Everything you ever wanted to know about Hiveships/Wraith.

[Buba uognarf]

Have you seen Travelers yet.

Spoiler:

It was a pretty awful episode but there's an interesting demonstration of cruiser firepower in it.

We get some guys on the bridge of an Aurora class battleship bring the shields up when they're about to be attacked by the cruiser. The cuiser then takes the shields down in 10 shots, 9 if you assume the first one doesn't count because it was before the guy says "20%".

The ship rocks violently every time a shot hits and the scene is pretty much continuous as far as I can see.

It's an interesting bit of info in any case. Certainly more evidence toward the idea that Wraith weapons were optimised specifically to maul Lantian shields.

If their best ship can be laid low by only 50 shots from a mere cruiser I think we've got our answer to how the Wraith faught them despite the various instakill weaponry, which is also demonstrated again here. The shots this cruiser fires are a fraction of the size of the bolts in hive yet the damage they cause to the lantian shields is way out of proportion compared to what they would do to say, Daedalus. It seems from this that the Wraith weaponry was almost as bad for the Lantians as the Lantian weaponry was for the Wraith.

The episode also shows how fragile Lantian warship hulls are as well. The one cruiser shot that hits after the shields drop blows a pretty massive chunk out of the hull, the bridge being a part of said chunk.

Well here's hoping that this trend of the Wraith doing more damage will continue. I haven't seen the episode yet but was the Lantian ship any different to an Aurora?

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

Well here's hoping that this trend of the Wraith doing more damage will continue. I haven't seen the episode yet but was the Lantian ship any different to an Aurora?

I believe it was an Aurora class though I havent seen the episode yet.

[Mister Oragahn]

Have you seen Travelers yet.

Spoiler:

It was a pretty awful episode but there's an interesting demonstration of cruiser firepower in it.

We get some guys on the bridge of an Aurora class battleship bring the shields up when they're about to be attacked by the cruiser. The cuiser then takes the shields down in 10 shots, 9 if you assume the first one doesn't count because it was before the guy says "20%".

The ship rocks violently every time a shot hits and the scene is pretty much continuous as far as I can see.

It's an interesting bit of info in any case. Certainly more evidence toward the idea that Wraith weapons were optimised specifically to maul Lantian shields.

If their best ship can be laid low by only 50 shots from a mere cruiser I think we've got our answer to how the Wraith faught them despite the various instakill weaponry, which is also demonstrated again here. The shots this cruiser fires are a fraction of the size of the bolts in hive yet the damage they cause to the lantian shields is way out of proportion compared to what they would do to say, Daedalus. It seems from this that the Wraith weaponry was almost as bad for the Lantians as the Lantian weaponry was for the Wraith.

The episode also shows how fragile Lantian warship hulls are as well. The one cruiser shot that hits after the shields drop blows a pretty massive chunk out of the hull, the bridge being a part of said chunk.

Spoiler:

Then you wonder why the Lantians simply didn't slap ZPM into each warship, and move Atlantis out.
These twats had a mobile fortress they could hide anywhere, even bring out of the galaxy, just to harvest ressources in a nearby small galaxy, seriously rethink their strategy and build and build.
Those cowards were damn lucky that the Wraith never attempted to leave Pegasus, and even more, never managed to get their hands on better hyperdrives, otherwise the life suckers could have started a crusade to conquer even more galaxies, to get even more food, grow more farms and so on.

But the draining rate you are describing is not surprising either, when you know that if it was a matter of energy - exotic gizmo out - these weapons would be draining at the very least many petatons of energy per second or so.

But was that cruiser different? There were those hiveships in No Man's Land, and they didn't damage the Orion anywhere that fast.

So we're back to the possibility that the weapons may not be specifically designed against the Lantians, but just that some ships (cruisers and hives) actually sport them.

[Buba uognarf]

Spoiler:

Then you wonder why the Lantians simply didn't slap ZPM into each warship, and move Atlantis out.
These twats had a mobile fortress they could hide anywhere, even bring out of the galaxy, just to harvest ressources in a nearby small galaxy, seriously rethink their strategy and build and build.
Those cowards were damn lucky that the Wraith never attempted to leave Pegasus, and even more, never managed to get their hands on better hyperdrives, otherwise the life suckers could have started a crusade to conquer even more galaxies, to get even more food, grow more farms and so on.

But the draining rate you are describing is not surprising either, when you know that if it was a matter of energy - exotic gizmo out - these weapons would be draining at the very least many petatons of energy per second or so.

But was that cruiser different? There were those hiveships in No Man's Land, and they didn't damage the Orion anywhere that fast.

So we're back to the possibility that the weapons may not be specifically designed against the Lantians, but just that some ships (cruisers and hives) actually sport them.

