Everything you ever wanted to know about Hiveships/Wraith.

[Ouroboros]

This is not a good example to judge the accuracy of drones.

Well you brought it up.

The drone couldn't count of the support from the person in the control chair. There was no cooperation. Above all Beckett was actually trying to switch the damn thing off.
Added to whatever happens between the mind and the machine, reminding us that we're talking about a doctor who's concerned about saving lives and not destroying any, god knows how this messed up with the weapon.
I think it's fairly easy to excuse the drone's poor accuracy in such conditions, especially when you compare this to the trajectories curves displayed in Lost City or The Tower.

I'm not disputing the manuverability of the actual drone itself. I'm disputing that whatever brain controls it is going to be able to fully utilize that manuverability. The closest thing we've got to an unpiloted drone vs a small craft is the helicopter thing where Beckett lost control of it. In all the other examples the drone was always being assisted conciously by a pilot and even in some of those didn't perform particularly well, the main example of that being "return 2".

Yes and no. If we take Trinity as an example, a ship like the Daedalus had no problem to withstand the device's bleeding shots, yet those same shots were vaporizing entire chunks of hiveship armor out of the sky.
Assuming the aurora cannons are roughly the same, and considering the idea that I highly doubt such ships can't at least come with power cores as efficient and powerful as the ones found on the 304s, I think that would certainly make those cannons fairly devastating.

Damage to shields is difficult to measure visually. It's entirely possible and likely that it would have blown even bigger chunks out of the Daedalus hull. I haven't seen the episode in a while but weren't the pieces being blown up alsa rather small when compared to something the size fo a hiveship? If I'm remembering it right then their loss would be largely inconsequential. It's even possible that the pieces were made up of softer interior portions of the ship. Going purely on odds the majority of chunks in a debris field that used to be a ship are not going to be giant slabs of exterior hull armour.

It's also doubtful that ancient capships are going to be packing similar firepower to the Arcturus weapons platform. They might be capable of what it managed in this emergency fire mode after McKay had already screwed it up but, as I've explained, that doesn't really seem like all that much when you consider it.

Yes. They'd be far better as pure gun platforms.

They'd be even better as flying war factories and super heavy carriers that did everything in their power to stay out of drone range.

But these wraith drones' capacity would be limited. It all depends to the "room" and the power source backing it up.
A modification on an Ark-like wraith device would let it scoop the equivalent of 1000 people.
So that's a lot of lantian squids and other energy bolts.

Not that limited. Like you already went ahead and pointed out for me, even a civilization with vastly infearior tech can come up with a roughly coffin sized knock-off of a culling beam that can store 1000 people.

That's a huge chunk of a capship, nevermind incoming ordnance. There's also the fact that there's no need to store the stuff these things eat so they could just break it down and vent it to space. You could simplify the culling tech and only use the first "break down from matter" stage, skipping the suck in and store stages entirely. This would transform it into some sort of disintigrator beam that just destroyed matter it passed over.

Would probably be more about a lantian warship fighting several hives.
Then sfrweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Chip chop! big chunks beamed out, like someone eating an apple with a fist sized mouth.

Either way one swipe from this thing would cause immediate crippling damage to virtually any ship it hit. Losing a few outer decks (even if that's all it could manage) would kill so many people and compromise the hull and various interconnected systems so badly the ship would be completely done for.

Probably, but realistically, this will be a point we'll often hear about.
Maybe a part of the shield is deactivated when the dart enters a stargate. But no. The skin was still active after the crash.
I gues Sheppard's bullets became little drones.

I'm thinking that there's probably some part of the dart that's say their analog to an air intake or engine nozzel. Something which can't be armoured and still function properly. If you hit that you can cause problems, just like the exposed hyperdrive components on a hiveship.

I wish I could take screencaps, because the bolts are just so damn similar. And yes, considering the Keeper's role, she probably was one of those who still had some good toys.
However, darts were overall still weak. Just armed harvesting ships, not real combat ships.

