Death Star vs Borg Cube-Who Would Win? (PLEASE READ)

[The Dude]

I think you just trampled on and destroyed everything Star Trek is about.

If that really happened in the movies/episodes, Gene Roddenberry would be turning over in his grave.

EDIT: The combined forces of the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, and Federation had enough trouble defeating the Dominion, and you're saying the Federation could single handedly defeat the Klinongs, Romulans, Dominion, Borg, Cardassians, Ferengi, Breen, Voth, and every other species in the Galaxy?

How much you want to bet that Youngrandomnumbers really liked DS9?

[Mr. Oragahn]

It won't change much anyway, since the Death Star is a secret project. The few drones sent will easily be dealt with, and if one or two manage to survive with personal force fields (assuming such fields are not projected from Cubes - which in this case would be hard since it would be already vaporized), the stormtroopers have access to heavier weaponry, can always block entire sections and wait for Vader to clean the mess.

Really? The first drone that beamed into the E-D's engineering room in "Q Who?", while it was dispatched quickly enough, the following drone was adapted to them, so the same should be true for the Death Star scout drones, especially if they beam into someplace not immediately accessible by the Stormtroopers.

The real problem is if the Borg know where to beam to. It seems they had no problem go know that against the E-D. And once the drones start working down in engineering, the mess begins. With the power of the Death Star to tap, it can get ugly very quickly.
The Imperial officers will need to seal off sections and deploy all firepower available. Luckily, the Empire knows more than just blasters. They have grenades and ion guns, which could do wonders against drones (at first, perhaps) and they have flechette guns. They also have other heavy pieces, rocket launchers and so on.
If FC is anything to go by, as it's probably the most similar scenario, then we have to consider the possibility of Imperial personnel turned into drones. However, the Borg showed that they spread their "hive" from the engineering section of the E-D, which means the Empire can still concentrate forces there.
How far they could take down drones depends on the weapons they decide to use. It could be tricky to use heavy firepower anywhere close to the sensitive power systems, even if there are many of them in the Death Star.
The situtation is much more manageable with Vader.

However, with all those droids around, especially the foot sized fast wheeled ones... I think we could see the Borg spread in a way we've never seen before.

• 

If Vader should become involved, assuming he isn't off chasing Rebels somewhere, he will ultimately have to use the Force on the invading drones as there is nothing that precludes adapation to lightsabers.

If it comes to that, lightsabre fails before the tenth jab at a drone. OK, let's say that happens.
He uses the Force, end of the drone.
But as seen above, I don't think Vader being able to destroy drones is the real question.
The point, though, is that even in "Q Who?", we saw that the Borg first collect info and then decide to be aggressive or not.
If they do the same here, pick info, then leave, it's good for the Empire.

As for the drone's personal force fields, we have seen in "Hope and Fear" as well as "The Raven", that Borg personal shields are not dependent on power or anything from a cube or Unicomplex.
-Mike

So it runs on what the drone has as a power source?

It also really depends on how aggressive the Empire will be. If they do it S8472 style, the Cube will be dealt with too fast for the ship to be a menace.

[411-RED]

Personally, I think the Borg would treat the assimilation of a massive, heavily armed station differently than a smaller spacecract (as seen in, "Q Who?" where they wasted a lot of time and focused their efforts on ship to ship combat). The Borg would probably begin beaming large amounts of drones over very quickly, after making a tactical analysis.

There are other factors involved, including minor things such as which way the Death Star is facing. If the superlaser isn't facing the Borg, then the Death Star would have to turn around, giving the Borg precious time to gather information and begin boarding. It is also possible the person commanding the Death Star would try to board the cube and take over it, perhaps after seeing the ability of the transporter, instead of destroying it.

