The Aurora's have been getting a lot of crap lately, due to there performance in BAMSR. Furthermore, the Asurans and the Ancients have been viewed by many lately as weak, in comparison to the Asgard in particular.
The Ancients - Examples of Warfare
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In 'The Return - Part 2', Captain Helia is talking with Gen. O'Neill and Woosley, about there battle with wraith cruisers, saying that they overwhelmed them.
A wraith ship, every shot, shoots 2 plasma balls - 2 Round Burst.
An aurora is equipped with:
26x Plasma weapons, mounted around the ship
Drone Platform - limited supply
What I presume to be 1x Plasma Beam weapon, mounted on the right of the ship, looking from the rear.
A ships strength lies in its power generation, which in turn effects shield strength, weapon weapon, and sublight capabilities, etc. Every ship we have seen is built to a certain specification, ie Shield strength is 10, weapons are 5, and sublight is 7. However, power can be rerouted from systems not being used to systems that are 'screaming' for power. Example, if I'm not moving around, I can turn off my sublight engines and use the power for either shields or weapons.
The Aurora is a slow ship, however it houses a drone platform and 26 seperate plasma weapons, which are positioned to cover the entire ship. In warfare, ideally, your weapon would be self sustainable, ie you dont have to constantly reload - because eventually your gonna run out of ammo.
The BC-304 has ran out of rails and missiles, which render the ship vulnerable, despite its shield strength.
An Aurora can run out of drones. I bring this up because many people have argued that the Asurans didn't use enough drones during there battle.
At the beginning of the battle, the Asurans have 30 or so ships, the other 8 were destroyed during the previous week by the daedalus and apollo. We come into the fight with 2 BC-304's, 7 hiveships, and 5 traveler ships = 14 ships. 2:1 ration almost. Immediately after the fleet drops out of hyperspace, 4 Asuran ships are destroyed (from what we can see on screen). So now were down to 25 Auroras vs. Our 14 ships.
1 traveler ship is destroyed during the battle, by various swarms of drones. At this point in the battle, Col. Caldwell states that he doesn't know how much longer they can keep it up [the battle]. We see the hive ships take massive damage from the drones and plasma weapon fire from the aurora's. The asgard beam weapons gave us the leverage we needed, and I'll explain why:
When we first saw the beam weapons, it was during 'Unending'. Our first use of them proved very successful, but for 1 specific reason: Rate of Fire. When the usual weapons guy onboard the odyssey destroyed the first Ori battlecruiser, he fired 4 shots continuously, no pause between. This type of fire has the same effect as a sustained beam weapon (as seen in 'First Strike'). A shield can only be given so much power per second and in effect, has a certain recharge time. If this recharge time is interupted by weapons fire, the overall strength of the shield will drop and then rise again, due to the recharge power, but the overall recharge time has increased because of weapon's fire. When Col. Mitchell was firing on the Ori battlecruiser, he was doing it slow, spacing out each shot over time, which therefore gave the shields more time to recharge on the Ori ship.
Heres a perfect analogy: You have a tube with a top opening so that it can be filled with water, and a drain that uses the water in the tube. So I hook up a hose so that I can constantly refill my tube to 10 mL of water, since now I'm going to be using 2 mL of water every second. My hose also pumps in 2 mL of water, which keeps my tube at a constant 10 mL. If my hose is only capable of putting out 2 mL (power output for shields) to fill my 10 mL tube (full shield strength) then if my water consumption goes beyond 2 mL (weapon fire), which keeps the water lever constant its going to take more time for that same hose to refill my tube.
Now, given the beam weapons strength, and the 12 other ships that made up our fleet, we were able to 'shock' the Asuran's shields during that precious recharge time, which allowed us to overwhelm them.
Even so, not only did the daedalus state they couldn't keep it up much longer (due to inevitable low shield strength), the Apollo's Col. Ellis was about to have power from the beam weapons routed to..... presumably shields, it makes the most sense. It was also stated that the shields couldn't take much more of this, referring to the enemies weapon fire.
Back to the drones: When Sheppard is told to fire on an Aurora that is powering there hyperdrives, he fires drones in order to destroy the ship, and we see the ship launch drones to destroy our drones. From counting the drones on screen, Sheppard fired anywhere from 15-25 drones, of which 5 or so actually impacted the Aurora, which was enough to destroy it. As I mentioned above, various swarms of drones destroyed the travelers ship (10-15 drones).
The only time we've seen drones launched in a large swarm is when we, the earthlings, have used drone weapons. The ancients/asurans know better: there not gonna throw all there cards on the table (fire all there drones, or a huge portion of them) to destroy a ship they know can be destroyed with far less. As I stated - an aurora has 26 plasma weapons mounted on it, and as I also mentioned about power specifications, its very very likely that power consumption has been calculated and accounted for when the Ancients designed the power system/source for the ship. We know the Aurora's shield is fairly strong, which would also be accounted for in the power specifications.
And keep in mind, if the nanites hadn't been attracted to the mass on the surface of the planet, we would of been screwed. We didn't go into this battle to kick there asses with our ships - we sent our ships to keep the enemy ships busy while we turn them into a blob of nanites and then blow it up. At the end of the battle, when the fleet jumps back into hyperspace before the planet blows us, I counted 12+ Asuran ships still in orbit, which look to be undamaged.
