Following the losses of Borg vessels as a result of the war between the Borg and Species 8472, the Collective began designing and constructing modified vessels to counter this threat. The general principal was to design an extremely heavily armoured Cube designed solely for combat purposes and not for purposes of assimilation. Possessing excessively thick, external, ablative armor to counter the devestating energy beams used by Species 8472 which tore through standard armour and caused catastrophic chain-reactions in the vessels' power systems - resulting in the instant destruction of the Cubes. Despite the assistance of the Federation resulting in the retreat of species 8472, the Collective continued production of Borg Tactical Cubes also referred to as a class 4 tactical vessel. These vessels are similar in almost every respect to the standard Cubes however possessing astoundingly thick layers of external ablative hull armor, allowing them to withstand significantly greater onslaughts. Also possessing a volume of 28 cubic kilometers and spanning more than 3,000 meters on each side, like the standard cubes and housing enough Borg drones to assimilate a planet. The weaponry of these vessels possess a slightly lower yield to that of the standard Borg cubes, however they have significantly more weapon ports on each face as a result. Its function in the Collective is to engage the most highly resistant species encountered by the Collective and to destroy unassimilated threats.
Vessel Design[]
General Operation[]
Borg cubes are infact closer to traveling city ships than starships, however despite their enormous size, 50% of the internal volume is unoccupied and empty space, A miniscule 0.2% of its internal mass are actual walls and floors with the rest being alcoves, corridors, on-board facilities, hangar bays, and various other vital systems.Forgoing such irrelevancies as lights, cantinas, personal quarters, (sonic showers, food replicators, personal computers), holodecks, turbo-lifts, stairs, internal com system and an interactive voice-activated computer system. In doing so, the vessel saves a great deal of power which is re-routed into other more vital systems such as weapons and shields, significantly increasing their effectiveness. Each drone which is no longer required or of whom is running low on power simply return to their regeneration alcoves and due to the massive crew compliment, drones are not required to leave their assigned deck however may also do so using the ships transporters. The interior of a Cube consist of thousands of catwalks, walkways, hangar bays, pipes and conduits lined with Borg alcoves. Cubes possess a generalised interior design, there are no specific bridge, living areas or engineering sections and due to all drones possessing equal technical knowledge and maintanence capabilities, simply the closest drones to a malfunctioning system are assigned. Dissimilar to the design of all other races, Borg vessels possess no particular exit or entry hatches from the exterior to the interior of the vessel as the entire ship is essentially open to the vacuum of space. The interior pressure of the Cube is however maintained by high energy forcefields and structural integrity fields with multiple redundencies.
Combat[]
The very appearance of the cube is designed to be cold and intimidating, its colossal size dwarfing even the mightiest of battleships. Despite the unusual design of using symmetrical geometric shapes, there is also a great deal of logic and many advantages in doing so. Each side is identically armed and armored, denying enemy species the luxury of any directional weaknesses in defenses and blind spots in firing arcs. It's collosal size also negating the practicality of suicide attacks performed against the enormous Cube. An additional benefit of the generalised interior design is the aspect of presenting no particularly beneficial and specifically vulnerable targets of which enemy vessels may focus attacks upon. As a result of the vessels highly decentralized design and endless redundancies the ships vital functions may be run from any part of the ship, resulting in a Borg Cube being capable of remaining operative even if up to 80% of the vessel is destroyed.
Class 4 Tactical Cube[]
Primary Function: Tactical Engagement
Following the conclusion of the Species 8472 war, this class of Cube's function has been adapted to engage unassimilated vessels and even starbases to determine their offensive and defensive capabilities to their fullest by making full use of the vessels highly resistant armour plating, allowing it to withstand prolonged engagements with any opposing vessel/s. To this end, the vessel possesses somewhat substantially lower-yield weaponry to fulfill its function of thoroughly determining the defensive strength of vessels without critically damaging or destroying them. In the event the vessel poses a threat to the Cube, it will await the arrival of a vessel equipped for assimilation.
This class of Cube is a modified combat platform for the standard Cube class. In accordance with the vessels function of analysis and not assimilation - many of the class 4 tactical cubes is equipped with excessive external armour plating covering many of its standard weapons such as the cutting beam, polaron scanning beam, and tractor pulse.
