[alt-trek] after BOBW

so, "best of both worlds, part 2" ends with data putting the borg to sleep through a captive locutus, destroying the invading borg cube and saving earth from the borg menace. but what if that plan had failed? what if the borg cube was capable of defeating riker's desperate attempt to ram the enterprise into the cube?

let's assume the enterprise and its crew have been neutralized... either killed outright or captured and assimilated. the borg assault on earth then begins. how long would it take, do you suppose, for the borg to capture earth? a year? two? assuming that the borg had taken earth, what do you suppose the borg's next target would be? vulcan? andoria? what do you suppose the reaction of the klingons, romulans, and cardassians would be?

If Earth falls quickly, it may become a new hub of Borg activity and a natural staging ground for the assimilation of the rest of the Federation. It has vast amounts of resources both in terms of people, and technology, to assimilate. For this scenario, resistance is sporadic, poorly organized and ultimately crushed.

If Earth does not fall quickly, and Federation resources are up to the task of fighting back, Earth may start to look like a Day of the Dead-type scenario. Assimilated areas are kept in quarantine pending 'sterilization.' The treasures of human civilisation are lost or destroyed; humanity's morale and identity as a culture is dealt a terrible blow.

Looking at all available info about assimilation of cultures, I wonder if the Borg's first move would be to open up Transwarp conduits around Earth, to allow a more cubes into the area to facilitate assimlation.

If this happens, then there would be almost no resistance; they would transport drones to every inhabited zone, assimlate as many people as possible, then send those new drones out to assimilate more. I think the last free person on earth might last maybe a week, month tops in that scenerio. Of course, I'm using the Romero movies as a template.

If something like that doesnt happen, like they use only the cube and the Borged Enterprise, then I would assume things would take much longer. SF members are quite good at using their heads, and they might find ways to hide, at least until they could strike a blow. Could take a year, but remember, any losses by a resistance will either be lost (killed or destroyed), or converted to Borg assets.

After Earth falls (although they might not wait, they could start sending drones out to take the rest of the FED), they will begin converting all vessels and orbital habitats to borg designs, and taking over Luna and Mars colonies.

And stuff like transwarp corridors make the kind of targets to send PCs to disrupt...

so let's say earth falls... there's no way that stafleet is going to be able to recapture the planet. do you suppose starfleet would deploy genesis to take out the planet altogether?

Would Starfleet deploy Genesis as a weapon of mass destruction to destroy the Earth to rid it of Borg?

No.

I sometimes wonder whether people ever watched the show... :(

Simply destroying the Earth wouldn't particularly help Starfleet defend the rest of the Federation. There is no point in destroying the Earth given a Starfleet which let the Borg capture Earth would be incapable of stopping a single cube. The Borg wouldn't need to use Earth as a staging point, they'd just keep moving the one cube from planet to planet. Starfleet's top priority would be coming up with a weapon they could use which would destroy Borg cubes.

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Originally Posted by Mazza

Would Starfleet deploy Genesis as a weapon of mass destruction to destroy the Earth to rid it of Borg?

No.

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Actually, a desperate Starfleet admiral who lost his entire family to the Borg would try, and it would be up to the PCs to stop him.

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Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King

Actually, a desperate Starfleet admiral who lost his entire family to the Borg would try, and it would be up to the PCs to stop him.

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That would make for a good episode. :) But I do wonder where the desperate Starfleet admiral would've found a Genesis device. I doubt very much that Starfleet keeps them lying around.

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Originally Posted by Mazza

That would make for a good episode. :) But I do wonder where the desperate Starfleet admiral would've found a Genesis device. I doubt very much that Starfleet keeps them lying around.

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The Federation is full of mad scientists who'd love nothing more than to take some crackpot idea like a terraforming torpedo and try to make it work. In the eighty years since the original data was wiped out (I'm assuming all the research and schematics and crap were only at Regula I for security reasons) someone would try to replicate it.

With or without the protomatter.

I expect Starfleet has been sensible enough to build a structure that wouldn't be completely disorganized after its head was severed. So I guess that, with the assimilation of Earth, the whole Federation would gang up against the new Borg planet (along with the Klingons, and possibly the Romulans or even Cardassians).

