Ha'tak weapons! [Continuum spoilers]

[Buba uognarf]

The movie was great but sadly its been revealed that Ha'tak weapons are indeed sub nuclear in yield! It defies all logic all sense but after seeing the bombardment scene in Continuum its clear that Ha'tak weapons are pretty damn weak....

What a disappointed. Thats not to say I didn't enjoy the movie though. You should definately buy it! .

[SGFerrit]

Ever seen Star Trek: First Contact? The Borg are meant to be the scourge of the galaxy in Star Trek, yet their version of 'planetary bombardment' caused considerably less devastation than even an Alkesh is capable of!

[Buba uognarf]

Yep I have, we've also seen Ha'tak blasts make less bang than a hand grenade whats your point?

[SGFerrit]

Just saying, the Hatak blasts weren't that bad. When you got the aerial view of them they were making pretty big blasts. And which episode was it that we saw a Hatak making less bang than a hand grenade?

[wkw427]

I believe that you can controll the blast yeild.

What is more fun? Killing everyone fast and painless (super strength) or slowly, fearfuly, and painfuly (sub nuclear)

[DaCk]

Just saying, the Hatak blasts weren't that bad. When you got the aerial view of them they were making pretty big blasts. And which episode was it that we saw a Hatak making less bang than a hand grenade?

He may be referring to the Sentinel. When the goa'uld were blasting the city from space it was pretty weak. More than a hand grenade but maybe a few hundred pounds of TNT. Same as in the episode where the Tollan were wiped out. Im sure there are other episodes as well but those two were the ones that came to mind.

[SGFerrit]

He may be referring to the Sentinel. When the goa'uld were blasting the city from space it was pretty weak. More than a hand grenade but maybe a few hundred pounds of TNT. Same as in the episode where the Tollan were wiped out. Im sure there are other episodes as well but those two were the ones that came to mind.

Yeah, that was a while ago. They had a lot more trouble making big explosions back then, and this was before we got upgraded Hataks from the Anubis era. Ba'al worked closely with Anubis so no doubt the Hataks we saw would also have been upgraded?

[JSPuddlejumper]

That is just special effects, no big deal.

[nich959]

I think the blasts we've seen are from different guns, and anyway the blasts in continuum were big enough to look good =]

[Mister Oragahn]

I believe that you can controll the blast yeild.

What is more fun? Killing everyone fast and painless (super strength) or slowly, fearfuly, and painfuly (sub nuclear)

But the movie precisely has Getesh ordering the fleet to do as much damage as possible, to eradicate the humans down there. She even leaves Cronus three days, and tells him that the more damage, the bigger the reward when she'll return.

The blasts are truely pathetic. Mainly thermal, they don't even vapourize a refueler airplane. When they hit the ground, all what they produce is fireballs, which shrink and dissapear extremely fast.
The blasts release no smoke, no noticeable air blast. Their fireball, again, are short lived in comparison to a MOAB (chemical) or the Davy Crockett (nuclear).

Add insult to that, the golf ball in Cassandra was at least thousands of time more powerful than a single of those blasts. I tell, they'd better start firing naqahdah golf balls.

There is no rationalization.

I think I'm going to stick with the following super powerful argument:

The ships were powered by brushfire power cores and had no naqahdah.

Even the mere energies needed to go into hyperspace or move those ships around utterly dwarf those things.

Hell, flying a Ha'tak towards the moon at full acceleration and bringing it back towards Earth and smashing it would have achieved in one microsecond what a whole fleet of a hundred Ha'taks will do within days.

It's even more absurd to think Goa'uld would use such puny weapons against each other when they could just strap a naqahdah cake onto a missile and fire it into a fleet of Ha'taks and utterly pulverize them.

Obviously, only Earth is allowed the uber gigaton stuff.

Aliens who have been mastering naqahdah for over tens of millenia?

Fire crackers.

[s09119]

But the movie precisely has Getesh ordering the fleet to do as much damage as possible, to eradicate the humans down there. She even leaves Cronus three days, and tells him that the more damage, the bigger the reward when she'll return.

The blasts are truely pathetic. Mainly thermal, they don't even vapourize a refueler airplane. When they hit the ground, all what they produce is fireballs, which shrink and dissapear extremely fast.
The blasts release no smoke, no noticeable air blast. Their fireball, again, are short lived in comparison to a MOAB (chemical) or the Davy Crockett (nuclear).

Add insult to that, the golf ball in Cassandra was at least thousands of time more powerful than a single of those blasts. I tell, they'd better start firing naqahdah golf balls.

