Borg Cube vs 1 gigaton nuke

[Roondar]

I've seen a rather interesting thread over on spacebattles, basically it pits the Borg (with 2 cubes and a sphere) against Stargate Earth.

Now, I'm not going to repeat the thread here but just one point. In the thread, it's repeatedly claimed by the pro-SG crowd that a 1 gigaton nuke (which is apperantly available) would be more than enough to destroy a cube, even if used from the outside.

I'll give my viewpoint on this, perhaps others have another idea?

TL;DR version:
Borg cubes have been shown taking (in my view) in excess of 1GT repeatedly without going 'boom'.

My viewpoint:

UFP 24 century torpedoes have been calculated again and again and again, with varying results. Personally, I found little problems with the Spacebattles calculation regarding the Torpedo in ST-Voy:Rise. For reference, that thread calculated the torpedoes at between ~50 and ~150MT each.

The figure I'll be using therefore is 50 MT low-end, 150 MT high end.

The Borg have faced UFP forces using these weapons repeatedly. I'm not counting Phaserblasts as I find these impossible to quantify.

In Best of Both Worlds, they faced 39 starships. If each of them had fired only one torpedo, the low end Borg shield strength (really low end, they survived that without *any* damage and there where most likely more torpedoes fired per ship than just one) is put at being able to absorb at least 1950MT (At 150 MT per torpedo it comes out to 5,8 GT) without failing.

In First Contact we see more fleet action - the Borg, after literally fighting their way to Earth through whatever defenses Starfleet threw at them take 12 torpedoes to their hull without serious damage (before Picard steps in). After Picard steps in and gives the order, 18 more torpedoes hit (all aimed at the same spot, all hitting close to one another in time - I've counted Quantum Torpedoes as being equal to Photon Torpedoes here).

So, the Borg cube took (in addition to numerous phaser blasts and whatever had been fired at them prior to the Enterprise-E arriving) 30 torpedoes, of which 18 where aimed at a 'weak spot'.

This puts the Borgs minimum 'endurance' at about 1500 MT of damage (High end: 4,5GT), of which 900 MT (High end: 2,7GT) was aimed at the same spot, inside the cube.

Prior to being hit in their weakspot, the didn't seem to be in any real problems. And do note that this does not count any Phaser fire, nor does it take into account that they had obviously been fighting for quite a while and thus had taken much more firepower into them than these numbers suggest.

Now it's not entirely clear, but the status report Data gave earlier strongly suggests that the Borg cube had lost their shields prior to reaching Earth. This is backed up by the effects Torpedoes show when used on shielded Borg ships - these do not show the same explosive effects to the hull but instead show a much more muted blast and no bits of structure flying about.

One last note: the time between these attacks is really short - the entire visible part of the battle in First Contact (which I described above) lasts less than 2 minutes, the part where they shoot the weak spot only takes 17 seconds) and there is ample indication that during these 2 minutes more shooting happens in the background.

My conclusion: 1GT of firepower is not nearly enough to destroy a Borg Cube. It might not even be enough to destroy the E-E (given it's performance in Nemesis).

[Mike DiCenso]

I'm not sure where you are going with your essay here, Roondar. Are you doing a conservative calc based on the Borg cube's structural strength alone, or are you attempting to quantify shields, or both?
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

I think he's trying to say that the guys at SB.com are high on crack and say stupid things over and over...
I may be wrong, of course... :)

[Mike DiCenso]

I suppose he might at that. But there are several possible ways of defining how much energy it would take to destroy a Borg cube. There are the calcs I did a while back on how much energy and antimatter it takes to destroy the stardrive of a Galaxy class starship here in this thread. The estimate of 3.98 gigatons is a conservative one since iron is used here, and for obvious reason cannot take into account the physical properties of materials like tritanium and nitrium which are known to make up the hulls of Borg and Federation vessels, and can withstand much greater temperatures and stresses than mere iron. If that is any indication of what a GCS can harness and project through it's deflector dish array by diverting power from the warp drive, then consider just how much energy the deflector weapon beam was projecting at the Borg cube in BoBW. So a 1 GT nuke isn't going to cut it as far as that is concerned, especially given that as an explosive, a nuke will radiate most of it's energy away from the target vessel.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

Well, in "Q Who?", the E-D blows some fairly large holes in the side of the Borg cube. If you're particularly ungenerous, you might assume that the E-D's weapons are down in the single-digit megaton range, and then you might reasonably conclude that if the Borg weren't expecting it, you'd be able to fragment a cube using a gigaton yield device.

On the other hand, higher calculations put the E-D's conventional weapons in the gigaton range. A more likely first contact encounter between a SG ship with naquadah-enhanced gigaton nukes and a cube would involve the SG ship blowing a large hole in the side (ala "Q Who?") but failing to cause serious enough damage. The Borg then repair the ship in short order and start ignoring subsequent nukes.