Now the question is : how would they fare ? The Federation already lost 40 ships against a single cube. After assimilating Earth, they could probably be unstoppable, especially if they managed to seize the contents of the Starfleet Command computers, and the minds of the highest admirals (depends if Starfleet managed to erase their computers memories, but even though I doubt the entire Starfleet Command crew would be ready to commit suicide to avoid information falling into the hands of the Borg).

I think actually only a very desperate mesure would allow the Federation (and, following that, the whole Alpha and Beta Quadrant) to escape complete assimilation. The thing is that they would have a very hard time to find counter measures to the Borg - most of Starfleet knowledge of them came from unassimilating Picard apparently (and at the time of BOBW, Voyager is probably not even in design phases). So it would be time to dig something really powerful (or desperate) from the recesses of Starfleet archives - like time travel (a reverse First Contact would be fun), weapons from The Arsenal of Freedom, Iconians or T'kon technology, and so on... while, indeed, avoiding any equally desperate admiral trying to cause the Sun to go nova (that would also be successful in countering the Borg) or destroying Earth.

Hm. I suddenly wonder if whales can be assimilated, and if they could call for help ;)

That would make an awesome campaign frame– Search for superweapons to destroy the Borg threat. Perhaps a trip into the Delta Quadrant on a fact-finding mission?

Anyway, as for destroying the Cube–I'm pretty sure smacking a Galaxy-class starship full of antimatter into it would destroy one. There might be bits left over to rebuild, but it would be, uh, slowed down enough. My guess as to why that didn't happen in BOBW was that Starfleet had yet to adapt its shields to avoid the Borg tractor beam, so that even at warp the Borg could deflect major oncoming threats like kamikazi fireships. [Aside: That's probably how the Romulans would deal with the situation–A fleet of warbirds ready to sacrifice themselves for Romulus. A Cube could deflect a few ships, but twenty crashing into it simultaineously would probably do the trick.]

Thus, a manufacturing base on Earth would probably be something the Borg would invest in before just flying off to Proxima colony.

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Originally Posted by C5

Now the question is : how would they fare ? The Federation already lost 40 ships against a single cube. After assimilating Earth, they could probably be unstoppable, especially if they managed to seize the contents of the Starfleet Command computers, and the minds of the highest admirals (depends if Starfleet managed to erase their computers memories, but even though I doubt the entire Starfleet Command crew would be ready to commit suicide to avoid information falling into the hands of the Borg).

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The situation becomes worse. Once the shipyards and Starfleet command are assimilated, the Borg then have access to every single Starfleet vessel command access codes.

Next Starfleet task force gets shut down leaving whatever allies they have to be slaughtered and the crew have little choice but to abandon ship or wait, either way the choice appears to be non existant and limited to 'wait for assimilation'...

I think that something like Genesis may well come into play as stated, the antagonist should be a maddened scientist or admiral with appropriate clearance (think along the lines of the Doomsday Machine), but there are other tools and weapons that may well come into play (say; Guardian of Forever, time... the one weapon the Borg could not adapt to...)

Basically if you want Borg defeating weapons trawl through TOS, kirk used to find them every other week. ;)

But I love the idea of a Borg/Zombie Romero style Trek game...

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Originally Posted by Dan Gurden

I love the idea of a Borg/Zombie Romero style Trek game...

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OK, a few second thought, I have the plot. Get the players to create their characters, make them a rag-tag buch of Starfleet, Scientists, Klingons, whatever you fancy really, and give them a ship, again, a good chance to play with anything you fancy in this alternate universe.

This part does not matter, however, as the pilot for the game is to show the players how desperate the situation is. So for the first game, give them some standard templates of Starfleet Planet Security.

Now run a standard Zombie style game, pick them off one by one. be merciless, have fun and let your players have fun (have a few spare drop in characters, Cadets, Civilians, even off-duty Starfleet, maybe an Admiral?), let them play up the cliches and enjoy getting dead in relative safety until they are no more.

