In canon, can Borg drone's shields adapt to bullets?

[The Rock]

I know that in the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy of novels, they resorted to using bullets against Borg drones because they had adapted to every frequency of phaser modulation and their shields could never adapt to bullets. However, they adapted in another way: Borg drones started to fire back with phaser blasts of their own. In the Star Trek Online game Borg drones cannot adapt to bullets. But as we all know, this is all just beta canon.

In main canon, has there ever been any indication that the Borg's shields could adapt to bullets eventually if Starfleet decided to use bullets and not phasers?

 

[Unicron]

I don't see why they wouldn't be able to. Most Trek shielding is assumed to be multipurpose, meaning it can provide some protection against physical weapons or objects as well as energy. Star Wars, in contrast, has particle (physical) and ray (energy) shields, with the latter being more energy intensive and thus used mainly in combat. The Death Star's reactor had such a shield, so you need a warhead like a proton torpedo.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Worf once build a shield that could deflect regular bullets out of a combadge and some 19th century telegraph parts, so I'm thinking that as long as the Borg never assimilate him then projectile weapons will continue to work just fine on them.

 

[publiusr]

Earth bullets they could adapt to , but the holodeck bullets could be given enough power to defeat individual drone fields

 

[at Quark's]

I always assumed those holodeck bullets worked simply because of the element of surprise and because it was a rapid-fire weapon (i.e. no time to adapt for that Borg drone)/

 

[flandry84]

And given the number of races the Borg have presumably assimilated,chances are that someone somewhere has tried projectile weapons on them.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Or it could simply be a matter of reaction time.

While the Borg Collective can process vast amounts of data in parallel by splitting up a problems workload into smaller chunks.

Like modern day parallel processing in computers.

Individually, the drones might not have the speed or processing power to stop bullets as individual drones.

And leaving your shields on is energy intensive and wasteful.

There is a energy cost to run shields, and since Drones aren't connected to a giant reactor.

Drones are run on some form of battery, ergo the recharge / regeneration cycle that Seven and other Drones have to partake every now and then.

You don't see drones leaving their shields on, they only turn it on for brief moments when there is a perceived threat.

And usually the first few energy shots work on the average drone until they figure out how to adapt to it.

If the projectile (Kinetic or Energy) based is too fast for the individual drone or is of a energy frequency they haven't encountered yet and they can't figure out the pattern to which frequency you changed to in real time, there might be a solution to defeating the drones on a individual basis.

 

[trekshark]

They didn't adapt to any kind of melee weapons over the years. First Contact had them having phaser rifles used as clubs against they,then worf using his sword.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

They didn't adapt to any kind of melee weapons over the years. First Contact had them having phaser rifles used as clubs against they,then worf using his sword.

Whatever Energy based Shielding the Borg might've decided to mass produce / use might only be tuned or optimized for countering Energy Weapons and not optimized for Kinetic Energy impacts.

And the Average Drone moves around incredibly clunkily.

They didn't assimilate any martial arts to mass spread and train the muscle memories of their drones.

Unlike Seven of Nine which had individuality and can move flexibility and reasonably fast as a liberated drone.

Remember when she did martial arts in "Tsunkatse"; her speed, reaction time, power, and flexibility was pretty good.

Not enough to counter a beast of a man like 'The Pendari Champion' AKA (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson).

But that's sheer raw power, agility, speed & toughness vs a Borg Enhanced adult human female's body.

There are probably practical limits as to what Seven of Nine can do.

And since the Borg Drones are part of the collective, their clunky movements seem to be hampered by their need to be constantly connected to each other and react more like Zombies then people.

Remember, when Lore influenced a split off Borg Drone Group, they were more individualistic, used tactics, moved around with far more fluidity, and cared for their fellow drones. Drone's weren't sacrificial.

If the Borg Collective TRULY wants to evolve to be competitive against individuals while maintaining a Hive Mind.

They need to work together collectively for a common goal, but share their knowledge and allow individuality, unique individual private thoughts, but maintain loyalty to the collective.

Thus allowing the best of both worlds.

Otherwise, they're just glorified Cybernetic Zombies with no true intelligence.

Their goal to assimilate their way to perfection limits their creativity and are more brute force computational monsters then a truly creative Cybernetic race.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I always assumed that the Borg in ST:FC would have eventually adapted to bullets. There's no evidence they can't, anyway.

 

[mithril]

Given how holodecks work. It seems unlikely that the tommygun Picard used actually fired physical bullets. More likely the holodeck just used tractor Rams and forcefield to simulate being hit by bullets. With the safeties off it would do so with lethal force. The drones would never have encountered that before and thus were killed. Had he tried to do it a 2nd time the drones probably could have blocked them.
And since we know forcefield can be set up to block solid projectiles, I see no reason why the Borg couldn't adapt to bullets too.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

IMO, the blocking of Solid Projectiles or Kinetic Energy isn't the problem.

Most any shield types can do that at levels ranging from: pretty good to amazing levels of Kinetic Energy stoppage.

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The fact that the Enterprise-E was able to shrug off a giant chunk of Wing-Pylon crashing into the Sovereign Class shields is testatment to how strong the Shields are. It only did some shield damage and continued with the battle.

A Valdore Class isn't a small vessel, and part of it's Wing-Pylon is huge/massive in mass.

And it tumbled and bounced off the shields like it was massive space junk.

I think the problem is the detection and reaction time to activating the shields is the issue.

Since Drones aren't living generators, they run on some sort of battery internally, they can't leave their shields on permanently like a StarShip with a Reactor and multiple Years worth of fuel.

So most Drones operate without shields on by default and only activate them when they sense an attack coming.

