Megathread - Versus battles

[Mister Oragahn]

The shields were working at 40% efficiency. It's not much of a deal for Baal if you have to turn your weapons down to less than 40% in the process.

It's only about a ratio derived from the frequency, the percentage. X bolts on Y fired passed through the shields. It's not a questions of raw power versus shield toughness.

Apparently you don't need them for hive ship either, as evident by 302s.

Wrong. Already adressed.

It is when it comes to the disclosure of their nuclear program.

[mod snip] It's totally irrelevant. Nothing of the Stargate program has been disclosed, yet they produced those gatebusters and several more. There's no way you can use this as a proof that the SGC can't have the right nukes produced.

My point exactly. You don't know.

They are nukes, it's a good start.

Oh, you've quantified the luminosity then in terms of the total number of lumins?

No, I used my brain.

http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s2/2...rgate7108.html

Wow, so light emitted from Wraith blasts is inconsistent. See MW's comments.

No, it's fairly consistent. The shot you show me is close to the heroes. The one I showed you is from a bigger distance, and it proved that those damn yields would not be enough to produce the kind of flashes seen in the pictures.

See MW's comments.

Can we see highways from space? Dams from space? Contrails from space?

That's not an argument.

WEIR: Hold on a second, Colonel. I don't think you fully grasp our situation here.

EVERETT: You have three Wraith hive ships bearing down on your position and precious little to defend yourselves with. That about sum it up?

McKAY: You got our message.

EVERETT: We got your message.

Does not contain a single nugget of technical information of a hiveship. My point remains fully unthreatened.

And you know less. Less than the characters, that is. You're trying to tell me that your estimates of Wraith durability are billions of times better than their estimates, even though they've never been terribly surprised by the durability of wraith ships or the strength of their weapons since Siege, even though their initial estimates were supposedly off by a billion fold by your calculations. Sorry, I just have a hard time believing that.

You'll have, because I demonstrated that anything they could know based on the satellite weapon could not prove useful enough if to be used for more traditionnal weaponry, that is, nukes.
Plus, you cannot provide evidence that they had plenty of technical information before Letters from Pegasus, or that they had what is necessary to estimate the minimal yield of a nuke, so you still have no point.
I proved that Allies was a significant change in the amount of information they got.
Please drop the point. You're just repeating yourself from the same book of no evidence.

Right, just like a zombie only has a "weakness" when you shoot it in the head. Everywhere else, it can keep on walking.

Again, one wrong analogy on so many. A zombie dies when shot in the head. A hiveship doesn't explode when the main ventral hyperdrive is damaged.

Now, remember that your argument was that they knew about the weak spots and, above all, that those mines would be enough to take out the Wraith hiveships.

You don't understand how a mine works, do you?

Just quoting myself to show that your question is irrelevant. Concession accepted.

Blame Carter and McKay for the calculations. I trust them more than I would trust you. It's funny how neither of them seem to be presenting any of the objections that you are, despite the fact that McKay saw the Ancient weapon first hand, and would have a much better grasp of whether or not it was "exotic."

I don't care what you feel is right for you. I care about facts and evidence. Characters aren't always right, and they don't always know everything. And the weapon is exotic. From observation. Undisputable.

Once again, there's a logical format for criticizing analogies you disagree with it. Feel free to use it. Otherwise, I'm going to conclude that your only reason for dismissal is the fact that it disagrees with you.

Nice failed dodge fella. More. Please. I need my daily dose of humour.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...-ridicule.html

[b]"This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because mocking a claim does not show that it is false. This is especially clear in the following example: "1+1=2! That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!""

[mod snip]

Your statement that I was replying to: Secondly, had the nukes exploded near the shields, their yields would have not been enough to knock them down.

I'm not seeing the "if" there. Maybe I'm too stupid?

So...
I said to myself,
Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not yet sought the LORD'S blessing.
So in my anxiety I offered up the holocaust.
Samuel's response was: "You have been foolish! Had you kept the command the LORD your God gave you, the LORD would now establish your kingship in Israel as lasting;

And why wouldn't you want to do that?

Ratio, ammo and efficiency.

On the show, John expresses specific concern about the futility of wasting ordinance. Caldwell accepts his advise and they try a new strategy. Yet you now want me to believe that they went the exact opposite strategy, to waste as much as possible.

Ah, so trying to carpet bomb a ship is going to economize ammunition, instead of trying to use less nukes with more power?

Oh, so a Wraith hive ship is only has the thickness of a tree, now?

I never claimed such a thing. Are you making it on purpose or what? At this point, I'm just quoting you for simple amusment purposes mind you.

Oh, and it wasn't once second. It was closer to five.

You're sure you know to count?

The link that will save your life.

I stopped the video at two seconds. The beam had already completely pierced the whole ship at this time. In fact, upon closer inspection, we see that it takes less than a second to completely tear the hiveship a new arsehole, since I could see the glow on the other side of the hull after one second of video.
The rest of the beam is largely wasted beyond that point.
That's it.

That, and you have no way of knowing that the Satellite even used 33% of the generator's total energy. That's the maximum it could have used, but not the [i]minimum it could have used. For all you know, it only used 1% of the generators total energy. At which point, your complaints would officially be addressed, just not in the way that you would like.

Hardly likely, since a large quantity of the beam was actually wasted over four more seconds, and since it only took less than one second to completely impale the hiveship, that same beam could have shot three hiveships in a row.
Plus they're the first and last line of defense of Atlantis. There's no logic in partially charging the buffer when they have only chance.
Above all, they said that once fully charged, the satellite could shoot down three hiveships.
As evidenced, the beam had enough whatever it uses to destroy several hiveships in one blow. Therefore it was more than fully charged. They wasted the beam on the first target for too long.
Needless to say that a lantean buffer of a battle station should have no problem to store the puny energy of a man made naqahdah generator mk I.
So my figures stand, thank you.

[Mister Oragahn]

And? Is that the proof that Beckett actually piloted the drone and took his best shot at trying to destroy the helicopter?

*Mckay's fly snip*

You have wasted your time. You evaded the issue at hand one more time by aiming at another case. You didn't even understand that McKay's case proved that even if he wanted it, he couldn't fully control the PJ for the first time.
So of course, in your fantastic brain, we must then assume that Beckett was piloting the drone and trying to shoot down the helicopter.
I mean, Beckett and his oath of hypocrath. Beckett the one who wants to save everyone. Beckett the one who's very nervous just sitting on the control chair, especially for the first time.
Beckett, the one who's actually trying to deactivate the weapon.

Sure, it's that same Beckett who was trying to kill John and Jack.

Obviously!

As for the rest of your drivel: You're just saying that Beckett was controlling the drone, instead of trying to shut it down, and that it was pure luck if anywhere he was guiding the damn drone during the whole time, there happened to be a helicopter on its path, several times.
Oh boy, that's very bad luck for John, isn't it?
I mean, John so had all odds against him.

And you sincerely hope I'd swallow that stupid claim?
What's next? Earth is flat?

For your education:

SCENE: ANCIENT OUTPOST

BECKETT: Look we've been through this I'm not your man.

MCKAY: Keep moving.

BECKETT: I'm a Doctor. A medical Doctor.

MCKAY: There is nothing to be afraid of

BECKETT: You don't understand, I break things like this.

MCKAY: This device has survived for millions of years in tact. It will survive you. Now sit down. Close your eyes and concentrate.

BECKETT: *sighs, sits* Again nothing.

MCKAY: This time just try and imagine an image of where we are in the solar system.

BECKETT: *closes eyes* I think I feel something. It could be Lunch related.

MCKAY: Shut up and concentrate

BECKETT: *closes eyes*

The machine comes on so does the probe thingy Peter is working on, it flies out hitting things exploding, still moving.

Here we go! The drone has departed!

UNKNOWN: What's happening?

BECKETT: What did I do?

Probe flies up and out past the elevator Weir is on.

WEIR: Get us back down there!

Drone breaks out into airspace.

SCENE: Chopper

ON RADIO: All inbound craft we have a rogue drone that could seek a target on its own. Land immediately and shut down your engines. This is not a drill. I repeat we have…

Proves all my points, both about a drone's independency and the way it's able to seek and track a target.

SHEPPARD: It's too late.

O'NEILL: Hang on!

Drone zips passed them several times Sheppard maneuvering them out.

O'NEILL: Break right. (Sheppard takes a hard left)

O'NEILL: I said right!

SHEPPARD: I'll get to that sir. (Takes a hard right)

SCENE: Ancient outpost

Weir runs up to chair, Beckett still in it.

BECKETT: I told you I was the wrong person.