Class modifications:
- High-energy tractor Pulse Removed
- Lower-yield weaponry installed.
- Standard Automatic Regeneration Matrix
- Automated Regeneration Droid Units (ARU's)
- Additional ablative armour hull plating.
- Five transwarp cores. (Star Trek Magazine)
Interior Architecture[]
Generic Interior[]
Central Plexus[]
Transwarp Chamber[]
Shield Matrix[]
onboard facilities maturation chamber, assimilation chamber, hangar bay
Power Systems[]
The Borg utilize a unique method of powering almost all their on-board systems, maintaining their highly decentralized interior design they do not rely upon a single warp core or such devices in order to solely generate power for the entire vessel. Each vessel generates its own power via power nodes - each device capable of generating an enormous amount of power. Borg vessels however possess hundreds, thousands perhaps even millions depending upon their size and class. These power nodes are spread throughout the vessel collectively producing a sufficient amount of power which the vessel requires at any given time. Only a fraction are active at any one time with additional redundant power sources located throughout the ship (TNG - Best of Both Worlds) which activate and begin generating power as another power node fails. As their power demands increase as a result of construct additional weapons and alcoves for newly assimilated drones the vessel may construct additional power nodes. Additionally, the method of dispersing their power ouput makes it almost impossible for intruders to sabotage the entire vessels power systems at once, in the event one power node is disabled only the small section which it powers and the devices in that section lose power for 4.8 minutes causing a manipulation effect in the vessels subspace field before another node activates and restores power (VOY - Dark Frontier, TNG - Best of Both Worlds). The only system which does not rely upon power nodes are the transwarp drives which are powered by the transwarp coils themselves.
Weapon Systems[]
Dissimilar to that of all other races, the Borg's weapon systems do not vary from ship class to ship class, all using identical weapons systems utilizing the latest and most efficient weapons from newly assimilated species. The Tactical Cube however possesses additional weapons per face within comparison to the general-purpose Borg Cubes.
High Energy Disruptor Beams[]
Fulfilling its role as a pure combat vessel, The Tactical Cube is outfitted with six disruptor beams upon each face resulting in 36 disruptor beams across the entire external surface of the vessel.
High-Yield Photon Torpedoes[]
To fulfill its role as a pure combat vessel each face was equipped with three frontal, rapid-firing torpedo tubes each capable of firing four torpedoes in rapid succession at identical or multiple targets. The resulting weapon count being 18 Torpedo tubes across the entire external surface of the vessel.
High Energy Tractor Pulse[]
Due to the modified and very specific function of the tactical cube, the high energy tractor pulse was removed. The function of the tractor pulse was deemed irrelevant to the vessel's function: to destroy significant threats to the Collective. Instead, the additional exterior surface area was dedicated to additional weapon ports and armor.
Polaron Beam[]
Due to the modified and very specific function of the tactical cube, the polaron beam was deemed irrelevant. Vessels encountered by the Cube would not be scanned, they would be attacked and destroyed immediately. As a result, the polaron beam was removed from its design.
Defense Systems[]
Internal Defense Systems[]
Crew[]
- One of the Cubes greatest defensive features is its enormous crew compliment, responding immediately to malfunctioning systems or ship damage of any kind, subsequently healing and repairing any damaged drones essentially allowing the vessel to always operate at 100% efficiency even during pro-longed battles. Whilst Borg drones are capably of responding immediately to enemy boarding parties, they do not typically do so unless specifically instructed to, deeming enemy boarding parties to be of no threat to the vessel whilst surrounded by hundreds of thousands of drones and prevented from escaping by means of transporters as a result of the Borg's multi-adaptive shield matrix.
Automated Regeneration Units[]
- Another relatively small however extremely effective defensive feature of a Borg vessel are small spherical droids named Automated Regeneration Units, these droids speedily roam the sub-sections, shafts and conduits of Borg vessels, repairing all technology and imperfections in the tritanium infastructure within the ship adding additional response time and causing the ship to quite essentially maintain itself and its own systems.
Multi-Regenerative Security Fields[]
- These fields are emplaced within Borg vessels to protect the most vital technology from harm, preventing all forms of transporter attacks and preventing biological and technological matter from passing through however they are typically not activated until a threat has already been detected on-board. Borg drones may however walk freely through these fields.