Or maybe the writers have decided to make the Wraith more powerful and stop dumbing them down and hope we don't notice

[l33telboi]

Spoiler:

You were talking about jumper acceleration earlier, well in Travelers there is a way to get figures for the acceleration. It takes 5 hours to travel what seems to be several AU (rough eyeballing).

Thoughts?

[Ouroboros]

Spoiler:

Then you wonder why the Lantians simply didn't slap ZPM into each warship, and move Atlantis out.
These twats had a mobile fortress they could hide anywhere, even bring out of the galaxy, just to harvest ressources in a nearby small galaxy, seriously rethink their strategy and build and build.
Those cowards were damn lucky that the Wraith never attempted to leave Pegasus, and even more, never managed to get their hands on better hyperdrives, otherwise the life suckers could have started a crusade to conquer even more galaxies, to get even more food, grow more farms and so on.

Indeed. Fortunately for them the Wraith seem not really keen on expansion unless they're under threat from some distant external power.

I've sometimes wondered what would happen if some sort of charismatic leader rose up in their ranks and decided, "ok, enough of this lurking in a dark corner business, it's time we owned this part of the universe. Get them all organised, doing R&D again, building new ship classes, training armies, building the political will for mass war and conquest.

The main weakness the Wraith have is apathy toward their situation. They don't particularly seem to want any more than what they already have.

But the draining rate you are describing is not surprising either, when you know that if it was a matter of energy - exotic gizmo out - these weapons would be draining at the very least many petatons of energy per second or so.

I was surprised at 2% per shot myself. From a hive maybe not but from a cruiser it seemed like a lot, especially given that they were carfully restraining their rate of fire here in preparation for the boarding action they'd started when their ship was destroyed.

But was that cruiser different? There were those hiveships in No Man's Land, and they didn't damage the Orion anywhere that fast.

So we're back to the possibility that the weapons may not be specifically designed against the Lantians, but just that some ships (cruisers and hives) actually sport them.

The cruiser might have been better grade than the hiveships of the lesser queen from no mans land, more in line with the hives that attacked the city shield. I don't remember off hand the Aurora taking significantly less damage than would be consistant with a shield at closer to full capacity either.

The main difference is in the Daedalus. Youc ouldw rite that off one of several ways. Character shields, Wraith weapons working better vs ancient shield designs, or asguard shields being better than ancient ones, even secondhand copies of them.

Or maybe the writers have decided to make the Wraith more powerful and stop dumbing them down and hope we don't notice

Would certainly be nice. Make the Wraith more pwerful and the Asurans smarter and get some more credible storylines going.

Based on the oh so captivating content of last nights epsiode though I'd say it's probably more likely that we see Shep have a romantic fling with a hive queen this season.

I had to reassure myself that I wasn't actually watching Andromeda a few times last night.

[Mister Oragahn]

Spoiler:

You were talking about jumper acceleration earlier, well in Travelers there is a way to get figures for the acceleration. It takes 5 hours to travel what seems to be several AU (rough eyeballing).

Thoughts?

That's a problem. I think I said something similar at SBC; McKay said it took them something as stupid as 15 hours to reach the last remaining Lagrange point satellite, said to be on the other side of the system (which means the most distant point, on the other side of the sun).

Earth <-> Sun = 1 AU. ... that makes an absolutely crappy acceleration and cruising capability, especially since we've seen puddle jumpers tremendeous accelerations.

Then, it takes only 5 hours to travel inside another system, right? My memory's a bit sketchy regarding Travelers.
Better, but still a bit conservative imho.

It took a Death Glider less then 45 minutes to cover a distance from a Sol like sun to an Earth like planet.

So if the distance in Travelers was something like 10 AU, or more, it could become acceptable.

[Mister Oragahn]

Here's the real reason why I bump this thread.
I noted how hiveships destructions were often impressive. Particularily in certain episodes such as in the Siege episodes, where hiveships were entirely vapourized in the blink of the eye (just like the destruction of the Aurora completely vapourized both the Lantian ship and the two nearby Wraith cruisers).

I wanted to see how much energy would be necessary to achieve such "performances".

So let's use the same volume as found earlier on, but use iron instead.

Some figures for iron.

One mole of iron = 55.847 g

So we get 13.81 kJ to bring 55.847 g of iron to fusion point (melting), and then 340 kJ to bring the same mass to boiling point (vapourization).

The volume was V = 37379379280.7407 m³.

With 7,000 kg/m³, we get a mass M = 261655654965184.9 kg.

The amount of energy to melt a whole hiveship:

E1 = Melting energy/kg x Mass
E1 = 247.28275466900639246512793883288 x 261655654965184.9
E1 = 64,702,931,134,514,001.987573191039805 kJ
E1 = 64.7 e18 J
E1 = 15.464 GT

For vapourization, that would be around 92.11 GT.

