Predator ship

[youarehere]

just fire 10000= drones from the 302 bays. the problem is where to get them...

[youarehere]

have a triple battery of beam weapons on each 302 bay and on the nose. that would be cool

[Todd the prior]

The 304 class was designed in an era when Goa'uld motherships were the primary threat and naquada reactors were the bees knees in terms of power generators.

Everything added to it since that point will need to be made to work with the original design specs which will inevitably require trade offs. The biggest one I can think of is that during all this its never once been mentioned, as far as I recall, that the 304 class received a reactor upgrade.

Despite this though it somehow not only manages to power Asgard beams that can kill everything in 3 shots, but it does so while never experiencing a shortage of power for other systems like shields.

Contrast that to something like say, an Ori mothership, Aurora or Wraith hiveship, which has a reactor designed to meet the demands of its shields and energy weapons, or just weapons in the case of the hive, and which is built entirely using Ori/Wraith/Ancient technology. The 304 reactor on the other hand is built using a second hand human understanding of captured Goa'uld technology.

Despite this though the Aurora or hive ship can both be killed in a handful of shots by an Asgard beam powered by a reactor that was never intended to be used to power energy weapons in the first place.

So Earth can somehow make a ship with a knocked off Goa'uld reactor powering it, that was never even intended to power energy weapons, outperform two battleships from two of the most powerful races in Stargate. The Ancients, who's understanding of power generation technologies gave birth to the mighty ZPM, and the Wraith, the species that destroyed them despite that.



Size is relevant when you're comparing things like a typical stargate battleship from a similar tech level, since all stargate battleships have a lot of things in common that are directly comparable to one another. Nobody's changing the game by packing a tiny cargoship's hanger full of FTL capable anti ship missiles for example.

That's to say a big Goa'uld ship is going to have thicker shields and more firepower than a small one if they're both warships, because its larger size will allow for more weapon ports, bigger or more reactors, etc.

You can overcome this with more advanced technology, like say a small ancient ship could still overpower a larger Goa'uld one because even though it does have more generators/weapons etc all of them are of inferior quality to what's found on the ancient one.

This falls apart with the 304 though since the vast majority of it is representative of humanity's second try ever at a spaceship, with various reverse engineered alien techs bolted on as they became available.

It's a case where less advanced technology and small size somehow manages to be better than larger size and more advanced technology.

The 304 has certain parts that are pretty advanced. Like the various Asgard bolt ons, but everything connecting those parts together was just made in a hanger under the Nevada desert sometime in the early 2000s. It's like a flintstones car with a state of the art anti tank missile bolted on.

Globally that shouldn't all add up to something that goes through Auroras and Hives like a lawnmower goes through grass.

The design should have serious shortcomings and weaknesses but none of that is ever seen.

It's simply, faster, better protected, and carries more firepower than anything else out there (let alone anything else its own size) "just because".

First off the deduleses with beams cme around during the ori/wraith arks, far worse than then gou'ld.secondly, we did get a power core to add to the power generation to allow use of the beem wepons, so that argument is mute. also, anything important on the 304 is asgard, there are gou'ld crystals, anceints rings, and doors made by humans. so i you were talking about the 303 i agree, but your not.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

First off the deduleses with beams cme around during the ori/wraith arks, far worse than then gou'ld.secondly, we did get a power core to add to the power generation to allow use of the beem wepons, so that argument is mute. also, anything important on the 304 is asgard, there are gou'ld crystals, anceints rings, and doors made by humans. so i you were talking about the 303 i agree, but your not.

Actually the first 304 was launched towards the end of season 8 of SG1, so it would have been in an era when all we knew about was the Goauld.
TBH construction for the Daedalus could have begun in early season 7 of SG1, tbh it's design probably began upon completion of Prometheus, which would have been in mid season 6.

BTW you're making an assumption if you think the power source in the Asgard core is actually powering the Beam weapons.
The Asgard computer cores are computers, a standalone power source only has to power a computer which even though we're talking about a massively more powerful computer than anything man made could be infinitely more efficient than anything man made, so it's not likely that a massive boost on the level to penetrate advanced shields and destroy tough armor the size of a Hive, when a 304 is about a 10th of the size of one is a bit of a stretch to think that a computer power source could be that powerful.

TBH it's never actually been stated that the newer looking Asgard computer consoles on the other 304s besides Odyssey actually have an Asgard power source like Odyssey's Asgard legacy does, those computers could just be powered of the already present power source a 304 has and a few modifications to those generators could be what's allowing us to power the Plasma Beam Weapons or newer, more efficient systems could have replaced older ones to allow surpluss power to become available for the Beam weapons.

IMO the most likely possibility is we've developed more powerful generators that power the beam weapons.

[Ouroboros]

One way it can sort of make sense is if the 304 was designed around the idea of eventually being upgraded to mount some sort of plasma cannon derived from Goa'uld technology.

We know Earth was studying such weapons so the 304 class might have been designed with future upgrade space to mount generators for the weapons once they became available.