Auto-Destruct Sequence[]
- All Borg vessels are equipped with an auto-destruct sequence which intentionally overloads the primary power systems and detonates all on-board torpedo warheads resulting in the instant destruction of the vessel. The auto-destruct sequence also intentionally sabotages all of the vital Borg technology on-boards such as the transwarp coils (VOY - Dark Frontier).
External Defense Systems[]
External Borg ship design follows a pattern of foregoing shields as a primary defensive measure in favor of relying upon extremely strong, resistant and regenerative hull armour.
Regenerative Hull Armour[]
- The exterior hull armor of all Borg vessels and stations have the capability of regenerating quickly and constantly, granting an enormous boost to survivability in prolonged battles. The exterior of the Cube's hull is covered in all pipes and conduits which act like blood vessels and capillaries transporting type 03 and type 04 nanoprobes to the damaged areas, healing much like a biological body would. The creation and distribution of the nanoprobes are governed by the ships equivalent of a heart, the Automatic Regeneration Matrix.
Tritanium Shape Memory Alloy Hull
[]
- Borg vessels are constructed entirely out of tritanium shape memory alloy which when the regeneration process engages, re-aligns itself to its original configuration, playing a significant role in the regeneration process.
Ablative Hull Armour[]
- As all Borg vessels rely upon their hull armor to survive, the entire outer hull layer is comprised of double-layered tritanium. However, Tactical vessels are also equipped with additional ablative armour twenty cubic meters of thick ablative armour designed to prevent catastrophically high-energy discharges from penetrating and destroying the cube. Ablative armour possesses the capability of dispersing particle weapons fire, granting extraordinary protection and resistance to even the most powerful energy weapons.
Adaptive Shield System[]
- Whilst the Borg do not use shielding as a primary means of defense, Borg vessels do possess shielding for the purposes of propulsion, internal security, and as a second line of defense. Adaptive Shielding casts an extremely low power force-field around the exterior of the Borg vessel which samples each particle beam which passes through. This data is recorded by the Adaptive Shield Matrix which records and remodulates the vessel's primary shield grid to the counter-frequency of the opponent's weapons, allowing Borg vessels and stations to become immune to that particular weapon frequency.
Shielding[]
- Unlike the majority of the other species in the Galaxy, the Borg do not shield their entire vessel inside of a single bubble extended around the vessels exterior, Instead, they cast their shielding across their hull, re-enforcing it. This is done by dividing the external surface area into grids, each grid possesses its own shielding known as shield grids (VOY - Unimatrix Zero). This method possesses several benefits, firstly due to the shielding covering a much smaller area, its strength is far greater, this method also allows the drones in each grid to focus upon maintaining and repairing their own grid with greater efficiency than repairing the shielding across an entire vessel. When the shielding of one section is offline, the rest of the vessel may remain shielded and the drones within the damaged grid focus upon repairing their own shield grid as quickly as possible.
High Level Structural Integrity Field[]
- The high level structural integrity field further increases the durability and damage resistance throughout Borg vessels hull and bulkheads which add a further overall increase to the robustness of the vessel itself.
Chroniton Projection Conduits[]
- For the purposes of overcoming the extreme temporal stresses within a transwarp conduit, Borg vessels possess internal conduits through which a chroniton field is projected throughout the ship, keeping the entire ship in temporal synchronisation during its transwarp flight
Propulsion Systems[]
Borg Cubes are capable of rotating between their many faces, allowing them to use all of their weapons to their full capacity when needed, allowing for a rapid rate of fire of torpedos and disruptors.
Thrusters[]
Thrusters are positioned upon both corners on all vertical faces of the Cube, movement is achieved by firing which-ever happens to be the "aft" thrusters in this particular engagement and rotation is achieved by firing one aft side thruster and one frontal thruster.
Warp Drive[]
The standard warp drive is capable of a maximum speed of 9.98, meaning newly developed Starfleet ship classes such as: Sovereign, Intrepid and Prometheus are able to slightly outmatch the vessel at warp speed.
Transwarp Drive[]
Structural integrity field allowing the Cube to withstand Transwarp stresses.
