Stargate vs ???

[adam_grif]

Hatak guns make a hell of noise, shake the ground and are visible bolts of lightning from the sky. For the Goa'uld that type of setting is basicly what they want as a freaking terror weapon. Military effectiveness is largely irrelevant for them untill it was late season 7 to 8.

So what if it would take them days to dismantle Modern Earth with orbital bombardment? You are subjecting entire planetary populations to massive shock and awe and probably ensuring a large chunk can't sleep through the time period. The entire thing is designed to break entire peoples, and for the Goa'uldto have a awesome lightshow at the same time.

So something that could potential give them an advantage over their rivals would not be considered worth the time and effort to produce? If they have more powerful guns and they want to make it take longer, they can tone it down or use specialized shitty guns to do that for them. But the idea that they would willingly make their vessels shit is a pretty hard pill to swallow. You know what they love more than slowly destroying a planet? Having their rivals on their knees.

Well, and you have to remember, the Ha'tak taking days to dismantle a planet is totally cool according to the System Lords.

Days? At that level of firepower? Try centuries. Days would be what it takes to wipe out a small village with those pieces of shit. You can jump out of the way to avoid getting killed by them. They look just like special effects explosives, coincidentally.

It would make far more sense if they were just using some kind of low powered gun or their weapons were dial-a-yield and they had a gunner come in on work experience and he didn't know how to switch it off the setting they use to shave their beards or some shit.

Goa'uld vessels are like 90 percent defense, 10 percent offense, and geared towards dealing with far-flung settlements of pre-industrial humans.

And wars with other Goa'uld. That the Goa'uld are hugely arrogant and stupid is a given, but these blasts are supposed to be killing other, similar vessels. Did they all just sit around in a circle and agree not to use any blasts that gave off more energy than a hand grenade?

I mean, hell, they don't even bother to design new weapons. They just take bigass staff weapons and mount them on the gliders, the bottom of the Al'kesh, and I swear they use the same things on the Ha'tak batteries and just pump more power into it.

Their technological stasis colours them as tech scavengers (since most of the "progress" we see is just when they found some ancient tech or some shit).

Really, the Goa'uld motherships only look badass until you realize that they don't do anything serious without about 15-20 of them at once.

Did you just say the Goa'uld motherships look badass in some circumstances?

They're the Hummers of space travel.

Yes we all know they're pieces of shit, what I don't buy is that their main guns are so pathetically weak.

[NecronLord]

Well, and you have to remember, the Ha'tak taking days to dismantle a planet is totally cool according to the System Lords. They don't mind wasting shitloads of their time just dropping shots onto a planet, but something as densely populated as Earth is still a huge, huge issue for them. They're just patient enough to bomb people to death over a long period, or try to do something sneaky like slip a bomb through the gate. They would much rather have their stupidly designed flying pyramids and satisfy their overwhelming, crippling sense of vanity than knuckle down and build something strictly effective. Goa'uld vessels are like 90 percent defense, 10 percent offense,

I'd love to know how you worked that one out. They can certainly wipe out cities in short periods of time, render entire planetary surfaces radioactive, and even notably increase the volcanic activity on a large moon with their weapons. We just never see any of this stuff. It's conceivable it's all done with their complement of bombs, but on the other, it's conceivable that it's done with their energy weapons.

and geared towards dealing with far-flung settlements of pre-industrial humans. A single drone can basically crush a Ha'tak. Outside of their shields, those ships are garbage.

There's no statistical evidence to back that. Unless ancient-knowledge super-O'Neill is a ginormous moron who likes wasting limited supplies of drones, I am inclined to suggest that's a lucky shot. Remember that we've also seen a single drone from a crashed jumper mission kill a wraith cruiser, and yet those same cruisers can severely damage a ZPM enhanced Aurora-class battleship in unspecified numbers.

I mean, hell, they don't even bother to design new weapons. They just take bigass staff weapons and mount them on the gliders, the bottom of the Al'kesh, and I swear they use the same things on the Ha'tak batteries and just pump more power into it.

I have some terrifying concept art of that the other day. But I will spare you. Thankfully, it's non-canon.

Also, why should they actually design fundamentally new energy weapons? There are several variants of staff weapons and cannons (in fact, there's a 'new' one in the re-edit of Childen of the Gods on the gliders, I noticed, that opens in a different way) What would actually work better in the same role in your opinion?

Missiles, perhaps, but other than that, there's no reason to think that they're particularly poor energy weapons on aircraft.

But you very rarely see Earth directly threatened because of the Asgard treaty. When talking about badass ships, the Asgard are a lot more powerful than anything the system lords have at their disposal. Several other forces (including one-off forces) can beat the shit out of Ha'tak, they just don't have numbers. Really, the Goa'uld motherships only look badass until you realize that they don't do anything serious without about 15-20 of them at once.

We never see them do anything, full stop.

The only species in Stargate that uses ships purely militarily are humans.

The O'Neill class was outright said to have no other function than combatting the replicators.

The Asgard vessels, though powerful, were over-weighted in speed and not in gunnery. The Ori flying ox-yokes were terror weapons mass-produced with an oversized main beam weapon, decent hyperdrive, and the rest of their systems depending heavily on the Priors. Ha'tak are garbage, and even the relatively uncreative Goa'uld are able to make much more advanced versions (like Apophis' improved design) pretty quickly. They're the Hummers of space travel.

