Super-Hive's strength

[Mister Oragahn]

Ouroborous,

As I stated in my first post. All the power output of two ZPMs and most of the output of the other one was tied in to the Wormhole drive. The Wormhole drive did not deplete the ZPMs it just made most of their power output unavailable in the battle with the Super-Hive. Remember when Carson said that he did not have enough power to fire drones and pull Atlantis up. That was because the rest of the ZPMs(plural) output was still tied in to the Wormhole drive. It took the Atlantis team until the city was almost at San Francisco to reconnect the rest of the power and engage the cloak. My theory does not deplete the ZPMs it just makes most of their power output unavailable during the battle.

Dr. Daedalus

Actually, that makes me think of something that has been, ZPM output wise, just so unnerving.

Could it be possible that the Tau'ri struggled so much to lift Atlantis and use the shield and weapons at the same time because the damn wormhole drive was already linked and wasting vast amounts of power?

No, don't think about it, it's a crap theory.

[Ouroboros]

We have seen one ZPM power the shield and the stardrive in space. When the Super-Hive was pushing Atlantis into a lower orbit the city did not need 90% or 67% power output to pull back up. Since Beckett said he did not have enough power that means that at most one ZPM was available to take power from.

Or that there was actual damage suffered and this was why they crahsed. We've seen already in previous episodes that damage can cause even more severe efficiency issues to occur. It also makes for a much more natural explanation given the battle than just arbitrarily deciding that 2 of the 3 zpms were unavailable to be drawn from.

I explained above why that would not occur.

You showed that they can move in space even with one zpm but this doesn't mean that they could also generate takeoff levels of thrust with one zpm, be it in space or not.

We know that to get takeoff levels of thrust you need much more than one. Thus the engines running on 1 zpm will actually be running drastically underpowered. They're normally capable of more performance than that, but at the cost of far greater power consumption.

The question then becomes what the normal power draw is under ideal conditions. In other words how much power do they normally draw when the city has 3 zpms and everything is hunky dory.

You are right on this one. My mistake.

So we can now agree that there's two places where the hive has efficiency advantages.

-engines
-defences (powered shields vs armour)

I'd also throw is subsystems. The hive runs fine on just it's normal reactors but hasn't it beent he case in the past that without a zpm atlantis couldn't even use what you'd think would be low draw systems like sensors.

In the Episode Lifeline the city was able to use sublight engines with one ZPM.
The sublight engines were not at full thrust but they could be used with one ZPM. In space you do not need to use full thrust all the time.

This is true but you should know that Atlantis' takeoff thrust is likely not going to look that impressive in a space battle context in terms of acceleration.

Not quite. You are right in saying I do not believe this is a clearcut case of 3 ZPMs versus 1. However, my explanation for why it is not is that most of the power output of the ZPMs was still tied into the wormhole drive and was unavailable during the battle.

The only problem that remains for me is the fact that this is completely unprovven, seems to be contradicted by the episode, and it's introduction amounts to saying "atlantis actually fought this battle with 2/3 hands tied behind it's back". Given the impact this would have on guaging the actual strength of the participants here don't you think it merits something more in the way of proof than just your say so?

[Ouroboros]

Actually, that makes me think of something that has been, ZPM output wise, just so unnerving.

Could it be possible that the Tau'ri struggled so much to lift Atlantis and use the shield and weapons at the same time because the damn wormhole drive was already linked and wasting vast amounts of power?

No, don't think about it, it's a crap theory.

That would have made for a nice punchline to close the series on.

McKay: Wait we found a wormhole drive! It's uses massive amounts of power but I think now that I've finally found the folder it's filed in we can use it to get to Earth.

Woolsey: Well then! Switch it on!

McKay: .....it..... is..... on.

Zelenka: Well so it wasn't actually the lightbulbs burning through all those naquada generators then.... who would have thought :looks at McKay:

[NoobTau'ri]

It is utter crap to say that Wraith technology uses energy better than the Ancients'. The Ancients used Naquadah a lot in the MW galaxy to great efficiency, and the fusing of Naquadah generates and infinitesimal amount of the power of a ZPM. Even a freakin' lightning bolt can provide enough energy to power Atlantis shields and protect it from Wraith hives.

What about drones? They carry raw power in them, which is evident by the fact that they can explode on impact, and yet the amount of power they carry is extremely small compared to the amount of damage a single drone causes. A drone can pierce through Anubis ships' shields which even nuclear weapons can't, and yet the amount of energy that a dron carries is 0.00000000000000000000001% of the amount a 1 megaton nuke has. What about Orlin powering his stargate with DC batteries and opening a wormhole to another planet with only the power of this primitive Human power source? What about Merlin powering the Sangraal for thousands of years with that funky power source that he built by hand? What about Janus' time machine opening a wormhole through time with the power source of a puddle jumper?

As for Wraith technology being so efficient at using energy, then why did they lack intergalactic drives? Their hyperdrives clearly had the capacity for intergalactic travel and hives clearly have enough energy for it, evident by the fact that the queen in Allies didn't need to acquire a new power source to get intergalactic travel capabilities, and yet the queen was only able to make the hyperdrive of her hive use enough energy for intergalactic travel after she modifid the hyperdrive with Asgard knowledge. Wraith technology is **** at using energy. Think about it: the queen in "Allies" made no modification in the power source of her hive but only in the drive itself. What does that tell you? That Wraith use the amount of energy they have available suboptimally.

And this super-hive is pure wank. There is no basis in canon for this atrocity. Here are several quotes from canon proving this:

"One-on-one their ships were far more powerful, but the Wraith were so many...they could win almost every battle, but they could never see an end to the war."(Dr.Weir, "Before I Sleep")

"What you need to understand is that Ancient technology is far superior. The Wraith won only due to sheer numbers."(Dr.McKay, "The Siege, part I")

"The technology of this city....of this city that you now control...is far more advanced and powerful than anything the Wraith ever had."(Wraith Queen "Allies")

The word "ever" here is important, because it qualifies my statement. It makes it clear that the writers came up with this super-hive on the fly, showing a blatant disregard to the show's established canon.

This whole mess started with the Ori, and they are to blame for this mess. By giving Earth an opponent that was above and beyond even Anubis, the writers made it impossible for Earth to defeat them with it's own technology and resource capacity. Even the Asgard, who were superior in power to even Anubis, could do no better than tie with the Ori in battle. The writers solution? To make the Asgard give Earth a "legacy weapon", the last achievement of their science before blowing themselves, a weapon so horrifically powerful that it could wipe out Ori Motherships. The problem is that this made the Wraith a joke, since the Ori were designed to be a more powerful threat than the Wraith and superior to them one-on-one, and if the Asgard beam can destroy Ori Motherships, then it can ass-rape Wraith hives. The writers solution? Why, give the Wraith a mega ship that can resist the super-weapon. Terrible writing.

