Drones and Shields

[sunrek]

OK Fandom Something that comes up in every shield or weapon discussion that always bothers me: the statement "Drones ignore shields." Following their introduction in "Lost City," destroying all of Anubis' fleet in about a minute, they have been hailed as the ultimate, omnipotent weapon, capable of phasing through shields, ramming through bulkheads, and detonating with great power.

Is this really true? SG-1's evidence does point to their ultimate-weapon status. In "It's Good to be King," two drones fired from a puddle jumper impact a Goa'uld ship without shield interference and moments later, the whole ship blows up. It's accepted that in that occasion, Jack got lucky and hit something important, leading to the ship's destruction. After all, it took what is accepted to be tens of thousands of drones to wipe out Anubis, requiring whole swarms to pass through dozens of impact points. But that's the extent of SG-1's use of drones: two episodes, used against one race's ships.

In Atlantis, drones are used quite often, even being the only canon weapon used by the Ancients on their Battleships and Cities (energy weapons of some kind are shown on Aurorae, but never mentioned in dialogue). Drones are used against Wraith ships, Earth ships, Ancient and Asauran ships, and planetary surfaces. How do they perform? Against Wraith darts, one is enough to take it down. Cruisers take moderate damage from one and are destroyed by about 30, and hives go down when assaulted by a swarm of a few hundred. Ancient-built puddle jumpers' shields successfully deflect drone impacts (shields that are not standard equipment on PJs but are a modification of the cloak). Apollo's shields hold up against drones, though we are never given an indication of how long they would last. Drone impacts against land provide no bigger explosion than Alkesh bombs.

So, by race assuming shields were at full in every battle:
Wraith: N/A
Goa'uld: Ignores shield
Ancient/Asauran: Deflected by shield
Earth/Asgard: Absorbed by shield

Doesn't seem to me like they are all that uber in ignoring shields.

I would go further and say that perhaps drones couldn't bypass a Goa'uld ship's shields either. In IGTBK, Aries' Ha'tak has just arrived in orbit and faces no threats to itself. The jumper shows up a few minutes later, and from Aries' perspective it is a fly that couldn't possibly threaten him. Therefore, he declines to raise shields. This is like our first glimpse at Goa'uld shield when Apophis refused to raise his shields until the last second: the Goa'uld are overconfident and Aries didn't consider the jumper's weapons a threat. The two lucky hits from the jumper were in fact educated guesses on the part of the drones based on Jack's knowledge of Goa'uld ship design. He has been all over Ha'taks and he knows were the good parts are. And if shield generators come down from two grenades, the power generator could conceivably be overloaded by impact from two fast-moving battering rams.

The situation is similar with Anubis' fleet, in terms of shields. Anubis we threatened only by Prometheus, whose weapons were almost gone, and no match for Anubis' armor anyway. The drones too the fleet by surprise, and by the time they realized they were weapons, their shield generators were probably destroyed and the ships were about to blow. So on both occasions we could argue that the shields were not up and therefore the drones impacted the hulls directly.

The other examples of drones not bypassing shields are often dismissed with the qualification "Drones ignore shields, except Ancient and Asgard shields. The problem is, those are the only kind of shield we ever see them face other than Goa'uld shields. And furthermore, Anubis' shields were almost certainly Ancient-based. Consider the events of "Revalations." Anubis upgraded his ships to resist Asgard weapons using the knowledge he gained from ascension, from the ancients. He also downloaded the contents of Thors mind, so he maybe even have legitimate Asgard-based shields if he develops the technology from then to "Lost City." So, really, the only fully Goa'uld ship we see vs drones is Aries' Ha'tak.

So, given all the evidence, can we really claim that drones are shield-ignoring battering rams? I put forth that this interpretation of events shown on screen is fanwank at best.

[lordofseas]

OK Fandom Something that comes up in every shield or weapon discussion that always bothers me: the statement "Drones ignore shields." Following their introduction in "Lost City," destroying all of Anubis' fleet in about a minute, they have been hailed as the ultimate, omnipotent weapon, capable of phasing through shields, ramming through bulkheads, and detonating with great power.

Mhmm.

Is this really true? SG-1's evidence does point to their ultimate-weapon status. In "It's Good to be King," two drones fired from a puddle jumper impact a Goa'uld ship without shield interference and moments later, the whole ship blows up. It's accepted that in that occasion, Jack got lucky and hit something important, leading to the ship's destruction. After all, it took what is accepted to be tens of thousands of drones to wipe out Anubis, requiring whole swarms to pass through dozens of impact points. But that's the extent of SG-1's use of drones: two episodes, used against one race's ships.

