Borg vs Necrons

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Ok so i got bored on factpile and decided to rock the boat on the side of the borg using a little bit of creative thinking and the reliance and over confidence of the 40k guys on the pile.

Considering the allowable material and the fact they got lazy and expected a easy win i did kinda kick ass so far .

Anyway a debate has also started on SB.COM about this so i suppose we should do our bit here as well...

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=182487

[Mr. Oragahn]

I admit I never paid so much attention to the Necron side of the question, but the more I read, the less impressive they seem to me. I mean, comparing to what you get to read on SBC.
For one the stasis pods of the Necron Lords doesn't seem as good as the sarcophagi the Goa'uld use (which basically repair tissues and revive people who have been blasted by staves or eaten by small insects on and on, and can correct some deficiencies like bad sight) and the repair system for the Necron troops appears incapable of allowing soldiers to retain personalities and memories and some other mental things, and we know that if they didn't matter, they wouldn't even try to maintain anything and would even erase said elements (application of the most massive brainwashing possible). This makes the Cylon resurrection tech quite superior.

Methinks that's also the wrong forum. Anything that involves universes other then ST and SW should be moved.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Some notes:
JANEWAY: They have an extraordinary immune response. Anything that penetrates the cell membrane, chemical, biological, technological, it's all instantly destroyed. That's why the Borg can't assimilate them.
EMH: Resistance in this case is far from futile. Nevertheless, I believe Borg technology holds the key to saving Mister Kim.
JANEWAY: How so?
EMH: I hope to unleash an army of modified Borg nanoprobes into his bloodstream, designed to target and eradicate the infection. As you know, I've been analysing the nanoprobes. They're efficient little assimilators, one can't help but admire the workmanship, but they're no match for the alien cells. So I successfully dissected a nanoprobe and managed to access its re-coding mechanism. I reprogrammed the probe to emit the same electrochemical signatures as the alien cells. That way, the probe can do its work without being detected. Observe. The alien cells are completely oblivious to probe until it's too late. Unfortunately, I've only created a few prototypes. I'll need several days to modify enough nanoprobes to cure Ensign Kim.
I see this was interpreted by Nattuo as indicating the Borg couldn't figure out how to assimilate 8472. However, there's a very real difference in what's going on in this case vs an assimilation. Here, the object is remaining undetected long enough to destroy the cells in question; in an assimilation attempt, the nanoprobe must remain intact long enough to significantly alter the cell.

Unfortunately, there's very little resembling actual relevant evidence being produced with respect to WH40k in the SBC thread, although this is normal. It's generally just hyperbole.

So I'll make a list of what I see the relevant questions we need to address here to address the question of Borg assimilating Necrons.

Step 1: Acquire Necron to assimilate.

This is not necessarily trivial. The Necrons make use of teleportation and phasing, and that means that getting your hands on the Necrons is not always straightforward. Simply beaming one straight into an assimilation chamber is not guaranteed to work. Being subject to a transporter beam could trip the Necrons' "teleport-home" feature.

However, the Borg will have an easy time getting face-to-face contact and attacking via assimilation tubules.

Step 2: Get nanoprobes inside the Necron.

If the Necron is able to be transported to an assimilation chamber, it can be held in place via force-fields/tractors and studied at leisure, so long as the Borg do not actually trip the "teleport-home" feature via gross physical damage. Transporters can actually be used to inject nanoprobes.

Otherwise, we have the question of whether or not assimilation tubules can penetrate the Necron living metal. This would seem very obvious. Necron living metal is "tough" only on the scale of plasteel and adamantium. We're talking about something that can get successfully attacked by weapons that have trouble with a similar or lesser thickness of adamantium - Space Marine armor - and chopped up by that kind of stuff.

Adamantium is five times as tough as steel. Tritanium runs somewhere around 10-100x as resistant as steel to various attacks. Given that Borg assimilation tubules (and nanites) don't have any trouble at all with piercing Federation metals, we have that the Borg can get nanites inside a Necron.

Step 3: Compromising the integrity of the Necron.

First, what is the speed of Necron self-repair as opposed to Borg assimilation? Second, will Necron self-repair fix the Borg alterations as if they are damage? Third, will the Necron "immune system" target and destroy Borg nanites, or will the Borg nanites target and compromise the Necron self-repair mechanisms?