I could cap it but I don't have this episode anymore for obvious reasons. You'd think that there'd be caps of it online somewhere but I also failed to find any when I made my last post.

Shouldn't this actually make Rodney something close to a god?

It would seem so yes. A god of wank. His altar is fresh with the blood of suspension of disbeleif.

[Mister Oragahn]

Well you brought it up.

But I brought it up to show how the AI could make most of the work, not for accuracy analysis purposes.

I'm not disputing the manuverability of the actual drone itself. I'm disputing that whatever brain controls it is going to be able to fully utilize that manuverability. The closest thing we've got to an unpiloted drone vs a small craft is the helicopter thing where Beckett lost control of it. In all the other examples the drone was always being assisted conciously by a pilot and even in some of those didn't perform particularly well, the main example of that being "return 2".

Well, of course, Return 2 is probably the most stupidest example of a formidable weapon nerfed in the area of main characters. The drones were slowed down to death, destroyed on impact, and they didn't even have them go underwater. Past a point, I can't do anything against plot holes and writers' dishonesty.
If anyone has a solution as to why the Asurans couldn't make those weapons work properly...

Maybe the Lantians had a kind of firewall on certain functions against the Asurans. Poor cop-out.

Damage to shields is difficult to measure visually. It's entirely possible and likely that it would have blown even bigger chunks out of the Daedalus hull. I haven't seen the episode in a while but weren't the pieces being blown up alsa rather small when compared to something the size fo a hiveship? If I'm remembering it right then their loss would be largely inconsequential. It's even possible that the pieces were made up of softer interior portions of the ship. Going purely on odds the majority of chunks in a debris field that used to be a ship are not going to be giant slabs of exterior hull armour.

They were small and looked like the armored bits.

It's also doubtful that ancient capships are going to be packing similar firepower to the Arcturus weapons platform. They might be capable of what it managed in this emergency fire mode after McKay had already screwed it up but, as I've explained, that doesn't really seem like all that much when you consider it.

Of course, if we assume that those vaporized pieces of armor and else were able to absorb insane levels of energy, like naqahdah does, before getting turned into plasma.
There's also the idea that I'm not convinced that the device really bled off that much energy at all.

They'd be even better as flying war factories and super heavy carriers that did everything in their power to stay out of drone range.

Well, apparently the first wave sent against Atlantis would seem to disagree with that idea as well, and the holo clearly shows capital ships besieging the planet.

They may have used that strategy for other parts of the galaxy, but it seems that unfortunately, we'll have to forget about that as well.

Not that limited. Like you already went ahead and pointed out for me, even a civilization with vastly infearior tech can come up with a roughly coffin sized knock-off of a culling beam that can store 1000 people.

That's a huge chunk of a capship, nevermind incoming ordnance. There's also the fact that there's no need to store the stuff these things eat so they could just break it down and vent it to space. You could simplify the culling tech and only use the first "break down from matter" stage, skipping the suck in and store stages entirely. This would transform it into some sort of disintigrator beam that just destroyed matter it passed over.

They could always store a few bits to fire them back or study them later on though, but yes, they wouldn't really need to bother with the last stages at all, and just use the system like the Asgards do.

Either way one swipe from this thing would cause immediate crippling damage to virtually any ship it hit. Losing a few outer decks (even if that's all it could manage) would kill so many people and compromise the hull and various interconnected systems so badly the ship would be completely done for.

A bit like how the Aurora was truncated.

I'm thinking that there's probably some part of the dart that's say their analog to an air intake or engine nozzel. Something which can't be armoured and still function properly. If you hit that you can cause problems, just like the exposed hyperdrive components on a hiveship.

Yes, that's the idea, but it doesn't solve the problem at all, because it's exactly that equivalent of an air intake that will be swallowing large loads of dust and debris like a giant fishnet when the dart will be flying through space or clouds of debris.

I could cap it but I don't have this episode anymore for obvious reasons. You'd think that there'd be caps of it online somewhere but I also failed to find any when I made my last post.

There aren't any on internet.

It would seem so yes. A god of wank. His altar is fresh with the blood of suspension of disbeleif.

