For all the talk about how powerful and deadly the Ori were as a foe it always seemed to me that this was one area in which they were severely lacking.
We saw in the show that their initial invasion of the MW in Camelot consisted of 4 ships, which was a nice biblical allegory and all but the trouble was I don't really remember there being much of any follow up to it. I remember one other episode where they brought a few more ships through, and we did see them building more ships in their home galaxy, but still not that many more.
In the alternate reality episode we learn that they were attacking Earth with I think it was around 10 ships, and that this is apparently a force that they actually had to gather up for a while.
Basically the impression I got from the show was that the entire "Ori invasion" consisted of a fleet that numbered less than 20 ships, and probably even less than 15 and that this more or less represented the rate at which they could build them over the few years that the invasion lasted.
Is there any reason to think this wasn't the case? It seems downright wrong that 15 or so ships would constitute a galactic invasion force but SG has always had trouble with scaling these things so it wouldn't really surprise me.
The picture it painted for me was that the Ori were a power that was very advanced technologically but very low output in terms of industry. They make their ships on however many planets they hold in their home galaxy, which isn't likely to be many, using unskilled manual labor in fields with prior supervision and that those factors combine to make their manufacturing output absolutely dismal.
Why the Ori do things this way isn't entirely clear but it probably has a lot to do with them not wanting the secrets of their highest technologies to be known by anyone but trusted individuals like Priors who just tell the loyal worshippers what screw goes in what hole.
In any case though from looking at the series it looks like they're not anywhere near as nasty as they're cracked up to be in a fullscale war type situation. Their ships are powerful yes, but they have almost none of them and building new ones is apparently a long tedious process judgeing by how few of them they could apparently make. Compare them to a power like the Ida Asgard for example that had worlds with impressive futeristic cities and ships being built in technologically advanced drydocks on those worlds. It doesn't seem like they would have any hope at all at competing long term with such a power in a full on war conflict, or even a power like the Wraith that can grow new ships out of virtually nothing bypassing the need for infastructure, or one like the Asurans that can build them alarmingly fast from just a single industrialized world.
I would even go so far as to say that the united system lords at the height of their power with Anubis could probably hold off an Ori invasion for much longer than most people give them credit for. The Goa'uld and Anubis had anywhere from a low few hundred to around a thousand or more Ha'tak depending on where in the series you look. If the Ori only have 15 or so ships after building them for a few years of conflict it would seem like they'd be fighting against not the 3 or 4 to one odds we saw in the latter seasons, but odds of nearly 100 to one vs Ha'taks. The wide variance in Goa'uld ship numbers at differant points in the series also suggests that they can even build them pretty fast, likely from the more industrial advanced Goa'uld worlds we saw from time to time.
So what do you think. Was I missing some critical bit of dialog somewhere or are the Ori really not all they're cracked up to be once you look at the whole picture, namely their crippling lack of industry and the very slow rate of ship production this leads to.
We saw in the show that their initial invasion of the MW in Camelot consisted of 4 ships, which was a nice biblical allegory and all but the trouble was I don't really remember there being much of any follow up to it. I remember one other episode where they brought a few more ships through, and we did see them building more ships in their home galaxy, but still not that many more.
In the alternate reality episode we learn that they were attacking Earth with I think it was around 10 ships, and that this is apparently a force that they actually had to gather up for a while.
Basically the impression I got from the show was that the entire "Ori invasion" consisted of a fleet that numbered less than 20 ships, and probably even less than 15 and that this more or less represented the rate at which they could build them over the few years that the invasion lasted.
Is there any reason to think this wasn't the case? It seems downright wrong that 15 or so ships would constitute a galactic invasion force but SG has always had trouble with scaling these things so it wouldn't really surprise me.
The picture it painted for me was that the Ori were a power that was very advanced technologically but very low output in terms of industry. They make their ships on however many planets they hold in their home galaxy, which isn't likely to be many, using unskilled manual labor in fields with prior supervision and that those factors combine to make their manufacturing output absolutely dismal.
Why the Ori do things this way isn't entirely clear but it probably has a lot to do with them not wanting the secrets of their highest technologies to be known by anyone but trusted individuals like Priors who just tell the loyal worshippers what screw goes in what hole.
In any case though from looking at the series it looks like they're not anywhere near as nasty as they're cracked up to be in a fullscale war type situation. Their ships are powerful yes, but they have almost none of them and building new ones is apparently a long tedious process judgeing by how few of them they could apparently make. Compare them to a power like the Ida Asgard for example that had worlds with impressive futeristic cities and ships being built in technologically advanced drydocks on those worlds. It doesn't seem like they would have any hope at all at competing long term with such a power in a full on war conflict, or even a power like the Wraith that can grow new ships out of virtually nothing bypassing the need for infastructure, or one like the Asurans that can build them alarmingly fast from just a single industrialized world.
I would even go so far as to say that the united system lords at the height of their power with Anubis could probably hold off an Ori invasion for much longer than most people give them credit for. The Goa'uld and Anubis had anywhere from a low few hundred to around a thousand or more Ha'tak depending on where in the series you look. If the Ori only have 15 or so ships after building them for a few years of conflict it would seem like they'd be fighting against not the 3 or 4 to one odds we saw in the latter seasons, but odds of nearly 100 to one vs Ha'taks. The wide variance in Goa'uld ship numbers at differant points in the series also suggests that they can even build them pretty fast, likely from the more industrial advanced Goa'uld worlds we saw from time to time.
So what do you think. Was I missing some critical bit of dialog somewhere or are the Ori really not all they're cracked up to be once you look at the whole picture, namely their crippling lack of industry and the very slow rate of ship production this leads to.
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