Ha'tak weapons! [Continuum spoilers]

[Mister Oragahn]

kiloton and megaton are terrible measures of energy when it comes to energy weapons. yes, they talk about gigatons and kilotons and megatons. but did you honestly think a 300mt impact creates exactly the same result as a 300mt nuke? no. cause the blast isnt a nuke. we know they had terror weapons, not annihilation weapons. goauld enjoy a slow, painfull death of their enemies. had they been real tyrans, they just dropped a few gigaton nukes at tactical locations to destroy all life, as the explosions wouldve brought ecological disasters. but they dont think that way. why the hell should everyone think our way. they are aliens. why does every alien have to think like earth?

There are differences, but first, the higher the yield of your conventional explosives, the more they'll look like nukes.
Secondly, the TNT equivalent corresponds to energy measures. Even if 300 megatons in a nuke is different than 300 megatons in a earthquake, the effects should be dramatic and easily noticeable with a 300 MT earthquake. Besides, an earthquake is the most distant destructive event possibly measured with the TNT equivalence. Generally, explosions are measured that way, and they're way closer to the nuke stuff than earthquakes, in terms of similar effects, notably those involving thermal radiation.

No matter how you look at it, even if you argued that the bolts where chemical weapons, they don't even come close to a MOAB.
They are utterly and terribly pathetic.

They don't even mesh with the calcs you'd obtain from Beachhead. Even the lowest figures would drive up figures in the low megatons.

How could those pitiful cannons even hope to dent the shields of a ship that can remain ten hours close to a blue giant?
How could Sokar ever hope to renew the fires of Netu with those guns before he'd start his assault on all System Lords?

If that's an attempt at rationalization from the writers, it's mediocre at best.
There was a simple way to gap the different yields:

Say that you can "dose" a bolt by making it more raw in destruction, or more focused on weakening shields by some technobabble draining.
So when you're firing at another Ha'tak, you don't need to pour true 200 megatons into a bolt, but instead some kilotons, and increase the technobabblish draining element of the bolt so that it could suck out the equivalent of hundreds of megatons out of any energy capacitor tied to the shields, that at a low expense of real energy.
Like the Asuran red beam did, able to drain a ZPM by hitting Atlantis' shield, while barely being able to damage a small asteroid. Or like the Wraith weapons did, same, low yields, but capable of draining the ZPM of Atlantis.

Then, if you'd like to destroy a world, you would obviously not care about draining shields, and thus go for raw and pure direct energy transfer, and kick in true hundreds of megatons into those bolts, so you'd get nuclear-like strikes on a given planet.

An old theory I had was that originally, the Goa'uld did use naqahdah filled projectiles and raw bolts of plasma, until they put their hand on weapons which could deal more damage to shields without actually requiring the equivalent amount of energy powering said shields.
Meaning that they could drain megatons out of a shield's power source while spending much less energy on their side. It's technobabble, but again, it has canon backing.

The Lantian beam worked on a similar principle in fact. It could pierce the hull of a hiveship with a low wattage beam, powered by a portable naqahdah generator mark I, while the hull of a hiveship has been able to resist to the power of nukes at point blank ranges (take the yield of the nuke and multiply it by a billion to obtain the power, since nukes release their energies within nanoseconds).

It would explain how Al'keshes and Gliders can actually deal moderate damage to shields, still nothing stellar, but explain how their very sub-ton weapons can be useful against the shields of Ha'taks.

That way, it fits, and you don't have to handwave ten years of canon for some lousy sequence of epic disapointment.

[Mister Oragahn]

Also, bear in mind that the blasts the Ha'taks were firing weren't their standard ship-to-ship blasts; you can actually see them re-orientating themselves in orbit for ship-to-ground fire, likely an automated mode to blanket a planet and destroy the contents of its surface. Earth would still be perfect for mining and/or geothermal power once it was cleansed of life.

I get the feeling that the horizontally-fired staff cannons on a Ha'tak are of far greater yield than the downwards-fired blasts they used; in much the same way that when we saw the Lanteans destroying Asuras they used fairly low-yield weaponry rather than high-explosive drones.