Hallowed are the McKayisms.

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

If anyone has a solution as to why the Asurans couldn't make those weapons work properly...

Not sure but I always assumed that drones were heavily reliant on sensors and if they are down then you need something to watch the target in order for the drones to hit. If thats the case, then the sensors were taken down by the destruction of the control tower but the Asurans stationed watchmen at various points throughout the city and through the Asuran subspace link they were able to direct the drones being launched but when the jumper went underwater well there was no line of sight to see it.

BUT Beckett was able to take out the stardrive of the cityship without any trouble but he knew where it would be plus its a stationary target so perhaps thats why it was easy then.

Thats just my thought on it....... can't give an explanation as to why the drones were impossibly slow or how a weak puddle jumper shield managed to bounce it off beyond the possibility that the system wasnt working at full power because of the damage sustained at the control room.

[Ouroboros]

But I brought it up to show how the AI could make most of the work, not for accuracy analysis purposes.

Yeah, but you kinda ended up proving just how much they turn to suck when the AI does take over.

Well, of course, Return 2 is probably the most stupidest example of a formidable weapon nerfed in the area of main characters. The drones were slowed down to death, destroyed on impact, and they didn't even have them go underwater. Past a point, I can't do anything against plot holes and writers' dishonesty.
If anyone has a solution as to why the Asurans couldn't make those weapons work properly...

If it was anyone else we could probably make all kinds of excuses to explain it. It's the worst possible situation ever though. They're super advanced robot people who share some form of interconnected intelligence and they've been manufacturing their own ancient tech, drones included, for 10,000 years. Their own city is a perfect copy of Atlantis and they even dress like ancients, being so ancienty that the team initially thought they were ancients.

They were small and looked like the armored bits.

Being honest though doesn't most of a hiveship, interior included, look like that dark blue stuff.

Of course, if we assume that those vaporized pieces of armor and else were able to absorb insane levels of energy, like naqahdah does, before getting turned into plasma.
There's also the idea that I'm not convinced that the device really bled off that much energy at all.

Yeah, this old thing again. The contradiction between. How can it vent enough energy to meaningfully slow down a build up that destroys a solar system and yet still only barely vaporise fairly small chunks of Wraith hull.

Well, apparently the first wave sent against Atlantis would seem to disagree with that idea as well, and the holo clearly shows capital ships besieging the planet.

They may have used that strategy for other parts of the galaxy, but it seems that unfortunately, we'll have to forget about that as well.

Maybe they were going to ram them into the city shields. That's something I'd really like to see actually. Get something the size of a hive up to a good percentage of c, point it at Atlantis and just wammo. I'm surprised the Goa'uld never tried to destroy Earth this way. All it would wake would be a cargo ship full of lead or naquada.

More seriously though maybe differrent hiveships had different internals. If they really are grown in some fashion and then implanted with all that artificial stuff after the fact, its entirely likely that they'd all look very similar, even if they had different "guts".

They could always store a few bits to fire them back or study them later on though, but yes, they wouldn't really need to bother with the last stages at all, and just use the system like the Asgards do.

Funny how we don't see the Asguard disintigrator beam anymore.

A bit like how the Aurora was truncated.

It was? I could make heads or tails of the model shots in that episode. It just look like a dark yellowy smudge to me.

Yes, that's the idea, but it doesn't solve the problem at all, because it's exactly that equivalent of an air intake that will be swallowing large loads of dust and debris like a giant fishnet when the dart will be flying through space or clouds of debris.

Well I don't think it would suck in anything in space really, unless it works with magnets or something. More likely it's just some sort of small weak area of some sort that can be damaged fairly easily.

One thing that tends to get forgotten a lot in this "Darts can be damaged by P90s" stuff is that the vast vast majority of shots seen to hit actually bounce off and do nothing.

There aren't any on internet.

Well that blows.

[Mister Oragahn]

Yeah, but you kinda ended up proving just how much they turn to suck when the AI does take over.

