You're forgetting that Janeway is back in the alpha quadrant in this period. Just give her a runabout and a couple of phasers and she'll take down that Borg cube no probs!
@@VestedUTuber I'll pass on the whole Delta Flyer idea and just go with a Galaxy class prototype that can go toe to toe with the borg using it's own technology against it.
They send one cube to assimilate. If it gets beat, they know they have a worthy civilization to go after, so they send another cube to push the civilization to develop to develop more tech that they will some day assimilate. Their version of winning is not to destroy, but to basically farm us for better and better tech.
Yes, exactly. The Federation was never at risk of being assimilated/destroyed by the Borgs as they were bound to be wiped, 10yrs after Picard met them, by species 8472, and Q knew it. What Q wanted was for Picard to understand the Borgs, so that he could one day work with them, and for Janeway to save them, so that there would still be Borgs to work with. The knowledge used by the doctor to create his biologic weapon against 8472 was acquired due to Q's involvement, otherwise Voyager's crew would have had no records of the Borgs except for the disconnected colony. Instead they got there with the results of years of studies by the best scientifics of all the worlds of the Federation, more than enough to do what had to be done. These records influenced Janeway's decision to attempt to work with them, she speci
Given the cube's ability for automated repair, I am more inclined to believe they would attempt an all-out assault on the cube rather than attacking in waves.
I agree. It would be a war of attrition. The borg's ability to self-repair versus the combined fleets would win over time... unless the borg have a limit on what-ever they'd need. To reach that assumed limit would be "costly". INHO, the borg would initially send one cube as a 'reconnaissance'. I wonder what affect something exiting warp IN the cube would do? Timing and aiming would be a challenge.
@@brianj.841 The show indicates accuracy of exiting warp is high (battle fleets travelling together, Picard maneuver) but I think it has shown that objects at warp can't travel through objects. If the show took the approach that objects at warp could pass through other objects then come to a stop inside, I would expect them to be fused similar to transporter accidents, not an explosion from 2 objects occupying the same space. It does create an interesting battle tactic - a massive number of autonomous objects consisting of just a warp core passing through the area the enemy ship is located, exploding on impact with off the charts energy (from momentum), or circling for another pass if it misses... but that would make battle scenes boring (no beam weapons, just lots of autonomous objects travelling at warp speed until they run into something).
@@brianj.841 Could be recoverable if they don't make contact, warp engines can come in smaller packages (shuttles, torpedo in Voyager, I think the Romulans have a warp capable torpedo), they're a lot cheaper than a warship. A thumbnail calc would indicate it is millions of time more powerful than a beam weapon - you would expect that 1 strike would obliterate a targeted ship.
I would seriously question why the Cardassians are even there, given their lower technology base and that after the Dominion War, they barely have a military to speak of and will have had to have focused hard on just rebuilding their homeworld. Hell, asking them to come to aid the Dominion would be a hard ask, given that it was the Dominion who burned their cities to the ground and attempted to exterminate their people after using them as cannon fodder.
I think it realistic for them to send a token force, as a sign of goodwill. Also, there is a chance to snag some tech floating around in space, or for their intelligence agency (obsidian order?) to make some contacts. They wouldn't have to fight in the front lines. Say, join the back line as a hospital ship, supply runner, harassment squad.
i was really hoping that would happen, but it wouldnt work. like the borg couldnt borg them. i dont want startrek to go the grey goo rout, its been done to death.
@@Mate397 it's not canon (but neither is the war depicted in THIS video) but a DS9 novel, a borg drone tried to do it and the changeling channled/moved all the probes that were injected into it into a ball and crushed them, somehow stopping it.
Or worse... the Great Link's will is greater than the Borg's, and they come to dominate the Collective. The Borg are scary but they don't hold grudges.
I strongly believe that a battle would not be drawn out into multiple engagements. Even with upgraded technology, the Federation fleet cannot match the repair and recovery rate of the Borg. Thus by breaking the engagement into multiple sections, you keep attacking an almost full power borg cube. Also, we have seen multiple instances where cubes have delayed engaging the enemy to go into recovery mode. A better strategy is to utilise the wealth of knowledge of borg ship anatomy with the new weapons. Instead of surrounding the cube, the alliance fleet would most likely have a combined front where they would attempt to knock out a singular shield generator. This would allow them to beam torpedos into the critical locations on the cube. Even if the Borg saves some of its critical components to continue the fight, the damage would be too severe. Another strategy would be to approach a Borg ship in it's damaged/recovery mode with an old undesirable ship and quickly beam aboard explosives. The knowledge the federation has on Borg layout is their biggest weakness.
Also a forgotten technique is to lure a cube into a transwarp hole, and then detonate a charge inside to destabilize it thus destroying any ships inside it which get spewed out in the other end as spinning junk debris
I think in TNG FC the starships mobbed the cube ever which way but loose with a monster whiplash several times and preventing and slow the Borg cube down and changing shield nutations constantly making it not to go to warp
I think the Romulans would want in on this conflict. The Ferengi would safeguard the supply lines because there has to be some rule about what costs can be incurred in order to avoid losing everything.
You may not be a millionaire Lore, however you managed to create a Federation starship fleet better than in Picard season 1. Man, let's start a petition to get you Kurtzman's job. Great work, as always 😉🖖
California-Class are not automatically a coward. They are simply not combat rated. They are not much better than Oberth class. It is a treat to see a California Class in this video but rationally, the ship would never have been included in this mission except to side-quest to maybe speak to the Founders or function as a rescue vessel to get people out of harm's way during the battle with the Borg Cube.
I suspect that the Oberth Class is about as combat rated as the TOS era constitution class. Which is plenty for second contact and purely scientific missions within federation space, but definitely not enough for combat scenarios TNG-era onwards. I suspect the California class has superior shielding to the Oberth, but like the (prerefit) Constitution class would take between 1 and 2 hours to initiate General Order 24. (Which the prerefit Enterprise has threatened to do in multiple episodes) Since starfleet is known for fielding Oberth class ships when caught off guard, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a California class do the same during the first or second relay point. And unlike an Oberth, I think they would have the warp factor to escape after getting a shot or three in. www.ditl.org/fleet-weapons.php?Race=fed&ListID=Fleets
Can't say I could help you a lot Lore, but I would be all in to see you dive into animations. It would bring these hypothetical battles to a whole new level.
it's a bit unfortunate that the Borg are always coming at them with a single cube. they clearly have plenty of ability to overwhelm alpha/beta quadrant races if they just decided it was priority enough. It makes the events of first contact seem so silly.
Very major ST plothole which I cannot stand 😔 Though there might be some logic in that: sending one cube as "let's see what happen", sending another one to assess how much enemy's technology progressed, its learning curve and potential and how much of a threat it is/can be in the future overall, only then coming in full force of deemed a potential serious threat.
Man if Janeway doesnt show up for no other reason but for a quick quip and wipe out a wing of cubes I'd be disappointed. Also great job as always, cant wait to see what else you cook up.
For my Star Trek Online Liberated Borg character, I had the Borg actually 'raiding' the Dominion. The Borg analyzed a full invasion would cost too much until enough adaptation could take place. How they got to this point is the Borg started to have 'officer' Borg to allow more creative thinking. Jemhadar breading sites, Dominion tech sites, Vorta cloning sites, and a few others were randomly attacked and assimilated, but the Borg left with what they got. The Federation, Klingons, and a Romulan faction sent ships to help advise the Dominion, but fortunately for them the Borg attacks seemed to be ending. A few years before this, my character was assimilated from a pre cadet field trip, along with other Starfleet personal and pre cadets on their ship, a Klingon ship that was stalking them, and the Romulans onboard the Borg enhanced ship whose mayday after an accident brought everyone together. One Borg cube in the Dominion space had several of the drones from that incident onboard, and was disabled during a battle with the Jemhadar, but not disabled by them. The Dominion never told the others what was going on in that system. The 'officer' drones, freed from the collective for a brief moment, instantly liberated the cube and called for rescue. My character can only recall from the last moments before being liberated that the Dominion had obtained some very advance technology from an ancient race, and it must have drawn something else to it that managed to disable the cube before reclaiming the tech. All Dominion ships were destroyed. Liberated Borg characters now went to each faction for the game. A small hint of the Iconians was missed.
@@ghostlypresence5362 you know I don't believe so. Arrogance is mostly of a biological except for vulcans. They're more calculating being mostly technological. They simply would adapt and if it requires more ships I believe that's what would happen IMO
Or they have a different goal. If your goal is to add "biological and technological diversity" to your collective, anything after a Wolf 359 is just gravy. A cube probably isn't a full scale invasion, but rather a raid.
Wow lore. You actually did it. This looks very impressive and can say that you've put a lot of effort. Thanks for putting all of this effort into a video for us.
Can't really adapt to kinetic energy except with stronger shields, something the Borg have likely thought of. Just a matter of who has more power Borg Shields or a Jem Hadar ship with E=mc2 x Warp 8 powering its inertia
@@athrunzala6919 I dont think that's how that works. As I recall the warp bubble they create means the ship isnt actually moving so therefore no momentum.
