Up, down, top or bottom of Borg ships?

[colmquinn]

I'm sure you've all touched on this somewhere in some form or another but is there an Up, down, top or bottom to a Borg ship?
I know the cubes/ spheres seem to be able to move as quickly in one direction as another - is there a particular advantage in this ability to move like that - other than trying to confuse the enemy targeting and if so why don't other races try out this tactic?
But it seems that when away teams go onto Borg vessels there only appears to be one ground (albeit different levels) - would the Borg not find that different gravity orientations in particular areas provide a maximum use of space or am I just spending too much time looking out the window at work?

[Deepcrush]

just spending too much time looking out the window at work?

8)

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, there seems to be an 'up' while inside the ships, evidenced by the fact that there's artificial gravity. I suppose you could take from that a rough sense of 'up' and 'down'.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

It surely simplifies the design of a cubical ship to have gravity pointing in one direction throughout; this eliminates transition zones and the complications inherent in transition zones. A spherical ship conceivably could have radial gravity, but Borg spheres are small enough that the curvature of decks in such an arrangement would be significant, especially near the center of the ship. Having "up and down" gravity on spheres eliminates this complication as well.

[Monroe]

Yeah maybe a truely massive Borg ship flying around the Unimatrix could pull off different levels of gravity but Borg ships as big as they are are still kinda too small to take advantage of that.

And its a slight advantage not having to turn to face your enemy in space combat instead you can zigzag towards whatever direction they take.

[Tiberius]

I think we've seen a Cube flying with one of the square faces forwards as well as an edge where two faces meet forwards as well.

[Mikey]

True. It would seem that the internal definition of "up" and "down" bear no relation to the external facing or vector of the ship... which would be expected of Borg design philosophy, having little aesthetic sense and bearing in mind that such a connection would be "irrelevant."

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

IIRC, in BOTW, when the Enterprise left the nebula, the Borg ship just sped off, not turning around after approaching the nebula.

[Mikey]

True - more evidence of the external facing not relating to the internal arrangement.

[KuvahMagh]

Really when you think about it this is the way that makes the most sense in terms of a ship designed to operate solely in Outer Space, the only ship Canonically stated to be designed to operate in an atmosphere was the Intrepid (I Don't count shuttles) and even then this was as an Emergency Type procedure. Starfleet ships really are not designed well in this regard.

I'm sure someone would argue the point but I doubt that the Enterprise could go Warp 9 sideways or backwards, of course this also goes back to Engine Placement and how they stop, the Borg would seemingly have found an answer by building ships which were never meant to have an up/down/right/left.

[Captain Seafort]

I'm sure someone would argue the point but I doubt that the Enterprise could go Warp 9 sideways or backwards, of course this also goes back to Engine Placement and how they stop, the Borg would seemingly have found an answer by building ships which were never meant to have an up/down/right/left.

I think there are a few examples of starships reversing at warp - the E-nil in "Balance of Terror" and the E-D in "The Nth Degree" spring to mind. Overall, though, while spaceships theoretically have the ability to accelerate equally in any direction, in practice such an ability would reduce it's maximum acceleration due to the size of engine needed. Look at the Apollo C/SM for example - to achieve the sort of acceleration it needed, it was limited to a single axis.

[Mikey]

Don't forget that in the case of non-cubical ships - Federation, etl. al. - warp field "aerodynamics" also come into play. A ship might be able to travel at warp in a non-forward direction, but nowhere near as efficiently or quickly. We have often seen a starship pivot at sublight to a new heading before going to warp.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The Borg seem to have found a way around the warp field dynamics problem - while SF ships have tended toward more streamlined shapes in the name of warp performance, Borg ships are anything but streamlined, yet faster that the fastest ship in the AQ/BQ (of course, they are much larger as well). Either Borg warp drives don't have the same field shape limitations as standard Warp, or the Borg have such powerful engines that they can overcome these limitations and they don't care about warp efficiency or considered other factors more important in ship geometry.

[Tiberius]

Don't forget that the Borg wouldn't use standard warp drive all that much. Probably only when they are chasing down other vessels. For general faster than light travel they'd probably just use transwarp, and it might not matter so much what shape the vessel is for that. Using transwarp for chasing down vessels would probably be like using a formula 1 race car to chase down a snail. And given that the Borg have power sources that are incredibly powerful, they probably are able to say, " to hell with it, let's just dump in more power instead of completely rebuilding our ships."

[Captain Picard's Hair]

I was aware of Borg transwarp, but we have seen Borg cubes outrun the most advanced Fed ship at the time, the E-D, apparently using some form of conventional warp.