Aurora class shields overestimated, as shown on Traveler

[Mister Oragahn]

I hate to say i told you so. But Ancient shields are not as good as we all wanted them to be. In fact they are very sub par. Considering Ancient shields on Atlantis can take days to wear down with ZPM wheras an aurura, well i would compare them to very good goauld shields at best. Certainly weaker than asgard shields. Tria, Orion, The Echoes ship, and now this one...Which can be called the Pegasus for the time being. No Aurora has been seen to have good shields. 6 Hits from a Wraith cruiser. Thats 30 hits to destroy one at full shields. To be fair, the cruisers were charging thier weapons for along time between shots. But that still shows aurora to be very weak.

So basically, the Lantians had enough ressources to build huge space guns that one shot entire hiveships with minimal energy, build kilometer long spaceships, build more ZPMs, but couldn't fraking put cityship grade shields on their ships?

The evidence says that the shields are not faulty. Just that the Wraith weapons, in that case, are particulary super efficient.

[kirmit]

So basically, the Lantians had enough ressources to build huge space guns that one shot entire hiveships with minimal energy, build kilometer long spaceships, build more ZPMs, but couldn't fraking put cityship grade shields on their ships?

The evidence says that the shields are not faulty. Just that the Wraith weapons, in that case, are particulary super efficient.

Shields could be the Ancients weakspot, I know Atlantis has the most powerful ever seen but it uses several generators and requires a ZPM to function. On their ships they don't have several generators due to the fact they aren't big enough and most of the time don't have a ZPM plugged in. So ancients shields running on a single generator, minus a ZPM don't appear that powerful.

[immhotep]

So basically, the Lantians had enough ressources to build huge space guns that one shot entire hiveships with minimal energy, build kilometer long spaceships, build more ZPMs, but couldn't fraking put cityship grade shields on their ships?

Yes they had the knowledge to build powerful weapons. Yes they could be build universe containing batteries but thier implementation of their technology is frankly, crap.
Also We have the resources to build 1km long space ships. Deadalus is 3/4 of that size and its the first fish put in the pond. Also thier space guns were not huge, in fact if you scale it, its not even the size of a hatak.

The evidence says that the shields are not faulty. Just that the Wraith weapons, in that case, are particulary super efficient.

The Evidence surgests that they are not faulty, but by that same measure they are very sub par. Not only are Asgard shields more resiliant to wraith weapons, they can hold out longer, take less power to sustain, are more efficent, and generally just much much much better shields. Discount Atlantis from the benchmark process. The deadalus in all but weapons is a better ship. Better shields, faster in every way, easier to maintain, less prone to damage, and last longer in battle.
This says alot of about all three races involved. Firstly, we can design ships much better than the ancients could, even to fight an enemy we have never encountered our ships have shown to be much better at fighting them. Yes we dont have drones, and when they have drones they can blast hives and cruisers out of the sky. But without drones, the entire setup is crap. Its faulty to the point of being a leaky sieve trying to contain an ocean. Not only do shields fail, the shields are not even of a great design. They are hull tight with a poor energy matrix configuration(notice how the shield only activates over 1 part of the ship, which may have explained the 20% figure. They could only protect 20% of the ship.)
Now the comparison, Asgard technology on our ships is significantly better than ancients now, i think without drones, our ships are much better in general than aurora. I keep saying without drones because there is no disputing, drones are the perfect weapon. The ancients got that spot on. The problem is all the other stuff, which is what the asgard got damn right. Bubble shield, overall protective converage that weakens as a total shield and sustains itself against any kind of energy weapon very very well. Wraith weapons are per shot, very very powerful, at least a few hundred MT's each as seen by the damage they did to the Micheal relocation camp. Only a handful of shots were required to cause nuke like dents. Considering deadalus has stood up to bombardment for several times longer than an Aurora, and more successfully.

As to why they didnt put city ship shields on the Aurora, maybe they did. The Power source is what makes shields powerful, now aurora power sources are enough to power drones but they apparently are not enough to sustain both shields and drone effectively. Weve seen that on a number of occasions. Atlantis has ZPM's so can do all that stuff, and Asgard shields with a ZPM can hold back a solar flare. But another aurora was ripped apart by the same solar flare. While atlantis with its ZPM survived. So if the Aurora wasup to standards with Ancient tech, it should have similar shields to Atlantis, and cos they can build ZPM's it should have one. But an aurora at full, thatwas studying the sun around lantia, got ripped apart, Asgard and a ZPM or Atlantis with a ZPM survived..So theres alot of evidence now for Aurora, while being a seriously powerful offensive ship, pretty useless as any other function. At bieng defensive and holding shields, at travelling fast, power efficency, hasnt got any real carrier capacity, it really is quite a poor ship when its not firing drones.