Well, my point was to show that a drone can act on its own, this proving the presence of an AI for each projectile, and this in consequence showing how the person in the control chair could be helped, with a minimal effort, giving general orders and letting the drone do the stuff on its own. Much like in a strategy game.

However, I also said that though this example was good to demonstrate the independancy of a drone, it was bad to show its accuracy. My reasoning was that Beckett was messing with the drone, mentally sending conflicting orders about shutting down and avoiding to kill anyone, both concious and not concious of it, and this perturbed the drone, having a bad influence on its behaviour.

Sheppard had no issue to intercept a couple of darts buzzing fast around the city in Siege Part 2.

If it was anyone else we could probably make all kinds of excuses to explain it. It's the worst possible situation ever though. They're super advanced robot people who share some form of interconnected intelligence and they've been manufacturing their own ancient tech, drones included, for 10,000 years. Their own city is a perfect copy of Atlantis and they even dress like ancients, being so ancienty that the team initially thought they were ancients.

Poto's idea about the lack of sensors and watchmen coordinating the hunt seems right, and we can acertain that the repairs were advanced enough when Beckett jumped in the chair to fire drones.
Plus, as he said, he knows the city and had to target a fixed city wide target. A big fat sitting duck.

Being honest though doesn't most of a hiveship, interior included, look like that dark blue stuff.

By looking at the shots of corridors I have, I'd say no, safe if the walls are immensely decorated and that the stuff we see floating in space is located behind these walls.
But realistically, the hardest parts are ought to survive a hiveship's destruction, and those parts will likely be the armored ones instead of the softer structure, safe the main beams supporting the superstructure's integrity.

Globally, the debris just looked like those mixes of shell and dark metal.

Yeah, this old thing again. The contradiction between. How can it vent enough energy to meaningfully slow down a build up that destroys a solar system and yet still only barely vaporise fairly small chunks of Wraith hull.

It's possible that the weapon was supposed to bleed off enough energy if it was to actually reach megaton or gigaton levels. Thus, say, firing multiple pulses at said levels.

But it does not explain how a puddle jumper could survive a near splash of an explosion at such levels. Especially since a complete debris vaporization is unlikely, and this would also turn into super fast shrapnel.
Possibly McKay messed up with the calibration controls, and the gun wasn't spitting enough juice, which thankfully was still enough to vaporize small chunks of already damaged armor, but unable to hurt the PJ nearby.

A theory we talked about some time ago is that a hiveship's armor has an internal system that absorbs and dissipates any energy it's hit with, or stores it in power buffers.
A reactive dynamic bioarmor.
Not some piece of inert stuff. Like an integrated shield that makes the whole armor tougher.

So flying debris loose most of their robustness simply because there's no system to absord the energy. An analogy would be a brick wall suddenly becoming millions times tougher than an alloy of naqahdah and trinium, because it's backed up by a structural integrity amplifier, meshed with superconductive circuits, ending in power buffers or massive dissipators. Or returned straight into the energy weapons and other power hungry systems.
Here's for the technobabble, but that's pretty much the best solution to explain that inconsistency imho.

An armor which would become even tougher the bigger the power cores and buffers to back it up, this actually marvelously explains the difference of power between ships from 10,000 years ago and the ones seen now.

Slightly off topic, there's the question as to how beams moving at sonic speeds still manage to lock and catch a fast vessel zig zagging in high orbit.
We concluded on homing energy beams. Otherwise, what we saw is simply impossible.

Maybe they were going to ram them into the city shields. That's something I'd really like to see actually. Get something the size of a hive up to a good percentage of c, point it at Atlantis and just wammo. I'm surprised the Goa'uld never tried to destroy Earth this way. All it would wake would be a cargo ship full of lead or naquada.

That would be quite a nice spectable! I'd be afraid that the VFX team would, unfortunately, come with some goofy blur or whatever ship flying at subsonic speeds, while McKay would crap his pants with alarming reports of a ship approaching at 0.8c from outside of the star system.