 

[XCV330]

I don't think that being shot by bullets is a problem for the drones long term, as the nanoprobes have remarkable healing capabilities. Eventually they will get back up, whereas bullets aren't infinite. A similar scenario is in the book (don't know about the movie) World War Z's "Battle of Yonkers" where the US military was overwhelmed and beaten by unarmed zombies that could be harmed but never entirely overwhelmed with ammunition. When the ammo ran out, the living lost. And Borg ARE kind of the zombies of Trek.

In another perspective, living things die from gunshots because of blood loss and tissue damage, generally, or infections and other complications afterwards. Borg have redundant systems that don't have these flaws.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I don't think that being shot by bullets is a problem for the drones long term, as the nanoprobes have remarkable healing capabilities. Eventually they will get back up, whereas bullets aren't infinite. A similar scenario is in the book (don't know about the movie) World War Z's "Battle of Yonkers" where the US military was overwhelmed and beaten by unarmed zombies that could be harmed but never entirely overwhelmed with ammunition. When the ammo ran out, the living lost. And Borg ARE kind of the zombies of Trek.

In another perspective, living things die from gunshots because of blood loss and tissue damage, generally, or infections and other complications afterwards. Borg have redundant systems that don't have these flaws.

That's a problem with any projectile based weapon, supplying the ammunition.

Bullets along with the cartridges it resides in + the Magazine or Clip in the case of current modern current day ammunition.

For the Star Trek Universe, it's Power Packs for storing all the energy for your Small Arms sized Phasers.

Different Energy Weapons have Different size and shaped Power Packs, which seems odd that StarFleet didn't standardize on one design for it's Type 2 / 3 Phasers.

Or made one design that was cross compatible between Type 1/2/3 Phasers.

 

[XCV330]

Different Energy Weapons have Different size and shaped Power Packs, which seems odd that StarFleet didn't standardize on one design for it's Type 2 / 3 Phasers.

Or made one design that was cross compatible between Type 1/2/3 Phasers.

coming from the organization that designs exploding computers, puts rocks in ceilings, creates holodecks where the safety function can be turned off, but goes to the trouble of making a speaker that lights up when it's making sound, I'm not entirely surprised. anyway, maybe type one and two have civilian applications and 3's are more restricted. just throwing ideas around.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

coming from the organization that designs exploding computers, puts rocks in ceilings, creates holodecks where the safety function can be turned off, but goes to the trouble of making a speaker that lights up when it's making sound, I'm not entirely surprised. anyway, maybe type one and two have civilian applications and 3's are more restricted. just throwing ideas around.

The one advantage I can see in not having cross compatibility is that every mm³ of Power Pack holds alot of energy.
If you don't have to waste more volume on structure for the housing of your battery / Power Pack, you can hold more energy for your phaser.

That's similar to the reasoning why modern SmartPhone manufacturers don't like modular Battery Packs anymore, they want everything to be sealed and customized. This way, they can better exploit every mm³.

But that means having multiple types of Power Packs that aren't immediately cross compatible without some converter or wire to transfer charge between Packs.

But it wouldn't be the first time in history that different types of Electronics Equipment or Weapons have proprietary Magazines / Clips or Power Packs / Batteries.

So asking for standardization is incredibly difficult.

 

[XCV330]

I have been trying my hand at scratch-building RC airplanes lately. Learning the arcane mysteries of LiPO battery packs has been.. well I haven't learned them yet.

 

[blssdwlf]

I don't think that being shot by bullets is a problem for the drones long term, as the nanoprobes have remarkable healing capabilities. Eventually they will get back up, whereas bullets aren't infinite. A similar scenario is in the book (don't know about the movie) World War Z's "Battle of Yonkers" where the US military was overwhelmed and beaten by unarmed zombies that could be harmed but never entirely overwhelmed with ammunition. When the ammo ran out, the living lost. And Borg ARE kind of the zombies of Trek.

In another perspective, living things die from gunshots because of blood loss and tissue damage, generally, or infections and other complications afterwards. Borg have redundant systems that don't have these flaws.

Doesn't "First Contact" establish that bullets can kill Borg, well at least the ones not prepared for them? The dialogue later emphasizes that Ensign Lynch was dead from being killed by Picard?

edit: oh and LiPo's. Don't let the cells drop below 3.6v or overcharge above 4.2v. Watch out for puffed batteries. Keep them in a place where it is fire resistant in case they combust. Stay safe and have fun

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Doesn't "First Contact" establish that bullets can kill Borg, well at least the ones not prepared for them? The dialogue later emphasizes that Ensign Lynch was dead from being killed by Picard?

Yup, but most things will kill you if you're not prepared for them.

The same why random phaser shots work in the beginning, until the Borg sound the silent "Red Alert" amongst the Collective in their area and they start figuring out what frequencies to counter for Phaser fire.

Usually, that means taking a few hits for the collective.

 

[Go-Captain]

They don't really need to stop bullets because they can heal from any physical damage short of something hitting that instant vaporization plug they carry. But other than that there is really no reason their shields couldn't stop bullets if it was needed.

Outside of canon though I think the production teams were working under the idea that the Borg are definitely vulnerable to physical attack under normal situations. There is a concept for a phaser "riot gun" attachment for the Type II which was supposed to produce a hyper velocity phaser pulse which kills Borg through kinetic energy.

Alternatively hyper velocity shots working against Borg might actually indicate that it is kinetic energy which determines shield bleed-through, and it is a weakness not particular to Borg but all shields.

https://imgur.com/a/FToTbI4
http://www.phasers.net/noncanon/sttng-riotgn.htm