So I've been playing a little it of Star Trek Online. Mostly I like to watch let's plays of other people playing because I'm 80% interested in the stories and 20% interested in the gameplay.
The Borg always say, "Resistance is futile. Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded."
That's just bad tactics.
If the Borg are out to incorporate the strengths of the cultures they assimilate into their collective, they are REALLY bad at assimilation.
So, species 8472 was encountered in Voyager. I believe it is the first if not only species the Borg every encountered that they could not assimilate. This applies at least 8471 species were assimilated. That doesn't mean they didn't wipe out 8471, they assimilated a bunch of humans but did not wipe out humanity.
Anyway, we are talking around 8000 assimilated cultures. If I could ask the Borg Queen one question would be this.
In your entire history, how many times did you say your resistance is futile spiel and then your victims complied with your request and surrendered without a fight and did not try to flee. Out of 8000 species and probably millions of encounters with individuals, I'd bet it happened fewer times than you could count on one hand. And we are talking a Borg hand with two claws instead of five fingers.
If I could ask two questions, "Of all the things you assimilated from the thousands of species you encountered, have you ever tried assimilating
lying?"
Imagine if they said. "We are the Borg, resistance if futile. We mostly want your ship. If you lower your shields and allow us to board, we will let your crew leave peacefully on escape pods."
Then of course, they don't spare the crew. Eventually their enemies would catch on, but I bet you'd get a few ships that way. But then later they can try a new lie out. The resistance is futile only galvanizes your opposition to fight to the death.
Forget lying. Even saying nothing at all is better than announcing "We are about to assimilate you!"
Especially given an opponent like the Federation. They are so trained to seek peaceful solutions that if there is any ambiguity at all, the Federation cannot fire until the other side is clearly attacking.
Remember in
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 when the bad guys were like . "If you fight us, all of you will die." "If you surrender, most of you will die."
They didn't actually want the pirates to surrender, they
wanted a fight. Goading opponents to fight to death may works for the Klingons or the Romulan Star Empire but the Borg should know better.
I do like in Star Trek Online after facing umpteen hostile Romulan Empire vessels that always start with "Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded." you are later given the dialog option to reply back "You lower
your shields and prepare to be boarded."
The Empire in the original Star Wars trilogy knew better than announce their intentions, even when they had a clear upper hand they didn't gloat. Especially in
Empire Strikes Back. They didn't ask the crew of the
Millenium Falcon to surrender or gloat about hopeless their situation was. If you gloat you are giving your enemy a few seconds to prepare defenses and MAYBE a few extra seconds are all it takes to escape.
Even if you win, a few seconds extra preparation could be the difference losing 90 stormtroopers and losing 100 stormtroopers. Maybe the Empire doesn't care about stormtrooper losses but if the Borg's goal is to assmilate more Borg, I can understand that the Borg are okay sacrificing 50 drones to gain 100 drones but it's feasible that if they had just a smidgeon more element of surprise they could maybe
40 drones to get 100 drones.
