The Borg Cube is an Epic ship available from Operations 28, with 18 tiers spread across 90 levels. Instead of scaling on its own the way a Federation or Klingon ship does, its strength is tied to how far you have progressed your faction ships, so it is meant to grow alongside your existing fleet rather than replace it. You can own and upgrade up to three Cubes per commander.

The Cube's signature ability fires at a target anywhere in the same system once charged, without you needing to enter combat, and it deals damage straight to hull, bypassing shields and defenses entirely. It cannot be used against player stations, Alliance Starbases or Armada targets. The Beam charges from HHP damage you deal in ordinary combat, and it has diminishing returns against targets above your own level, so it works best against hostiles near or below your level rather than as a way to punch up.

Destroying a PVE target with the Cutting Beam awards Technological Distinctiveness. That resource refines into Shape Memory Alloy, which tiers up the Cube itself, and Advanced Cybernetics, which progresses the Cube's nodes in the Ex-Borg research tree. In practice this means the Cube's progression loop is self-contained: you fight with it to earn the material that upgrades it further.

Building a second or third Cube needs a Borg Data Node from one of the three main factions, and each Node is earned by hitting a tier milestone on a specific faction ship, not by grinding the Cube itself. If a prompt tells you a requirement is unmet, it is naming a different faction ship you need to bring up to that tier — a ship you already used to unlock your first Data Node cannot be reused for the second.

Officers and research that boost your other ships do not change the Cutting Beam's damage or charge rate — only the Cube's own tier does. A Cube you have never upgraded also carries no repair cost, so leaving one at tier 1 rather than half-committing to it is a genuine option if you are not ready to invest.