Mini drones? SPOILERS for "Harmony"

[YutheGreat]

Why wouldn't the ancients just send regular drones through the stargate and have then auto-seek there own target as shown in 'Rising'. From there I'm sure McKay or someone else could input data on wraith life signs and then have them target wraith.

The wraith dont have a defense against regular sized drones. And yet, the wraith took the ancients down.

The regular size drones as we have seen aren't that effective if the Wraith are inside their ships from the episode of the Travellers. Yes the ships would be damage but the Wraith warriors would still be alive. As we know the Wraith warriors are hard to kill and because of the cloning facility in SoW they have armies of them. I also thought they may have decided to place these minidrones inside ancient warships as we know the Wraith were trying to board them to capture ZPMs for the cloaning facility.

You guys, the ancients were in pegasus for several million years, and the war lasted, what, 100+ years out of that, towards the end, which was 10,000 years ago.

If TPTB were tyring to fix there drone plothole like i think, the mini drones would of been created first - its seems these drones, as someone pointed out, lacked the explosives, i agree. The ancients most probably were experimenting with the navigational and energetic portion of the drone, since drones are projectile energy weapons. Explosives can be added later, its the navigation part thats the most tricky.

If they were planning to use minidrones on people making them explode will be overkill. So the navigational part of the drones are only bullet size while the explosive comprise the remaining part of the drone. Maybe the lack of explosives was to prevent hull breaches if they decide to deploy them inside their own ships

And the hole point of the replicators was to avoid using conventional weapons, such as the drones. The ancients didnt want to confront them, they'd rather have there bugs do it. What Niam said was only in reference to the nanites, nothing more.

By leaving a truckload of minidrones on a Wraith controlled world then activating them in auto targetting mode. As we have seen in auto targetting mode the drones target everybody without the ancient gene. No one needs to command them. They can sit back and relax while the drones target Wraith warriors.

I think O'neil did it to impress the spectators. joke. Well Anubis had advance shields. I suspect O'niel order several of those drones to hit Anubis himself, Jack wanetd to make sure he destroyed Anubis. He had no physical form. The Hatak umopapisdn is talking about belongs to Aries, I think, Puddle Jumper drones.

Have you guys realized that this episode is a combination of:
The Tower episode of Atlantis as well as Progeny of SG-1?

[Halzman]

Well, they could have and probably did, but there is one thing about any human race that you might want to know: We like to shrink things, and big things come first. Why wouldn't we stick with big cell phones? They would last longer, really. Possibly even be cheaper, as in shrinked technology usually costs more. Oh yea! It's a storage thing, isn't? Making those big drones means you need a bigger space to hold them. And since there is a limited size issue in a battle ship, you would want them to be smaller.

And once again, it is stupid to believe that the ancients didn't change their technology. I mean, really. Technology changes rapidly in real life, and only gets smaller -- why would they not shrink this? (Plus, don't PJ's use smaller drones? Now thats another reason for smaller drones -- and you know what, they would need a testing place to insure these things pack a punch -- right?
The wraith dont have a defense against regular sized drones. And yet, the wraith took the ancients down.



Yeppers!


That would be unrealistic. Did we make small cell phones first, or big ones? Did we make small super computer first, or small ones (we actually are getting very close to having small super computers, thanks to IBM). And of course they are going to pack a smaller punch -- does dynamite pack the same punch as a nuke? Does a handgun pack the same punch as rocket launcher?

well obviously not if your comparing the extremes of each side as you are. And just as a little tid bit of info, if you ask some older folks, the ones who grew up during the start of computers and even before, they'll tell ya - technology has advanced way faster then it should of.

And there are cases where you build smaller first. Look at building construction and design. Everything is designed and demonstrated at a small level. Its meant purely to represent what the final product will look like, without spending all the time and resources to make the real thing.

This is what prototyping is. You build a smaller version of whatever it is that your building, in order to test and evaluate core components of the overall final product.

