Milky War War Spoilers?

[SciFiRick]

Originally Posted by garhkal
Heck if i was the LA i would 'cloak it' then put some holo over it of an asteroid. Or better yet, since they KNOW our situation, perhaps they DO go the route of 'exposing' the program.
Goa'uld cloaking devices do no work like that. They can't cloak anything larger than an Alkesh. Apophis did it once with Ha'taks, but that was treated as something very rare and never happens again.

To expand on this further and IF Atlantis is still on Earth: The sensors on Atlantis is very powerful. Remember, they knew the Wraith were coming two weeks ahead of time and that was using one ZPM. If the Luciene Alliance was coming to Earth in force with the big ships (no cloaking ability) they would be detected. If they did have cloaking abilities I would think that they wouldn't cloak the ships until they had gotten closer to Earth. That IS assuming that the LA doesn't know about Atlantis or if they do know about Atlantis, they wouldn't necessarily know it's capabilities. The small ship that the LA used to transport Rush back to IcarusII is another matter.

[morbosfist]

But Earth can't really destroy the Alliance with 5-6 ships. There are 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Even if only 1% of them have habitable planets, it's still an awful lot of planets scattered around 100 000 light years of space. You can't police that with six ships, or even with sixty. Alliance bases can remain undiscovered forever and then some. They may lose much of their spaceship fleet in this kind of attack, but the fleet can be built a new. If they manage to take Earth out of business, it may be worth it in the Alliance's cost vs. benefit equation.

Scale isn't an issue. We know how the Alliance is set up. We know their outposts, their trade routes, major centers of production, most of their leaders and organization structure. If they attacked Earth, those placed would be leveled. Earth would retaliate, because when your enemy has proved they can and are willing to attack you, you do your best to put them out of commission. The only reason the Alliance isn't gone already is because Earth hasn't decided to do it. If Earth really wanted to do a first strike, the Alliance would be on the defensive in short order.

Would it though?

Let's say Earth is majorly devastated by LA sneak attacks (i.e. landing naquadah-filled cargo ships across the world and blowing them up), and we launch all but one of our ships - leaving one at Earth to prevent further attacks - to destroy everything LA in the Milky Way. How long do you think that will take?

Will the fleet have to split up into individual ships?

Furthermore, would we even try such a thing as it's nothing more than revenge and wasting valuable resources (unless our goal is not to destroy the LA but to cease their resources)?

I don't think it's that easy. Seems to me that the Asgard beam is really easy to take down if we're caught in a surprise attack, and after that it's just a matter of wearing down the shields; if the LA can command a large enough Hatak fleet against one of our ships and manage to take down the Asgard beam early enough, they could win.

See above for the how. To the issue of ship to ship, surprise only works if you know when and where the enemy is coming, and as proved by the Phoenix in the alternate timeline, you'd need to box in the ship to keep it from just jumping away to recover. When it comes down to it, the Hammond in SGU really wasn't in much danger at the time. It could have kept going. Hell, George Hammond felt that the Prometheus could take at least one Anubis Ha'tak (I forget the exact numbers, but at least one), and that ship was far inferior to a 304.

[PG15]

Scale isn't an issue. We know how the Alliance is set up. We know their outposts, their trade routes, major centers of production, most of their leaders and organization structure.

Do we? All of them?

On a side note, I always wonder how the Earth characters find out these things.

See above for the how. To the issue of ship to ship, surprise only works if you know when and where the enemy is coming, and as proved by the Phoenix in the alternate timeline, you'd need to box in the ship to keep it from just jumping away to recover. When it comes down to it, the Hammond in SGU really wasn't in much danger at the time. It could have kept going. Hell, George Hammond felt that the Prometheus could take at least one Anubis Ha'tak (I forget the exact numbers, but at least one), and that ship was far inferior to a 304.

If the existence of the LA is in danger, I would think they'd use every ship they have to destroy ours, and that's a lot more than three, I think. They would have plenty to box in our ships, considering that they've ceased a lot of Goa'uld hardware.

Oh, and something else I've thought of: there are LA people who's good at engineering. Remember Vala's monk friend? Traders rely on their smarts to survive; if one of them can come up with a few gadgets to take out their enemies, how do you know others can't?

What if all of, say, Daedalus's systems were temporarily wiped out by one of those energy pulses? It's done then, isn't it?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Morbos,

It's not really a victory for the Lucian Alliance if we destroy them in retaliation, which would happen. They can't go toe to toe with our fleet.

And we can find all their forces if they go to ground? And to back up PG15 we know everything there is to know about the LA? That being the case how were they able to pull off the sneak attack at Icarus? How were they able to find another Icarus planet and build a facility for contacting Destiny without our knowledge? It seems to me the LA may have assets and factilities Earth knows nothing about. Assuming otherwise would be foolish at best.

[morbosfist]

Do we? All of them?

On a side note, I always wonder how the Earth characters find out these things.

Spies like Telford, one would assume, only better at their jobs.

If the existence of the LA is in danger, I would think they'd use every ship they have to destroy ours, and that's a lot more than three, I think. They would have plenty to box in our ships, considering that they've seized a lot of Goa'uld hardware.

Given that they've only committed, at most, three Ha'tak vessels to any one engagement, they simply cannot be that well stocked on the big guns. But I'll concede that they may simply be stingy in how they deploy.

Oh, and something else I've thought of: there are LA people who's good at engineering. Remember Vala's monk friend? Traders rely on their smarts to survive; if one of them can come up with a few gadgets to take out their enemies, how do you know others can't?

What if all of, say, Daedalus's systems were temporarily wiped out by one of those energy pulses? It's done then, isn't it?