Within unison with the Transwarp Hub network maintaining the stability of the Transwarp conduit network, Borg vessels may engage their Transwarp Drive and accelerate to unimaginable speeds, approximated to be twenty times the speed of standard Federation warp speeds, this grants Borg vessels high maneuverabily and quick deployability across the galaxy.
Due to the aero-dynamically unsound design of a cube, the Borg compensate by projecting their structural integrity field several meters ahead of the vessel to act as an arrow-head designed to shear the extreme gravimetric forces past the vessel.
Theoretical Clarification[]
Design Purpose[]
"Following the losses of Borg vessels as a result of the war between the Borg and Species 8472, the Collective begun designing and constructing modified vessels to counter this threat, the general principal was to design an extremely heavily armed Cube designed solely for combat purposes."
This was the most plausable reason which explained both why we'd never seen this ship until after Scorpion and why they put on excessive anti-energy beam armor on a ship which was always otherwise fully capable of defeating anything before-hand.
Theory Confirmed: "Drexler incorporated in his design the notion that the Borg performed tactical updates after their recent beating bySpecies 8472" "'What do you do with a cube? You can armor it. The Borg had just had their collective asses handed to them by Species 8472, so I’d design a flak jacket for a Borg cube."' '
Low-yield Weaponry[]
"The weaponry of these vessels possess a slightly lower yield to that of the standard Borg cubes however they have significantly more weapon ports on each face as a result", " To this end the vessel possesses somewhat substantially lower-yield weaponry to fulfill its function of thoroughly determining the defensive strength of vessels without critically damaging or destroying them. In the event the vessel poses a threat to the Cube"
This was the best theoretical explaination I could come up with to explain why this giant cube needed something like 6 torpedos just to destroy the Delta Flyer and wasn't able to trouble Voyager until they had their shield command codes.
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# of weapon ports[]
The green dots represent confirmed disruptor firing points seen in Unimatrix Zero and due to the symmetrical nature of Borg design an additional weapon was added parallel to each (the purple dots) resulting in this approximate number of 9 and the 3 torpedo ports were seen in Voyager - Unimatrix Zero part 2.
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Green = canon disruptors, Yellow = canon torpedo tubes, Purple = extrapolated disruptors
Internal Volume and size[]
The statistics regarding internal volume were all speculation stated on http://www.ditl.org/by its author Graham Kennedy of which I completely agree with using the Borg interior shots as a reference the entire inside of the vessel seems to be a huge void, which begs the question of where the technology like vinculums and the cone shaped core we see on First Contact are?
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Power Usage[]
"the vessel saves a great deal of power which is re-routed in-to other more vital systems such as weapons and shields"Speculation based on observation, never seen a turbo lift or staircase in a borg ship so they obviously save power which allows them to put it in-to every other system and it's more efficient anyway which the Borg are all for however as the power source for a Borg vessel is a complete mystery the need to save power is questionable.
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Cutting Beam[]
"The beam is however unable to penetrate newly developed armor designed to disperse particle weapons such as Ablative Armor."
It was the most logical assumption and is also well-based, ablative armour can resist phasers, then lasers will be useless against it. It was also the only reason I could think of why we've never seen the cutting beam after DS9, the Borg probably realised it's quicker to assimilate the entire ship than chop it up and assimilate the pieces.
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Exterior conduits and pipes[]
" conduits which act like blood vessels and capillaries"
Assumption and speculation based upon the well-founded establishment that the Borg use elements of organic design in everything they do, makes perfect sense and explains why the strange conduits should be covering the outer surface instead of a smooth chrome armor like other races do.
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Holding Beam and Polaron Beam[]
"Due to the modified and very specific function of the tactical cube - the high energy tractor pulse was removed in favor of protecting additional exterior surface upon the Cube and for additional weapon ports. The tractor pulses function was also found inconsistent with the vessels function to destroy significant threats to the Collective."
This was my explaination for the reason why the tactical cube didn't just lock Voyager in a holding beam and destroy/disable it.
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Thrusters[]
The way I explaned thrusters is once again not strictly proven or stated anywhere but it's the best guess to show why a cube can both move forward and rotate simultaniously, imagine a cube floating on water, which way it rotates depends on the corners you push.