Firefights with Borg Drones

[MetalHead]

The discussion about Borg vessel shielding, and coupled with watching 'Survival Instinct' got me thinking.

In the Episode, Seven of Nine (still a drone) crash lands a small scout ship and she and 3 other drones are severed from the collective. At one point, the other three realize how the Borg have wronged them and attempt to escape. Seven apparently constructs a beam weapon on her right arm (watch carefully, there's an extra peice on her lower right forearm) and stuns the escaping drones.

So, here's a crazy question!

In the name of combat efficency, why do the Borg just advance like mindless zombies? Sure, they ignore you until they consider you a threat. If so, why bother taking casualties until they adapt? Why not just stun the assailants and assimilate them? They waste drones on mindlessly staggering forward, when they've demonstrated the ability to be swift and silent (Star Trek: First Contact).

So why DO they just let themselves get hit with weapons fire anyway? Surely since they have shields, they can use them on some kind of 'general purpose' mode? I mean it like this: shields can be set to certian frequencies to stop certian things, as they borg do to adapt (presumeably). So why not just 'raise shields' at the first sign of trouble?

So why would Borg drones not act alot more tactically?

The only plausible explanation I can think of is this - the Borg understand psychological warfare. Quite frankly, the mindless relentless march WOULD be unnerving...hell, when I first saw First Contact I found the Borg terrifying!

Quote: Seven of Nine: 'I am Borg, I illicit apprehension'

ANYWAY. Why do the Borg not
A- Have their drones use particle weapons to stun their victims
B - Use their shields to stop weapons fire from killing any drones before they adapt?

One thing I just thought of actually - the Borg might possibly always have their shields up, they are just so low powered that they only work when they've adapted to whatever phaser weapon is firing on them. The reason I say they might always be up is in scenes from Voyager, we see them going through forcefields within cubes and so on where their shields flash.

[Teaos]

Maybe the collective mind can't handle so many advanced orders at once. It can only say "Assimilate" so the drones stagger foward. For more advanced tactics they would need to let the drones have a bit of independant thought and I doubt the collective would allow that.

[MetalHead]

Maybe the collective mind can't handle so many advanced orders at once. It can only say "Assimilate" so the drones stagger foward. For more advanced tactics they would need to let the drones have a bit of independant thought and I doubt the collective would allow that.

Quite frankly, I doubt it, though I see your line of thinking and it makes sense.

In the episode 'survival instinct', the drones state that the collective is millions of voices. I would imagine all you have to do is listen for the right ones in a firefight, which I believe drones can do (single out a voice or voices) as in Unimatrix Zero, the Queen asks a drone 'why can't I hear you?'

also in Survival Instinct, one of the drones ( the female ) designates herself as a 'processor'

The emergency procedures in Survival Instinct also seemed to show that the Borg are more than cabable of forming micro collectives for short periods of time before being assimilated back into the collective (if they are so far gone that they require re-assimilation, presumeably as Seven of Nine demonstrates in several episodes, the link to the collective is easily re-established)

[Sionnach Glic]

I consider the borg race as one big computer.
You can have dozens of programs all running fine, provided you don't do too much with them. Start getting all these different programs doing different things at once and your computer isn't going to be too healthy!

Its possible that the borg method for controling all drones at once produces a large amount of infromation demand with not enough computing power to supply detailed orders.
This explains most problems. Why they slowly lurch towards opponents. Why they take so long to decide what to do. Why their ships never fire more than one weapon at a time. Why there was such a large gap between the first attack on the Federation and the second. Etc, etc.

[Teaos]

Thats what I was trying to get at. It can only handle simple commands like attack. They have the numbers to not care about a few lost drones.

[MetalHead]

Again, read what I said about 'micro collectives'

And what do you mean never use more than one weapon at once?

When a Cube was sacrificed in order to prevent Voyager's destruction from 8472, the cube rotated and fired a barage of what lookd like torpedoes

in Q-Who, the Borg held the E-D With a high energy tractor beam and then started using a cutting beam simeltaneously...and that was their first appearance?

[Sionnach Glic]

Again, read what I said about 'micro collectives'

The fact that 'micro collectives' are effective would lend credence to my theory. With less borg to input data from there would be less mental clutter.