MCKAY: It doesn't matter now just do something

BECKETT: Like what?

WEIR: Carson. Concentrate on shutting that weapon down before it hurts someone.

From there, Beckett really does his best to shut down the drone. At this point, no one can claim that Beckett was still having fun at piloting the damn thing. For all concerns, I think he had fun only during the first seconds after take off, at best, and after that was only fed with sensations from the drone flying all around, but was just a spectator here. But after that, we was concentrating on shutting down the weapon, not having fun piloting it.
No matter Beckett's impressions after the events, the evidence that is undisputable, since observed by both the audience and the characters in universe largely prove your claim to be totally absurd. Like always may I add.

*Beckett closes eyes.*

SCENE: Chopper

SHEPPARD: I can't see it.

O'NEILL: Pull up! Pull up!

SCENE: Ancient outpost.

*Beckett concentrating, all others are watching. Worried.*

SCENE: Chopper

O'NEILL: What about now?

SHEPPARD: Now's good

*They land*

O'NEILL: Shut it down!

SHEPPARD: Sir that wasn't a--.

O'NEILL: *holds up hand* Wait for it.

*Drone heads straight for them*

SHEPPARD: Get out!

*Both jump out, Sheppard taking a nose dive into the snow. The drone stops just in from of Jack, who just sat down on the snow next to the chopper.*

SCENE: Ancient outpost

BECKETT: *Gasps, and opens eyes* I think I did it.

SCENE: Chopper

SHEPPARD: *His uniform is white from the snow, Jack's is clean.* That was different.

O'NEILL: For me, not so much.

[mod snip]

[Buba uognarf]

If the plague had occurred naturally, it would have been fairly easy to quaranteen and contain.

doesn't change the fact that they had no known enemy on our plane of exsistance and that the dakara was not intended as a weapon.

You can assess the relative length and width, which tells you that the hive ship is at least 100 times bigger. Are you telling me that depth wouldn't be proprtional as well?

actually hives are relativly thin only 5 times thicker than the deadalus max but this is irrelevent, we don't have to argue about everything

But not a light source, or reflecting a light source in itself. It was the exact opposite of that. It was a shadow.

fine, but you haven't answered 2 of my questions...

1) does motion blur effect width?
2) how could motion blur increase the size of the blast by 1000 times?

Sure I can. Something can be easy to find with Wraith weapons fired by Wraith ships, and no so easy with railguns fired by human ships. Wraith blasts and railguns are not equal.

No but seeing as we've been in several engagements against the wraith and rail guns can surposedly pierce wraith armor which have never seen any evidence of then they should be hitting these weak spots you keep talking about, this is not the case. Hive ships can't be both fragile and easy to pierce and littered with weak spots the fact that rail guns spraying areas in a concentrated pattern don't cause explosions or visable damage is proof of this.

If the armor is so weak and the ship is filled with weak spots which explode how did it survive a nuke hit when according to you amrams are enough to set them off?

Depends on how big the spray was, how big the weak spots are, and how long I had to fire onto the right spot before I penetratred deep enough. For instance, if I have to keep a sustained burst for even one second, then I have to move very, very slowly, which means that it takes me a lot longer. Also keep in mind that as McKay said, motion in space is relative, which makes it even harder to keep track.

if we play the numbers game, the number of rounds fired into the same general area and the fact that these weaknesses are every where accoding to you means that we should have at least one, yet the show contradicts you and doesn't show this...

It's hard to say, actually. For instance, during the fight in Allies, I would have assumed that the damage from the first hive fight was minimal, and that the primary hive ship didn't suffer much damage. And I would be wrong, since the official reason why the Wraith ships gvie SGA a copy of the database is so that they could "come up with some fixes for the damage that the Wraith hive sustained during its last battle." The fact is, we don't know what's going on inside of these hive ships when Caldwell fires on them. We barely know what's going on outside of the hive ships, because FX shots are expensive, and the writers would prefer to show the scene from the cockpit if possible. All we know is that Caldwell fires at the hive ships, which aren't enough to shut them down. Which makes sense, because as Zelenka points out, the hive ships are massive.

the fact is you're making statements which contradict the shows visual evidence in many ways with nothing to back it up, rail guns have never done any damage to the superstructure of a hive ship...

we can't anything said in allies as fact seeing as they were all lying at the time...

But the fact is, at the beginning of season two, Everett believes that 6 GT level nukes will be sufficient to serve as Atlantis's main line in defense. Sheppard apparently thinks they can get by on even less. McKay never expresses any skepticism whatsoever on whether or not that's enough firepower.

maybe they would have been but at this point the atlantis team and earth knew nothing about hive ship capabities to make a conclusion.

Throughout season 2, Caldwell continues to believe that his railguns can at least do some damage to the Wraith ships. He dos this right up until the final battle, and there really isn't anything that he sees in season three that suggests that his assessments were wrong. The fact that the same Wraith ship that he's been firing railguns at can survive a Mark III doesn't seem to catch him by surprise at all. Either Caldwell really likes to waste ammo, or the Mark III's aren't that strong. Of these two options, one of them is consistent with the show's recurring theme of international oversight and international scrutiny.

Just because he fires them doesn't mean they do damage he can't just sit there in his chair. The rail guns probably do wear away at the armor slowly but it have severe doubts about their ability to pierce wraith armor in sufficant time.

Or it could just mean that hive ships are very tough? the fact that caldwell isn't surprised that the mark III could be quite logically interperated as him knowing the nuke wouldn't be powerful enough and he was counting on several hits.

could it possibly be that mrk III's are powerful just not strnog enough to take out a hive ship?

http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s2/2...allies781.html

Here's a better one from Siege:

http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s2/2...gate17484.html
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s2/2...gate17485.html

You notice the plumes coming from the shield?

could be light, seeing as there is no oxygen in space it can't be smoke...

No, I said John was able to hit at least 3 of them with a weapon that had a 10 foot range.

even better seeing as according to you that proves hives are practically made of the stuff and are basically flying bombs.

"The side" is a pretty big area. Can you be more specific?

pretty bad picture but here the side is being hit my hive blasts...
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s2/2...hehive657.html

this hive is basically pelted by hive blasts which are noticably smaller in size on the same side...
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s3/3...otten0593.html

the difference is although both were hitting similar spots one took a couple of dozen hits the other closer to 70/80, this shows variable yields

Yes, and a laser pointer fires trillions of photons. What's your point?

my point is with the number shots being fired if the armor is as weak as you say and the weaknesses as frequent they should be easy to find, but they're not.

[Schrodinger82]

It's only about a ratio derived from the frequency, the percentage. X bolts on Y fired passed through the shields. It's not a questions of raw power versus shield toughness.

Speculation.

Nothing of the Stargate program has been disclosed, yet they produced those gatebusters and several more.

Which was a non-missile, non-tactical weapon.

Does not contain a single nugget of technical information of a hiveship. My point remains fully unthreatened.

What point? That you apparently know more about Wraith stats than SGA does? Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that.

You'll have, because I demonstrated that anything they could know based on the satellite weapon could not prove useful enough if to be used for more traditionnal weaponry, that is, nukes.

That's not a coherent statement. Rephrase.

Plus, you cannot provide evidence that they had plenty of technical information before Letters from Pegasus

There's nothing to suggest that they had less than what you know.

I proved that Allies was a significant change in the amount of information they got.

Sure, on to hit the Wraith externally rather than relying on drone weapons, and the best way to transport a retrovirus cannister on board. Neither of which the Ancients would be particularily interested in in the first place.

Again, one wrong analogy on so many. A zombie dies when shot in the head. A hiveship doesn't explode when the main ventral hyperdrive is damaged.

Not every weakness is fatal.

Just quoting myself to show that your question is irrelevant.

So I guess you don't know how mines work then. Concession accepted.

I care about facts and evidence.

Since when?

Characters aren't always right, and they don't always know everything.

Neither are you, what's your point? I still take their estimates over yours.

And the weapon is exotic. From observation. Undisputable.

Yep. Just like my microwave and bullets are exotic. From observation. Undisputable.

Me: Once again, there's a logical format for criticizing analogies you disagree with it. Feel free to use it. Otherwise, I'm going to conclude that your only reason for dismissal is the fact that it disagrees with you.

You: Nice failed dodge fella. More. Please. I need my daily dose of humour.

So in other words, you are unable to epxlain why my analogy is flawed. Concession accepted.

If you happen to alter your motto though, and therefore suddenly become interested in thinking straight, the technical reasoning is available in my former post.

"Because I say so" is not technical reasoning. Provide one scientific source that backs you up on this matter.