Which is another error, because one thing the canon of previous years of Stargate has established as a fact is that the cannons above are the same that those underneath, as far as the surrounding superstructure is concerned (which is where bolts are fired from anyway).

And if you were correct If they wanted to blast biggest chunks of the city, they'd just place themselves so they could fire "anti-ship" broadsides at the planet beneath, instead of pissing those pathetic glowing droplets of hurt.

[thekillman]

The Lantian beam worked on a similar principle in fact. It could pierce the hull of a hiveship with a low wattage beam, powered by a portable naqahdah generator mark I, while the hull of a hiveship has been able to resist to the power of nukes at point blank ranges (take the yield of the nuke and multiply it by a billion to obtain the power).

that was a simple superlaser with a ton of capacitors. nothing difficult about. its how we power railguns in real life. besides, a mark 1 is already a nuclear powerplant equivalent.
this way the superlaser, meant to cut things, could easily slice the hive in half.

the asuran beam weapon contained a kind of anti energy to the city's shield energy, thus draining it without having superhigh energies. and yes, it hit water and barely evaporated it. but the coherency of the beam allowed it to reach deep into the ocean with minimal powerloss, thus only evaporating a bit of water while heating up the rest slightly. water can absorb tons of energy. even though a hive has the potential to evaporate all water protecting atlantis, the water can absorb the bolt sufficiently without evaporation

[NoobTau'ri]

There are differences, but first, the higher the yield of your conventional explosives, the more they'll look like nukes.
Secondly, the TNT equivalent corresponds to energy measures. Even if 300 megatons in a nuke is different than 300 megatons in a earthquake, the effects should be dramatic and easily noticeable with a 300 MT earthquake. Besides, an earthquake is the most distant destructive event possibly measured with the TNT equivalence. Generally, explosions are measured that way, and they're way closer to the nuke stuff than earthquakes.

No matter how you look at it, even if you argued that the bolts where chemical weapons, they don't even come close to a MOAB.
They are utterly and terribly pathetic.

They don't even mesh with the calcs you'd obtain from Beachhead. Even the lowest figures would drive up figures in the low megatons.

How could those pitiful cannons even hope to dent the shields of a ship that can remain ten hours close to a bluegiant?
How could Sokar ever hope to renew the fires of Netu with those guns before he'd start his assault on all System Lords?

If that's an attempt at rationalization from the writers, it's mediocre at best.
There was a simple to gap the different yields:

Say that you can does a bolt by making it more raw in destruction, or more focused on weakening shields by some technobabble draining. So when you're firing at another Ha'tak, you don't need to pour true 200 megatons into a bolt, but instead say a few kilotons, but increase the draining element of the bolt so that it could suck out the equivalent of hundreds of megatons out of any energy capacitor tied to the shields, that at a low expense of energy.
A bit like the Asuran red beam, able to drain a ZPM by hitting Atlantis' shield, while barely being able to damage a small asteroid.

Then, if you'd like to destroy a world, you would obviously not care about draining shields, and thus go for raw and pure direct energy transfer, and kick in true megatons into those bolts, so you'd get nuclear-like strikes on a given planet.

An old theory I had was that originally, the Goa'uld did use naqahdah filled projectiles and raw bolts of plasma, until they put their hand on weapons which could deal more damage to shields without actually requiring the equivalent amount of energy powering said shields. Meaning that they could drain megatons out of a shield's power source while only spending kilotons out of their own cores. It's technobabble, but again, it has canon backing.

The Lantian beam worked on a similar principle in fact. It could pierce the hull of a hiveship with a low wattage beam, powered by a portable naqahdah generator mark I, while the hull of a hiveship has been able to resist to the power of nukes at point blank ranges (take the yield of the nuke and multiply it by a billion to obtain the power).

It would explain how Al'keshes and Gliders can actually deal moderate damage to shields, still nothing stellar, but explain how their very sub-ton weapons can be useful against the shields of Ha'taks.

That way, it fits, and you don't have to handwave ten years of canon for some lousy sequence of epic disapointment.

