SDN Commands the Atlantis Expedition (RAR!)

[Forgothrax]

Q appears one day and offers you the opportunity to take the position of head of the Atlantis Expedition in a slightly AU version of Stargate. Everyone who posts in this thread will be assumed to be part of a general council in one reality, instead of each poster being sent solo to different realities. He's kind enough to detail the differences, as described below.

1) The Ancients will not interact with you directly (for good or ill). So no meeting Chaya Sar in person, no Ascension machines, etc.

2) The Asurans do not exist. Period. The Ancients never created them this go-round. Similarly, neither do the Vanir.

3) Superweapons, such as the Attero Device or Project Arcturus, do not exist. Neither does time travel (which means no Weir-sicle in the basement). The devices were either never built or were destroyed by the Wraith. tl;dr: No Deus Ex Machinas to invalidate the scenario.

4) The timeline has been moved forward several years. "Lost City, Part 2" took place in earlier 2013, and you arrive in the middle of the year. This is mostly for convenience so you don't have to think about the state of the world and technology in 2004 when the show first aired.

5) Disclosure has been forced by Anubis' assault on Earth. While governments are scrambling to create a cohesive cover story, the cat is truly out of the bag. Estimates for partial Disclosure are any day now once a journalist finds someone willing to leak classified data, with complete official Disclosure by the end of the year. Speculation is rampant. This United States has been somewhat more intelligent than the OTL and had previously opened up the program to limited cooperative operations with other members of the UN Security Council and NATO. As a result, the Stargate Program and Earth Security will be a cooperative effort, and the diplomatic ramifications of Disclosure will be somewhat more muted than they might've been otherwise.

6) The SGC knows a little bit more about Atlantis going in, and the future is going to go a little bit more differently than canon. See below.

Q also details your objective for him: namely, the Atlantis Expedition must survive and be in command of Atlantis by the 5-year mark, defined by survival of at least 20% of your total personnel including reinforcements and one SDN member, and by Atlantis remaining under your sole control or that of a non-coercive alliance (the Genii taking control of the city but leaving you in nominal control of some aspects is a fail, the Genii allying with you to share tech and resources to beat the Wraith is not). Upon failure, you will be returned to the "real world" with no time having past and a payment of $10k per month of survival on Atlantis. Upon success, all members (whether killed in SGA or living) will be returned to the modern day with no time having passed with a Q-created "uplift package" disseminated into the public sphere that will lift modern-day Earth to the level of technical knowledge/capabilities of the Goa'uld within 20 years of sustained global effort and to the level of the early Alterans within a century as well as $10 million tax-free as payment and a 1sqm container .

Should you take Q up in his offer, he transports you to SG-Earth and to the SGC specifically on the morning of your mission brief, creating identities for you as equivalents of Dr. Weir and downloading the necessary general knowledge and skills into your brains so that you can act in her capacity. Your OOC knowledge remains, but you have no real authority over SGC-operations, and no evidence to convince anyone of the truth of it, though you are of course free to use it to guide your actions.

The mission brief covers a complete history of Stargate operations, and then covers Atlantis. With the stunning blow dealt to the Goa'uld by Anubis and his downfall, other minor powers in the galaxy (the Serrakin, the Aschen, the Tok'ra, and many others) are smelling blood in the water and are mobilizing to destroy the Goa'uld. SGC Intel estimates that with the continuing success of the Jaffa Rebellion, as well as these other powers rising to combat the Goa'uld, the Goa'uld will cease to be anything more than local powers rallying around one System Lord or another within five years. At that point, it is believed that certain other powers in the galaxy may choose to turn on Earth once alliances of convenience fall apart. Earth would represent a prime prize due to her population, especially since anyone who parks a few Ha'tak in orbit can dictate terms, and her extreme luck in defeating the Goa'uld marks her as a potential threat. The Asgard, while fine allies against the Goa'uld, are fighting the Replicators and slowly turning the tide, and in recent diplomatic correspondence have expressed unwillingness to intervene directly to protect Earth except from direct Goa'uld assault.

Thus, an expedition to Atlantis has been proposed to provide a potential stop-gap. The intent of the IOA is to send the expedition to attempt to find new technology to reverse-engineer and to bring back to the Milky Way to give Earth a trump card and buy time while Disclosure and its after-effects play out, and Earth has time to start up-teching and building warships.

