One would assume, offscreen.
Oh. Sure. Ok ...
Thor had some hope for thier success in small victories, if the right tactics could be found.
You just hit it right on the nail there - the right tactics. It took a
plan that did not involve simply using their technology to save their asses. Thor only had hope for success because SG1 had just recently defeated the Replicators, a feat that the Asgard had not achieved themselves even with all their advanced tech.
If Beliskners were the fucking literal antiques you claim they are, why would he have any hope whatsoever?
Certainly not by simply blasting the Replicator ships with Biliskners, since Thor CLEARLY tells us that approach is doomed to failure. His hope lay in the ingenuity of humans who proved themselves capable of exploiting Replicator weaknesses WITHOUT simply throwing their ships uselessly into battle and getting them taken over. As Carter puts it "We cant touch them, but they can EASILY take over our ship or blow us up." Thus showing how fantastically effective the Biliskners were in fighting the Replicators.
Has it occured to you that that one (most likely the Valkyrie, according to Small Victories concept art) from Small Victories was probably the last of its class, and it was sent to deal with Osiris precisely because the ship was out of production as of small victories?
That does not support the notion that they're antiques as you suggest.
Nor does it support the notion that they are modern, cutting edge ships. In fact it doesnt support
either notion and the whole thing is open to speculation, making it irrelevant. Still, the Asgard stopped using Biliskners in favour of O'Neill class, DJ class, and that Camelot class ship. The Biliskners were shown to be vulnerable to both Replicator attack and Anubis' upgraded ships. Even if they
weren't antique by Asgard standards, they
were clearly of little further use to the Asgard, illustrating that the Biliskners were insufficient force in SG1's modern galaxy. Which is what I said.
No. Dumb-ass. It's exactly the same situation. Exactly. Stock unarmed ships, that've been known up-rated in one instance only. Yes, when Thor equipped the Daniel Jackson with ancient technology, it could purge all replicators on a planet.
You realise that Thor could also handily fit a PWARW in a Tel'tak too, and give it the same ability you're wanking about. Those things are not big. That doesn't mean the Daniel Jackson class has proper ship-to-ship weapons for regular use.
Fine. Fair enough. So? It's a science ship. It can be modified for combat, as can a Teltak. Call them whatever you want.
For all we know, if the Asgard actually sent an O'Neill, it would have smacked the Ori ships down the second they appeared.
It is actually dumb that the Asgard didn't decide to go out fighting by taking down as many Ori as possible rather than simply blowing themselves up. We know their ships can self destruct to avoid capture, so it's not like that would have been a concern. They even end up with a weapon that can crack Ori shields, and they still dont simply use their fleet to put the smack down on the Ori invaders and
then commit suicide. It's mad.
Actually, how do we know that's not precisely what it did? It fired a few shots, while flying off away from the other ships, and then didn't appear in the battle any more. It certainly wasn't in the debris later.
True. However I'd be inclined to call the Asgard complete bastards if so, because in the aftermath everyone was royally boned for space and life support, and having an intact Asgard ship around to beam up survivors and provide aid would have been the sort of thing allies do. If the Asgard ship did survive and run away, and then not turn back to provide help afterwards and simply ran home or whatever, then it really speaks ill of the Asgard crewing it.
There's been no mention of a massive revolution in thier power or shield technologies to support this idea that a 304 is more dangerous than a Beliskner. Let alone O'Neills, which are even larger.
My point was that the Asgard Beam, which I was trying to get you to admit to as being new, was a large part of what makes the 304's dangerous, especially to Ha'Taks. We know the 304's shields can survive attack from Ha'Taks because it comes under fire from them (controlled by Ba'al and the Lucian Alliance) and survives. However in the past 304's lacked anti-ship weaponry to eliminate the opposition. Now with Asgard Beams they
have that weakness covered, and so dont have to sit there impotently while enemy ships wear down their shields, which may be good but wont last forever.
What makes them dangerous is the
combination of good shields and a good weapon. Without the shields they could dish out the damage, but get destroyed before they could defeat all enemies. Without the weapons they can survive for a while, but eventually they will lose because they cant destroy the enemy. With
both, they can survive long enough to blast their enemies apart.
Even if they lose a ship with every 304 shot, there's still a good chance they'll win. That's the way attrition works.