Ok, explain to us scientifically how these shield-penetrating weapons work? It makes no sense that a weapon that is powered by giga joules of power would penetrate a shield fed by hexa joules of power. I can buy the Ancient beam slicing hives by concentrating all the power in a minuscule surface of area, but since hives can take megaton level nukes while suffering minimal damage from them, it is unlikely that a beam fed by a Naquadah generator would be able to slice the hive even by concentrating all it's power in a small area. It is completely pseudo-scientific crap! The only explanation I can thing of is that the Ancient beam fires some exotic sub-atomic particle that only the Ancients know about that is especially and dramatically effecgive at cutting through the organic material that hive are made of. Otherwise it is bull****.

[Mister Oragahn]

that was a simple superlaser with a ton of capacitors. nothing difficult about. its how we power railguns in real life. besides, a mark 1 is already a nuclear powerplant equivalent.
this way the superlaser, meant to cut things, could easily slice the hive in half.

Err no, it's not that simple at all.

The Nq generator Mk I charged the weapon for a couple of minutes. A Nq generator, on overload, is capable of unleashing up to 20 kilotons.
The beam itself has been fired for several seconds, meaning that its power is actually whatever was inside the capacitor, divided by those seconds.
Even more, the beam was stopped by the hull for a very brief time. Most of the beam was actually wasted.
The beam itself was rather wide.
That makes a very poor energy capacity, for an even pooror power output.

Now you have the nukes, fired as an alpha strike in No Man's Land. At least one of them explodes in extreme proximity of the hiveship's hull, which means the intensity per square meter at that point of the ship was particularily huge. The power itself, as nukes release their energy within nanoseconds, would be even greater, utterly dwarfing that of the Lantian beam into nothingness.

The hiveship quite easily survived that, so much that later on, we can see the stern and there's no gaping hole whatsoever. And could still fly and even fight.
Only bioorganic systems apparently very fragile regarding radiations got damaged there.
We've also seen hiveships take fire from other hiveships, and even by picking the lowest firepower rate as seen in No Man's land, and claiming it to be kilotons, you still end with a total of energy and power that totally surpasses what the Lantian beam, power by the man made generator, could ever deliver.

There's simply a huge gap, and only a technobabble argument can cover that.

the asuran beam weapon contained a kind of anti energy to the city's shield energy, thus draining it without having superhigh energies. and yes, it hit water and barely evaporated it. but the coherency of the beam allowed it to reach deep into the ocean with minimal powerloss, thus only evaporating a bit of water while heating up the rest slightly. water can absorb tons of energy. even though a hive has the potential to evaporate all water protecting atlantis, the water can absorb the bolt sufficiently without evaporation

Well, more or less, it's that, but the beam hardly lost any power going through the water, nor hardly damaged the asteroid. It would put the amount of energy it poured into the asteroid per second up to very low gigawatts at best. Nothing worth threatening Atlantis unless you plan to fire it for billions of years.
The red beam was simply a very low DET weapon with a huge weakening/draining factor to it, probably most efficient against a Lantian cityship's shield (evidence for this being how it didn't utterly rape the 304 despite hitting it for a second or so).

[Mister Oragahn]

Ok, explain to us scientifically how these shield-penetrating weapons work?

It fires plot particles.

It makes no sense that a weapon that is powered by giga joules of power would penetrate a shield fed by hexa joules of power.

Well, for starters, "hexa" is not a correct prefix within this context. It's a reference to six. Power and energy levels are measured with multiples of orders of magnitude, ten at the power x.

I can buy the Ancient beam slicing hives by concentrating all the power in a minuscule surface of area, but since hives can take megaton level nukes while suffering minimal damage from them, it is unlikely that a beam fed by a Naquadah generator would be able to slice the hive even by concentrating all it's power in a small area. It is completely pseudo-scientific crap! The only explanation I can thing of is that the Ancient beam fires some exotic sub-atomic particle that only the Ancients know about that is especially and dramatically effecgive at cutting through the organic material that hive are made of. Otherwise it is bull****.