Vala's monk friend didn't work for the Alliance. They had to steal his ship from the Alliance. But fair point. One big problem, though. That weapon had the huge drawback of disabling the ship for almost a minute as it charged, and it was short range. 304s aren't going to be aiming to board like the Alkesh were, and it might not work on larger vessels.

And we can find all their forces if they go to ground? And to back up PG15 we know everything there is to know about the LA? That being the case how were they able to pull off the sneak attack at Icarus? How were they able to find another Icarus planet and build a facility for contacting Destiny without our knowledge? It seems to me the LA may have assets and factilities Earth knows nothing about. Assuming otherwise would be foolish at best.

Even if we don't know everything, we know enough to cripple them. The big dogs can't hide their activities as easily. Cut off the head, and those that remain will be disorganized.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Morbo,

Even if we don't know everything, we know enough to cripple them. The big dogs can't hide their activities as easily. Cut off the head, and those that remain will be disorganized.

Which is why we went out and crippled the LA after they destroyed the important Earth base at the first Icarus planet?

[morbosfist]

That's an outpost, not Earth itself. And Earth has been ruining their operations for quite a while now. If it comes down to an attack on Earth, Earth would hit back. The only reason they haven't is because Earth isn't in the habit of going out and destroying an entire organization directly.

[Shan Bruce Lee]

Advanced weapons suddenly lose their advantage when your enemy has more numbers

Nu uh, otherwise the Wraith would've outlasted the... oh.

[Shan Bruce Lee]

I kinda hated them mentioning that because it just made me want an SG-1 movie we're probably not gonna get.

[nx01a]

I want to see more space battles!

Having said that... I've never taken the Lucian Alliance seriously. If they were to devastate Earth AND reveal the existence of aliens and the stargates to the general Terran population, they'll do what no other enemy in Stargate has been able to do. It would certainly make them less of a joke to me. What I DO like about them is that they're not aliens, they're baseline humans. That makes them all the more dangerous and the one enemy that might actually succeed in doing Earth some serious damage. Now, where was I? Oh, yes.

I want to see more space battles! Maybe the LA have designed a new class of ships better able to stand up to the Daedalus class ships! Those Ha'taks are getting kinda old. Oh, for more space battles!

[Eternal Density]

But what if the Leather Alliance find the next Ancient Super-Wepon before we do?

[nx01a]

That would certainly be interesting. 'Interesting' as in 'bad for Earth'.

[Descended]

People seem to think that the Lucian Alliance (who are human) are some huge massive organization that has an incredibly large population to draw on just because it controls multiple planets. However, you have to remember that most MW planets have very small populations of humans (brought there by Goa'ulds to serve them) - Earth has by far to largest population of humans in the galaxy as evidenced by the comments of the System Lords when they came to Earth in SG:Continuum and were shocked that humans were allowed "to breed to those numbers"

Most LA planets probably only have a couple hundred thousand people at most, so in a prolonged war that revealed the Stargate program and brought Earth together to fight an outside threat production power and soldiers would shift to the Tauri rather quickly, especially when combined with the Free Jaffa allies.

[Kaiphantom]

How on earth do we know how many spies the LA have on Earth? They managed to get a cloaked ship onto Earth and Kiva's group seemed to have a permanent presence there so why would we assume that Telford is the only spy they have recruited, forced or otherwise?

Because we don't have evidence for any other moles? I'll retract the point when or if we learn about any other LA moles in the SGC, but they seemed to have all their eggs in one basket in the form of Telford. If they had more than him, than they wouldn't have minded losing him.

Same goes for the production facilities for making ships? How do we know that Earth have more / better facilities than the LA? The LA have taken over the Goa'uld space and planets and the Goa'uld had the capability to produce starships, fighters, bombers, etc.

The mafia wasn't exactly known for it's ability to churn out large numbers of tanks. The LA is much like the mafia, or yakuza. They may have taken over facilities, but considering the goa'uld didn't exactly entrust much knowledge to their human slaves, the LA wouldn't have too many people capable of creating new shipyards, or new ships. Granted, no proof; but that's what logical deduction tells me based on all the evidence presented thus far.

Oh and as for the 'War on Terror' the only reason that you Yanks are still fighting is that war is very profitable for big multinational corporations who sell weapons, armour, security, rebuilding of infrastructure, etc and also it is good for politicians who are funded by aforementioned corporations and can use it to whip up hysteria and votes to get themselves elected and maintain the hegemony they hold. If you think that the war is about making America safe or spreading 'democracy' then your sadly deluded. Nothing to do with the worlds perception of use of nuclear weapons, the Yanks are still the only country in the world to have used a nuclear bomb in a war so id say their reputation as a bunch of triggerhappy cowboys is well and truly set in stone...

I'm not entirely sure where you're going with this. If the US could have gotten away with nuking Iraq or Iran or North Korea, they would have. The main point was that the US isn't really threatened by any small countries when you come right down to it, which they would be the equivalent of the LA.

[KEK]

People seem to think that the Lucian Alliance (who are human) are some huge massive organization that has an incredibly large population to draw on just because it controls multiple planets. However, you have to remember that most MW planets have very small populations of humans (brought there by Goa'ulds to serve them) - Earth has by far to largest population of humans in the galaxy as evidenced by the comments of the System Lords when they came to Earth in SG:Continuum and were shocked that humans were allowed "to breed to those numbers"

Most LA planets probably only have a couple hundred thousand people at most, so in a prolonged war that revealed the Stargate program and brought Earth together to fight an outside threat production power and soldiers would shift to the Tauri rather quickly, especially when combined with the Free Jaffa allies.

Earth is one planet, the galaxy is pretty huge. I'm sure it would be easier for the LA to wipe out Earth in one fell swoop than it would be for Earth to defeat the LA. Cloaked cargo ships full of nukes could destroy Earth quite easily.