Star Wars vs Star Trek

So they are unprepared to the unknown. Yet somehow prepared for the unknowns of Star Trek?

Considering that would be like a Shuttlecraft ramming a Starship in Trek (which wouldn't be seen as much of a threat, shields or not)... yes, I would expect the Falcon to harmlessly *splat* against the oh-so-great armor of an Imperial Star Destroyer...

If you recall, they DID try to raise shields - their shields were inoperable because of the anomaly. Truth be told, if the ship (and it's a Soyuz class variant, not a Miranda, btw - the difference is the big axial weapons on it instead of the torpedo pod) had impacted anything BUT the Warp Nacelle, the Enterprise would've been pretty much unharmed.

Hence why I bring this situation up - either the CO did not KNOW that he could not raise the shields in time, and thus made a tactical mistake (a very simple one at that), or the shields WERE up and the Falcon landed anyway, or the shields were never raised (in which case the crew disobeyed a direct order)

 

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Actually, no. The Sphere was successful in assimilating Earth - this is proven by the change in Earth while the Ent-E was in the temporal vortex (case in point - Data mentions there are 6 billion life forms on the planet, all Borg, at which point Picard says go into the past to assimilate the future). Now, we saw how quickly bullets took down the drones in the holodeck - so, obviously, anything more powerful than a .45 ACP round (what the Tommygun uses, and it isn't exactly a powerful round mind you, with very limited armor penetrating ability) would stop the Borg - case in point, they "cannot survive without their organic components" as Picard and Data said, so even a 9mm round could easily stop a drone IF they were unable to adapt as a 9mm round can easily take out the heart or brain.

So, either the hundreds of millions of people on Earth were incompetent (remember, they said only 600 million were dead... wheres the other 6 billion people, even going just by todays Earth standard of 6.7 billion people), and assuming even just 1/4 of them are combat capable adults, that leaves 2 billion people able to fight... you're telling me none of them had so much as a 9mm pistol?

Tell me, you ever been to Texas? Now, be honest - do you REALLY think some place like that would be incapable of resistance, even without a formal military?

 

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on the first note kit, the most likely explanation is that he did do a tactical mistake. but, no, the ship would have not just squashed against its armor, ESPECIALLY that it was heading towards the bridge, and we saw that the bridge is the most vulnerable part of the ship in Return of the Jedi when that A-wing (a far smaller ship by the way) rammed the bridge and KABOOM! now, what would you think would have happen if the Falcon did that?

 

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yes, but we do not know if the borg from the sphere itself did the attack and assimilation. after all, assimilating that much people and that much of the planet would take time. plenty of time for reinforcements to arrive. also, what they saw was an alternate reality, as they stopped the assimilation in the first place.

how do you prove the planet they saw was any close to 2067? after all, assimilating a planet like that would take time. screw the people, the planet was a giant Borg hive. that would take a lot more time to build. also, it is obvious that if the alternate earth was assimilated, the borg succeeded in stopping the Phoenix. so, Earth probably never recovered from WW3, and never invented better weapons. and you can have as much guns as you like, the Borg probably toke on more defended planets. now, at that time when earth was in chaos, and for a long time after that, you really think the humans would have put up any significant resistance? remember that the borg were building a communication device???? they wanted, REINFORCEMENTS! pretty sure they could have build a communicator, in more time sure, to call for more borg.

no, never been to Texas, but i know what you mean. but still, rednecks are defending the ENTIRE planet now?

 

If you recall, the entire purpose of modifying the Ent-E's deflector was to call in reinforcements from the DELTA quadrant. Now, it's give or take if the sphere could have done that alone, especially given humanity's technology at the time. What I am certain of, though, is that if they were unable to resist simple bullets, the Borg on that sphere wouldn't have lasted more than a few days on Earth - after all, if you were part of some backwater little band of people that had survived WWIII, and you saw a Borg Drone wandering around, how long would it take you to "greet" it with a hail of bullets? I mean, the Borg aren't exactly known for being subtle.

 

*shrugs* the excuse I've always heard from pro-wars debaters is that the A-Wing is a high speed military vehicle and it's only because of it's speed that it was able to penetrate the bridge armor on the ISD. I would think a mere civilian (albeit heavily modified) freighter wouldn't pose a similar threat... but then again, I'd also think that their point-defense crews would be smart enough to simply acquire and destroy either vehicle before such a ramming could occur :shrug:

 

exactly.

