Everything you ever wanted to know about Hiveships/Wraith.

[Buba uognarf]

Ok I was just writing down my thoughts sorry if it's misplaced. I only read part of that thread but presumably the Wraith would get some kind of sustainence while in the sack or being grown or whatever. The Wraith would have to feed quickly but it wouldn't stop the soldiers being thrown into battle to make up the numbers.

[Ouroboros]

It's cool man this thread is for discussion like this. I was just making it clear that I didn't think my own ideas from that other thread were really fully developed yet since most of what I was saying was just based on rumours and spoilers of questionable accuracy.

I just like to throw around ideas sometimes. By all means feel free to do the same.

[Lord batchi ball]

Can a Wraith Hive be cloaked?

[Ouroboros]

Not normally but if you installed a cloaking device (devices?) I don't see any reason why not.

Interestingly enough the Wraith have already shown that they have the technology to project an artificial holographic wall that can perfectly mimic a real stone cliff face.

In theory there's no reason why one couldn't cover a hiveship with devices like that and make it appear to "transform" into various other objects. Ever since hearing about this I always thought it would be an absolutely evil ambush weapon.

Imagine an ancient warship that's just been "attacked by the wraith" but defended itself. They send a distress call and another ancient warship arrives. Then the first "ancient warship" turns into a hive and the various floating bits of Wraith ship that were pretending to be wreckage from the battle that never happened turn into cruisers.

Depending on how good the mimic tech was you could potentially imitate things like this that were smaller than the hiveship itself, just by holographing in the parts that stuck outside the desired object's dimensions to look like void. Or you just make the whole ship into void and its a cloaking device. Assuming it fools sensors of course. I can't remember for sure if it did in the episode with the false wall.

If you want to be a real ******* though you use the holoemmiters to turn your ship into void and project 3 other "copies" all around your actual location at random distances. Then when they fire have a computer program that changes the holograms to look like they took appropriate damage. Meanwhile the enemy is just shooting at nothing.

OIf course the game is up when you open fire yourself but mixing about twice as many fake hives/cruisers into a fleet formation of real ones, and then laying sensor jamming on top of it, would make for one massive piss off.

[Mister Oragahn]

I think it was in Season 1's The Gift, where Teyla discovers she has Wraith DNA.

The ships could be made to look like asteroids as well, or pretty much any type of inert object that is solid.

All those applications should be possible, at least the ones about close cloaking - I'm not sure about casting solid "holo illusions" at certain distances - though that would really rock!

Coupled to a possible weapon grade psychic illusion power, that would be terrific on the battle field, and would help to explain why even the most competent lantian crews would get their mind fux0red.

Ah... so much potential.

[Lord batchi ball]

To catch Sheppards team the Wraith could disguse the hive as a Lantian Warship when they get near, thats it.

Could you kill a hive by using radiation? Lots of it.

[Buba uognarf]

To catch Sheppards team the Wraith could disguse the hive as a Lantian Warship when they get near, thats it.

Could you kill a hive by using radiation? Lots of it.

Well we know hyperspace radiation damages Wraith ships after prolonged exposure so it stands to reason that a large dose of intense radiation would damage the ship. Though producing that much radiation with a weapon may not be practical.

Though nukes create large amounts of radiation when they explode they need to hit their mark first.

[Ouroboros]

Could you kill a hive by using radiation? Lots of it.

Yes, but you can pretty much kill anything that way can't you.

Mr. Oragahn and I have speculated though that the hives may have a weakness to large sudden doses of radiation. If you look at no mans land and misbegotten, the hive takes no visible surface damage to its armour from the 304 nuke and yet it is obviously harmed somehow by it.

The hyperspace radiation thing is also interesting itself because its not clear exactly what part of the hive is being harmed and how. We speculated here as well that it might be some sort of internal componant that is exposed to the hyperspace rads for some reason or another, possibly to use them as fuel or serve some other function in relation to the hyperdrive. This component then gets "tired" and needs to rest and recover/cool down before it can continue to function again normally, necessitating a drop back to sublight speeds. The reason this sort of explanation is even necessary is obvious if you think about it. The same episode that talked about how hyperspace rads damage some organic part of hiveships also featured Sheppard being exposed to the same hyperspace rads as the hiveship with nothing between his body and the suppossedly deadly radiation other than the 302s cockpit glass. Since he didn't fry instantly or die of radiation poisoning or even suffer any sort of ill effects at all, that places a rather hard upper limit on just how dangerous this radiation can really be in terms of normal exposure.

[Ouroboros]

All those applications should be possible, at least the ones about close cloaking - I'm not sure about casting solid "holo illusions" at certain distances - though that would really rock!

I figured that was the more certain part actually. The gift thing was some sort of hidden emmiter that projected a solid wall at distance afterall.

If they have tech like this that can produce solid seeming masses at a distance then that also means they have the tech for some sort of tractor beam or forcefeild net.

Worse even, if it is field tech, which I assume it is, you could craft a series of ultra sharp or ultra thin objects and just smash them into or constrict them around an enemy ship until they started to saw, crush and warp its hull. Or if you've got enough reactor power just project a sphere around their ship to contain all their return fire/make it explode near their ship, then constrict it slowly until you crush them into a tiny dense ball of starship scrap and human gore.

