Would Tollan ionic cannon effective against Hiveship?

[Laxian of Earth]

well, they are not displayed of having shields, but they have Phasing tech, which could protect them.

And as a race advanced enough to have that they sure would have shields (they just don't have any planetside as you don't just install shields in your cities, even more if you are sure that nothing is capable of attacking that cities anyway)

as for destroying a hive: Yes, they would do that (6 shots i estimate) because of their high rate of fire and their massive DMG done to the Hataks their fired upon (one hit, hatak gone - ignoring the shields that seemed to be useless against them (before anubis showed up) - and hataks still have a pretty sturdy hull (naquadah!) which i am sure could take some beating from wraith ships)

that of course puts up the question: Why not go to Tollana and salvage what is left there? (maybe you can find enough destroyed cannons to make a whole one? or you find an undamaged computer with data on it? => i am doing this in an FF i am writing at the moment - see WBA thread for that

mfg LAX

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

Didn't it say that it took out those Wraith ships because it malfunctioned? Like what McKay did, but in a smaller area? The Ancients were able to disable it in time, but they died along with everyone else in that region of the planet. At least, that's what I think I heard.....

Zalenka said that the weapon was used as a kind of release valve to prevent an overload, it was the power source that the Ancients weren't able to make work as intended in a controlled manner.
The weapon was designed by the Ancients to defend the Darandans (a race of humans in PG I'd imagine), but like you said the Ancients managed to disable Acturas (the power device) before it went bang.
I think the cannon was said to be a ground based version of the Ancient satellites, only souped up from Acturas, now what I don't get is when Acturas became a failure why didn't the Ancients use a power sources that was within their capabilities to reproduce like a ZPM or a better regular kind of generator like whatever originally powered their satellites, buffers could be used for rapid firing rates and you'd probably only need a few of those cannons on a planet to make it safe from the Wraith.

[lordofseas]

They don't have Phasing tech, that was Lya, of the Nox.
And about salvaging......why not use time tech? If they can upgrade wraith tech to include millions of people, they could go back in time, beam all the non-symbioted people on Tollana onto the wraith tech, all they would need to do is create an instability in the planet's core, and the time line wouldn't be disrupted. Then, they could go back to the natural time, and beam the people out. There. Timeline happy.

[lordofseas]

Zalenka said that the weapon was used as a kind of release valve to prevent an overload, it was the power source that the Ancients weren't able to make work as intended in a controlled manner.
The weapon was designed by the Ancients to defend the Darandans (a race of humans in PG I'd imagine), but like you said the Ancients managed to disable Acturas (the power device) before it went bang.
I think the cannon was said to be a ground based version of the Ancient satellites, only souped up from Acturas, now what I don't get is when Acturas became a failure why didn't the Ancients use a power sources that was within their capabilities to reproduce like a ZPM or a better regular kind of generator like whatever originally powered their satellites, buffers could be used for rapid firing rates and you'd probably only need a few of those cannons on a planet to make it safe from the Wraith.

*shrugs* Ask them. I would think that they were losing the war at that point, and tried to devote their salvation in their Aurora-classes.

[Mister Oragahn]

A hive cannot take gigatons of abuse. We've nuked quite a few with nukes in the sub megaton range beamed inside and one hive crippled by an external blast from a baby nuke. Where do you guys get this crap?

I'd rather ask you where you get yours.
Nukes deployed inside hiveships cause chain reactions which literally vapourize most of the ship. This requires a considerable amount of energy alone to do so, which starts in the gigatons if you spread the energy homogeneously, which of course is not what happens, since we're speaking of grouped explosions somewhere in the middle of the ship.

This either proves:

1. that with nukes inferior to the required gigaton yields, the hiveships actually provide most of the energy that blows them up, when a kiloton or megaton range warhead is detonated inside.
The Genii warheads were prototypes and likely nothing more than kiloton weapons.

2. that for some reason, all nukes, even the Genii prototypes which were finished by Radek and Rodney, were in the high gigaton range, which of course doesn't fit much with reality.

As for the "baby nuke" remark, that's just as baseless as it could get, and it didn't stop the hiveship from firing.
The baby nuke is at the very least going to be in the two digits megaton range. That's your low end. Crippled? It still had life support and lights on all over the ship.
However, the chained explosions which run back into the ship as garlands of Darts were destroyed did quite reach deep enough into the ship to literally cause severe internal damage.

The reality is that this explanation is not perfect either. Between a nuke that clearly didn't leave a gapping hole, nor a burning chunk of the superstructure, and a chain reaction which somehow manages to damage critical internal components despite a moderate level of destruction, we may want to consider another possibility, in that some drones used to destroy the first hiveship acquired the second one.

The necessity of such an explanation also lies in the fact that the same damaged hiveship could still take a massive pounding from a fully functional enemy hive some time later on, long enough for Sheppard & co to escape to the bay where they had parked their puddle jumper and get out of there.