Really let the consequence of their actions play out, if they get cornered its over, if they stay on the run stretch it as long as possible... And if they cut and run, let them escape but leave them with a view of the planet being borged as they run away.

(Maybe any survivors may take over in the main game... IF there are any survivors)...

OK . . . after reading this thread I have two questions

1) Besides the sleep command, what stopped the borg cube from beaming (given that their transporter range was probably multiple times greater then that of the Federation at the time) drones along the way within the Sol system, and when they were stopped in orbit around Earth? If this occured, why have we not heard stories regarding how this was handelled? If this occured, what of the assimulated persons on the moons of Jupiter, on outer outpost, Mars, Luna, and other artificial habital stations? It has been shown that the Borg can transport at warp, and that given sufficient amount of time, even a small contingent of Borg drones can multiple their numbers significantly over time.

2) Regarding the use of the Genesis weapon. The Genesis planet was made out of the Nebula which the Reliant and the Enterprise were conducting combat, and thus the matter which was used to create the new planet was the nebula itself. If this is the case, could the genesis weapon be used on the cube itself? . . . in order to create a class M planetoid that would be moon sized or less?

As for what I think would occur if the Cube survived . . . lets assume that the Enterprise-D does ram the cube, and successfully self-destructs . . . and then lets assume that even though it creates massive damage to the Cube itself, it leaves enough of the cube for a Brigade (say 2000) worth of drones to survive. And then lets assume that the orbital defenses were not able to destroy the debris in time for this Brigade to transport itself off the defenseless chunks of Cube.

Given the significant number, if they transported into a heavily populated area, say Manhatten, the orbital defenses would be able to be used against them once they are planetside. If we are also to assume that assimulation is as quick as is shown in the near future, in First Contact, then we can assume that within a matter of a week they would be able to quadrouple their numbers. Even if this is the case, if the defenders don't adapt to the invaders . . . they would be able to create a beachhead significant enough to be able to transmit for reinforcements.

This would lead to multiple cubes entering orbit, and assimulating the solar system.

However, if they are unable to communicate for reinforcements, if the defenders don't adapt to combatting the borg (i.e. busting out with thompsons (see Picard training film)), it would only require one or two months to assimulate the rest of the populace.

Dan : I once had a similar idea about Borg used for a zombie story, but it was much more complicated, recycling an alleged unused Voyager script I had seen on the Net about the origins of the Borg, which was basically a sort of mix between the Matrix, Cyberpunk, and, in the end, a zombie flick. But I never elaborated the story more than that, and, given the state of my gaming group, I guess I will never have an opportunity to play it (or any other Trek RPG actually).

JALU3 : The Borg seem rather single-minded, and I doubt they would have taken the time to beam a few drones here and there on their way. After all, they were here to assimilate Earth, and it seems to me they rely on strength in numbers. However, they could have slipped a few shuttles away to the Delta Quadrant, in order to back up a few of their assimilated drones (this would explain why the Voyager crew encountered former Starfleet officers who were assimilated at Wolf 359).

As for the Enterprise ramming the Borg Cube, I wonder... maybe they can adapt to that too ? Maybe one ship it at Wolf 359, or detonated nearby, and the Borg came up with a countermeasure ?

Cut, how does one counter act an anti-matter explosion? How strong would the shields need to be to have 0 penetration of the ships shields?

Or maybe the goal of the cube really wasn't to invade earth, and that was more of a seconday mission. Maybe the goal was to create the transwarp conduit which terminates just outside of the Sol System . . . or was it vice versa. For it the conduit existed there the entire time, wouldn't it have made logical sense for them to already have assimulated the Sol system at their earliest convenience while the Federation was unaware of the threat which they would be be?

Or better yet, why must we use the borg drones . . . Starfleets ships computers appear to be very independent, and rarely networked completely. However, they do network . . . imagine a worm virus which would infect all of the Federation computers overtime. . . which at a set preprogrammed date, make the ships sentient agents of the borg, and use the ships abilities to replicate items to replicate pods that would assimulate the all the biological entities that cross infront of it . . . on all ships, stations, homes, etc, at the exact same time?