The Wraith were supposed to be inferior one-on-one to the Ancients, but this ship makes them far superior. I mean, Auroras are not as powerful as the Asgard-upgraded 304, evident by how easily the Daedalus ass-raped the Auroras in BAMSR - and yes, Asuran Auroras are as good as Ancient ones -, and yet the 304 had it's shield depleted to 20% after a few salvos from the super hive. This means the super-hive would one-shot-one-kill Auroras, essentially. It makes you wonder, though, why the Wraith bothered to use the ZPM they stole to power the cloning facility that makes weak-ass hives that get raped by drones in a few shots, instead of simply using that ZPM to power a super-hive. They would have won the war in days after that, as the super-hive would destroy Auroras in one hit, vanquishing the entire Ancient fleet in days. My estimate that the super-hive would destroy Auroras in one shot comes from the fact that a single salvo depleted Atlantis shield when powered by 3 ZPMs to 30%, meaning that the weaker shield of an Aurora powered by a single ZPM would be overwhemed in one shot. The only thing in SGverse that could defeat this monstrosity would be an O'Neil powered by a ZPM, as that would essentially be a 15 times larger version of the Odyssey.

[Pepino1101]

Ouroboros,

I like your explanation but if hive ships have that kind of power then the Ancient warships would have lost nearly every battle. However, we know that the Ancients won nearly every battle. The Wraith won with superior numbers. We also know that the Ancients had millions of years to improve Atlantis' power distribution (and that Rodney greatly improved the city's power systems in "Tao of Rodney"). If Atlantis can take out a regular hiveship with one ZPM then it should be able to take out a Super-Hive when fully powered. The only other explanation in my opinion is that Atlantis was not fully powered at the time of the battle with the Super-Hive. As I said I like your explanation but I think mine is a little better. No hard feelings .

you forget that the super-hive had a far superior hull... that was mentioned in the episode, when rodney said and i quote" when they'r done, my guess is that that hull will be all but impenetrable" which means that the drones didnt pass through the hull like they used to, exploding in the middle of a wall doing some impressive damage like firecrackers in a bottle, but rather exploding on the surface mearly scratching the "skin" of the hive... thats why it took much more effort to damage the hive... and also... atlantis having more power doesnt mean they had better weapons, it only meant it could withstand more of the hits... drones retain the same amount of firepower on one ZPM as they would on all 3...

I think that the super-hive plot was not generally bad, although I was a little disappointed by the reactions of the Daedalos when they engaged the hive... they waited too long for the first shot and didnt get the chance for a second.. I believe that if they fired all they had as soon as they were in range, the hive might have been at least disabled and severely crippled. and thy should have also tried to avade them before getting hit by the salva. the episode wold have a much better ring to it, if they also showed the actual battle with the sun-zu and the appolo...

in general a good episode... but they could have done a lot better... but as was said... the episode was written on short notice, so they probably didnt have the necessary time to clen up some of the rough eges...

[Ouroboros]

It is utter crap to say that Wraith technology uses energy better than the Ancients'. The Ancients used Naquadah a lot in the MW galaxy to great efficiency, and the fusing of Naquadah generates and infinitesimal amount of the power of a ZPM. Even a freakin' lightning bolt can provide enough energy to power Atlantis shields and protect it from Wraith hives.

What about drones? They carry raw power in them, which is evident by the fact that they can explode on impact, and yet the amount of power they carry is extremely small compared to the amount of damage a single drone causes. A drone can pierce through Anubis ships' shields which even nuclear weapons can't, and yet the amount of energy that a dron carries is 0.00000000000000000000001% of the amount a 1 megaton nuke has. What about Orlin powering his stargate with DC batteries and opening a wormhole to another planet with only the power of this primitive Human power source? What about Merlin powering the Sangraal for thousands of years with that funky power source that he built by hand? What about Janus' time machine opening a wormhole through time with the power source of a puddle jumper?

As for Wraith technology being so efficient at using energy, then why did they lack intergalactic drives? Their hyperdrives clearly had the capacity for intergalactic travel and hives clearly have enough energy for it, evident by the fact that the queen in Allies didn't need to acquire a new power source to get intergalactic travel capabilities, and yet the queen was only able to make the hyperdrive of her hive use enough energy for intergalactic travel after she modifid the hyperdrive with Asgard knowledge. Wraith technology is **** at using energy. Think about it: the queen in "Allies" made no modification in the power source of her hive but only in the drive itself. What does that tell you? That Wraith use the amount of energy they have available suboptimally.

And this super-hive is pure wank. There is no basis in canon for this atrocity. Here are several quotes from canon proving this:

"One-on-one their ships were far more powerful, but the Wraith were so many...they could win almost every battle, but they could never see an end to the war."(Dr.Weir, "Before I Sleep")

"What you need to understand is that Ancient technology is far superior. The Wraith won only due to sheer numbers."(Dr.McKay, "The Siege, part I")

"The technology of this city....of this city that you now control...is far more advanced and powerful than anything the Wraith ever had."(Wraith Queen "Allies")

The word "ever" here is important, because it qualifies my statement. It makes it clear that the writers came up with this super-hive on the fly, showing a blatant disregard to the show's established canon.

This whole mess started with the Ori, and they are to blame for this mess. By giving Earth an opponent that was above and beyond even Anubis, the writers made it impossible for Earth to defeat them with it's own technology and resource capacity. Even the Asgard, who were superior in power to even Anubis, could do no better than tie with the Ori in battle. The writers solution? To make the Asgard give Earth a "legacy weapon", the last achievement of their science before blowing themselves, a weapon so horrifically powerful that it could wipe out Ori Motherships. The problem is that this made the Wraith a joke, since the Ori were designed to be a more powerful threat than the Wraith and superior to them one-on-one, and if the Asgard beam can destroy Ori Motherships, then it can ass-rape Wraith hives. The writers solution? Why, give the Wraith a mega ship that can resist the super-weapon. Terrible writing.

The Wraith were supposed to be inferior one-on-one to the Ancients, but this ship makes them far superior. I mean, Auroras are not as powerful as the Asgard-upgraded 304, evident by how easily the Daedalus ass-raped the Auroras in BAMSR - and yes, Asuran Auroras are as good as Ancient ones -, and yet the 304 had it's shield depleted to 20% after a few salvos from the super hive. This means the super-hive would one-shot-one-kill Auroras, essentially. It makes you wonder, though, why the Wraith bothered to use the ZPM they stole to power the cloning facility that makes weak-ass hives that get raped by drones in a few shots, instead of simply using that ZPM to power a super-hive. They would have won the war in days after that, as the super-hive would destroy Auroras in one hit, vanquishing the entire Ancient fleet in days. My estimate that the super-hive would destroy Auroras in one shot comes from the fact that a single salvo depleted Atlantis shield when powered by 3 ZPMs to 30%, meaning that the weaker shield of an Aurora powered by a single ZPM would be overwhemed in one shot. The only thing in SGverse that could defeat this monstrosity would be an O'Neil powered by a ZPM, as that would essentially be a 15 times larger version of the Odyssey.

Well I'm certainly not going to argue that the superhive wasn't over the top. I've already said as much before. I still don't think it's nearly as over the top as the upgraded 304s/Odyssey though. It's more powerful than them in straight combat yes, but it's still not as contextually retarded as one of the smallest ships in the entire series built by the least advanced civilization blowing up Auroras, Ori motherships and hives in 3 shots, and doing it all with only a basic naquada reactor under the hood.

The only wank that tops the "beam weapons" is the ****ing "make anything" Asgard core machine, if you assume they would just abuse it at will and with competence isntead of being plot induced idiots about it. Combine it with the time dialation device and whoo baby. Not only do you have whatever you want but you've got as many copies of if as you want, effectively instantly, all you need is power.

I've said before to that I'd much rather have had a small number of super powerful Wraith ships like this one than whole swarms of crap ones. This one at least looks like it's 10,000 year obsolete original version would have been a serious threat to the ancients. Logically speaking modern Wraith ships should crap all over the old ancient stuff. They won from a position of major disadvantage with their 10,000 year old stuff.