[Lord batchi ball]

I would think that the Wraith learned all there tech abilities from the Lanteans so they would have have a defense,and the ship would have to be bigger than its target.

Does a hive ship Scream when you hurt it?

What does a hive ship eat? Wraith or Humans?

[tauriprivatesoldier]

This has probably been repeated dozens of times but exactly how the wraith create more of their kind? None of the episodes gave any clue; I've not read any of the books, so i don't know, coz i keep hearing the ancients were overwhelmed by great numbers of wraith. is there like some giant iratus bug queen that lays giant eggs , so many at one time and pops out a fullgrown wraith soldier?

[Mister Oragahn]

In the end, I don't get the point about the population large numbers.

In Stargate, ground combat is severely limited, as a victory is often determined by who can park his massive spaceship in orbit of a world.

I don't get why billions of wraith soldiers will help, when it's all about spaceships, especially ships which we've seen could be manned by two or three persons, one of them being Teyla, with diluted Wraith DNA.

Take a crew of a hundred Wraith, and that should more than enough to get your ship battle ready.

Is it about the darts? With their level of firepower, not even worth one ton of TNT, even a million darts, assuming they can all fire at the same at the same moment, would only be firing one megaton of energy per second.

Wee in the ocean for any self respected lantian warship.

The only way wraith specimen numbers would make a difference would be when it comes to psychic powers, and their combination.

We've seen how ex-Wraith could summon a hiveship many lightyears away... though I suspect that they only tapped into a "hidden" network that covers most of the galaxy.

But yet, we've seen the Wraith putting the emphasis on psytech, notably with the sort of mind grinder device stuck in a cave.
We've seen the Wraith use psychic illusions to create ghost silhouettes, just for the sake of frightening their cattle.
We've seen the queens easily mind break humans, and we've seen how a pilot on a recon/sabotage mission can get inside the mind of Teyla.

Just imagine the untaped power of a complete hiveship population... what kind of star system wide psychic nightmare they could create.

Such numbers would then make a load of sense, again, and explain how the lantian much superior tech didn't help them that much.

Of course, at some point, we should expect a sort of lantian counter measure.
Not a Magneto helmet, but something that blocks psychic intrusions.

Of course, seeing that even Atlantis' shield couldn't block the psycrap from whales, there's a problem here.

Either the expedition didn't find the device, in Atlantis, that would have blocked such psychic waves, or the Lantians, 10,000 years ago, never had to worry about such Wraith powers... because the Wraith didn't have them.

It would be particularily ironic to see that the second solution is true, in light of evidence, and knowing how this show feeds on a daily plot device routine.

[Mister Oragahn]

I figured that was the more certain part actually. The gift thing was some sort of hidden emmiter that projected a solid wall at distance afterall.

If they have tech like this that can produce solid seeming masses at a distance then that also means they have the tech for some sort of tractor beam or forcefeild net.

Worse even, if it is field tech, which I assume it is, you could craft a series of ultra sharp or ultra thin objects and just smash them into or constrict them around an enemy ship until they started to saw, crush and warp its hull. Or if you've got enough reactor power just project a sphere around their ship to contain all their return fire/make it explode near their ship, then constrict it slowly until you crush them into a tiny dense ball of starship scrap and human gore.

Oh-ho, lots of neat stuff. Perfect for a book.

I'd say it depends on how the stone wall was cast. If it was like a window, with all the emitters being embedded in the rock on the door's edge, then there's clearly a limited range to the tech.

That said, a dart canopy is a bubble, so even between two edges, the Wraith know how to make such a shield solid and non planar.

Eventually, you could argue that a very distant shape could be formed, but it would need to be linked to the generators present on the Wraith ship anyway, like some sort of appendage.

... huh, taking your globe idea... wouldn't it be a neat way, actually, to board an enemy craft, by casting such tubes and platforms between a hiveship/cruiser and the damaged ship?

Then the Wraith would pour tens and tens of thousands of soldiers inside the enemy ship, sending all their tech and so on.

But that may be going too far, though that would help this show depart from the classical paved ways of SF on TV.

So I'm reserved about the ranged projection, but I'm firmly convinced that it could be executed over the surface any Wraith ship, with maybe a range of tens of meters, or maybe a hundred for a hiveship, if the skin was to be a bubble.

This would be a great tool for ambushes.

Imagine lantian visucloak vs wraith illushield. Tricky, heh?

[Buba uognarf]

The thing is covering an entire hive ship in emitters is easier said than done. The ship as you know is huge and there's no telling how effective a string of such emitters would be. They could give off noticeable power emissions etc...this would allow the Lanteans to detect them. Although if disguised as a large Lantean ship they could get away with the strange power emissions for the first few attacks.

Ok i've got a question. We've seen the Deadalus withstand direct Wraith energy weapon hits so how strong is the armour? We know trinium is 100x stronger and lighter than steel so how much would the ship need to survive a direct hit?

[Lord batchi ball]

What would be cool if they could amit a kind of hollow graphic image that looks like a Wraith Hive or a fleet and one could look like Dozens.
Only problem is if somthing gets between the Hive and the Amitter but maybe they would be sophistacated enough to ward against That.