BRAD'S COMMENTS - A BORG REVIEW: Personally, I find the Borg to be the most disturbing among all of the Federation's adversaries in Trek history.  As John DeLancie quipped to Patrick Stewart during the ST:TNG episode in which the Borg first appeared, such formerly impressive threats as the Romulans and Klingons are miniscule compared to the omnivorous Borg, whose legacy supposedly stretches back over "thousands of generations" and whose domain encompasses thousands of star systems.  Perhaps if the Borg were merely tyrannical, as with the shape-shifting Founders and their Dominion, they would not bother me so much.  But the Borg don't just rob you of your freedom, the Borg rob you of your soul, leaching your thoughts and personality of their useful components while simultaneously turning your body into an anonymous waldo for the Collective über-mind that controls the Borg from everywhere, all at once.  In this regard the Borg are far and away more dangerous than the Dominion, or any other Star Trek foe yet seen, and the magnitude of their crimes against the galaxy are so far above and beyond anything within the capabilities of the other Star Trek bad guys as to render the Borg in a class all by themselves.  They are the Milky Way's bona fide Super Power, with the Federation and other nations under constant threat of assimilation into the Collective so long as even a single Borg is left alive, capable of replicating itself and assimilating others.
     In this sense, the Borg might be thought of as 24th century vampires.  They don't just kill you, though they have shown that they are certainly able and willing to perform this service when they are in a hurry.  The Borg want to convert you, turn you inside out, rob you of your identity and your will to resist, feasting on your flesh and blood until you have become like them, and similarly seek to roam the universe robbing other sentient species of their independency and willpower, until whole planets have been swallowed up, processed, and regurgitated in the pattern of the Borg, doing the will of the Collective with little or no memory of what life was like before assimilation.
     When you consider the obscenity and depth of this perversion, and the extent to which the Borg have taken it--literally thousands of intelligent species have been absorbed into the Collective over its millennia-long lifespan--the Borg clearly stand alone as, in the paraphrased words of one Starfleet officer, the closest thing to pure evil the Federation has ever faced.
     The only weakness the Borg seem to possess is that they are accumulators, with little or no capacity for independent innovation.  The Borg increase their knowledge and technological capability, not by synthesis or research or scientific study as we understand it, but by merely absorbing and disseminating the knowledge and capabilities of the various species who fall before the Collective.  An over-reliance on assimilation and the mass thought of the so-called Hive Mind, make the Borg somewhat vulnerable to people and groups capable of quick, independent, often improvisational tactics, which is perhaps the only reason why the Federation and the Alpha Quadrant continue to resist the Borg threat, in spite of the overwhelming numbers and technology the Borg are capable of bringing to bear against whatever species or government they see as being worthy of assimilation.
     Which brings me to one of my main beefs about how the Borg were handled by Star Trek's writers, once they were established late in the second season of ST:TNG.  While gathering information on the Borg from Guinan, Picard learns ominously that the Borg never do anything piecemeal, that when they come, they come in force.  Yet when the Borg do ultimately arrive on the Federation's doorstep, this pithy bit of intelligence seems to have been all but forgotten, as only a single cube invades Federation space, on two occasions, with each singular thrust apparently intended to begin assimilation of the Federation at the seat of Federation power--Earth.
     Given the fact that the Borg possess countless thousands of super-powerful vessels, like the ubiquitous cube, it seems rather un-Borg-like to send only a single cube, vulnerable to a concentrated defensive strike, rather than a sizeable fleet of several tens or even a few hundred cubes.  If the Federation is so attractive to the Borg that the Borg would go out of their way to assimilate the Federation long before the Borg's perpetual border expansion naturally overlaps the Federation frontier, doesn't it make sense that the Borg would load the odds in their favor?  Especially after the first cube is destroyed, and it becomes apparent that the Federation is capable of defeating the Borg; at least on a single-cube basis?  What about the ST:VOY episode "Hope and Fear", wherein one of the final survivors of a technologically advanced species that has been assimilated tells us that his home system was eventually surrounded by "hundreds of cubes" before the end came?  And this was a race apparently quite adept at keeping the Borg at bay, at least until the crew of the USS Voyager inadvertently helped the Borg overcome that race's resistance to the Borg.  So it stands to reason that even a small fleet of cubes could have easily overwhelmed the Federation and Earth defenses on either of the two occasions when the Borg struck into the Alpha Quadrant, and it is never explained to the audience why the Borg would suddenly alter tactics that have worked successfully for thousands of years, against thousands of different enemies.