 

dude, do you know ANYTHING about kinetic energy?the A wing can go to 5,100 G's, or 49,980 meters per second! that's top speed. a freaking 9 meters ship going that fast...NOT able to penetrate armor?REALLY? all that kinetic energy, combined with fuel. just think dam it. also, both the Falcon and the A wing are made from the same materials, durasteel. also, the Falcon is just as fast.

 

In defense of many sci-fi, and NOT taking a side in this portion of the debate.... If you have shields, you may not develop proper point defense systems. As the shields provide a better defense than any point defense system could. The call to 'intensify the forward batteries' may have been a response to that in that the 80 + forward facing weapons might be able to provide enough of a wall of fire to prevent the fighter from getting through.

 

he ordered more firepower because the shield was down.
"captain, we just lost our bridge deflector dome!"

 

Yes, but don't forget an important part of kinetic energy and impact forces - a high powered rifle may put a .50 cal round downrange at incredible speed, but that round is NEVER going to penetrate the armor of, say, an M1A2... likewise, an F/A-18 will never be able to ram it's way through, say, an aircraft carrier's hull... much less in a way as to cause enough damage to mission-kill it!

 

An F/A-18 at top speed impacting the hull of a carrier, would most certainly penetrate it. And there are low calibur high KE devices (not currently weaponizable) that could easily rip through the armor of a tank. Actually there are high calibur KE devices called 'Anti-tank Rifles' Which can certainly penetrate an M1A2. And yes some are still in use, we gave up because of the devastation of TOW and Dragonsbreath weapon systems.

 

An F/A-18 at full-afterburner has impacted a carrier before (the CVN-65 USS Enterprise no less) and the result was a very messy splatter of flaming jet fuel and plane parts and some minor damage to the flight deck. Was the Big-E's firefighting crew's first "trial by fire" so to speak.

And yes, we have high-calibur KE devices called Anti-Tank Rifles... none of which are capable of directly penetrating the armor of an M1A2 or Challenger 2 tank... they may penetrate the first layer or two, but the ballistics lining/spall liner will stop them. Not even the .50 BMG is capable of penetrating into an Abrahms... and it has over 13,000 ft pounds at the muzzle... now, there IS a round it can fire to do just this (though with limited success against heavily armored vehicles) - it is called the M903 SLAP - ( or Saboted Light Armor Penetrator) round... essentially, it's a metal dart with a discarding casing around it, allowing for a MUCH higher impact force on a very small area. However, even this would be hard-pressed to KILL a tank. It'd put a hole into it, yes... kill some crew sure. But take it out of commission completely? Only if it hits/detonates ammo or fuel (or perhaps goes through the engine?)

 

ok, guys enough of that.
the fact here is that modern day airplanes are made of different material than aircraft carriers. reason for this is for them to be lightweight, so they can fly. now, a carrier is indeed heavily armored, its made to withstand hits from missiles, that can carry much more power than some ramming aircraft. the Nimitz class aircraft carrier has a 64 mm armor of kevlar over vital spaces, repeat VITAL SPACES. a aircraft has no chance in taking out any significant part, BUT, were were talking about SW, remember? the A wing didn't hit an armored part of the ship. either it can or can't penetrate it doesn't really matter, although i think it can (doe it had to be at full speed, and the fuel would play some role in doing damage, otherwise it would just punch a hole in the hull). it hit the bridge in its most vulnerable spot: the observation windows. not made of glass if that's what you think, but of something called Transparisteel, some kind of hard transparent material, much weaker than durasteel.

 

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That was... random...

 

...Duh?

Adaption isn't just modulating your shields a bit via magic voodoo. Adaption can be as easy as just slapping heavier armor onto the drone. That's not to mention that Picard went through a whole (more actually) drum from a Tommy Gun to take down just two drones.

Even when it was on full automatic, the second drone was actually slowly making progress towards him.

Sure they could. The planet was likely still in chaos at that point, with major infrastructures down as well as formal governments gone (given that the US had its own factions...). And we know that the Borg build their ships out of existing ships, so all the drones really had to do was expand upon their existing sphere to transform it into a cube.

There ya have it folks - the Borg can, in fact, adapt to projectile weapons, should they view them as a threat![/QUOTE]

Time travel was plan B. Keep in mind that in 2366, when the Borg conducted their first invasion, they single handily bitch slapped the Flagship of the Federation, 39 starships at Wolf 359, and laughed off the Mars and Earth Defense Grid.