So...
I said to myself,
Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not yet sought the LORD'S blessing.
So in my anxiety I offered up the holocaust.
Samuel's response was: "You have been foolish! Had you kept the command the LORD your God gave you, the LORD would now establish your kingship in Israel as lasting;

Blah blah blah.

You: "I mean, what don't you understand in the use of the word IF?" (Emphasis yours), and then call me stupid for not seeing it.

I then point out that you didn't use the word IF.

To which you bring up something about the Holocausts.

Okay...

Ratio, ammo and efficiency.

All of which are better met by smaller yield weapons. Try again.

Ah, so trying to carpet bomb a ship is going to economize ammunition, instead of trying to use less nukes with more power?

Yep. Mainly because a carpet bomb has a better chance of actually getting through, and small yeild nukes means that less nuclear materials actually go to waste. Your nuke can have a yeild of inifinity, and it wouldn't matter if it was easily intercepted long before reaching the target.

I never claimed such a thing. Are you making it on purpose or what?

Oh, so you were making a strawman then. Gotcha.

I stopped the video at two seconds.

So you stopped it midway through the firing sequence?

The beam had already completely pierced the whole ship at this time.

Yes, but obviously it wasn't finished delivering the entire blast, which means that it was distributing its enery over a longer period of time, therefore making it even less comparable to a nuke.

Hardly likely, since a large quantity of the beam was actually wasted over four more seconds, and since it only took less than one second to completely impale the hiveship, that same beam could have shot three hiveships in a row.

Which McKay and Co. were fully expecting it to, if it weren't for a malfunctioning conduit. Again, I take their estimates over yours.

McKAY: C’mon, hit ‘em again!

(Inside the satellite, alarms are sounding and panels are shorting out everywhere.)

GRODIN: We have a problem.

McKAY: What? What problem?

GRODIN (working the controls frantically): It looks like the circuit we re-routed has overloaded. The weapon can’t fire again. I’m trying to find another pathway.

There's no logic in partially charging the buffer when they have only chance.

As evidenced, the beam had enough whatever it uses to destroy several hiveships in one blow. Therefore it was more than fully charged.

How in the world could something be more than fully charged?

So of course, in your fantastic brain, we must then assume that Beckett was piloting the drone and trying to shoot down the helicopter.

Right. Just like Rodney was trying to sly in a zigzag, and was trying to dehydrate and starve to death. You seem to have a way of confusing "action" with "intent." For instance, if a drunk driver swerves his car and kills two people, it's not because he was trying to kill anyone. It's also not because the car was malfunctioning. It's because he's in an altered state of mind and doesn't know how to properly handle the controls.

I mean, Beckett and his oath of hypocrath.

And McKay has a very biological urge not to starve to death, which I think is a wee bit stronger than even the hypocratic oath. What's your point?

Beckett, the one who's actually trying to deactivate the weapon.

Sure he was, while being enthralled by the magical experience of it. Just like Rodney was trying to turn off the feeling of being invincible in an unfamiliar and alien world.

As for the rest of your drivel: You're just saying that Beckett was controlling the drone, instead of trying to shut it down, and that it was pure luck if anywhere he was guiding the damn drone during the whole time, there happened to be a helicopter on its path, several times.

Ever play with a ouiji board, where people will start feeling the planchette seemingly move on it's own, even when the users consciously express skepticism and disbelief? Now, do you think that's because of their subconscious desire to see the thing move, or do you think that there are actual spirits of the dead involved who are moving the planchette beyond their control?

You can also factor in the power of suggestion and reverse psychology. For instance, Doctors who want their patients to fall asleep might say something like, "Try to stay awake a few minutes later," to which the patient rationalizes, "Gee, if I need to try to stay awake, then I must be tired. After he's done, I'm going to sleep."

In Beckett's case, when people are screaming at him to shut down the machine, they're reinforcing the idea that the machine is acting entirely on it's own, and not just Beckett acting drunk with power. Since they're reinforcing the idea that the machine acts entirely on it's own, Beckett is subconsciously rationalizing, "Well gee, if the machine hits that helicopter, it won't really be my fault." Might as well enjoy this a few moments longer.

The other point is this: If the machine is acting entirely on it's own, then how did Beckett manage to stop it at all? The H&S explaination is that Beckett was always in control, and would have stopped the drone if it was clear that John wouldn't be able to to on "dancing" with him. Your explaination is that Beckett is not in control, except when he is.

From there, Beckett really does his best to shut down the drone. At this point, no one can claim that Beckett was still having fun at piloting the damn thing.

Well, he has no problem chuckling over the experience and describing it as magical afterwards. But to answer, does it look like McKay is still having fun in "Hide & Seek"?

PETER: Well, some ancient technology uses a metal component for operations.
MCKAY: *Closes eyes* Shut up I'm thinking *few minutes nothing happens*
PETER: Is there any chance the gene therapy isn't permanent?
BECKETT: It's possible
MCKAY: *Eyes still shut* I'm a dead man.

Lights go out and McKay collapses. Everyone stares
SCENE: Infirmary.
BECKETT: He fainted.
MCKAY: oh there's got to be a better word.
BECKETT: Faint is the proper medical term.
MCKAY: I passed out from. Manly Hunger.
SHEPPARD: Well Hang in there. (on radio) Dr Weir this is Sheppard. McKay’s okay.he.uh.he fainted. *leaves*
Beckett grins
McKay: Oh yeah that's very sympathetic. Let's all mock the dieing man. Thank you.

[Schrodinger82]

doesn't change the fact that they had no known enemy on our plane of exsistance and that the dakara was not intended as a weapon.

The weapon was from before they left for Atlantis. Ascension didn't occur until after they were there.

actually hives are relativly thin only 5 times thicker than the deadalus max but this is irrelevent, we don't have to argue about everything

Agreed. I should point out, however, that in "Intruder," they had to breech the hulls and clear the decks just in preparation for a 302 attack. And since time was of the essense and since they were quickly losing control of their systems, I doubt it was a simply formality.

1) does motion blur effect width?
2) how could motion blur increase the size of the blast by 1000 times?

Motion blur can effect length. We see bolts of the same width in "The Hive."

No but seeing as we've been in several engagements against the wraith and rail guns can surposedly pierce wraith armor which have never seen any evidence of then they should be hitting these weak spots you keep talking about, this is not the case.

Let's say that the average weak spot is 10 feet across, and the rail guns have to fire on one for one second before they get enough bullets through the hull to do damage (probably a lot more, but hey).

That means that the railgun couldn't trace much more than 10 feet per second. Or 36,000 feet per hour. Or 6.8 miles per hour. That's not a very good speed to trace over an entire hive ship. Keep in mind that motion in space is relative, so that you have to take into account the speed and direction of the Daedalus relative to the speed and direction of the hive ship, and adjust accordingly. For instance, if the hive ship moves more than 7 mph relative to the Daedalus, then it's practically impossible for the Daedalus to concentrate it's fire.

If the armor is so weak and the ship is filled with weak spots which explode how did it survive a nuke hit when according to you amrams are enough to set them off?

The front portion of the ship seems to be more resistent to the side. That, and the nuke is probably low yeild.

we can't anything said in allies as fact seeing as they were all lying at the time...

Apparently it was at least convincing enough to make Michael a believer, and I trust his judgement on this.

maybe they would have been but at this point the atlantis team and earth knew nothing about hive ship capabities to make a conclusion.

Except for what they could extract from the database.

Just because he fires them doesn't mean they do damage he can't just sit there in his chair.

He could try focusing entirely on evasive manuvers.

Or it could just mean that hive ships are very tough?

If they were, then he wouldn't be using railguns all the time.

could be light, seeing as there is no oxygen in space it can't be smoke...

How is it that we see the light then? The "smoke" could come from the bolts themself.

pretty bad picture but here the side is being hit my hive blasts...
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s2/2...hehive657.html

this hive is basically pelted by hive blasts which are noticably smaller in size on the same side...
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s3/3...otten0593.html

Then look at the scene from allies. The side of the hive ships seem to be more vulnerable than the front. Which would make sense, think of the basic design of an armedillo, and the fact that the side armor would have to be stretched out to a much greater degree.

[Ouroboros]

And how how well did that go?

They had to turn around and pull the slingshot move because trying to jsut brute force their way out of the gravity well was making them a sitting duck for the hiveship which had the "higher ground".

Way to strawman. This is Stargate Atlantis, not "24."

Ok so even if it wasn't in real time how is the Wraith hiveship supposed to know that their guy is going to lose the fight and that there's a cloaked puddle jumper there in time to fire some slow moving bolts that'll only hit minutes later. And how are they supposed to know exactly what course this previously unknown jumper is going to take in order to drop a few more just behind it as it attempts to escape.