     The astute Trek fen smells a deus ex machina.  And I'm not referring to Mr. Data.
     I'm also curious as to the evolution of the Borg's man-to-man tactics, and even their physical appearance, from their debut in ST:TNG to their final(?) stage bow in ST:VOY.  The Borg that Picard first encounters are pasty-white, like bloodless cadavers, and show almost no interest whatsoever in the individual people they encounter, whether onboard the Enterprise or onboard the Borg cube.  Later, when Picard himself is assimilated and transformed into Locutus, the actual process of assimilation would appear to be a lengthy one, wherein a single mature subject is slowly converted into a drone over a period of days, or even weeks, through the gradual introduction of Borg bionics and cybernetics, long after the initial merging of the single mind to the Hive Mind has rendered the subject without individual thought or personality.
     By the time of the Borg's second offensive against Federation space, featured in Star Trek: First Contact, things have changed.  Physically, the Borg have taken on an even more alien appearance, their skin become mottled and "sickly" looking, and their bionics and cybernetics seem to have been refined.  Even the second cube that attacks Earth appears different, with the added capability of dispatching a sphere-shaped "lifeboat" craft when Starfleet ultimately does the cube in--thanks to Picard's intimate knowledge of Borg spacecraft. (clank-clank, the deus ex machina goes; why does Picard wait years to divulge information about an "achilles heel" in the Borg cube architecture, when such information is clearly the first thing Picard should have told Starfleet after regaining his individuality, so that every captain in the navy could have an ace-in-the-hole if he or she faced off with a cube in the future?  I could also spend a paragraph or two on the problems of getting the Enteprise-E from the Romulan/Federation border to Earth just in the nick of time, when clearly the cube is faster than any known Federation ship, and arrived at Earth well ahead of the Enterprise-E to begin with.  Or how about the ridiculous ease with which Trek spacecraft time travel!?  But I digress...)
     During the pitched battle for Enterprise-E, the Borg tactics are quite aggressive, almost predatory, not plodding and oblivious as seen previously.  Assimilation itself has become near-instant, as the Borg have adopted the use of prehensile injector tubes to deliver a burst of self-replicating nano-robots into the bloodstream of "prey" species, whereupon the nano-robots begin assimilation of the individual on a cell-by-cell basis.  Loss of individual thought and personality is almost as quick, with the injected subjects falling under the sway of the Collective within moments of being exposed to the nano-robots.  Even the skin of the injected subject undergoes a near-instant transformation, with the Borg "mottling" effect rapidly tracing the attack path of the nano-robots as they seek out and assimilate the subject from within.
     All of this, of course, serves to make the Borg even more menacing and grotesque than before.  The injector tubes, nano-robots, and hyper-assimilation remind one of the unspeakably horrible Thing from John Carpenter's 1980's remake of the movie by the same name.  That beast also "takes over" its prey, cell-by-cell, after even the slightest exposure, slaving previously human minds and bodies to the alien will of an inhuman monster with a bottomless appetite for "assimilation".
     Friends suddenly become enemies in the flash of an injector tube, and some of the brief footage of former Enterprise crew being later "refitted" to Borg standards, is truly disturbing.
     The simple answer, of course, is that the producers of the eighth Trek film were making the most of an expanded budget.  As happens nearly every time an alien Trek species is imported from small to big screen, the Borg were enhanced, made meaner and scarier, both physically and psychologically.  In terms of the Trek universe itself, it seems academic that the Borg must evolve as they incorporate the knowledge, abilities, and technology of newly-assimilated species.  Their altered appearance, tactics, and especially the rapid-assimilation technique, are probably all results of newly-integrated knowledge the Borg have gained from species that have been absorbed since Picard's first encounter during ST:TNG.  Such changes are no doubt introduced across the Collective, all at once, every time the Borg assimilate any sort of information or brand of technology which proves superior to that which has been used previously.  Which leads one to imagine how the Borg's appearance, and their tactics, have changed over their long history.  It would be fascinating to get a look at the Borg from, say, Earth's steam-power era.  Or the American Revolution.  Or the Middle Ages.  Or even the Roman and Greek Empires. Ultimately, it would be interesting if we fans were to ever get a glimpse into the very birth of the Borg, on some far-away Delta Quadrant world deep in the past, where surely the forces of insanely oppressive government and terribly invasive technology once combined in one singularly awful genesis.
