3 types of Ancient ships?

[Crias]

Could there possibly be 3 types of Ancient ship? We know of the seed ships and Destiny but is it possible that the ancients sent out ships in advance of the seed ships that would scan the planets and assess viability and then relay the info back to the seed ships so they can drop a nice new Stargate on it? I took a look at the seed ships and they didn’t look like they were equipped with any antae or scanning instruments as you would expect to see.

[escyos]

The Ancients didnt need any antae, their sensors were just...there.

Combining them into the seed ship is best, that way the ship scans, drops and moves on.

[traylormatt]

I think there would have been mention of it by now. There is always the possibility of it, but I highly doubt it. And as escyos said, they don't need scanning instruments, they just communicate, it is all built in. Where is the antenna or anything on most mobile phones? they are built into the design now. They clearly have it to detect stargates in range (that is on destiny I mean) and it has been said that the seed ships communicate with Destiny so they must do it through sub space. So I doubt there is a 3rd ship.

[garhkal]

We know they had science ships, auroras, transports.. so i could potentially see a smaller scanning ship (say 3 times the size of a destiny shuttle) that preceeds the seed ships...

[Keeper]

if there were a previous ship type in advance of the seeders, they'd have to scout entire galaxies for viable planets - and to be honest, i think it's safe to say that wasn't really done.

as it is, the seedships have planted gates that destiny locks out - and we have no solid info why. most gates seem to be on a fairly straight line through the universe, or at least that's my understanding, so all the seedships have really cared about is viablity at time of seeding.


scoutships would have had many more planets to survey, meaning that - to have a viable head start - they'd have to be sent out even further in advance of the seeders than seeders were sent in advance of destiny. otherwise seedships would have run the risk of catching up, making any further use of the scout redundant.

as it is, seeders are semi-redundant - if destiny had been built with gate production facilities, a gate could be landed on each world on an as-needed basis. however, sending seeders prevents resources being wasted on destiny when some pesky brattish race called humans find out how to control seeding - they'd be everywhere they could get to, safe or not, and go through the entire production facility in a single galaxy. possibly with no way to even get more of whatever material is used, and if they could they probably wouldn't be able to work out the refinment process to make it work with production.


no, seeders have scanners enough for scouting the planets en route, and determining best viability at the time, without wasting resources on yet another ship style.

[actuallyliam]

I could see a small unmanned drone or nineteen. It would make sense and save resources to determine the actual habitability of these galaxies before having ships that drop gates on human populatible worlds. It makes sense to me. But I can't imagine these things being very useful to Destiny crew.

[escyos]

if there were a previous ship type in advance of the seeders, they'd have to scout entire galaxies for viable planets - and to be honest, i think it's safe to say that wasn't really done.

as it is, the seedships have planted gates that destiny locks out - and we have no solid info why.

technically Destiny locks them out because the gate send a subspace signal saying that their is something wrong with the gate and not to send anyone through (e.g. buried gate)

The Seed ships travel through the galaxy and select planets, drop gates and move on. Destiny follows, connects to the gates and thats about it.

[garhkal]

Or that the planet is unsuitable for our survival.

[escyos]

Or that the planet is unsuitable for our survival.

not nessecarily, remember Hoth and that planet Eli dialled in Lost

[Keeper]

unfortunately though, the crew don't seem to get told why they shouldn't go to a particular planet.

i vaugely rememeber a season 1 epi where they overrode the lockout - because of the lack of info - and ended up losing a couple of people because of it.

whether the gate itself is sending info to destiny saying 'please lock me out' - or whether destiny's own sensors are detecting lockout conditions seems unclear at this point. but if it's the gate sending the info, then it must have some kind of built in sensors - which to me seems unlikely, unless it's being retconned in, because such sensors could have been used by sg1 and atlantis to determine which gates were space-based, or if any had hostiles in the vicinity.



regardless though, between seedships and destiny, there's really no point in having scouts even further in advance. unless they were only a short time before the seeders, conditions could have changed too much for their info to be useful any more. seedships are planting on a good few planets that, by the time destiny gets there, are getting locked out - making it clear that information is relatively obsolete in that time.

[garhkal]

True.. BUT we can hope!

[RafK2]

There are several factors involved such as:

1) how many seed ships are there? most likely a swarm for redundancy.

2) How long does it take the seed ships to renew there construction material for gates? I would suggest that they probably get the raw materials when they recharge in a sun. (assuming thats how they recharge) this will mean they dont have to stop to mine for new materials and preumably the elements they collect in a star would, with nano technology be easily converted into whatever is needed.

3) how long does it take to seed a world? is it a case of just dropping a gate of quickly or are there other factors involved.

I think the likelyhood is that rather then a third class of ship as the leading edge of the 'swarm' enters new areas they constantly scan and exchange information and the trailing elements then go straight to these planets. they manufacture gates whilst travelling and hopefully its a case of just dropping the gates of.

Either that or the seed ships are significantly faster then destiny

[Crias]

There are several factors involved such as:

1) how many seed ships are there? most likely a swarm for redundancy.

2) How long does it take the seed ships to renew there construction material for gates? I would suggest that they probably get the raw materials when they recharge in a sun. (assuming thats how they recharge) this will mean they dont have to stop to mine for new materials and preumably the elements they collect in a star would, with nano technology be easily converted into whatever is needed.

3) how long does it take to seed a world? is it a case of just dropping a gate of quickly or are there other factors involved.

I think the likelyhood is that rather then a third class of ship as the leading edge of the 'swarm' enters new areas they constantly scan and exchange information and the trailing elements then go straight to these planets. they manufacture gates whilst travelling and hopefully its a case of just dropping the gates of.

Either that or the seed ships are significantly faster then destiny

We know that the seed ships recharge inside stars because we saw it in Resurgence/Deliverance but gathering resources from inside a star wouldn’t make sense because the gates are built with naquidah and I don’t know of any stars that can contain super heavy elements without becoming unstable as we saw in the SG:1 episode “Red sky.”
Also how do they get the gates down on the ground? Would they need to land and drop it off like an egg or how does it work? Also I think the seed ships would travel at the same general speed of destiny as the ancients would have wanted Destiny to find the source of the signal/message ASAP but then the seed ships are only a third the size of Destiny.

[MathiasE]

because the gates are built with naquidah

We've seen nothing to support that these gates are built with Naquadah, in fact from what we saw with the gate being blown apart a couple of episodes ago it's highly unlikely there's any Naquadah in them, Naquadah gates can withstand nuclear blasts and the gate in Common Descent was destroyed by a single Drone energy blast.

Our Milkyway gates are made of the stuff, but we also have longer range on our gates, these prototype gates most likely use a less capable conductor which I guess is also the reason why they have such a short range.

[Crias]

We've seen nothing to support that these gates are built with Naquadah, in fact from what we saw with the gate being blown apart a couple of episodes ago it's highly unlikely there's any Naquadah in them, Naquadah gates can withstand nuclear blasts and the gate in Common Descent was destroyed by a single Drone energy blast.

Our Milkyway gates are made of the stuff, but we also have longer range on our gates, these prototype gates most likely use a less capable conductor which I guess is also the reason why they have such a short range.

True, I didn’t really think of that actually. What do you think these gates would be made of? I think if it were something that would need to be refined the ships would need to be much bigger so that the metal can be purified and then shaped.