It always struck me as asinine the way these 10,000 year old barely functional Ancient war relics were constantly being trotted out to pwn major Wraith ass. It's basically the equivalent of trying to use Roman swords to intimidate the modern German army. "Haha remember your ancient enemies of thousands years past that your ancestors defeated, they were more advanced than you and now we've ressurected their terrible advanced technology to kick your .... :is run over by Leopard II:"

Just once in one of these sci-fi shows I'd love to see somebody dig up some "mysterious ancient tech of great power from a long lost and legendary race" and after analysing/trying it realize that it'd be considered hilariously weak **** even by their great grandfather's standards.

[Mister Oragahn]

It is utter crap to say that Wraith technology uses energy better than the Ancients'. The Ancients used Naquadah a lot in the MW galaxy to great efficiency, and the fusing of Naquadah generates and infinitesimal amount of the power of a ZPM. Even a freakin' lightning bolt can provide enough energy to power Atlantis shields and protect it from Wraith hives.

What about drones? They carry raw power in them, which is evident by the fact that they can explode on impact, and yet the amount of power they carry is extremely small compared to the amount of damage a single drone causes. A drone can pierce through Anubis ships' shields which even nuclear weapons can't, and yet the amount of energy that a dron carries is 0.00000000000000000000001% of the amount a 1 megaton nuke has. What about Orlin powering his stargate with DC batteries and opening a wormhole to another planet with only the power of this primitive Human power source? What about Merlin powering the Sangraal for thousands of years with that funky power source that he built by hand? What about Janus' time machine opening a wormhole through time with the power source of a puddle jumper?

As for Wraith technology being so efficient at using energy, then why did they lack intergalactic drives? Their hyperdrives clearly had the capacity for intergalactic travel and hives clearly have enough energy for it, evident by the fact that the queen in Allies didn't need to acquire a new power source to get intergalactic travel capabilities, and yet the queen was only able to make the hyperdrive of her hive use enough energy for intergalactic travel after she modifid the hyperdrive with Asgard knowledge. Wraith technology is **** at using energy. Think about it: the queen in "Allies" made no modification in the power source of her hive but only in the drive itself. What does that tell you? That Wraith use the amount of energy they have available suboptimally.

And this super-hive is pure wank. There is no basis in canon for this atrocity. Here are several quotes from canon proving this:

"One-on-one their ships were far more powerful, but the Wraith were so many...they could win almost every battle, but they could never see an end to the war."(Dr.Weir, "Before I Sleep")

"What you need to understand is that Ancient technology is far superior. The Wraith won only due to sheer numbers."(Dr.McKay, "The Siege, part I")

"The technology of this city....of this city that you now control...is far more advanced and powerful than anything the Wraith ever had."(Wraith Queen "Allies")

The word "ever" here is important, because it qualifies my statement. It makes it clear that the writers came up with this super-hive on the fly, showing a blatant disregard to the show's established canon.

This whole mess started with the Ori, and they are to blame for this mess. By giving Earth an opponent that was above and beyond even Anubis, the writers made it impossible for Earth to defeat them with it's own technology and resource capacity. Even the Asgard, who were superior in power to even Anubis, could do no better than tie with the Ori in battle. The writers solution? To make the Asgard give Earth a "legacy weapon", the last achievement of their science before blowing themselves, a weapon so horrifically powerful that it could wipe out Ori Motherships. The problem is that this made the Wraith a joke, since the Ori were designed to be a more powerful threat than the Wraith and superior to them one-on-one, and if the Asgard beam can destroy Ori Motherships, then it can ass-rape Wraith hives. The writers solution? Why, give the Wraith a mega ship that can resist the super-weapon. Terrible writing.

The Wraith were supposed to be inferior one-on-one to the Ancients, but this ship makes them far superior. I mean, Auroras are not as powerful as the Asgard-upgraded 304, evident by how easily the Daedalus ass-raped the Auroras in BAMSR - and yes, Asuran Auroras are as good as Ancient ones -, and yet the 304 had it's shield depleted to 20% after a few salvos from the super hive. This means the super-hive would one-shot-one-kill Auroras, essentially. It makes you wonder, though, why the Wraith bothered to use the ZPM they stole to power the cloning facility that makes weak-ass hives that get raped by drones in a few shots, instead of simply using that ZPM to power a super-hive. They would have won the war in days after that, as the super-hive would destroy Auroras in one hit, vanquishing the entire Ancient fleet in days. My estimate that the super-hive would destroy Auroras in one shot comes from the fact that a single salvo depleted Atlantis shield when powered by 3 ZPMs to 30%, meaning that the weaker shield of an Aurora powered by a single ZPM would be overwhemed in one shot. The only thing in SGverse that could defeat this monstrosity would be an O'Neil powered by a ZPM, as that would essentially be a 15 times larger version of the Odyssey.

OK, there are a couple of things to say.

First, I do agree that it is most unlikely that the Wraith would be better at exploiting Lantean power sources that the Lanteans have been using for millions of years.
Yes, Atlantis is possibly not meant to fly -for some reason, everytime it takes off, it shakes like it's going through an epileptic rage while we've never seen this from other ships, yet it has super boost we saw in Rising, so someone must not be using the stardrive properly- but that is not related to how they exploit power levels.
And if this were true, then their warships would absolutely steamroll any opposition, for there would be no reason to consider that these ships wouldn't be made to exploit ZPMs perfectly for combat, since it would be their main and unique purpose.

Secondly, that the Wraith may have never had such an advanced technology does not preclude the possibility that at some point, they upgraded all their assets to a certain level, not super-wank-hive level, but something midway.

Thirdly, yes, that super hiveship, and pretty much all that goes with it in this episode, is beyond words to say how mediocre and poorly thought it was. Battle are completely ridiculous and illogical, force-staged to involve certain fan-pandering ships or groups of ships, without the involvement of very obvious and expected other tactics or defenses: Caldwell sitting there and waiting for the slow ass bolts to hit his ship, Area 51 having ZERO defenses aside from the F-302s, drones not capable of reaching the moon despite the fact that they can drift that far and that FTL communication systems can cover countless light years, the chair not being protected by a shield, being in a vulgar warehouse on the surface, Darts wasting their time instead of ramming that place all at once, the Wraith actually not even using a nuke to do so (com'on, only Earth is allowed to have nukes in that damn show or what??), etc.
And once again, Radek and Rodney manage to make work a tech the Lanteans couldn't fix... never mind the Lantean's super brains and the fact that they came with the tech first and had, what? possibly years to think it out. Surely more than a few minutes in all cases!

I also dislike it because it seems that once again, a ZPM is not an "ordinary" power source, but that on the contrary, it's an excuse to reach new powers and efficiencies for all techs, the unlocking cheat-code-god-mode-power-boosting trick that it is. It literally powerlevels all techs out of thin air, regardless of the more than likely and logical inherent limitation of each technology.

No, here, it seems that each tech is literally under used up to the point whereas it routinely runs on terawatts or petawatts of energy (kilotons or megatons per second), it can finely exploit the full potential of supernova power sources once plugged in.

And you may say... but maybe the Wraith systems don't use the ZPMs at full level?
And yet a Wraith ship with one ZPM can outdo in a few minutes a cityship which has proven impenetrable in the past, while it's running on three of them?