     There is also the matter of the Borg "queen", who puts a face on the otherwise faceless Borg, and provides us with a window on the mentality that was, perhaps, ultimately responsible for creating the Borg in the first place.  At first glance the queen seems like another writing gaffe, as it is made explicit that the Borg do not operate in traditional dominance hierarchies as do most other nations, and that no one individual person or species controls the Borg, as is the case with the Dominion.  But upon reflection I've come to believe that the queen was a very necessary addition to the Borg, primarily because if the Borg Hive Mind was merely the sum of its assimilated parts, then the collective revulsion and self-hate that must surely fester within all the assimilated species would surely cause the Borg to fragment to the point of self-destruction.  Emotionally and intellectually, there has to be some kind of overarching force that drives the Collective, keeps the individuals slaved to the communal whole, and remains insanely obsessed with the assimilation of (presumably) all humanoid life in the universe, en route to the achievement of the Borg's cryptic idea of "perfection".
     As to the singular corporeal nature of the queen (many fans balked when the queen reappeared in ST:VOY after her "death" in the eighth Star Trek movie) it's my opinion that the Borg queen is not a person so much as a 'spirit' that inhabits the Collective and retains overall control of the Collective, as a sort of super-mind.  When it is necessary for her to assume a physical form, she doubtless has countless cloned bodies scattered across her domain, into which she deposits a portion of herself.  The death of any one of these clones is probably quite painful for the queen, but not lethal, and even after the cataclysmic events of ST:VOY's final episode, it's not exactly clear as to whether or not the queen has been utterly destroyed, or her Borg legions with her.  Certainly, significant damage has been done to the Collective.  Perhaps to such an extent as to blunt or drive back Borg expansion for decades, or even centuries, as the Collective must surely now focus on extensive internal damage control, both from the effects of Admiral Janeway's sneak attack, and the swath previously cut through the Delta Quadrant by Species 8472.
     If it's true that the queen has been obliterated, then I can't see how the Collective can last for very long as the buried emotions, thoughts, and desires of all the assimilated species slowly resurface, creating currents of discord and dissent within the whole, eventually leading to outright divisions.  Dare we imagine a civil war within the Collective?  Complete with the perpetual building and crumbling of countless alliances, ethnic "cleansings" against various races as previously hostile or xenophobic species resume their former aggression, and ultimately an even more ravenous assimilation of non-Borg species as different Borg divisions desperately seek to find an edge that will allow them to defeat their former comrades?  Such a civil war would rip the Delta Quadrant to shreds, and pose perhaps an even greater threat to the other three quadrants than the Borg did prior to the events leading up to ST:VOY's final episode.
     All of this, I think, warrants bearing in mind when bringing the Borg into the STSSTCS.  The Borg utterly outclass all Alpha and Beta Quadrant nations, while the Gamma Quadrant's Dominion plays a poor second fiddle.     

BRAD'S COMMENTS - THE LARGE CUBE: The Large Cube is similar to other singularly massive alien vessels that have menaced the Federation and Earth in the past.  As with the V'Ger machine vehicle (Gene Roddenberry once quipped that V'Ger was a Borg product, a notion that I reject) or the mysterious Whale Probe, or even the new Xindi superweapon unveiled by ST:ENT, the cube is larger by far than any mobile Federation spacecraft ever built, seemingly impervious to all conventional Federation means of attack and defense, and is only defeated when the Federation attempts some kind of unorthodox means of communicating with, or destroying, the vehicle.  This makes the cube damned near invincible in terms of the conventional STSTCS gaming system, so I've been forced to throw in some additional rules that make the cube playable.  Cosmetically, we've seen several different versions of the cube, from the tube-mesh original design to the blockier ship of First Contact to the hull-plated designs featured in ST:VOY.  My renderings above are merely that: renderings.  Based primarly on what I saw (or thought I saw) on screen, so you will all forgive me if these four different artistic interpretations are not 100% accurate.  Each version has a separate set of stats, listed below, though all four cubes possess generally similar characteristics, and each cube is a mighty foe that even a small fleet of powerful Alpha or Beta Quadrant craft will find difficult to destroy.

SPECIAL NOTES & RULES - BORG SHIPS ONLY!

* Denotes completely hypothetical model number and stats, devised by Brad R. Torgersen.

