Did the Wraith really want the Milky Way?

[Starsaber]

Ha'taks destroyed before Atlantis would have no bearing on ships the Milky Way would have to bring to bear against a fully united Wraith fleet.

I don't know. But going by visuals, it appeared to be two cruisers to one hive ship. I could be wrong though. I am doing this off of memory.

The Siege is the only time we've ever seen a fully-united Wraith fleet. It would take time for any one Wraith Queen to bring all the other factions back together.

I just watched Letters From Pegasus through Siege Part 2 fairly recently and I'm 95% sure that John said it was 3 Cruisers per Hive. Maybe we just couldn't see the third from our angle with the visual effects.

[garhkal]

really? wouldn't that just be a severely one-sided killingfest with the wraith on the bottom?

That depends on how many wraith ships got involved, and whether they would have had any better luck against the ori shields than we did prior to getting the asgard beam of pawning!

[Ouroboros]

It would depend pretty much on how the Wraith got to the MW. It it was just a few unsupported ships blundering in through some sort of wormhole or special circumstances type scenario and they got discovered right away they'd go down.

If it was some kind of organized invasion plan aimed at setting up Wraith beachhead bases in all the uninhabited parts of the galaxy and breeding a massive horde again, then the galaxy would be screwed if the local powers didn't catch them doing it right away.

[garhkal]

True. Heck i wonder, how quickly they could have taken over HAD they had a proper beach head or three.

[The Flyattractor]

Of course one thing we never found out was how fast or even really HOW the Wraith could reproduce their own technology. How long did it take to grow a bunch of darts or a few cruisers or a single hive ship. They could be like roaches. Once you let one in you've got a few thousand before you know it.

[Peterking72]

Oh yesss!! They wanted it from the get go, when they learned it's existence from col. Summers. Yummy humans. They would terraform Mars or the Moon with stolen Ancient tech and set up a human breeding colony that would sustain them for ages to come.

[The Flyattractor]

The Wraith wouldn't even need to hit the earth first. There were enough other human setteled worlds to sustain them for long enough to establish a new power base that they could probably attack earth at their leisure...at least that's what I would have done....if I were a wraith that is.

[Peterking72]

We debated in an other thread whether the Wraith have enough humans in the Pegasus galaxy to sustain their population. We ended on a note, that they have not. So probably no establishing new power bases for the moment. They would've fared better if they were established a clear chain of command (CCOC) in the first place instead of hive rivalry. They had an ultimate Queen turned out later in the seasons, but she was murdered so easily that it made almost no sense. Then all the soldiers fell into place automatic.
With CCOC established I (as the Ultimate Queen) would ordered all troops to attack Atlantis simultaneously. With a 60+ ships armada plus cruisers and darts in the hundreds the shield of the city would've failed in minutes. They may have initiated self destruct, but that only meant victory for the Wraith. There would've been many losses. Some like Shepard would escape with puddle jumpers taking the main team and then some, but they would be far less dangerous and pesky than a fully operational Atlantis. On that I think all of us can agree.
Then the wraith technicians finally can get to work analyzing Ancient hyper drives, this time without Shepard and McKay intervening. Develop a viable fast hyper drive, some shielding as well to protect the hull from deterioration and go Milky Way.
It is all probable that Ancients erased all data from the location of the Milky Way and Earth specifically from the database but those Ancient in stasis on the warship Aurora sure knows where Earth is.
Also it would helped if Wraith leaders were more cunning, like Todd for example.

[garhkal]

Todd was one of the most cunning ones they had.
BUt that wraith who devised the plan to use Mccay's gate way bridge from the Pegasus to Earth could have used it for other uses, like to ferry people from pegasus to the nearest planet with a gate TO the end of the bridge.. that way they could flood darts and people through to establish their beach head while awaiting the hives and crusiers doing their travel this way..

[Mister Oragahn]

No. No bluff. From the very beginning they wanted Earth specifically because it had the population in the billions. Not to mention the many other planets as well.

Honestly, the Wraith going through the Stargate isn't that big a deal. Yeah they could storm it but they would have to go through many levels of the mountain to get to the surface and then break through a concentrated effort to keep them contained. That is also if the self destruct doesn't go off.

So then the Wraith are without air support or heavy weaponry to take out fast moving objects like missiles and planes. No big ships either.

Better to get the coordinates to Earth.

Really, the biggest problem wasn't the Wraith reaching the surface, but establishing a foothold on Earth by taking control of the SGC, its loot and data.
From there, they had control of the stargate and could envision deploying nastier stuff: deploying a shield, dropping a plague, launching the AI virus on all of our combined electronics, starting to turn the whole SGC into a base or ship (even if as a ship, it would never take off), plus any other kind of funkiness that a stargate allows to use, like threatening to nova the whole planet or connect it to a blackhole if humans wouldn't surrender and begin to deliver the annual tithe of tasty homo sapiens snacks.

Plus even mere drones reaching the surface would still cause many problems: let them feed on humans and they turn into übertanks of flesh. A hundred of those guys in the US would be a pain in the A. And that goes without counting the massive PR issue and the whole secret being vented.