This provides a large rush of drones in a short time, in multiple locations, on multiple planets, in multiple systems, in multiple sectors, all at once.

You know something struck me as a spin off idea of some of the material you guys are churning out...

What would happen if a Borg cube came into the Federation, then was ALMOST defeated, but it did something quite unexpected.. A parting mission, much like the Borg sphere in First contact, separated, and flew off, before anyone could catch it.. somewhere nearby... but then what would happen if all of the long range communications systems in the Federation started winking out.. Instead of infecting the humans, they infected the computer network! The immediate effect would be the Borg would have all access to almost everything in the Federation, and Everyone in the Federation would be completely cut off. Ships on deep space missions might not even notice at first, and colonies and species as much as 5000 Lightyears away might take months to fully appreciate what was going on - the Federation is huge and it relies on it's communications network to exist!

Rather than being a complete 'Armageddon' scenario, it would be more sinister, and scary.. Suddenly the fleet doesn't know where anyone else is, unless they are in long range sensor range, but they can't communicate. Something keeps infecting the comms systems. No one knows where the Borg are operating from.. a few guesses, but since there's no coordinated effort, and fringe ships have no clue what's going on might fear the worse, that Earth and the Federation have been assimilated, and flee, or be lured into the honey trap of going in to investigate, on at a time! :)

you could have a number of spawned adventures based on the theme.. trying to find allies, anyone who has a clue what's going on.. Maybe the Borg occasionally get the replicators on ships to begin replicating Borg Nanites, which attempt to assimilate people (Imagine if you drank Earl gray with Borg nanites in it!!!) You maybe would get pockets of resistance, such as many byanus, one of the few cultures able to fight off such a sophisticated virus, or an elite pocket cadre of scientists working to try and cure it, trapped at an institute. You'd have world wide problems, such as starvation, if all the replicator or even transport connections are not working (how do you get food about!) which would heavily waylay any ship flying by!

it would be a good way of giving the impression of 'the end of the world' without actually DOING it, (as I read in a game book recently, you can only blow up the world once! :D) - there'd still be horrific challenges, a great deal of terror, the unknown and great danger, but a lot of it would be in the players heads, and from the general issues of complete communications breakdowns!

It's hard to imagine that the whole alpha and beta quadrant species we know wouldn't also be affected. The Klingons - definitely, they share the Federations communications technology. The Romulans probably, the Cardassians, depends on the era, but likely - we all grew up in each others pockets and share comms protocols, and stole each others' technology hehe :)

The Borg aren't just frightening because they are 'Zombies' but because of the technologies they wield! :)

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Originally Posted by JALU3

Cut, how does one counter act an anti-matter explosion? How strong would the shields need to be to have 0 penetration of the ships shields?

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Interphasic shielding.

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Originally Posted by Tobian

You know something struck me as a spin off idea of some of the material you guys are churning out...

What would happen if a Borg cube came into the Federation, then was ALMOST defeated, but it did something quite unexpected.. A parting mission, much like the Borg sphere in First contact, separated, and flew off, before anyone could catch it.. somewhere nearby... but then what would happen if all of the long range communications systems in the Federation started winking out.. Instead of infecting the humans, they infected the computer network! The immediate effect would be the Borg would have all access to almost everything in the Federation, and Everyone in the Federation would be completely cut off. Ships on deep space missions might not even notice at first, and colonies and species as much as 5000 Lightyears away might take months to fully appreciate what was going on - the Federation is huge and it relies on it's communications network to exist!

Rather than being a complete 'Armageddon' scenario, it would be more sinister, and scary.. Suddenly the fleet doesn't know where anyone else is, unless they are in long range sensor range, but they can't communicate. Something keeps infecting the comms systems. No one knows where the Borg are operating from.. a few guesses, but since there's no coordinated effort, and fringe ships have no clue what's going on might fear the worse, that Earth and the Federation have been assimilated, and flee, or be lured into the honey trap of going in to investigate, on at a time! :)

you could have a number of spawned adventures based on the theme.. trying to find allies, anyone who has a clue what's going on.. Maybe the Borg occasionally get the replicators on ships to begin replicating Borg Nanites, which attempt to assimilate people (Imagine if you drank Earl gray with Borg nanites in it!!!) You maybe would get pockets of resistance, such as many byanus, one of the few cultures able to fight off such a sophisticated virus, or an elite pocket cadre of scientists working to try and cure it, trapped at an institute. You'd have world wide problems, such as starvation, if all the replicator or even transport connections are not working (how do you get food about!) which would heavily waylay any ship flying by!