If you follow along with this reasoning that is must have been the hiveship and only the hiveship you're going to end up proving that the wraith have some sort of Jedi like precognitive abilities.

Well, the fact that Teyla said it was the hive ship that was going to fire on them, for one. Why would she say that, if the hive ship was too far away?

Teyla speculated that the hiveship might try to light them all up if they messed with the fight. No one actually confirmed that that was what happened.

Again, doesn't have to be cloud. It could be any type of dust/vapor in the atmosphere, including dust/vapor that's close to the surface. That's also why you see the bright flash coming from the Wraith weapon in "condemned," because there's enough dust/vapor in the area to absorb it.

If the dust is non reflective, like say dirt kicked up on a massive scale by orbital strikes, it's going to dampen and reduce the amount of visible light not increase it.

Nothing that took place in condemned had anything to do with any vapour or dust of any kind other than the smallest naturally present amounts. The air was perfectly clear where the bolts hit and it was a perfectly sunny day with no trace of fog or anything of that nature.

Nukes are less effective in space, and had an unknown yeild. Blackholes apparently couldn't even stop the Odyssey. Other hiveships is circular.

There's not effective and then there's "reduced to the yeild of a few hand grenades.

You realize that the term kiloton refers to the sort of explosion you'd get from one thousand tons of TNT right? A megaton is a million tons and a gigaton is a billion.

Since the nukes fired by the Daedalus are way more likely to be comperable to the "space mines" or season one "Goa'uld busters" both of which were gigaton level we're talking about an awful lot of loss you're trying to account for just by pointing to space here.

You're essentially trying to make a what's in all likelihood close to a billion tons of TNT explosive potential, just vanish.

You've never been able to explain your need to undercut the mkIII nuke to spitball status either, given that all other nukes employed against spacecraft have been in the gigaton range and such nukes are small and light in SGverse thanks to naquada.

I really doubt Wraith weapons can create GT level explosions either way though. Doesn't GT level weapons mean... they could decimate large areas of land? (Sorry I'm sort of newb... since Hiroshima was like 10kt or something... which means GT level would be heaps stronger?) Because then it stands to reason that we would've seen those types of weapon fire reigning down on to Atlantis in Siege 3... It makes more sense since, if Wraith weapons could do that sort of damage, when the Atlantis team were destroying the Human Wraith camp on the planet, they would only have needed to fire 1 or 2 shots to kill everything within an x km radius.. Yeah... correct me if I'm wrong.

It sounds outlandish at first but when you start to think about how even Earth can do it with missiles ten years ago it starts to look sillier in terms of story to think that they couldn't.

We're talking about the dreaded Wraith here who supposedly rival the even more advanced ancients and beat them in a war. It's kind of a hard sell when you think about it to try and argue that they can't manage to equal or best Earth in terms of weapons when they're so hugely ahead of us in every other area.

Gigaton etc weapons would seem fairly commonplace in stargate universe if all you need to get them is understanding of nuclear fission and access to naquada.

90s era Earth figured it out in less than a year back in season 1 once they got some naquada. It's only logical to think that if Earth could do it that easily, vastly more advanced and older civilizations could manage at least the same or better as well.

[Madeleine]

Editing rudeness, personal attacks and other rulebreaking is too much like hard work when the posts are, like, three yards long. I'm not going to bother any more.

I'll be going straight for the DELETE POST option. It's quicker... and the evidence is still visible to all the other mods, if we need it later.

[Mister Oragahn]

Sum' up.

Lantean satellite weapon + 20 KT naqahdah reactor"

The hiveship was down in one second of beaming. Say slightly less than two seconds for assured destruction. Multiplied by three, we get above the five second bar, which was the complete beam firing duration.
Which would actually prove that they depleted the whole buffer, wasting a large quantity of the beam.
Ergo, all was fired.

If this does not fit with dialogue, then either the database is wrong, or the computers on the battle station were talking crap.
The video proves that even with the beam they fired, they could have destroyed three if not four hiveships. Theoritically, the database should be more reliable than a computer tied to a hastily repaired power system with a man made power generator hotwired into the mainframe in a haste.
So we're in case of "database + video" vs "faulty mechanics". I go for the database and the video, thank you.

Let's say that the five second beam correspond to 33% of the buffer's full charge.
Again, a lantean buffer is more than able to contain 20 kt worth of energy, and there's no reason for the team not to charge the buffer at maximum charge, especially since the database said that maximum charge would be able to take down three hiveships. McKay didn't say "more than" by the way.

Full charge = 20 KT.
1/3 = 6.666667 KT. (<- the value I used as far as I'm concerned, since slightly more than one second was plain enough to cut the hiveship in two).

But now, let's divide this by the beam firing duration. Roughly 5 seconds if we go by 82's count: 1.3333 KT.
That's it.
That's still a power of 5.578667 terawatts!

Again, as a Direct Energy Transfer weapon, such a power would have produced large luminous fireballs if fired at a target located inside an atmosphere.
Which was the case of all the materials and air located inside the ship, on the beam's path.

So apparently to certain people, something like a minuscule fraction of the Hiroshima bomb is all enough to take down an armored Wraith hiveship. Nevermind if we're talking about the race which defeated the Lanteans, their multiple warships able to be powered by those mighty planet superbusting ZPMs.
Nevermind if a single terran nuke didn't produce any major external damage to the hiveship in No Man's Land.
Nevermind if Earth has never used such puny low kiloton level warheads against alien capital ships when going for traditionnal space warfare. The lowest estimated yields was already in the low megaton range (mark 8, but remember that label is not tied to power), and estimated that gigaton level mines would be better to destroy hiveships.
The only moment a hiveship was destroyed by weaker nukes was when the genii warheads were beamed inside the ship. But it's absurd to claim that because an entire hiveship was destroyed because of an internal and initial kiloton level explosion, then that's all that is needed to take one down by attacking it from the outside.

That is why I consider the lantean satellite weapon to be largely exotic, dealing most of the damage through some unknown and avanced mechanism.



On a relative same hand:

The battle of Kelowna

The events that occured over the city is another case of contention. Why people insist so much that nevermind if Anubis' supership had shields and weapons largely superior to a Ha'tak, it would not require special weapons or conditions to take it down besides pure energy.

82 claimed that my theory was pure speculation. The funny part is that it's the best theory. Since the day I even speculated that it was all about frequency years ago, I've seen that theory spread over multiple boards, and never seen a single good debunk. I've seen all the arguments thinkable, and 82's, {snip} are nothing new.
My theory was simply there to explain how weapons, just enough to go 9/11 on a skycrapper, were supposedly able to kick a shield that could repel tens of gigatons per second.
If that was true, if kicking through the shield could only be achieved by literally forwarding that level of firepower, then one single blast missing the shield should have leveled the entire capital and its surrounding valley, and one single blast even reduced to 60% of its former potential would still fit in the mid megaton range, enough to blast most of the city in one swipe. Power levels which, if available to the Goa'uld, were against the deal Baal had with the people in Kelowna.
There's is also a large amount of evidence from the video showing some of the bolts passing through, while some don't, all at the same time. The shield does not suddenly fail. It progressively becomes porous.
Hence the heavy evidence that we're dealing with a frequency and ratio problem, where on X bolts fired by Baal's ships, only Y manage to get through.
Of course, once Anubis' ship is severely damaged, shielding systems are definitively out, therefore, past a certain point, all bolts hit the supership.


Sidenote: the {snip} "pure DET to down shields" argument is held by the same person who claims that Ori beams are kicking through Ha'tak's multi-gigaton shields by sheer power, again,. Nevermind if same beams can't even manage to level a pile of solidified dust that is like 100 or 200 meters tall only (you may want to read what happened to those high towers, made of concrete, which were used to support those kiloton level warheads during nuclear firing tests... they were completely vaporized).
But noooo, those weapons are not exotic in the slightest. It's all DET they say. Sure.



Rising: Drone independancy and tracking capability

I have provided evidence that the drone was acting on its own. I also provided information on how the drone could track a target.
I have enough facts that Beckett was trying to shut down the drone. But above all, with all logic considered, I have proved that it's impossible for Beckett to be willingly seeking the death of John or Jack.
Of course, there's one person insisting that Beckett was trying to shoot down the helicopter.
Nevermind if the dialogue says this:

UNKNOWN: What's happening?

BECKETT: What did I do?

Probe flies up and out past the elevator Weir is on.

WEIR: Get us back down there!

Drone breaks out into airspace.