First, this isn't a 'war' between the Dominion and the Borg. It's a war between the entire alpha, beta, and gamma quadrants and the Borg, so your premise of a Dominion-Borg war isn't represented here. That said, I personally think the Borg would mop the floor with the Dominion. They didn't declare war on earth and one cube nearly wiped us out. Twice. The only 'war' the Borg ever fought was against species 8472. Everything else was just steps taken to assimilate other species and technologies. If they thought of it as an actual war, they wouldn't send just ONE cube. They'd send a dozen tactical cubes with smaller tactical support spheres. They have assimilated the military experience and strategies of thousands of species. If the Borg ever actually declared war with a species other than 8472, it would be like watching a tent try to withstand a hurricane. The Borg are a force of nature. The concerns of individual minds are literally irrelevant to them. Beneath their notice. If there is a flaw or weak spot to the Borg it's that without individuals confronting and creating solutions to challenges they will never grow. If you follow their logic to its end, the assimilation of all species, they will stagnate without new species to assimilate. They rely on individualistic species to do the creative thinking for them. The only logical solution would be for the Borg to break down the hive mind so it's not in complete hegemonic control over all Borg all the time. Since that is their only real weakness, I don't think it can be exploited to create defensive tactics against them. It requires extremely long timelines to affect. The Dominion being in a more weakened state after their last war wouldn't be able to field enough military might to stop the Borg of they were to REALLY come for them. All it would take is for the Borg to assimilate one Vorta, one JemHaddar, one changeling, and the war would be practically over. The Borg would know everything there is to know about Dominion technology, be able to adapt to it, and suddenly nothing can affect their cubes anymore. It's possible they'd figure out how to rotate weapon frequencies the way Starfleet ships did to keep the Borg from adapting but even that will eventually fail. There is one possibility that could give the Dominion an advantage. If they implemented some sort of biological and/or technological virus like the Enterprise and others came up with but actually used them. We've seen the Borg cut off cubes, sacrifice entire fleets, to save the whole. Something like that might back them off until they've adapted, which could but the Dominion time to try something else and so on. The Dominion has an impressive military but their most effective tool of conquest and warfare is their shape-shifting. They use it to infiltrate, sabotage, collect intelligence, spy, etc. This would be useless against the Borg, effectively eliminating the Dominion's biggest and most effective tool. That alone would put it solely in the realm of military might and the Borg would outclass them considerably. So there is just no way the Dominion can win and very slim chance they could put up a fight for very long.
“An ant has no quarrel with a boot.” - Loki. I think the dominion alone COULD take out one cube. Send the largest ships in to kamikaze. But the borg wouldn't care and would just send 3 cubes to assimilate the whole dominion. I think the borg would have interest in the Jemhaddar and how they are "made". And how the Vorta save knowledge with a save button and can reupload it to clones.
Good points. It is needless to let a weakened Dominion fight the Borg, for our war both parties should be at the top of their game. Further I don´t think that the Borg could assimilate changelings, just like they couldn´t assimilate species 8472. What do we have - let´s say hundreds of cubes and thousands of little support ships on the Borg side and maybe a hundred thousand Dominion ships. The Borg tech is superior but the Dominion is not inherently weaker than say the Federation, so we can be optimistic that they could come up with innovative bio-weapons and computer viruses. All in all the battle might be lost for the Dominion but it will cost the Borg a great deal and I am not sure if there will be any life forms left to assimilate for the Borg. In the end the Gamma quadrant might be a dead zone and the Borg might be seriously weakened for a long time.
@@jimbeam4736 One of the Deep Space nine books had the Defiant allowed to do scientific research in the Gamma Quadrant as long as they avoided Dominion space. They came across a crashed Dominion ship that was the result of the Dominion and Borg meeting right before Species 8472 attacked. There was a changeling on board and a reanimated drone tried to assimilate her only for her to condense herself and the nanoprobes down so she expelled them in a little ball.
@@tigerlilly4712 Sounds plausible and as changelings don´t have blood or organs or DNA or a nervous system or a brain, I don´t think how the Borg would ever assimilate them. Changelings even have their own hive mind - the great link and it is even possible that they transform into spaceships that might kill off Borg vessels and planets, much like Species 8472. Even if not, they could modify the genetic code of all gamma quadrant species so that they could not be assimilated or infiltrate/disrupt the Borg network if doing so.
@@jimbeam4736 That's a lot of speculation. I think the Borg would simply destroy them if they couldn't assimilate them. Their technology is not particularly advanced, and genetic manipulation techniques of the Dominion were not so advanced; they just had no scruples in deploying them against other species.
i'm under the impression that Admiral Janeway and her pocket full of advanced futuristic ship and weapon designs would render short work of a borg incursion.
0:00 Intro 0:25 Dominion-Borg War 1:32 We Are The Borg 2:24 Fan-Funded Full Battle? 4:07 The Initial Confrontation 6:05 Fall of Battle Group One 8:47 Conclusion of the First Borg Battle 9:45 Vorta Strategy 10:34 Delta Quadrant Conduit En Route To ????
The thing is though: This is only one cube. We know that the Borg, while often stupid enough to think one will do the trick, could most possibly send a fleet of cubes. Talking 50-100 cubes. Then it really is game over for the Dominion. They would never be able to produce enough ships and Jem Hadar to kill all of the Borg, even with allied support.
That was my thought too. However, as you alluded to, in the shows/films we only ever see the Borg attack the UFP with one cube at a time, this being despite the vast fleets we see in Voyager. Thus it may be the case that the Borg have some unexplained but logical reason to operate in the manner that they do. For example, their existing territory and surrounding space in the Delta Quadrant may provide them with sufficient resources to make a large scale invasion of the Alpha, Beta or Gamma Quadrants insufficiently profitable. Or maybe the Borg aren't in fact as powerful as they appear and are more like WW2 era Germany and Japan, seemingly extremely advanced militaries capable of tactically overwhelming their enemies but lacking the necessary logistical and strategic strength to win a war. Or possibly they just don't care enough to commit more, after all their stated goal is to add to their Collective not to conquer new territory and resources. Then again they may just be stupid.
though, the dominion do seem to have an advantage there. The Borg do not birth/breed/produce more drones, they only get them from assimilation (except the borg nursery in Q-who and the episode "one" from Voyager which was an accident of seven's nanoprobes. The former of which we never saw them do again and seven specifically said "the borg do not resproduce, which is contradicted by Q-who- unelss they assmiliated a baby) The dominion can produce as many Jem'Hadar and Vorta as they want, though it wasn't enough to win the dominion war.
@@thesnare100 my understanding of the scene in Q-who was that it was Starfleet misinterpreting a Borg maturation chamber, like the Voyager episode with the assimilated children, as a nursery, as they didn't yet know about assimilation. Also, during the Dominion War the Dominion forces were cut of from their logical base in the Gamma Quadran leaving them only the resources of the Cardassians (famously resource poor), Breen (joined war late) , conquered UFP territory (unreliable, vulnerable and likely prone to sabotage) and what they could bring through the wormhole early on and yet they still almost won, that suggests a frankly terrifying military industrial capacity.
There is a theory that since the Federation is so resourceful in finding ways to defeat them, that the Borg do not mass invade so that they can learn from the Federations tactics thereby improve upon themselves even if they lose a cube every time. Once the Federation finally succumbs to a single cube, the Borg will have gotten everything they could possibly learn from humans and will come out better than if they just assimilated from the start.
@@LoreReloaded the animations are pretty impressive and it's a good topic to cover - always wanted to see how the Dominion would do against the Collective. One idea is that maybe they enlist the help of another faction (the Breen Confederacy perhaps?)
I think the most interesting area of this story arch would be how the federation alliance handles suddenly becoming the guarantors of Cardassia’s independence as needing to protect them from the Borg. Especially as the Cardassians become increasingly frustrated with their status as the Federations ward and having updated shields and weapons kept from them due to the previous hostilities. I’d also be interested to see if the Jem-hada (or however its spelt) can become drones or if their addiction to ketamine white would just kill them after a little while or the Borg would decide their addiction disqualifies them as potential Borg.
Two thoughts: 1) Terran Empire vs The Borg. (Would the Borg be different in the Mirror Universe?) 2) Oufitting ships with NX-01 grappling hooks and pulling a Borg cube apart. (Silly idea, but would be fun to watch.)
I feel like the Jem'Hadar warship ramming the Cube in the initial encounter should have done a lot more damage, but c'est la vie. Another thing is that the Dominion are utterly ruthless, and it will take a lot more than Odo to get them to see the Jem'Hadar as anything other than expendable assets. We know that Dominion transporters can penetrate shields, and they have a much longer effective range than Starfleet's ones, so a potentially viable tactic would be to transport Jem'Hadar suicide bomber commandos aboard an incoming Borg ship. If the Jem'Hadar can avoid detection by shrouding, then they can spread explosives over more of the Borg ship before detonating. Even if they immediately attract attention, then they just blow themselves up. Any internal damage they cause will (at worst) serve as a distraction, and should soften the Borg ship up at least a little. If they can get their bombers to the right places aboard a Borg ship, they might be able to cause crippling damage before the actual space battle even starts. Set it up so the instant a Jem'Hadar gets any Borg nanoprobes in his system, he explodes. Can't risk the Borg learning anything from assimilating even one Jem'Hadar after all. An all out war between them... depends on what resources the Borg choose to pile on. From what we've seen of them, except when they're on the defensive like against the Undine (Species 8472), the Borg seem to send out the bare minimum they expect to do the job. If you can't fend off a Cube, you get assimilated. If you defeat the first Cube by trickery, the next attempt will still be one Cube, which won't fall for the same trick and you'll probably get assimilated. If you defeated the first Cube with superior technology, then the next attempt will be two Cubes, or three Cubes. We've never seen them employ overkill. It's just not efficient apparently.