There is no rationalization.

I think I'm going to stick with the following super powerful argument:

The ships were powered by brushfire power cores and had no naqahdah.

Even the mere energies needed to go into hyperspace or move those ships around utterly dwarf those things.

Hell, flying a Ha'tak towards the moon at full acceleration and bringing it back towards Earth and smashing it would have achieved in one microsecond what a whole fleet of a hundred Ha'taks will do within days.

It's even more absurd to think Goa'uld would use such puny weapons against each other when they could just strap a naqahdah cake onto a missile and fire it into a fleet of Ha'taks and utterly pulverize them.

Obviously, only Earth is allowed the uber gigaton stuff.

Aliens who have been mastering naqahdah for over tens of millenia?

Fire crackers.

Here's a radical concept; because they don't want to completely crack the crust of our planet (they did want to own Earth, remember? That requires it to be inhabitable), they dialed down the power on their weapons so they would only destroy surface-level things. It takes longer, but the planet could be lived on immediately after bombardment finished.

[Ltcolshepjumper]

Nah. Hatak weapons are weak, comparatively. They were stated originally to be nuclear yield, but sadly, the show has refuted it many times through the various space battles involving the ships, as well as the various planetary bombardments.

[Ouroboros]

But the movie precisely has Getesh ordering the fleet to do as much damage as possible, to eradicate the humans down there. She even leaves Cronus three days, and tells him that the more damage, the bigger the reward when she'll return.

The blasts are truely pathetic. Mainly thermal, they don't even vapourize a refueler airplane. When they hit the ground, all what they produce is fireballs, which shrink and dissapear extremely fast.
The blasts release no smoke, no noticeable air blast. Their fireball, again, are short lived in comparison to a MOAB (chemical) or the Davy Crockett (nuclear).

Add insult to that, the golf ball in Cassandra was at least thousands of time more powerful than a single of those blasts. I tell, they'd better start firing naqahdah golf balls.

There is no rationalization.

I think I'm going to stick with the following super powerful argument:

The ships were powered by brushfire power cores and had no naqahdah.

Even the mere energies needed to go into hyperspace or move those ships around utterly dwarf those things.

Hell, flying a Ha'tak towards the moon at full acceleration and bringing it back towards Earth and smashing it would have achieved in one microsecond what a whole fleet of a hundred Ha'taks will do within days.

It's even more absurd to think Goa'uld would use such puny weapons against each other when they could just strap a naqahdah cake onto a missile and fire it into a fleet of Ha'taks and utterly pulverize them.

Obviously, only Earth is allowed the uber gigaton stuff.

Aliens who have been mastering naqahdah for over tens of millenia?

Fire crackers.

They closed up every possible way to rationalize it to. Even if you hold the visuals as not consistent you still have the fact the bombardment goes on for days and even obvious targets like Norad aren't destroyed.

Here's a radical concept; because they don't want to completely crack the crust of our planet (they did want to own Earth, remember? That requires it to be inhabitable), they dialed down the power on their weapons so they would only destroy surface-level things. It takes longer, but the planet could be lived on immediately after bombardment finished.

Trouble is though that wasn't the order Katesh gave. She told Cronus to go all out and destroy the Earth not to destroy it just a little bit because she wanted to capture it. She told him to basically "do his worst".

[thekillman]

kiloton and megaton are terrible measures of energy when it comes to energy weapons. yes, they talk about gigatons and kilotons and megatons. but did you honestly think a 300mt impact creates exactly the same result as a 300mt nuke? no. cause the blast isnt a nuke. we know they had terror weapons, not annihilation weapons. goauld enjoy a slow, painfull death of their enemies. had they been real tyrans, they just dropped a few gigaton nukes at tactical locations to destroy all life, as the explosions wouldve brought ecological disasters. but they dont think that way. why the hell should everyone think our way. they are aliens. why does every alien have to think like earth?

[Dev Corvin]

Also, bear in mind that the blasts the Ha'taks were firing weren't their standard ship-to-ship blasts; you can actually see them re-orientating themselves in orbit for ship-to-ground fire, likely an automated mode to blanket a planet and destroy the contents of its surface. Earth would still be perfect for mining and/or geothermal power once it was cleansed of life.

I get the feeling that the horizontally-fired staff cannons on a Ha'tak are of far greater yield than the downwards-fired blasts they used; in much the same way that when we saw the Lanteans destroying Asuras they used fairly low-yield weaponry rather than high-explosive drones.