The figures you're citing are generally underestimates for how much firepower was dropped on the cubes in BOBW and ST:FC. What's especially worth noting is that the E-D's warp core is 1-2 orders of magnitude more powerful than what it can dump downrange using its conventional weapons. That's why, in BOBW, the crew of the Enterprise was hoping to nail the cube with the deflector array's beam when several dozen starships unloading all their conventional firepower fell short; that was a similar amount of raw power, concentrated on a single point of attack.

The core was cited as generating 12.75 exawatts one time, and conservation of energy requirements on the E-D's short-range movements (flying fast out of gravity wells) would put the E-D's maximum output on the order of 100 gigatons per second.

If you want to look at the raw total energy that a Borg cube can handle, the one in BOBW could handle teratons, whether you're concerned with the fact that dozens of Federation ships can unload their entire arsenals on top of it or quantifying the deflector beam.

Even the most diehard Saxtonites in their most dubious low-ball estimates of "Pegasus" require a TNG-era GCS to be able to come up with tens of megatons of firepower. and I think it's clear a Borg cube can take everything that several dozen Federation TNG ships can throw at it and laugh. Memory Alpha estimates there were 60 Federation ships present in ST:FC, using cutting-edge quantum torpedoes and inside information from Picard (better weapons than were available as of "Pegasus"); you're really not going to get weak Borg ships without going into Voyager. Even then, Voyager usually fought with Borg spheres and smaller Borg ships.

What's more important in attacking the Borg is not how much energy you're putting downrange, but whether or not the weapon is something they're currently defending against. If they're expecting naquadah enhanced nukes, naquadah enhanced nukes aren't going to do a thing.

[Roondar]

Well, there's two points here, which I both find interesting:

1) Just how much can a Borg cube take (shields or no shields)

Best of Both Worlds illustrates that a shielded cube can take in excess of 1,9GT worth of firepower without even losing it's shields.

First Contact illustrates that even unshielded a cube can take between 0,9 GT and 4,5 GT of structural damage before it's destroyed. And even then its destruction is only made possible by the 'weak spot'.

The question then becomes - just how much can they take?
(See, I'm part of the 'adapation is not limitless' crowd - my take is that given enough firepower, adapation won't help. So it becomes interesting to see where their limits lie.)

2) Why are the same people that put UFP torpedoes at 50MT+ a hit adamant that a ship that can take so many of said torpedoes without so much as a scratch will buckle to something that basically amounts to about 7 to 20 of them hitting the cube?
(by their own math about Photon Torpedo yields naturally)

To me it's patently obvious that a Borg cube (being really, really big compared to top of the line UFP ships as well as being really, really advanced compared to same UFP ships) is going to be able to shrug of quite a bit.

Example: The Enterprise-D can take quite a few torpedoes before it's shields fail. A Borg cube is (volume wise) about 4667 times as big as the E-D (sources: Memory Alpha and http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWvolumetrics.html). It's not a stretch to assume that their shields will be a lot stronger as a result.

Now, the second point I can't control - people on SB.com regularly place Borg endurance at really low levels (presumably because it's an ST entity and they've placed ST as being 'upper-low end' in the Sci Fi power levels). But the first point I can at least wonder about ;)

[Roondar]

The figures you're citing are generally underestimates for how much firepower was dropped on the cubes in BOBW and ST:FC. What's especially worth noting is that the E-D's warp core is 1-2 orders of magnitude more powerful than what it can dump downrange using its conventional weapons. That's why, in BOBW, the crew of the Enterprise was hoping to nail the cube with the deflector array's beam when several dozen starships unloading all their conventional firepower fell short; that was a similar amount of raw power, concentrated on a single point of attack.

Well, it was kind of the point to get a reasonable lower end here. I didn't quote the higher estimates of UFP firepower because doing so would make me seem interested only in a high-end figure. Which was not what I was looking into ;)

you're really not going to get weak Borg ships without going into Voyager. Even then, Voyager usually fought with Borg spheres and smaller Borg ships.

And they managed to ammount to very little effect on them - I certainly don't recall them winning many engagements.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Well, it was kind of the point to get a reasonable lower end here. I didn't quote the higher estimates of UFP firepower because doing so would make me seem interested only in a high-end figure. Which was not what I was looking into ;)

I'm of the opinion that SB leans heavily towards minimizing Trek firepower. Truth to tell, you'll have to address it directly. The SDN crowd was fairly dominant on SB for a while, and while the ludicrousness of the ICS figures is starting to percolate through, the ludicrous minimizations of ST are still kicking around.

Most of them also aren't aware just how powerful the Borg are in TNG. They're familiar with the fact that the Borg seem to have no concept of tactics or strategy, and have "alien" motivations.

