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Tumblr post by arctic-hands:
When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll “Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?”. Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly “Borg Cube”, but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.
So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said “Death Star”.
So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.
Reply from evilsoup:
An image depicting the story of the “Judgment of Solomon”, where Solomon is labelled “stargate fandom”, and the two women are labelled “star trek fandom” and “star wars fandom”. The Star Wars lady is standing grumpily with her hands on her hips, while the Star Trek woman gestures with open arms. Between the two of them, on the floor, is a baby in a wicker basket. Solomon sits over them in judgment.
Its canon, species 8472’s combined ship super weapon thing has been shown to blow up whole planets and continuously work against the Borg. I would consider 8472’s super weapon as a in-universe death star equivalent
8472’s entire thing was organic modulation, making it impossible to adapt to.
The death star laser is based on the resonating frequency of a crystal. So it will always be the same. Easy for the borg to adapt to.
Question is can you overpower shields in Star Trek? I would postulate a “maybe” given that the Cardassians use a giant phaser on the front of their ships to break things, and they’re noted as being technologically inferior to the federation.
You can definitely overpower shields. Shields still need energy, and there are other factors involved on calculating shield integrity. Combat in Star Trek routinely shows bridge officers announcing the current strength of the shields as a percentage that drops as it absorbs more impact.
QED, the shield has its limits, so presumably a sufficiently powerful enough weapon could overcome those limits, possibly even with a single shot.
I think the question is would a shot from the Death Star, after completely depleting the cube’s shields, hit the cube at full power? Or would the shield have “absorbed” enough of the hit that the cube might survive? Or does the shield perhaps completely nullify a single shot, even if it is depleted by doing so?
It raises the question of how the Borg shield adaptation technology works. Its always shown as previously highly effective shots suddenly having “no effect.”
The fights we see with the federation have them constantly modifying their phaser output frequencies to work around that, but even then its a losing game, as the borg adapt to their modification formula.
Even the future Janeway’s super torpedoes run into this. And they were specifically designed to work around the adaptation mechanic.
I think it blows up one cube, damages a second, then no effect from then on.
Really it’s a moot point, I think at max Star Wars had 2 Death Stars, 1 finished and 1 under construction or maybe a prototype or something.
Either way, Species 8472 had that super weapon thing, but the biggest thing is they couldn’t be assimilated, Imperial personnel and tech would have no such immunity.
So they could blow up Borg cubes all they want, but they’ll be overwhelmed eventually (Which shouldn’t be too long, while the Death Star is powerful, I’m pretty sure it takess awhile to recharge between shots) to the point where drones start getting on board and then it’s game over.
Now who would win, an assimilated Death Star or all of Imperial forces lmfao
3 if you count Starkiller Base.
I would guess (though I certainly don’t have the knowledge or evidence to support this guess in a Daystrom-like environment) that it’s basically just about the range of frequencies. A normal shield is designed to protect against a wide range of frequencies because you don’t know where the attack will come from. This, I posit, has the effect of spreading the shield thin and making it easier to damage. Like trying to charge through a shield wall (as in mediaeval warriors) with a single layer where each defender is a metre apart.
The Borg’s adaptation is to spend all their energy on a very narrow frequency range, making it much, much stronger and more difficult to damage. Like if they shield wall were three rows deep and the fighters are standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the point you’re trying to charge through (but there are fewer-to-no enemies at other locations).