easier to withstand/deflect if you know how to properly ground yourself, as the Borg did in BOBW by having prior knowledge of the weapon.
Really what I'm getting at with this thread is, I see many people use First Contact as evidence of Borg adaptation skills being nothing special when faced with overwhelming firepower, but the problem is we missed like 99% of the battle, and only saw the very end - we don't know what occured there But we DO know the Enterprise in The Best of Both Worlds put pretty much everything they had into the main deflector dish, fired, and the Borg cube took it... we have a stated output of the Enterprise while just cruising along at impulse speeds, and we know they put warp power into the deflector, so the figures are actually quite conservative... First Contact has too many unknowns to reliably use, but BoBW doesn't have those factors... so shouldn't this be the benchmark for Borg adaptation abilities?
Man, I suck at electricity related things too, heh. Well the thinking when they developed the deflector dish plan was that they needed a way to output a MONSTEROUS amount of energy to blast the Borg cube. Phasers and photon torpedos weren't powerful enough, but they were going to set the deflector to the same frequencies that they used with the phasers, which seemed to cause some momentary damage to the cube. Apparently this was supposed to be a VERY huge explosion, since their early projections showed the Enterprise being blown up along with the cube, until they devised the plan of halting the cube for a short period of time... then from 40,000 km away they fired... Going by memory, the deflector pulse simply splashed against the surface of the cube (unless it was it shields, which is quite likely), and there was no visual indication the cube was even affected, there were no audio ques, and Worf even reported the cube was undamaged... I think THIS is the best benchmark to use when figuring out Borg adaptability... we have facts to plug in, there aren't really any outside factors that should throw this off... the Borg knew what to expect, adapted to it in advance, and managed to apparently block 122 teratons of energy effortlessly...
WAIT WAIT WAIT! Nah, I made an error up above with the whole calcs. I had put a comma, rather than a period, and G_A tried to correct that error, but it was still wrong. The Enterprise would've outputted 122.88 gigatons at the cube
lol, I was still right with the little conversion though. Anywho, that number seems way, way more reasonable than 122 TT.
The Amperage is determined by the voltage/resistance. As the resistance of your body is a constant, the amperage of any current is directly proportional to the voltage. So if one volt can create a 1000 amps current, 50 billion volts will produce a 50 tera-amp current. [/nitpick]
Welp, anyways we still have a Borg cube apparently taking 122 gigatons of energy (at the very least), without flinching. I dunno where my head was when calc'ing all this, but with the new figure, we see that at the max calc of photon torpedos, it'd take about 250 torpedos to equal the deflector dish's output. So this makes the weapons factor of First Contact seem more reasonable, since almost definately thousands of torpedos would've been fired at the cube throughout the battle. Still though, looking at hundreds, if not thousands of small explosives being continuously fired over timevs. 1 monsterous, continuous beam, and given what we know about Borg regeneration abilities, I still think it's a long shot that ONLY weapons did that damage to the cube...
But here we have to face a few other facts. For instance, in nearly every episode featuring the Borg, where the crew has fought them, the first few phaser hits ALWAYS killed them. Later episodes, different series' didn't matter, the first few drones were always taken out. Maybe the Borg adaptation isn't so fantastic as to apply to the entire Collective. Yes, the Collective has a hive mind, but the limitations of such seem to contradict themselves. The Borg Queen, in Voyager, was able to sense the destruction of Cubes and send orders to Borg Fleets, yet it was up to the individual Consciounsness of each Cube to do battle. And as we know, the Borg Collective is only as capable as the number of drones in the Collective. So, while the entire Cube was able to focus their collective brains to adapting to one weapon type, of which they had vast knowledge of it's workings and capabilities, they might of had more difficulty in adapting and repairing damage done from multiple weapons strikes (photon, quantum torpedoes/phasers of various frequencties/possible ramming tactics??) *shrug* It's something to consider anyways, I mean the whole issue of Borg Adaptability is based on it's Collective Mind and the abilities and limitations of such.
As far as things shared amongst the collective, we know information is shared amongst the collective pretty much immediately. In a Borg ship, they have a Vincuulum which purges individual thought, and "brings order to chaos"... this might be like a little slice of the collective, doing its own thing individually, but it's hard to tell since we don't have that info... But anyways, going by the Borgs performance in other instances, they would adapt to torpedos almost instantly... in Q Who, they were initially damaged by phasers, then adapted so phasers were no longer nearly as effective. But when photon torpedos were fired for the first time (and remember, torpedos are more powerful than phasers), they did absolutely no visual damage to the cube... Maybe quantum torpedos would've made a difference, but who knows... Overall, it was either a monsterous barrage of weapons fire, or ramming, or a combo of both which did the surface damage to the cube in First Contact. A concentrated burst of energy that's many times more powerful than weapons couldn't damage a cube which had adapted, so looking at it as a whole, I'm still thinking ramming would've been a very real possibility... unless there was a fleet of thousands combating the cube in First Contact, I can't see how they could dish out that level of firepower to counteract the cubes regenerative abilities fast enough...
Consider thought that the newer torpedoes, however they function, will be made to defeat Borg systems. So they should be able to keep the Borg from totatly adapting, just as the ship board phasers. The big deflector beam only had one shot though and only one frequency to try. Perseonaly I think torpedoes work by directing all of their energy into their shields and then on contact with shields or hull the energy is transfered. That would allow for torpedoes to have variable frequncies. That way because it does take time for Cubes to regenerate, if the barrage was maintaned or more rapid than Cube regeneration, you would end up with a continualy mounting level of hull damage. I don't think it's that the Borg forget how to adapt to Federation weapons, I think it's that the Federation weapons always have new frequencies which make the Borg temporarly vulnerable in each new engagement.
Ok, well the weapons talk aside, what are everyones opinions on the following: 1) do people agree that the First Contact battle is ambiguous at best, since we don't even see like 99% of it? We don't know if it was purely weaponry, or if ramming tactics were involved to damage the cube, so saying it was definately weapons doesn't work 2) How about the figures for Best of Both Worlds? The 122 GT figure is extremely safe, IMO, due to the power rating Data gave while the ship was at impulse, and we know they had to divert some "serious" power from the warp engines into the deflector pulse... it could be that it was a FAR greater amount of energy, but 122GT is an acceptable lower limit, IMO.. 3) How about the whole thing about 12.75 billion gigawatts? If it's such a highly contested thing, let's hear the opposition who says it's a useless statement. Going by Datas statement, we know the Enterprise's warp core was producing 12.75 billion gigajoules of energy per second, per.... something else... does it matter what the something else was? How could this POSSIBLY change the first part of the statement?
I think it's pretty clear that the the running battle damage was commited by weapons. Nothing else is implied. The other ships we saw destroyed would not have even had the chance to think of ramming. The Defiant was in the uniqe position of having enough intergrity and manuverability to commit to such an action before being destroyed. I think the 122 GT figure fits with another figure derived from the bombardment of a cube by planetary debri in one of the Scorpian episodes of Voyager. Data's power rating of the warp core. I think the per has to do with power generated per unit fuel consumed. So Data was probably going to say something like "12.75 billion gigajoules of energy per second, per gram of anti-matter and matter." Sure, that's probably way too little anti-matter and matter to create that much energy, that's beside the point. Actualy, I wouldn't be suprised at a statement like that though, considering all the warp cores are powered by dilithium statements.