it would be a good way of giving the impression of 'the end of the world' without actually DOING it, (as I read in a game book recently, you can only blow up the world once! :D) - there'd still be horrific challenges, a great deal of terror, the unknown and great danger, but a lot of it would be in the players heads, and from the general issues of complete communications breakdowns!

It's hard to imagine that the whole alpha and beta quadrant species we know wouldn't also be affected. The Klingons - definitely, they share the Federations communications technology. The Romulans probably, the Cardassians, depends on the era, but likely - we all grew up in each others pockets and share comms protocols, and stole each others' technology hehe :)

The Borg aren't just frightening because they are 'Zombies' but because of the technologies they wield! :)

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Tobain, have you thought of entering the Absolutely evil GM club? I hear that some bars give a discount for their pints of beer with membership.

It's like a notch down from mine, but more terrifying. I guess we are so use to the Idea of wide area, world wide, networking that it isn't even a second thought to us. Yet in the Star Trek Universe, even though they widely share data, the computers for the most part appear to be networked and synced up only on occasion, only sharing burst of data at a time, rather then a constant active link. However, that doesn't sound unlike the early, and parts, of the present WWW.

So your ideas would be very possible . . . but what would trip some systems to go off line and act rebellious, and other systems to be ineffective . . . maybe it would be a graduale thing . . . power fluctuations . . . the replicators giving the wrong food items . . . the temperature being slightly off . . . then corrects itself before anyone gets the wiser, and then gives false data during low to medium level diagnostics, hiding itself and learning and sharing data with other infective systems to stealth their way into vital networks such as communications, replication, energy, and other automated systems which the populace have become unknowingly dependent on.

What the turbolifts aren't functioning to the 50th floor? You mean this building has stairs?!?
Computers start giving false information to children. "What did you learn today child.", a mother says to their home schooled girl. "That the borg are our friends and, are here to make our lives better.", and pauses "You really should resist them Mommy."

Man, the thoughts of what a computer bug like that can do. OMG. And maybe parts of it evolve to be more stealthy and cunning, while offshoots are brutal, unpretentious, even boastful . . . and more akin to create computer controlled biological drones.

After several years, parts of it might even consider itself more advance then the Borg which created it . . . looking to remold their makers closer to their image.

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Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King

Interphasic shielding.

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Do Borg have access to that tech? Wasn't that developed after BoBWs?

The TNG series Borg, as I recall had a simple magnetic shield to prevent beaming. The strength of their technology was a massively strong SIF - when you ships go into combat with the Borg.. they fire directly onto the hull... not shields. Largely the Borg don't seem to operate them, like normal species. The SIF seems more to be operating on the local level, massively boosting an area's structural integrity... Remember when the Enterprise caught the Borg with their pants down, when Q took them to go visit... The Enterprise blasted a huge hunk of ship out of there, there were no shields... Then the Borg adapted, they improved, and suddenly... nothing did any damage! :)

in Voyager I recall Seven installed multi-spacial shielding on a probe, which then went on to the Delta Flyer, however that doesn't implicitly mean that's what the Borg use... just what she could implement using Voyager's technology... Don't forget, she knew how Trans-warp conduits were made, she just couldn't make one with the resources Voyager had! :)

haha thanks Jalu3 - it was one of my better ideas haha. It could make for a good campaign as the player characters try and restore the Federation, along with everyone else of course, but they would be totally cut off!

The way I see it... A Ship could, because it's a single computer organism, with respects to it's self, could basically 'reboot' and manually disable their comms array, once they detected such an invasion, but then that's the point! It leaves it totally unable to open comms, just in case that virus is being transmitted! you couldn't even have comms from you to your away party! Scary new stuff!