With a drone you have 3 core components: a)navigation/propulsion b)communication c) energy/explosive component

Drones as we've seen work in groups and move much like schools of fish move. In order to start testing and evaluating the various systems, you would obviously start off with just getting it to move on its own - navigation and propulsion. This system will be responsible for moving the drone to its target by adjusting its propulsion system. This in itself is a very hard task. You try building a rocket that has the ability to move and 'seek' on its own.

Next, before you even incorporate the explosives portion, your going to want to get individual drones to work with other drones, forming groups and swarms of drones that move in synch. This task I can assure you is very very very difficult, if not the hardest part.

To get back to my point, you wouldnt need to built a full size whatever to test certain systems. You can always scale things up or down, either which way, once you understand how to work with the technology and how to collaborate everything together.

-----

As for your travelers example: no the wraith would die also. Its called space and its a giant vacuum. And since energy moves from its highest to lowest - the atmospherically pressured cabins would be exposed to hard vacuum and everything would be sucked out, including the wraith. The damage although would only be limited to sections exposed, however a strong enough breech will effect areas surrounding it, if the bulkheads between sections aren't strong enough.

And the wraith only went after the zpms of ships that had gone deep within wraith territory. Its not like they went around taking zpm's from ancient warships at there leisure. And no one bring up there hyperdrive technology, it would of been useless to the wraith 10,000 years ago and earth was lookin pretty bleak.

The 'glow' surrounding the drone is what gives them the ability to go through objects. Its basically a sheild, just one comprised of high temperature plasma, whereas the shields of a ship are low/room temperature plasma. Heres a lesson on warfare for you: If you want to destroy whats on the other side of an armored whatever, you need to do 2 things: a) puncture the armor b) destroy whatever was behind the armor. Presently, missiles designed to do that sorta thing work like this. On impact of the armor, it either detonates a charge to puncture the armor or punctures it by design, and then a secondary charge, or regular charge, goes off once the missile has breached the armor, exposing itself to whatever it to be destroyed. The hi temp plasma surrounding the drone is what does this. This was seen really clearly during 'No Man's Land'.

And you still have to work about getting that truck load of drones onto your everyday friendly wraith world. A few nanites which would begin replicating on there own would be much easier to expose on the wraith then a 'truck load' of drones. The whole purpose of the nanites was to fight the wraith from the inside out, whereas the mini drones does quiet the opposite.

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

I think O'neil did it to impress the spectators. joke. Well Anubis had advance shields. I suspect O'niel order several of those drones to hit Anubis himself, Jack wanetd to make sure he destroyed Anubis. He had no physical form. The Hatak umopapisdn is talking about belongs to Aries, I think, Puddle Jumper drones.

I think its more to do with the fact that the Ancient's Knowledge within his brain was slowly killing him and, as such, did not have as much control as he would have liked. The Knowledge was very distracting for him and meant that he could not direct the drones, he simply told them to attack the enemy fleet in orbit so lacking direction the interface simply used so many rather then use them strategically.

[YutheGreat]

Halzman your points on creation of the drones were well thought out Also There are some who argue that advancements in technology occur at an incredible pace only late in the 21st century than in previous centuries. I still maintain that the minidrones came in second.

In the Travellers example. Wraith are dead but damage is done on the Ancient ship. I mean the example was in this scenario: Wraith soldiers boarded a Ancient warship to get a ZPMs. They deploy minidrones to hunt down the boarders. Well the ancients could deploy security teams to deal with the wraith aboard but this would result in cassualties. I think the wraith tried but never succeeded because the Ancients could run away with advance hyperdrives. The wraith succeeded when the ancient went deep into their territory because Ancients couldn't get back to their bases because none were nearby. Wraith outnumbered them. Ancients were striking behind enemy lines where Wraith were more fortified.

I had a thought what if the minidrones were the commercial application of the drone technology. I think Mckay said something about they were there as a security measure to protect ancient research? Am I right?