If anything, we're lucky we only lost 1 ship, the travelers ship.
And thats my story.
The Ancients - Examples of Warfare
-----------------------------------
In 'The Return - Part 2', Captain Helia is talking with Gen. O'Neill and Woosley, about there battle with wraith cruisers, saying that they overwhelmed them.
A wraith ship, every shot, shoots 2 plasma balls - 2 Round Burst.
An aurora is equipped with:
26x Plasma weapons, mounted around the ship
Drone Platform - limited supply
What I presume to be 1x Plasma Beam weapon, mounted on the right of the ship, looking from the rear.
A ships strength lies in its power generation, which in turn effects shield strength, weapon weapon, and sublight capabilities, etc. Every ship we have seen is built to a certain specification, ie Shield strength is 10, weapons are 5, and sublight is 7. However, power can be rerouted from systems not being used to systems that are 'screaming' for power. Example, if I'm not moving around, I can turn off my sublight engines and use the power for either shields or weapons.
The Aurora is a slow ship, however it houses a drone platform and 26 seperate plasma weapons, which are positioned to cover the entire ship. In warfare, ideally, your weapon would be self sustainable, ie you dont have to constantly reload - because eventually your gonna run out of ammo.
The BC-304 has ran out of rails and missiles, which render the ship vulnerable, despite its shield strength.
An Aurora can run out of drones. I bring this up because many people have argued that the Asurans didn't use enough drones during there battle.
At the beginning of the battle, the Asurans have 30 or so ships, the other 8 were destroyed during the previous week by the daedalus and apollo. We come into the fight with 2 BC-304's, 7 hiveships, and 5 traveler ships = 14 ships. 2:1 ration almost. Immediately after the fleet drops out of hyperspace, 4 Asuran ships are destroyed (from what we can see on screen). So now were down to 25 Auroras vs. Our 14 ships.
1 traveler ship is destroyed during the battle, by various swarms of drones. At this point in the battle, Col. Caldwell states that he doesn't know how much longer they can keep it up [the battle]. We see the hive ships take massive damage from the drones and plasma weapon fire from the aurora's. The asgard beam weapons gave us the leverage we needed, and I'll explain why:
When we first saw the beam weapons, it was during 'Unending'. Our first use of them proved very successful, but for 1 specific reason: Rate of Fire. When the usual weapons guy onboard the odyssey destroyed the first Ori battlecruiser, he fired 4 shots continuously, no pause between. This type of fire has the same effect as a sustained beam weapon (as seen in 'First Strike'). A shield can only be given so much power per second and in effect, has a certain recharge time. If this recharge time is interupted by weapons fire, the overall strength of the shield will drop and then rise again, due to the recharge power, but the overall recharge time has increased because of weapon's fire. When Col. Mitchell was firing on the Ori battlecruiser, he was doing it slow, spacing out each shot over time, which therefore gave the shields more time to recharge on the Ori ship.
Heres a perfect analogy: You have a tube with a top opening so that it can be filled with water, and a drain that uses the water in the tube. So I hook up a hose so that I can constantly refill my tube to 10 mL of water, since now I'm going to be using 2 mL of water every second. My hose also pumps in 2 mL of water, which keeps my tube at a constant 10 mL. If my hose is only capable of putting out 2 mL (power output for shields) to fill my 10 mL tube (full shield strength) then if my water consumption goes beyond 2 mL (weapon fire), which keeps the water lever constant its going to take more time for that same hose to refill my tube.
Now, given the beam weapons strength, and the 12 other ships that made up our fleet, we were able to 'shock' the Asuran's shields during that precious recharge time, which allowed us to overwhelm them.
Even so, not only did the daedalus state they couldn't keep it up much longer (due to inevitable low shield strength), the Apollo's Col. Ellis was about to have power from the beam weapons routed to..... presumably shields, it makes the most sense. It was also stated that the shields couldn't take much more of this, referring to the enemies weapon fire.
Back to the drones: When Sheppard is told to fire on an Aurora that is powering there hyperdrives, he fires drones in order to destroy the ship, and we see the ship launch drones to destroy our drones. From counting the drones on screen, Sheppard fired anywhere from 15-25 drones, of which 5 or so actually impacted the Aurora, which was enough to destroy it. As I mentioned above, various swarms of drones destroyed the travelers ship (10-15 drones).
The only time we've seen drones launched in a large swarm is when we, the earthlings, have used drone weapons. The ancients/asurans know better: there not gonna throw all there cards on the table (fire all there drones, or a huge portion of them) to destroy a ship they know can be destroyed with far less. As I stated - an aurora has 26 plasma weapons mounted on it, and as I also mentioned about power specifications, its very very likely that power consumption has been calculated and accounted for when the Ancients designed the power system/source for the ship. We know the Aurora's shield is fairly strong, which would also be accounted for in the power specifications.
And keep in mind, if the nanites hadn't been attracted to the mass on the surface of the planet, we would of been screwed. We didn't go into this battle to kick there asses with our ships - we sent our ships to keep the enemy ships busy while we turn them into a blob of nanites and then blow it up. At the end of the battle, when the fleet jumps back into hyperspace before the planet blows us, I counted 12+ Asuran ships still in orbit, which look to be undamaged.
If anything, we're lucky we only lost 1 ship, the travelers ship.
And thats my story.
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