The Borg cube would find the inherent flaw in the Death Star and exploit it. Borg cubes can’t be destroyed easily just through weapons fire because they’re self-repairing and have adaptive shielding.
I guess even if the Death Star were able to destroy a single Borg Cube, that would be it at most.
I would say so. Also, Borg Cubes are decentralized, which makes them harder to cripple, let alone destroy.
Well, the Death Star can destroy a planet, so I’m thinking they could take out a single cube.
Imagine the energy required to destroy a planet…
But if there’s more than one cube, I’m guessing they’re fucked.
But what happens if Vader were assimilated?
So all the Borg needs is a superstar flyboy hero type in a little one manned spacecraft with a little energetic torpedo to fly an impossible space battle against thousands of TIE fighters, fire his way to the Death Stars surface, fire his torpedo in an exact location and blow up the entire thing on his own.
Deathstar takes first blood very easily, but that would never work twice.
This! Yea the death star could annihilate a cube, but there’s only 1 death star, vs. 20,000 cubes
Can the cubes share information with each other at distance?
If not, I feel like the Death Star surprises the shit out of every cube it encounters.
In VOY they established there are limits to how far they can transmit to the collective, and can be “cut off”. But it’s only under pretty specific circumstances. So if this was in the Alpha Quadrant or the Galactic Core then almost certainly they would be able to transmit the instructions to other Borg. 2nd cube would destroy the Death Star.
Now what’s really interesting is if there’s a Sith Lord aboard like Darth Vader… He could probably shuttle over to the cube and not be harassed, then mind trick the entire collective (as one)? OR what happens when one gets assimilated, Borg Sith sounds pretty fucking dangerous.
Given that Storm Trooper rifles are the most basic-ass laser weapons imaginable and don’t even consistently kill a person wearing physical armour, let alone a shield, this battle is over basically the minute the Borg beam over to the Death Star. The cube will be destroyed by the main D.S. gun, but it takes so long to aim and charge that half the station would already be assimilated - or at very least full of laser-immune Borg.
Additional thought: 70%-ish of a Borg cube needs to be destroyed before its distributed system collapses. If the D.S. main gun is too powerful it may just shoot straight through and leave the Cube with enough intact to keep going at least one more shot.
Simple. The cube gets one shotted. The Borg Collective, which is linked across subspace, will notice a Cube suddenly going dark. They will send two spheres. The first gets one shotted, as the Death Star is simply too powerful to block its main weapon with adaptium shields. The second sphere beams over drones. The Death Star is assimilated. Resistance is futile. The Borg now have assimilated the technology of a planet killer weapon. Not that it matters. The Borg have the technology to wipe out entire star systems in one go. They choose not to, as that would go against the Identify, Adapt, Assimilate mindset. You can’t ascend other species into the Collective if you vaporise them all.
This came up a few months ago, and I wasted most of a day figuring it out. Here’s a compilation of what I said at the time:
The Borg’s main advantage is its ability to counter energy weapons. They do this with the Adaptive Shield Matrix:
All phasers are generated on a particular subspace phase compression pulse frequency, whilst torpedo warheads all possess their own shielding which also possesses its own subspace phase compression pulse frequency. Adaptive Shielding works by remodulating the shields to the identical subspace compression pulse frequency of torpedos and phasers…
So, it seems like the Borg’s sheilds adapt to the subspace pulse frequencies of phasers and torpedos. Phasers are a type particle weapon that Gene Roddenberry made up when he realized lasers didn’t work the way he thought they did, and they don’t really have much basis in the real world like lasers or plasma weapons do. The problem is that 99% of the weapons in Star Wars are plasma weapons, except for the Death Star cannon, which is a laser.
Since the Adaptive Shield Matrix specifically works by adapting to subspace frequencies, there’s really no reason to think that their shields would have a distinct advantage over lasers or plasma bolts the way they do phasers. Star Fleet seems to agree, as they theorized plasma phasers would be effective weapons against the Borg in Best of Both Worlds. Picard was also able to easily kill several Borg with hard-light bullets in First Contact, further demonstrating their inability to counter non-phaser weapons.
