Weapon Strengths

[jnadreth]

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.

My bad-you all know what I mean't though

[thekillman]

whatever its called: a beam weapon would cut through a hive. the ancient sat sliced through it

[Mister Oragahn]

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.

I think that by design, they're two different weapons. The Lantian defense satellite seemed to be a weapon meant to be used against dense matter, and poke holes at the expense of low energy levels.
The Asuran satgate was probably the opposite. Although we don't know if the Lantian beam would have been good against rock, we see that it wasn't the case for the Asuran weapon, but it had an effect on the shield+ZPM ensemble.

[immhotep]

The Satgate was a beam based weapon but unlike previous beams it was at the expense of a huge amount of power, clearly. We know only massive amounts of power can sustain a stargate longer than 38 minutes, black holes, stargate destroying weapons (of which the Satgate might be a refined varient)...the other Lantian satalite was a different weapon entirely. It was a one shot kill, buffer and unleash hell. Both very powerful, one shot kill on a hive, a sustained and effective assault on atlantis. Difference is that the Satgate had an offworld source of power that was virtually limitless, there could have been multiple ZPM's attached to the other side of the gate, what i cant understand is how they powered the shield through the gate, we have never seen an exterior gate shield be able to be powered remotely using the gate as a conduit. Weve seen weapons fire through, we have seen one gate build up energy in another gate buffer. But that whole device seemed to be powered by the offworld source. Which doesnt make...I really want to know if the satalite is still in orbit around lantia. If it is and we can disable it...there could be one hell of a power source inside.

[jnadreth]

There's no doubt the work on different things in different ways but it is still quite plausable that the Satellite weapon was modified by the Asurans to the point where it would be effective against Atlantis- just look at the discussions about the beam weapon used on Apophis's Flagship by the replicator controlled ship compared to the Asgard Plasma Beam weapon. I guess that depending on how much modding the Asurans did to their beam weapon you could classify it as a brand new type of weapon. In this case both theories have merit.

[Maedhros_Sea]

The assumption of megaton or gigaton yields is based on a statement Carter made in the first season.

What if the the 2-300 megaton detonations weren't caused by conventional Hatak fire? A bomb made from Naquadah could have been ringed down to the planet or dropped by Alkesh bomb.

Given the yield I doubt there were direct surviving witnesses. So the estimate would have been based on observations after the fact.

Just a thought.

[thekillman]

there are many things that can explode. what happened if a ha'tak hit a gaspipe? imagine the massive detonation. or they hit nuke storages, or other stuff that can explode.

[Ouroboros]

The assumption of megaton or gigaton yields is based on a statement Carter made in the first season.

What if the the 2-300 megaton detonations weren't caused by conventional Hatak fire? A bomb made from Naquadah could have been ringed down to the planet or dropped by Alkesh bomb.

Given the yield I doubt there were direct surviving witnesses. So the estimate would have been based on observations after the fact.

Just a thought.

It's also based, at least for me, on the logical implications of the "Goa'uld busters" and other gigaton+ level nuclear bombs created by Earth.

Given the extreme ease with which these weapons were created, the Goa'uld busters in particular, it's hard to imagine a reason why everyone else wouldn't have also created them.

The fact the misc aliens are not all using gigaton+ nuclear missiles sprinkled with naquada themselves anymore, again keeping in mind how easy it is to create such weapons, suggests that the bolts they do use now enjoy some advantage over them. The advantage need not be sheer yeilds, though I think that's likely in the case of more advanced species like the Asgard, Ori or Wraith, but it could also be things like ammo capacity, increased difficulty of interception, the potential "bonus" shield damage talked about earlier, possibly all of the above and more.

There's simply no good explanation, aside from the usual Earthwank, for why the US airforce could create gigaton level weapons a year after learning about naquada with a 20th century techbase, but the various aliens couldn't do the same with their much more sophisticated tech and much much greater experience.

It's like there being a planet where grenades grew like apples on trees but everyone fought by throwing rocks instead, except for one guy.

[thekillman]

i personally think the nukes are NAQUAHDRIAH enhanced

[Mister Oragahn]

The assumption of megaton or gigaton yields is based on a statement Carter made in the first season.

What if the the 2-300 megaton detonations weren't caused by conventional Hatak fire? A bomb made from Naquadah could have been ringed down to the planet or dropped by Alkesh bomb.

Given the yield I doubt there were direct surviving witnesses. So the estimate would have been based on observations after the fact.

Just a thought.

This eventuality was explored.

If Goa'uld ships fired barely souped up staff cannons at their enemies, and took them down thusly, you'd end all miseries and destroy entire fleets just by using a couple of naqahdah bombs and throwing them at Ha'taks.
After all, Ha'taks hardly show a capacity to intercept small objects with their cannons, that's what the shields are for.

There's always been that other possibility, absolutely annoying because it's only just getting that overused, that Goa'uld weapons have very low yields, but once again, great shield draining capabilities.
Which is annoying because Goa'uld weapons are usually rawer in design than the excentricities of Lantian, Ori or Asuran weapons.

Arguably, it would have the advantage of explaining why Al'keshes are sent attacking enemy ships with their cannons barely enough to blow up a school bus in one salvo.

[immhotep]

The Gatebusters were Naquadriah enhanced but the origional 1000MT goauld busters were made that powerful by unrefined, raw naquadah.

[jnadreth]

Not forgetting how more powerful Ra made that MKIII nuke in the original movie. What was it 10 or 100x more powerful. From the size of that nuke it must have been in the KT range to begin with!

[Mister Oragahn]

Well, when you consider the quantity Ra put, if all those little naqahdah fragment were intended for the nuke, and the amount put into each goa'uld buster, it seems that between the film and the show, yields were increased by three orders of magnitude. Where a kiloton nuke would turn into a megaton one in the film, it would turn into a gigaton one in the show.

[ManiacMike]

I don't even think there was such a thing as naquada in the movie, wasen't there?

[Davidtourniquet]

I thought there was: Unless it was forced into canon when the series took off.