As for why the Goa'uld never did it. I think that they thought they could deal with Earth with conventional tactics, and they barely show a will to try new things.
By the time this tactic might have been possible, Earth had a fleet and FTL sensors.

However, an enemy could still accelerate near c somewhere in space, then open a window pointed at Earth, jump out in our solar system at a couple of Earth radii and FPAAAAAAMMM!!

More seriously though maybe differrent hiveships had different internals. If they really are grown in some fashion and then implanted with all that artificial stuff after the fact, its entirely likely that they'd all look very similar, even if they had different "guts".

Yeah that's also possible. In fact, in the shots I put in Locations of Interest, we can see variations in design, from walls to cells, or prey coccons for example.

Funny how we don't see the Asguard disintigrator beam anymore.

We don't see much of the Asgards at all, and there's hardly been any occasion for them to show their "go somewhere else" beam.
Maybe against the medusa class replicator ship, but it's the reps, so you don't know if it would have worked at all.

It was? I could make heads or tails of the model shots in that episode. It just look like a dark yellowy smudge to me.

Yeah, after staring like a cow for hours at the screen, I recognized that a good chunk of the bow was gone, and many parts severely torched.

Well I don't think it would suck in anything in space really, unless it works with magnets or something. More likely it's just some sort of small weak area of some sort that can be damaged fairly easily.

Well, not suck, but by sheer fact of being a gaping hole, it would catch anything.

One thing that tends to get forgotten a lot in this "Darts can be damaged by P90s" stuff is that the vast vast majority of shots seen to hit actually bounce off and do nothing.

Oh, I remember how this was a point our friend 82 couldn't get through his skull.
Maybe that lucky shot actually ricocheted inside the ship or what...

Well that blows.

How do you get screencaps from AVI? I tried to printscreen the stuff, but obviously the video buffer is "shortcircuited" and does not display the picture in any 2D pic editor.

[Mister Oragahn]

A point about FTL sensors. The Wraith, in Allies, were able to precisely know where the Daedalus would arrive.

Knowing that the ship will drop somewhere around, as there was a rendez-vous point, would not explain the accuracy at which the Wraith managed to prefectly hit the Daedalus in the split second it exited hyperspace. It's a lot of space around to fill with fire, and the Daedalus could have poped out anywhere.

But they tracked and, with guns ready, could spot the Daedalus breaking the hyperspace conundrum to return to normal space.

That, again, is both a proof of high quality FTL sensors and good accuracy.

[garhkal]

Perhaps that was cause it was a preplanned 'jump out point'.. so all they had to do was wait till half a min before revision, and start firing on that spot.

[An-Alteran]

Not sure but I always assumed that drones were heavily reliant on sensors and if they are down then you need something to watch the target in order for the drones to hit. If thats the case, then the sensors were taken down by the destruction of the control tower but the Asurans stationed watchmen at various points throughout the city and through the Asuran subspace link they were able to direct the drones being launched but when the jumper went underwater well there was no line of sight to see it.

Exactly right!

BUT Beckett was able to take out the stardrive of the cityship without any trouble but he knew where it would be plus its a stationary target so perhaps thats why it was easy then.

No, the sensors had been repaired long before Becket used the Drones.

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

No, the sensors had been repaired long before Becket used the Drones.

Yeah you are right, checked it and the ship was preparing to launch and the repairs had all been done. Though personally I still assume that if knows where the target is then the drones can still work so mainly against stationary targets it can rely on without sensors. Personal theory.

[Mister Oragahn]

Perhaps that was cause it was a preplanned 'jump out point'.. so all they had to do was wait till half a min before revision, and start firing on that spot.

Could be as well, but something makes me thing that a rendez-vous point is not specific to tens of meters close, but more a zone to where you're going to meet the others, a zone you'll reach on sublight drives after jumping out of hyperspace several kilometers away, to avoid hazardous and unfortunate collisions.
That's generally what happens at rdv next to planets for example.
They jump out of hp at a safe distance and reach their target on sublight engines. That would be a safety protocol to follow for any space captain.

