Borg cube

The Borg Cube is a standard ship of the Borg Collective, and is one of the most commonly encountered vessels employed by the Borg. It's power and threat varies depending on what episode it is in.

Structure

Borg Cubes are exactly that-cubes. They seem outwardly composed of many thousands of components haphazardly arranged in a way that just happens to conform to a cubical form. Although many parts of a cube are redundant, there do exist in its construction unique components such as central data transfer nodes that connect the ship and its crew to the greater Collective. These unique non-metameric components represent weaknesses that have been exploited by Federation crews fighting against the Borg. Otherwise, large amounts of damage can be inflicted on a cube without it being rendered totally combat ineffective.

Cubes have no visible engines, weapons emplacements, sensors, shield projectors, or any components at all that are identifiable out of the morass of parts that form their surface.

Combat

Borg Cubes present an omni-directional threat to opposing forces. They are fully optimized to engage in combat from any direction, and any facing can act as a primary weapons battery. Beam weapons, possibly lasers or some type of phaser equivalent, are the only observed offensive weapon of a Cube, although it is not unusual for the Borg to board a ship that they encounter to assimilate its crew. Tractor beams are also in use by the Borg to immobilize enemy ships before they are carved apart with beam weapons.

Defensively, Borg ships are quite adaptable, able to apparently neutralize many frequency based weapons with apparently trivial effort. The exact mechanism by which they neutralize photon torpedoes is still debatable, but it may involve shielding interplay between the weapon and the Cube. Borg ships are still vulnerable to superior firepower, and even many inferior forces can still inflict damage on a cube. Despite using weapons which the Borg had had ample opportunity to study and neutralize, a Federation task force still managed to destroy a cube in Star Trek: First Contact.