The Drones - are they similar to Seed Ships?

[wabbit42]

I think that the drone ships are able to harvest raw material to create new drones, much like the way the Seed Ships can produce new gates, or even the Replicators being able to.... replicate. It would make sense because a command ship without drones is pretty useless.

[escyos]

They may just have a manufacturing plant somewhere

[General Jumper One]

I wouldn't be surprised if they could harvest new materials and make new drones

[thekillman]

i think there are baseships that harvest materials to build drones. putting all that stuff on a command ship makes no sense

[wabbit42]

Indeed, I hadn't thought of an off-ship manufacturing plant or something of the sort

[Kamosis]

Yes, that would make no sense at all! It would be like if modern Aircraft Carrier was unable to build his own airplanes! Wait a second...

[wabbit42]

Yes, that would make no sense at all! It would be like if modern Aircraft Carrier was unable to build his own airplanes! Wait a second...

The point I am making is that the command ship has no discernible weapons other than the drones, and that if it does we haven't seen them yet. Like escyos and thekillman have said, they may manufacture drones at another location, much in the same sense that planes for aircraft carriers are made on land. My initial point may have not been very clear, but...

a command ship without drones is pretty useless

is basically what I'm trying to say.

[Keeper]

Yes, that would make no sense at all! It would be like if modern Aircraft Carrier was unable to build his own airplanes! Wait a second...

however, that modern aircraft carrier is far advanced from the old ships that used to use cannonballs.

remembering that the command ships and drones are sufficiently advanced to track by gate activity, and to travel possibly intergalactic distances, it's safe to conclude that they may have any capabilities that we do not know about.

i believe it was stated by the ursini that the drones are computer-controlled - so no need for a crew, life support et cetera. the command ships are pretty big, but they don't seem to have the capacity for taking control of another ship's drones (as evidenced when the destiny activated friend-or-foe.) in fact, the drones seem relatively autonomous, in that they just need to have friend-or-foe targeting adjusted to suit.

i won't pretend to know how many things a command ship could carry - but, while we know they carry a fleet of drones, we also know they're a little smaller than the rear compartment of a shuttle. it's logical, therefore, to imagine that there's a lot of potential space on a command ship. it isn't unbelievable that a portion of that space could be set aside for advanced mining drones, as well as metal processing facilities to produce materials for repairing and possibly even constructing new drones.



an aircraft carrier has to consider the needs of the crew, not just the equipment. the equipment, too, needs to consider the crew involved - in case of planes, pilots. in case of defensive weapons, operators. and so on. when they need supplies, they can put in at port - and have time to prepare for returns. if they aren't able for whatever reason to return, supplies can be shipped out to them. while the same may happen for drones, it would represent a serious decrease in efficiency to have them return to base regularly - far better to have them maintain themselves in the field, and send reports back.

[thekillman]

but they don't seem to have the capacity for taking control of another ship's drones

actually i believe this isolation is a safety measure. as you can see in Deliverance, they took capture and reprogramming into account

[RafK2]

A Hungarian chap callen Von Neumann came up with the idea of self replicating machines, which has long been used by sci fi writers and extended to space craft. I believe the drones to be these (most likely the command ship itself)

The idea being you create one, send it on its way, it finds suitable resources and has the manufacturing caperbility to make a copy of itself. Initially it would be a slow proces but 100% compound interest rapidly picks up the numbers and before you know it you have thousands.

To put it into perspective even if one command ship can only make one other command ship per year after 10 years you would have 512 command ships and after 20 years a staggering half million!

As you can see it then rapidly comes into the realms of possiblity to blockade every star in a region of space. These ships seem prevalent enough in this region for that to be the case.

[garhkal]

I think they DO make new ones.. though why the 3 types (the small scout looking, the medium and the large)..

[knowles2]

I had a theory that the command ships are base on technology obtain from a seed vessel and that why the Ursini were so interested in them. The seed vessel manufacture the stargate, so adapting this technology to build vessels should not be that difficult.