Ok, let's say I'm wrong on this last part, that the Wraith ship was certainly NOT using the best out of its ZPM.
But then, why and how did it manage to threaten Atlantis so much then?



Here are some questions that need to be solved first.

1. Was Atlantis' shield working under perfect conditions? It can take incredible punishments, but we remember that after going through troubles in season 5, the shield did loose some emitters or something, and possibly other things.

2. How much energy was left in the ZPMs when they arrived at Earth? Actually, how much was left before they departed. I admit I didn't follow the count of ZPMs and their charges for season 3 and 4, and I don't even remember where they got them from.

3. Did someone forget to switch off the wormhole drive once they arrived at Earth? Or could they? Maybe the system was still sucking out lots of energy?

4. As suggested by someone else earlier on, since that wormhole drive is more or less non standard, power was manually rerouted to it.




So we could argue that while the superhive was using like equivalent of gigatons/teratons/petatons of energy or more from this ZPM, Atlantis, on the other side, couldn't reroute power to normal combat systems, like shields and drones.

Oh, besides, I'm really full of the drone wank. Not only it was stupid to have Sheppard put a hole in that ship with one missile, but why the hell didn't Beckett fly the drones through that hole again? And even more, wasn't Atlantis supposed to have other defenses systems besides the drones?
I really wish the TPTB could work a bit more and find something different for a change.

[Dr. Daedalus]

Or that there was actual damage suffered and this was why they crahsed. We've seen already in previous episodes that damage can cause even more severe efficiency issues to occur.

Remember in Lifeline the power conduits were damaged and still one ZPM was enough to power the sublight engines to a limited extent. The city did not need near its takeoff speed to just move into a higher orbit.

The question then becomes what the normal power draw is under ideal conditions. In other words how much power do they normally draw when the city has 3 zpms and everything is hunky dory.

It varies. If you need full thrust the stardrive requires 67% to around 90% power output of the ZPMs. It goes down from there depending on how much thrust you need.

So we can now agree that there's two places where the hive has efficiency advantages:

-engines
-defences (powered shields vs armour).

Yes, we can agree on that.

I'd also throw is subsystems. The hive runs fine on just it's normal reactors but hasn't it beent he case in the past that without a zpm atlantis couldn't even use what you'd think would be low draw systems like sensors.

Atlantis could use long range sensors before they had a ZPM. They were able to see the hive ships coming at the end of season 1. Subsystems worked fine on Atlantis without a ZPM.

This is true but you should know that Atlantis' takeoff thrust is likely not going to look that impressive in a space battle context in terms of acceleration.

All Atlantis needed to do was pull up. They did not need full thrust. Even after the battle with the Super-Hive Dr. Beckett was unable to pull Atlantis up.

The only problem that remains for me is the fact that this is completely unprovven, seems to be contradicted by the episode, and it's introduction amounts to saying "atlantis actually fought this battle with 2/3 hands tied behind it's back". Given the impact this would have on guaging the actual strength of the participants here don't you think it merits something more in the way of proof than just your say so?

My proof is that my explanation preserves previous episodes canon. Both my explanation and yours preserve this episode's canon. However, your explanation does not preserve the previous episodes canon.

you forget that the super-hive had a far superior hull... that was mentioned in the episode, when rodney said and i quote" when they'r done, my guess is that that hull will be all but impenetrable" which means that the drones didnt pass through the hull like they used to, exploding in the middle of a wall doing some impressive damage like firecrackers in a bottle, but rather exploding on the surface mearly scratching the "skin" of the hive.

You are right. I agree now that Atlantis could not beat the Super-Hive even when fully powered. What I am saying is that the Super-Hive should not have beaten Atlantis that quickly if Atlantis was fully powered.

Dr. Daedalus

[SoulReaver]

You are right. I agree now that Atlantis could not beat the Super-Hive even when fully powered

yeah but if the superhive's hull strength had been enhanced by only 1 zpm, then Atlantis' weapons should still have been able to do some serious damage
edit> especially since the wraith certainly didn't spend all the zpm's energy into upgrading the hull

[Mister Oragahn]

It varies. If you need full thrust the stardrive requires 67% to around 90% power output of the ZPMs. It goes down from there depending on how much thrust you need.

I doubt that.
A ZPM can reinforce shields so a 304 can cross the path of super coronal mass ejection. That's levels of energy and hurt rarely ever met in Stargate safe in some conditions.
A ZPM can also be depleted at a rate of 2% per second, which means it can get entirely dry from 100% to 0% in 50 seconds.
The ZPM output cannot be the problem here.
It does not take much energy to slowly rise Atlantis actually, in light of what other alien ships do without effort.

Atlantis could use long range sensors before they had a ZPM. They were able to see the hive ships coming at the end of season 1. Subsystems worked fine on Atlantis without a ZPM.

On the same hand, they were badly tuned and didn't work well to scan the planet's oceans (Grace Under Pressure), until in season 5, they repaired or tuned them, can't remember, and then they could scan the whole planet and through it without any trouble.

You are right. I agree now that Atlantis could not beat the Super-Hive even when fully powered. What I am saying is that the Super-Hive should not have beaten Atlantis that quickly if Atlantis was fully powered.

Actually, since there is no viable technical reason for a cityship powered by 3 ZPMs not to be able to do all things at once, I don't think we can tell for sure.
Nor that it matters much, considering the low amount of care for consistency that went into this.
We could speak about it for ages and never reach some kind of agreement, mainly because the canon does not even agree with itself.

[Quadhelix]

good you answered the question. so you meant "emitters"
during battle the emitters are irrelevant when it comes to the shield power status, that only depends on the shield generators (which act like some sort of "buffer" between power source & shield emitter). in a cityship the zpm feeds the shield emitter directly (ie. no shield generator) meaning as long as there's juice left in the module the shield stays up

Where did you get the idea that "Shield Generators" have anything to do with power generation? If that where the case, then the shields would be off the ships power grid. Also, what you are describing is either a capacitor or power cell, not a generator.

In any case, you are wrong about the shield emitters being irrelevant. First, we have already seen Atlantis's shields fail because the shield emitters couldn't handle the strain. Indeed, there is no reason to think that when someone says, "shields at X%" that they are referring to power reserves. They could mean that the shields are are weakening because the shield emitters are damaged, or that the shields themselves have some internal structure that is being disrupted by enemy weapons fire.

odd, in the siege those emitters didn't take the slightest damage

A. Presumably, a ZPM powered Hive has more firepower than a small group of regular Hiveships. This goes double when considering the evidence that not all of the Hives in "The Siege" were firing on the city.
B. "The Siege" took place before Atlantis's shield emitters got fried in "First Contact." In other words, the shield emitters were at something resembling peak condition in "The Siege," whereas they were most likely patchwork repairs in "Enemy at the Gate."

a weakened shield has nothing to do with a damaged emitter anyway

And you know this...how?

optimising power consumption of a system doesn't mean modifying all those conduits that provide power to that system. those are just conduits. like getting a better quality motor doesn't mean changing the car. and worst case scenario even if the lanteans had to do crack open their city, those are advanced aliens not terrans. this ain't 21th century earth this is SG, like ST. making stuff ain't a big deal, fixing it even less so

True, but if you designed something to run off a V12 (or whatever), it would be really had to optimize it to run off a small hand crank.

and that's assuming this even calls for an upgrade in the hardware department at all. hell you get shareware apps that optimise the cpu's power usage (so as to reduce cpu temp. good for inveterate overclockers). not saying it's the same thing of course but you get the point

Interesting point.

teleportation <-> energy to matter conversion <-> matter replicators. not that much of a difference between the 2 types of tech. the asgard had these things long ago

Actually, we have no idea how long long the Asgard have had beaming technology. Also, my point with regard to Ring Transporters and Stargates is that both of them seem to fairly indiscriminant about what they transport. Unlike Asgard beams, which can beam up a single person in a group, Ring Transporters beam up everything enclosed in the Rings.