You can observe pictures of the ship. Still damaged and at best working at 50% of its potential power, the stern was hardly crippled:

http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s3/3...otten0020.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s3/3...otten0021.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s3/3...otten0022.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s3/3...otten0579.html

I think it's fairly obvious that we tended to overlook the presence of the most potent weapon against hiveships and concentrate on what was in our face, that is, the nuke or the anti-Dart fire spam, while we know that the first failed to put a huge hole in the hiveship and didn't forbid the hiveship from continuing fighting, while the second couldn't realistically be powerful enough to threaten the integrity of such a starship on its own.
The external explosion was not that large, so we can easily consider that the same thing on the inside could have clearly hit some power conduit of fuel depot or else, and even shoot back towards the core of the ship or hit other auxiliary sources to some degree, but that's just as far as it can get.

Remain the spare drones, and I consider it's not far fetched at all.
It's easy to imagine that the programming told them to acquire the second hiveship if there were any left.
You don't need a ton either. Just a few, like the ones fired by Sheppard from a puddle jumper, which would be small and few enough to get unnoticed on screen, hit the hiveship and drill their way to the power core or a nearby region and damaging elements here, relative to the power grid or so.

[Quadhelix]

They don't have Phasing tech, that was Lya, of the Nox.

Actually, no. We saw in "Enigma" that the Tollan had the technology to phase through solid objects. In "Between Two Fires," the Tollan were shown to have developed bombs of a quasi-nuclear nature equipped with the technology.



As for the Tollan Ion cannon being capable of destroying a Hiveship, I say that it is unlikely. If it takes any more than one shot to kill a Ha'Tak (bypassing the shields, of course), then the Ion Cannon doesn't stand a chance against a Hiveship. Even a shot capable of vaporizing a Ha'Tak would still require concentrated firepower to destroy a Hiveship, as seen in the size comparison below.

Spoiler:

Image and Ship Sizes courtesy of the Ship Scaling Sprites thread.

[lordofseas]

The bombs can't pass through irises made of energy shields. And 5-8 shots could take the hive out. So 8 Ion Cannons could successfully take out a hive. Not that big of a strech, since 2 shots were fired in one second.

[Quadhelix]

The bombs can't pass through irises made of energy shields.

Why not? I once heard an argument that ran along the line of "Narim originally thought that the bombs where to be used as a new weapon against Goa'uld Motherships. For them to be effective in that regard, they would have to be capable of penetrating shields."

And 5-8 shots could take the hive out.

Where did you get this number, 'cause it looks like you just pulled it out of your...

As I pointed out from the relative sizes of the two vessels, if a single shot is not powerful enough to vaporize a Ha'Tak (it isn't), it wold take dozens of shots to destroy a Hive.

[lordofseas]

Phase shifters change solid matter. Energy is....energy. And an Atlantian iris doesn't even allow subatomic particles to reintegrate, a flaw in the Earth shields.

It looks like you can fit 5-8 motherships along the necks of the Hive. Slice those, and the hive's gone.

[Quadhelix]

It looks like you can fit 5-8 motherships along the necks of the Hive. Slice those, and the hive's gone.

That, of course, assumes that the Tollan ion cannon can actually vaporize a Ha'Tak in a single shot (as opposed to triggering secondary explosions). Given that the Tollan typically use multiple shots against even individual Ha'Tak, this does not seem to be a safe assumption.

Also, it assumes that Hiveship armor is not stronger than Ha'Tak armor. This is a somewhat flawed assumption, as Ha'Taks have shields, and thus would have less emphasis on armor, whereas Hives are protected only by their armor.

[lordofseas]

I see your point. How many shots do you believe could take down a hive ship?

[Quadhelix]

I see your point. How many shots do you believe could take down a hive ship?

I don't think there is any way to know. It might be only a handful or, depending on how quickly a Hiveship's hull can regenerate, it might not be possible.

[Laxian of Earth]

well...me again, with phasing as allready told i was talking about their "move through solid matter" armbands (narim used to walk right through the earth's iris - or even send his cat through )

as for taking out the hive? well firstly: the scalling is wrong (they would have taken several minutes to travel from the dart-bay to bridge for example witch they never did in the show they walked a few meters and were there!) for me a hive is max. 4 times the size of a goa'uld hatak (except for our "monster"-hive in *Spoiler* EATG)

secondly: it might take any number of shots, but i still go with 6 shots (hitting the right targets of course) or up to 12 shots (which would still be fired in under a minute, thus making the cannon still pretty much a very effective weapon against hives and certainly less power consuming then the asgard beam)

greetings LAX

[lordofseas]

The Cannon can shoot a min. 2 shots a second.

[Quadhelix]

as for taking out the hive? well firstly: the scalling is wrong (they would have taken several minutes to travel from the dart-bay to bridge for example witch they never did in the show they walked a few meters and were there!) for me a hive is max. 4 times the size of a goa'uld hatak

Firstly, we have no way of telling just how much time passes when the camera "switches views."

Second, the Daedalus fits quite comfortably in the gap in the Hiveship, so we know that the Hiveship is many, many times the size of a BC-304. However we know from the Odyssey's encounters with Ba'al and the Lucian Alliance that Ha'Taks are not that much larger than a BC-304, not to a sufficient extent to keep Hives from being enormously larger than a Ha'Tak.