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The drones are able to adapt to energy weapons, but what about kinetic weapons like bullets or rail guns?

Alarion
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Brandon Wray
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  • I've edited your question to hopefully clarify it and make it more on topic. You can revert my edits if you don't agree with my revisions. – Alarion Jan 21 '20 at 02:58
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    Only example that I can think of is in First Contact on the Holodeck where Picard turns the safety features off and uses a holographic machine gun against a drone – SpacePhoenix Jan 21 '20 at 07:07
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    Not very well, according to "Star Trek: First Contact" when Picard lured Borg drones into the Holodeck, disabled its safeties, and killed them with holographic bullets. – Remy Lebeau Jan 21 '20 at 07:07
  • Remy. Yes, but it’s been shown it takes 5-6 phaser shots (and dead drones) before they adapt to them when they alternate the frequencies. The Tommy Gun instance was we unpredictable and happen really fast. They would have probably adapted their shield generators to compensate soon afterward. – user76329 Jan 21 '20 at 12:13
  • Projectile weapons are something they probably encounter infrequently. (1) Any species technologically advanced enough to counter their ships will probably not use projectile weapons, (2) any species not advanced enough to counter their ships won't pose any threat to them. They can just transport a drone in behind each person on the target ship and zap them all, without a shot being fired. –  Jan 21 '20 at 19:34
  • Consider this, Federation ships lob great gobs of Photon and Quantum Torpedos into Borg ships, which have explosive warheads, and the Borg hardly seem to bat an eye. I don't see any reason Drone shields couldn't adapt to stop bullets. The only reason Picard was able to gun two drones was because they haven't adapted yet. Also consider Picard had to unload a whole clip into those two drones before they went down, while a single phaser shot takes them out otherwise (before they adapt). – triclon Jan 22 '20 at 06:29

2 Answers2

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This depends on how you define adapt and also depends on what shields in Star Trek would actually do to projectile weapons since I do not recall projectile weapons ever being used against shields

Presumably a shield would vaporize a projectile which would still be deadly to the drone behind the shield and no shield adaptation could change this

However Borg have some kind of armor what this is made of currently is somewhat weak but the Borg could most likely alter the armor material to protect against projectiles which technically is adapting this presumes that Borg would deign to adapt to such a primitive form of attack

Revenant
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  • Can you explain what you mean by "vaporize a projectile which would still be deadly"? That seems somewhat self-contradictory. – DavidW Jan 22 '20 at 04:15
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    Oh, and a shield doesn't need to vaporize a projectile; it would seem much easier to redirect it. You might even call that something like a "deflector." – DavidW Jan 22 '20 at 04:17
  • @David A vaporized projectile is vapor moving at the same speed as the projectile this would eventually cause damage and death if slightly slower than an actual bullet, As to deflection it is a matter of power requirements while an energy shield can conceivably cancel an energy attack with very little power usage redirecting matter would be much more energy intensive its doubtful a drone would have the onboard energy capacity to deflect a great many projectiles – Revenant Jan 22 '20 at 04:35
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Haven't seen anything canon, but common sense would seem to suggest they would. The drones themselves produce a force field that blocks energy weapons fire, so it seems to reason they would just change the frequency until it stopped the projectiles.

Ham Sandwich
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user76329
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