There are no particular weak spots for suicide bombers. Besides borg subspace fields are a different asset than standard issue shields. Lets give that they could transport in 4 times before they are locked away. The design of borg ships do not allow for critical damage to specific parts.
Brilliance of the Cardassian design is the big phaser/disrupter crystal at the front of the ship; special effect team doesn't have to make sure that beams come out of one, specific pinpoint spot.
@@athrunzala6919 Plot immunity and first version of the borg are far more scary then the shit we got later. If original writers were still there we'd have a very different outcome for the borg. Plus a cube is for conversion not fighting. Borg use different ships for that purpose and to think 1 borg ship not even built for combat defeated 300+ federation ships in their first real encounter.. Imagine what would happen if the borg go from we want you to join us to Fuck yall we just gonna kill you.
@@meyatetana2973 According to the last episode of Voyager there is a Borg transwarp corridor right at Earths doorstep. The Borg could have mass invaded anytime they wanted bit never did.
At the first encounter they lost but "softened" the Borg cube. By the time the Borg encounter them the second time they would have adapted and the "softened" cube would have repaired itself and made improvements.
Outstanding video. I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat throughout period If I Was A Millionaire I would definitely find you to make a thousand videos. Once again absolutely outstanding and very well-thought-out. You have a friend in Columbus Ohio!
Happy you took some of our ideas from that early morning stream. I think the Dominion and the alliance would start to come up with different strategies similar to what we see in some of your what if videos. Such using the phase cloak to phase a ship into the cube and destroy it from the inside. Using Brean bio weapons. Section 31 would come up with a doomsday weapon at some point. And so on the war would go, because the Federation would be the ones to realize you can't use the same tactic twice to beat the Borg. Yet the alliance would ultimately win do to the Borg not being able to think and plan ahead. What was it a coronal once said, "give me an hour I'm good, give me a day I'm great, give 8 months I'm unbeatable." Hannibal Smith
I really don’t think one Borg cube would hold out long against an alliance of this type. In fact the dominion wouldn’t need an alliance at all for the reason stated: Suicide runs. Klingons would have less trouble as well.
Good stuff. The one thing that I never understand when it comes to the Borg are the orders given and received. "You have been ordered to..." and "We will comply". Ordering another Borg ship to do something would be like me ordering my legs to walk and waiting on them to respond. The way they describe the hive mind, every Borg and every Borg ship should be controlled on a subconscious level. The queen wants something to happen and it just does. Like me reaching for my drink without any thought about it. I know it's for theatrics but I wish they would make sense of it.
Given how slow the Federation is to adapt at times, the relative speed they used in compensating for Dominion polaron beams tells me the Borg would adapt faster than they do against Federation phasers. But, a Breen energy drain weapon might just wreak havoc given that Borg tech is really just an amalgamation of other technologies.
The cost to do it appropriately would be pretty astronomical. Most companies pay about 1k per animated minute when it’s finished. Animation alone would be multi thousands. This episode was kind of a pilot and testing of the waters . If enough people like it, I’ll try to use my contacts at full sail and others to see what kind of deals I can make and on the cheap, if I was going to do it, it would likely be an hour cut into smaller segments to make it cheaper
_The Award For Hilarious Use Of The USS Cerritos In A Space Battle Battle goes to:_ Well, Star Trek: Lower Decks, but *Lore definitely gets the next spot on the podium.* Effing. Brilliant. Nice backstory to this one, Mr. Lore. I'll have to check out your earlier Lore, also, when I'm not Avenging Politics, too ~¿ô
MOAR DOMINION-BORG WAR!!! But in all honesty, we really liked this! Good start to what we hope will be a long standing series! Our money's on the Borg, even in a Post Dominion War Era. It's hard to take down even one cube... but once the Borg figured out the Dominion meant business... they too would start stepping up their game! The Borg may lose here and there but every loss still ends up teaching them something. Every drone that dies makes the next drone that much stronger!
It would be cool if Sisko and DS9 got involved. Poor Sisko never really got a chance to get any revenge on The Borg after Wolf359. I was surprised they never did a Borg one off episode for DS9, maybe The Defiant and some Jem Hadar could have made a temporary truce to deal with a Borg sphere scouting Dominion territory. Keep somewhat small in scale.
They were going to but Voyager got it and I dont think ds9 needed the Borg, they had the dominion and before that the cardassians plus run ins with the Klingons.
None of this would matter. The Borg spent hundreds if not thousands of cubes fighting Species 8472. A handful of cubes to any of our homeworlds would be a game over senerio.
Great work. I think it would be easy for the borg to defeat the dominion. If the federation could overcome the dominion's advanced tech, the borg defo could
Lol What? All the Dominion would have to do is have tons of Gem H Dar in ships and kamikaze the cube and its over. Also, the founders are liquid, the borg couldn't assimilate them.
So I guess the Federation is not bringing the future Admiral Janeway transphasic torpedoes to the table, but saving those for last stand when the Borg decide to bring more than one cube to the battle.
From my point of view, the Dominion would be technologically outmatched by the Borg. From when we first witnessed Dominion military technology until the end of the Dominion War, there had been two new developments: The construction of the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought and the installation of Breen Energy Dampeners. The Borg would adapt very quickly to the second one - maybe even have the solution at hand already from assimilated federation or klingon officers/databases. The first one would be a step back when fighting the Borg: Having fewer, but bigger ships increases the risk of being boarded, and thus, taken over and it reduces the chance of a succesfull suicide run, since they are slower and not as maneuverable as Jem'Hadar Fighters. That shows us that the Dominion has issues to adapt to new threats. They just try to flood the enemy with manpower and firepower. The federation learned that that doesn't work after the Battle of Wolf 359. The Dominion likely has yet to recover from their losses in the Dominion War - thousands of ships went down from the first wave and the 2800 that disappeared in the wormhole were probably also hurtful. And since they ruled for a long time in the Gamma Quadrant without any major pushback, they likely didn't have the production capabilities in the Gamma Quadrant either. Another issue is, that Dominion Ships are limited to Warp 8. So the Borg not only could surprise them with hidden transwarp conduits, but also outrun them easily with conventional propulsion systems, thus, dictating the fights. The Dominon can't just place a thousand ships at every shipyard, Jem'Hadar breeding facility and whatever infrastructure they had. The Borg don't need to fight their amassed fleets, but just destroy the infrastructure needed to reproduce those fleets. And when they're done with that, flooding the enemy with masses of ships becomes an unsustainable strategy. And that the Dominion does not have smart military strategists became apparant, when they had to put a Cardassian officer in charge of all Dominion forces in the Alpha Quadrant during the war with the Federation Alliance. So, TL;DR: The Dominion has inferior technology, can't adapt easily and can't make up for that with strategy. Their only hope is to benefit from the experience the federation made and the technology they can provide - and I would hardly describe destroying two cubes under immense casualties can be called a resounding success.
This appears to be only the screen cannon of the Star Trek Universe. I like to use the ST Online additions. In it, the Federation has gotten MAD buffs from all the data and tech Voyager brought back. Now a ship like the Enterprise can go 1v1 against a standard cube and expect to win. Also because of what future Janeway did the Borg have been set back a bit and are only regaining their footing after 30 years. However because the Borg got their hands on both a 8472 corpse AND ship, courtesy of the Hirogen, 8472 weapons are no longer as effective against the Borg. So much so that they successfully invaded fluidic space.
8:06 - In your opinion about the Borg's weakness, I will tell you what their weakness is: They always send ONE ship. While they have definitely a lot more at their disposal. As seen in the war against Species 8472.
They would call on Picards tactics to concentrate fire on a single point. They would use his inside knowledge to formulate new attack strategies as well as equip ships with the ablative hull tech that Janeway gave the Voyager then brought back to the federation via some temporal shenanigins. It can be equipped in short order as well so could technically be shared with other members of the fleet in preparation. There is no such thing as 'softening up' a borg cube. If you give it time to recouperate, it will come back stronger having fully regenerated, analyzed and adapted to your strategies and weapons, you make it dead, then continue shooting till its constituent parts are dust lest there be a borg with a transmitter that can send fragments of information to assist future incursions or survive to rebuild and contact the greater hive. Evidence suggests that if you can destroy them fast enough, they cannot adapt.
For all we know, The Borg could have assimilated factions even more powerful than The Dominion. Given what we have seen, it doesn't seem to be too crazy of a theory. The fact that we have seen them on the losing end so many times, may create doubts about their strength. I would argue that every powerful being or group (like The Borg), has their "achilles heal", which happened to be the smaller and weaker Federation and for a time Species 847 "we need ratings"2......I would put a dollar and a cent on The Borg over The Dominion 9 out of ten times....I also think that if The Dominion were more powerful than The Borg, The Federation would have again been warned by Q who secretly cheers and rigs the game for The Federation and Starfleet to endure.......Finally, it would only require the assimilation of a few Jem Hadar and Vorta to unlock the secrets of Dominion Technology. No amount of "Homeworld Relocations" would save the Founders from being sniffed out to be assimilated or eliminated. I highly doubt that The Borg, in it's vast history of conquest, have never experienced other alliances rotating and upgrading weapons and shields "on the fly" to squeeze out a victory....Power for Power can always be matched, but their can be no substitute for speed and efficiency....The Borg can do several things at once (Like Get Smarter) while engaged in battle. While all other known powers have to regroup, assess, and plan, The Borg are always in a state of advancement and even require battles to get them closer to "perfection" which is why they are such a nightmare for all. I would classify them as more of a PLAGUE than an enemy. Unless you uproot them, it only takes time for one drone to become millions of drones and vessels. The question should be how many cubes it would take to win if they are sent one by one to Dominion Space......They are locusts on a galactic level
Well, in a simulated timeline in STO they actually managed to assimilate T'ket, an _ICONIAN._ And in the main timeline they did eventually figure out how to assimilate Species 8472 - though it didn't really work out that well even then, the specimen was killed and the cube was destroyed before it could report back (don't even ask me how that happened). Honestly, though, the one big issue in regards to assimilating the Founders is their physiology. They're kinda, well... incompatible with Borg nanites, they could literally just filter them out of their bodies and destroy them. If anything, the Borg would most likely either exterminate the founders or ignore them and focus on the less... liquid... species of the Dominion, depending on if whoever's writing the Borg wants to portray them more as focused on achieving perfection or as a giant swarm of alien locusts.