That could explain where they put them, if they even exist, which isn't indicated anywhere. It doesn't however explain the ridiculously over the top performance. There's no credible way to explain that that doesn't also imply that all the other species, including the Asgard most of all, would be simply to stupid to employ the same methods on their own ships. So we're back to innate Earth supremacy for no justifiable reason again.

Teaching aliens the best ways to employ their own technologies.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

One way it can sort of make sense is if the 304 was designed around the idea of eventually being upgraded to mount some sort of plasma cannon derived from Goa'uld technology.

Do you think that the 304 could be designed to just unplug and plug in new components around the ship?
You know with anything just being taken out of sockets that plug into the power grid of the ship and ports on the hull were just there already.

We know Earth was studying such weapons so the 304 class might have been designed with future upgrade space to mount generators for the weapons once they became available.

In that case all our guys had to do was take or beam off a trinium panel here and there and fix the new weapon system in.
Afterall having to remove a massive plate of trinium from the hull could mess with the overall strength of the ship's body.

That could explain where they put them, if they even exist, which isn't indicated anywhere. It doesn't however explain the ridiculously over the top performance. There's no credible way to explain that that doesn't also imply that all the other species, including the Asgard most of all, would be simply to stupid to employ the same methods on their own ships. So we're back to innate Earth supremacy for no justifiable reason again.

Teaching aliens the best ways to employ their own technologies.

I was thinking about this recently, if we look at how long each beam shot is fired for compared to their alien counterparts pulse shots.
A beam is like dozens of pulse shots being fired one after the other, without a gap inbetween each, I think we have to think about what all that stress is doing to the target, since shields in SG usually have regions that weaken when taking the brunt, now imagine you don't give the enemy long enough to reposition their ship so it's taking stress in one tiny portion of that region, rather than getting sprayed in multiple areas and unless you reassign the shields bubble to cover the areas you're hitting constantly after each equivalent moment of impact from multiple pulse and IMO this would explain the apparent power of the beams.

Since a 304 doesn't have to power multiple cannons to deliver this amount of damage it could just be shunting the equivalent energy used accross say half a dozen Hive shots or whatever into one weapon and that would deal as much damage as we're seeing the APBWs do to the targets we've seen them hit.

I just think what would happen if you fired all of a Hives cannons at the same point on a 304's shields, not just one side, but a pulse's width, or imagine double that amount of cannons all hitting the same point at once or directly after each other, without a break for a few seconds and I think the results could be very similar.
It's stress, over a small area and in a short space of time, which equals more efficient damage delivery to a target.

Afterall randrops wouldn't hurt as much as a jetstream of water.

TBH I wouldn't be surprized if a Goauld came back, changed his/her ships to using a few beam variants instead of pulse cannons that they'd have had a better effect on the Ori other ships, guess we'll never see that though.

[Ouroboros]

Do you think that the 304 could be designed to just unplug and plug in new components around the ship?
You know with anything just being taken out of sockets that plug into the power grid of the ship and ports on the hull were just there already.

In that case all our guys had to do was take or beam off a trinium panel here and there and fix the new weapon system in.
Afterall having to remove a massive plate of trinium from the hull could mess with the overall strength of the ship's body.

Modularity in anticipation of future upgrades would make sense in an environment of rapid tech development like the SGC. It's got its limits though. Eventually you're going to reach the point where you're better off just building a new ship rather than trying to slap on a bunch of fresh upgrades to an outdated platform.

The 304 series already seems well past that point as it's still lugging around nuclear missile tubes and fighter bays that are now utterly useless compared to its beam weapons, but still account for probably close to 50% of the thing's volume.

I was thinking about this recently, if we look at how long each beam shot is fired for compared to their alien counterparts pulse shots.
A beam is like dozens of pulse shots being fired one after the other, without a gap inbetween each, I think we have to think about what all that stress is doing to the target, since shields in SG usually have regions that weaken when taking the brunt, now imagine you don't give the enemy long enough to reposition their ship so it's taking stress in one tiny portion of that region, rather than getting sprayed in multiple areas and unless you reassign the shields bubble to cover the areas you're hitting constantly after each equivalent moment of impact from multiple pulse and IMO this would explain the apparent power of the beams.

Since a 304 doesn't have to power multiple cannons to deliver this amount of damage it could just be shunting the equivalent energy used accross say half a dozen Hive shots or whatever into one weapon and that would deal as much damage as we're seeing the APBWs do to the targets we've seen them hit.

I just think what would happen if you fired all of a Hives cannons at the same point on a 304's shields, not just one side, but a pulse's width, or imagine double that amount of cannons all hitting the same point at once or directly after each other, without a break for a few seconds and I think the results could be very similar.
It's stress, over a small area and in a short space of time, which equals more efficient damage delivery to a target.

Afterall randrops wouldn't hurt as much as a jetstream of water.

TBH I wouldn't be surprized if a Goauld came back, changed his/her ships to using a few beam variants instead of pulse cannons that they'd have had a better effect on the Ori other ships, guess we'll never see that though.

