Everything you ever wanted to know about Hiveships/Wraith.

[Ouroboros]

I tried to trim out some of the stuff that I would only have responded to the same way I did other similar points. If there anything I missed you want me to address specifically just point it out.

I do think both work, the energy of the destroyed stargate was being sent elsewhere, likely some layer of subspace. Many emitters or stronger but fewer emitters could achieve same effects, with advantages for both I suppose.
But it's a fact that shields work, in 99.9% of cases, as one way devices, and that the Lantean cityshield bares all similarities to a solid shell once it's up, as long as there's no stress put on it.

They do work as 1 way devices yes, but there's also never been any indication that you could block things with the backside at all and Zelenka in this episode makes no mention of blocking things with the backside being an issue. All he talks about is the emmiters being the problem.

Now you could take this and use it to absolutely and totally nerf the **** out of stargate just by saying that they used all the emmiters and that even then a couple nukes were more than the cityshield could handle. Dovetail that with how later in the same episode they talk about the awesome power of an exploding stargate (multiple nukes) and it's ballgame. I prefer not to of course because yeilds that low don't make sense in the context of naquada availability, 1 gigaton nukes built by the USAF in the 90's, or simply dropping large enough things from orbit at a decent speed.

It is fairly clear to me though that the energy is being absorbed and sent somewhere not deflected. Containing that fireball until it was nothing but a comparitively small sub nuclear explosion wouldn't have been possible otherwise. That energy had no where to go trapped in that forcefield unless the shield was sending it somewhere. My theory is simply that the process of this "sending" for whatever reason requires power as well and that the actual handling of the weapon/attack energy also places a strain on the emmiter. So you need energy to get the emmiter to function/send the energy of the attack and the process of sending the energy strains/overheats/taxes the emmiter. It's also likely that as the emmiter heats up and nears failure it loses efficiency, requiring more energy to shunt the same amount of hostile energy which likely also only hastens the overheating process. This is where the "transfer power" trick comes in as well as the reason why you can't do it indefinately until your power core is totally dead and still expect to have shields.

Either one could be a potential point of failure then. If you've got excellent emmiters and a lousy powersource the powersource can't keep up with the demand to enable the emmiters to shunt the attack energy away. If you've got a massive power source, like a ZPM, then the problem becomes the emmiters themselves overheating and burning out as a result of handling too much energy in a given timeframe.

The second one probably happens a lot more often than the first, not just for ancients but in general. There is very obviously some physical component to shields that fails causing them to eventually go down and/or lose appreciable amount of their total strength permanently until they are repaired.

So only Earth would be allowed to plug a ZPM into a mainframe which was not meant to use one, to deflect a stream of plasma and photons that would kill all life on a planet (stuff in the teraton range) but warships designed by the Lanteans themselves would not come with shields as good as Atlantis'?

There's the simple problem that overtaxing the shield emitters never happened before. Now we suddenly get such a case, precisely the only time the shield is supposed to contain a gigaton explosion from inside out? That's just too much of a coincidence.

We do have a case now though, and it can be used to explain an awful lot so I rather like it. As far as Asgard shields not failing that's simple to explain, they're superior in this respect. Their shield emmiter tech is better than the ancient equivalent. It's not surprising considering shields are a primarily military technology and the ancients hadn't fought a war, let alone a war against a comparable opponent, in literally millions of years.

I'm not sure about the method, especially the documented records about the absolute lack of such events from external attacks against Atlantis.
I'm also fairly sure that a warships would have enough redudancies to allow emitters to kick in to help those which would fail, if they were to be.

It's possible that there's some hard limit to the number of emmiters you can have for X surface area of shield before they start to interfere with each other somehow. The trend toward size though is fairly clear, the bigger the shield the better. I'd speculate it's because a bunch of interlinked emmiters can share the load of attack energy between all of them, preventing any single one or group of them from failing. This is consistant with how you don't ever seem to see holes in shields being opened, but rather the whole thing failing at once. In seige then the Wraith fleet would just not have been large enough to overtax all of the cities emmiters at once fast enough, meaning that they instead had to gradually deplete its power source.

As for Misbegotten:

We can see the curvature now, which wasn't that obvious before. But still, the explosions were nowhere that powerful, they were faint white. I suppose that would put them in the low megaton range at best.

A fairly small difference in curvature can account for a thousand fold reduction in estimated yeild? If true then that calls into question how a hiveship can survive one of the Daedalus nuclear weapons yet still be destroyed by the weapons of another hive that are a thousand times less powerful in a matter of minutes.