Huh, I really don't know what's your problem there. You seem to fairly understand that it requires an explanation arguing that it's an exotic weapon, with technobabble properties, so why are you acting against me like if I had to explain how it scientifically works?
It does, that's all.

[aAnubiSs]

There's already been atleast one calc:

http://forum.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=135275

[DaCk]

Nice find aAnubiSs. He really detailed it well and figured most of it out. Although when he talks about seeing the blasts from orbit it doesnt look like a single blast did that like he assumes it looks kinda patchy like multiple smaller hits which is what you see in the aerial view.

OK i have looked all throughout the science and the movie forums, now i may have missed it or something but has anyone else noticed that the Alkesh that Tealc landed at the Russian base had a SHIELD!!! That is the first time one has been shown to have a shield. Of course it could be explained by Baal having Anubis's knowledge and so he upgraded his Ha'taks and in the 70 years his Alkesh as well once he figured out to make a shield emitter small enough. Not to mention it stood up to a lot of hits from the Ha'taks in orbit.

[Crazy Tom]

Actualy, since tel'tacks have shields, it's only logical that al'keshes also do.

[jnadreth]

Actualy, since tel'tacks have shields, it's only logical that al'keshes also do.

Damn right-I've been saying for over a year now that in "Prometheus Unbound" Dr Novak said that the shields for the Al'kesh they were on were operational. Every time I say it people continue to say the Al'kesh has no shields despite canon evidence to the contrary-its like they are in denial

I'm really happy that the Al'kesh has been shown clearly to have shields cuz now I don't have to keep on pestering unbelievers about Al'kesh shields

[Mister Oragahn]

Nice find aAnubiSs. He really detailed it well and figured most of it out. Although when he talks about seeing the blasts from orbit it doesnt look like a single blast did that like he assumes it looks kinda patchy like multiple smaller hits which is what you see in the aerial view.

OK i have looked all throughout the science and the movie forums, now i may have missed it or something but has anyone else noticed that the Alkesh that Tealc landed at the Russian base had a SHIELD!!! That is the first time one has been shown to have a shield. Of course it could be explained by Baal having Anubis's knowledge and so he upgraded his Ha'taks and in the 70 years his Alkesh as well once he figured out to make a shield emitter small enough. Not to mention it stood up to a lot of hits from the Ha'taks in orbit.

Al'keshes and Tel'taks do have shields, but they are atmospheric ones.
It's the first time I actually see battle shields on a Goa'uld bomber.

Besides, I really like leet's input, but I think this time he made a mistake. Well, it looks like he watched a low quality video, so that might explain his conclusion, but there are no explosions to see from orbit at all.

[s09119]

Al'keshes and Tel'taks do have shields, but they are atmospheric ones.
It's the first time I actually see battle shields on a Goa'uld bomber.

Besides, I really like leet's input, but I think this time he made a mistake. Well, it looks like he watched a low quality video, so that might explain his conclusion, but there are no explosions to see from orbit at all.

Um... yes there are. I can see them in my copy just fine.

[Mister Oragahn]

Um... yes there are. I can see them in my copy just fine.

There aren't any on my copy that's near 800 megs heavy, and I can go through virtualdub to verify that, with zoom and photoshop if needs be. All you get is that yellow translucent haze.
I'm talking about the orbit where we see all those ships firing at the planet.

[NoobTau'ri]

It fires plot particles

It fires terrible plot hole particles.

Huh, I really don't know what's your problem there. You seem to fairly understand that it requires an explanation arguing that it's an exotic weapon, with technobabble properties, so why are you acting against me like if I had to explain how it scientifically works? It does, that's all.

The problem is that it's not a very good explanation. I was talking out of my ass, really. I am not aware of any particle that goes through shields - assuming shields are made of some form of energy or plasma - like gamma rays go through organic cells. The writers are supposed to give at least an explanation based on science, even if it extremely far fetched science. Alas, they give no explanation whatsoever.

[kymeric]

Dont forget atlantis showed us cloaks can be turned into shields and vice versa with a minor amount of tinkering.