I'm honestly not sure. I was just looking through a Necron Codex. Still not sure. There's something of a lack of concrete evidence on how the Necron maintain their Necron-ness, so there's some wiggle room here.

Still, we should have a concrete reason why the Borg can't assimilate. They are generally able to assimilate 99+% of everything they encounter, whether it is more or less advanced than their own technology. Without a very specific reason why a basic Necron warrior has an artificial "immune system" on the level of Species 8472's, I don't see why they should be immune.

In general, Necrons lack immunity to special weapons in the game not just because of mechanical balance, but also, in-universe, it has proven relatively easy to adapt weapons to have an equivalent effect on Necrons:

Necrons are largely mechanical creatures, and as such it might seem inappropriate that weapons such as sniper rifles, which generally use poison to achieve their effect, and agonisers, which work against an enemy's nervous system, should be effective against them. In practice, anyone using these weapons against Necrons would make adjustments to counter the Necrons' defences, for example, using acid rounds instead of poisoned rounds or altering the charge from an agoniser to affect the Necrons' power systems.

So it seems reasonable to conclude that the Borg can assimilate a Necron warrior. They have a strong self-repair factor, but that doesn't render them immune to the mechanical equivalent of a neurological retrovirus.

Step 4: Keeping your Necron drone.

Here's the problem. While it's true that WH40k fans on SBC are generally engaged in hyperbole instead of debate, we know quite well that drones can influence the Collective's behavior from within, and in some cases break free from the collective.

The Necrons are under a magical curse of sorts binding them to certain dark powers in the WH40kverse, namely, the C'tan. What prevents the C'tan from taking back control of their newly Borgified Necron? What prevents them from taking over the Collective's group-mind, for that matter?

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Step 4: Keeping your Necron drone.

Here's the problem. While it's true that WH40k fans on SBC are generally engaged in hyperbole instead of debate, we know quite well that drones can influence the Collective's behavior from within, and in some cases break free from the collective.

The Necrons are under a magical curse of sorts binding them to certain dark powers in the WH40kverse, namely, the C'tan. What prevents the C'tan from taking back control of their newly Borgified Necron? What prevents them from taking over the Collective's group-mind, for that matter?

From what i have been readying it is only the high level necrons that retain any knowledge of self and the lesser type even become more and more messed up the more times they are repaired.

White rabbit posted this:

Hellforged, by Ben Counter The Undying had no souls to destroy, so Sarpedon had to rely on pure strength to drive the axe through them. Fortunately, strength was something he had never lacked.

But later we have mith posting from the rulebook:

Code: Select all

[b][u]40k rulebook, pg. 178[/u][/b]

Although Necrons can differ according to ran and function, all sophisticated auto-repair systems coursing through their exoskeletons, allowing recovery from all but the most crippling of damage. Should irreparable damage occur, the Necron ‘phases out’. Body and consciousness are teleported to the nearest tomb complex, where they remain in storage until such time repairs can be effected or a new form can be forged. Such seeming inviolability is not without its limitations, and each act of transference exacerbates any weakness in the Necron’s engrams. A Necron that has ‘died’ several hundred times will often be little more than a shambling automaton with no memory of the creature it once was. Such Necrons have no free will. Hard-wired programming drives their instincts and their only goals are those set by Necron Lords.

Page179

The Necron Lords are the driving force behind the awakening. Of as high a rank in death as they were in life, the Necron Lords benefit from more sophisticated artificial bodies and stasis tombs than their vassals, allowing them to sleep through the millennia unplagued by the slow decay that has tkaen a terrible toll from others of their kind. As a result, Necron Lords retain the personality and memory denied to their minions. Even so, not all have survived the great sleep unscathed. Filled with bitter resentfulness of other life, some Necron Lords lead their minions on bloody harvests, murdering millions in an attempt to quench their rage. Others have been driven utterly insane by the weight of aeons. Believing themselves to be the reincarnations of ancient gods, these Necron Lords have their consciousness grafted into ever newer and more grandoise forms as they embark on campaigns of conquest and destruction.