This is a value largely made to be conservative.
It is, in fact, not even an acceptable minimum, because of the following reasons:

• It is calculated from the premise that the energy is equally spread all over the ship, while we know that the explosions that destroy such ships occured from the middle.
• Therefore, due to the ship's overall shape, lots of energy will be wasted as radiation in vacuum. The radiations that shoot upwards from the ship's center won't hit anything else.
• However, the radiations shot towards the rest of the ship will be blocked by the very structure of the ship, acting as a shield. It's not like exploding a sun inside a dyson sphere that's 10 km thick. It's like exploding one sun inside one dyson sphere 1 km thick that contains another sphere 1 km thick, etc. until you get 10 concentric spheres. The material in the path of the radiations will act as a buffer and "protect" the most distant zones of the ship.
• Due to inverse square law, the intensity of the radiations will be particularily weaker when they'll reach the bow and stern parts of the ship. Thus, the initial yield needs to be increased to match the necessary melting, and vapourization requirements.

If you want to see what I mean, let's consider this:

M = 261655654965184.9 kg
M = 2.616556549651849 e14 kg
M = 2.616556549651849 e11 tons

Now, let's use Mr. Wong's asteroid calculator. It provides energy figures necessary to break, melt and vapourize asteroids based on the energy released from a single nuclear bomb placed in the middle.

I need to input a diameter of 5980 meters, to obtain the following mass in tons: 2.610 E+11.
This will be close enough to our ship.

The calculator returns the following values:

The energy alone required to melt the whole iron ball is 268.6 gigatons (more than 17 times my figure).
The energy to vapourize the whole same ball is 1.600 E+3 gigatons, or 1.6 teratons.

Now, considering that the vapourizations occurs in fractions of seconds, the power is these energy figures, divided by the number of frames observed for the complete destruction of the ship (with media often rated at 25 fps).

In all cases used as evidence, that's less than half a second, which means you pick the numbers above in joules, add a 0 at least, and you get your power.

Now, considering that the weapons used against those hiveships were:

- Genii nukes.
- Tau'ri nukes, which at best would range up to 1 or 2 GT as far as we can guess.

It means that the vast bulk of the energy is simply provided by the hiveship itself, and whatever served to fuel the explosion inside.
Sure, the calculator considers a dense asteroid, but due to the nature of the premises, the correct values will be closer to the calculator's ones than to my own values.

If you really feel unsafe, you can still arbitrarily accept the calculator's values for rock instead, at least you'll have reduced the final values.

Besides, this, again, is based on the mass of iron. I wouldn't undermine the possibility that the most solid regions of the hiveship have heavier armour.

[Ouroboros]

I wonder how that would work out factoring in that the MK8 nukes from no mans land were unable to cause visible damage to the hull armor.

In any case though low teratons for a magazine/reactor cook off seems perfectly in line with the lowish gigaton range for single bolts you got earlier. Great work as usual.

[Mister Oragahn]

I wonder how that would work out factoring in that the MK8 nukes from no mans land were unable to cause visible damage to the hull armor.

Yes, that was tough. Since the nuke hit on the stern, that means a rather good distance from the ship's core.
Say the nuke was of a yield of 26 MT (just picking a low number), detonated slightly before impact. Let's say the whole nuke was focused (they can focus 26 MT blasts with no problem at all apparently, and I think these yields were even reduced from the greater yields they initially planned).

Say that makes it 20 megatons per square meter. That's the intensity I.

Now, the ship is 11 km long, but the stern is considerably closer to the core than the bow is (well, sort of speaking).



Globally, the distance "Point of Impact <-> Core" looks like 2 km. That's the radius r, 2000 m.
Let's just see what's necessary to completely vapourize the ass of that hiveship (we're not even considering vapourizing the bow for the moment).

The original source strenght S, unhindered by other materials on its path, would be:

I = S / (4 x pi x r²)
S = I x 4 x pi x r²
S = 1,005,309,649.1487338363080458826494 megatons

One petaton, if we start from a focused 26 MT megaton nuke exploding very close to the hull (maximum damage).
Huh, funny how this brings us close to the numbers I got for draining a ZPM via pure DET.

So let's try to lower this a bit.

Say the intensity was "only" of 20 megatons over a surface of 100 m². The intensity I is 200 kilotons per square meter.
With this new parameter, the strenght is:

S = 10,053,096.491487338363080458826494 megatons.

Around ten teratons of energy.

Now let's consider a probable naqahdah enhanced nuke, with a yield of 1 GT (fairly low in light of what they could do by the time of SGA), with an unfocused warhead.
I don't know if they could focus the power of a 1 GT nuke, so let's say that only half of that stuff hits the ship at a short distance.

That makes it a rough intensity I of 500 MT / 100 m², or 5 MT/m².

S = 251,327,412.28718345907701147066236 megatons.

A bit over 250 teratons.