In what I think is 2372 or 2373, they attacked again, sending only a single cube because the former one was only lost through the Enterprise D exploiting a programming flaw given to them by Picard.

First off, it does take more than one drone going down to adapt to a new energy weapon, so that doesn't really tell us all that much. Second, ignoring the shield bit aside, Picard went through over an entire drum from a fully automatic weapon to take down *two* drones at near point blank range. A real war involving the Borg would result in most assault units running out of bullets before the Borg ran out of drones.

And that's assuming they just don't start using particle shields. Even Worf was able to rig something up with nothing to work with but old western technology and a comm badge. I would think the Borg could come up with something a bit better.

1) Of course they were going to invade. That was the whole point. The Enterprise E arriving was not part of their plan. They changed it when they saw them coming.

2) Stopping First Contact wasn't really all that important in terms of controlling Earth, it was more like to stop the Vulcans or any other from interfering with their efforts while they did so.

3) The Enterprise E would have made the need for conventional invasion irrelevant. The Borg don't invade by beaming down in mass to assimilate people; abduct them from orbit and then consume their cities.

Not entirely true. First off because the Borg being there at all makes it 'too late'. Second, it's likely many smaller countries not targeted by nuclear warheads still existed, not to mentioned armed factions such as the Eastern Coalition.

The fact of the matter is, that wouldn't win the war though. The Borg aren't going to fight a conventional war. That's stupid. They're not going to just start lumbering through a city with people shooting at them. They're going to beam into their bedrooms and camps at night and start assimilating them.

Or just shell them from orbit and during the chaos, beam down and assimilate them. It doesn't matter if they're organized or not. Unless they have a missile that can properly target a Borg sphere from space and not get shot down by said sphere...they're right fucked proper.


The fact of the matter is the Borg win due to several basic advantages:

Superior industrial capabilities

Though obviously smaller, the Borg have shown to quickly add to ships they've abducted, as seen in Regeneration and are shown to be able to quickly repair most damage

Superior Mobility

The Borg have transporters that can take them to any part of the world on their sphere within minutes of wanting to be there. Compare that to the hours or days it would take for any modern power today to do the same thing.

Superior Defense

The Borg's home base is located in orbit, has point blank defense against all missiles, is faster than any missile ever created at the time, and is probably more than capable of ignoring said assault via their shields. Even ground bases, possibly where the Phoenix would be, would be immune assets. The Borg shielding technology would easily prevent any sort of attempt of shelling it. Even nuclear weapons may not be enough to destroy the base once the Borg are dug in.

Orbital Firepower

The Borg sphere can effectively shell most modern military bases and camps without any problem, with no fear of retribution. And anything they can't touch normally can be sabotaged by beaming drones in to critical locations to shut down power and begin assimilation.

Superior Weapons and Defense

Even in a modern day era, someone capable of absorbing about half a drum of a Tommy Gun before going down is going to be a dangerous, dangerous thing. The Borg would thus only be really vulnerable to enemies who either score head shots or pour an absurd amount of bullets into them before going down.

In a post apocalyptic war, ammo is going to be short and weapons probably not in the best of condition. So wasting ammunition on drones just take a handful down is not going to be the best of circumstances. That's not even mentioning the Borg adding any sort of shielding to them.

Nor does it take into consideration that the Borg can simply fire disruptors to either kill or stun the victim. Not that it would matter too much since the enemies could be beamed up into the sphere.

Modern Earth would not have stood well against a single Borg cube today. A crippled, somewhat more advanced modern Earth would have been easy pickings.

 

Sorta occurs to me that ST side 'debating' with SW side is often pointless because they just don't GET IT although I do applaud their efforts of trying. But it's sorta like how UFOs are reported as being capable of drastic maneuvers that would kill any occupants with the amount of G-forces they'd have to endure and for the most part, most people just don't GET IT.

Its pretty funny too because the ability to travel through time has often been presented as a means to alter reality and there's hardly any way you could stop it unless you prevented the alteration from occurring. Some fool argued that according to this theory or that one, you can't go back and change the past because it would not affect the original timeline LOLOL and I'm like wow - it's as if they're incapable of accepting the truth.

Either that or as I said, they just don't GET IT