My vision is that the Borg inhabit a major Comms hub.. It might just be a few hundred of them, BUT the point is such places might be minimally operated, so in any tactical sense the thing should be easy to take over. Then it radically begins spreading the Borg virus (essentially a form of the collective) throughout the high-speed relays in the Federation, entrenching it's self in each one and spreading out. Regions might find themselves free of the virus, but then who can they contact, and they are constantly under data attack from any nearby Borg signal.

The way I see it is that the Federation needs to use high-speed comms hubs, to speed up communication throughout the Federation, it's so huge, to get even delayed communication, you're going to need a hell of a lot of high-gain signal boosters all over the place. The Problem for the players is many fold. From a 'central' hub the Borg could essentially ghost their operations to all of the surrounding hubs. Sure that site's administrator could tell them there's no Borg there, just a damn virus he's having a bad day disabling, but he can't send a signal either! So they would have to fly to any major 'obvious target' and hope they have picked the right one, and destroy the actual, physical Borg. Trailing round the core of the Federation, they would encounter others, friends, people horribly suffering and maybe scavengers out for the kill!

I don't specifically see this as a 'Virus', more the Borg actually sitting in this large facility hacking the network. Any sites which go offline, they continue attacking, till they rejoin the comms collective, using their vast parallel processing function they use for bypassing every other piece of technology: Basically just how the collective operates normally, as a hugelly fast subspace comms relay. What's more, the Borg collective is a heck of a lot more 'real time' than the Federation.. they may begin upgrading the network, and assimilating the machinery at large facilities, using the replicators... Not actual people, because there are no drones to catch them hehe, but that would be a hell of a scary place to visit, let alone be trapped in!

Once the players, and with any luck hundreds of other ships figure out how to stop the Borg 'hacking' them, the Borg start to fight dirty, they 'adapt' Some crews may try and set up private networks between the ships they find, confident that their version of Lt. Data has made a foolproof firewall. So perhaps they have, or maybe the Borg instead of going for the all out 'shut down' upload actual 'viruses' which as you say may take on a life of their own.

Another horrific idea was what would happen if a Borg drone was so completely divested into a large computer (a galaxy class computer core or a large starbase) and then someone pulled the comms plug. The data left behind isn't just data, but is more like the conciousness of the drone, and like all drones, cut off from the collective, begins to remember it's former life. Imagine the horror and fear it would have at being a disembodied mind, with large chunks of it's memories missing, and people trying to kill it, maybe people it knew! :) a *ghost in the machine*.

Man this might make for quite a cool campaign setting!

I think the outage/ server problems show the Borg have already assimilated out inter...........

I mean complaining is irrelevent. Server problems are irrelevent.

Your message board will be assimilated to service us......

Borg? Sound Swedish ;)

Definitely not Swedish! :)

Well, here is a lenghty answer I had been writing when the crash occurred and which I managed to save when the site kept babbling about a database error... ;)
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I very much love this idea of a Federation without any com system. Would be a nice "back to the dark ages" scenario.

For an even scarier idea, I'd see the Borg trying to reprogram every computer they could link to for one purpose : assimilation. Once a virus has infected the computer, every single system on board the starship is reprogramed to perform this task. Replicators start producing nanites (like the Earl Grey mentioned earlier). Some minor systems short circuit - thus causing the need to replicate new ones, which are, too, infused with nanites. And I won't start on what could happen in sickbay or in a holodeck (I even wonder if the transporter could be rigged to add nanites to anyone or anything who uses it)... Of course, the infection will also spread to planets, starbases and especially shipyards.
All of these nanites could stay dormant for a while, allowing the infected ships to spread the virus to any ship they open a comlink with. And then... they become active. Crewmembers start sprouting Borg implants, the ships suddenly stop responding and start to change... And of course, any ship answering the distress call from one of these stricken ships will become infected too.
This would make another nice zombie scenario, as crewmembers have to understand how ships become contaminated, then try to find out how the infection spreads and, finally, who is already infected. Imagine explaining to the captain that he's carrying nanites and it's only a matter of time before he turns into a full Borg drone... or worse, the only member of the crew who would be able to find a way to disable them.