Furthermore, we have seen in "The Quest" that even post-Ascension Ancient matter replication technology needs to be much larger than the object being replicated, meaning that pre-Ascension matter replicators, if they existed at all, must have been massive.

besides the ancients did build The (original-accept-no-substitute) Replicators. remember those "self assembling buildings" projects that today's nano-scientists are in such a tizzy about ? same thing here only far more 1337. I say the ancients had no problem building big stuff quickly if they wanted to

Which explains why Atlantis is made of Lego bricks.

your 2nd theory would suggest that all they'd need to make a zpm is to create an empty zpm shell (doesn't take much power) and just snap it shut, the space within would have all the energy.

Well, no, because you are discounting the power requirements of "pinching off" a new universe from our own. After all, the reason that the ZPMs use a "pocket universe" instead of real space is because of the hazardous exotic particle generation. As long as the exotic particles are being generated in a region of space that has been folded off from rest of the universe and kept there, there is no real problem save that the "pocket universe" will eventually become saturated and collapse.

that zpm in turn could be used to make other empty zpms & so on. this would be ridiculously easy.

Hence why the Ancients would not have had much concern for power consumption: although individual ZPMs would deplete, the Ancients would have another ready to replace. The only time that this scheme would have failed was during the war with the Wraith, when they found themselves facing a shortage of ZPMs.

they wouldn't even need Trinity as they'd already be extracting energy from (an enclosed portion of) normal space

Except that Project Arcturus was created during the war with the Wraith, when the Ancients' massive power generation advantage was proving insufficient. ZPMs were limited by the finite region that they could tap: not a significant limitation when you can easily make more, but a serious problem when you are loosing a war of attrition.

theory #1 is more likely, the miniverse is created ex nihilo like a mini-bigbang (meaning a maxi-source of energy to make this happen - maybe black hole ?)

Then how did the Asurans create their ZPMs?

even the maximum yield torpedos have ain't anywhere near as impressive as a detonating zpm which can destroy at the very least a planet and at most a solar system (depending on the ep & on who's doing the calculations -). besides zpe is zpe, so an explosion should be even greater with a torpedo since it's bigger than a zpm (which means that logically the miniverse within is bigger (unless the miniverse "size" is fixed hence all zpms having same size in SG in which case torpedos should at least have the same effect as zpms)

You make several flagrant factual errors here. First, Quantum Torpedoes do not use a miniverse like a ZPM, it draws ZPE directly from real space the way Project Arcturus does. ZPE is everywhere; the only reason that ZPMs draw power from a pocket universe instead of real space is because of the danger of exotic particle generation.

Second, to see why Project Arcturus can destroy solar systems when a Quantum Torpedo cannot even destroy a large asteroid, imagine ZPE as water in a well. That is not a bad analogy, as ZPE is everywhere, so the only issue is finding some way of tapping it. Using this analogy, Project Arcturus is a nuclear-powered, industrial-grade pumping plant designed to pump the "well water" to a town of thirsty people. A Quantum Torpedo, on the other hand, is a 1400s hand-pump put down by a farmer.

"why wouldn't they" ? because that would make this supposedly uber-advanced race even more idiotic than the "most races" you're talking about. I really dunno how else to explain this because this is so bloody obvious, imo.

If it is "obvious," but you cannot explain it, then there exists the possibility that it is wrong. Take the "obvious" position that space and time are fixed and independent. This seems quite obvious and was accepted as such for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Nevertheless, we eventually learned that space and time are not fixed, that they are dependent on velocity and gravity.

all the more so than in this case even their powersources although very impressive provided nowhere near unlimited energy (ie. zpms do not "eliminate power consumption concerns").

While I agree that a single ZPM does not eliminate power concerns, it seems quite apparent that the Ancients didn't really have that much of a shortage of ZPMs.

I'm not saying they would maximise efficiency like crazy but at least to a reasonable level; any smart race with a modicum of common would realize this was necessary just in case they found themselves in a tight spot & short on power since evn their best powersources will get depleted eventually, and get be depleted prematurely (this happened to the lanteans even before the war btw)

Yes, but from the shear number of ZPMs floating around the Pegasus galaxy, it seems likely that the Ancients never really had a reason to consider the possibility of a ZPM shortage until the war, at which point is was too late.

I'm only begging you to understand :|

You are assuming that the Wraith new about ZPE to make an argument as to why they would have discovered ZPE. That is begging the question.

the way you put it this would be a vicious circle from which even (rl) humans would never have escaped.

We discovered Quantum Mechanics only because we investigated certain "anomalies" that turned out to be very important and revealing. Such anomalies include Black Body Radiation, the Double Slit Experiment, and the Photoelectric Effect. If the Wraith, due to lack of interest (or whatever reason) failed to follow up on these experiments, they most likely would never uncover the principles that define Quantum Physics.

preposterous. thinking outside the box is the whole point behind research, all it takes is necessity & curiosity (ratio between those two can vary)

Which, again, assumes that the Wraith inherited the human trait of curiosity.

so what, we know there were wraith scientists. we haven't seen the tollan or even the asgard as "serious researchers" either (the former are supposed to have debunked quantum physics, so the latter probably did the same) in fact none of the aliens outside the ancients were depicted as such, yet for all of them their "mere knowledge of the universe" (to quote one of them) was way beyond terran level

Actually, the Asgard have shown themselves to be explorers and researchers (hence the Replicators, which they discovered and decided to research).

I said that striving beyond the former would sooner or later lead to knowledge of the latter

How much Quatum Physics is necessary for the creation of a hyperdrive? Furthermore, how do we know that the Wraith didn't just copy a Lantean or Pegasus-human hyperdrive?



As a side note, the Wraith's possession of teleportation technology would imply that they do possess knowledge of Quantum Physics.

hey man I tried. but it's kinda hard to explain why blatantly absurd is absurd

Argumentum ad lapidem.

[SoulReaver]

Where did you get the idea that "Shield Generators" have anything to do with power generation?

not power generation

If that where the case, then the shields would be off the ships power grid. Also, what you are describing is either a capacitor or power cell, not a generator.

that's what they mean by generator (what else would it be if it's neither the main generator nor the emitter)

In any case, you are wrong about the shield emitters being irrelevant. First, we have already seen Atlantis's shields fail because the shield emitters couldn't handle the strain.

even if that happened (?), the shields failed. they didn't weaken

Indeed, there is no reason to think that when someone says, "shields at X%" that they are referring to power reserves. They could mean that the shields are are weakening because the shield emitters are damaged,

which is simply another layer of technobabble that has absolutely no grounds. cite one ep in any sci-fi series where they say the shields are down to x% (x>0) and also refer to the shield emitters. at most they mention the generators, at the very least they mention...nothing
besides, in your scenario the shields would fail altogether, without weakening

or that the shields themselves have some internal structure that is being disrupted by enemy weapons fire.

immaterial (the shields, thus the argument)

A. Presumably, a ZPM powered Hive has more firepower than a small group of regular Hiveships.

agreed

This goes double when considering the evidence that not all of the Hives in "The Siege" were firing on the city.

of course, makes sense. some of the hives must have been "spectating"

> silverrasta@hive#4 > u go ahead guys this is 2 unfair 4 the humans
> toddy_bear@hive#7 > lol
> silverrasta@hive#4 has left the game
> toddy_bear@hive#7 has left the game

B. "The Siege" took place before Atlantis's shield emitters got fried in "First Contact." In other words, the shield emitters were at something resembling peak condition in "The Siege," whereas they were most likely patchwork repairs in "Enemy at the Gate."

so it just so happens that of all the damage even those gaping holes in the hull & various kinda damage that occurred over the course of eps, the emitter was the only thing not covered by the magic reset button. bummer. tough luck eh ?