When a Cube was sacrificed in order to prevent Voyager's destruction from 8472, the cube rotated and fired a barage of what lookd like torpedoes

Yes, one weapon system, possibly fired from a single launcher. Although I haven't seen that episode in a while, so I may be wrong there.

in Q-Who, the Borg held the E-D With a high energy tractor beam and then started using a cutting beam simeltaneously...and that was their first appearance?

I wouldn't call a tractor beam a weapon system. You could just as easily point out that they were using a weapon and life support at the same time. Also, tractor beams would not need to be aimed once you have your target standing still, you could easily trap your opponents and then start cutting them up.

Also the large majority of borg battles feature the borg ship simply firing one weapon at a time at enemy ships.
This could also be why Riker ordred the Enterprise to split up during the attack, with two targets to track the cube may not have been able to keep up an effective battle.

[MetalHead]

Two targets mean an uneffective battle?

Please explain -

Wolf 359
Sector 001

And the tractor beam destabalized/drained their shields I believe. Could be wrong though. Also, I believe that during Wolf 359 and excelsior class gets *owned* by what looks like a tractor beam, which if im correct, can have its polarity reversed to act like a giant punch?

In that 8472 episode (no idea what the episode is) the Cube rotats on its axis and fires a total of 4 torps i think, from two seperate launchers.

And really, lets say that whoever was right about all they can do is plant the root command 'attack'. And the drones lumber forward. So why not have them lumber forward firing their weaponry? Set weapons to stun, kill, vaporize, or warm up your pizza and on you go

[Sionnach Glic]

Two targets mean an uneffective battle?

Sorry, I meant to say they may be less efective when fighting numerous targets.

And the tractor beam destabalized/drained their shields I believe.

Yes, but like I said, once you hit your enemy with a tractor beam they are stuck there. You could leave it running and use something else.

In that 8472 episode (no idea what the episode is) the Cube rotats on its axis and fires a total of 4 torps i think, from two seperate launchers.

*Shrug* Perhaps the losses sustained during the war was large enough for more processing power to be devoted to each drone? Or perhaps the collective specifically devoted more processing power to the ones guarding Voyager, as they couldn't aford for it to be destroyed?
And still, wiht the amount of weapons on a cube, you'd expect it to fire all guns in most situations.

And really, lets say that whoever was right about all they can do is plant the root command 'attack'. And the drones lumber forward. So why not have them lumber forward firing their weaponry? Set weapons to stun, kill, vaporize, or warm up your pizza and on you go

My theory deals with this easily. Due to the fact there is only X amount of proccesing power per drone, there may not be enough for them to aim and fire a weapon.
To be honest I can't think of another in-universe explaination other than 'they're all idiots'.

[MetalHead]

'They're all idiots'

-hahahaha made me laugh

Well, most of it makes sense, the only thing I cant really see eye-to-eye with is aiming a weapon.

Numerous times we've seen advancing drones raise their modified arm at the person they are attacking/confronting/etc. Can't be that hard, especially not when they can simply *grow* an aiming device? oh well. whatever, it sure makes for better entertainment on the screen

[Teaos]

I doubt they would go for miini collectives. It would mean letting a form of indendence for a group which they wouldn't like.

[MetalHead]

I doubt they would go for miini collectives. It would mean letting a form of indendence for a group which they wouldn't like.

I was thinking of more of a squad-based idea

here's example

A group of five drones is beamed into a firefight. One drone processes the orders and passes them onto the others, who analyse and react accordingly. All of them are within the direct control of the collective, but in the interest of saving processing power, they let one drone (say, an advanced tactical drone) do the commanding for the duration of the threat.

[Teaos]

Could work. But honestly they seem to have no shortage of drones are their tactics do seem to work.

[Captain Seafort]

Could work. But honestly they seem to have no shortage of drones are their tactics do seem to work.

Only because of the tactical ineptitude of pretty much everyone else in Trek. The tactic of ambling slowly towards the enemy, unarmed unless you count the assimilation tubes, makes the British Army's wave tactics on the first day of the Somme look brilliant. One sustained-fire GPMG team could hold them off easilly.

[MetalHead]

LOL.

You're right about that. The only good tacticians were the Think Tank crew in the Voyager episode, but thats questionable given the outcome of the episode.