Even if some crews manage to get rid of the infestation (which would imply a level of knowledge of Borg technology similar only to Voyager's), the Borg have taken control of enough communication hubs to keep spreading it... And of course, their computer virus keeps adapting, so any freed ship could become infected again by a mutated version of the virus.

After a while, the infected ships are assimilated enough to be able to complete the assimilation process and turn their former crewmembers to full fledged drones (at which point the assimilation could be considered irreversible).

A nice way to counter this could be to reverse engineer the virus, mask it as a new update (all infected systems are in constant communication for updating against new countermeasures), and spread it. Even though, this would be a very hard time for the Federation (and possibly any other empire they came in contact with), and lots of interesting action for the players, be it trying to help an infected ship, fighting an infection on their own ship, or fleeing through a slowly self assimilating Federation while shutting down any communication...

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Originally Posted by C5

I very much love this idea of a Federation without any com system. Would be a nice "back to the dark ages" scenario.

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"...designed to operate against an enemy who could infiltrate and disrupt even the most basic computer system."

So say . . . that it's spread through computers . . . however, the advance tech is still present . . . imagine what would have to happen if the Federation would have to operate in a world where they cannot be computer dependent . . . or atleast computers which communicate with otehr computers . . . otherwise the borg virus may continue to spread . . . like the problem that BSG had during the early episodes about having their technology work against them . . . what would a standard ship out there do . . . to be able to make it into an uninfected system.

Mentats.

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Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King

Mentats.

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That's great . . . but those people are raised from a very early age to have that type of mental capability. But what of a ship out on the rim, say returning from a medium ranged (1-2 year) exploration mission, which is rimward. And find out from observations of the "silent" federation, scans of some effected ships . . . and warning bouys . . . what do they do as, as far they know, the last uneffective vessel in Starfleet.

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Originally Posted by JALU3

That's great . . . but those people are raised from a very early age to have that type of mental capability.

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Like Vulcans?

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But what of a ship out on the rim, say returning from a medium ranged (1-2 year) exploration mission, which is rimward. And find out from observations of the "silent" federation, scans of some effected ships . . . and warning bouys . . . what do they do as, as far they know, the last uneffective vessel in Starfleet.

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Deintegrate their computer systems, set up firewalls, and chase down the rumour that the Romulans have developed a 'vaccine.'

Has anyone ran a campaign as this as their starting point? If so . . . how has it progressed.

I regret I came to this game so late in its day. Years after its official demise. Still, its nice to see some activity here.

This would be an interesting setting to run a game in, though somewhat grim/fatalistic.

I imagine that it'd be like that TNG ep with Worf scattered across dimensions, they run into hundreds of Enterprise-Ds, when one flips out near the end, and a disheveled Riker comes on screen "The Borg are everywhere!" in his realm.

For a BOBW what if, Earth would fall within days. At the time of the Ep, Anti-Borg defenses and tactics were fairly low, the fleet scattered and the home guard fleet destroyed at Wolf 359. By the time the Borg beamed down to the surface, they'd be immune to pretty much any defenses that could be raised, as all defenses would be pretty much equal or lesser versions of the Starfleet stuff they'd just become immune to.

Assimilation, even with 1 cube, would be pretty quick, as with Starfleet knowledge, the borg drones would know the most efficient beam down areas and just go around poking people with nano tubes.

Even if a DS9 sized anti-dominion fleet with hundreds of ships showed up, given the time-frame of their technology, they'd be unable to dislodge the Borg from Earth. I'd imagine once the Borg gained a foot hold, it'd just be a matter of 'ringing home the Delta Quadrant and having a few more cubes and such transwarp in'

Everyone would be in a mad scatter, theoretically Starfleet would regroup at other worlds, Vulcan, Alpha Centauri, etc.

In this setting, I see the potential for alot of quick alliances, ala DS9 Dominion War, but sooner. Borg don't make non-aggression pacts, so the Rommies and Cardies would be in just as much danger as everyone else. Orion pirates, Breen, Gorn, whatever, they'd all be in trouble too.

