Energy Dampening vs Borg

[Sionnach Glic]

That assumes a one on one encounter. In any situation where there might be more than one ship in the system at the time then there's always the possibility of it escaping.

[Teaos]

Escaping and sayong what? They still would have no info on how to counter the weapon.

[Sionnach Glic]

They'd have info on what the weapon does, and depending on how good their sensors are they might be able to figure out quite a bit about how it works.

[Sionnach Glic]

They'd have info on what the weapon does, and depending on how good their sensors are they might be able to figure out quite a bit about how it works.

[Captain Seafort]

This all assumes that the EDW is effective at all. Klingon ships were able to resist it with very little adjustment. It's far from unreasonable to suggest that some species' technology isn't affected by it at all.

[Sionnach Glic]

Exactly.

Let's say the Borg try to assimilate a Klingon ship with this weapon. The weapon doesn't work on the Klingon ship and it's able to esacape. It then warns the rest of the KE that the Borg are employing a new type of weapon, and the KE upgrades all its ships to be resistant to it. Other AQ powers such as the Romulans and Federation spot that the Klingons have made the same minor modification to all their ships and start wondering why. They eventualy find out why they're doing so, and proceed to modify all their own ships.
Within a short while the entire AQ is resistant to the weapon.

[Mikey]

Plus - when the Breen deployed it, the Klingons were able to counter it fairly easily. The Klingons have never been portrayed as the leading technological and scientific minds in the quadrant.

[Captain Seafort]

That might have been why they were able to deal with it so easilly - because their technology is a bit behind that of the Feds and Romulans it's simpler and therefore more robust.

[Mikey]

Possible, although the point at which I was getting is that one could expect that the Feds or Romulans would be better able to develop a counter than the Klingons.

Now that I'm thinking of it, the Klingons' solution couldn't have been integral to their particular technology, because it was ported to the Feds and Romulans.

[Captain Seafort]

Actually, the Klingon solution was specific to their ships' design - the Feds and Romulans had to wait until Kira's group managed to get a working model back to them before they were able to develop a solution that worked for them.

[Mikey]

Yes, it had to be adapted, but there was nothing integral to the solution that depended specifically and solely and Klingon tech.

[Captain Seafort]

Yes, it did. The script:

O'BRIEN
-- basically we stumbled onto it
by accident. At Chin'toka, our
entire fleet was disabled when
the Breen engaged their energy-
dampening weapon. Three hundred
and eleven ships -- Federation,
Romulan, and Klingon -- all lost
power.

SISKO
But one didn't -- a Bird of Prey
called the Ki'tang.

Ross and the Romulan perk up at hearing this.
Martok -- having already been briefed on the subject
-- lets them ask the questions.

ROSS
Why, what was different about the
Ki'tang?

O'BRIEN
We're not exactly sure. The only
thing we can figure is that right
before the engagement, her Chief
Engineer adjusted the tritium

intermix to compensate for a
containment problem in the warp
core.

DEEP SPACE NINE: "When it Rains... " - REV. 03/02/99 - TEASER 2.

2 CONTINUED:

MARTOK
I've ordered every ship in the
Klingon fleet to adjust its
reactor the same way.

ROMULAN
Our vessels are of a different
design -- can this technique be
adapted to protect them as well?

SISKO
Unfortunately, no. Your ships
are still vulnerable.
(to Ross)
And so are ours.

O'BRIEN
I've sent what we know about the
Breen weapon to the Romulan
Ministry of Science and to
Starfleet Engineering, but
realistically, it's going to be a
while before they can come up
with a way to protect our ships.

The adjustment that was used to protect Klingon ships was specifically mentioned as being reliant on the fact that Klingon engines were of a different design to those of the Federation and the Romulans.

[Mikey]

But somehow, it was done, no?

[Captain Seafort]

It was done, but the fact that they were unable to use the Klingon method, and had to wait until they had a working model of the EDW to examine, suggests that they used a different solution to the Klingons. Their solution probably involved lots of technobabble to shield them against the weapons, wereas the Klingons' solution simply meant that the weapon didn't affect their systems any more.

[Mikey]

Fair enough; it's been a while, and I had thought that the Fed solution was based in part on the Klingon one.