Mhmm. Other than the Chair in the Alternate Reality that scared the Ori off. Logically powered by drones.

In Atlantis, drones are used quite often, even being the only canon weapon used by the Ancients on their Battleships and Cities (energy weapons of some kind are shown on Aurorae, but never mentioned in dialogue). Drones are used against Wraith ships, Earth ships, Ancient and Asauran ships, and planetary surfaces. How do they perform? Against Wraith darts, one is enough to take it down. Cruisers take moderate damage from one and are destroyed by about 30, and hives go down when assaulted by a swarm of a few hundred. Ancient-built puddle jumpers' shields successfully deflect drone impacts (shields that are not standard equipment on PJs but are a modification of the cloak). Apollo's shields hold up against drones, though we are never given an indication of how long they would last. Drone impacts against land provide no bigger explosion than Alkesh bombs.

For a hive, I would say that about 100 could blast it to kingdom come. But that's semantics.

So, by race assuming shields were at full in every battle:
Wraith: N/A
Goa'uld: Ignores shield
Ancient/Asauran: Deflected by shield
Earth/Asgard: Absorbed by shield

Doesn't seem to me like they are all that uber in ignoring shields.

Well, of course not. We can't have uber weapons all the time. And I don't think that the APBW are uber weapons.

I would go further and say that perhaps drones couldn't bypass a Goa'uld ship's shields either. In IGTBK, Aries' Ha'tak has just arrived in orbit and faces no threats to itself. The jumper shows up a few minutes later, and from Aries' perspective it is a fly that couldn't possibly threaten him. Therefore, he declines to raise shields. This is like our first glimpse at Goa'uld shield when Apophis refused to raise his shields until the last second: the Goa'uld are overconfident and Aries didn't consider the jumper's weapons a threat. The two lucky hits from the jumper were in fact educated guesses on the part of the drones based on Jack's knowledge of Goa'uld ship design. He has been all over Ha'taks and he knows were the good parts are. And if shield generators come down from two grenades, the power generator could conceivably be overloaded by impact from two fast-moving battering rams.

The situation is similar with Anubis' fleet, in terms of shields. Anubis we threatened only by Prometheus, whose weapons were almost gone, and no match for Anubis' armor anyway. The drones too the fleet by surprise, and by the time they realized they were weapons, their shield generators were probably destroyed and the ships were about to blow. So on both occasions we could argue that the shields were not up and therefore the drones impacted the hulls directly.

*cough*

HER'AK
Our shields are of no use!

Of course. Her'ak assumed that. If a ship is coming at you like a battering ram, you logically raise your shields. So, you could argue, but you'd be wrong.

The other examples of drones not bypassing shields are often dismissed with the qualification "Drones ignore shields, except Ancient and Asgard shields. The problem is, those are the only kind of shield we ever see them face other than Goa'uld shields. And furthermore, Anubis' shields were almost certainly Ancient-based. Consider the events of "Revalations." Anubis upgraded his ships to resist Asgard weapons using the knowledge he gained from ascension, from the ancients. He also downloaded the contents of Thors mind, so he maybe even have legitimate Asgard-based shields if he develops the technology from then to "Lost City." So, really, the only fully Goa'uld ship we see vs drones is Aries' Ha'tak.

So, given all the evidence, can we really claim that drones are shield-ignoring battering rams? I put forth that this interpretation of events shown on screen is fanwank at best.

And Ori. And drones never started to go against Asgard shielding until after Lost City. And the Asgard shields were not at their peak until Unending, which is before BAMSR. And the shields that Anubis used were obviously not of the same grade as the Lantean shields. So, we know that:

Ancients: No Penetration.
Asgard: No Penetration.
Goa'uld: Penetration.
Ori: Most likely penetration, though it was enough to scare them off.

[sunrek]

Thank you for the Her'ak quote. I don't think it's fair to use AR ori example since it's not clear what happened exactly. Regardless, the fandom's perception of drone Strength is just a little exaggerated

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

I'd like to point out that the only drones shown being fired Earth vessels are those made by the Asurans and it's never explicitly stated that they are perfect copies of the Ancient's.