And you know this...how?

like I said emitter status has nothing to do with shield strength. a damaged emitter wouldn't...emit. how to explain this...if I battered your motor with a baseball bat would this mean your car would run slower ? no, it would stop working altogether -_-

Actually, we have no idea how long long the Asgard have had beaming technology. Also, my point with regard to Ring Transporters and Stargates is that both of them seem to fairly indiscriminant about what they transport. Unlike Asgard beams, which can beam up a single person in a group, Ring Transporters beam up everything enclosed in the Rings.

this must be a matter of fine-tuning. in the former case the beam (or field or whatever) just covers the whole area, in the latter the field can be set to cover several smaller user-defined areas thus resulting in a far more precise teleportation system analogous to those in 24th century ST. understandably this would call for some hefty cpu-power, but that doesn't necessarily imply a different type of technology

Furthermore, we have seen in "The Quest" that even post-Ascension Ancient matter replication technology needs to be much larger than the object being replicated, meaning that pre-Ascension matter replicators, if they existed at all, must have been massive.

not that size matters much in the present case, but we never got a glimpse of even part of the hardware behind this tech during that ep. all we saw were the holograms, that was it

Which explains why Atlantis is made of Lego bricks.

hey visually it looked identical to the replicator city. besides the replicators we quite prompt in repairing that huge hole made by the bomb weren't they (unless they also had access to the magic repair button, but I'd be fine with that too)

Well, no, because you are discounting the power requirements of "pinching off" a new universe from our own. After all, the reason that the ZPMs use a "pocket universe" instead of real space is because of the hazardous exotic particle generation.

maybe. then again those exotic particles would interact with the inner surface of the container, which is made of normal (non-exotic particles of) matter. those particles being exotic, even the lanteans would've had no way to predict how they'd react with the zpm container. maybe nothing noticeable, maybe a mouse fart, maybe a planet-busting explosion
perhaps extracting energy from those specially made spaces does not produce exotic particles

Hence why the Ancients would not have had much concern for power consumption: although individual ZPMs would deplete, the Ancients would have another ready to replace.

ah but not if pinching off a new space meant a lot of energy in the 1st place, just like you suggested

Except that Project Arcturus was created during the war with the Wraith, when the Ancients' massive power generation advantage was proving insufficient. ZPMs were limited by the finite region that they could tap: not a significant limitation when you can easily make more, but a serious problem when you are loosing a war of attrition.

well yeah which just goes to show that making zpms wasn't exactly a cakewalk. those things were hard to make, if only from a power point of view ( ) & not plentiful

[SoulReaver]

Then how did the Asurans create their ZPMs?

? the same way the lanteans did obviously, so I'll requote

theory #1 is more likely, the miniverse is created ex nihilo like a mini-bigbang (meaning a maxi-source of energy to make this happen - maybe black hole ?)

it's kinda obvious the PG replicators also possessed a good portion of ancient knowledge

You make several flagrant factual errors here. First, Quantum Torpedoes do not use a miniverse like a ZPM, it draws ZPE directly from real space the way Project Arcturus does. ZPE is everywhere; the only reason that ZPMs draw power from a pocket universe instead of real space is because of the danger of exotic particle generation.

in that case either the universe would be in jeopardy every time those things were fired (exotic particles), or the ST-version of zpe does not have that exotic particle problem in which case yet another difference between the rules applying to ST & SG, and more of a reason a comparison between the 2 verses would be futile (eg for matter/antimatter for example)

Second, to see why Project Arcturus can destroy solar systems when a Quantum Torpedo cannot even destroy a large asteroid, imagine ZPE as water in a well. That is not a bad analogy, as ZPE is everywhere, so the only issue is finding some way of tapping it. Using this analogy, Project Arcturus is a nuclear-powered, industrial-grade pumping plant designed to pump the "well water" to a town of thirsty people. A Quantum Torpedo, on the other hand, is a 1400s hand-pump put down by a farmer.

possible, of course this is if the torpedoes do draw their juice from real space instead of a self-contained portion of it. since those are mobile systems (like zpms, except they're fired), I wouldn't be too sure about it. no online official Star Trek manual to confirm this unfortunately
big problem with your theory is that torpedoes are explosive devices ie. they release all their energy instantaneously. so the pump analogy would be erroneous. water bombs would be a better comparison

If it is "obvious," but you cannot explain it, then there exists the possibility that it is wrong. Take the "obvious" position that space and time are fixed and independent. This seems quite obvious and was accepted as such for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Nevertheless, we eventually learned that space and time are not fixed, that they are dependent on velocity and gravity.

unfortunately we'll only know for sure once we have the G.U.T

While I agree that a single ZPM does not eliminate power concerns, it seems quite apparent that the Ancients didn't really have that much of a shortage of ZPMs.

on the contrary as I pointed out it turns out they couldn't have been that easy to make, thus they couldn't have been that abundant (unless the ancients were making & hoarding them during all those millennia in anticipation of a possible war ^_^). besides Todd himself said those things were very rare, so that settles it

Yes, but from the shear number of ZPMs floating around the Pegasus galaxy, it seems likely that the Ancients never really had a reason to consider the possibility of a ZPM shortage until the war, at which point is was too late.

see ^

You are assuming that the Wraith new about ZPE to make an argument as to why they would have discovered ZPE. That is begging the question.

no I said they knew about quantum physics (a necessary prerequisite as you correctly pointed out). in fact it is you who are begging the question, you said they wouldn't know about zpe unless they researched quantum physics, and that they wouldn't research this unless they already knew about zpe. that is begging...to have your own argument used against you :/

We discovered Quantum Mechanics only because we investigated certain "anomalies" that turned out to be very important and revealing. Such anomalies include Black Body Radiation, the Double Slit Experiment, and the Photoelectric Effect. If the Wraith, due to lack of interest (or whatever reason) failed to follow up on these experiments, they most likely would never uncover the principles that define Quantum Physics.

'cept that this is a huge "if" (not to mention unsubstantiated). you're willing to accept an advanced space-faring race missing out on a fundamental chapter of science just because they happen to like feeding on humans hey that's okey. I don't. btw watched ST-TNG Darmok ?

Which, again, assumes that the Wraith inherited the human trait of curiosity.

yup this assumes that the wraith - who are human at the core - inherited the human gene of curiosity. I'm fine with that. et tu ?