@@VestedUTuber Of course, the Changelings don't need to be assimilated; they can just be destroyed. Their technology is not particularly impressive and certainly could be assimilated. Their use of genetics to enslave other races is a question of a total lack of morals outside their own species, not fantastically advanced genetic like 8472.
One aspect of the conflict I think could be viable but may never talked about is the dominion using boarding techniques to take a cube as they may never win in a space battle without incurring significant losses. The Jem'hadar are excellent soldiers in hand to hand fighting. They could (assuming a Dominion-Federation alliance) use armour equipped ships to get in close and transport soldiers onto the Cube or ram the ship then board it. Using intelligence from Voyager, they could figure out where the central plexus is or could otherwise disable the ship and sever their connection to the Borg; thus neutralizing the ship without having to destroy it. The Jem'hadar are genetically bread to require a drug to survive, making them unworthy of assimilation (detract from perfection). The founders may be able to alter the genetic make up of the Jem'hadar to make them more effective for this war, plus they can breed soldiers to be come effective very quickly. These advantages could make the Dominion one of the few serious threats to the Borg. Finally, with the vast territory the Dominion holds in the Gamma quadrant, they could loose lots of territory buying them time to adapt and seriously fight the Borg. Either way, this would be a great thing to see on screen; however, given the state of CBS and what they are currently putting out, I will not hold my breath.
I feel like the Dominion is a bit like the Federation in regards to this - they'd be able to continuously beat back the continuous streams of lone cubes that are typical of early Borg probing but would struggle against a full onslaught. With Federation assistance, though, it could possibly push the Borg to the point of sending in the big guns - tactical cubes and Unimatrix Command Ships (the big V'Jer-lookin' ships from STO).
Shape shifters can be fog fire metal hell itd only take one shifter to get to the central nexus... Game over. "The Dominion can transport just about through anything"... Dax
I humbly suggest that the Federation, Dominion, Klingons, and Romulans might employ the tactics of the famed military strategist "LEEEEEERRRROOYYYYYY JEEEENNNKKIINNNNSSSS!) Great work by the way, Lore Reloaded!
All we've seen of the Borg is advanced exploratory cubes picking the easy low hanging fruit. What has not been encountered yet is the Borg Wall which undoubtedly exist at the expanding borders of their empire.
I think the best weapon against the board would be an unmanned vessel, perhaps made for this purpose, ramming it at high speed if not warp speed. They could put an end to any Borg encounter really quick.
I don't know if you will consider this in your analysis, but it would be amazing if one breakdown did include Defiant class starships in swarms using wolf pack tactics like so many have discussed.
2373-2375: Fed/Romulan/Klingon/Dominion War. By 2375 and the war ending all sides have lost aprox. 60-70% of their space/ground military assets. Civilian losses come to approx 30% (estimating). By any measure these losses are STAGGERING. The Federation Member Worlds are exhausted from the war and any diplomatic capital Starfleet had is more than likely expended. Likewise Rom/Klingon Empires would be in similar positions. 2376: Rebuilding begins. With Starfleet having to put out numerous brushfire wars/skirmishes at various points in and around its territory (The Sona, Gorn, Tholians etc). 2377: Dominion coreward colonies begin falling silent (this is the first indication that the Borg have detected the Dominions weakness). Dominion Jem'Hadar battlegroups are sent to investigate. Within weeks 2 of 3 battlegroups are lost (the borg simply attacked and destroyed these 3 ship groups) The 3rd group send a distress call before being assimilated. The Dominion now know. At this same time the assimilated colonists/outposts/civilian vessels that were assimilated WEEKS earlier are also spreading the Borg expansion within Dominion space. With few ships/resources (but plenty of Jem"hadar- they can be bred within days) the Dominion decide on delaying tactics and send THOUSANDS of soldiers on transports to stem the tide (I am sure you can see what is about to occur). One MONTH passes and the Borg have seized 1/5 of Dominion space. Desperate the Dominion decide on a scorched planet policy (they ARE ruthless after all) while at the same time sending diplomats through the Wormhole to the Federation to inform the Alpha/Beta Quadrants of events. However The Federation already know (Starfleet Intel) and efforts are being made to gather support for an expedition to the Gamma Quadrant to aid the Dominion. Ok so here goes, 1- How much political will would there be within the Fed to aid the Dominion after TWO YEARS of war that killed BILLIONS ? 2- Realistically how many ships could the Fed/Rom/Klingons muster after less than 2 years of rebuilding ? 3- How quick would Starfleet be to MINE the Wormhole with the most devastating weapons it had in its arsenal (tri-cobalt devices, subspace mines, red matter explosives etc) ? 4- And finally with the Borg in your scenario having acquired adaptive shielding and in my opinion (having played STO for a long time) they would also have modulating plasma/cutting/shield drain beams, regenerative shields (yes even better than they had before), ablative armour improved transporters (Dominion range- anywhere up to 1-5 lighyear range- see DS9), Warp 9.99 in normal space, Having adapted already to Dominion polaron weaponry, Janeways trick of using transphasic weapons/deployable ablative hull armour wont work (what one Borg knows they all do) Opinions ?
I always thought it was a crazy missed opportunity for making the Borg even more dangerous that the Borg attacked, destroyed, and assimilated ships and outposts from the Klingons and Romulans, but never utilized cloaking technology. Cloaked Borg ships appearing and attacking sounds like nightmarishly bad news and could've made for a pretty interesting plot device.
You're forgetting that Janeway is back in the alpha quadrant in this period. Just give her a runabout and a couple of phasers and she'll take down that Borg cube no probs!
Or give an STO player character a Delta Flier and their choice of weaponry and they'll solo the cube without breaking a sweat.
Don't forget transphasic torpedoes
Lmfao
@@stavinaircaeruleum2275 LMAO I read it as "transphobic" torpedoes.
@@VestedUTuber I'll pass on the whole Delta Flyer idea and just go with a Galaxy class prototype that can go toe to toe with the borg using it's own technology against it.
They send one cube to assimilate. If it gets beat, they know they have a worthy civilization to go after, so they send another cube to push the civilization to develop to develop more tech that they will some day assimilate. Their version of winning is not to destroy, but to basically farm us for better and better tech.
Yes, exactly.
The Federation was never at risk of being assimilated/destroyed by the Borgs as they were bound to be wiped, 10yrs after Picard met them, by species 8472, and Q knew it.
What Q wanted was for Picard to understand the Borgs, so that he could one day work with them, and for Janeway to save them, so that there would still be Borgs to work with.
The knowledge used by the doctor to create his biologic weapon against 8472 was acquired due to Q's involvement, otherwise Voyager's crew would have had no records of the Borgs except for the disconnected colony.
Instead they got there with the results of years of studies by the best scientifics of all the worlds of the Federation, more than enough to do what had to be done.
These records influenced Janeway's decision to attempt to work with them, she speci
Love how the California class, just was like: "nope, I ain't dying" and just ran for it's life.
It is cannon right in the opening credits scene for the lower decks.
Lol, I know, but at least it's not made out of explodium like Oberths
Came in, PEW PEW PEW. And NOPE'd right out.
@@salixalba6536 Canon. It's not a gun!
@@DMSProduktions internet spelling defies grammar critics
I would definitely fund a bigger entire fan breakdown of this
Me too
I would chip in a few quid.
Given the cube's ability for automated repair, I am more inclined to believe they would attempt an all-out assault on the cube rather than attacking in waves.
I agree. It would be a war of attrition. The borg's ability to self-repair versus the combined fleets would win over time... unless the borg have a limit on what-ever they'd need. To reach that assumed limit would be "costly".
INHO, the borg would initially send one cube as a 'reconnaissance'.
I wonder what affect something exiting warp IN the cube would do? Timing and aiming would be a challenge.
@@brianj.841 The show indicates accuracy of exiting warp is high (battle fleets travelling together, Picard maneuver) but I think it has shown that objects at warp can't travel through objects. If the show took the approach that objects at warp could pass through other objects then come to a stop inside, I would expect them to be fused similar to transporter accidents, not an explosion from 2 objects occupying the same space.
It does create an interesting battle tactic - a massive number of autonomous objects consisting of just a warp core passing through the area the enemy ship is located, exploding on impact with off the charts energy (from momentum), or circling for another pass if it misses... but that would make battle scenes boring (no beam weapons, just lots of autonomous objects travelling at warp speed until they run into something).
@@1SCme I suspect such physical torpedoes would be expensive. As for cinematic tension, no worse than WW2 naval.
@@brianj.841 Could be recoverable if they don't make contact, warp engines can come in smaller packages (shuttles, torpedo in Voyager, I think the Romulans have a warp capable torpedo), they're a lot cheaper than a warship. A thumbnail calc would indicate it is millions of time more powerful than a beam weapon - you would expect that 1 strike would obliterate a targeted ship.
