Wraith Threat? Very Real!
Introduction
Lately with the introduction of the Asgard uber fanwank beam of death and its three shot kill of a Hive (ridiculous by the way) the threat the Wraith possess has been disregarded by the wider community. However the Wraith are the most terrifying of all races in the stargate universe, and with a recent revelation it was revealed to myself that the Wraith could easily defeat any known stargate race even now in their weakened state. All it would take is the writers making the Wraith use their resources wisely. To realise just how powerful the Wraith are we must compare the Hive a carrier and the Cruiser a warship. I have titled them such because that is what they are and it will soon become apparent. The sheer almighty power of the Wraith is an accident that I doubt the writer intended for the Wraith but it easily explains why the Ancients lost the war and why we should fear them (plot and budget will prevent us from ever seeing their true power).
The Hive Ship
The Hive is one of the most impressive ships in stargate, its size bigger than a mountain, however the Hives sole purpose is as a carrier a giant flying city for the Wraith. The fact that the ship is formidable in battle is a non-issue however it is important that we all know what a Hive is capable of achieving.
http://forum.gateworld.net/showthread.php?t=38304&highlight=wraith+hive+dimensions
The link tells you everything you need to know about the Wraith Hive. As I said Hives are carriers and it’s not beyond reason that they can carry tens of thousands of darts. That is one of many points of note, the sheer length of a Hive 11km is truly amazing and the devastating power of its weaponry is the strongest pulse type weapon in the stargate universe. The size of a Hive cannot be stressed enough and to add the fact that they are heavily armoured and it’s not unreasonable for the armour to be quite resilient. For all intensive purposes it is acting as a Hives shield and should be capable of taking a hell of a beating. Unfortunately this is not supported by canon as a Hive is easily destroyed in three shots by instant win Asgard hero beams. As much as this is canon it is ridiculous however it is canon and therefore it cannot be argued with no matter how ridiculous it is (sorry but it is). Regardless of a Hives literal submission to the Asgard death rays it is still an impressive ship however it is an ineffectual Wraith vessel when it comes to war, after all it is a carrier and not a battle cruiser.
Cruisers
Widely underestimated vessel, done injustice by the show, this is the Wraith’s key to winning any war. The Cruiser has half as many plasma cannons as a Hive so it’s only capable of dealing out half the damage of a Hive at maximum, but this is an assumption so let’s assume a Cruiser can only deal out a tenth of a damage a Hive can. We could get lower but this already seems below a Cruisers capabilities and by this assumption 10 Cruisers equals one Hive in terms of firepower. Now lets examine the defensive capabilities of a Cruiser, one missile means instant death a Hive can survive many so not so impressive however lets assume one hit by the Asgard plasma beams will destroy it. Considering that a Hive was destroyed by three this seems more than reasonable that a Cruiser wouldn’t survive one direct. But we determined under the assumption that 10 Cruiser equalled a Hives worth of firepower we have now determined that it would take ten shots by the Asgard plasma beams to kill this Hive equivalent. It seems that under these assumptions Cruisers are far superior to Hives in combat.
Now this is the end of the assumptions their purpose was to paint a picture in your mind. A Hive is 11km by length and 8km by width, a Cruiser is 1200m by length and 700m by width. By these measurements a Cruiser is dwarfed by the Hive which is approximately a hundred times bigger, I have ignored the height of both vessels but that is unimportant as a Hive is 1000m thick and a Cruiser is barely that long let alone that thick. Of course because I have not included the height it must be realised that a Hive is definitely more than a hundred times bigger than a Cruiser. Using this simplified math and pretending that both are two dimensional rectangles a Hive is 88km^2 and a Cruiser is 0.84km^2, this means a Hive is 104.76 times bigger than a Cruiser. This math is of course over simplified and in fact both the Hive and Cruiser would be less than the numbers given, that however is unimportant as the purpose of this math was to determine the ratio in size which it has. From this math we can easily say that the resources used to make a single Hive could be more wisely used to create 100 Cruisers. And from the picture I painted before a Hive is inferior to 10 Cruisers, however this used assumptions so let’s compare the actual facts. It would take 100 shot of the Asgard plasma beams to destroy the resource equivalent Cruisers but only three to destroy the Hive (which is ridiculous). We don’t know the kind of firepower a Cruiser can dish out however we can say the exact minimum 100 Cruisers could wield in firepower would be that of a single Hive, which is simply a massive underestimation of Cruisers firepower. However even if this underestimation were true the equivalent resource of a Hive spent in Cruisers is far superior to that of a Hive, the difference being 97 hits of the Asgard beam weapon. To fully grasp the horror of what the Wraith are capable of which I don’t doubt you already have, in The Last Man the Phoenix instead of facing 4 Hives could have been facing 400 Cruisers, same result but far more terrifying.
Wraith Threat Very Real
Lately the Wraith have not been considered a threat because of the Asgard plasma beams, however it is obvious that if the Wraith properly pool their resources into the production of Cruisers instead of Hives they will once again become the feared race that defeat the Ancients through unimaginable numbers of Wraith vessels. Now that we can truly appreciate a Cruiser for all it is worth it should be realised that if the writers do the Wraith justice then there is no need for new villains as the Wraith would be more than capable of defeating the Atlantis expedition. And if the Wraith ever made it to the Milky Way they’d be capable of easily over running the galaxy. The Wraith defeated the Ancients and for that they should be respected because if they weren’t made dumb so that our heroes could defeat them they’d be the most powerful race in the stargate universe.
Just so you know Wraith win all stargate universe vs threads from now on because its not unreasonable to think the Wraith could have 60 Hives and 60 Hives equals 6000 Cruisers and 6000 Cruisers equals win
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