We have also seen a Puddle Jumper decloak and turn the tide of a battle between two Hives from on side being close to losing to it winning and with the jumper launching what looked to me like about 10 or maybe 12 Drones in the queen.

Individually Drones are of course pretty weak in terms of explosive yield, but in the right hands their highly maneuverable abilities make them the perfect projectile and if you were to target the right place on a Hive or Cruiser even a few small explosives could cause a lot of damage, maybe even destroying either kind of ship pretty easily.


The lack of seeing Ancient drones used on Tauri/Asgard ships makes it pretty much impossible to say if they're bad at penetraring other kinds of shields or specifically saying they are just like the Asurans ones.
In BAMSR we see an Ancient Aurora go face to face with an Asuran one, both ships were facing pretty equal odds, but the Ancient one won, this could be used as an example of Ancient superiority or it could have been luck, but since the two ships were at near point blank range and both firing very smart missiles that don't tend to miss unless facing highly maneuverable and smallish ships I doubt the Asuran's were perfectly equal.
There's also some possibility Rodney tweaked the shields on the Traveler's ship and our 304s to resist the Drone's penetrating abilities, but that's just a guess.

Ultimately it's difficult to say how Ancient Drones fair against all shields, Goauld Anubis Ancient upgraded ones = Penetration, everything else shields wise = uncertain, Asuran = maybe suck at penetration, but still apparently fine against Hive armor, although most Asuran ships seemed to be firing a few volleys of Drones so should have taken out a few Hives yet much of the Hive fleet still stood fine at the end of the battle.

[Deuce]

I would like to posit a hypothesis as to the apparent (though unconfirmed) superiority of Alteran/Lantean Drones over Asuran ones. Could the apparent difference in effectiveness be explained by the requirement of the Alteran/Lantean Drones of a mental interface with the Chair? It’s been shown that the Drones require large amounts of power as well as the mental interface of the Chair to be effective. True Rodney hot-wired a Drone in The Tower, he didn’t need it to be accurate or to follow anything other than the simple commands he had already input to blast his way out. Since the Asurans are just machines approximating consciousness through their incredibly complex programming, is it possible that their Drones, while being an exact copy of the Alteran/Lantean version, lacking in the mental interface of the Chair are just mere guided missiles such as today’s sophisticated cruise missiles?? It could be that while the machine interface could be better for reaction time, the intuition and target selection capable from a personal interface could be a tipping point in a slug-fest.

What say you??

[timstro59]

drones might not be an all powerful weapon, but they still awesome on-screen.

[morrismike]

I would like to posit a hypothesis as to the apparent (though unconfirmed) superiority of Alteran/Lantean Drones over Asuran ones. Could the apparent difference in effectiveness be explained by the requirement of the Alteran/Lantean Drones of a mental interface with the Chair? It’s been shown that the Drones require large amounts of power as well as the mental interface of the Chair to be effective. True Rodney hot-wired a Drone in The Tower, he didn’t need it to be accurate or to follow anything other than the simple commands he had already input to blast his way out. Since the Asurans are just machines approximating consciousness through their incredibly complex programming, is it possible that their Drones, while being an exact copy of the Alteran/Lantean version, lacking in the mental interface of the Chair are just mere guided missiles such as today’s sophisticated cruise missiles?? It could be that while the machine interface could be better for reaction time, the intuition and target selection capable from a personal interface could be a tipping point in a slug-fest.

What say you??

Even the lantian drones have the capability to be guided without mental control. The ability to dodge darts shows that more than a mental interface is involved. Any modern navy have AA capability far beyond what a person in a chair could achieve. A true 3D fire control system with an electronic interface would be far superior to a mental interface. With an electronic guidence system ships can be herded into kill zones, "soft" spots can be preprogrammed, a "kill them all feature" could be activated with a push of a single button, etc.

[lordofseas]

Thank you for the Her'ak quote. I don't think it's fair to use AR ori example since it's not clear what happened exactly. Regardless, the fandom's perception of drone Strength is just a little exaggerated

True.

[webxro]

everything in here totally agrees whit me but here is the think drones eventually break trow ancient or asgard shields .

[morrismike]

True.

A drone is basically a 500 pound guided bunker buster.