It also doesn’t seem like the Borg have an innate ability to adapt to enemy weapons. Aside from only countering phaser weapons, the rotating-frequency strategy was pretty effective throughout TNG and First Contact. It seems more like that Adaptive Shield Matrix was just a piece of technology they assimilated rather than an intrinsic ability to counter attacks.
So, if the Borg shields don’t nullify the Death Star’s weapons like they do Star Trek weapons, and they don’t have a special ability to counter enemy attacks, this just comes down firepower. The superlaser should be able to destroy any Borg cube multiple times, and even without the superlaser, they’re massively outgunned. This is 3000 meter ship against a 75 mile wide battle station. Even if the 10,000 turbolaser, 2,500 laser cannons, 2,500 ion cannons can’t overpower them (and by the way, it sounds like those, “lasers,” are actually plasma weapons according to wookiepedia, because of course Star Wars can’t be consistent), and the 768 tractor beam projectors can’t immobilize the cube, the 7,000 individual tie fighters would probably overwhelm the it. Hell, if the Death Star is faster, they could probably just smash into them and still survive the damage.
I think the Death Star has this by a mile. I hate to admit it, but I don’t see a win condition for the Borg here.
The Borg would want that technology so after that first cube is destroyed they’d be back with enough firepower to overwhelm the shields and get drones on board. Even if they lost a couple of hundred cubes it would likely be worthwhile.
The Borg have several trillions of drones many thousands to millions of vessels. They can go full Russia tactics with capturing the death star if needed.
If this is the first death star though, they’d just beam some drones aboard while it was busy destroying them.
There were small gaps in the shields of the first Death Star; the Empire believed that this was harmless since only small ships could wiggle through the gaps.
If a small ship can get through then a transporter beam is definitely getting through.
Yeah, the Borg hordes would overwhelm the Death Star. The last time this was posed was as a single Borg Cube vs. the Death Star, so I’m assuming that’s what OP was asking.
I don’t really see how a boarding party is going to help them much, though. Stormtroopers aren’t the most competent soldiers, but Borg aren’t going to be better protected from the plasma in their Blasters than the Cube is from the Death Star’s plasma and laser weapons. It’s possible they could assimilate someone with strategic knowledge of the station or find something useful in their computers, but they’re going to get wrecked before they can pull that off. The cube is also too big to get through the Death Star shields, so they can’t use the exhaust port trick to blow it up.
I don’t see how plasma weapons would do anything. The Borg are probably already adapted to be honest. The Romulans were rocking plasma torpedoes in the 23rd century, and there’s no idea of just sending a bunch of TOS era warbirds against the Borg. The only reason the primary weapon would work is the raw power it has being able to simply overload anything in front of it.
If the Borg personal shields aren’t already adapted to storm troopers weapons they’ll just blast through a few Borg, then they adapt their personal shields to compensate for the stormtrooper weapons.
After that it’s open season on turning the whole crew into drones and subverting the computer systems.
The only thing that might be able to stop them if there was a force wielder on the death star, and they realised what was going on before even they’d be overwhelmed by the sheer number of assimilated crew.
I mean, after being shot through by the death stars laser weapon, the borg would launch their time travel device so as to go back and include some ridiculous vulnerability in the death stars plans that they could then take advantage of. Say, like a single vent shaft that ran from the outside of the fort all the way to it’s power source 🤣 I also imagine they would be able to get drones aboard. however, I could also see the hivemind being vulnerable to force manipulation tactics. A larger consciousness might be harder to sway, but the power of Darth Vader can’t be summarily dismissed in this capacity. I think Darth would attempt to control them.
Yeah, I suppose time travel could win them the day, but that feels like cheating. I’m not sure boarding party would do much better. Those personal shields the Borg have are…weird. They stop phaser fire like a ships shields, but they don’t stop physical objects (for example, Mr. Worf’s fists) like a regular shield. But there’s no reason to believe that they would stop plasma bolts from a Blaster, so there’s no reason to think a Borg boarding party would get wrecked by a barrage of (admittedly inaccurate) Stormtrooper fire before they could do much damage. Plus the Cube would probably get destroyed before they could send more than one or two waves of drones over.
