Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF issue?

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McAvoy
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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Jim wrote:
McAvoy wrote:Oh you mean the wide variety of camo the military uses. You mean the military who may not even be in the field that still carries a knife because he works on tanks, planes, helicopters, and jets? You mean the military who are supply who needs a knife to cut through boxes?

You mean knives are useless because Starfleet doesn't wear camo and office military wears camo.

Yeah. Makes perfect sense.

Oh and BTW, I carried a knife or two on me when I was in the military. Funny isn't it?
No, it's not funny or odd for you to have done it because in today's reality a knife might come in handy from time to time in the military. In the Trek time it is about as useful as a rock. How many boxes did you see in Trek? Things were always in plastic crates that opened via a hinge and the items were non-wrapped inside. Knife not necessary. In the motorpool knives can be used to cut hoses, strip wires and cut zip-ties. More things that you never see in Trek. If anything you would think that they would always carry one of those things that looks like a screwdriver with a light at the tip instead of the flathead/phillips head.
On a ship? They have plenty of weird looking tools. I am sure they have some sort of tool that strips wires or whatever.

On the field? Definitely. A phaser does only so much and clearing brush and branches is wasteful with a phaser.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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I know we've been over this before, but bladed weapon training should have become standard for all Starfleet personnel after they figured out the Borg apparently can't adapt to kinetic weapons. Give me a good machete or katana, and Borg are going down quick.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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Tsukiyumi wrote:Give me a good machete or katana, and Borg are going down quick.
One or two might, if you're lucky, but drones are strong and they've got the vampire tubes. For anything other than an 8472 to try and take them on hand-to-hand is suicide or worse.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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They are rather strong, granted. A chokepoint or other good tactical position would be ideal. Still better than trying to club them with your useless phaser.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

Yeah, bladed weapons would be better... but not by too much.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

Post by Tsukiyumi »

We saw Worf chop one of their arms off with a blade in FC; that means their vaunted armor isn't worth a shit against blades either. Good luck tubing me with no arms.

* Granted, Worf is stronger than a human, and more skilled, etc. but I'd bet Sisko or Garak with a blade in that same situation would wreck Borg. Training and skill seem to be the real clincher against them in CQB.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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Tsukiyumi wrote:We saw Worf chop one of their arms off with a blade in FC; that means their vaunted armor isn't worth a shit against blades either. Good luck tubing me with no arms.

* Granted, Worf is stronger than a human, and more skilled, etc. but I'd bet Sisko or Garak with a blade in that same situation would wreck Borg. Training and skill seem to be the real clincher against them in CQB.
There's no question that bladed weapons are effective against Borg - I simply don't think they're enough to overcome their physical superiority over most species, and the advantage of the tubes. To properly take advantage of their susceptibility to KE attacks you really need ranged weapons.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

Post by Tsukiyumi »

Agreed, the Thompson seemed to handle them pretty darn well.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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In the end they'd just adapt the shields to it if it became a problem for them.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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Tsukiyumi wrote:We saw Worf chop one of their arms off with a blade in FC; that means their vaunted armor isn't worth a shit against blades either. Good luck tubing me with no arms.

* Granted, Worf is stronger than a human, and more skilled, etc. but I'd bet Sisko or Garak with a blade in that same situation would wreck Borg. Training and skill seem to be the real clincher against them in CQB.

You do realize that if it was The Sisko he would have bitch slapped the Borg instead.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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GrahamKennedy wrote:In the end they'd just adapt the shields to it if it became a problem for them.
8472 were shredding them hand-to-hand for months. They never adapted.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

Post by Teaos »

8472 were special.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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Teaos wrote:8472 were special.
Because their immune system destroyed nanoprobes (and pretty much anything else) and their ships had enough BF&BI to take on a cube. Not because their punches had any magical shield-penetrating properties.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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Captain Seafort wrote:
GrahamKennedy wrote:In the end they'd just adapt the shields to it if it became a problem for them.
8472 were shredding them hand-to-hand for months. They never adapted.
And we were told that the reason for this was that 8472 has special cells or some damn thing that made any adaption to anything they did impossible. Which makes no damn sense, but that's the explanation anyway.

Not so for non-8472.
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Re: Why wouldn't knives or similar weapons be standard SF is

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GrahamKennedy wrote:And we were told that the reason for this was that 8472 has special cells or some damn thing that made any adaption to anything they did impossible.
No, we were told that they had an extremely powerful immune system that meant they couldn't be assimilated. Their combat effectiveness, both ship-to-ship and hand-to-hand, was down to BF&BI.
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