Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Suicide Junkie]

I don't think the Enterprise had a chance in hell to defeat the Borg. If they weren't after Picard, they could have easily blown the Enterprise apart before it could even get off a shot.

Well, they'd get to fire a few shots, but they wouldn't do any noticable damage.

The borg cube only needed three shield-sapper shots to disable them, and then start cutting bits out like a roast.

The Borg are extremely powerful, but they have no real direction, and are very narrow-minded. Tactical superiority, but no strategy to speak of.
They do not spend resources on "insurance", or anything without immediate value.

IOW, they are perfect for a monster race, with powerful and dangerous single ships, yet nearly harmless in the big picture.

[Kamog]

I believe that the Borg were never really thought out very well...

Neither was the time traveling stuff with First Contact. If the Borg can travel back in time to change history whenever they want, why didn't they do it earlier? Apparently, the Enterprise has exactly the same time traveling capability, but of course the Federation is bound by the prime directive of temporal non-interference (which they disobey every other episode). By the way, the stuff from the other movies and the original series about traveling back in time by using the sling shot effect, flying around the sun really fast, never did make much sense...

[Phoenix-D]

"By the way, the stuff from the other movies and the original series about traveling back in time by using the sling shot effect, flying around the sun really fast, never did make much sense..."

If you go REALLY fast in real space, you should theoreticlly end up going back in time. The apparent time slows as you speed up and approach the speed of light, so "logiclly" after a point it should start running backwards.

The problem with that is in order to do that, you need to generate MORE than infinite force. Slingshoting around a sun just ain't going to cut it. That and your apparent time would reverse, not anything else's. The result would likely be a ship trapped in an infinite loop..go forward one second, reverse the next. You can't go anywhere, the time is too small to react..stasis.

Phoenix-D

[Krsqk]

"If the Borg can travel back in time to change history whenever they want, why didn't they do it earlier?"

Just have them go back in time to change when they started going back in time... Maybe this should have gone in the Post-of-Many-Names...

[capnq]

I've got an obscure boardgame in my collection called Time Agent. The object of the game is to travel in time and change history so that your empire dominates the galaxy, then prevent anyone else from changing things back, by going back and preventing the invention of time travel.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:

If you go REALLY fast in real space, you should theoreticlly end up going back in time. The apparent time slows as you speed up and approach the speed of light, so "logiclly" after a point it should start running backwards.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the limit of this theoretical effect, is that everyone else would see the fast ship as if it were moving almost as fast as the speed of light. The fast ship would in theory seem like it was travelling faster than the speed of light, as if there were no speed limit, but even with infinite speed, the time to reach the destination would be at least zero, but never less than zero. T = D/V. As long as D(istance) and V(elocity) are positive, change in T(ime) is positive. The only way to get negative T(ime) is to go away from your destination, which just means you're going the wrong direction in space, not in time.

So as far as I can tell, the "Star Trek slingshot effect" (like many of the rest of the explanations of Star Trek effects) is entirely a result of writers with much greater immagination than their knowledge of math and physics.

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

V= D/T, mixed with relativity, eh?

Unfortunately, at relativistic speeds, time is distorted as well as space.

As you go faster and faster, time slows down for the other object. If faster than light speeds would make the time negative, then the ship would see the universe getting younger, and the universe would see the ship getting younger. Once the ship decelerates, the twin paradox effect should make the end result be that the ship would end up younger, and the rest of the universe be slightly older than when the whole thing started.

[ December 04, 2002, 03:03: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]