You are given some additional information on Atlantis-- namely, a basic floorplan of Atlantis, the fact that the city will be submerged and running low on power for the shield (and how to trigger the docking clamp release), and that the Ancients were driven from Pegasus by an unknown enemy. These are facts known by the SGC IC from study of the computers at the Outpost.

The Expedition itself has been given a blank check in terms of resources and personnel. You have been authorized to draw on any current Stargate personnel within reason (no, you can't have SG-1) for the expedition, and have a budget in the billions for funding the expedition. Your only limitation is time-- you have enough ZPM power for one 38-minute connection to Atlantis and that's it. You might be able to scare up another partial dial if you make a very convincing presentation, but the Outpost and its drones are considered Earth's only defense at this time, and the ZPM the only way to power said defenses.

The SGC is working on a means to dial Atlantis at regular intervals for very short periods (a few seconds to beam data back and forth and that's it) in order to update you on things in the Milky Way and to receive data from the Expedition on Ancient technology. The SGC lets you know that the Daedalus and several of her sister ships are in various stages of construction and the first will be coming off the line in a year, but that they may not be able to dispatch one with supplies as the Asgard have been much less forthcoming with technology than in the OTL (a journey without a ZPM from the Milky Way to Pegasus takes a BC-304 3 months, not 3 weeks). However, construction has begun on a series of massive transports intend to serve as supply ships for Terran operations in the Milky Way, and the first will be dispatched to Atlantis as soon as it is completed, with capacity equivalent to a very large container ship or more. Q drops a little warning in your heads that you won't see a BC-304 in Atlantis at all, and you'll get one supply ship at the 24-month mark and another at the 48-month mark. He also states, in a teasing tone, that he would find a conflict between you and the Wraith... amusing.

It is currently May 2013, and the Expedition has been set for a January 2014 departure date at the absolute latest (at which point Q's 60-month clock will begin ticking). What is the composition of your Expedition? What personnel and what supplies do you choose to take? And knowing what you know, how do you plan to survive the Pegasus Galaxy and the Wraith long enough to win the scenario?

[Batman]

As the trip to Atlantis doesn't offer me anything I don't already have readily available anyway, I pass.

[Ahriman238]

Without the need for caution displayed by the original expedition, and with a 38 minute window we can move a lot of personal and equipment through. We'll still have to be careful about who we pick. The hardest part, of course will be running things as a committee of 2500. Will insist on recruiting John Sheppard, if that hasn't already happened. Maybe see if we can find more than a couple of ATA carriers and get the ball rolling on the gene therapy. Experts in Ancient will also be sorely needed, though I'd hope we could run everyone through some basic Rosetta Stone-like program before leaving.

The first thing is to get rid of the energy-draining shadow monster. Second, visit Dagan, the planet with a fully charged ZPM protected by an order of monks and a sudoku puzzle. This time, no Genii involvement or letting slip to the locals that we aren't exactly the Ancestors. That's one major problem solved, for security might want to visit the geothermal plant Atlantis is resting on, hunt down the Wraith Queen, ideally while still slumbering, and bring that back online. Any idea if killing that Queen will wake all the Wraith across the Galaxy, or if that only applies to one in a Hive?

What further mischief can we get up to in the first couple of days (roughly the timeframe of Rising)? Should probably do a thorough sweep, lick the rogue nanite problem and check for a frozen time-displaced member of the Expedition, though that shouldn't happen lacking the cause.

[Forgothrax]

The hardest part, of course will be running things as a committee of 2500. Will insist on recruiting John Sheppard, if that hasn't already happened. Maybe see if we can find more than a couple of ATA carriers and get the ball rolling on the gene therapy.

Sorry if the OP wasn't clear-- the only people part of the Council are the ones who post in this thread, to keep numbers down to a manageable size. Right now that would be you and me.

Sheppard is someone you can recruit, yes-- the SDN members are literally the only people who have been chosen for the Expedition, so you're free to recruit whoever you want within reason. Based on the fact that Carson was already deploying the gene therapy by the third episode of the first season, I'd say it's not unreasonable to suspect therapy would be available before the deadline. There's no way Carson created that therapy on his while acting as Expedition CMO, in facilities he probably barely understood, and only days to weeks after arriving in Atlantis.

check for a frozen time-displaced member of the Expedition, though that shouldn't happen lacking the cause.