This breaks down against a moving target like a ship though. A beam hitting a moving target, more so a miserably slow beam like the Asgard one, will have more of a raking effect along a rough line in the shield unless the target ship is moving directly toward or away. There's also the issue of power/time. Say a beam holds 10 wankatons of energy and takes 3 seconds to fully hit the shield. In such a case squishing it down into a blob that can finish hitting the shield in 1 second because it's shorter stresses the shield 3 times as hard in terms of dissipation.

I suppose it's a question of what's more important. Stressing dissipation or cross section, but it still comes back to the same general suspension of disbelief failure. If beams really were better than blobs for whatever reason you might image, then why do all the other species use blobs. Why were none of them smart enough to switch to beams before the weapons installed on the tiny little Earth ship if they were really THAT much better.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

Modularity in anticipation of future upgrades would make sense in an environment of rapid tech development like the SGC. It's got its limits though. Eventually you're going to reach the point where you're better off just building a new ship rather than trying to slap on a bunch of fresh upgrades to an outdated platform.

I guess if Earth improved it's methods of making the hull of the ship, to be stronger and a more efficient use of resources then limits would of course be there in the older platform, but if the 304 can just have it's power grid replaced with ease to be more efficient and handle more power, then retiring our current ships doesn't really seem necessary, especially considering how long it's taken Earth to get it's fleet to the numbers it's currently got.
BTW I realize next to real life building times the 304s haven't really taken long to make, but for what we need and next to our enemies Humans are still pretty slow.

The 304 series already seems well past that point as it's still lugging around nuclear missile tubes and fighter bays that are now utterly useless compared to its beam weapons, but still account for probably close to 50% of the thing's volume.

I know their robustness is unrealistic but APBWs are pretty terrible in that regard.
Nukes are still useful as are 302s as a back up, tbh I wouldn't see them going in a while, hell even the Ancients had Puddle Jumpers and a mixture of energy weapons and projectiles in their society.

The Goauld also had explosives and fighters, but their pulse based energy weapons seem more reliable than teh APBWs.

This breaks down against a moving target like a ship though. A beam hitting a moving target, more so a miserably slow beam like the Asgard one, will have more of a raking effect along a rough line in the shield unless the target ship is moving directly toward or away.

In terms of moving speed the APBWs are not really different than their blob counterparts, they do deliver more material over a shorter space of time and they don't give a break, unlike pulses which do.

There's also the issue of power/time. Say a beam holds 10 wankatons of energy and takes 3 seconds to fully hit the shield. In such a case squishing it down into a blob that can finish hitting the shield in 1 second because it's shorter stresses the shield 3 times as hard in terms of dissipation.

The APBWs don't take 3 seconds to deliver their stream, it's about a second and a half, maybe 2 max, next to a single pulse which takes about half a second from firing to hitting and has about the same amount of a time gap inbetween the next hit.
The heat build up from trying to throw that much energy out of the weapon in a split second could be impossible for another race to try and emulate with a big blob, so delivering the power over a 2 second stream of the same kind of energy could be a safer way to make the principle work.

I suppose it's a question of what's more important. Stressing dissipation or cross section, but it still comes back to the same general suspension of disbelief failure.

See I don't see the issue, Stargate ships appear to have their battles at close in ranges and don't appear to move at relativistic speeds which would be a nightmare for real world battle scenarios.
These ships move slow and the APBWs aren't really any slower than their blob counterparts, plus they're delivering more damage in the amount of time it would take our enemy's to fire a volley of shots, mainly because there's no gap per amount of damage delivered, that could make a world of difference in a battle scenario.

If beams really were better than blobs for whatever reason you might image, then why do all the other species use blobs. Why were none of them smart enough to switch to beams before the weapons installed on the tiny little Earth ship if they were really THAT much better.

We didn't design them though did we, we got the designs from a race much older than most, even the Asurans.
It's probably a matter of heat build up and the materials used to deal with the stresses such a weapon could place upon itself by trying to fit that much energy/matter delivery into short space of time as it takes the APBWs to fire off all of their stuff.

Unless shown how to make them or given the technology to do so with ease it could be impossible for any other race to make such a weapon with their present level of technology.
Though the Asurans did have that satellite, which did terrible amounts of damage to Apollo's shields.
The Goauld and races that used their ships don't seem to have been shown the beams in action, only Pegasus races.

[McAvoy]

There are real world examples of reaching an upper limit of how much you can refit the ship without practically rebuilding the ship from the keel up. The USS Midway was a straight-decked ship when designed, and was heavily refitted back in the late 1960's, early 1970's to be as near as the super carriers as possible. Yet, she had her limits. She was a much wetter ship (sat lower in the water compared to the deeper hull supercarrers), was marginally slower and could not operate F-14 Tomcats which were the latest fighters at the time and had to resort to using F-4s. One of the reasons was because of the hangerdeck ceiling level. The ship rolled pretty heavily which limited her in launching and recovering aircraft.

I can easily see the 304s reaching the limit of their design either now or very soon. Yes, you can modify the ship during the construction, but there is a limit on what you can do even then before you practically have to redesign the ship. Another real world example is the difference between the USS Nimitz when commissioned about 40 years ago, and the USS George Bush commissioned a few years ago.