[wise one]

i think the ancients just had power problems

aslong has there power in their technology then that good enough for them

like mckay said that when the ancients came back they activated systems all around atlantis, so they must of thought that aslong as they have power its okay,

in my opion they didnt have any ideas or they were lazy to configure on saving energy unlike how the atlantis expidition, justhow mckay tried to configure the atlantis power things..

i mean they know about safegaiyds and power levels

[Ehecatl]

You can't make a comparison about the ship if we've never seen one that wasn't damaged in some way. Plu, we've never really seen what the ships are capable of when they are under the control if the Ancients.

[kirmit]

You can't make a comparison about the ship if we've never seen one that wasn't damaged in some way. Plu, we've never really seen what the ships are capable of when they are under the control if the Ancients.

What difference would an ancient being in control do to the shields? .

[Buba uognarf]

I think it was more to do with the fact that cruiser was on steroids! It was clearly much more powerful shot for shot that the hives in No mans land judging by the hull damage.

I'm not sure we can come to any conclusions quite yet.

[Ltcolshepjumper]

I never really got how the cruisers were so effective against the Ancient warships. I maen, this is the ship that can take out a Wraith Hive with one salvo. Also, the ship was at 20% shield power at the most.

[Lord batchi ball]

Well this makes the most sense to me.
That the hive fired alot more than what we saw.
I posted the idea earlier but Xaeden went into much more detail

Just fyi, the first hit was at 17:43 and the shields went down at 19:01. We did feel or see 10 hits, but there was a cut scene between Sheppard convincing her to let him help and them then running down a hallway somewhat outside the chair room. Also, between 18:40 and 18:43 we see them fire 5 shots. Which may suggest that they had been firing that quickly the entire time and when they feel the effect inside it does not equal one shot. Rather it only equaled an especially bad hit. Anyway that would equal over 130 shots in total (we have no way of knowing how much time passed during the cut scene and the time was different between those 5 shots).

[Ltcolshepjumper]

The fact is, it was a cruiser, not a hive.

[kirmit]

The fact is, it was a cruiser, not a hive.

Exactly, if a cruiser can do that much damage imagine what a hive could do. It could be that the ancient ships relied more on firepower than shields, they took out the enemy before they had a chance to inflict serious damage to their shields.

[ManiacMike]

why do people continue to think the wraith cruisers are weak?

They are almost the same size as the Daedalus and were in attendance when Atlantis was first attacked.

[talyn2k1]

Exactly, if a cruiser can do that much damage imagine what a hive could do. It could be that the ancient ships relied more on firepower than shields, they took out the enemy before they had a chance to inflict serious damage to their shields.

Thats a good point there. If the Aurora class (which from this point on shall be known as Enterprise. Atleast one ship has got to be called that ) had fired on the cruiser as soon as it was in range it probably wouldn't have had a chance to get a shot off before it was blown to hell.
This would make the Ancients losing to the Wraith make more sense as even being outnumbered, if their shields and weapons were as powerful as they have been claimed to be that wouldn't have made a hell of alot of difference. But if their shields are relatively weak, it would explain how they were defeated.
Superior weapons are fine but only if you can last long enough in a firefight to get off more than one or two shots. The Enterprise took 3 or 4 hits with shields at 20%, so discounting any other damage that may have caused the shields to drop sooner, that means an Aurora can take 15 or 20 hits from a cruiser at full power. imho, If an Aurora were up against 2/3+ Hives, it would take out two at most before it shields were overwhelmed and it was destroyed.

I know that working out shield strength isn't that simple and that shield strength is determined by where the shot hits, what other damage the vessel has sustained up to that point, the skill of the crew controlling the ship. But I think the above figure is probably a reasonably accurate figure to work from.

[Xaeden]

The Enterprise took 3 or 4 hits with shields at 20%, so discounting any other damage that may have caused the shields to drop sooner, that means an Aurora can take 15 or 20 hits from a cruiser at full power.

We had 10 confirmed hits, but I maintain that it was more like 130-150 and they did not feel the effects of every single hit inside of the ship. Rather they only felt the effects of an especially bad one. Otherwise it makes no sense that we see the Cruiser firing 5 shots in the span on 3 seconds at one point, but inside 10-20 seconds go by without a hit.

imho, If an Aurora were up against 2/3+ Hives, it would take out two at most before it shields were overwhelmed and it was destroyed.

Actually it's much much more than that. Drones do not work in such a way where one needs to fire one swarm, have it destroy the ship, and then fire the second swarm and target it at a different one. They can release tons of them and have them fly at many different targets at once just as O'neill used the Outpost to destroy Anubis' 30+ fleet in no time at all once they were all in the air. Most, humans with the gene probably would have an issue controlling so many drones at once though.

[Exiled Master]

No, it means this is rediculous. The writers are throwing sense out the window with this one;

In "No Man's Land", an Aurora with hardly any shielding took a MASSIVE amount of fire from a hive for a minute or so before its shields failed. Here, one with 20% shields (probably more than the Orion had) took less than a dozen shots from a cruiser and had its go.

That simply doesn't add up, unless the Orion and this ship were different models (which is possible, considering that this ship had a new interior).

Craft can look the same on the outside but perform differently. Look at the Blackbird and Oxcart, for example. Externally, they look a lot alike. But the Blackbird had far superior specs.