No screwing around with time means no Weir-sicle, so yep, nobody frozen in the basement.

[Isolder74]

Well with me around no one will go hungry. I have other skills too but I'm terrible with guns.

[FaxModem1]

Wait, if there's no Weir-cicle, do we drown because the city has no power and she didn't go back in time to have an Ancient program the contingency program to make Atlantis float?

Assuming that's not the case, and we can get the city to float on the first day, I say we get rid of the shadow monster by turning off all power, opening the gate to where a known hive ship is, and letting it cause trouble there.

As for packing, bring all the characters from the show we can get, the more brains we have, the better. We'll need an iris we can install at Atlantis with a manual control, just like the Stargate on Earth has. We'll of course need food for at least three years, even if that's nothing but MREs and lots of drinking water. Computers, enough to house databases of everything, and to have a backup in case we run a sentient virus, power problems, have to destroy the originals for whatever reason. We'll need medical equipment, enough to run a hospital if need be. Plus top of the line research equipment, after all, we want to learn as much as possible. After that, we'll need seeds, and gardening equipment, if we can be self sufficient in making our own food, then we should do so.

For weapons, we'll need railguns, so we can defenses on Atlantis in case of an actual attack, as well as much ammunition and small arms we can have. If possible, as many zats as we can take, as they seem to have nearly limitless ammunition, and can be used to hide our presence if we explore the galaxy.

Naquadah generators, we need at least 30, and if possible, a 100, since we are planning on powering an Ancient city, and Ancient technology is a power hog, and we seem to lack ZPMs. If possible, take the ZPMs from Ra's hiding place and from the ancient outpost Camulus(as he has defected to Earth by now, right?) got his from, and stop it from blowing up when exposed to electricity.

Now, since the Wraith are in hibernation, I stand by Ahriman's plan to grab ZPMs by the bucket in the first few days, then for all intents and purposes, stay at Atlantis. The hives won't awaken for millenia, and we could use the time by checking every nook and cranny of Atlantis and just studying the technology there. If we have an incoming wormhole, we activate the forcefield and use the secondary iris, power outages won't have us with our pants down. When Atlantis is fully operational, and we have a good grasp of what we're doing, we then head out to loot the galaxy.

Find the Orion and the Aurora, and well take them. With the Aurora, if there is a Wraith who has decided to study it, wake up the Wraith in it and quickly kill it. We then take the ship home, and either wake the crew up and have them teach us about their technology, as they are not ascended beings, we can interact with them via their virtual reality device, or transfer them to a makeshift cryobay if we cannot.

With the Orion, we warn the people of Taranis that their volcano is about to destroy them in a few years, and they may want to evacuate to a safer continent or planet. We then harvest all Atlantean technology and take the ship.

We now have a city, two ancient warships in more or less working condition, and an entire crew of ancients to interview about technology, Wraith weaknesses, and tactics.

[Ahriman238]

Right, the original Atlantis expedition died within ten minutes as the forcefield failed and the city flooded. The revised timeline with Weir-icle had the forcefield failure after a full day, and the safeguard to float the city. In the revised timeline, we have plenty of time to retrieve a ZPM and decide at our leisure if the security of being underwater is worth the power drain. In the first, we need to run to the console and detach the city, first thing. May still be close.

Probably shouldn't go to the Athosians first thing, as that would bring the Wraith down on their heads and ours.

Okay, we're recruiting from scratch? Everyone except Kavanaugh we remember from the show gets a free pass. Daniel Jackson too, without the need to keep his own show afloat. I don't suppose we could nab Carter while we're at it? Then with disclosure and a true international expedition we have such a ridiculously wide pool of qualified candidates to pick from, even on an expeditied time frame going through them will take months.

I vote we loot the Atlantis duplicate inhabited by decadent nobles who use it's technology to terrorize the peasantry. They have a lot more drones than we do at this point.

I'm honestly not sure whether to give a good faith try at working with the Genii, or shoot them in their treacherous faces the first time we meet. For the time being, we'll introduce ourselves as the people of Earth and keep the knowledge we live in the City of the Ancestors restricted to people we trust.