@@1SCme True.
I would seriously question why the Cardassians are even there, given their lower technology base and that after the Dominion War, they barely have a military to speak of and will have had to have focused hard on just rebuilding their homeworld. Hell, asking them to come to aid the Dominion would be a hard ask, given that it was the Dominion who burned their cities to the ground and attempted to exterminate their people after using them as cannon fodder.
Each of their ships counts as a couple hundred meters worth of armour plating for an actually useful ship.
@@ethicsgradient2525 LOL!
IKR! a hard ask
I think it realistic for them to send a token force, as a sign of goodwill. Also, there is a chance to snag some tech floating around in space, or for their intelligence agency (obsidian order?) to make some contacts.
They wouldn't have to fight in the front lines. Say, join the back line as a hospital ship, supply runner, harassment squad.
Kanye invited them
Most horrifying outcome to a war like this: The founders do, somehow, get borgified and you have a wireless techno version of the Great Link.
i was really hoping that would happen, but it wouldnt work. like the borg couldnt borg them. i dont want startrek to go the grey goo rout, its been done to death.
Can nano probes infest an ever changing goo creature?
@@Mate397 it's not canon (but neither is the war depicted in THIS video) but a DS9 novel, a borg drone tried to do it and the changeling channled/moved all the probes that were injected into it into a ball and crushed them, somehow stopping it.
@@thesnare100 ooooooh! that's interesting to know.
Or worse... the Great Link's will is greater than the Borg's, and they come to dominate the Collective. The Borg are scary but they don't hold grudges.
Ah hah.. the USS Cerritos and a Mcmahon class ship? Very clever
I strongly believe that a battle would not be drawn out into multiple engagements. Even with upgraded technology, the Federation fleet cannot match the repair and recovery rate of the Borg. Thus by breaking the engagement into multiple sections, you keep attacking an almost full power borg cube. Also, we have seen multiple instances where cubes have delayed engaging the enemy to go into recovery mode.
A better strategy is to utilise the wealth of knowledge of borg ship anatomy with the new weapons. Instead of surrounding the cube, the alliance fleet would most likely have a combined front where they would attempt to knock out a singular shield generator. This would allow them to beam torpedos into the critical locations on the cube. Even if the Borg saves some of its critical components to continue the fight, the damage would be too severe. Another strategy would be to approach a Borg ship in it's damaged/recovery mode with an old undesirable ship and quickly beam aboard explosives. The knowledge the federation has on Borg layout is their biggest weakness.
The battle of sector 001 (first contact ) was
Also a forgotten technique is to lure a cube into a transwarp hole, and then detonate a charge inside to destabilize it thus destroying any ships inside it which get spewed out in the other end as spinning junk debris
I think in TNG FC the starships mobbed the cube ever which way but loose with a monster whiplash several times and preventing and slow the Borg cube down and changing shield nutations constantly making it not to go to warp
Good work guys!
I think the Romulans would want in on this conflict. The Ferengi would safeguard the supply lines because there has to be some rule about what costs can be incurred in order to avoid losing everything.
You may not be a millionaire Lore, however you managed to create a Federation starship fleet better than in Picard season 1. Man, let's start a petition to get you Kurtzman's job. Great work, as always 😉🖖
Wasnt it German trekkie?
Excellent work! (12 January 2021)
A major issue to consider: Federation's destroyed top-notch ships as a source of technology for reverse-engineering/tactical analysis for the Deminion
California-Class are not automatically a coward. They are simply not combat rated. They are not much better than Oberth class. It is a treat to see a California Class in this video but rationally, the ship would never have been included in this mission except to side-quest to maybe speak to the Founders or function as a rescue vessel to get people out of harm's way during the battle with the Borg Cube.
I suspect that the Oberth Class is about as combat rated as the TOS era constitution class. Which is plenty for second contact and purely scientific missions within federation space, but definitely not enough for combat scenarios TNG-era onwards. I suspect the California class has superior shielding to the Oberth, but like the (prerefit) Constitution class would take between 1 and 2 hours to initiate General Order 24. (Which the prerefit Enterprise has threatened to do in multiple episodes) Since starfleet is known for fielding Oberth class ships when caught off guard, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a California class do the same during the first or second relay point. And unlike an Oberth, I think they would have the warp factor to escape after getting a shot or three in.
www.ditl.org/fleet-weapons.php?Race=fed&ListID=Fleets
Or as a support ship to the front line fighters.
All hands on deck bro
Can't say I could help you a lot Lore, but I would be all in to see you dive into animations. It would bring these hypothetical battles to a whole new level.
it's a bit unfortunate that the Borg are always coming at them with a single cube. they clearly have plenty of ability to overwhelm alpha/beta quadrant races if they just decided it was priority enough. It makes the events of first contact seem so silly.
Very major ST plothole which I cannot stand 😔 Though there might be some logic in that: sending one cube as "let's see what happen", sending another one to assess how much enemy's technology progressed, its learning curve and potential and how much of a threat it is/can be in the future overall, only then coming in full force of deemed a potential serious threat.
@@IcekPanNaPolin like when dealing with Species 8472
Story fixes the plot hole
@@raymondsims537 How so? I don't remember any on-screen explicit explanation.
Ment star trek online
Stupid autocorrect
The Borg's greatest weakness is that despite their ability to adapt they have absolutely no capacity for innovation.
ahhh the Zapp Brannigan strategy: use their own preset kill limits against them...
Is it weird that I read part of that in Zaps voice?
Kiff - have the boy lay out my Borg shorts.
@@olyrhys8724 whos the boy?
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongey and bruised."
@@aredub1847 You! You're the boy!
Man if Janeway doesnt show up for no other reason but for a quick quip and wipe out a wing of cubes I'd be disappointed. Also great job as always, cant wait to see what else you cook up.
The Admiralty would tell her no more coffee til the Borg are gone.
@@khartog01 "Orders from Starfleet HQ. The replicators cannot make coffee until the Borg are defeated."
"You have awoken a sleeping giant..."
For my Star Trek Online Liberated Borg character, I had the Borg actually 'raiding' the Dominion. The Borg analyzed a full invasion would cost too much until enough adaptation could take place. How they got to this point is the Borg started to have 'officer' Borg to allow more creative thinking. Jemhadar breading sites, Dominion tech sites, Vorta cloning sites, and a few others were randomly attacked and assimilated, but the Borg left with what they got. The Federation, Klingons, and a Romulan faction sent ships to help advise the Dominion, but fortunately for them the Borg attacks seemed to be ending.
A few years before this, my character was assimilated from a pre cadet field trip, along with other Starfleet personal and pre cadets on their ship, a Klingon ship that was stalking them, and the Romulans onboard the Borg enhanced ship whose mayday after an accident brought everyone together.
One Borg cube in the Dominion space had several of the drones from that incident onboard, and was disabled during a battle with the Jemhadar, but not disabled by them. The Dominion never told the others what was going on in that system. The 'officer' drones, freed from the collective for a brief moment, instantly liberated the cube and called for rescue. My character can only recall from the last moments before being liberated that the Dominion had obtained some very advance technology from an ancient race, and it must have drawn something else to it that managed to disable the cube before reclaiming the tech. All Dominion ships were destroyed. Liberated Borg characters now went to each faction for the game. A small hint of the Iconians was missed.
As always it was a pleasure working with you
You did a good job!
I dont think the borg would continue to send just one cube into a fight that involved the alpha quadrant races after its continuous defeats to them.
Despite being supposedly free of such traits, I think the Borg were arrogant enough to continue
@@ghostlypresence5362 you know I don't believe so. Arrogance is mostly of a biological except for vulcans. They're more calculating being mostly technological. They simply would adapt and if it requires more ships I believe that's what would happen IMO
@@JamaicanMeCrazy 👍
Or they have a different goal. If your goal is to add "biological and technological diversity" to your collective, anything after a Wolf 359 is just gravy.
A cube probably isn't a full scale invasion, but rather a raid.
Wow lore. You actually did it. This looks very impressive and can say that you've put a lot of effort. Thanks for putting all of this effort into a video for us.
As far as I know German trekkie made the animation though
Dominion: warp speed ramming for the easy win
Can't really adapt to kinetic energy except with stronger shields, something the Borg have likely thought of. Just a matter of who has more power Borg Shields or a
Jem Hadar ship with E=mc2 x Warp 8 powering its inertia
@@athrunzala6919 I dont think that's how that works. As I recall the warp bubble they create means the ship isnt actually moving so therefore no momentum.
A Dominion battleship at full impulse, with the warp reactor set blow about 15-20 seconds after initial impact, would probably get the job done
High warp. With a load of extra antimatter for sparkle effects.
Ah, the Vice Admiral Holdo Maneuver.
Very effective against Snokes.