Normally, yes, but not always. Attrition didn't do squat against Anubis' super ship until it was utterly castrated. Attrition spectacularly failed to put a dent in even a single Ori ship. Despite having a vast fleet attacking Earth, Anubis was anhilated by a single super weapon. If the Asgard Beams can take out Ha'Taks as easily as drones, and the 304's shields last long enough for that to happen, then a fleet like Ba'als would lose.
Yes, it's a big if, but like I said it's not like they have to just take one ship and sit their and play tit-for-tat until they either win or get blown away.
Err. Yes. With a deus-ex-machina. And the small fleet that engaged it was supposedly enough to destroy Anubis' ship, if it didn't have all six eyes.
Based on what? Daniels say so? Not only did Anubis call him on that ("Do you know that for a fact?") but if Daniel himself really believed it, then he was a fucking moron for not telling Yu to strike and finish Anubis then and there. Besides, even after SG1 destroyed the Eye's power source, Carter tells us that the shields are still intact and powerful as ever, and only because Anubis was dumb enough to park his ship inside the planets atmosphere and handily reduce his shields to 40% strength, were they able to destroy his ship in the first place.
An assembled fleet is not the same thing as engaging them piecemeal. There is FUCK ALL to suggest Anubis parked up over Chulak with his flagship and sent a message to all the other system lords saying "gather your fleets and come get me, pansies" and then took them all on at once, which is what you're suggesting with this "immune to large numbers" BS.
Yu shows up with a fleet and says he commands the collective might of the system lords. He gets whipped, and the survivors run away. Knowing now what he is capable of, if the System Lords believed they could take that ship down through sheer force of numbers, then why the hell didn't they bunch their attack fleets together and hunt the damned thing down? What's Anubis going to do, run away from such a fleet with his brand new seemingly untouchable super weapon? Use it's firepower to deal them a heavy blow by picking on stragglers?
Even IF the case, my point remains - the Ha'Taks were useless against that ship even when they outnumbered it, and even with the collective might of the system lords their combined fleets were unable to stop it. And that is comparable to a 304 because if the 304 can one-shot Ha'Taks, take decent punishment in return, and pick it's own battles as you say, then it will eventually prevail against such an attack. And the odds start increasing tremendously with each 304 you add to the equation.
Do you think these ships are just plain invulnerable, and that Anubis switched to using kryptonite bullets or something?
Well, yes. That's the Stargate way. At first Earth couldnt touch a Ha'Tak, and then you have Ion Cannons bypassing their shields and blowing them up, and shield frequency modulators bypassing them. You have the Ori turn up and be pretty invulnerable, until SG1 gets a blue kryptonite death ray to kill them. The Replicators? We cant touch them, they can kill us easily, but oh look, and anti-replicator weapon that can bypass their shields and kill them.
So yes, going in vein with Stargate history in general, it's pretty standard for them to have ships that have untouchable shields and one-shot killer guns, and then have some technobable way that flips it around and acts as a kryptonite bullet. If the Asgard weapons were even close to Tollans, they would be one-shotting Ha'Tak by bypassing their shields. Next thing we know, Anubis makes his shields Ion Cannon proof, and they magically stop the Biliskners weapons from doing any damage. This is Stargate. This is what happens.
If we had it your way, Thor could have just parked over earth in Fair Game and waited for the two hundred ha'tak to arrive, and then slaughtered them, because one asgard mothership is invulnerable to superior numbers of goa'uld ships.
That was pretty much what Jack wanted. Thor on the other hand, had to leave Earth even before negotiations were over. At the very least, if his ship was packing the equivelant of a Tollan Ion canon it could be blasting apart Ha'Taks left right and center without effort, and provided the shields could stand up to the return fire he would eventually whittle them down. Massed fire obviously had not effect on the Ori ships, or on Anubis' ship, so why would it on Thors ship, provided the relative shield to weapons gap was similarly wide? To put it another way, if the entire of Starfleet tried to take down one Imperial ship, could they do it?
In your strange world, does 2 = 200? It was quite clear from Fair Game that the Asgard could not deal with one dominant goa'uld
I believe his words were "We
may not have sufficient power to stop him [from destroying Earth]". Back when they were tied up by the Replicators and still used Biliskner class ships. Unless Thor knew how many ships they would face from an attack by a single dominant Goa'uld, it was probably wise of him to be conservative and admit that a single ship may not be able to defend earth from an unkown number of Goa'uld ones. Then again it may have, he doesnt say "If Sokar rose to power and attacked you, there'd be nothing we could do about it." he says he feels they might be unable to stop him from attacking protected planets.