If the Wraith haven't woken by this point, we may wish to steal the Genii's grand strategic plan of hiding a suitcase nuke aboard every Hiveship we find, then detonating them all if we're confident we got most of them, or if they wake. For that matter, we'll want to ambush one of the routine hunting parties maintaining a skeleton crew aboard the Hives, down a dart and steal those nifty transpoders that show where every Wriath ship in the Galaxy is. Even if don't nuke them, that's priceless information for stepping fast to avoid the Wraith.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Unfortunately the OP states we can't have SG-1 so no Daniel. Still, I second Sheppard and the rest, plus I would also bring along an SAS/2 Para/Royal Marine Commando contingent for when stuff gets messy.

As far as finding ZPM's goes, thats quite hard if there is no Asurans. There is one on Dagan, one nearly depleted one on the kiddie planet and another on the planet with the Atlantis duplicate, plus another reasonably full one on Tria. All the other ones they use are either from the Milky Way (Ra's one) or brought by/stolen from the Asurans. The best thing to do would be to fire up the hologram room, display all known Ancient outposts in the Milky Way and get the SGC to send teams/ships to each one. Since Proclarush Taonas had a full ZPM it is reasonable that the others do and they are clearly not in use. Only exploring Milky Way outposts avoids waking the Wraith.

Definitely the first thing is to get rid of all the nasty stuff lurking in Atlantis (cloud monster, nanites). Then again, I think the nanites may have been released by the bigass storm so they may be safely contained on arrival). Then get the geothermal power station fired up.

I second the Orion/Aurora mission ideas, and I would also send teams to reactivate the Lagrangian point satellite just in case. On the matter of the Taranians, I would offer them resettlement on the mainland in place of the Athosians, they'll have nearly two years to build up infrastructure before they have to leave Taranis which would make them much more capable allies. I would avoid contacting the Genii for now. I'd go talk to the Hoffans and offer to help with their drug, stating that the Wraith won't be coming for a while. This gives us two populous, 19th century-level worlds for support and trade.

Then, well, we potentially have full loads of drones and jumpers, two operational warships and a number of ZPM's from the Milky Way (leave one at the SGC and one at the weapons platform) allowing two-way travel easily enough. Bring through additional forces, railguns, supplies etc to help garrison the city.

Then and only then do we go hunting Wraith. Plant nukes (preferably the naquada enhanced 1,000-megaton ones) near all known hiveships (and that cloning facility, just in case) and detonate them as close to simultaneously as possible. Some Wraith will survive but Atlantis will have drones, a full shield, two warships and the satellite weapon to defend it.

Crack open the Ancient database (offer to share information with the Asgard in exchange for help) and prioritize finding assembly instructions for ZPM's, drone weapons and the satellite weapon (it's powered by one naquada generator, imagine them mounted on warships). Share advanced medical technology with Earth.

If I manage all that I would probably ask Q to stay in this universe since it's far better than what I have now.

[Forgothrax]

Wait, if there's no Weir-cicle, do we drown because the city has no power and she didn't go back in time to have an Ancient program the contingency program to make Atlantis float?

The contingency program is not in place, but the ZPMs have a little more power in them than originally. Including the time it'll take to figure out how to release the clamps and raise the city, you have about half an hour.

We'll of course need food for at least three years, even if that's nothing but MREs and lots of drinking water. Computers, enough to house databases of everything, and to have a backup in case we run a sentient virus, power problems, have to destroy the originals for whatever reason. We'll need medical equipment, enough to run a hospital if need be. Plus top of the line research equipment, after all, we want to learn as much as possible. After that, we'll need seeds, and gardening equipment, if we can be self sufficient in making our own food, then we should do so.

Even with a 38-minute dial window, can we bring enough food through to support everyone for a minimum of 24 months (ETA of the first supply ship)? Considering the sheer volume and mass of what we need, is it possible to bring everything through that we'd need in that period of time? That said, water shouldn't be a concern-- we'll need to bring at least a few days worth, but purifying Lantean seawater shouldn't be a problem. Atlantis is almost guaranteed to have facilities capable of doing so herself, I would think.

The Gateroom on Atlantis's side is also a factor. The Gate could be moved out of the SGC temporarily if need be to help feed people and supplies through from Earth, but Atlantis' Gateroom has fairly limited space itself, so it would be hard to feed through vehicles or large supply containers en masse.