First, this isn't a 'war' between the Dominion and the Borg. It's a war between the entire alpha, beta, and gamma quadrants and the Borg, so your premise of a Dominion-Borg war isn't represented here. That said, I personally think the Borg would mop the floor with the Dominion. They didn't declare war on earth and one cube nearly wiped us out. Twice. The only 'war' the Borg ever fought was against species 8472. Everything else was just steps taken to assimilate other species and technologies. If they thought of it as an actual war, they wouldn't send just ONE cube. They'd send a dozen tactical cubes with smaller tactical support spheres. They have assimilated the military experience and strategies of thousands of species. If the Borg ever actually declared war with a species other than 8472, it would be like watching a tent try to withstand a hurricane. The Borg are a force of nature. The concerns of individual minds are literally irrelevant to them. Beneath their notice. If there is a flaw or weak spot to the Borg it's that without individuals confronting and creating solutions to challenges they will never grow. If you follow their logic to its end, the assimilation of all species, they will stagnate without new species to assimilate. They rely on individualistic species to do the creative thinking for them. The only logical solution would be for the Borg to break down the hive mind so it's not in complete hegemonic control over all Borg all the time. Since that is their only real weakness, I don't think it can be exploited to create defensive tactics against them. It requires extremely long timelines to affect. The Dominion being in a more weakened state after their last war wouldn't be able to field enough military might to stop the Borg of they were to REALLY come for them. All it would take is for the Borg to assimilate one Vorta, one JemHaddar, one changeling, and the war would be practically over. The Borg would know everything there is to know about Dominion technology, be able to adapt to it, and suddenly nothing can affect their cubes anymore. It's possible they'd figure out how to rotate weapon frequencies the way Starfleet ships did to keep the Borg from adapting but even that will eventually fail. There is one possibility that could give the Dominion an advantage. If they implemented some sort of biological and/or technological virus like the Enterprise and others came up with but actually used them. We've seen the Borg cut off cubes, sacrifice entire fleets, to save the whole. Something like that might back them off until they've adapted, which could but the Dominion time to try something else and so on. The Dominion has an impressive military but their most effective tool of conquest and warfare is their shape-shifting. They use it to infiltrate, sabotage, collect intelligence, spy, etc. This would be useless against the Borg, effectively eliminating the Dominion's biggest and most effective tool. That alone would put it solely in the realm of military might and the Borg would outclass them considerably. So there is just no way the Dominion can win and very slim chance they could put up a fight for very long.
“An ant has no quarrel with a boot.” - Loki. I think the dominion alone COULD take out one cube. Send the largest ships in to kamikaze. But the borg wouldn't care and would just send 3 cubes to assimilate the whole dominion. I think the borg would have interest in the Jemhaddar and how they are "made". And how the Vorta save knowledge with a save button and can reupload it to clones.
Good points. It is needless to let a weakened Dominion fight the Borg, for our war both parties should be at the top of their game. Further I don´t think that the Borg could assimilate changelings, just like they couldn´t assimilate species 8472. What do we have - let´s say hundreds of cubes and thousands of little support ships on the Borg side and maybe a hundred thousand Dominion ships. The Borg tech is superior but the Dominion is not inherently weaker than say the Federation, so we can be optimistic that they could come up with innovative bio-weapons and computer viruses. All in all the battle might be lost for the Dominion but it will cost the Borg a great deal and I am not sure if there will be any life forms left to assimilate for the Borg. In the end the Gamma quadrant might be a dead zone and the Borg might be seriously weakened for a long time.
@@jimbeam4736 One of the Deep Space nine books had the Defiant allowed to do scientific research in the Gamma Quadrant as long as they avoided Dominion space. They came across a crashed Dominion ship that was the result of the Dominion and Borg meeting right before Species 8472 attacked. There was a changeling on board and a reanimated drone tried to assimilate her only for her to condense herself and the nanoprobes down so she expelled them in a little ball.
@@tigerlilly4712 Sounds plausible and as changelings don´t have blood or organs or DNA or a nervous system or a brain, I don´t think how the Borg would ever assimilate them. Changelings even have their own hive mind - the great link and it is even possible that they transform into spaceships that might kill off Borg vessels and planets, much like Species 8472. Even if not, they could modify the genetic code of all gamma quadrant species so that they could not be assimilated or infiltrate/disrupt the Borg network if doing so.
@@jimbeam4736 That's a lot of speculation. I think the Borg would simply destroy them if they couldn't assimilate them. Their technology is not particularly advanced, and genetic manipulation techniques of the Dominion were not so advanced; they just had no scruples in deploying them against other species.
i'm under the impression that Admiral Janeway and her pocket full of advanced futuristic ship and weapon designs would render short work of a borg incursion.
0:00 Intro
0:25 Dominion-Borg War
1:32 We Are The Borg
2:24 Fan-Funded Full Battle?
4:07 The Initial Confrontation
6:05 Fall of Battle Group One
8:47 Conclusion of the First Borg Battle
9:45 Vorta Strategy
10:34 Delta Quadrant Conduit En Route To ????
YES WE WANT TO SEE THE ENTIRE WAR!!!
Sorry, just really excited. I would love to see this fully fleshed out 😃
Stay tuned :) big announcements
Time for Romulans to share data / information / tech taken from Borg cube that was recovered.
The dominion does have genetically engineered super soldier shock troopers, which is something the feds don't have.
Wow, awesome! I’m all for more of this. I’m happy to fund this endeavor.
For a self produced youtube video yhe graphics were actually pretty cool. Thanks for taking the time to create this.
I think it looks like a fun series to get into. I for one would enjoy seeing it.
Yeah, Star Trek isn't bad...
lol
The thing is though: This is only one cube. We know that the Borg, while often stupid enough to think one will do the trick, could most possibly send a fleet of cubes. Talking 50-100 cubes.
Then it really is game over for the Dominion. They would never be able to produce enough ships and Jem Hadar to kill all of the Borg, even with allied support.
That was my thought too. However, as you alluded to, in the shows/films we only ever see the Borg attack the UFP with one cube at a time, this being despite the vast fleets we see in Voyager. Thus it may be the case that the Borg have some unexplained but logical reason to operate in the manner that they do. For example, their existing territory and surrounding space in the Delta Quadrant may provide them with sufficient resources to make a large scale invasion of the Alpha, Beta or Gamma Quadrants insufficiently profitable. Or maybe the Borg aren't in fact as powerful as they appear and are more like WW2 era Germany and Japan, seemingly extremely advanced militaries capable of tactically overwhelming their enemies but lacking the necessary logistical and strategic strength to win a war. Or possibly they just don't care enough to commit more, after all their stated goal is to add to their Collective not to conquer new territory and resources. Then again they may just be stupid.
though, the dominion do seem to have an advantage there. The Borg do not birth/breed/produce more drones, they only get them from assimilation (except the borg nursery in Q-who and the episode "one" from Voyager which was an accident of seven's nanoprobes. The former of which we never saw them do again and seven specifically said "the borg do not resproduce, which is contradicted by Q-who- unelss they assmiliated a baby) The dominion can produce as many Jem'Hadar and Vorta as they want, though it wasn't enough to win the dominion war.
@@thesnare100 my understanding of the scene in Q-who was that it was Starfleet misinterpreting a Borg maturation chamber, like the Voyager episode with the assimilated children, as a nursery, as they didn't yet know about assimilation. Also, during the Dominion War the Dominion forces were cut of from their logical base in the Gamma Quadran leaving them only the resources of the Cardassians (famously resource poor), Breen (joined war late) , conquered UFP territory (unreliable, vulnerable and likely prone to sabotage) and what they could bring through the wormhole early on and yet they still almost won, that suggests a frankly terrifying military industrial capacity.
There is a theory that since the Federation is so resourceful in finding ways to defeat them, that the Borg do not mass invade so that they can learn from the Federations tactics thereby improve upon themselves even if they lose a cube every time.
Once the Federation finally succumbs to a single cube, the Borg will have gotten everything they could possibly learn from humans and will come out better than if they just assimilated from the start.
@@WizelBalan Now THAT is one good theory. Never thought about it that way.
Really cool! I'd love to see more of this
Glad you enjoyed
@@LoreReloaded the animations are pretty impressive and it's a good topic to cover - always wanted to see how the Dominion would do against the Collective. One idea is that maybe they enlist the help of another faction (the Breen Confederacy perhaps?)
I think the most interesting area of this story arch would be how the federation alliance handles suddenly becoming the guarantors of Cardassia’s independence as needing to protect them from the Borg. Especially as the Cardassians become increasingly frustrated with their status as the Federations ward and having updated shields and weapons kept from them due to the previous hostilities.
I’d also be interested to see if the Jem-hada (or however its spelt) can become drones or if their addiction to ketamine white would just kill them after a little while or the Borg would decide their addiction disqualifies them as potential Borg.
Ketamine White would be an interesting drug. The Jem Hadar be flipping out and killing the Vortas and Founders.
Yeah would love to see more of a battle. I never really thought about this scenario. It's very interesting!
Great video, I really enjoy watching,,, please keep them coming.
Two thoughts:
1) Terran Empire vs The Borg. (Would the Borg be different in the Mirror Universe?)
2) Oufitting ships with NX-01 grappling hooks and pulling a Borg cube apart. (Silly idea, but would be fun to watch.)
I feel like the Jem'Hadar warship ramming the Cube in the initial encounter should have done a lot more damage, but c'est la vie.
Another thing is that the Dominion are utterly ruthless, and it will take a lot more than Odo to get them to see the Jem'Hadar as anything other than expendable assets. We know that Dominion transporters can penetrate shields, and they have a much longer effective range than Starfleet's ones, so a potentially viable tactic would be to transport Jem'Hadar suicide bomber commandos aboard an incoming Borg ship. If the Jem'Hadar can avoid detection by shrouding, then they can spread explosives over more of the Borg ship before detonating. Even if they immediately attract attention, then they just blow themselves up. Any internal damage they cause will (at worst) serve as a distraction, and should soften the Borg ship up at least a little. If they can get their bombers to the right places aboard a Borg ship, they might be able to cause crippling damage before the actual space battle even starts. Set it up so the instant a Jem'Hadar gets any Borg nanoprobes in his system, he explodes. Can't risk the Borg learning anything from assimilating even one Jem'Hadar after all.
