Stargate Atlantis variation

[Bilbo]

Okay, its the first episode of Season 2 of Stargate Atlantis. The city is under seige from the Wraith and things are not looking good at all.

In the episode the Daedalus arrives with a ZPM which is the beginning of the turnaround for the battle.

What happens if the Daedalus does not arrive alone? What if the Asgard frustrated by their war with the Replicatots has decided to move their entire civilization to the Pegasus galaxy. As a start the entire Asgard fleet (numbers relatively unknown, I am guessing no more than a couple dozen ships) arrive over Atlantis. Short term this should remove the small Wraith fleet and wipe out the second wave of 12 Hive Ships fairly easily.

Long term Atlantis has the internal volume of Manhatten so the Asgard could probably move a huge chunk if not their entire population into the city. Assuming some form of joint command between Earth and the Asgard working in the city what does this do?

Are the Wraith toast within a week? Month? Do they still suceed in being a threat at all? Do the Asgard learn to correct their genetic degredation problem and survive as a species?

How would this change the Stargate world storyline? How much of a threat are the Ori assuming they come along in some manner within the same timeframe or so, we can assume Daniel Jackson will continue his same line of research so the device that led the Ori to our galaxy might still be found and used.

[Vertigo1]

The Asgard fleet (at the time specified was only a small group of ships) would make mincemeat out of the two remaining hiveships, and the nine cruisers. After that, it gets a little iffy. With the Asgard helping, the wraith would be even more inclined to send everything they have against them. The only real help here is if the Asgard probed the ancient database for ZPM locations, and then dispatched a ship to investigate each location. Then things become even more fun when they help move the city to yet another planet, or just keep it flying in space to avoid the wraith discovering its location.

I honestly don't see Atlantis that much better off, in the long run, with the asgard around. They have the firepower, but they are seriously screwed when it comes to the numbers game.

[Themightytom]

The Asgard fleet (at the time specified was only a small group of ships) would make mincemeat out of the two remaining hiveships, and the nine cruisers. After that, it gets a little iffy. With the Asgard helping, the wraith would be even more inclined to send everything they have against them. The only real help here is if the Asgard probed the ancient database for ZPM locations, and then dispatched a ship to investigate each location. Then things become even more fun when they help move the city to yet another planet, or just keep it flying in space to avoid the wraith discovering its location.

I honestly don't see Atlantis that much better off, in the long run, with the asgard around. They have the firepower, but they are seriously screwed when it comes to the numbers game.

The Asgard are probably advanced enough to be able to either build a ZPM or a substitute, as their ships can travel from galaxy to galaxy in a matter of minutes, and the Asgard themselvves have no difficulty with intergalactic addresses on stargates.

The Asgard shields on a daedalous can withstand quite a bit of fire from the wraith, and once the Asgard designed a beam weapon for them, were able to annihalate hive ships in short order. The campaign against the replicators, a far more advanced and powerful foe, was pretty successful, The asgard could ccertainly launch a hit and run campaign with half a dozen ships and bring the wraith to a point where they were at least willing to negotiate.

[Vertigo1]

The Asgard are probably advanced enough to be able to either build a ZPM or a substitute, as their ships can travel from galaxy to galaxy in a matter of minutes, and the Asgard themselvves have no difficulty with intergalactic addresses on stargates.

They have their own method of power generation that, while incredibly powerful, isn't ZPM powerful. This is evident by Thor's beliskner being shredded by one of Anubis' lackeys at the end of the fifth season.

The Asgard shields on a daedalous can withstand quite a bit of fire from the wraith, and once the Asgard designed a beam weapon for them, were able to annihalate hive ships in short order.

Without a method of augmenting the power generation capability of the earth ships, those asgard shields go down rather quickly. It doesn't take long for a hiveship to batter down the shields of the Daedalus, sans ZPM. Even Michael's pathetic little cruiser pounded the shields of the Daedalus down to 20% before they launched their 302 attack to take out his weapons. As for the asgard beam weapons, they're incredibly useful against the cruisers, but when you're taking on multiple hiveships at once, you're still screwed.