If possible, as many zats as we can take, as they seem to have nearly limitless ammunition, and can be used to hide our presence if we explore the galaxy.

I would say Zats do have ammo limits, we just don't see them used for long periods on-screen. It's been a while since I've seen a lot of SG-1, but IIRC we never see the same zat fired more than 10-20 times on screen. I would say it's more likely they're run off a rechargeable powercell. Still, it would be better to have something we could recharge. With several months to prepare, perhaps a cut-down staff weapon? Staff weapon powercells are pretty small and you apparently get a lot of bang for your buck for one.

Naquadah generators, we need at least 30, and if possible, a 100, since we are planning on powering an Ancient city, and Ancient technology is a power hog, and we seem to lack ZPMs. If possible, take the ZPMs from Ra's hiding place and from the ancient outpost Camulus(as he has defected to Earth by now, right?) got his from, and stop it from blowing up when exposed to electricity.

Camulus' may or may not be repairable (if it is, neat, but it was never mentioned again in the series so there's a nonzero chance it isn't repairable by the SGC). Ra's would fall under the "no time travel" rule.

Find the Orion and the Aurora, and well take them. With the Aurora, if there is a Wraith who has decided to study it, wake up the Wraith in it and quickly kill it. We then take the ship home, and either wake the crew up and have them teach us about their technology, as they are not ascended beings, we can interact with them via their virtual reality device, or transfer them to a makeshift cryobay if we cannot.

Aurora we can find if we light off Atlantis' subspace beacon, IIRC. We'd still need a way to actually get at the ship, though, since AR-1 originally took the Daedalus to get there. Not sure about the Orion... unless someone remembers the Gate address for Taranis, though, we'll just have to hope we stumble across the ship in our explorations. Tria is hit or miss as to whether or not we'd manage to locate it.

Okay, we're recruiting from scratch? Everyone except Kavanaugh we remember from the show gets a free pass. Daniel Jackson too, without the need to keep his own show afloat. I don't suppose we could nab Carter while we're at it? Then with disclosure and a true international expedition we have such a ridiculously wide pool of qualified candidates to pick from, even on an expeditied time frame going through them will take months.

Everyone who would've gone on the original is up for grabs, yes. You can take anyone else you can persuade to go. Daniel and Carter are unfortunately not available.

[FaxModem1]

Hence saying MREs, each one can be a full day's meal, just add water. If we have enough for a year, by that point, the seeds we brought should be ready for harvest.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Or trade with the Hoffans for food. Let Carson and others sit down to make the drug safe in exchange for food, supplies, etc. With no time pressure from the impending Wraith harvest we have time to make it function properly and distribute it across the galaxy.

[Batman]

Assuming a (probably excessive) 3kg of food and water per person per day,for 24 months, and the 2500 number for participants and using the ENTIRE 38 minutes for nothing but shoving that food and water through, you'd need to move 2.4 tons per second through the gate.
Like I said, 3 kilos is probably excessive especially as you can probably meet water needs out of local resources pretty quickly (desalinating sea water isn't exactly rocket science) but there's no way you can make that. Of course, that assumes Ahriman's 2500 number (presumably based on the number of SDNetizens). If we reduce the size of the expedition to the people who actually posted in this thread, or even something the size of the TV Atlantis mission, bringing enough food and water to last 2 years shouldn't be much of a problem.

And while I agree that the Zats are unlikely to have unlimited ammo, chances are staff weapons don't either and Zats have both a better refire rate and are massively less unwieldy or obvious (have fun trying to concealed carry a staff weapon). Why the arbitrary assumption you can recharge staff weapons but not Zats?

[FaxModem1]

In that case, 6 months of MREs, and fishing equipment along with inflatable rafts to be included with the rest of the equipment. If nothing else, in good weather, we can fish from a planet that is nowhere near being over-fished.

[Zwinmar]

set up a conveyor belt system so that when the gate is opened on the left supplies go through, quickly. On the right personnel go through double quick.

One problem I always had with the show was the military guys not acting like military. There really is no room for cowboys on a mission like this. So a company of highly disciplined troops is essential. French Foreign Legion perhaps.
I would limit personal gear for everyone so they can all carry extra supplies.

As for weaponry: standard issue (current military not SG-1 submachine guns) would be preferred along with heavy weapons. This is provided no other more advanced weapon can be readily produced.