An all out war between them... depends on what resources the Borg choose to pile on. From what we've seen of them, except when they're on the defensive like against the Undine (Species 8472), the Borg seem to send out the bare minimum they expect to do the job. If you can't fend off a Cube, you get assimilated. If you defeat the first Cube by trickery, the next attempt will still be one Cube, which won't fall for the same trick and you'll probably get assimilated. If you defeated the first Cube with superior technology, then the next attempt will be two Cubes, or three Cubes. We've never seen them employ overkill. It's just not efficient apparently.
There are no particular weak spots for suicide bombers. Besides borg subspace fields are a different asset than standard issue shields.
Lets give that they could transport in 4 times before they are locked away.
The design of borg ships do not allow for critical damage to specific parts.
@@sigurdrr1015 Except in Voyager ;)
The caught me off guard. It just appeared in my list. First time I had a good suggestion in a long time.
That was very good, thank you.
Heck yes, I'd love to see a full Dominion-Borg War!
4:53 Never was clear on those "Subspace Feilds" and what they did. They seemed very effective.
Brilliance of the Cardassian design is the big phaser/disrupter crystal at the front of the ship; special effect team doesn't have to make sure that beams come out of one, specific pinpoint spot.
Borg would just call in massive reinforcement end of the line for the Dominion.
Then why didn't they do that for the Federation?
@@athrunzala6919 because that would have ended the TV show.
@@athrunzala6919 Plot immunity and first version of the borg are far more scary then the shit we got later. If original writers were still there we'd have a very different outcome for the borg. Plus a cube is for conversion not fighting. Borg use different ships for that purpose and to think 1 borg ship not even built for combat defeated 300+ federation ships in their first real encounter.. Imagine what would happen if the borg go from we want you to join us to Fuck yall we just gonna kill you.
@@meyatetana2973 According to the last episode of Voyager there is a Borg transwarp corridor right at Earths doorstep. The Borg could have mass invaded anytime they wanted bit never did.
I want more of this! Can't believe I missed this upload when it went up!
At the first encounter they lost but "softened" the Borg cube. By the time the Borg encounter them the second time they would have adapted and the "softened" cube would have repaired itself and made improvements.
Thanks for the work you put into channel.
Outstanding video. I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat throughout period If I Was A Millionaire I would definitely find you to make a thousand videos. Once again absolutely outstanding and very well-thought-out. You have a friend in Columbus Ohio!
I’m subscribing for your animation skill alone. Keep it up man
More of these animations. Your Trek imaginations are right on and I really like them. Best Trek channel out there.
Happy you took some of our ideas from that early morning stream. I think the Dominion and the alliance would start to come up with different strategies similar to what we see in some of your what if videos. Such using the phase cloak to phase a ship into the cube and destroy it from the inside. Using Brean bio weapons. Section 31 would come up with a doomsday weapon at some point. And so on the war would go, because the Federation would be the ones to realize you can't use the same tactic twice to beat the Borg. Yet the alliance would ultimately win do to the Borg not being able to think and plan ahead. What was it a coronal once said, "give me an hour I'm good, give me a day I'm great, give 8 months I'm unbeatable." Hannibal Smith
Who love something like your what if the Dominian won series.
This was bluddy awesome!!!!!!
I really don’t think one Borg cube would hold out long against an alliance of this type. In fact the dominion wouldn’t need an alliance at all for the reason stated:
Suicide runs.
Klingons would have less trouble as well.
Good stuff. The one thing that I never understand when it comes to the Borg are the orders given and received. "You have been ordered to..." and "We will comply". Ordering another Borg ship to do something would be like me ordering my legs to walk and waiting on them to respond. The way they describe the hive mind, every Borg and every Borg ship should be controlled on a subconscious level. The queen wants something to happen and it just does. Like me reaching for my drink without any thought about it. I know it's for theatrics but I wish they would make sense of it.
Given how slow the Federation is to adapt at times, the relative speed they used in compensating for Dominion polaron beams tells me the Borg would adapt faster than they do against Federation phasers. But, a Breen energy drain weapon might just wreak havoc given that Borg tech is really just an amalgamation of other technologies.
I like the detail of ships entering and leaving warp in the same order
I Loved this. Definitely expand on this. Consider this subscribed
Real question. How much would it cost you to do a full hour long battle? 30 cubes vs 100s if not thousands of alpha quadrant ships? Rough estimate???
The cost to do it appropriately would be pretty astronomical. Most companies pay about 1k per animated minute when it’s finished. Animation alone would be multi thousands. This episode was kind of a pilot and testing of the waters . If enough people like it, I’ll try to use my contacts at full sail and others to see what kind of deals I can make and on the cheap, if I was going to do it, it would likely be an hour cut into smaller segments to make it cheaper
_The Award For Hilarious Use Of The USS Cerritos In A Space Battle Battle goes to:_
Well, Star Trek: Lower Decks, but *Lore definitely gets the next spot on the podium.*
Effing. Brilliant.
Nice backstory to this one, Mr. Lore. I'll have to check out your earlier Lore, also, when I'm not Avenging Politics, too ~¿ô
Sadly no one but you and I will get the reference here... for now
MOAR DOMINION-BORG WAR!!!
But in all honesty, we really liked this! Good start to what we hope will be a long standing series!
Our money's on the Borg, even in a Post Dominion War Era. It's hard to take down even one cube... but once the Borg figured out the Dominion meant business... they too would start stepping up their game! The Borg may lose here and there but every loss still ends up teaching them something. Every drone that dies makes the next drone that much stronger!
It would be cool if Sisko and DS9 got involved. Poor Sisko never really got a chance to get any revenge on The Borg after Wolf359. I was surprised they never did a Borg one off episode for DS9, maybe The Defiant and some Jem Hadar could have made a temporary truce to deal with a Borg sphere scouting Dominion territory. Keep somewhat small in scale.
They were going to but Voyager got it and I dont think ds9 needed the Borg, they had the dominion and before that the cardassians plus run ins with the Klingons.
None of this would matter. The Borg spent hundreds if not thousands of cubes fighting Species 8472. A handful of cubes to any of our homeworlds would be a game over senerio.
Great work. I think it would be easy for the borg to defeat the dominion. If the federation could overcome the dominion's advanced tech, the borg defo could
Lol What? All the Dominion would have to do is have tons of Gem H Dar in ships and kamikaze the cube and its over. Also, the founders are liquid, the borg couldn't assimilate them.
for low budget graphics, i still really enjoyed this. gjgj.
For 10k my friend, I’ll give you trekyards quality :p
So I guess the Federation is not bringing the future Admiral Janeway transphasic torpedoes to the table, but saving those for last stand when the Borg decide to bring more than one cube to the battle.
I doubt it.. The borg already adapted to the tech when they scan the future shuttle craft in the last episode.
From my point of view, the Dominion would be technologically outmatched by the Borg.
From when we first witnessed Dominion military technology until the end of the Dominion War, there had been two new developments: The construction of the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought and the installation of Breen Energy Dampeners. The Borg would adapt very quickly to the second one - maybe even have the solution at hand already from assimilated federation or klingon officers/databases. The first one would be a step back when fighting the Borg: Having fewer, but bigger ships increases the risk of being boarded, and thus, taken over and it reduces the chance of a succesfull suicide run, since they are slower and not as maneuverable as Jem'Hadar Fighters.
That shows us that the Dominion has issues to adapt to new threats. They just try to flood the enemy with manpower and firepower. The federation learned that that doesn't work after the Battle of Wolf 359. The Dominion likely has yet to recover from their losses in the Dominion War - thousands of ships went down from the first wave and the 2800 that disappeared in the wormhole were probably also hurtful. And since they ruled for a long time in the Gamma Quadrant without any major pushback, they likely didn't have the production capabilities in the Gamma Quadrant either.
Another issue is, that Dominion Ships are limited to Warp 8. So the Borg not only could surprise them with hidden transwarp conduits, but also outrun them easily with conventional propulsion systems, thus, dictating the fights. The Dominon can't just place a thousand ships at every shipyard, Jem'Hadar breeding facility and whatever infrastructure they had. The Borg don't need to fight their amassed fleets, but just destroy the infrastructure needed to reproduce those fleets. And when they're done with that, flooding the enemy with masses of ships becomes an unsustainable strategy. And that the Dominion does not have smart military strategists became apparant, when they had to put a Cardassian officer in charge of all Dominion forces in the Alpha Quadrant during the war with the Federation Alliance.
So, TL;DR: The Dominion has inferior technology, can't adapt easily and can't make up for that with strategy. Their only hope is to benefit from the experience the federation made and the technology they can provide - and I would hardly describe destroying two cubes under immense casualties can be called a resounding success.
This appears to be only the screen cannon of the Star Trek Universe. I like to use the ST Online additions. In it, the Federation has gotten MAD buffs from all the data and tech Voyager brought back. Now a ship like the Enterprise can go 1v1 against a standard cube and expect to win. Also because of what future Janeway did the Borg have been set back a bit and are only regaining their footing after 30 years. However because the Borg got their hands on both a 8472 corpse AND ship, courtesy of the Hirogen, 8472 weapons are no longer as effective against the Borg. So much so that they successfully invaded fluidic space.
Correct, I only use alpha canon - or that found on screen. Beta canon can be a lot of fun though and often finds it way to alpha canon
8:06 - In your opinion about the Borg's weakness, I will tell you what their weakness is: They always send ONE ship. While they have definitely a lot more at their disposal. As seen in the war against Species 8472.