[Mister Oragahn]

I'd like to point out that I've been through a couple of new "fireball" firepower and armour estimations lately.

They're more detailed, and regress a bit in comparison to the earlier ones from Misbegotten, but even those would need to be strongly revisited. That said, the low end still put a single shot - at maximum power - still in the gigaton range, somewhere around 10 GT.
Those latest calcs are based on indirect observations, themselves based on the much discussed ha'tak shield figures.

Since I tried to obtain the most conservative figures for ha'tak shielding recently, I was able to revise the fireball estimations (remember that the essay talked about tow types of weaponry, and the "falling stars" and their astronomical ZPM-shield draining rates remain unchanged thus far).

There's also a FTL estimation, at last, with standard wraith hyperdrive estimated at roughly 45,799 c.

There's more to say on their hyperdrives, and how due to certain former limitations, besides sheer speed, they couldn't reach the Milky Way.

With Andromeda being roughly 2,250,780 LY away from the Milky Way, with Pegasus in close proximity to M31 (Andromeda).

With such an hyperdrive speed, they're need a bit more than 49 years of constant travel into hyperspace.

Even if Wraith can hibernate, maybe over a century, a few of them still need to remain active to survey the ship's basic systems, and thus will need human cattle to feed upon.
Either they'd have to start to grow small human village somehwere inside the hiveship, and both find a way to feed the humans and have them reproduce (though the feeding part seems to be a no brainer, since we've seen human slaves onboard hiveships), or they'll have to keep humans in stasis with deterioration, which is not a given over such long periods, due to our fragile matabolism.
Hiveships will also need to make many stops, and we don't know if the ships will have enough power to travel such a long distance - and then comes the question as to how hiveships are powered.
Do they drain energy from hyperspace, do they suck the energies contained in planets, or do they use "simple" fuels which can be stocked en masse?

[Buba uognarf]

Ok I was reading a discussion which involved Ouroboros and it occured to me that depending on the way Wraith reproduce it would easy for them to overwhelm the ancients.

Let me explain, it was suggested the Wraith are produced in a similar fashion to michaels bug people which would allow the Wraith to build up rapid numbers very quickly. My thoughts were what if the Wraith soldiers didn't need to feed straight away? The queens could build huge armies of soldiers to litterally through at the enemy without caring if they survive. Without feeding Wraith can last weeks easily enough to time to grow some troops and throw them at the enemy. By only feeding the more important Wraith the armies could be practically thrown away on suicidal missions.

The soldiers created would be born litterally just to die. With soldiers whose only purpose was to be thrown at the enemy and die it's easy to see how the Ancients could have been forced back.

anyway just something I thought and wanted to get down.

[Mister Oragahn]

Quoting myself from here.

I add this, temporarily. I'll check out lower numbers based on my Ha'tak low end calcs.

Wraith firepower

As an update to the former essay I linked to, here are estimations obtained differently. It's quite impressive how they actually mesh very well with the former ones.

The current ships, in terms of brute firepower, have the following capabilities:

By using the episode No Man's Land, and noticing that it took between 1:00 and 1:02 minutes to drop the Daedalus' shields by 40%, I had to know what those shields were capable of, and come with a reasonable ROF for the two hiveships.

The first part, I worked from Camelot's evidence. Three ori beams kick a 304's shields down, while a single is almost entirely stopped by a ha'tak's shields, but they still fail in the end, and the Jaffa's ship gets impaled.

If Ori weapons are of any indication in this case, we can assume that a 304 has thrice the shielding of a ha'tak.

So by taking a ha'tak's low end shielding, 80.64 GT, we get 241.92 GT for a 304.
(1.14 T as the medium end for a ha'tak shielding.)

40% corresponds to 96.768 GT.

After looking at all bombardment sequences, timing each bolt occurance, my average rate of fire estimation for that battle came as such: 1.948 bolts / s.
120.776 bolts over 1:02 minutes.