Oh yeah, actual diplomats need to be brought along.



I'm not sure of the floor plan for the Atlantis gate room, but WWII era jeeps should be small enough to move through the gate, and if a ground guide is present, they can move rather quickly ...getting supplies through. (incidentally they are still being used in some roles, or were at any rate the last I checked.)

As for individual recruitment: Have a few submarine commanders along as they have the experience and spacial awareness to run the jumpers in reconnaissance roles. As well as professional drill instructors and pr people to get recruits from off world (atlantis) provides more personnel is needed. Ideally everyone will have cross trained with everyone else.

[OmegaChief]

I'm not sure of the floor plan for the Atlantis gate room, but WWII era jeeps should be small enough to move through the gate, and if a ground guide is present, they can move rather quickly ...getting supplies through. (incidentally they are still being used in some roles, or were at any rate the last I checked.)

One teeny issue with the Jeeps idea; Fuel. Remember we only have a limited window for pulling over supplies, and limited amount of space on the supply transport when it eventually comes, do we really have enough for enough Jeep fuel for them to be reliable? Especially when we already have puddlejumpers on the other side which can cover just about any other role you can think of for a Jeep, only they can fly (Interplanetary no less!) and I think cloak if I remember right? (It's been a while since I saw Atlantis).

Also a couple of ideas re: The Wraith, wasn't there a crashed Wraith 'supply' ship on one of the other planets in the system that Atlantis was on? We know it has that old survivor on it, but if we go in prepared we might be able to take him easily and then we potentially have survivors (Very unlikely I admit) or at the very least a whole chunk of Wraith tech to study without worrying about waking up the rest of them. Which brings me to my next point, everyone is assuming that unless we wake up the wraith no one will, just like the OTL... only we're not in the OTL at all, and of all things Q himself has stated he'll find the conflict between us and the wraith amusing, as such we should probably plan for the fact that something will wake them up in a similar timeframe that was in the show.

[Ahriman238]

According to the OP, each of use gets inserted into the world as a Weir-equivalent, with her connections, skills and backstory to everyone. A couple of dedicated diplomats might not hurt though.

Omegachief makes a good point. We should plan on the Wraith waking, and sooner rather than later. which means we're on a tight-schedule to get as much as we can done before that with regards to securing the city, and diplomacy. And while we won't be telling all and sundry we came from Atlantis, we might want to get the city cloak rigged sooner rather than later, if only so we aren't throwing it together at the last minute and praying it works. Maybe a couple of McKay's other projects from the show, like shields and hyperdrive for the Jumpers, or the Gate Bridge should be started sooner. As soon as we get a ship for the latter.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The gate bridge is a priority I think. Perhaps the incoming supply ship can deploy gates on the way, that way we can transit with puddle jumpers until Midway Station is built.

I would suggest that toher than initial forays for ZPM's/drones/supplies/contact with Taranis and Hoff, beginning to plant those big old nukes in the dormant hive ships. Perhaps set them with a time-delyaed proximity fuse (i.e. one that gives you an hour etc to get clear). That way, the Wraith wake up and BOOM.

Bring along Camulus's rigged ZPM. Steal an idea from NecronLord's Undiscovered Galaxy fanfic, lure the Wraith to a system (perhaps the one with the wrecked city-ship once the population evacuates), dare them to attack, wait until they bring in most of the Hives and boom, bye-bye solar system.

[Ahriman238]

Now what to do about Janus' hidden lab? Even without the Attero Device and time-travel available to us, Janus was a mad genius with many projects going on at once. But if we breach the lab, the Lost Tribe will likely attack us. Which might not be a terrible thing, if we can get the Asgard onboard to deal with their rogue cousins, or convince the Pegasus Asgard to work with us. A little Asgard cloning could give the Aurora crew younger bodies that could survive their removal from the VR. Assuming they didn't decide to act like another ship full of Ancients I could mention.

If we could get the Gate Bridge set up, we can have all the supplies and additional personal we need gated in from Earth. With disclosure, we are not going to hurt for exquisitely qualified personnel. Let's just make Midway Station a bit bigger and better secured, huh? Maybe even have the Milky Way arm terminate at the Alpha Site or something.