I appreciate your videos
They would call on Picards tactics to concentrate fire on a single point. They would use his inside knowledge to formulate new attack strategies as well as equip ships with the ablative hull tech that Janeway gave the Voyager then brought back to the federation via some temporal shenanigins. It can be equipped in short order as well so could technically be shared with other members of the fleet in preparation.
There is no such thing as 'softening up' a borg cube. If you give it time to recouperate, it will come back stronger having fully regenerated, analyzed and adapted to your strategies and weapons, you make it dead, then continue shooting till its constituent parts are dust lest there be a borg with a transmitter that can send fragments of information to assist future incursions or survive to rebuild and contact the greater hive. Evidence suggests that if you can destroy them fast enough, they cannot adapt.
For all we know, The Borg could have assimilated factions even more powerful than The Dominion. Given what we have seen, it doesn't seem to be too crazy of a theory. The fact that we have seen them on the losing end so many times, may create doubts about their strength. I would argue that every powerful being or group (like The Borg), has their "achilles heal", which happened to be the smaller and weaker Federation and for a time Species 847 "we need ratings"2......I would put a dollar and a cent on The Borg over The Dominion 9 out of ten times....I also think that if The Dominion were more powerful than The Borg, The Federation would have again been warned by Q who secretly cheers and rigs the game for The Federation and Starfleet to endure.......Finally, it would only require the assimilation of a few Jem Hadar and Vorta to unlock the secrets of Dominion Technology. No amount of "Homeworld Relocations" would save the Founders from being sniffed out to be assimilated or eliminated. I highly doubt that The Borg, in it's vast history of conquest, have never experienced other alliances rotating and upgrading weapons and shields "on the fly" to squeeze out a victory....Power for Power can always be matched, but their can be no substitute for speed and efficiency....The Borg can do several things at once (Like Get Smarter) while engaged in battle. While all other known powers have to regroup, assess, and plan, The Borg are always in a state of advancement and even require battles to get them closer to "perfection" which is why they are such a nightmare for all. I would classify them as more of a PLAGUE than an enemy. Unless you uproot them, it only takes time for one drone to become millions of drones and vessels. The question should be how many cubes it would take to win if they are sent one by one to Dominion Space......They are locusts on a galactic level
Well, in a simulated timeline in STO they actually managed to assimilate T'ket, an _ICONIAN._ And in the main timeline they did eventually figure out how to assimilate Species 8472 - though it didn't really work out that well even then, the specimen was killed and the cube was destroyed before it could report back (don't even ask me how that happened).
Honestly, though, the one big issue in regards to assimilating the Founders is their physiology. They're kinda, well... incompatible with Borg nanites, they could literally just filter them out of their bodies and destroy them. If anything, the Borg would most likely either exterminate the founders or ignore them and focus on the less... liquid... species of the Dominion, depending on if whoever's writing the Borg wants to portray them more as focused on achieving perfection or as a giant swarm of alien locusts.
@@VestedUTuber Of course, the Changelings don't need to be assimilated; they can just be destroyed. Their technology is not particularly impressive and certainly could be assimilated.
Their use of genetics to enslave other races is a question of a total lack of morals outside their own species, not fantastically advanced genetic like 8472.
A whole animated battle? are you kidding Lore Reloaded? Of course, I'd wanna see something like that.
Lore voicing the Borg. Well done on everything guys!
One aspect of the conflict I think could be viable but may never talked about is the dominion using boarding techniques to take a cube as they may never win in a space battle without incurring significant losses. The Jem'hadar are excellent soldiers in hand to hand fighting. They could (assuming a Dominion-Federation alliance) use armour equipped ships to get in close and transport soldiers onto the Cube or ram the ship then board it. Using intelligence from Voyager, they could figure out where the central plexus is or could otherwise disable the ship and sever their connection to the Borg; thus neutralizing the ship without having to destroy it.
The Jem'hadar are genetically bread to require a drug to survive, making them unworthy of assimilation (detract from perfection). The founders may be able to alter the genetic make up of the Jem'hadar to make them more effective for this war, plus they can breed soldiers to be come effective very quickly. These advantages could make the Dominion one of the few serious threats to the Borg. Finally, with the vast territory the Dominion holds in the Gamma quadrant, they could loose lots of territory buying them time to adapt and seriously fight the Borg. Either way, this would be a great thing to see on screen; however, given the state of CBS and what they are currently putting out, I will not hold my breath.
Give us the entire war! Sadly, I have no money, but I would LOVE to see this!
Wouldn't rotating shield and weapons modulation/frequency prove effective against them and with much less casualties to the fleet?
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!!!
Yes. I will support this for sure.
Title Dominion vs Borg in actuality Everyone vs the Borg.
I feel like the Dominion is a bit like the Federation in regards to this - they'd be able to continuously beat back the continuous streams of lone cubes that are typical of early Borg probing but would struggle against a full onslaught. With Federation assistance, though, it could possibly push the Borg to the point of sending in the big guns - tactical cubes and Unimatrix Command Ships (the big V'Jer-lookin' ships from STO).
Maybe the borg would go back to the past to prevent the formation of the alliance?
Shape shifters can be fog fire metal hell itd only take one shifter to get to the central nexus... Game over. "The Dominion can transport just about through anything"... Dax
Please please please please do a full length video I will happily donate to such an amazing cause!
I’m glad to see the vorta maintained their confidence despite the first loss to the dominion ever :)
Personally I think the Romulan ships would be more survivable than the Klingons
I humbly suggest that the Federation, Dominion, Klingons, and Romulans might employ the tactics of the famed military strategist "LEEEEEERRRROOYYYYYY JEEEENNNKKIINNNNSSSS!) Great work by the way, Lore Reloaded!
Thank you for making an awesome video
All we've seen of the Borg is advanced exploratory cubes picking the easy low hanging fruit. What has not been encountered yet is the Borg Wall which undoubtedly exist at the expanding borders of their empire.
I think the best weapon against the board would be an unmanned vessel, perhaps made for this purpose, ramming it at high speed if not warp speed. They could put an end to any Borg encounter really quick.
Hell yeah, you've outdone yourself.
Ya i gotta see more of this.
I don't know if you will consider this in your analysis, but it would be amazing if one breakdown did include Defiant class starships in swarms using wolf pack tactics like so many have discussed.
2373-2375: Fed/Romulan/Klingon/Dominion War. By 2375 and the war ending all sides have lost aprox. 60-70% of their space/ground military assets.
Civilian losses come to approx 30% (estimating).
By any measure these losses are STAGGERING.
The Federation Member Worlds are exhausted from the war and any diplomatic capital Starfleet had is more than likely expended.
Likewise Rom/Klingon Empires would be in similar positions.
2376: Rebuilding begins. With Starfleet having to put out numerous brushfire wars/skirmishes at various points in and around its territory (The Sona, Gorn, Tholians etc).
2377: Dominion coreward colonies begin falling silent (this is the first indication that the Borg have detected the Dominions weakness).
Dominion Jem'Hadar battlegroups are sent to investigate. Within weeks 2 of 3 battlegroups are lost (the borg simply attacked and destroyed these 3 ship groups) The 3rd group send a distress call before being assimilated.
The Dominion now know.
At this same time the assimilated colonists/outposts/civilian vessels that were assimilated WEEKS earlier are also spreading the Borg expansion within Dominion space.
With few ships/resources (but plenty of Jem"hadar- they can be bred within days) the Dominion decide on delaying tactics and send THOUSANDS of soldiers on transports to stem the tide (I am sure you can see what is about to occur).
One MONTH passes and the Borg have seized 1/5 of Dominion space.
Desperate the Dominion decide on a scorched planet policy (they ARE ruthless after all) while at the same time sending diplomats through the Wormhole to the Federation to inform the Alpha/Beta Quadrants of events.
However The Federation already know (Starfleet Intel) and efforts are being made to gather support for an expedition to the Gamma Quadrant to aid the Dominion.
Ok so here goes,
1- How much political will would there be within the Fed to aid the Dominion after TWO YEARS of war that killed BILLIONS ?
2- Realistically how many ships could the Fed/Rom/Klingons muster after less than 2 years of rebuilding ?
3- How quick would Starfleet be to MINE the Wormhole with the most devastating weapons it had in its arsenal (tri-cobalt devices, subspace mines, red matter explosives etc) ?
4- And finally with the Borg in your scenario having acquired
adaptive shielding and in my opinion (having played STO for a long time)
they would also have modulating plasma/cutting/shield drain beams,
regenerative shields (yes even better than they had before),
ablative armour
improved transporters (Dominion range- anywhere up to 1-5 lighyear range- see DS9),
Warp 9.99 in normal space,
Having adapted already to Dominion polaron weaponry,
Janeways trick of using transphasic weapons/deployable ablative hull armour wont work (what one Borg knows they all do)
Opinions ?
I can tell that was a Vorta speaking for the Dominion.
After a couple decades of deprecation I'm not convinced the borg are a threat to anybody anymore
What a god, Ramming his ship into the cube to save his crew from assimilation
I liked seeing a Prometheus in there, they don't get a lot of screen time, and they are my favorite ship class. I'd love to see the whole war play out
I always thought it was a crazy missed opportunity for making the Borg even more dangerous that the Borg attacked, destroyed, and assimilated ships and outposts from the Klingons and Romulans, but never utilized cloaking technology.
Cloaked Borg ships appearing and attacking sounds like nightmarishly bad news and could've made for a pretty interesting plot device.