** SUPERSTRUCTURE POINTS: The Borg superstructure is unique in the STSSTCS in that it is capable of spontaneous regeneration, essentially rebuilding itself and "healing" damage in the heat of battle, sort of like the Healing Factor some Marvel Comics heroes/villains possess.  We saw this ability on-screen during the Federation's very first contact with the Borg, when the cube encountered by the Enterprise-D "heals" a significant amount of phaser damage while simultaneously pursuing the Enterprise at high warp.  I extrapolate that this regeneration technique requires a certain amount of energy expenditure on the part of the Borg vessel, so the process is not free for anyone playing the Borg, but it does provide a significant advantage.  The regeneration ratio indicates how many power points must be expended to regenerate two superstructure points; nominally, ten energy points yielding two superstructure points.  Granted, players might not normally have a block on their playing sheets which can be used to allocate power to this process at the start of every turn.  If gamers elect not to improvise such a block when using Borg ships, then I say let the players decide whether or not to siphon power off of the Borg weaponry, movement, or shield systems during play, reconverting energy originally allocated to weapons, movement or shields, back into raw power points, then expending those power points on regeneration.  There is another important caveat: the Borg ship must have at least 50% of its original superstructure intact for this process to be viable.  If the superstructure has fallen below 50% of its original capacity, then the Borg ship is too badly damaged to muster the resources necessary for regeneration.  Regeneration can take place at any time in any turn, during any of the three phases.

*** ACHILLES HEEL: Superstructure regeneration might, at first, seem like an insurmountable obstacle for players faced with the Borg, but as we saw in ST: FIRST CONTACT, the Borg architecture is vulnerable at specific, key points, sort of like the thermal exhaust port on the Death Star in "Star Wars".  The Borg "Achilles heel" is not obviously observable via shipboard scanners, and as we see on film, only an opponent with intimate knowledge of the Borg is likely to know of its existence, much less its placement on any given Borg spacecraft.  For game play purposes the rules surrounding this weakness are deliberately designed to require that both a Borg player and his/her opponents enjoy a degree of random luck.
     Here is how it works...
     1- At the start of every game, the player(s) operating Borg ships will have to determine the status of the Achilles heel for each of their individual Borg vessels.  This can be done by adding up the total superstructure points and power units available, and then dividing that sum by the roll of three six-sided dice.  For example, a Borg player commands a single Large Cube with 1,200 superstructure points and 900 total power units of output, so he combines the two for a total of 2,100, and then divides that sum by the sum of three simultaneously-rolled six-sided dice.  In our example, the Borg player rolls a six, a two, and a three, for a total of 11.  The figure 2,100 divided by 11 yields 190.90909090909, which is rounded up to 191.  This number is the total value of the Achilles heel for that individual Borg ship for the duration of that particular game.  All damage against the Achilles heel in that game will be subtracted from that number, and the amount cannot be recouped or added to via superstructure regeneration.  It is a static number which can only be subtracted from via battle damage, and once it has been depleted, the Achilles heel is officially exploited and the Borg player will then be forced to roll a ten-sided die on the catastrophic Achilles damage table (seen below!)
     2- Once the Borg player(s) have determined the value(s) of their Achilles for each Borg ship, they next must determine on which of the hexagonal shield sides each Achilles heel for each ship lies.  This can be done via a six-sided die.  Borg players, be sure to note on your game sheets the total value of the Achilles for each ship, and on which shield hex, 1 through 6, the Achilles heel sits.  It is best if both of these rolls and their results are made and recorded in private, so that opponents will have no prior knowledge about the strength and location of the Achilles heel for each Borg ship.
     3- Once game play ensues, Borg players can proceed normally until the shielding protecting the hex on which the Achilles heel lies has been exhausted, leaving the superstructure and other systems open to direct assault.  At this moment, the Borg player must announce that his/her Achilles heel is exposed, indicating to the other players exactly which shield hex the Achilles heel is located on.
     4- For as long as the shields remain down on the hex where the Achilles is located, any/all players which successfully fire into that hex must roll a six-sided die to determine whether or not the damage they inflict is transferred to the Borg via standard damage table rolls, or directly to the Achilles heel itself. Every successful hit on the hex which holds the Achilles will require the attacker to roll on the Achilles hit/miss table (see below!) to determine what damage, if any, is leveled against the value of the Achilles heel.  Borg players, remember that the Achilles heel cannot regenerate or be repaired in the same fashion as the superstructure.  Also remember that the shielding on the Achilles hex can be restored at the start of the next round, assuming the shield generator for that hex has not been destroyed.  Finally, opponents and Borg players both must remember that only shots fired directly into the same shield hex as the Achilles will have a chance of damaging the Achilles.  Shots that miss due to bad die rolls, or shots that successfully hit, only on other hex sides, will not affect the Achilles heel.