By your retard logic, just having superior technology would mean they could handwave away any number of enemies. Because situational superiority of force is exactly the same thing as overall superiority of force.
They practically
did. According to the Ancients, they won nearly
every battle. They destroyed wave after wave of attackers. All they lacked was the endurance to keep it up.
In relation to the main issue, if the Ancients could slaughter Wraith ships with apparent ease (which they claimed) and only lost due to attrition, then it's a matter of whether Earth's 304's could hold out against Ba'als combined forces. I know, the point you're making is that Ba'als forces could defeat the 304's through attrition. I'm not convinced they could, I don't think Ba'al had enough ships to do it, and Ba'al himself was present. If he and the other Goa'uld present were killed before they could escape then unless the next Goa'uld in the system over feels like throwing more ships at such a formidable foe, the attack will end then and there.
Thirty plus ships... including Al'kesh, which he previously counted as 'ships.' It's obviously not a re-use of the shots from Lost City as you claim. Because there's more motherships on the screen. (Also, Ba'al's ship's weapon is also 'open' in the 'armed' position, Anubis' wasn't.)
I don't believe that. I'll get the discs and go over them, and make screenshots for comparison. I'll get back to this.
And? That doesn't mean it can take on thirty ha'tak. Your no-numbers arguments are really beginning to grate.
Ok, I admit that if Ba'als fleet was smarter than Anubis', and all his ships targeted the one 304 making the attack, and if enough were able to bring their fire to bear upon the smaller earth ship without their superior numbers getting in the way in the process, then yes, the combined firepower would surely obliterate the 304. In that case they
would win, unless there were more than one 304 and depending on what kind of manouvers each side was pulling off.
And you know how long it would take ha'tak, I assume. (Incidentally, I can link you to calcs that suggest very strongly that Anubis' flagship's regular powerplant should dwarf a ZPM)
No, I admit I don't. We do see the Odyssey attacked by Ha'Taks, and it's shields stood up fairly well, but they were few in number, and in no way 30+. And if the 304's shield cant stand up to all the fire for long enough, yes they are screwed. You don't need to show me any calcs, I wouldn't understand them, I'll take your word for it.
So, they should... Jump out of hyperspace (no shields) into an enemy fleet, and then into hyperspace again... Rather than just damn well manouvering? This doesn't sound sensible. But it's a ray of sanity compared to your other blither.
Well in the final SG1 episode they fought off Ori ships, got pounded, but jumped to hyperspace and were able to recharge their shields somewhat before they decided to drop out into normal space, and the fight ressumed, they kicked more Ori ass, then jumped again. Granted the Ori were following them from hyperspace, but all they would have to do is drop out of hyperspace sufficiently far enough away from Ba'als fleet to engage the shields. Provided they vary their attack vector, at the very least they should force Ba'al to give up his entrenched position and mobilise to make such strike tactics less effective.
Or he could threaten to use cloaked al'kesh to fire a naquadah bomb at the US for every ha'tak they destroy. Leaving him to run around Earth at will and attacking him with hit-and-run attacks would be... dumb.
Well seeing as they (Earth) got zapped in the end anyway, they may as well go for it. At least that way the deal out damage to their attackers and stand the chance of killing Ba'al in the process. If they're smart, whatever 304's are involved will simply combine attacks on Ba'als ship itself and eliminate him from the get go. The series has demonstrated that the Jaffa are unlikely to continue fighting when their 'God' is dead, and so long as no other Goa'uld picks up the standard and tries to carry on, cutting off the head in this instance ought to work.
And for that matter, if he has the eyes in this scenario, he's the ability to 'destroy' the Earth in one shot while they're fucking about doing this.
Right. Because the Eye weapon was so powerful that Anubis had to target planets Stargates just to amplify the blast to a decent level ... and as I said, if they dont fight they're boned. Either they'll get blasted from orbit or sold to a life of slavery. If they're going down why wouldn't the humans go down fighting? If you're damned if you do and damned if you dont, you might as well take any chance you might have at killing the bugger leading the attack.