SCENE: Chopper

ON RADIO: All inbound craft we have a rogue drone that could seek a target on its own. Land immediately and shut down your engines. This is not a drill. I repeat we have…

With all evidence of Beckett trying his best to actually deactivate the weapon, and being particularily happy that it happens, 82 is the only one still claiming that Beckett was unconsciously piloting the drone all along, and that everytime he moved the projectile around, it happened - oh the incredibleness - to be on route to hit the helicopter, and that multiple times.
I mean, why not? Maybe Beckett's subconsciousness just wanted to say hello to our arriving heroes in a friendly kind of way, trying to rub the deadly projectile against the helicopter in a sign of thriving affection.
{snip}


The tactical data sent to the SGC in Letters From Pegasus regarding the Wraith

I asked 82 to prove that the team had any significant tactical information regarding the wraith capital ships, besides the note about the satellite exotic beam and its capacity to kick three hiveships when fully charged.
As I proved, he's making stuff up.
The data about the satellite's weapon is useless for application and transcription to "traditional" weaponry, like nukes.

{snip} By the way, as I said multiple times, Allies shows that they had no such detailed and important data. They didn't even know there were external weaknesses before that.
{snip}.
All that being part of his larger campaign to prove that the SGC was right in their initial thought that 1,200 megatons warheads would be enough to deal with the Wraith armada, until the Daedalus would arrive.
Nevermind if the SGC was totally wrong there, and even in the past when dealing with the Goa'uld after one season of confrontation.
Which brings me to the following point:



SGC's nukes against Apophis

The SGC thought, back in the cliffhanger between season 1 and season 2 of SG-1, that 1 gigaton nuke would be enough to take down Apophis' ships.
Not only didn't they imagine that they could be shielded, but it would have made no difference anyway. Had the nukes exploded near the shields, their yields would have not been enough to knock them down anyway. A nuke will release its energy omnidirectionally, so 50% of its energy would be lost, unless the warhead is focused, which can be achieved nowadays. But still, an important quantity of the potential energy would still be lost.
Besides, the weakest Ha'tak goa'uld shield have been witnessed as able to withstand low gigatons of energy per second, as this for continuous exposure to an energy source for ten hours, putting the total of energy absorbed up in the teraton range.
This showing that with limited information, what the SGC thinks is enough to take down alien ships is not enough in fact.

[Schrodinger82]

Ok so even if it wasn't in real time how is the Wraith hiveship supposed to know that their guy is going to lose the fight and that there's a cloaked puddle jumper there in time to fire some slow moving bolts that'll only hit minutes later.

Just out of curiousity,

And how are they supposed to know exactly what course this previously unknown jumper is going to take in order to drop a few more just behind it as it attempts to escape.

Just out of curiousity, how long does it take the bolts to reach the ground in Misbegotten?

Teyla speculated that the hiveship might try to light them all up if they messed with the fight. No one actually confirmed that that was what happened.

I still trust her word on the matter over yours.

If the dust is non reflective

Is there's any reason why it shouldn't be?

[qquote]The air was perfectly clear where the bolts hit and it was a perfectly sunny day with no trace of fog or anything of that nature.[/quote]

Realistically, air is almost never "perfectly clear." For instance, just look at those commercials they do for air filters, where they show the amount of dust that people inhale every day.

There's not effective and then there's "reduced to the yeild of a few hand grenades.

You realize that the term kiloton refers to the sort of explosion you'd get from one thousand tons of TNT right? A megaton is a million tons and a gigaton is a billion.

So a thousand tons of TNT = a few hand grenades?

Man, it makes you wonder why they bothered with the manhatten project at all, if a few hand grenades would've had the same result.

Since the nukes fired by the Daedalus are way more likely to be comperable to the "space mines" or season one "Goa'uld busters"

Circular reasoning. The idea that the Mark III are gigaton levels is supposed to be your conclusion. The above phrase assumes it as your premise to lead to your conclusion.

You've never been able to explain your need to undercut the mkIII nuke to spitball status either

Done so numerous times. Wasted ordinance (Stated in Siege), combined with international oversight (Shown in Scourge, Disclosure, Misbogetton, etc.) and the fact that other countries that currently help fund SGC and SGA (Origin) are weary about giving a US too much military power (Scourge, Disclosure), particularily on a ship where the captain doesn't have to answer to them (Misbegotten.). Why woud they help fund a program that gave a US owned ship the power to essentially devestate entire planets from space?

Oh, and that's ignoring the fact that Weir and others have been in favor of non-proliferation in general (Lost City, Real World), and the SGA represents shaky ground as it is, because there are already treaties stating that the Antartic outpost that made SGA possible isn't supposed to be used for military purpose, which is why SGA is an international effort. Again, all the most reason not to give the US exclusive control over high end tactical nukes with no oversight.

It sounds outlandish at first but when you start to think about how even Earth can do it with missiles ten years ago it starts to look sillier in terms of story to think that they couldn't.

37 years ago, we had people walking on the moon. I guess it's outlandish to think that with all the progress we made, we wouldn't already have moon colonies up there by now, if not colonies on Mars.

There's a difference between having the technology to do something, and the will, drive, necessity. Especially with the international community scrutinizes your every move.

It's kind of a hard sell when you think about it to try and argue that they can't manage to equal or best Earth in terms of weapons when they're so hugely ahead of us in every other area.

The Asgard couldn't even think of gunpowder, so why now?

Gigaton etc weapons would seem fairly commonplace in stargate universe if all you need to get them is understanding of nuclear fission and access to naquada.

See above about will, desire, and necessity.

[Schrodinger82]

Sum' up.

Lantean satellite weapon + 20 KT naqahdah reactor"

The hiveship was down in one second of beaming. Say slightly less than two seconds for assured destruction. Multiplied by three, we get above the five second bar, which was the complete beam firing duration.
Which would actually prove that they depleted the whole buffer, wasting a large quantity of the beam.

Right. Sort of like how P-90s are designed to fire in bursts of 3, because that's how much they can hold before emptying out the entire clip.

Ergo, all was fired.

McKAY: C’mon, hit ‘em again!
(Inside the satellite, alarms are sounding and panels are shorting out everywhere.)
GRODIN: We have a problem.
McKAY: What? What problem?
GRODIN (working the controls frantically): It looks like the circuit we re-routed has overloaded. The weapon can’t fire again. I’m trying to find another pathway.

Funny, if the problem was that they were out of juice, you think they would have said so, instead of making up stories on how the circuit was overloaded.

Again, a lantean buffer is more than able to contain 20 kt worth of energy,

Really? You've run tests on it, then?

Full charge = 20 KT.
1/3 = 6.666667 KT. (<- the value I used as far as I'm concerned, since slightly more than one second was plain enough to cut the hiveship in two).

Once again, you assume that the each hive ship required a full 1/3rd. For all you know, each hive ship individually could have required a lot less than that.

Nevermind if we're talking about the race which defeated the Lanteans, their multiple warships able to be powered by those mighty planet superbusting ZPMs.

And weapons platforms that could be powered by a single naq generator.

Nevermind if a single terran nuke didn't produce any major external damage to the hiveship in No Man's Land.

Different delivery mechanism.

The battle of Kelowna

The events that occured over the city is another case of contention. Why people insist so much that nevermind if Anubis' supership had shields and weapons largely superior to a Ha'tak, it would not require special weapons or conditions to take it down besides pure energy.

There were special conditions. The ship was't at full power, and was within the atmosphere of a planet. From there, raw power did the rest, although it wouldn't have been enough if their special conditions weren't there.

82 claimed that my theory was pure speculation. The funny part is that it's the best theory.

{snip}

Since the day I even speculated that it was all about frequency years ago, I've seen that theory spread over multiple boards, and never seen a single good debunk.

Kind of hard to debunk something that doesnt meet scientific method and would be impossible to test or disprove.

However, if it was a frequency thing, then why do only certain bolts make it through? For instance, I can say that Drones have some special ability to pass through shields, because they do so every single time. But if only some drones passed through and some drones didn't, I might suspect that it was something else.

Power levels which, if available to the Goa'uld, were against the deal Baal had with the people in Kelowna.

"Hey Baal, I have a great opprotunity for you to take down Anubis. He's in an atmosphere, where his shields are only 40% effective, so it'll only take you 40% as much of your time to shoot him down as normal."

"Sounds good. So what's the catch?"

"Well, the catch is that you have to tune down your weapons down to 0.000001% of their normal efficiency. So instead of of being 2.5 times faster than normal, it'll actually be over a million times slower."

"Hmmm... Anything else?"