So in Allies/NML, the firepower would have been around this:

809.5 MT per bolt, from the ha'tak's low end shielding, or 9,438.96 MT from the medium end shielding.

However, considering the power of the explosion due to the crash of Cronos' ha'tak (again, a two digit teraton affair), that medium end 1.14 TT shielding seems to be reasonnable, in regards of that episode, Enemies, which the shield strenght was also estimated from.


So assuming that the size of a bolt has anything to do with power, and that seems to be true, given the level of damage produced by the big blobs, we can look at the size of all of them and guess levels.

I observed the ones from No Man's Land.

Based on those measurements (which proved correct as I used them to measure the hiveship, which got me extremely close to the approved 11 km lenght), we see that the Daedalus is like 58 meters high.


A fireball next to the Daedalus' shield in No Man's Land:



This makes the bolt roughly 25 meters wide.


A fireball about to hit the Daedalus in The Hive:






Fire exchanged between two hiveships (although bolts look smaller, they're in fact bigger than the ones hitting the Daedalus minutes ago):



This makes the fireballs being like 100 meters wide.

Looking at the level of damage displayed in The Hive, we know that the yields seen in this episode are superior.

By scaling up firepower according to the volume of the projectile, which is more logical considering the nature of the weapon, and assuming a spherical projectile when standing still, we get a Hive projectile being 64 times more voluminous than an Allies/NML one.
And thus, while firepower in Allies/NML was around 809.5 MT, in The Hive, it would have been about 51.808 GT per bolt for the low end, and a bit more than 604 GT from the medium end ha'tak shielding.











Wraith defenses

Besides the teletransporter jamming technologies, it's all up to armor here. Wraith do not rely on shields. It's understandable, if the only form of shielding they came with would be of no use against shield-bypassing weapons.

There are three incidents where we've seen the wraith firepower used against hiveships. The Hive, Allies (both from the second season) and Misbegotten (third season).

• In The Hive, two hiveships start to exchange big fireballs that tear huge chunks of armor off their superstructure. Clearly the highest level of firepower ever seen.
  From the first part of that bombardment, the camera is placed above the hiveship on the right. 15 bolts hit it.
  Then comes the second part, immediately in the trail of the first one. The camera is then located beyond the hiveship on the left. The distant hiveship is damaged at several points, and the way the bolts hit it do not correspond to the first part, so we know that it's not just the first part seen from another angle.
  23 more bolts are fired by the hiveship that started to shoot. On these 23 bolts, 21 bolts hit the hiveship before it explodes, but major secondary internal explosions start to occur after the 13th hit, and the whole superstructure starts to glow red from the inside and crack like an egg with the 20th shot, before definitively exploding after a 21th hit which was just overkill.
  So it appears that 20 shots, all hitting the portside's arm will be enough to totally destroy the ship. A destruction enhanced by internal explosions. The arm in question is the elongated part of the structure that is mirrored on the other side, and separated by a multi-kilometer long gap, as you can see here.
  So technically, this part of the ship was saturated with a barrage of two tens of shots. Precisely 21, but 20 of them were enough to cause irreversible damage.
  
  With the firepower figures obtained above, the total of energy roughly absorbed by this part of the ship before failing is about 1,036.16 GT for a low end, and 12,080 GT for the medium end range.
  There are likely a couple of bolts missing there, considering that the end of the first part does not match the beginning of the second one when it comes to bolt count and position (camera cut for those who don't get what I mean).
  That said, from the first impact to the 20th one, the bombardment lasted at least 10.3 seconds.
  
  
  
• Allies shows two hiveships, one of which belongs to the minor queen who established an alliance with the Terrans. Both are firing against each other, but hardly doing their best. We learn later on in the episode that both queens were actually working together.
  The size of the projectiles is slightly below the size of the bolts fired at the Daedalus in The Hive, so roughly 50 meters wide. Explosions are not particularily large, and only last two seconds. No bits of hull are seen flying :
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Misbegotten shows a damaged hiveship, powered at less than 50%, crewed by Teyla, with McKay's help. Their firing controls are off, so they can't even know what they firing at with enough precision, and can only hope they're pointing the cannons in the right direction, in an attempt to destroy the camp they established down on the planet.
  However, Michael and his half Wraith pals already psychically summoned a hiveship located light years away in hyperspace. An impressive feat, for sure.
  Immediately after this hiveship arrives, it starts shooting at Teyla's ship, but the level of damage is less impressive than in The Hive. That said, the ROF is higher.
  It keeps firing at a high rate for many seconds.
  First, it aims for the prow of Teyla's ship, since it's in direct LOS. We briefly see two starting explosions before camera cuts to the bridge, where we see the heroes getting a bit shaked.
  We stay in the bridge for 19.8 seconds.
  