2) Why are the same people that put UFP torpedoes at 50MT+ a hit adamant that a ship that can take so many of said torpedoes without so much as a scratch will buckle to something that basically amounts to about 7 to 20 of them hitting the cube?
(by their own math about Photon Torpedo yields naturally)

The least generous SDN-type estimates are sub-megaton. The lowest SDN estimate based on "Pegasus" is on the order of 100 kilotons per torpedo - a fraction of a percent of the yields you're talking about - and Saxtonites are likely to assert even lower numbers, such as "gigajoules."

That's the sort of reasoning that leads someone like Aratech to claim the Borg are pushovers, but it's a non-transparent assumption. Aratech is likely to be reluctant to roll out a calculation involving sub-megaton torpedoes on SB, because he knows that while saying "OMG LOL ST ARE WEAKSAUCE!" will pass without comment, explicitly assuming torpedo yields below a megaton is likely to be challenged.

I think that highlights how important it is to push for hard numbers, hard arguments, hard figures.

But let me roll out some numbers. In BOBW, we have several engagements. One, the Enterprise bangs on the cube for about a minute of on-screen time - there's an opening salvo with many phasers and photon torpedoes, and after that, we have forty seconds of "fire at will" before the E-D manages to disable the tractor beam locked onto it.

Wolf 359 and the ST:FC battle have close to 2 minutes of on-screen action time. (We see some more of Wolf 359 in flashbacks in DS9). That would correspond to a Borg cube nailing a Federation ship every 3-4 seconds, which is slightly more often than seen onscreen. It's a reasonable approximation to assume that each ship is averaging about 1 photon torpedo per second in equivalent firepower. Some ships fire torpedoes, some fire phasers, some both.

Now, assume that the Federation casualties are as stated on Memory Alpha - 39/39 at Wolf 359 and 30/60 in ST:FC - then we should have the equivalent of 2340 photon torpedoes fired on the Borg cube at Wolf 359, and a whopping 5400 at Star Trek: First Contact. For reference, the Enterprise in STVI seems to have 96 photon torpedoes; Voyager was at one point stated to have 38 torpedoes; Enterprise D 250.

It's a perfectly reasonable estimate - perhaps low on the duration of the battle, perhaps high on the rate of fire for the smaller and less powerful ships, like the Miranda class, but those should cancel out.

That's not just a couple gigatons. That's hundreds of gigatons by the sort of photon torpedo yields you're talking about. Truly, that's the "moderate" estimate. A "low" estimate using the sorts of torpedo yields you're talking about should fall in the tens of gigatons - we may not know exactly how many weapons were fired at the Borg, but we have a very good idea that we're seeing less than 10% of the shots fired.

If you assume the Battle of Wolf 359 lasted 39 seconds, with the Borg destroying one ship per second and the Federation ships firing on average the equivalent of a photon torpedo every other second, 50 megaton torpedoes give you 19 gigatons.

Now, here's your actual high figures. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the E-D can shell out 1-10 gigatons per second, and most of the other ships can sustain at least 100 megatons per second. Assume a mean output of 300 MT/sec. (Phasers are virtually ignored by Saxtonites, but they actually are the main armament of these ships, not photon torpedoes.)

Assume both battles lasted five minutes - that's a Federation ship being blown up every 7-10 seconds, more like what we see onscreen. Then we have 1.7 teratons ignored in BOBW, and a whopping 4 teratons in ST:FC.

40 seconds of "fire at will" from the Enterprise alone could more generously be taken as 40-400 gigatons based on "Masks," "Skin of Evil," and the assorted "phaser drilling" incidents.

20-30 seconds of full maximum warp power, at about 400 exawatts, would be 2-3 teratons. That's definitely generous, but at the same time justifiable with reference to "Deja Q" and the "moon-be-gone" warp field, or going straight to warp from the surface of a sun-like star in "Descent." Use the more common 12.75 exawatt figure, and you're still close to a hundred gigatons for the deflector array beam strike.

Proportionately, a cube is actually very weak compared to the Federation ships. Volume for volume (using the cube volume given in Voyager), hitting a cube with 5400 photon torpedoes is like hitting a Galaxy class starship with a single photon torpedo. You may only see around 30 torpedoes impacting the cube, but we see only a small fraction of the action in any given scene, and torpedoes are not the main weapon of the Federation. (Phasers, folks, phasers.)

Only spread out over several minutes. So in that perspective, the Borg cubes really aren't very efficient ships, but in absolute terms, they're big and tough.

[Mike DiCenso]

And they managed to ammount to very little effect on them - I certainly don't recall them winning many engagements.

Not against any of the big cubes, but they did win against a smallish probe ship in the opening teaser to "Dark Frontier", and that was simply because they were able to beam a photon torpedo inside it somehow through it's shields.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Use the more common 12.75 exawatt figure, and you're still close to a hundred gigatons for the deflector array beam strike.

