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Borg Cube

A massive, fast and very powerful ship from the Borg. (Q Who?, TNG)

Borg vessels generally appear to follow a very similar design philosophy, with the exception of the single vessel created by the Borg under the direction of the android Lore. All other Borg vessels are cubical, with all onboard systems distributed evenly throughout the ship. The entire vessel is protected by an adaptive shield system that is highly flexible and powerful; once the shields have adapted to a weapon no known force is capable of overcoming them. Starfleet has attempted to shortcut this problem by designing weapons which re-tune after each discharge and these have met with some success, but even so the distribution of systems makes the vessels extremely damage resistant. A Borg cube can function even if 80% of it is destroyed completely; in the Typhon sector battle an entire fleet plus heavy reinforcements succeeded in inflicting damage only to the outer hull of the Borg cube despite continuous heavy attacks over a prolonged period.

Even if the vessels main functions fail due to extensive damage, the nanotechnology-based repair systems can continue to rebuild from a severely damaged hulk. Should members of the crew escape, a single Borg is capable of establishing a collective and spreading outwards from there.

Borg offensive weaponry is as potent as their defensive capacity. Their standard tactic is to use a high energy tractor beam or specialist warp capable energy weapon to drain the shields and disrupt the warp field of a target vessel, then to cut it up into sections with a laser cutting beam. These sections are then taken inside the Borg vessel, where the technology is analysed and then broken down and used in the Borg ship. If the vessel is thought to present a direct threat to the collective then the cutting beam or plasma weapons are used to destroy it once the shields are down.