A tomb world restored to full operation will have many hundreds of Necron Lords, each dedicated toa particular role. Some are builders and shapers, responsible for the endless swarms of Tomb Spyders and Scarabs that maintain the tomb complex.

Others are programmed to unearth and awaken buried starships, defend the tomb world from interlopers or scour nearby planets fror mineral resources. If the tomb complex has been damaged, and many Necron Lords lost to stasis failure, the resulting imbalance will shift the behavior of the entire tomb. There are worlds in the Imperium that suffer Necron raids at precisely regular intervals, simply because the function of the ranking Tomb Lord is to gather resources.

So it looks like at the very least the lower caste necrons get more stupid and zombie like the more they are killed and this certainly implies a far from perfect repair system.

[Mith]

Ie, the conscious of the creatures are retained, not their actual spirits. Given that being a conscious being in Trek doesn't stop assimilation, there's no reason why being made of metal would. It's also considerably worse given that most lower Necrons suffer degradation. Even Necron Lords can apparently sufer mental problems, as we've seen that damage to their stasis pods has caused some of them to go insane--even believing that they're gods.

I've yet to get a response as to why the uber scarab nanobots can't counter this problem.

Also, it seems like their living metal was made before they met the C'Tan.

[Mike DiCenso]

Moved to "Other analysis, crossovers, and debates" forum since this is really a Trek/Warhammer scenario, not Trek/Wars.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Ie, the conscious of the creatures are retained, not their actual spirits. Given that being a conscious being in Trek doesn't stop assimilation, there's no reason why being made of metal would. It's also considerably worse given that most lower Necrons suffer degradation. Even Necron Lords can apparently sufer mental problems, as we've seen that damage to their stasis pods has caused some of them to go insane--even believing that they're gods.

I've yet to get a response as to why the uber scarab nanobots can't counter this problem.

Also, it seems like their living metal was made before they met the C'Tan.

Can the warriors phase at will or is it a mechanism based on the amount of damage they take, or do they need a lord to help them.

If they can do it at will considering the borgs familiarity with transporters, phasing and other forms of travel that include extradimensional realities could they block the ability to phase.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The warriors don't seem to be the ones who/that organize anything tactical or strategical. Yet their armies have been seen to phase in and out as a whole, so it seems that there's a general, some kind of supervising mind that sort of presses a button and has the Necrons zap in and out.
In light of this, it seems hard to imagine how the Borg could capture and Necron. Surely they'd have to finda way to block the telephase thing first.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

The warriors don't seem to be the ones who/that organize anything tactical or strategical. Yet their armies have been seen to phase in and out as a whole, so it seems that there's a general, some kind of supervising mind that sort of presses a button and has the Necrons zap in and out.
In light of this, it seems hard to imagine how the Borg could capture and Necron. Surely they'd have to finda way to block the telephase thing first.

Unless they have a (no limit fallacy) unlimited range on phasing, grabbing a few warriors and jumping to fluidic space or one of the transmaterial enegy planes would be enough, either way after a few phase escapes the borg will be able to adapt a dampening field of some sort to prevent it.

It also seems that we have at least two examples of the necrons auto-phasing ability being disrupted and in one case destroyed.

When a Lord or Command presence is not felt this is observed by the Necron automatically returning to the Tombworld. This is observed after a successful capture of a Necron whose auto-port was damaged (deliberately with AdMech tech) awoke, destroyed a research base and PHASED OUT.

“higher up on the page before hepsebah interrupts, archmagos voar is studying a necron warrior who’s phaseout mechanism had been destroyed by a fellow technomagi”

Later in that story archmagos voar develops a device that sends out a signal that prevents wraiths from phasing and they kill them..

[Mr. Oragahn]

Intriguing. What is the source?

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Intriguing. What is the source?

It was in a deathwatch mission that the use a bolter to track a necron.

Archmagos Voar in Souldrinkers series has a necron warrior with a destroyed phase home device (destroyed by another Archmagos), he examines it and crestes a device that prevents the wraith from phasing so his team can kill them.

Bottom of page 38 and top of page 39 has him examining the necron:


http://www.scribd.com/doc/23508913/Ben- ... Hellforged