"Well, Anubis is on the planet because he wants this incredibly promising power source that he believes can bring his ship to full power. In general, the planet doesn't have much advanced weapons, and would be completely helpless if you wanted to take over. But you have to promise them alone, and never to touch them. {snip}

Sidenote: the {snip} "pure DET to down shields" argument is held by the same person who claims that Ori beams are kicking through Ha'tak's multi-gigaton shields by sheer power,

When did I ever claim that the Ha'taks had multi-gigaton shield?

Rising: Drone independancy and tracking capability

I have provided evidence that the drone was acting on its own.

No, you provided an interpretation that the drone was acting on it's own. Beckett's assessment afterwards where he describes it as a feeling of power and says that he had it dancing suggests otherwise.

I have enough facts that Beckett was trying to shut down the drone.

Which he then did, so what's the problem?

But above all, with all logic considered, I have proved that it's impossible for Beckett to be willingly seeking the death of John or Jack.

Yep, just like it's impossible that McKay would willing seeking his own death in H&S (Which you continue to ignore or address). But it's not impossible for Beckett to want to try dancing with them thanks to a magical feeling of power that he never felt before. You notice that he stopped the drone before it hit them, right? Hard to do if he wasn't in control. Are you telling me that this is the first time ever that someone got lost in a moment, and allowed bad judgement to take over

Heck, McKay actually fainted, and yet the device was still apparently connected to his subconscious desire to keep the device attached. The PJ that Jack used was sensistive enough to recognize the difference between "5000 years ago" and "3000 BC," despite having no concept of Christ. The fact that the device can work on such a deep level of consciousness is something that most lowly humans wouldn't be able to deal with. The fact that John does this naturally is what makes him so special.

Of course, there's one person insisting that Beckett was trying to shoot down the helicopter.

Really? Who's that? Can you provide a direct quote, or do I have to take your word for it?

82 is the only one still claiming that Beckett was unconsciously piloting the drone all along

WEIR: Well I have another theory; we know that there is a mental component to using ancient technology.

BECKETT: You don't have to remind me; I experienced it first hand with that drone weapon back on Earth.

So apparently Beckett agrees with Weir's assessment.

and that everytime he moved the projectile around, it happened - oh the incredibleness - to be on route to hit the helicopter, and that multiple times.

Hence, "dancing." John moves ones way, Beckett moves another. What, you never played cowboys and indians as a kid? You never play computer games where you crush the other guy, including your friends? Beckett described it as "magical" afterwards. The part of him that was connected to the machine was in an entirely different state of mind than the one that the people watching him were in. However, once it became clear that the dance was over, Beckett was able to shut the drone down accordingly.

{Snip}
For future reference, try paying attention to the actual argument, rather than simply making them up.

I asked 82 to prove that the team had any significant tactical information regarding the wraith capital ships, besides the note about the satellite exotic beam and its capacity to kick three hiveships when fully charged.

So SGA doesn't have the figures, but you apparently do.

Not that it matters, anyway, because the Mark III yields are going to be based on the figure that SGA comes up with, rather than the figures that you come up with. Thus making your entire argument pointless.

Had the nukes exploded near the shields, their yields would have not been enough to knock them down anyway.

Really? Go ahead and prove it.

[Buba uognarf]

The weapon was from before they left for Atlantis. Ascension didn't occur until after they were there.

For the lanteans maybe but we don't know when the ori ascended, we also have no knowledge of the ancients having an enemy in the MW so there would be no need to armor the device especially seeing as it was never intended as a weapon.

Agreed. I should point out, however, that in "Intruder," they had to breech the hulls and clear the decks just in preparation for a 302 attack. And since time was of the essense and since they were quickly losing control of their systems, I doubt it was a simply formality.

Formality maybe not, more like a precaution, destroying the array could have caused damage to internal systems in the area and unknown complications, so they sealed off the area in preporation. I have no doubt that a prelonged attack on a shieldless deadalus class would eventually cause minute structual damage but i have serious doubts as to whether a couple of direct hits from armams could cripple the deadalus.

Motion blur can effect length. We see bolts of the same width in "The Hive."

so motion blur can increase the length of object by 100 of times???

and the bolts seen in the hive are far larger then the ones in Sateda anyway so that pretty much proves variable yields unless you're going to say that a blast many hundreds of times bigger carries the same amount of energy?

Let's say that the average weak spot is 10 feet across, and the rail guns have to fire on one for one second before they get enough bullets through the hull to do damage (probably a lot more, but hey).

That means that the railgun couldn't trace much more than 10 feet per second. Or 36,000 feet per hour. Or 6.8 miles per hour. That's not a very good speed to trace over an entire hive ship. Keep in mind that motion in space is relative, so that you have to take into account the speed and direction of the Daedalus relative to the speed and direction of the hive ship, and adjust accordingly. For instance, if the hive ship moves more than 7 mph relative to the Daedalus, then it's practically impossible for the Daedalus to concentrate it's fire.

yes but during most of the engangements with hive ships the ships are moving towards each other there is no maneuvering, the fact remains if we put all your points together there should have been explosions from these weak spots going off during the battles we've seen with hive ships, but this is not the case so logically one of your theories must be incorrect or both.

The front portion of the ship seems to be more resistent to the side. That, and the nuke is probably low yeild.

True the front does seem more resistant but the nuke hit the back, and i doubt the back is hundreds of times stronger than the side. If the armor is as weak as you claim it to be then the nuke would have caused visable damage to the hive despite it's yield and it would of set off dozens of these exploding weaknesses, this did not happen.

We don't know the yield either way so i think we should keep an open mind about it, it could be a large one it could be weak one we don't know. I'll apply my arguements as if it's a weak one so we're on the same page but you should also bear in mind the possibility of it being a much stronger nuke.

The fact remains any nuke is hundreds of times more powerful than an amram and the wraith took it without visable damage. Judging by what i've seen from the nuke impact the nuke doesn't do that much more damage than a wraith blast does.

Apparently it was at least convincing enough to make Michael a believer, and I trust his judgement on this.

maybe, but remember they were also preoccupied with retro engineering new inter - galactic hyperdrives so they may have something to do with them being unable to fix their own problems - their engineers were busy

Except for what they could extract from the database.

which was not alot, the lanteens didn't know about the wraith weaknesses this was mentioned in 'Aurora' and it became apparent in 'Allies'. Maybe the combined effect of the mines would have crippled or destroyed the hives but still a gigaton is huge and the fact that earth thought that was nesseccary to bring six of them shows that hives are tough.

He could try focusing entirely on evasive manuvers.

If they were, then he wouldn't be using railguns all the time.

You have no evidence of rail guns ever doing anything to wraith hive ships, show me evidence of them doing damage to the hull of a hive ship. You can't say because he fires them they must do damage with no evidence to back it up.

How is it that we see the light then? The "smoke" could come from the bolts themself.

How would the bolts create smoke? the fact is what you see could be caused by the shield reacting with the bolts we don't actually see any explosions.

Then look at the scene from allies. The side of the hive ships seem to be more vulnerable than the front. Which would make sense, think of the basic design of an armedillo, and the fact that the side armor would have to be stretched out to a much greater degree.

doesn't change the fact that the different sizes of bolts do different amounts of damage to the same area of a hive ship - hence variable yields

[Mister Oragahn]

Lantean satellite weapon + 20 KT naqahdah reactor"

I tried to keep things as simple as possible.
First, why do I think the buffer on the satellite is able to largely contain 20 KT of energy?
Because it just makes more sense to argue it can than say it can't.
Why? Because the Lanteans have proved again and again the capacity to use machiens requiring large amounts of power.
Because the Lantean have tied that buffer to one of the most powerful long range weapons seen in Stargate.
Because that a satellite is as big as a Ha'tak, and a Ha'tak houses buffers, notably for shields, which can manage gigatons of energy per second, and that was for the old generation ones.
Because it says that the fully charged buffer has what's necessary to take out three hiveships, but does not imply it can take more, and yet, hiveships have done a good job withstanding 304 nuclear ordinance which, thus far, either had low megatons or low gigatons worth of energy.
Because it is just downright stupid to claim that an advanced race such as the Wraith, who defeated the Lanteans, have hiveships which can be downed by a minuscule fraction of the energy that leveled Hiroshima more than 60 years ago, had the lantean beam been about pure DET. Ergo it is not, and relies on an exotic mechanism.
Add to this those Wraith hiveships which have been able to survive to multiple attacks from enemy hiveships geared towards the immediate destruction of their current target (The Hive, Misbegotten), with some same weapons capable of quickly draining the shields of a 304 which still managed to withstand the heat, radiations, friction and gravities of a black hole's accretion disc even when working at less than 20%.