[Buba uognarf]

In terms of pure yield drones actually aren't that far behind the Asgard plasma beam weapons on our 304's. We've seen seen that 2 drones can easily destroy and split an Asuran Aurora in half, a pair of drones can destroy a Ha'tak, a single drone can cause heavy damage to a Wraith cruisers and so on. In the Queen it was actually 6 drones Rise of the Phoenix which caused critical damage to a Hive ship. Single salvo's can also destroy Cruisers and Hives in seconds and large numbers can obliterate fleets. Against the Ori a likely poorly powered outpost with likely low drone reserves was able to fight off an Ori ship quick enough to prevent it firing on the surface. Not only that but the Ancient outpost was such a deterent that on the second attempt at invasion the Ori sent 5 ships! Originally they sent one but after the battle with the outpost they increased their forces 5 fold so obviously drones are highly effective there as well.

Drones are the best weapon in SG. Whether they penetrate Asgard/Ori shields or not judging by their relative damage to hulls when compared to other races energy weapons a single salvo hitting the shields at once is still likely to penetrate or deplete even the best shields.

[sunrek]

If drones are the BEST weapons then why not Send one jumper to fight the Ori? That's the kind of exageration I mean

[morrismike]

In terms of pure yield drones actually aren't that far behind the Asgard plasma beam weapons on our 304's. We've seen seen that 2 drones can easily destroy and split an Asuran Aurora in half, a pair of drones can destroy a Ha'tak, a single drone can cause heavy damage to a Wraith cruisers and so on. In the Queen it was actually 6 drones Rise of the Phoenix which caused critical damage to a Hive ship. Single salvo's can also destroy Cruisers and Hives in seconds and large numbers can obliterate fleets. Against the Ori a likely poorly powered outpost with likely low drone reserves was able to fight off an Ori ship quick enough to prevent it firing on the surface. Not only that but the Ancient outpost was such a deterent that on the second attempt at invasion the Ori sent 5 ships! Originally they sent one but after the battle with the outpost they increased their forces 5 fold so obviously drones are highly effective there as well.

Drones are the best weapon in SG. Whether they penetrate Asgard/Ori shields or not judging by their relative damage to hulls when compared to other races energy weapons a single salvo hitting the shields at once is still likely to penetrate or deplete even the best shields.

Shepard knew precisely where to strike which supports the 500 lb bunker buster description - something in the kiloton range blowing up inside an aurora would disentigrate it. I'm sure an aurora could withstand dozens of "random" hits from drones and quite frankly one uber beam hit results in toasted aurora (the reason they kept firing uberbeams at them was to exterminate nano components of replicators inside) . With regards to the ORI being chased off a single uber beam that was shielded from attack could accomplish the same as the swarm that attacked anubis and would have destroyed a single ORI ship in seconds. The weakness of an Uber beam is the ship and power supply it is attached to.

[Buba uognarf]

If drones are the BEST weapons then why not Send one jumper to fight the Ori? That's the kind of exageration I mean

Them being called the best weapon doesn't mean that a single ship with drones can win an entire war...thats absurd logic and a completely meaningless point seeing as I never claimed any such thing. TBH if Atlantis could fire drones like the super weapon on Earth then I probably would send it to make mince meat out of Ori fleets.

Drones are self guiding, can be fired in massive swarms which together with their yield and/or penetration abilities mean they can tear ships and fleets apart. Ergo they are the best weapons in SG as long as you can make more of them. In the hands of modern Earth maybe APBW would be better but in the hands of Ancients drones all the way.

[Buba uognarf]

Shepard knew precisely where to strike which supports the 500 lb bunker buster description - something in the kiloton range blowing up inside an aurora would disentigrate it. I'm sure an aurora could withstand dozens of "random" hits from drones and quite frankly one uber beam hit results in toasted aurora (the reason they kept firing uberbeams at them was to exterminate nano components of replicators inside) . With regards to the ORI being chased off a single uber beam that was shielded from attack could accomplish the same as the swarm that attacked anubis and would have destroyed a single ORI ship in seconds. The weakness of an Uber beam is the ship and power supply it is attached to.

Direct Asgard beam hits to the hulls of Asuran Aurora's have caused less damage than the 2 drones did on impact. I can post screen caps to support this if you want. We have no real evidence that the Outpost in Antartica is shielded and even if it was we've seen Ori weapons trounce most shields, the outpost is over 5 million years old and powered by an equally old ZPM its very impressive that it can beat an Ori ship. Not only that but the Ori saw the need to send 5 ships for the second attempt, drones are easily as good as the Asgard beam weapons. You need a serious power source to make the most out of the Asgard beams drones can be mounted on jumpers and still cause heavy damage to capital ships.