Actually, the Asgard have shown themselves to be explorers and researchers (hence the Replicators, which they discovered and decided to research).

hey you're assuming the wraith even though they were a technologically advanced race somehow skipped a vital area of physics. from there on any wild theory is acceptable including for the asgard :| maybe they just liked to travel a lot & were fascinated by spiderlike legobots which they wanted to research but only to be able to play with them

How much Quatum Physics is necessary for the creation of a hyperdrive? Furthermore, how do we know that the Wraith didn't just copy a Lantean or Pegasus-human hyperdrive?

who cares how much. the fact they knew the basics (principle of uncertainty, schrodinger equation etc.) is what this is about, from just 2 equations a host of new ones would be deduced. just like a simple axiom concerning natural integers in maths gave us the field of complex numbers & a wide array of branches ranging from algebra to calculus. ain't dat whack ?
btw reverse-engineering alien tech does mean a thorough understanding of it & thus of its underlying principles

As a side note, the Wraith's possession of teleportation technology would imply that they do possess knowledge of Quantum Physics.

good

Argumentum ad lapidem.

semper idem, sed aliter :/
k then we'll go with the idea of having an entire fossil fuel plant powering a desktop PC making sense. lol

[Ouroboros]

Remember in Lifeline the power conduits were damaged and still one ZPM was enough to power the sublight engines to a limited extent. The city did not need near its takeoff speed to just move into a higher orbit.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking happened here as well. The power conduits got damaged so even though it's got the power since the ZPMs aren't depleted it still can't get enough of the actual power to the engines, unless maybe if it directed all the power available there to overcome the losses.

That's why Beckett says he can fight back or pull up, he'd have to bias the power distribution toward either the engines or the weapons because there wasn't enough to go around to power both at once anymore thanks to the damage in the conduits.

It varies. If you need full thrust the stardrive requires 67% to around 90% power output of the ZPMs. It goes down from there depending on how much thrust you need.

I doubt that.
A ZPM can reinforce shields so a 304 can cross the path of super coronal mass ejection. That's levels of energy and hurt rarely ever met in Stargate safe in some conditions.
A ZPM can also be depleted at a rate of 2% per second, which means it can get entirely dry from 100% to 0% in 50 seconds.
The ZPM output cannot be the problem here.
It does not take much energy to slowly rise Atlantis actually, in light of what other alien ships do without effort.

I don't know if we can really use the drain rate from the alternate universe vortex for every situation.

If they could actually utilize power at that kind of rate under ordinary conditions you'd expect some absolutely epic accelerations from the city among other things. Instead though it's really slow and ponderous and for some reason this takes ****loads of power to accomplish. It's possible that the shields/weapons and engines all can't actually handle the full output of even 1 ZPM pumping out energy at 100% of its potential rate and that the city uses 3 of them for reasons having more to do with lognevity, redundancy or just balancing the output given to major systems better.

This would also explain how McKay overloaded the replicator atlantis by messing with the zpms. He just opened the taps to far and the outflow of energy eventually overloaded one or more of the systems it was flowing into and caused that system to explode.

As far as this situation is concerned if this is true it would mean that the city then is at a disadvantage because the hives systems can actually utilize more of the zpm's output than it's can safely, all be it with less overall longevity.

Basically Atlantis can suck out the power really fast but its actual systems like engines, shields etc can't actually utilize that much power at once without overloading. The hive's advantage then comes into play in that it's components can survive being run at a higher percentage of the ZPM's potential output, mainly the weapons.

I'm pretty sure this idea has some holes in it, I can already think of a few mainly having to do with why certain system can't run on 1 zpm at all, but it's one potential explanation I figured I'd just throw out there anyway.

I still tend to favour the idea that it just wastes ****loads of the power it extracts from ZPMs somehow myself as I think it's a tighter explanation and fits pretty good with otherwise stupid things like them commenting so often about minor systems like consoles actually mattering in terms of overall power consumption.

Atlantis could use long range sensors before they had a ZPM. They were able to see the hive ships coming at the end of season 1. Subsystems worked fine on Atlantis without a ZPM.

I must have been thinking of some other system other than sensors then. I know I can remember that in some of the earlier episodes they would regularly complain about the power consumption of things you'd think wouldn't use that much power. I think it was in the opener for example where they told people to stop exploring the city because having the lights and consoles and things like that switch on was actually going to make some non trivial difference to how long what was left of the shield would last.

All Atlantis needed to do was pull up. They did not need full thrust. Even after the battle with the Super-Hive Dr. Beckett was unable to pull Atlantis up.

I know, I was just pointing out that even the takeoff thrust which apparently uses a lot of power isn't really going to look very fast in space accelleration terms. If the city's conduits were damaged again I could easily see them not being able to pull up once they got caught in the planet's gravity as well as keep the shield up and fire back at the hive. There's also the possability that Beckett was already shunting extra power to the increasingly battered shields since well, if those fail, the other things don't really matter all that much anymore and just didn't have enough to spare for the drives anymore.

My proof is that my explanation preserves previous episodes canon. Both my explanation and yours preserve this episode's canon. However, your explanation does not preserve the previous episodes canon.

My explanation is based mostly on the idea that even the comparitively weaksauce wraith ships from the seige were still able to do considerable damage to the cityshield. In this case actually draining the entire ZPM in less than a week. Where I think the problem you're having might be is that you have trouble believing that he superhive could do in a few minutes what it would have taken the fleet of other hives weeks to do (3 zpms).

We've already delt with some of this with the discussion about how atlantis wasn't [i]really[i] going to be able to devote 3zpms to shields here but there is another part I didn't go into yet.

The superhive didn't really do what the wraith fleet did in seige. The fleet in seige wore the shield down over time by gradually wearing away the powersource powering the shield because their weapon's weren't powerful enough to just overpower the shield. That's the difference here, because that's what the superhive did. It didn't drain the ZPMs the same way the seige fleet did, it didn't have to, because it's weapons were powerful enough to tax atlantis' shield so badly that the shield, rather than the zpms powering it are what failed.

There's been a lot of theories kicked around as to why this happens, both in the case of shields on other ships and in the case of the exploding gate in "first contact", which was way less than a ZPM's output but still popped the shield. I personally figure it's just a question of power over time overtaxing the shield's components. Basically there's some threshhold of energy handling that a shield is capable of say per second and if you exceed that capacity that's when you start to actually damage the shield itself, likely be overheating/overloading the components projecting it.

What this means is that singular powerful hits like large nuclear bombs or overcharged wraith blobs are a lot harder for the shields to handle than multiple smaller shots that would add up to the same yeild spread out over a long time. In other words it's not just how much energy the shield can eat up in total but how quickly it has to deal with it.

A lot of people tend to think of shields mentally sort of like "hitpoints". I've got 1000 shields hitpoints so I can take 1000 damage, either as one big shot that does 1000 damage or 100 little ones that do 10 damage at a rate of one shot per second. I basically reject that model. The way I look at it the single big shot is a hell of a lot worse because when that hits the shield has to deal with all 1000 points all at once. Whatever means it uses to redirect/reraidiate/defect energy is going to be taxed 100 times more in that moment that shot hits than it will be when any one of those little 10 damage shots hit.

So what we have then with the superhive is a ship that fires just as fast or faster than another hive but where all the shots are much much more powerful. What this does then is pump the shield full of more energy than it can handle in a given timeframe and so the shield itself starts to overheat/overload and become damaged and eventualy falls. In this case it's not a lack of power going into it that causes it to fail but the fact that it's being placed under too much strain by the power being fired at it than it can handle in that short of a timeframe. Then you add in the fact that it seems like the Wraith actually have some sort of special property to their weapon bolts that makes them even harder and more taxing for the shield to handle than just their sheer raw energy content and it only gets worse, especially if the superhives anti shield effect is also boosted in effectivness, which I find fairly likely.