Then there's no mystery if the claim that a few terawatts of energy are all that's necessary to take down a hiveship is completely unsound, and that it can only be rationalized by a theory claiming that the satellite beam largely works through an exotic mechanism.



The battle of Kelowna

I have nothing to add to what I previously said. It's crystal clear. I have shown that even with a goa'uld bolt reduced to 10% of its initial raw energy, if it hoped knocking Anubis' shields down through raw power, a single bolt explosion would have leveled the entire city and its neighbouring environment.
Of course, this never happened, nevermind the shield's toughness.
The reduction of efficiency turned out to be a question of the shiled only stopping SOME bolts.
We see certain bolts passing through the shield's skin, but not interacting with it at all, so it's not even a question of the shield partially draining a portion of a bolt's energy, it's just a question of frequency of leaks.
It's still the best theory out there.



Rising: Drone independancy and tracking capability

I have provided evidence that the drone was acting on its own.
You keep insisting that the agressive nature and particularily obstinated way of trying to hit the helicopter was all a materalization of Beckett's feelings.
I did adress the part where he felt magnified, empowered by the device. However, they didn't say how long it lasted, and whatever he felt is largely open to interpretation.
However, his reaction to the order, Beckett's own nature, his pain to switch the system off, and the radio message all prove that the drone was acting on its own and searching for a source of energy.

WEIR: Well I have another theory; we know that there is a mental component to using ancient technology.

BECKETT: You don't have to remind me; I experienced it first hand with that drone weapon back on Earth.

So apparently Beckett agrees with Weir's assessment.

Yes, and Weir's assessment does in no way support your claim. So what's your point? It would be stupid for one to claim that there's no mental component in using ancient technology, as it's heavily evidenced over several seasons of SG-1 and SGA.
It's incredible how you pick and choose evidence and hope you can twist it in the vain belief that it could support your extravagant claims.

For future reference, try paying attention to the actual argument, rather than simply making them up.

My argument is simple. The drone, not Beckett, tried to destroy the helicopter. Anyone who argues this is supporting the idea that Beckett was trying to destroy the helicopter. You're arguing with me, thus you're supporting that idea, which, to be polite, is unlikely. By the way, you're just getting lost.



Goa'uld shields and human weapons

When did I ever claim that the Ha'taks had multi-gigaton shield?

I didn't claim you did. However, I and other people have made reliable shield estimations from the episode Enemies.
That's all you need to know, unless you can provide better estimations.

[Schrodinger82]

For the lanteans maybe but we don't know when the ori ascended

If the Ori had already ascended at that point and were responsible for the plague, then they would already be in the milky way in ascended form, and could prevent the Ancients from ever ascending at all.

we also have no knowledge of the ancients having an enemy in the MW so there would be no need to armor the device especially seeing as it was never intended as a weapon.

So why didn't the replicators just blow it up from orbit?

Formality maybe not, more like a precaution, destroying the array could have caused damage to internal systems in the area and unknown complications, so they sealed off the area in preporation. I have no doubt that a prelonged attack on a shieldless deadalus class would eventually cause minute structual damage but i have serious doubts as to whether a couple of direct hits from armams could cripple the deadalus.

Never said it would cripple, only said it would likely cause a breech. Ships are designed to have redundancy, and since the hive ships are massive, there's a lot of room for that. Ever watch a pirate movie, where you'll have two ships blowing large chunks out of each other without sinking? I expect that space ships would be at least as advanced.

and the bolts seen in the hive are far larger then the ones in Sateda anyway so that pretty much proves variable yields unless you're going to say that a blast many hundreds of times bigger carries the same amount of energy?

Doesn't matter, what we know is that they don't even have enough energy to prevent a Daedalus at 20% from having enough shield integrity to enter a black hole.

yes but during most of the engangements with hive ships the ships are moving towards each other there is no maneuvering

Doesn't change that fact that motion in space is relative.

True the front does seem more resistant but the nuke hit the back, and i doubt the back is hundreds of times stronger than the side.

Well, obviously it wasn't, since the one nuke manage to punch all the way from the top of the ship down to the bottom of the ship, where as the same weakened hive ship could withstand hundreds of hive blasts to its side and still survive for long enough to give John and Co a chance to board his PJ and escape.

If the armor is as weak as you claim it to be then the nuke would have caused visable damage to the hive despite it's yield and it would of set off dozens of these exploding weaknesses, this did not happen.

It managed to set off an explosion at the bottom. And again, these massive explosions only seem to happen when Hive ships get hit on the side, or when John plants C4 on the side. If the front has extra armor and/or fewer weak points, then the back might as well.

The fact remains any nuke is hundreds of times more powerful than an amram and the wraith took it without visable damage. Judging by what i've seen from the nuke impact the nuke doesn't do that much more damage than a wraith blast does.

I don't think McKay would be freaking out about how the ship is so bad damaged that he can't even find a system to overload if it had only been hit by one Wraith blast.

which was not alot, the lanteens didn't know about the wraith weaknesses this was mentioned in 'Aurora' and it became apparent in 'Allies'. Maybe the combined effect of the mines would have crippled or destroyed the hives but still a gigaton is huge and the fact that earth thought that was nesseccary to bring six of them shows that hives are tough.

Ouroboros points out that the warheads are relatively small. Now, if that's the case, then what propulsion system could they possibly use? Answer: None. That means that the only way they could be flying over Atlantis would be if they were in geosynchronous orbit.

We know that Atlantica is Earth sized (stated in Storm) with an Earth like gravity. Geosynchronous orbit on Earth is 35,786 km from the Earth's surface. In Siege, based on an initial velocity of zero, an end velocity of 10,000 kph, and the time necessary for impact, we can conclude that the Wraith ships were roughly 100 km above the surface. Atlantis expected that six GT level nukes to be effective at protecting them at 35,786 km. This tells me that they assumed that the nukes would be effective at a considerable range.

Then there's the fact that even if the Wraith didn't know how poweful these nukes were, they obviously able to detect them, and could have avoided them or shot them down. But they didn't. Instead, they decided to go out of their way, fly to the nearest asteroid belt, start pulling them in their tractor beams one by one, and attempt a game of cosmic bowling. The fact that they were able to hit all the nukes with only 100 asteroids, again, tells me that this was considerable range.

You have no evidence of rail guns ever doing anything to wraith hive ships

No Man's Land.

How would the bolts create smoke?

Because they have a matter component.

[Schrodinger82]

Lantean satellite weapon + 20 KT naqahdah reactor"

I tried to keep things as simple as possible.

Jumping immeadiately to exotic principles because the episode doesn't agree with your assumptions is not keeping things simple.

Why? Because the Lanteans have proved again and again the capacity to use machiens requiring large amounts of power.

And they've also used device machines that don't require large amounts of power. For instance, the stargate itself is capable of producing a stable wormhole for several minutes using the power of a single lightning bolt.

Because it is just downright stupid to claim

Again, appeal to ridicule. After being warned by the mods three times now, you'd think that some of this would stick.

And again, if you have a problem with the seeming inconsistency that the Wraith can beat the ancients yet still be damaged by low yeild weaponry, then refer to MW's comments about how the writers go about this. Better yet, check out what the creators themselves had to say on the matter:

GAJDECKI: They needed to come up with an adversary – the Wraith – who were sufficiently powerful that they could have defeated the Ancients ... but who were sufficiently stoopid that we can outwit them on a weekly basis! And that’s pretty tricky!

So if you ever want to know why Earth manages to damage the wraith with the equipment they have (C4, AMRAM weapons, railguns, naq generators, low yeild nukes), that's why. For instance, why do they have weak points? Because they're stupid. Why don't they have the absolute best armor? Because they're stupid. And being stupid is part of their character.

Add to this those Wraith hiveships which have been able to survive to multiple attacks from enemy hiveships geared towards the immediate destruction of their current target (The Hive, Misbegotten), with some same weapons capable of quickly draining the shields of a 304 which still managed to withstand the heat, radiations, friction and gravities of a black hole's accretion disc even when working at less than 20%.

Once again, the physics of this feat are beyond us to gauge, and it's doubtful that the writer put a lot of thought in the exact stats to begin with (per MW's comment.).

Then there's no mystery if the claim that a few terawatts of energy are all that's necessary to take down a hiveship is completely unsound

Again, appeal to ridicule. McKay and others seem to think otherwise. I trust their judgement over yours.

The battle of Kelowna

I have nothing to add to what I previously said. It's crystal clear. I have shown that even with a goa'uld bolt reduced to 10% of its initial raw energy, if it hoped knocking Anubis' shields down through raw power, a single bolt explosion would have leveled the entire city and its neighbouring environment.