However, if the cube flies headlong towards the Death Star, boldly declaring the futility of their resistance, the superlaser ready to go and lined up, with a the commander on the Death Star who doesn't care about gathering tactical information or the technology on the cube, it would probably be a short fight. But, the Borg could beam over to the Death Star once they knew destruction of their vessel was imminent, much like in First Contact. If they got even a couple dozen drones over, they could eventually assimilate it. They would probably interface with the Death Star's computer, and by doing so, could possibly take over (like they attempted to do in First Contact, but with no Data around they might succeed). Communications across the Death Star could be interrupted, and that would make it difficult for the Imperials to get an organized counterattack going (recall that in First Contact, Dr. Crusher was unable to contact anyone from sickbay).

As far as the Imperials using everything they've got to take down the Borg drones before they can accomplish anything, they wouldn't necessarily know the Borg were on board (again, recall that they initially evaded detection and slunk around in the Jefferies tubes in First Contact).

[Mike DiCenso]

One critical point, which Death Star is this? Youngla kind of blends the two in the OP since some of the EU material indicates that only the second battlestation was capable of targeting ships with it's superlaser. If it is the first DS, then even if the superlaser is pointed in the right general direction, it still won't necessarily be able to target the Borg cube. Just something that needs clarification here.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

I think 411-Red has a good analysis.
The only thing I doubt would happen is the DS firing at the Borg upon contact.
They're in a massive space station with enough firepower to annihilate a world.
What do they care about a "small" 27km cubed vessel spouting "Assimilation is inevitable, resistance is futile".
They would first scan ther ship, detect it's powerful, perhaps even detect the nergy transmissions towards the DS, and check to see what happens at those emission points.
then, having learned of intruders onboard capable of resisting Blasters, they would open up on the Cube with their TLs, see the little damage done, try to fire even more, but eventually align the Superlaser to blast the Cube to smithereens.
By that time, the hundreds, if not thousands (due to the size of the DS) of Drones transported on the DS would have started to wreak havok and assimilate all and everyone.
If they succeed in killing all the Drones with more powerful weapons, the DS by that time would still be lost or extremelly damaged...

[Mike DiCenso]

Here's another thing about the E-D's contact with the Borg in "Q Who?" that people keep forgetting; they originally never made any communications with the E-D until after the scout drones beamed aboard and accomplished their reconnaissance mission. This is the entire extent of the Borg's contact with the E-D:

"We have analysed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished."


That's it. So there's not even necessarily a guarantee of the Borg just sitting there and jabbering away about assimilation or what have you.
-Mike

[411-RED]

I think 411-Red has a good analysis.
The only thing I doubt would happen is the DS firing at the Borg upon contact.
They're in a massive space station with enough firepower to annihilate a world.
What do they care about a "small" 27km cubed vessel spouting "Assimilation is inevitable, resistance

In fact, aren't your average Borg cubes even smaller than that? About 3 kilometers on each side?

[Praeothmin]

I think 411-Red has a good analysis.
The only thing I doubt would happen is the DS firing at the Borg upon contact.
They're in a massive space station with enough firepower to annihilate a world.
What do they care about a "small" 27km cubed vessel spouting "Assimilation is inevitable, resistance

In fact, aren't your average Borg cubes even smaller than that? About 3 kilometers on each side?

Yes, and a cube with 3km sides has 27km cubed, as in 3km x 3km x 3km... :)
Sorry if it wasn't clear at first...

[Youngla0450]

Do you think the Borg will ever be exterminated?

[Mike DiCenso]

If it comes to that, lightsabre fails before the tenth jab at a drone. OK, let's say that happens.
He uses the Force, end of the drone.
But as seen above, I don't think Vader being able to destroy drones is the real question.
The point, though, is that even in "Q Who?", we saw that the Borg first collect info and then decide to be aggressive or not.
If they do the same here, pick info, then leave, it's good for the Empire.

There is another interesting possibility to consider. It might be possible for the Borg to adapt to the energy field that is the Force. Certainly we saw that while Jedi and presumably the Siith are able to Force push light-weight Trade Federation battledroids, we never saw them do the same to shielded Droidkas, nor to anything really big, beyond what we saw a few rare Force users of great power and experiance like Count Dooku, Yoda and Palaptine do at various times and having to expend a great deal of concentration in the effort. Conversely the EU, in the form of the Dark Empire comics has Luke held captive in an energy cage that blocks or severely degrades access to the Force. This is also somewhat confirmed by the movies as we saw Obi-Wan captured and held with some kind of energy restraints, and he did not seem to be able to use his Force powers, either.