  The enemy hiveship keeps moving on, and the second time we see it, it's flanking Teyl'a ship and concentrates its fire on the superstructure's left arm (same spot as in The Hive, but on the other side). This short sequence lasts 3.7 seconds. Towards the end, the hiveship is showing signs of critical damage, as secondary explosions occur in the middle of the ship. Fireballs do not vanish but keep growing, and we get the feeling that the whole vessel is about to go boom.
  
  Considering that Sheppard and co had time to reach their puddle jumper located in one of the hiveship's bays while running away from the main control bridge, and escape the hiveship at a safe distance, we can only assume it took them some time to do so, though how much is unknown.
  Although the total time from the two sequences is 23.5 seconds, we know it should be more, enough for our heroes to escape. After all, when the camera left the bridge, Sheppard's team wasn't even about to run away.
  A total of one minute bombardment wouldn't be out there, when we can't even know where the huge cavity on that 11 km long hiveship was from the main bridge.
  
  
  

[Mister Oragahn]

Ok I was reading a discussion which involved Ouroboros and it occured to me that depending on the way Wraith reproduce it would easy for them to overwhelm the ancients.

Let me explain, it was suggested the Wraith are produced in a similar fashion to michaels bug people which would allow the Wraith to build up rapid numbers very quickly. My thoughts were what if the Wraith soldiers didn't need to feed straight away? The queens could build huge armies of soldiers to litterally through at the enemy without caring if they survive. Without feeding Wraith can last weeks easily enough to time to grow some troops and throw them at the enemy. By only feeding the more important Wraith the armies could be practically thrown away on suicidal missions.

The soldiers created would be born litterally just to die. With soldiers whose only purpose was to be thrown at the enemy and die it's easy to see how the Ancients could have been forced back.

anyway just something I thought and wanted to get down.

Was it really that suggested?

Just how a queen would be able to do that. I don't even think we have a single clue about how they reproduce.
A queen would have to grow some huge sac, or be able to drop embryos and let those grow in pods.

These would make lots of numbers, which means bigger life section volumes.

[Ouroboros]

Was it really that suggested?

Just how a queen would be able to do that. I don't even think we have a single clue about how they reproduce.
A queen would have to grow some huge sac, or be able to drop embryos and let those grow in pods.

These would make lots of numbers, which means bigger life section volumes.

I think what he's reffering to is the thread in the season 3 forum about the wraith king in which I speculate using some of the new s4 spoilers. Basically there's been some rumours I've heard that they're born as adults and that it's not as the result of a sexual process. I theorised, as I have in the past, that they're grown in the hiveships in what would probably be cells not unlike the hibernation cells seen in rising.

While they grew they could be linked into the hivemind and imbued with all the skills needed to make them at least halfway effective soldiers. Then when they hatch you just give them a rifle and send them out.

I did note however that this would require a food rich environment, like ancient days pegasus, to be effective. In order to build up an overwhelming tide of Wraith grunts you need to keep them fed so they don't just die off at the same rate you make new ones. Logic would also dictate that the ship itself would require some sort of sustinence to create the soldiers.

If a queen could have the ship hatching them in batches of several hundred thousand that would certainly be able to account for the sort of terrfying population explosion the wraith seemingly had when the war started. Given the size of the hiveships broods of millions is even well within the realm of apparent possability.

It's really just my own musing speculation at this point though and doesn't really belong in a more grounded in facts thread like this one.