If we look at the theoretical 'borg space' maps of delta quadrant, their space seems to be bigger than the alpha quadrant species combined area, so everyne would be in trouble until the Borg decided to slow down for whatever reason.

Since we'd be Pre-DS9, and Sisko would likely be dead already (he escaped during Wolf 359, but without a homebase to fall back on, all survivors would likely have gotten assimilated too), so no Prophets, no Wormhole, no Dominion. The Dominion might have been strong enough to resist the Borg, having a larger empire.

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Originally Posted by Voran

If we look at the theoretical 'borg space' maps of delta quadrant, their space seems to be bigger than the alpha quadrant species combined area, so everyne would be in trouble until the Borg decided to slow down for whatever reason.

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Yeah, but the Borg don't 'hold territory' like other people. They're ecologically very different than humanoid life; what other cultures describe as 'Borg space' is just an area where the likelihood of encountering a cube and getting assimilated is very high, assuming you meet their standards. Potentially, there could be thousands of unassimilated species within Borg space, only brought into the collective when they find advanced technology or when they need a lot more drones.

That's a good point. As such, I imagine there would be quite a few Alpha Quadrant species that would otherwise be left more or less unmolested, as they have neither technological or biological advances to provide the Borg.

So unless they decided to piss the borg off by attacking, I imagine they'd be left alone...until the Borg needed their planet's resources, or drones, as you've mentioned.

The lone survivors of the Alpha Quadrant, the Pakleds.

Nonbiological creatures might be left alone. I can't imagine Borg trying to assimilate Tholians, biologically they're too different, and their tech is too ponderous and deliberate for the Borg approach.

How would the Organians play into this? Would they stand a chance being an energy evolved species?

As stated before, a long time ago in the thread, it could be possible that this borg cube wasn't designed to succeed, but rather to establish the transwarp tube that would be used in First Contact and in the last episode of Voyager. However, if this is the case, why didn't they use that tube earlier then First Contact? How are tubes exit points created n the first place?

I can imagine some hold outs though of the assimilation, using museum solid slug weapons, much a kin to the Thompson used by Picard on the Holodeck. Make for an interesting turn of events with some more of the ala 2nd amendment groups, being the last best hope for humanity on their home turf.

But then again . . . who knows they might just go with that airborne nano-probe idea . . . haha . . . accidently assimilating all mater of life. Borg-Ducks . . . quack . . . quack quack.
Sorry, excuse my silliness there.
Or that borg communications virus that was bantered around a couple years back.

I imagine, that if the Enterrpise rammed itself . . . lets say that they did get a handful of borg down to say Pluto station or some other remote corner of the system . . . but not earth. Imagine a slow crawl of expansion from there, and the terror that would create. Or would the Genesis weapon come out, for the sake of the rest of the Federation, and Earth be sacrificed at the alter of the good of the rest of the Federation. I bet someone has a couple of those lying around. Section 31 maybe?

Section 31 probably has some sort of horrible flesh-eating device, or specially-trained Muddroids designed to explode when the Borg try to assimilate them.

Oi! Pluto Station is ready to kick the Borg's @ss http://comby.star-fleet.org/test111a.jpg It might not be finished, but it's weapons systems, like the Death Star II, are fully operational :D

I don't think any species would be safe. Voyager episodes clearly show they were trying to assimilate anything and everything, which could offer them something, so as an advanced species with very 'different' technology, the Tholians and possibly Organians would be under a threat, especially the former, because they are not an ascended or pure energy entity.

TBH I suspect the main reason the Federation has not fallen and their interest in us is not that great is that other than creating drones, we are just not THAT tempting a target.. They would have assimilated most of the knowledge of the finest Federation technology during BOBW and FC, from Picards mind and the Enterprise computer core, and the dozens of ships and advanced systems they adapted too/assimilated during those assaults. The Federation is way out on a limb and certainly not the most advanced society we've seen, in a Trek context, they just are in 'our' neck of the woods. The Dominion showed us that, they outclassed them in almost every way, only the brief respite the wormhole aliens gave them, gave them the chance they needed! Several of the Delta Quadrant alien hegemonies/species/confederations etc, were a far more tempting treat!