In short, it may be possible for the Borg to shield themselves against the Force to some extent.
-Mike

[Youngla0450]

The Force surronds and binds everything, even those Borg creatures.

[The Dude]

Do you think the Borg will ever be exterminated?

Yeah, Luke will glue his saber onto the front of his trousers and cut them down one by one.

[Mike DiCenso]

I think 411-Red has a good analysis.
The only thing I doubt would happen is the DS firing at the Borg upon contact.
They're in a massive space station with enough firepower to annihilate a world.
What do they care about a "small" 27km cubed vessel spouting "Assimilation is inevitable, resistance

In fact, aren't your average Borg cubes even smaller than that? About 3 kilometers on each side?

Praeothmin ment cubic volume of 3 km cube. But on that point, we have even seen (thanks in no part to inconsistent visual FX), the same cube change size several times in the same episode.
-Mike

[411-RED]

I think 411-Red has a good analysis.
The only thing I doubt would happen is the DS firing at the Borg upon contact.
They're in a massive space station with enough firepower to annihilate a world.
What do they care about a "small" 27km cubed vessel spouting "Assimilation is inevitable, resistance

In fact, aren't your average Borg cubes even smaller than that? About 3 kilometers on each side?

Yes, and a cube with 3km sides has 27km cubed, as in 3km x 3km x 3km... :)
Sorry if it wasn't clear at first...

Haha, woops. The word "cubed" in the mathematical sense got lost because we were talking about Borg "cubes".

[Mr. Oragahn]

I think 411-Red has a good analysis.
The only thing I doubt would happen is the DS firing at the Borg upon contact.
They're in a massive space station with enough firepower to annihilate a world.
What do they care about a "small" 27km cubed vessel spouting "Assimilation is inevitable, resistance is futile".

Target practice?
The Empire is very swift. The EU has demonstrated that. If they get no confirmation about the ID, they don't wait to open hostilities. With a thing that's about 3 km wide, they won't send a few fighters. They'll let their gunners enjoy their job.

They would first scan ther ship, detect it's powerful, perhaps even detect the nergy transmissions towards the DS, and check to see what happens at those emission points.

They'd scan it while sending ID requests.

then, having learned of intruders onboard capable of resisting Blasters,...

They won't wait for that, but certainly a Borg intrusion won't lighten the tension.

... they would open up on the Cube with their TLs, see the little damage done, try to fire even more, but eventually align the Superlaser to blast the Cube to smithereens.

As said before, they have more than enough firepower to smoke that Cube out of the sky without even bothering with a low power superlaser shot.
"Death Star" makes it clear that her defenses can allow her to deal with an entire fleet of ISDs and even Super SDs.
If we go with a Death Star that's 120 km wide, then she has a surface area of 4.5239 e10 m². If you think there's like one ACS gun each 5x5 km, you get about 1810 guns.
Make that a quarter of them firing at the Cube. 452 guns.
At 1 MT each, you already get a 452 MT opening salvo.
Nothing tells us that the cannons would be capped at 1 MT either.
Of course, requiring such a number of cannons seems quite ridiculous, as we've seen what one single large piece, like the v-150 ion cannon did to a 1.6 long warship.

By that time, the hundreds, if not thousands (due to the size of the DS) of Drones transported on the DS would have started to wreak havok and assimilate all and everyone.
If they succeed in killing all the Drones with more powerful weapons, the DS by that time would still be lost or extremelly damaged...

Opening speech or not, the Borg actually send only a very few drones before their Cube is destroyed. Hell, they didn't even try to turn the E-D into theirs in "Q Who?". They were studying the stuff, reading blueprints, picking "samples", etc. At that time, they had sent like, what? A total of half a dozen drones or less.
Let them try to take a sample from the Death Star, just to see. :)