Weapon Strengths

[immhotep]

-They do know about how much energy you can get out of naquada which is why it powers all their tech including their weapons. Their "energy blobs" since the run off naquada reactions pump out similar energy levels to what you'd get from a bomb full of small amounts of naquada.

Better question might be, why did anubis need naquadriah when we know that adding potassium, a common element to the reaction turns even microscoptic amoutns of both elements in to sizable explosive devices...that were able to wipe out a floor of the SGC.

[Cylinder]

it might help things calculating the strength of shields, compare it to weapon strengths on the previous page and hopefully things will be more clear

[Mister Oragahn]

The problem with the atmosphere weakening the shots is that the energy still needs to end up somewhere. If they were holding hundreds of megatons worth of energy and bleeding so much of it into the atmosphere to the point that only those little spitwads hit nubie's ship you'd still have a nuclear holocaust. The radiated "waste" energy would cause more or less exactly the same effects as it would if it all hit at once. You'd get the same massive heating of the atmosphere, the same shockwaves the same heat melting peoples faces raiders of the lost ark style.

The destruction of Nubie's ship is one of the more difficult things in the series to try and explain. Even saying "well the weapons are just that weak" probably doesn't work because that ends up casting some doubts on if that gigantic ship could even hold together when moving on it's own, even with nobody shooting at it.

Actually, I've been wondering if Anubis didn't follow the lantian train of thought too the letter, you know, big shields and manly guns, but a fragile structure.
Otherwise, yes, when you look at what Ha'taks have been able to take, it doesn't make much sense to see Anubis' ship going down like that.
Other possibility is that his ship was already damaged by the internal explosion (you can't really shrug that off) and maybe used a structural integrity field which got damaged as well in Fallen.

[Mister Oragahn]

There's also the fact that that even Alkesh and Gliders can wear down Asgard shields like those on the Prometheus. Yet those same shields can withstand fire from Anubis' mothership.

Once these shields are up, the gliders and al'keses weren't representing much of a danger. But the Prometheus had been damaged before hand.
Al'keshes, eventually, seem to be capable of extremely varying levels. These ships are the most inconsistent Stargate has in terms of firepower. They can, depending on the plot, take on a Ha'tak or barely have what's necessary to topple a few ruins.

or season one screwed up with making the goauld hataks all that powerful so they had to tone it down abit

there have been serval ocassions where a hatak is in orbit and its firing into the planet like in that episode the warrior, if a hatak done what it done to the universe daniel went to, then that would simple got rid of all rebel jaffa and stop them from being a nuisance in the galaxy

Actually, the yields seen in the Warrior are nowhere near even what we've in Sentinel or Homecoming.
Yu was simply frightening the slobs down there with hand grenade level shots, it's I think as simple as that.

[Mister Oragahn]

they only fought themselves. they were successfull. people thought they were gods. why make superweapons when your old crappy stuff works fine. their tech was scavenged, so i doubt they could build more advanced versions. also, nukes are terribly inefficient when it comes to directed force

Because these Gods still fly in ships and it would be absurd for them to be victims to mere impacts with particles.
The Goa'uld may be a tad crazy, but they care about survival.
Plus consider that a free falling Ha'tak smashed into the ocean with its shields up, and then sank thousands of meters, and didn't get damaged more than a single crack it had, through which water poured.
Pretty tough.

Better question might be, why did anubis need naquadriah when we know that adding potassium, a common element to the reaction turns even microscoptic amoutns of both elements in to sizable explosive devices...that were able to wipe out a floor of the SGC.

Carter even said that the bomb would be million times more powerful, and the most funny thing in that is that it's not a nuclear reaction, but a chemical one, which means it's much less powerful than fission or even fusion.

I mean, if such small devices can cause so much damage... we also have those booby trapped treasure chests (notably used by Ra and Sekhmet), one of them warranting the evacuation of whole Los Angelels' Orange County.

it might help things calculating the strength of shields, compare it to weapon strengths on the previous page and hopefully things will be more clear

I'm on it. I've started assembling stuff a while ago, and I'm really a hair away from getting a very reliable figure from episode Enemies.

[NoobTau'ri]

The problem with the atmosphere weakening the shots is that the energy still needs to end up somewhere. If they were holding hundreds of megatons worth of energy and bleeding so much of it into the atmosphere to the point that only those little spitwads hit nubie's ship you'd still have a nuclear holocaust. The radiated "waste" energy would cause more or less exactly the same effects as it would if it all hit at once. You'd get the same massive heating of the atmosphere, the same shockwaves the same heat melting peoples faces raiders of the lost ark style.

The destruction of Nubie's ship is one of the more difficult things in the series to try and explain. Even saying "well the weapons are just that weak" probably doesn't work because that ends up casting some doubts on if that gigantic ship could even hold together when moving on it's own, even with nobody shooting at it.