It does however go toward the general trend of SG yeilds being nerfed as of late however. Even low megatons is downright terrifying in a universe dominated by continuum Goa'uld and Asgard rebels packing WW2 artillery stikes. The Tau'ri of course will get to keep their gigaton and teraton level nukes, which they will proceed to delegate to being a secondary weapon.

Time for another BSG vs Stargate thread perhaps?

You do need to thumbnail that picture or spoiler it though, it's breaking page tables.

Now, I agree, the Wraith found a way to capture ZPMs from warships without depleting them. But remember...

What I take from that except is that the assumption of ancient near invincibility was false and that they eventually paid for it rather harshly. I'm not disputing that in ideal conditions, with full drones and fresh paint an ancient ship is superior to any Wraith one. That much is obvious. What's not so obvious anymore though is how well a single ancient ship is going to do when being hammered from multiple directions by multiple Wraith ships at the same time.

Todd also says that only a few weeks of cloning were able to increase the size of their army 100 fold from whatever they used to take these ancient ships. That doesn't exactly seem to imply an awe inspiring horde to start out with. I can't recall exactly but didn't that machine only make clones in batches of tens of thousands with no clear timeframe on how long one batch took?

All I'm seeing here is that they were eventually able to put together some sort of a trap for these ships that were tasked with gradually exterminating them. I don't think you really need to invoke any sort of special tech or anything like that, just better tactics and positioning of their forces. Also keep in mind that being extremely early in the war these ships were likely not 3 Auroras. They were more likely former science/exploration ships with afterthought weapons crewed by people completely unfamiliar, even historically, with any sort of warfare. It's possible that the early Wraith designs, either in ships, weapons, defences or all, were likewise infearior to later war and modern ones, as I think at this point they were barely past the "single planet they started on" stage.

Certainly would be a lot easier had they ever bothered to show us anything at all in the way of flashbacks about the actual battles in the war huh. I'd especially like to see how that whole "fleet of our most powerful warships" thing went down.

But these six drones, however, penetrated the hiveship from a side which was totally unharmed. Sure, it already sustained damage, but the point is how 6 drones effortlessly went into a previously undamaged section of ship and turned the tables so quickly.

Pentrating the armour is to be expected. The ones in "no mans land" went in and out again. Whats more telling here I think is where he fired them. Those front prongs seem mostly empty space, storage, and dart bays if the MGM schematics are to be even halfway beleived, where as the back area around the engines and such is where you'd presumably find all the power generation/fuel etc. The Drones in no mans land mostly hit at the front where as the ones here hit right where it counted.

I don't remember that incident. I would be, once again, another of those examples where Asurans can't get **** from weapons which regularly own hiveships in all other conditions.
If I really wanted to be a *****, I'd ask why they didn't ram hiveships, considering how that absurd slow crash was enough to destroy one, when it was sacrificed to destroy a Wraith base on the ground.

And to that I'd say that they're going to have a hell of a time ramming anything mobile with only 23gs of acceleration.

I see that one, the ship starts farting internal fires left and right from the moment a single hiveship enters the dance.

Yes this episode made it apparent that 95% of an upgraded 304s shields are of the "character/plot" variety. Once the plot said it was ok for Carter to actually die since it would just be reset at the end, woo momma did the whoopin' come down then. It's like those 3 hiveships got to vent years of frustration over being constantly jobbed out to Earth's dinky little second try ever wank mobile.

Let's just say that Michael found some Wraith tech he used to upgrade his hiveships.
I loved how that blue donut of doom destroyed the two other ships. How fortunate that they both were on the planar path of that holy ring.
That said, the missiles she fired clearly damaged the hiveships. One had a gap with jumping glowy yellow arcs (you can see that before she rams one).

Well yeah they had to make Carter look good. Even in the "OMG apocalypse everyone dies!" version of reality the heroes still get to have overly dramatic and over the top death scenes. There's a woman driver joke in here somewhere to.

Wait, that's behind the scene official stuff? They thought they were doing Tau'ri ships?
I've seen artwork, but I think it's both a late one and it looks crude and ugly. Plenty of angled structures, chisel this and chamfer that. In 2D. Very far from even a rough Aurora.

I remember hearing that in a thread a while ago, might have been the one about if an Aurora was ugly or not.

It seems thekillman has likewise posted some of that concept art, thanks.

