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I have been thinking about the Borg. Specifically Borg adaption.
Item 1: The Borg are not permanently immune to phasers, despite having the option to shoot at each other with low-power phasers until every possible frequency has been used and been adapted against.
Item 2: The Borg seems to be vulnerable to unexpected weaponry.
Hypotesis 1: Bad writers, the Borg could have been immune to everything forever, but only attacks on-screen matter.
Hypotesis 2: The Borg can adapt to anything - but at the cost of weakening something else.
For the rest of the post, I'm assuming Hypotesis 2 is at least somewhat accurate.
An example would be 'adapting to continuous beam laser weaponry' - Shiny and Reflective and takes heat well - but at the cost of plating becoming harder and easier to shatter by direct kinetic impulse. Or adapting to kinetic impulse by getting more rubberlike and absorbtive - but at the cost of easier getting set on fire by plasma weaponry. Etcetera. This would mean any Borg fleet planning to attack a particular faction or system would pre-adapt to what the defenders would be assumed to use. This fits well with Item 2 - surprises in opposing force weaponry types being very bad for the Borg. Thing is, even if plating is good against phasers in general does not mean it would necessarily be perfect against every possible setting, but as the fight goes on the Borg would optimize shields and armor against the particular models and types of phasers the opposing fleet uses, and the particular frequencies they can and have used.
Hypotesis 2 could easilly be checked simply using combat footage by the AI's in-story. If the hypotesis is correct, the solution is obvious.
Currently you have a ship with x phasers, and y torpedo launchers. And that's it. The other ships of the same type have the same (or mostly the same) loadout. This may be good against everyone else, but it's horrible against the Borg.
What you want is the following: Warship a has a row of phasers, one row of lasers, one row of plasma throwers, one row of railguns, and a few disintegrators thrown in for good measure. The torpedo launchers are there as before, but all volleys mix up things with multiple different types of warheads. Warship b has a slightly different loadout, and lasers built for completely different parts of the spectrum, not to mention continuous beams instead of pulses. Maybe a few kinetic kill vehicles instead of torpedo launchers etc. Explorer c has a third version of weapon loadouts with a couple of weird things thrown in. Thing is, the 'combat damage' may suffer a little, but the ships get utility, and it would be EXTREMELY bad news for the Borg. Because now they face fleets that throws out damage all across the board. What exactly do they adapt against? No matter what they choose, it only protects against a small spectrum of the incoming ordonance, while possibly weakening themselves against the rest.
Mind you, for any military without the option of just creating parts and ammunition on the spot this would just fail utterly because of the problems it would cause with supply lines, but this is not a problem here. Starfleet would probably also fail at using this strategy, because of rules and bureaucracy. They want everything to be neat and orderly.
Item 1: The Borg are not permanently immune to phasers, despite having the option to shoot at each other with low-power phasers until every possible frequency has been used and been adapted against.
Item 2: The Borg seems to be vulnerable to unexpected weaponry.
Hypotesis 1: Bad writers, the Borg could have been immune to everything forever, but only attacks on-screen matter.
Hypotesis 2: The Borg can adapt to anything - but at the cost of weakening something else.
For the rest of the post, I'm assuming Hypotesis 2 is at least somewhat accurate.
An example would be 'adapting to continuous beam laser weaponry' - Shiny and Reflective and takes heat well - but at the cost of plating becoming harder and easier to shatter by direct kinetic impulse. Or adapting to kinetic impulse by getting more rubberlike and absorbtive - but at the cost of easier getting set on fire by plasma weaponry. Etcetera. This would mean any Borg fleet planning to attack a particular faction or system would pre-adapt to what the defenders would be assumed to use. This fits well with Item 2 - surprises in opposing force weaponry types being very bad for the Borg. Thing is, even if plating is good against phasers in general does not mean it would necessarily be perfect against every possible setting, but as the fight goes on the Borg would optimize shields and armor against the particular models and types of phasers the opposing fleet uses, and the particular frequencies they can and have used.
Hypotesis 2 could easilly be checked simply using combat footage by the AI's in-story. If the hypotesis is correct, the solution is obvious.
Currently you have a ship with x phasers, and y torpedo launchers. And that's it. The other ships of the same type have the same (or mostly the same) loadout. This may be good against everyone else, but it's horrible against the Borg.
What you want is the following: Warship a has a row of phasers, one row of lasers, one row of plasma throwers, one row of railguns, and a few disintegrators thrown in for good measure. The torpedo launchers are there as before, but all volleys mix up things with multiple different types of warheads. Warship b has a slightly different loadout, and lasers built for completely different parts of the spectrum, not to mention continuous beams instead of pulses. Maybe a few kinetic kill vehicles instead of torpedo launchers etc. Explorer c has a third version of weapon loadouts with a couple of weird things thrown in. Thing is, the 'combat damage' may suffer a little, but the ships get utility, and it would be EXTREMELY bad news for the Borg. Because now they face fleets that throws out damage all across the board. What exactly do they adapt against? No matter what they choose, it only protects against a small spectrum of the incoming ordonance, while possibly weakening themselves against the rest.
Mind you, for any military without the option of just creating parts and ammunition on the spot this would just fail utterly because of the problems it would cause with supply lines, but this is not a problem here. Starfleet would probably also fail at using this strategy, because of rules and bureaucracy. They want everything to be neat and orderly.
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