     5- For example, our Borg player with the Achilles value of 191 rolls a 3 when determining the hex placement of the Achilles.  During combat he takes multiple strikes on shield side 3 with no affect on the Achilles so long as the shield protecting it is still up.  However, during the final firing phase of the second turn, shield side 3 is brought down and our Borg player is forced to announce that his Achilles has been exposed and is unshielded.  Opponents attempt several more shots before the firing phase is over, several of which miss, a few of which strike sides other than that assigned to the Achilles, and a few of which hit the crucial, unshielded hex side 3.  Whether or not attackers can even attempt to hit hex side 3 depends purely on their range and their location on the map in reference to the attitude of the Borg vessel being attacked.  Assuming they make successful hits on the now-unshielded side of the Borg, they then roll on the Achilles hit/miss table (below) to determine if damage is accorded normally, or goes straight against the heel.  In our example lets assume a phaser strike worth 11 and a torpedo strike worth 20 both successfully impact on the unshielded hex side 3 of the Borg player's vessel.  The attacker rolls on the Achilles hit/miss table for the phaser shot, and gets a 6, which means she has to then roll again on the standard damage table(s) and the Borg player will record standard damage to his other systems.  On the torpedo hit, she rolls a 2, which means all 20 points of damage go against the Achilles heel, which has had its value permanently reduced for the duration of the game from 191 to 171; if that number reaches zero, the Borg player is in deep trouble!

**** BORG SHIELDS: Incorporating the unique Borg shielding into STSSTCS game play is almost as tricky as incorporating the regenerating superstructure or the Achilles heel.  The Borg shields are able to "learn" from damage taken, eventually becoming impervious to identical kinds of attacks, even if delivered by multiple different enemies.  In order to defeat this problem, Alpha Quadrant races have learned to randomly or rotationally vary the modulation of their weapons, which can then only be blocked if the Borg again learn the modulation scheme and adjust their shields accordingly.  To keep things relatively simple and avoid any kind of  complex shield modulation/weapons modulation funny business, I took the same approach with the Borg shields as I did with the Dominion shields, assuming that a certain percentage of shots will damage the shields while another percentage of shots will be totally deflected.  The rules for Borg shielding are therefore thus...
     When attacking a Borg craft, the attacking player must make one additional dice roll, assuming his strike roll yields a hit on a shielded side of the Borg playing piece.  If that side is unshielded, then don't worry about it.  Apply damage as normal, not forgetting to follow the rules surrounding the Achilles heel.  But if the side is shielded, then the attacking player rolls a ten-sided die (or a six, or a four, or a twenty, it does not matter) to see if the shot had any effect on the Borg ship's shielding.  An even number means the strike does full damage.  An odd number means the strike has been deflected totally, with no loss of shield strength.

^ TRACTOR/SEIZURE BEAM: Like the Shield Neutralizer (below) the Tractor/Seizure beam is a deceptively benign Borg weapon.  Harmless as a direct offensive device, the Tractor/Seizure beam is nevertheless very dangerous because ships seized in its grasp cannot take evasive maneuvers to avoid incoming fire, cannot pivot or rotate to bring shielded sides to bear or move unshielded sides away from exposure to fire, and cannot go to warp or high impulse in order to escape the battlefield altogether.  In STSSTCS gaming terms this means that a vessel successfully seized/tractored loses all movement points for the duration of the turn during which it is successfully seized.  Once captured, the seized ship can be manipulated at the expense of the Borg vessel, using whatever energy points have been used to energize the tractor/seizure beam in any given turn.  Thus, if a Borg ship makes a successful hit on a Type B Vor'cha with a tractor/seizure beam, the Vor'cha loses all movement points for that turn and will remain in the Borg's grasp until the Borg player either releases the Vor'cha, or the Vor'cha batters down the Borg shields and makes a called shot, destroying the weapons bank projecting the tractor/seizure beam which has caught it.  Baring that, the Vor'cha is at the Borg's mercy, movement-wise.  Expending a maximum of 50 energy points, the Borg can maneuver the Vor'cha in our example at exactly the same rate as the Vor'cha could move itself.  Meaning, to draw the Vor'cha four hexes closer to itself so that it can get a better shot, the Borg attacker needs to expend 7 points per hex, the same as the Vor'cha's movement point ratio, using power previously allocated to the tractor/seizure beam prior to the start of the turn, for a total of 24 points.