You are right. I agree now that Atlantis could not beat the Super-Hive even when fully powered. What I am saying is that the Super-Hive should not have beaten Atlantis that quickly if Atlantis was fully powered.

Even I didn't like that part of it myself, going on personal preference. The hive didn't just beat atlantis, it pretty much kicked atlantis' ass and took its lunch money. It was definately more over the top than I would have wanted, but so were the 304 beams and the Horizon platform and the Dakra device and the Asgard core and the Ark of Truth so I suppose we should expect this sort of thing from them by now.

I'm sure universe will include something that can 1 shot superhives, I just hope it's not also something that's "made in the USA".

[Quadhelix]

that's what they mean by generator (what else would it be if it's neither the main generator nor the emitter)

So by generator, they mean "Capacitor"? Why are they called "generators" if they are, in fact, capacitors or power cells? Why not call them "shield capacitors" or "shield batteries" or "shield cells."

Let me try this again:

Shield Generator=Shield Emitter. The two are the exact same thing. The terms are synonymous. In this case, why are the called shield "generators"? Because the "generate" the shield.

even if that happened (?), the shields failed. they didn't weaken

It happened in "First Contact."

which is simply another layer of technobabble that has absolutely no grounds. cite one ep in any sci-fi series where they say the shields are down to x% (x>0) and also refer to the shield emitters. at most they mention the generators, at the very least they mention...nothing
besides, in your scenario the shields would fail altogether, without weakening

If the shield em

immaterial (the shields, thus the argument)

Um, no. As you have already pointed out, none of the four known fundamental forces can account for "shields." This means that, unless shields use the Electroweak or Electronuclear force, that the shields are actually some sort of particle field. If that is the case, then it is indeed possible for the shields to have some sort of internal structure that can be damaged by enemy fire.

Just because something is not visible does not mean that it is not present.

of course, makes sense. some of the hives must have been "spectating"

Well there is no reason to thing that a Hiveship could keep firing for days, so they would have been cycling between Hives, some 4-7 firing while the remainder cooled their weapons and recharged their weapons' capacitors.

Screencaps from the episode are somewhat ambiguous about this:

Spoiler:

Of the four Cruisers, only one is firing. Do the other three start firing moments later? I don't know. Of the four Hives, one isn't firing. Given the screencaps leading up to this, I would suspect that that Hive started firing a moment later, but I cannot be certain.

so it just so happens that of all the damage even those gaping holes in the hull & various kinda damage that occurred over the course of eps, the emitter was the only thing not covered by the magic reset button.

It was also the only time they didn't have Ancients or robo-Ancients running around fixing stuff.

like I said emitter status has nothing to do with shield strength. a damaged emitter wouldn't...emit. how to explain this...if I battered your motor with a baseball bat would this mean your car would run slower ? no, it would stop working altogether

That depends on how badly you damaged the motor. If you just broke a couple of the spark plugs, it would run slower. If I had ten engines and you broke three of them...I have no basis to say how well it would run.

hey visually it looked identical to the replicator city. besides the replicators we quite prompt in repairing that huge hole made by the bomb weren't they (unless they also had access to the magic repair button, but I'd be fine with that too)

I was kidding.

maybe. then again those exotic particles would interact with the inner surface of the container, which is made of normal (non-exotic particles of) matter. those particles being exotic, even the lanteans would've had no way to predict how they'd react with the zpm container. maybe nothing noticeable, maybe a mouse fart, maybe a planet-busting explosion
perhaps extracting energy from those specially made spaces does not produce exotic particles

Actually, I was thinking that, as with the Miller Spacetime Bridge, the Ancients could probably control the flow of exotic particles back across the link between the pocket universe and the ZPM.

ah but not if pinching off a new space meant a lot of energy in the 1st place, just like you suggested

True, but there is no way saying just how much energy such a process would consume, so it is possible that each ZPM has enough power to make quite a few more.

well yeah which just goes to show that making zpms wasn't exactly a cakewalk. those things were hard to make, if only from a power point of view ( ) & not plentiful

True, but as long as the Ancients could (during peacetime) make a new one when the old one was running low, they would never really have any long-term concerns about power consumption. It was only during the war with the Wraith, when they found themselves with a shortage of ZPMs, that they were unable to make up the difference.

the same way the lanteans did obviously, so I'll requote

My point was that the Asurans don't seem to have a lot of spare black holes lying about.

in that case either the universe would be in jeopardy every time those things were fired (exotic particles), or the ST-version of zpe does not have that exotic particle problem in which case yet another difference between the rules applying to ST & SG, and more of a reason a comparison between the 2 verses would be futile (eg for matter/antimatter for example)

Well, we saw in "Trinity" that when Project Arcturus is "booted up," there is no exotic particle generation. This means that the exotic particle generation occurs only when the ZPE tap is left running (not possible for a ZPE explosive) or drawing large amounts of ZPE (not possible with a primitive ZPE tap like a Quantum Torpedo).

possible, of course this is if the torpedoes do draw their juice from real space instead of a self-contained portion of it. since those are mobile systems (like zpms, except they're fired)

What does mobility have to do with anything? ZPMs draw ZPE from a pocket universe instead of real space due to the dangers of exotic particle generation, which is a non-issue with Quantum Torpedoes.

big problem with your theory is that torpedoes are explosive devices ie. they release all their energy instantaneously. so the pump analogy would be erroneous. water bombs would be a better comparison

It was a rough analogy to demonstrate a point: although Project Arcturus and Quantum Torpedoes both draw power from the same "well," Project Arcturus is many orders of magnitude more effective at doing so.

unfortunately we'll only know for sure once we have the G.U.T

No, we actually do know for sure that space and time are dependent on velocity and gravity. We can run experiments to demonstrate this. Indeed, GPS satellites have to compensate for this.

Oh yeah, GUT.

on the contrary as I pointed out it turns out they couldn't have been that easy to make, thus they couldn't have been that abundant (unless the ancients were making & hoarding them during all those millennia in anticipation of a possible war ^_^). besides Todd himself said those things were very rare, so that settles it

They're rare now because the only people who knew how to make them (the Ancients and the Asurans) are dead. As for the Ancients hording them, the Ancients probably saw no need to make new ZPMs on anything other than an "as-needed" basis. After all, what are the odds pf having a shortage of the things...

no I said they knew about quantum physics (a necessary prerequisite as you correctly pointed out). in fact it is you who are begging the question, you said they wouldn't know about zpe unless they researched quantum physics, and that they wouldn't research this unless they already knew about zpe. that is begging...to have your own argument used against you :/

I asked why the Wraith would have wanted to learn about Quantum Physics. Part of you answer was, "the wraith also had a damn good reason to invest in energy production tech." However, that assumes that they knew about ZPE, which would have required them to have known about Quantum Physics in order to actually want to investigate Quantum Physics.

hey you're assuming the wraith even though they were a technologically advanced race somehow skipped a vital area of physics.

Vital how? Do hyperdrives require an understand of quantum physics? Do rocket engines?

In any case, this whole argument is moot, because we both agree that, for whatever reason, the Wraith do know Quantum Physics, as evidenced by their possession of teleportation technology.