Ask the SGC if they can pretty please negotiate for some of those Tok'ra tunneling crystals. It'd be nice if our allies could produce Dart-proof bunkers on demand. If we could get enough it would be nice for our gate teams to have the same capability.

I wonder if we could get the Daedalus (or other supply ship) when it shows to do a high-speed pass over Asuras and beam up a couple more ZPMs. A second one seemed to bring more and more capabilities online, and I'm curious what a full complement could do. Plus, it's nice to have spares.

Seriously, we could really use any Asgard support, they said they'd just barely scratched the surface of the Ancient's knowledge, and even having a ship swing by for half an hour to dust the Asurans would be tremendously useful, above and beyond dealing with their rogue members.

[FaxModem1]

The Vanir are the Lost Tribe, and according to the OP, no Vanir, at all.

[Eternal_Freedom]

No Asuras either. Consequently, start investigating JAnus' lab ASAP. No sense letting Ancient goodies go to waste.

This is why I recommended asking the Asgard for help with the ancient database and the Aurora/Orion/Tria. We know that the ASgard have power generators comparable to ZPM's (they can open intergalactic wormholes with a device on their hand and power their ships to go really fast). So ask them for help with the database and ships and power in exchange for whatever information they need.

[Forgothrax]

And while I agree that the Zats are unlikely to have unlimited ammo, chances are staff weapons don't either and Zats have both a better refire rate and are massively less unwieldy or obvious (have fun trying to concealed carry a staff weapon). Why the arbitrary assumption you can recharge staff weapons but not Zats?

I did originally state that number of people who come is people who post + any people they recruit in the SGA-verse. So your numbers could be anything from a few dozen to several hundred+, depending on how many personnel the Council decides would be necessary.

Sorry Bats, doesn't look like I was clear enough. I was saying Zats are good because we could recharge them and a rechargeable weapon would be preferable to one that uses ammo we can't replace. I was also saying that a modified staff weapon might be useful, as their ammunition is very small and we don't see them reload at all on screen, IIRC, so one crate of staff weapon power packs could produce a lot more total "shots" for its volume than an equivalent amount of 5.56/7.62/whatnot.

set up a conveyor belt system so that when the gate is opened on the left supplies go through, quickly. On the right personnel go through double quick.

The difficulty is cargo-handling on the Atlantis side. The gate room isn't exactly set up for moving large quantities of material through in a short period, and 38 minutes is not a particularly long period of time. Perhaps we could use antigravity technology to create a pad that applies a repulsive force to objects sitting on it, and place it in front of the Gate, then open the port into the Jumper hanger and use the pad to lift cargo into the Jumper bay? We'd need a number of pilots with the ATA Gene ready to move Jumpers out of the bay and out onto one of the Piers to free up cargo space, but that would give us a good place to store cargo immediately. Alternatively, we could mount antigrav directly to the supply containers and fly them through the Gate without setting up the pad. Something like a 20-footer intermodal container would carry roughly 28,000 kilos of supplies all on its own; a quick volume calculation indicates it might be able to hold as many as 16,000 MREs, and it'd carry a hell of a lot of ammo. Have we seen portable gravity manipulation technology in Stargate much? All I'm remembering is Anubis' hovering probe.

If we could feed one container through every 30 seconds, we'd have 75 containers or so, or a total of 2100 tons of supplies fed through. Cut than down to a 20-second transit, or even ten, and we could easily have a great deal of cargo moved through the Gate. It would probably be necessary to build a replica of the Atlantis Gate Room and run drills through several times before transiting to get things right.

One teeny issue with the Jeeps idea; Fuel. Remember we only have a limited window for pulling over supplies, and limited amount of space on the supply transport when it eventually comes, do we really have enough for enough Jeep fuel for them to be reliable? Especially when we already have puddlejumpers on the other side which can cover just about any other role you can think of for a Jeep, only they can fly (Interplanetary no less!) and I think cloak if I remember right? (It's been a while since I saw Atlantis).

While your points about the efficacy of Jeeps vs. Puddlejumpers stand, something like a mini-Naquadah generator similar to the one Sam used on the X-699 weapon could probably power an electric motor on a vehicle for quite some time and thus sidestep the fuel issue. I do not know if there are any vehicles that would fit our requirements that are electric and on the market, though.

