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    How can you defeat drones?

    Hey guys (and girls),

    I have been thinking and I've only come up with very few ideas, but still more than all the characters on the show!

    Drones are kind of described as "the ultimate weapon", but that's not exactly true (especially since running out of ammo is a real possibility...make Anubis's fleet three times as large and the drone chair will be destroyed before the drones destroy the last ship and then those things will probably become inert and nothing is protecting Earth anymore (Anubis laughs about the bolted together piece of junk - pardon: The Prometheus - after all!)

    I mean we don't know how fast drones are, but if ships actually moved (slugging matches like on the show kind of piss me off, in reality nobody would just sit there to let the enemy hit you, shields or not!) then dodging isn't a bad idea to start, then something like a CIWS (Phalanx, just a little more high-tech) might work, not to mention that shields (like the Asgard ones on human ships!) can take a fair amount of drones, but then again:

    How about using a hyperspace-window to get rid of those pesky things? - "Drones approaching sir!", "Very good Lieutenant: Open up a hyperspace window close to the drones (or: in the middle of the drone-swarm, so that them dodging is impossible!)" - *Window opens and swallows most of the drones* - "Well done LT, now commence the attack!"

    Well, just an idea (hell, you could even swallow the opening salvo of any fight...more if you give your ship several window-generators, so that you don't have to do it with the main one because you need that to move the ship!)

    greetings LAX

    #2
    Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
    I have been thinking and I've only come up with very few ideas, but still more than all the characters on the show!
    Throw more cheaply-grown cruisers at them than the ancients can produce those things. Inevitably they run out.

    Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
    I mean we don't know how fast drones are, but if ships actually moved (slugging matches like on the show kind of piss me off, in reality nobody would just sit there to let the enemy hit you, shields or not!) then dodging isn't a bad idea to start
    Large ships have trouble dodging because of the engines they use. Sure, they allow non-newtonian combat so nobody dies from liquefied insides, yet also clearly don't allow newtonian flight (e.g. endless acceleration).
    Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
    then something like a CIWS (Phalanx, just a little more high-tech) might work
    Drone showed a considerable ability to dodge and weave things. Space is quite big, so the kind of CIWS required to blanket them into destruction is considerably. I don't think it works. Seems to me that electronic warfare may be a better bet, distracting the drones and all that. Or tactical hyperspace jumps.

    Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
    not to mention that shields (like the Asgard ones on human ships!) can take a fair amount of drones
    Drones seem to penetrate all sorts of shields. Whether it works against Asgard or not is never really confirmed.

    Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
    How about using a hyperspace-window to get rid of those pesky things?
    Hyperspace windows appear to be 2D, so getting a window open at the right time would be extremely tricky. Makes more sense to actually jump away from the fight and return behind the target, fire a few shots and as the drones come back you jump again.

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      #3
      Didn't the Pegasus-Replicators (forgot the name people are using for them now...) shoot down a couple of drones (when Sheppard launched them from the Travellers Aurora-Class ship)?

      As for the HS-Window: Wouldn't dodging be kind of hard if it opens up less than 20-30 meters in front of the fast moving drones?

      Thanks for the fast answer (you seem to kind of be one of the few still on here)

      greetings LAX

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        #4
        Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
        Didn't the Pegasus-Replicators (forgot the name people are using for them now...) shoot down a couple of drones (when Sheppard launched them from the Travellers Aurora-Class ship)?
        Asurans, you mean? They shot down drones - with drones.

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          #5
          Every weapon is going to have a downside. Drones may not be the ultimate weapon, but they do come close. Three big things to note about drones. They are mind controlled on the fly. They are encased in a field of energy that burns through shields and matter. And there are usually a lot of them.
          Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
          Hey guys (and girls),

          I have been thinking and I've only come up with very few ideas, but still more than all the characters on the show!
          Usually at any given point in time, there will be dozens of ideas suggested as a solution to a problem. Very few of them actually get anywhere. One big part is testing. And it's really hard to test anti-drone defenses when there aren't many drones to test it on. It wasn't until The Tower they restock and I think they get even more later on but the number is finite and if wraith ever start knocking on their front door, every drone will count. The Goa'uld never needed to develop anti-drone technology. They've only ever encountered it once. The only ones that needed anti-drone tech were the wraith and they seem to have come up with an effective solution: beat it with numbers.


          Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
          Drones are kind of described as "the ultimate weapon", but that's not exactly true (especially since running out of ammo is a real possibility...make Anubis's fleet three times as large and the drone chair will be destroyed before the drones destroy the last ship and then those things will probably become inert and nothing is protecting Earth anymore (Anubis laughs about the bolted together piece of junk - pardon: The Prometheus - after all!)
          Anubis's flagship was the last thing to go down and right before it blew there were still quite a few drones. But no weapon is infallible. Numbers would be the best way to counter drones. Numbers would be the easiest way to beat any weapon that isn’t an all-encompassing explosion. The Goa’uld could probably beat the Ancients if there were enough of them. But this rings true to counter any weapon.


          Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
          I mean we don't know how fast drones are, but if ships actually moved (slugging matches like on the show kind of piss me off, in reality nobody would just sit there to let the enemy hit you, shields or not!) then dodging isn't a bad idea to start, then something like a CIWS (Phalanx, just a little more high-tech) might work, not to mention that shields (like the Asgard ones on human ships!) can take a fair amount of drones, but then again:
          Drones have been shown to out maneuver fighter craft. In fact, in general, missiles tend to out maneuver fighter craft since there’s less mass to slug around so it’s easier to move. That's why flares were created as a defense. And there is no way a capital ship has maneuverability on par with a fighter. It's inertia is simply too big. You could build up speed by moving in a straight line but you then become easy to predict. The only things that have intercepted drones were other drones. I guess flares could be used to counter auto-targeting drones but once someone in the chair takes control they won’t be fooled.
          Drones have been shown to penetrate shields entirely. Goa'uld shields did nothing. We don't know how drones perform on Alliance shields but an Ori fleet was reportedly chased away from Earth using drones and Asuran ships destroyed by drones didn't seem to bring up shields at all.
          Could point defense and CIWS's be used against drones? Potentially. But I think the same energy field that lets it go through ship hulls will just vaporize the projectile in a similar fashion. And if CIWS could destroy one drone per round, then you have sheer number to worry about.

          Originally posted by Laxian of Earth View Post
          How about using a hyperspace-window to get rid of those pesky things? - "Drones approaching sir!", "Very good Lieutenant: Open up a hyperspace window close to the drones (or: in the middle of the drone-swarm, so that them dodging is impossible!)" - *Window opens and swallows most of the drones* - "Well done LT, now commence the attack!"
          Well, just an idea (hell, you could even swallow the opening salvo of any fight...more if you give your ship several window-generators, so that you don't have to do it with the main one because you need that to move the ship!)
          I see no reason why a swam of drones can’t avoid a hyperspace window. Sure, the first few dozen might get swallowed up but the rest right behind it would be able to go around it with ease. Putting it close to or in the middle of the swarm just means you’ll get some instead of none. The issue would not be the speed of the drones but the numbers (if there aren’t that many drones you could swallow them all up in one go) and the mental capacity of the guy in the chair. What kind of reaction time does he have can he give them all the command to change course? If anything, wouldn’t avoiding a stationary window be easier than avoiding/chasing enemy aircraft?

          The only ways I can think to counter drones is to use some sort of explosive defense. Fire a missile and detonate it right in front of or in the middle of the swarm. It’s similar to your hyperspace idea but it’s a 3D explosion rather than a 2D window so it’ll get more drones and it’s way easier to slug missiles than to open a hyperspace window so you can slug multiple missiles and destroy drone swarms in batches. But once the guy in the chair realizes what’s happening, he could use lone drones to preemptively destroy the missile of just magic box them.
          The only other solution I can think of is to go full zerg and they to overwhelm the enemy with larger numbers of cheap units. If I can produce units that will eat up drones faster than they can be produced, I can win.
          Or go with Killman’s idea. If you can somehow jam the mental link between user and drone, they should all just turn off.