Wrong. You told me the above, but you didn't show me anything. Showing and telling are two completely different things.

Not to mention the fact that you still haven't explained why Baal would take up a deal to turn down his weapons to less than 10%, for the sake of taking advantage of a 40% limitation.

Rising: Drone independancy and tracking capability

I have provided evidence that the drone was acting on its own.

Right, just like there's "evidence" that the personal shield generator was acting on it's own. Because the guy on the radio who's watching this as it's going on with only seconds to think about what's going on is going to understand it better than Beckett himself would.

Why don't you explain to us why a drone launched in the first place per your theory? Is this just the standard procedure for the chair system? Guy sits down, drone gets released automatically, whether he wants it to be released or not? At what point does the chair platform think to itself, "Gee, now would be a good time to fire a drone"? How does it come to that thought entirely on it's own?

Moreover, explain to us why a drone acting entirely on its own would stumble around the room clumsily upon starting, bouncing off valuable equipment in the process? Did the Ancients program the drones to seek out targets within the outpost itself? You should also explain to us makes two passes passing accross the windshield of the helicopter, and two passes circling around the helicopter, before diving into the snow. Man, Ancient technology must really suck, if it can't even take down a simple terrain helicopter despite repeated attemps.

Please answer these basic questions, in accordance to your theory.

You keep insisting that the agressive nature and particularily obstinated way of trying to hit the helicopter was all a materalization of Beckett's feelings.

"The second I shut my eyes, I could see you see, I felt power I've never had before, I had it dancing across the sky... it was magical it really was."

Yep, sure sounds he it he was being hostile to me.

Yes, and Weir's assessment does in no way support your claim.

1) Weir states that Ancient tech has a mental interface.
2) Beckett concurs and states that he saw it first hand with the drone.
3) Weir then points out that McKay is still in control
4) Beckett never contradicts Weir on her assessment on how neural interface works, even though this would be the perfect time for him to prove you right by correcting Weir and saying, "That's not how it works, when I was with the drone, blah blah blah."1 He does express skepticism that McKay would will himself to starve, to which Weir replies that he's not there yet.
5) Later in the episode, the fact that the shield can interface on a subconscious level is proven, by the fact that it still stays attached even after Rodney faints.
6) Later in the episode, the fact that the shield has been controlled by Rodney is proven, by the fact that it shuts down at the precise moment when his desire to stay invincible is overwhelmed by his desire not to confront the monster.

The subconscious mind is extremely tricky. In "Epiphany," the Ancients were got to the point where their subconscious fears manifested itself into a ravaging monster without even being aware of it, and I think that they were a lot more advanced mentally than Carson is, given their superior DNA and the fact that dedicate all their time to meditation.

Hey, here's a question: Have you ever had a dream before? A literal dream, not a figurative dream. Personally, I believe that everything we see and experience within a dream are the products of our own minds. Yet most people have no control whatsoever over what they dream about. For instance, why do nightmares occur? Is it because the dreamer wants to have a nightmare, is it because the dream is actually being manipulated by alien technology, or is it something that you're not acknowledging? Of course, some people can train for "lucid dreaming" and learn how to manipulate their dreams, just like some people are more adept at manipulating Ancient technology than others. But it doesn't always come easy.

Another question: If I put a 6 year old into the drivers seat of a car and force him to take the wheel and he crashes it as a result, what would you conclude? Would you conclude that the steering wheel was only a prop and didnt actually control the car, would you conclude that the 6 year old crashed the car on purpose, or would you simply attribute it to a lack of training and experience? Because that's about where Beckett was when it comes to Ancient tech.

My argument is simple. The drone, not Beckett, tried to destroy the helicopter.

Who said he was trying to destroy it? Beckett referred to it as "dancing." I would take his assessment over yours. If the drone was really trying to destroy the Helicopter, then why didn't it manage to take it down despite four passes? John may be a good pilot, but it's not like he has any experience dodging drone weapons in the past, and it's not like Helicopters are terribly manuverable compared to the types of ships that the drones were designed for.

Beckett describes it as "dancing," which makes far more sense in the context of the scene then your assessment.

Goa'uld shields and human weapons

I didn't claim you did. However, I and other people have made reliable shield estimations from the episode Enemies.
That's all you need to know, unless you can provide better estimations.

Two fallacies. Appeal to authority, appeal to ignorance. Do better.

[Schrodinger82]

SGC: "Hey China, power consumption was a little high this month, so we could an extra billion. Do you think you guys could spare that for us?"

China: "What happened to that two billion dollars that we lent you last June?"

SGC: "Oh, well we spent that."

China: "Don't you also get several billion dollars from your own government?

SGC: "Well, we spent that that too. For multi-gigaton tactical nuclear warheads."

China: "Wait, what? Why in the world do you need to spend you money on multi-gigaton nuclear warheads? We were already upset in season 6 at the fact that the US was 'capable of flying an interceptor that is capable of both aerial combat and space flight.' We were later upset in season 9, when 'your government has made great strides in the field of military technology…but left us out in the cold.' Now you're telling me that a US owned shipped that's outside of our control, capable of not only aerial combat and space flight but intergalactic travel as well and completely protected by shields, is armed to the teeth with multi-gigaton tactical missiles?

SGC: "Pretty much, yeah."

China: "Why in the world should we approve of this blatant violation of nuclear treaties that Weir herself helped to push, on a ship that doesn't even have to answer to us? Moreover, why in the world should we help to fund such a project, with our own money, when it gives your country such a unique military advantage over our own?"

SGC: "Well, we need them. You know, for taking out the Wraith."

China: "According to the logs, 'You’re wasting ordnance, Colonel. Those missiles are being intercepted miles from the hive ship.' Are you telling me that you're putting all your money into multi-gigaton nukes that never even reach their target? You're basically throwing all our money away."

SGC: "Quite the contrary. We stopped the 'firing nukes' directly at them strategy all throughout season two since the incident. So now we transport them on their ships. Even now that the wraith have jammed our transport, we still attempt it anyway and don't even bother with the firing of missiles, because we know that the firing of missiles won't do any good."

China: "But even a genii nuke made with a maximum of 6 kg of uranium, which the Genii had only a few months to refine, and which only used C4 as an explosive which isn't even the greatest explosion as far as explosives go, was still enough to kill a hive ship. So why do you need your weapons to be multi-gigaton?"

SGC: "Well, why not?"

China: "Because high yield nukes are more expensive, and you hitting us up for cash. Ever hear of the court case of beggers vs. choosers? Why should we give you guys even more money, if you can even use it frugally?"

SGC: "Yeah, but I mean, it couldn't hurt, right?"

China: "Actually, yes it could. Collatoral damage if the target is too close, for instance. Then there's the inability to hit precision targets."

SGC: "Yeah, but what if we need to attack them from the outside? Then we'll need multi-GT weapons."

China: "Last year, your best scientists predicted that 6 GT level mines, presumably in geosynchronous orbit above atlantis and which would have had to have been detonated fron a considerable range to be effective, would be sufficient to serve as the main line of defense. Not you're telling us that the same multi-GT nukes from aren't enough to anything unless they're incredibly close up?"

SGC: "Nope. All our numbers were wrong, which is why we since upgraded our ships with even higher yeild Mark III's. We call them Mark III's, even though three is a lower number than VIII, and would suggest a lower designation."

China: "Really? So was there anything that happened throughout season two that would suggest your numbers were wrong?"

SGC: "Well, there was that scene in Allies, where we had access to a wraith encyclopedia, thus showing that we didn't know everything. And if we didn't know everything, then obviosuly, we must have been wrong about everything. There's absolutely no middle way, e.g., we could have known some things, but not others."

China: "Allies occured after you switched to Mark IIIs. I seriously doubt you accessed the Wraith encyclopedia, had the Daedalus fly to Earth, switch to Mark IIIs, then flew back."

SGC: "Yeah, well, that's just stupid. I mean, back in season one, we were already firing gigaton level nukes into orbit, and now you're telling me that we can't do that anymore."

China: "Wait, you did what back in season one?"

SGC: "Oh, we didn't tell you about that back when it happened?"

China: "Let's think about this one carefully... No!"

SGC: "Whoopse. Must've slipped our minds. But, uh, you won't mind if we still do this, right?"

China: "And you want us to pay for this?"

SGC: "That's about it, yeah. I mean, there's absolutely no reason against it, right?"

China: "Hmmm... None that I can think of. And obviously, none ever came up in our converation either. Here, let me write you a check."

SGC: "Sweet!"