[thekillman]

those pictures are at the MGM site. look up "behind the scenes'" i think, and then "stills", and click the behind the scenes button. techjournal, and concept art is all there. including a ton from conversion

[Crazy Tom]

I think necro-posting will be excused given the nature of this thread so:

What I find most annoying, is that the Wraith seems to have forgotten how to fight a war at all, despite some of them (like Todd, unless I'm mistaken) actually having been around during the war. This either suggests the knowledge has been suppressed, or it was never there at all (and there's a joke or two on senile aliens somewhere there too).
The later in turn suggests that the Lantians were truly stupid, becuase the only way I can imagine the current tactical stupidity is if they literally had nothing to adapt to. 100 years of war with next to no tactical innovation- not even any tehcnology driven innovation. It's like having modern combined arms militaries charge each other like in Lord of the Rings.

Are there any theories to why this is?

[thekillman]

well Allies implies that we're fighting the stupid ones. also, extreme trauma can be surpressed and cause specific amnesia. or, the brain simply doesn't have the storage capability and erases stuff that's outdated, except for the really important.

i mean, we forget stuff all the time. our brain can't store all of it. every night what's unimportant is thrown away and what's important is stored. i bet that after 10 000 years the wraith have forgotten most of the stuff that happened. the asgard don't, but they're not only clones, they directly said their old bodys cant sustain them. memory is one reason.


besides, statistically, if all intelligent wraith like todd get treated like todd, then i guess most smart ones are....dead. look at him. Todd's got a fancy toy? a backstab and he's gone. Michael backstabbed his queen, Todd killed another. it's kill or be killed, and the intelligent ones are often the targets: once their work is done (read: their fancy toy/plan planned/built) they get killed and some idiot takes over.

[Crazy Tom]

That assumes that they haven't bothered uploading anything into a computer.

[Ouroboros]

It's par for the course stupidity for Stargate. It's even worse with the Goa'uld. At least with the Wraith you've got the excuse that they lived basically unchallenged for 10,000 years in the Pegasus galaxy. The Goa'uld on the other hand are supposed to be viscously territorial and competitive with one another and have existed in a state of more or less constant conflict since before ancient Egypt on Earth.

And yet they're still using the same ships, even the same small arms now, as they did then.

There is no really particularly good explanation for Wraith stagnation. It's best to just either mutter something about 10,000 years of uncontested dominion or assume that their hibernation cycles are so heavily weighted toward sleeping that they've literally only been awake for maybe 20 of the last 10,000 years.

That second one might sound appealing at first but it just calls into question why those keepers who stay awake for tens of thousands of years at a time never bothered to work on some of the crippling problems the Wraith face in all that time. It's even more excruciating given that they're apparently supposed to be the tech experts as well.

What the hell do they do with their time? I have a hard time killing off a couple of hours waiting for my car to be fixed. I can't even imagine what a few centuries would be like. They're all trim and sexy to so it's not like they're just sitting on the couch with a dump truck full of ice cream and watching Oprah for thousands of years.

[thekillman]

actually the goauld had double logic: 1: they had rusted in their ways. Baal confirmed. 2: their servants had to stay stupid. oh and 3: we advance for our benefit. the Goauld don't have to benefit anyone. just themselves. they really are self-centered and well, they got quite crazy and all.

the wraith? no idea. as i said, a brain can only handle so much information.

besides, i bet that in 10 000 years, our biotechnology experts would've come up with artificial "life force"

[lord groovy]

besides, i bet that in 10 000 years, our biotechnology experts would've come up with artificial "life force"

Even if they did manage to do so they would then need to explain their people that there is no more Runner, human farming, maybe even clone soldier,... Hunger is also a political issue among the Wraith. And even Todd was reluctant with changing into a no-life sucker.

[thekillman]

except that they're still lifesuckers. they just don't NEED humans. just because we can live off soy food doesn't mean we still like meat, don't we?

what you're saying is the equivalent of a meat-lover having to eat vegetables only. what i'm saying is having a meat-lover eat artificially grown meat. the rest of the animal never existed.

same with life-force. i hate to call it that way. instead of producing humans, the wraith just make organic "sacks", and when they're hungry, they plant their feeding hand into it and feed on the fluid. blast the contaminated humans to hell, use some worshippers to get new colonies and well, why not clone the humans a few thousand times, spread them on a few dozen planets, and start anew?

[Crazy Tom]

Hell, given their penchant for biotechnology, it would make more sense if the Pegasus galaxy was populated humans engineered towards fast reproduction, which would at least give the Wraith much shorter hibernation periods, or do away with them altogether.

Thinking back on what I said, I can only conclude that the knowledge and the drive towards adaptation, has been suppressed consciously. Perhaps the Keepers have stamped it out over time in order to secure themselves a solid seat in power, using their advanced tehcnology to do as they please while they leave the "lower class" wraith to gallivant around the galaxy in ten thousand year old ships, like a glorified police force to stamp out any emerging civilizations which might threaten the Keeper way of life.