Prior_of_the_Ori You may have a point but doesn't controlling more drones require more concentration not less?

[Cap116]

(I haven't read all of the posts in this read, so if this has been brought up please let me know.)

After reading some fo the posts above, I realized that is possible that the experiment with mini-drones, might have to been what the Ancients started to use drones as explosives. In "Lost City," the drones that destroyed Anubis's ship didn't "explode," they just went through the shields. Poked through, similar to the mini-drones. It would be consistent with the timeline, since the Outpost is pre-PG.

This is all under the assumption that this stuff isn't a plot-hole or a change in continuity.

[Blistna]

well obviously not if your comparing the extremes of each side as you are. And just as a little tid bit of info, if you ask some older folks, the ones who grew up during the start of computers and even before, they'll tell ya - technology has advanced way faster then it should of.

Yes, technology is growing way fast.

And there are cases where you build smaller first. Look at building construction and design. Everything is designed and demonstrated at a small level. Its meant purely to represent what the final product will look like, without spending all the time and resources to make the real thing.

I was not talking about buildings, because that is technology but is different -- building are built (at least in today) for a purpose, and if it's purpose is for one person, then of course it's going to be small.

This is what prototyping is. You build a smaller version of whatever it is that your building, in order to test and evaluate core components of the overall final product.

With a drone you have 3 core components: a)navigation/propulsion b)communication c) energy/explosive component

Drones as we've seen work in groups and move much like schools of fish move. In order to start testing and evaluating the various systems, you would obviously start off with just getting it to move on its own - navigation and propulsion. This system will be responsible for moving the drone to its target by adjusting its propulsion system. This in itself is a very hard task. You try building a rocket that has the ability to move and 'seek' on its own.

True, but both theories could be correct. I still say technology is created big, then gets smaller. I say that because very little times in history as the pattern not been used.


So I still say what I said at the start, it could be a plothole, but I think not.

[wise one]

maybe they should of designed the arouro's better, i mean several laser beams biult on them would do it like their satilite weapon

there ships were slow and their rate of fire was aswell, while the wraith would pummel their shields

obvisously the minidrones was a sucess and im pretty sure they have them on dozens of worlds , maybe some destroyed by the wraith yet maybe some survived

its just abit strange that they look up the address on the database yet it gives them nothing on what on the planet

or maybe it was teyla that gave them the address or plothole

[jhkplaya888]

maybe they should of designed the arouro's better, i mean several laser beams biult on them would do it like their satilite weapon

there ships were slow and their rate of fire was aswell, while the wraith would pummel their shields

obvisously the minidrones was a sucess and im pretty sure they have them on dozens of worlds , maybe some destroyed by the wraith yet maybe some survived

its just abit strange that they look up the address on the database yet it gives them nothing on what on the planet

or maybe it was teyla that gave them the address or plothole

agreed, they should of had those satalite weapon like systems in there ships when the drones failed or ran out

[2ndgenerationalteran]

Now thinking about it the Satellite weapons on the ships would be sustained beams probably using it with the shields would make it fluctuate probably weakening the beam and the shields while both are active. Its powerful but would have drawbacks.

[wkw427]

Why the HELL is the page so wide?????

[2ndgenerationalteran]

SGAsgard forgot to put spaces between his dashes...

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

From Joe's Blog:

Prior of the Ori writes: “McKay said that the planet was where they first developed Drone technology, does this mean they never had it back in the Milky Way?”

Answer: No, that was an oversight. The drone technology was developed in the Milky Way, but the mini-drone version was perfected in Pegasus.

[Vala_M]

From Joe's Blog:

I saw that too. I was just about to post that now.

Vala,

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

I saw that too. I was just about to post that now.

Vala,

I was so glad he answered my question but felt since there are two threads on the subject, it might have needed some word from TPTB

[Crazy Tom]

advanced/more technology: leads to discovering moore new techs and advancing present ones faster.