Ya, the Ha'tak is the weakest and least sophisticated of SGverse ships, and yet it still blasts bolts at 200 megaton a pop. Discrepancy much? You don't need a PhD in thermodynamics to understand that no way no how does the damage caused by the weaponry of Ha'taks even remotely approaches what 200 megaton dispersion of power should cause. Energy doesen't disappear, but must be transformed. If a bolt of 200 megaton from a energy weapon hit Los Angeles, the entire city would be vaporized and a crater with a 30 mile dameter would take it's place, and people in San Diego would be burned to a crisp. That's the damage from one bolt. Now consider what we've seen in the show, where several ha'taks blast their weapons at full power on a planet and we get tiny explosions that are only strong enough to knock out a person - not even to kill a person! Now remember that the 200 megaton bolts fired by ha'taks, which are enough to vaporize Los Angeles, are is nothing compared to the firepower of Asgard motherships and Wraith hives, which is several orders of magnitude superior to Ha'taks, and when the Wraith bombarded the planet in the episode "Sateda", the explosions were not enough to even kill a single man!!!!! That was not a dart or even a cruiser firing, but a full fledged hive!! Wtf?! Whehn we see these ridiculous things onscreen, I understand why some fans can say incredibly stupid things like the one a poster here said some time ago, that the Air Force could take out an O'Neil and that the firepower of the O'Neil wouldn't damage the steel and titanium alloy armor of an F-22 jet fighter. Ok.

[Lt. Col. Mcoy]

I actually got a figure for Daedalus' shields; y = -1.35x + 100, where y is the shield strength (percentage), and x is the damage done in gigatons. This figure is based mostly on 'No Man's Land', but also a couple other Atlantis episodes. Surprisingly enough; Daedalus has had a fairly constant shield strength in Atlantis.

[Ouroboros]

Actually, I've been wondering if Anubis didn't follow the lantian train of thought too the letter, you know, big shields and manly guns, but a fragile structure.
Otherwise, yes, when you look at what Ha'taks have been able to take, it doesn't make much sense to see Anubis' ship going down like that.
Other possibility is that his ship was already damaged by the internal explosion (you can't really shrug that off) and maybe used a structural integrity field which got damaged as well in Fallen.

I'm not even touching this one in terms of trying to explain it rationally. There's just to many seperate ****ed up elements involved to ever make it work I think.

Ya, the Ha'tak is the weakest and least sophisticated of SGverse ships, and yet it still blasts bolts at 200 megaton a pop. Discrepancy much? You don't need a PhD in thermodynamics to understand that no way no how does the damage caused by the weaponry of Ha'taks even remotely approaches what 200 megaton dispersion of power should cause. Energy doesen't disappear, but must be transformed. If a bolt of 200 megaton from a energy weapon hit Los Angeles, the entire city would be vaporized and a crater with a 30 mile dameter would take it's place, and people in San Diego would be burned to a crisp. That's the damage from one bolt. Now consider what we've seen in the show, where several ha'taks blast their weapons at full power on a planet and we get tiny explosions that are only strong enough to knock out a person - not even to kill a person! Now remember that the 200 megaton bolts fired by ha'taks, which are enough to vaporize Los Angeles, are is nothing compared to the firepower of Asgard motherships and Wraith hives, which is several orders of magnitude superior to Ha'taks, and when the Wraith bombarded the planet in the episode "Sateda", the explosions were not enough to even kill a single man!!!!! That was not a dart or even a cruiser firing, but a full fledged hive!! Wtf?! Whehn we see these ridiculous things onscreen, I understand why some fans can say incredibly stupid things like the one a poster here said some time ago, that the Air Force could take out an O'Neil and that the firepower of the O'Neil wouldn't damage the steel and titanium alloy armor of an F-22 jet fighter. Ok.

Making it even more fun you regularly get orbital shots where it does actually look like the weapons impacting the surface are causing massive nuclear scale explosions. Look at Misbegotten for one and those scenes where the Ori warship fires on Dakara in SG-1. Both situations show massive fireballs/debris clouds as seen from space but then in the next episode we're back to bull**** popguns again. The Dakara episode even cuts away to shots of the beam hitting the mountain and doing basically dick all.

Really now. Is it that hard to just have everyone agree on a power level for weapons? Even if that power level is as broad and open ended as "roughly nuclear level". They've been doing this stuff for a cumulative 15 years now and they still can't get a handle on this?

[Jack_Bauer]

Earth Asgard eams = Best
!

[immhotep]

No way! The Langara point satalite is better than the Asgard beams.

[thekillman]

its not. that thing was a superlaser cutting through shieldless hull. with shield it would barely do damage

[immhotep]

Well if its anything vaguely related to the Ethon satalite, which is a fair assumption given that the Ascended would have access to the knowledge of the ancient and both Lantian and Ori have Alteran technology...it would do pretty well against shields.

[jnadreth]

The weapon that the Asurans fired through the stargate must have been higher yeild than the Langrean Satellite as they would have needed to use their best weapon against the shields of Atlantis. I reckon that the Langrean weapon was deployed at the start of the Wraith war and what the Asurans used was say the latest model. Apollo took considerable shield damage from the Asuran weapon that forced Ellis to retreat so the Langrean weapon would still be effective against 304's at least.

[Andru10]

The weapon that the Asurans fired through the stargate must have been higher yeild than the Langrean Satellite as they would have needed to use their best weapon against the shields of Atlantis. I reckon that the Langrean weapon was deployed at the start of the Wraith war and what the Asurans used was say the latest model. Apollo took considerable shield damage from the Asuran weapon that forced Ellis to retreat so the Langrean weapon would still be effective against 304's at least.

It's Lagrangian Satellite not Langrean !!! It's called that because it's located in one of the Lagrangian points. That means that it's stationary with respect to Lantia and its Sun.

[immhotep]

No its Langara...