On the subject of Wraith industry, their culling beams got me thinking: could they mine neutron stars? Would the neutronium decay into stable heavy elements once it's rematerialized outside the star's heavy gravity field, and the heavy elements harvested, with the waste thrown back into the star for recycling?

[Mister Oragahn]

It's par for the course stupidity for Stargate. It's even worse with the Goa'uld. At least with the Wraith you've got the excuse that they lived basically unchallenged for 10,000 years in the Pegasus galaxy. The Goa'uld on the other hand are supposed to be viscously territorial and competitive with one another and have existed in a state of more or less constant conflict since before ancient Egypt on Earth.
And yet they're still using the same ships, even the same small arms now, as they did then.

I don't see any problem with the Goa'uld.
I think the whole civil war thing is completely blown out of proportions. Ra kept most of them in check (and I'm sure that involves an insane amount of scheming that would make Palpatine blush).
I'm sure there's been a Goa'uld who said to the Tau'ri that they put to an end a lifestyle they had been used to for thousands of years. I have never managed to found that quote again, that pisses me off, so if anyone knows...
The Goa'uld were just too feudal, not prone on industrial military, extremely crazy and paranoiac, and not really fiddling with science much. They had all they wanted and it's pretty much clear from the episode "Summit" that the battles are more like board games. "Oh *******, you've sunk my frigate!" sort of stuff, agreeing to play gods with the same rules. Actually many followed those rules, and most truly believe they were Gods. ^^
It's also very possible they were very weary of not breaking too many bounds with science and its applications, as they may loose much more than they would gain.

There is no really particularly good explanation for Wraith stagnation. It's best to just either mutter something about 10,000 years of uncontested dominion or assume that their hibernation cycles are so heavily weighted toward sleeping that they've literally only been awake for maybe 20 of the last 10,000 years.

Also perhaps because the only ones capable solving anything, the Keepers and perhaps some Queens or transgenders like Todd (joking) would see gain in giving all the Wraith the capacity to become independent?
Perhaps they tried very hard, and just didn't got anywhere?
When you rule over a galaxy, can go hunting every x centuries and cull some fresh food, why bother?
Many tribes on Earth have totally stagnated. Some civilizations literally disappeared.
I remember you were fond of the idea that the Wraith of "now" are more like peasants and the guys who remained in Pegasus, without exactly knowing much about the wonders the Wraith came with before.

That second one might sound appealing at first but it just calls into question why those keepers who stay awake for tens of thousands of years at a time never bothered to work on some of the crippling problems the Wraith face in all that time. It's even more excruciating given that they're apparently supposed to be the tech experts as well.

What the hell do they do with their time? I have a hard time killing off a couple of hours waiting for my car to be fixed. I can't even imagine what a few centuries would be like. They're all trim and sexy to so it's not like they're just sitting on the couch with a dump truck full of ice cream and watching Oprah for thousands of years.

I'd say Sex in the Hiveship episode one too many, alongside their tupperware parties.
"Oh look, I'm sure you'd love that new model I have. It's very practical when you want to carry some of your snacks around."

The biggest problem to me is that SGU is clearly showing that the Alterans, and thus the Lanteans, had really mind boggling technology even eons ago. Destiny alone is baffling.
It's hard to imagine even how a super Wraith society, more advanced than what we saw, would have won. The ZPM stealing was just a conclusion, a final nail in a coffin which, in all logic, should have never been crafted to begin with.

That's why this speculation will continue. Bleh.

[Mister Oragahn]

On the subject of Wraith industry, their culling beams got me thinking: could they mine neutron stars? Would the neutronium decay into stable heavy elements once it's rematerialized outside the star's heavy gravity field, and the heavy elements harvested, with the waste thrown back into the star for recycling?

Ask yourself if they could even operate anywhere near a neutron star first, I'd say.

[thekillman]

have the wraith cull a magnetar

[Ouroboros]

I don't see any problem with the Goa'uld.
I think the whole civil war thing is completely blown out of proportions. Ra kept most of them in check (and I'm sure that involves an insane amount of scheming that would make Palpatine blush).
I'm sure there's been a Goa'uld who said to the Tau'ri that they put to an end a lifestyle they had been used to for thousands of years. I have never managed to found that quote again, that pisses me off, so if anyone knows...
The Goa'uld were just too feudal, not prone on industrial military, extremely crazy and paranoiac, and not really fiddling with science much. They had all they wanted and it's pretty much clear from the episode "Summit" that the battles are more like board games. "Oh *******, you've sunk my frigate!" sort of stuff, agreeing to play gods with the same rules. Actually many followed those rules, and most truly believe they were Gods. ^^
It's also very possible they were very weary of not breaking too many bounds with science and its applications, as they may loose much more than they would gain.