Now, if you wish to vapourize the stern, which itself is located at more than 6 km away from the core, you may increase that figure considerablymultiply that figure by 9.
You may also consider releasing all the energy extremely rapidly, and you'd also remember the selfshielding factor, ergo, the superstructure in the path of the radiations taking most of the damage before it can even reach the most distant extremities of the ship.

Now, I looked again. Picked up season 1 (ah really, that one was so good, how could they screw it up so much?).

In Siege part I, the hiveship Grodin impales is entirely turned into a fireball. Most interesting is that it happens a few seconds after the ship's been cut in two.

In Siege part II, all three hiveships were totally vapourized, and considering the flash from the first destruction, I'd call that a possibly total destruction as well. No debris were seen there after, thrown at the other ships, or raining in the sky above Atlantis after the first two nukes. Above all, the second hiveship took out a nearby cruiser when it blew up.

In No Man's Land, we didn't see any debris from the destroyed hiveship fly by, or hit the Orion or the Daedalus.
In other cases, explosions were less violent. We've seen orbiting debris in Misbegotten and Trinity. In The Hive, both hiveships were destroyed, but left huge debris behind.

Can be explained by depleted fuel, or power cores not generating large amounts of power at the moment of their destruction.

The figure above are really high ends I'd not defend, but the one from the former post. I'd not be surprised if it required hundreds of gigatons to get rid of most of a hiveship.


Hey, a note of interest: on the two first nukes fired at a hiveship, by the Daedalus, only one was actually intercepted by collision. The first nuke was shot down by a dart.

In any case though low teratons for a magazine/reactor cook off seems perfectly in line with the lowish gigaton range for single bolts you got earlier. Great work as usual.

You're welcome.

EDIT: a good thing to do to lower the numbers I got in the earlier post is to consider that only 10% of the volume is the superstructure (iron in that case). That makes 90% of it being void.
Divide by ten all numbers obtained from volume to see.

[boberth2o]

Ouroboros - One thing, holy crap man, how long did this take you? I mean seriously. I haven't read through it all yet but I'll comment on it after I read the first 10 posts or so.

[Ouroboros]

I didn't do all of it myself. I just posted it here so I don't really deserve all or even most of the credit. Mr. Oragahn's articles were actually a lot more involved than mine with calculations and everything. He's the real star here and does things with the material I couldn't even concieve of.

The whole thing sort of just gradually grew out of us shooting the **** back and forth about various Atlantis episodes.

[Mister Oragahn]

So, things did happen since the last post. We've seen more hiveships and cruisers owned by act of plot, with power varying from what's enough to highlight the superiority of Michael's power to what's necessary to show how he's nothing against Asgard want.
It's a high fence to jump. Ideally, we look for standards, averages, reliable facts which we know have chances to be recurring, like the structure of a ship, what it can do, how much it can hold, where the brdige, bays, service tunnels, weapons, reactors, etc. are.
Unfortunately, Stargate has been a franchise disregarding consistency quite a lot.

When issues came to light and didn't have anything to do with consistency, they had to do with common sense. So we come with rationalizations to fill the holes with said common sense.
In that, we had the episode Reunion, wherein a hiveship was voluntarily crashed a Wraith base on a planet.

While the episode clearly established that the hiveship used by Sheppard's team was fast enough to escape the other hiveships, we would have legitimately expected said 11 km long hiveship entering the planet's atmosphere at a crazy speed, like a furious asteroid of doom, appearing as a white, intense fiery comet piercing the skies, generating shockwaves (big asteroids do) until it would finally crash on the surface and generate an blinding explosion worth of the superb effects the show deemed impressive at the beginning of the spin-off's life.

But instead, what we got was a hiveship entering the atmosphere at a sluggish speed, hitting the base, the ground, and not even lifting a decent amount of rock up in the air, even less exploding in a gigantic nuclear fashion but instead like a piss weak gasoline tank put on fire.

While I'm afraid it's going to be hard to rationalize the trend that people still think gasoline explosions look cool and logical, we may, at least, attempt to explain why the freaking ship came in so slowly, against the most logical and expectable conditions of impact.

This is the summation of a bit of chat with Ouro some while back, and we considered that the ship had a sort of automatic safety braking system, which Sheppard and co didn't disengage before hurtling the ship towards the planet.

[Crazy Tom]

I'm not sure If this has ben brought up, but I think you estimated the thrust of a Hive ot be equivalent to several nuclear detonatiosn a second in order to keep it ariborn in a grvity well, but were inertial dampeners taken into account?

[Mister Oragahn]

Inertia dampeners would work inside to prevent people flying Spaceballs style.

You may be thinking of something like repulsorlifts, but still, unless we have any evidence of it, no matter if they don't work by ejecting hot matter like rockets, they still need to provide a given energy to push the ship upwards. Safe if they cheat physics.
My calcs were just an observation of what the ship would need to pull off with systems which respect conservation of energy.