Seriously, we could really use any Asgard support, they said they'd just barely scratched the surface of the Ancient's knowledge, and even having a ship swing by for half an hour to dust the Asurans would be tremendously useful, above and beyond dealing with their rogue members.

I'm not real sure the Asgard would want to help, though. IIRC haven't they had access to a Repository of Knowledge or something similar and not yet cracked all its secrets? I'm not sure Atlantis' database would be much better, to be frank, and the Asgard are said to be rather busy at the moment.

[bilateralrope]

How many Jeeps can be stored in the Atlantis gate room ?

Because I don't remember there being any door in the gate room big enough to drive a Jeep through. Except the Puddlejumper door, which doesn't count because it's in the roof.

[Dass.Kapital]

I think the previous poster was making a comment about using said vehicles to help haul stuff. Though, as another previous poster mentioned, setting up a sort of 'collapsible roller' type conveyor system might work too.

I suppose it really is about maximizing the flow through of material given the restricted focus and amount of time said portal can be opened.

[FaxModem1]

Considering that Atlantis uses teleporters like we do elevators, could we reverse engineer that technology(since in this timeline, we haven't gotten that technology from the Asgard) and once mastered, when on a regular mission update between Earth and Atlantis, teleport several boxes that are waiting in the gateroom?

[Ahriman238]

Okay, lacking the Vanir and Asurans makes things easier.

Atlantis is roughly the size of Manhattan Island and should be able to hold millions of people. Ideally I'd like something like a quarter million after reinforcement through the gate bridge. Enough that we aren't all rattling around in this giant city, and so we can have teams thousands of men strong doing research on vital areas. In the Siege, Dr, Weir admitted to being uncertain if they evacuated whether to spend limited computer storage to record ZPM research, cures for terrestrial diseases, weapons that might save earth or research on ascension. Frankly, all of these deserve lots of people working on them full time. Especially duplicating ZPMs which will allow us to settle the city indefinitely, give out ships a huge edge in any fight (and make the trip to and from Pegasus much shorter) and end ever wanting for energy. And of course, we're here for technologies for our ships so their ought to be dedicated teams looking into Ancient shields, weapons and other systems. Plus dedicated crews for the Aurora and Orion.

Also, many people should be taking classes with the holographic schoolmarm, on the assumption that they are very young and very slow Ancient children. It'll take a while and while in school they won't be contributing much, but having people with even a lay-Ancient's knowledge of their science will be useful later and we should have people covering the basic, foundational stuff to grasp things we may miss while reaching for the high fruit. Remember, the Ancient's technology isn't idiot or child-proofed. They genetically locked their tech and had faith that anyone with enough Ancient DNA to use the things would be well aware of exotic particles and supra-dimensional parasites and so on, and thus be qualified to use them.

Of course, such a population means more organizational hassles, we'll need more cooks than Isolder, probably our own law-enforcement above and beyond Weir's military security measures. If we're to be a ruling council, we might want to work out some division of responsibilities. My scientific education is "barely passed chem" so that's probably out, but I could likely handle diplomacy or gate operations. Preferably, I'd be right there with the group trying to get an Ancient's education.

Then let's talk about Arcturus. Frankly, the two cracks the show gave at limitless power generation didn't pan out, and I wouldn't be okaying research on any planet inhabited (by people we'd mind blowing up.) But not all alternatives were explored. Though, I'm almost interested in the ground-based, pulse-firing version of the Lagrane satellite weapon. If we could stick that on Atlantis with a couple of ZPMs for it and the shields, arbitrarily large Wraith fleets would become a minor issue. Of the solutions I'd vote for having the teams thoroughly model before trying anywhere are layered containment shields (probably a low-percentage solution) venting the unpredictable exotic particles (somewhere uninhabited, please) and using it only on low-power setting for short bursts, which is my favorite. A couple minutes of energy equivalent to the output of a dozen ZPMs into a capacitor could do some very nice things.

I'd also like to have a team or two always on standby alert, sitting in a jumper ready to go and support any gate team that gets in trouble.

Oh, and I assumed this was covered by the no ascended rule, but to be absolutely sure, the assorted nastiness around Atlantis' dark corners doesn't include the Ascend-o-matic that almost killed Mckay, right?

Oh yes, we're also living on a planet with annual super-hurricanes and a massive solar disturbance in a couple of years. We might expend some thought on dealing with those.