The thing that bothers me with them is that they're so power vain and competitive and self important that you would think these factors would drive each and every one of them to want to have shinier toys then all the others. I mean imagine for a moment when Goa'uld number 2 comes on the scene. Is he really going to want all his ships, weapons and Jaffa to look exactly like those of Goa'uld number 1, potentially his hated enemy. Or is he going to want them to begin to reflect his own personal sense of vanity and "superior ideas about design/warfare/training" as soon as possible.

Also perhaps because the only ones capable solving anything, the Keepers and perhaps some Queens or transgenders like Todd (joking) would see gain in giving all the Wraith the capacity to become independent?
Perhaps they tried very hard, and just didn't got anywhere?
When you rule over a galaxy, can go hunting every x centuries and cull some fresh food, why bother?

Some kind of active Keeper conspiracy is the only thing that really makes sense now. The finale pretty much put a nail in the idea that the actual tech is capable of a hell of a lot more than they're letting on. The hints were even already present in episodes like allies as well. I can't really blame them either. They apparently do all the work and just wake the Queens and various other leaders up from nappy time, feed them, then put them back to bed.

They probably think they should be running things and it wouldn't surprise me if intentionally letting the other's tech stagnate and break down is part of that long term goal. Queens in general seem to be arrogant and smug in their position and unlikely to appreciate the actual crucial value of the sort of tech support the Keepers provide them. They're just repairmen who do all the dirty work her royal highness can't be bothered with after all. Since the keepers are Wraith themselves, and we know at least some of them are also females/queens, it's likely they would resent being treated in such a way given the reality of the power they know they hold.

The whole "lets see how smug that ***** is when her hyperdrive breaks down between star systems" idea.

Or when they swap and compare stories about how "I can't believe I actually got that dumb ***** to believe that 1 reactor was better than 14"

Many tribes on Earth have totally stagnated. Some civilizations literally disappeared.
I remember you were fond of the idea that the Wraith of "now" are more like peasants and the guys who remained in Pegasus, without exactly knowing much about the wonders the Wraith came with before.

I've been fond of a lot of different potential origin stories for them over the years. There is definitely something missing from the modern Wraith to make them a credible threat to a galaxy full of ancients though, especially since they supposedly only started on one planet.

They should have actually done the reverse, with the Wraith ships and troops being qualitatively superior and the ancients having the greater numbers. Then the Wraith building a cloning machine would have made much more sense as a death blow as it would have removed the only advantage the ancients had.

I'd say Sex in the Hiveship episode one too many, alongside their tupperware parties.
"Oh look, I'm sure you'd love that new model I have. It's very practical when you want to carry some of your snacks around."

The biggest problem to me is that SGU is clearly showing that the Alterans, and thus the Lanteans, had really mind boggling technology even eons ago. Destiny alone is baffling.
It's hard to imagine even how a super Wraith society, more advanced than what we saw, would have won. The ZPM stealing was just a conclusion, a final nail in a coffin which, in all logic, should have never been crafted to begin with.

That's why this speculation will continue. Bleh.

The whole ZPM thing has always been stupid because it's just the Wraith getting their hands on some normal ancient power sources and then all of a sudden they're supposed to be unstoppable. It's like if during the invasion of Iraq the Iraqis had got their hands on a couple of aircraft carrier nuclear reactors and then somehow spun that into the total destruction of the United States and world domination.

The ancients must have had hundreds of ZPMs if their own yet 3 was all the Wraith needed to destroy them? To go from certain defeat to certain victory, nothing but some tech that their enemies already had more of?

[thekillman]

actually i believe the ancient defeat had NOTHING to do with numbers, technology or power.

Industrial Capability.


lets look at ZPM's. throw some calcs. Atlantis could be powered for millions of years under normal circumstances. it also appears the ancients didn't like mass-production. and they didn't need to Massproduce ZPM's. why should they? by the time they built 1, the old one isn't even halfway depletion. Arcturus wasn't a way to get MORE power, it was to QUICKLY get more power. the ancients were doing nicely. blowing wraith out of the sky, their shields held along nicely. but there was something wrong: they expended drones faster than they could build them. ZPM's depleted LONG before they were originally expected. the wraith got their hands on ZPM's and put the final nail in the coffin: everywhere the ancients had to fight, any industrial capability was targeted first, and not even the Cityship shields could protect them from large armadas. Drones ran out, ZPM's ran out. slowly but surely, Aurora after Aurora blew up, their ZPM's depleted or their Shield generators molten long before that.