     There are some important caveats.  First, the tractor/seizure process doesn't work against shields.  In order to grasp a vessel, the Borg must knock down the shields on at least one side of the craft in question, otherwise the shields form a slippery energy bubble which the tractor/seizure beam cannot hold.  This also means that if a previously seized/tractored ship is able to raise all six of its shields to full power at the start of the next turn, the Borg's grasp is broken and the shields of the target vessel must again be dropped and the ship again successfully hit with yet another tractor/seizure beam.  Second, the bare minimum energy requirement of each tractor/seizure hardpoint is 20.  Anything less, and the tractor/seizure beam becomes useless.  Third, the tractor/seizure beam has limited range, and all attacks using it must still make rolls to hit on the standard table using the correct firing chart.  Fourth, once a ship is seized it remains in the hex where it was originally hit until it is free from the beam, destroyed, or otherwise manipulated by the Borg attacker.  Thus, a Borg cannot latch onto a host of ships and then take off running, all its tractored prey remaining in motionless lockstep along with it the whole time.  Those craft will remain in the hexes where they were first seized, until released, or able to raise shields, or until the Borg ship goes beyond the firing chart range of the tractor/seizure beam itself.  Fifth, the tractor/seizure beam is independent of firing or movement phases, meaning Borg energy points expended on tractoring a ship need not be distributed over movement phases, and a Borg ship can manipulate a captured vessel while in a firing phase.
     So, getting back to the Vor'cha.  The Borg attacker first uses several Shield Neutralizer (see below) strikes to knock down the Vor'cha's three forward shields.  With the Vor'cha still blazing away at the Borg's own shielding, the Borg ship uses a 50-point tractor/seizure beam to grasp the Vor'cha and hold it motionless seven hexes away.  Next movement phase, the Borg ship moves two hexes aft, but the Vor'cha stays in the hex where it was capture, still firing, yet unable to move.  During its own firing phase, the Borg ship burns 21 points from its tractor/seizure device to drag the Vor'cha three hexes closer, where the Borg ship then unloads with Cutter and Destroyer beams.  Recognizing his plight, the Klingon player manages to raise all six shields to full power at the start of the next turn, this freeing his Vor'cha from the Borg, and now the Borg has to re-knock down the Vor'cha's shields and try to tractor/seize it all over again.  Et cetera, et cetera.

^^ SHIELD NEUTRALIZER: As shown in the TNG episode where the Borg are first encountered, the Borg don't use Dominion-like poloron weaponry which can cut immediately through Alpha Quadrant shields.  Instead, Borg ships are shown firing a pellet-like energy burst which, given a successful strike, can simultaneously disable Alpha Quadrant shields entirely and drop a ship out of warp.  The Shield Neutralizers are therefore quite unlike the rest of the Borg arsenal, in that they affect shielding only and have no damage modifiers, nor do they damage superstructure or other systems once a shield has been dropped.  They are armed somewhat like torpedoes or Romulan plasma weaponry, but affect shielding alone, and then, potentially in one fell swoop.  It matters not if an Alpha/Beta quadrant foe has a particular shield hex energized to 40 points or more.  A single Shield Neutralizer bolt, worth barely 10 energy points, has a 50/50 chance of knocking that 40-point shield down to zero, assuming a successful die roll on the part of the Borg player attacking an Alpha/Beta quadrant foe.  As with the Borg shields, a ten-sided die is rolled, this time by the Borg player.  Odd -numbered results mean the Borg's opponent's shielding remains intact, albeit drained by the requisite 10 points originally expended on the Shield Neutralizer for that turn.  Even-numbered results mean that the entire shield, on whichever hex side happens to get hit, is dropped, regardless of how highly it has been energized.  For example, if a Borg ship targets hex side 4 on a Mk. I Sovereign-class starship with its shields fully raised, the Borg ship is facing a total shield strength of 35 on that hex.  Assuming the Borg make a successful roll to hit, the Borg player then rolls a ten-sided die to determine if only 10 points are taken off that shield (reducing it to 25) or if the shield is entirely taken down for the duration of the turn.  Odds, the former.  Evens, the latter.