That said, the more modern O'Neill ships are able to take far more of a pounding than their predecessors, the Beliskner-class. (Which could be easily destroyed by a single hatak, with Anubis' modified shields.) The smaller variant shown in the curbstomping with the four Ori ships clearly was able to take more punishment than either the Anubis-upgraded hataks, or the two earth ships. However, this point is kinda moot since we have yet to see the upper limit of what punishment they can take.

The campaign against the replicators, a far more advanced and powerful foe, was pretty successful,

Umm, not really. The asgard tactic of "keep building a bigger zap gun" only worked for so long before the replicators assimilated the technology, and developed countermeasures. The only tactic that had any kind of success was to drop a time-dialation machine on their homeworld to attract the buggers. No, the only thing that stopped the replicators was the "lets dial all gates at once" tactic towards the end of the 8th season.

The asgard could ccertainly launch a hit and run campaign with half a dozen ships and bring the wraith to a point where they were at least willing to negotiate.

Yes, because that worked so well for Carter on the Phoenix.....

[Bilbo]

Couple thoughts. Either Asgard power generation or hyperdrives, or both, are much more advanced than the ancients. No ship of the Ancients ever moves as quickly as the Asgard. The main advantage of a ZPM is its small portable size and the fact that is is not so much an elaborate generator as it is a super-advanced battery that can be just plugged in and used.

As for the Daedalus versus the Wraith Cruiser, in that battle things were so one-sided that the main characters walked around the Daedalus and had casual conversations about strategy while Michael's cruiser was pounding away like mad. From beam in of Shep and Ronan to 302 attack was at least 15 minutes. In that time Michael's cruiser was unable to penetrate the shields, this is even including getting several shots in with the shields down that did extensive damage.

I do not believe that we ever get an indication of the size of the Asgard fleet, I a guessing no more than 24 ships but it could be a bit larger or smaller than that. It is large enough that Loki was able to "borrow" a Daniel Jackson class science ship in season 7 without the Asgard knowing.

When the Beliskner was destroyed it was by an Anubis upgraded ship. The Beliskner was such an old design that Tealc recignized it from Jaffa legends. So this is certainly not an indication of how powerful an Asgard ship is. A better indication is that a O'Neil class cruiser before the Asgard designed upgraded beam weapons survived the first battle with the Ori motherships. In fact the Asgard ship when moving around looked like a hummingbird alongside a bunch of pigs in mud, maneuverability means a lot in space based combat.

The Asgard fleet may not instantly wipe out the Wraith, but imagine the technical impact of hundreds, or thousands, or brilliant Asgard doing research work on Atlantis. This is where I expect the greatest difference in the timeline to be.

[dragon]

Out of curiosity have they ever mentioned what the Asgard use for a power source. Considering as advanced as they are they should be able to make ZPM them selves.

[Johonebesus]

If nothing else they should be able to figure out how to make ZPM's. Surely Atlantis had the facilities to produce them, but the humans either couldn't find them or couldn't figure out how to work them (maybe they didn't trust McKay to experiment with them after he blew up the planet). Really, that seemed like a big plot hole to me. You'd think that finding Atlantis' ZPM facility and figuring out its operation would be among the first priorities, but it's never mentioned. Why didn't Earth continue to send scientists and engineers to try to populate and eventually fully operate the city? I hope they left Atlantis on Earth, even though they landed in the wrong ocean.

As for the OP, I don't see it making a huge difference. Unless the Asgard merged with the Pegasus branch they're still going to degrade and probably commit suicide anyway. They might help the humans, but they were never interested in really sharing their knowledge until the end, and then they just gave the Earthlings a big encyclopedia with no-one left around to help them figure it out. I don't think they'd be any more inclined to help the humans learn Alteran technology than they were in the canon.

Possibly, if they merged with their Pegasus kin who then gained enough political power, they just might take a proactive role against the Wraith. If the Asurans don't lose any ZPM's and the Wraith can't find another way to power their soldier factories, they might not be able to overpower the Asgard with sheer numbers. Then the Asgard would probably remain aloof, possibly even banishing the Earthlings from Atlantis and decreeing that Humans aren't allowed to possess sophisticated technology.