This figure is actually being debated over at ASVS...
http://www.asvs.us/index.php/topic/361- ... -a-weapon/

Fun thread... :)

[Mike DiCenso]

Honestly I've never understood Jason's obsession with the E-D nav deflector weapon, and while that ASVS thread might be fun, it's clear that most people in that thread, most especially Jason have no clue what they're talking about half the time. It's been discussed here various threads, and IMHO in far better detail.
-Mike

[Roondar]

2) Why are the same people that put UFP torpedoes at 50MT+ a hit adamant that a ship that can take so many of said torpedoes without so much as a scratch will buckle to something that basically amounts to about 7 to 20 of them hitting the cube?
(by their own math about Photon Torpedo yields naturally)

The least generous SDN-type estimates are sub-megaton. The lowest SDN estimate based on "Pegasus" is on the order of 100 kilotons per torpedo - a fraction of a percent of the yields you're talking about - and Saxtonites are likely to assert even lower numbers, such as "gigajoules."

This is true, but I'm referring to the generally accepted (by SB.com naturally - I know estimates here are 'a tad' higher) Photon Torpedo calcs done over in their thread on the Rise incident. They came out at somewhere between 50MT and 150MT (depending on several variables) and this figure is generally used in debates on that site when it comes to UFP firepower.

That's the sort of reasoning that leads someone like Aratech to claim the Borg are pushovers, but it's a non-transparent assumption. Aratech is likely to be reluctant to roll out a calculation involving sub-megaton torpedoes on SB, because he knows that while saying "OMG LOL ST ARE WEAKSAUCE!" will pass without comment, explicitly assuming torpedo yields below a megaton is likely to be challenged.

Personally I kind of assumed their assumption about the 1GT nuke is made based on the very fact a torpedo is 50MT (that is, over on SB). The logic being - if 50MT can be a threat in some numbers then 1GT will BOOMIFY a cube. Without ever stopping to think just how many of said 50MT blasts where needed to only mildly annoy the Borg - not destroy them.

That's not just a couple gigatons. That's hundreds of gigatons by the sort of photon torpedo yields you're talking about. Truly, that's the "moderate" estimate. A "low" estimate using the sorts of torpedo yields you're talking about should fall in the tens of gigatons - we may not know exactly how many weapons were fired at the Borg, but we have a very good idea that we're seeing less than 10% of the shots fired.

While I can see what you mean here, I ignored offscreen stuff with a reason - arguing such things will make it far to easy for any opponent to throw down your argument based on that part. Which will lead to nigh-on-endless discussions about what is reasonable without either party ever budging.

Proportionately, a cube is actually very weak compared to the Federation ships. Volume for volume (using the cube volume given in Voyager), hitting a cube with 5400photon torpedoes is like hitting a Galaxy class starship with a single photon torpedo. You may only see around 30 torpedoes impacting the cube, but we see only a small fraction of the action in any given scene, and torpedoes are not the main weapon of the Federation. (Phasers, folks, phasers.)

Only spread out over several minutes. So in that perspective, the Borg cubes really aren't very efficient ships, but in absolute terms, they're big and tough.

I can't say I agree with that assesment. The UFP forces in ST:FC defeated the cube only because they hit the Borg-cube equivalent of the 'thermal exhaust port'. It was pretty obvious that they would not have the same success otherwise.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Gigaton phasers? That's silly.

[Roondar]

Gigaton phasers? That's silly.

Personally, I´m inclined to agree. I´m thinking Phasers are going to be somewhat weaker than torpedoes - say 50-75% of them or so. This fits with my -admitedly not very scientific- 'gut feeling' about how the two match up onscreen.

Then again, gigaton phasers are not needed at all for the reasoning behind the Borg surviving 1 GT nukes ;)

[Mr. Oragahn]

What's more important in attacking the Borg is not how much energy you're putting downrange, but whether or not the weapon is something they're currently defending against. If they're expecting naquadah enhanced nukes, naquadah enhanced nukes aren't going to do a thing.

Weapons the Borg manage well against are funky weapons which deal great amounts of damage via physics raping mechanisms. For example, the phasers, which for the first time they were used against a Cube, ate large volumes. When the bizarre effect of a weapon is understood, all that remains is the sheer energy of the attack in its bluntest form.

I wasn't of those who argued that one GT nuke would do it, but the Tau'ri have ships capable of beaming their entire armoury at once if needed.

Besides, First Contact's finishing blow against the Cube shouldn't be taken that literally. You can say the ship took several torps in one single weak spot and we didn't see much of the structure blowing up, but we didn't see anything that would be synonymous with the atmosphere filled interior of a ship exposed to hundreds of megatons either, and we didn't see the debris being ejected anywhere as fast as expected. There obviously are pros and cons.