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          Stargate spin off series: Stargate Millennium
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            #6
            IMO the only known way to defeat them is to cut power to the chair running them... CF the Tower episode..

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              #7
              Originally posted by thekillman View Post
              Asurans, you mean? They shot down drones - with drones.
              Says who? For me that looks more like a fast firing pulse-weapon! (I've just taken another look)

              Why is the window stationary? It can be re-established after swallowing a few drones, if the rest dodges (that's why I'd advise against doing that with your main hyperspace window generator)

              I agree that short-jumps might be a good way do avoid the drones (that's way harder to do with energy weapons, especially at the distances ships fight in SG)

              greetings LAX

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                #8
                I just took another look at the shot. The things that intercepted the drones were definitely other drones. They curved. The ones on the starboard side left the ship in a straight line then scattered. The ones on the port went straight at the camera then umbrella-ed out about one second after they appeared.

                For the hyperspace idea, what comes to mind is the practicality. Why hasn't this technique been used before? Intercepting linear energy weapons would've been easier to stop. Also, given the time it takes for a window to open and close, you'd need a lot of hyperspace generators. And while we don't know the specifics on how hyperspace window are made, it is clear they can only be made very close to the ship in question. Which means you'd end up having to completely encase your ship in a bubble of hyperspace windows.
                Last edited by StargateMillennium; 12 January 2018, 03:07 PM.

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                Stargate spin off series: Stargate Millennium
                https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5580179/StargateMillennium

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by StargateMillennium View Post
                  But why hasn't this technique been used before? Intercepting linear energy weapons would've been easier to stop.
                  Hyperspace often seems to leave the ship vulnerable. Even when de-activated it's prone to damage, so running it continuously would probably expose it to even greater risks of failing.

                  Plus, we don't know how straining the window formation is on the hyperdrive. Aircraft engines for instance only run at full power during take-off. It could be that window formation is the peak stress for the hyperdrive.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by StargateMillennium View Post
                    For the hyperspace idea, what comes to mind is the practicality. But why hasn't this technique been used before? Intercepting linear energy weapons would've been easier to stop. Also, given the time it takes for a window to open and close, you'd need a lot of hyperspace generators. And while we don't know the specifics on how hyperspace window are made, it is clear they can only be made very close to the ship in question. Which means you'd end up having to completely encase your ship in a bubble of hyperspace windows.
                    Also, ships using this strategy wouldn't necessarily be able to fire back. If we're talking about ships using their existing hyperspace engine to create a forward hyperspace window as normal, a lot of ships have forward facing weapons, so they would be hindering their own ability to return fire. It's one thing if you do this to take out a powerful weapon that the enemy has a limited number of, but to do it against energy weapons doesn't do much.

                    Take a F-304 versus Wraith hive as an example. If the Wraith are coming at them directly then, sure, their energy weapons would be swept up in the hyperspace window for a limited period of time, but they also wouldn't be able to fire their beam weapons or rail guns at the Hive during this time. They could still fire missiles and launch F-302s, but those are not particularly useful against a Hive. Meanwhile, the Hive could still easily send darts around the window, and those can do some damage to the F-304's shields. Without the darts attacking on their own, it's a zero-sum game, where the battle essentially pauses and nobody gets to do damage to the enemy until re-positioning can occur. With darts involved, this strategy would give a slight advantage to the Hive because the F-304 will have taken damage by the time the two capital ships can engage each other directly again.

                    If we're talking about redesigning a ship's engines so hyperspace windows can appear on all sides, again, this just pauses the battle until the windows come down. If a ship is doing this because its damaged or is up against an enemy with superior firepower, the correct solution is to run into hyperspace and try to get away, not sit there until they can't maintain the hyperspace windows anymore because once they go down they will be in the same exactly situation that they started in. Even if the enemy has a finite number of weapons, it's not like they're going to sit there, firing them into hyperspace the entire time, until they're depleted. After the first few get sucked in, they'll just wait until the windows go down again and resume fire then.
                    Last edited by Xaeden; 12 January 2018, 08:35 AM.

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