Err... okay. Again, we see nothing to scale their power with. We rarely saw them fight anything but another goa'uld ship. There's no reason to think they're particularly weak. Hell, pound-for-pound, Anubis' ships were superior to the Beliskner class in battle, if not in strategic speed.

At the time you mention, Apophis had access to the technologies and holdings of Sokar, it's reasonable to assume he also had access to Sokar's ship-designers and production facilities. Sokar was far from an uncreative goa'uld.

[NecronLord]

Their technological stasis colours them as tech scavengers (since most of the "progress" we see is just when they found some ancient tech or some shit).

Actually, during the series we see them make several major innovations, and conduct scientific research without any external source, offhand, cloaking, personal, tel'tak and mothership scales, new ship designs, nanotechnology research, gravity research (Ba'al's base in Abyss), genetics research (Cassandra) they were outright said to have invented transphase eradication rods...

They're tech scavengers, certainly they also adapt other people's technologies in many cases, I could name at least as many examples of that offhand too. But there's also no evidence that anyone in the SG universe has an original tech-base aside from the Ancients, Ori, and those aliens in Universe. The Tau'ri are certainly tech scavengers themselves.

And just to tweak you, I'll point out that, in terms of calculable examples, the goa'uld have a sub-light engine in a death glider that the Ancients' pilots would give their left nuts for. And there's no mention of their having stolen their sublight engines from anyone. Hell, a ha'tak is an order of magnitude faster than a puddle jumper at sublight; the only faster vessel of any kind was the Triia with a ZPM.

Also, Apophis regularly sends expeditions Fenri hunting for research purposes. And if examining nature to get your ideas doesn't count as science, I do hope you're not using modern medicine.

Daniel Jackson's statements that they make nothing of thier own must be weighed given his own bias. He is also convined that Apophis is incapable of - literally not capable of - love, even though there's no indication that he's not, and we outright see him when 'alone' addressing the symbiote Amaunet as 'my love,' screaming out her name in pain, and pledging extra-horrible death for Teal'c for 'murdering' her. Even Sokar went so far as to torment Apophis by informing him of Amaunet's death.

We even later see a goa'uld - an actual goa'uld - sacrifice herself to win Jonas Quinn's approval. Daniel Jackson may be an expert on the goa'uld, but at the best of times he is obviously (and forgivably) biased against them, and his statements regarding 'invent nothing of your own' cannot be taken seriously in the light of considerable evidence of goa'uld performing scientific research.

Did you just say the Goa'uld motherships look badass in some circumstances?

Are you shitting me? They look badass all the time. All the goa'uld ship designs are cool. Seriously, while there's no disputing taste, I question yours if you don't think they look helluva cool.

If you think otherwise, I would guess that's probably your impression of their technological weakness. If they had the abilities of Hathor's universe-crossing multi-exaton-firepower battleship Ra's Eye from the Bill McKay Stargate books, you'd probably think they were badass too.

[Nephtys]

Ha'tak bombardment basically destroyed the Tollan civilization, which was a global civilization with a technology level exceeding modern humanity (and non-asgard equipped Stargate humanity to boot). That really ought to indicate that a Ha'tak is really capable of destroying cities, since the radio traffic of the Tollans getting bombed seemed to suggest they were going down rather quickly since their surface-space defenses no longer were effective.

In the alternate reality Daniel Jackson traveled to in the first season finale, I do believe there were mention of multigigaton blasts destroying major cities as Apophis invaded earth.

[NecronLord]

Ha'tak bombardment basically destroyed the Tollan civilization, which was a global civilization with a technology level exceeding modern humanity (and non-asgard equipped Stargate humanity to boot). That really ought to indicate that a Ha'tak is really capable of destroying cities, since the radio traffic of the Tollans getting bombed seemed to suggest they were going down rather quickly since their surface-space defenses no longer were effective.

In the alternate reality Daniel Jackson traveled to in the first season finale, I do believe there were mention of multigigaton blasts destroying major cities as Apophis invaded earth.

The thing is, it could just be firing these at the target. It would actually make their shape and design sensible if they're intended to be fired from orbit and airburst over a target.

[Crazedwraith]

Weapons equivalent to 200 megatons (.2 gigatons) were referenced in that episode ('There But For The Grace Of God') Of course it seemed that that Apophsis had a far greater fleet. He'd also wiped out a good portion of the Earth's cities, though we don't know how long he'd been at it.

[NecronLord]

Weapons equivalent to 200 megatons (.2 gigatons) were referenced in that episode ('There But For The Grace Of God') Of course it seemed that that Apophsis had a far greater fleet. He'd also wiped out a good portion of the Earth's cities, though we don't know how long he'd been at it.

Actually, he only had two confirmed ships in that episode. And they'd been stated to have been there for four days.

And I want a special edition of There But for the Grace of God where we see Apophis standing on the pel'tak of his ship, grinning as he chases Air Force One and watches it splatter on the shield. That's a simply hilarious image. Interestingly, it's strongly implied that the goa'uld ships spent their time in atmosphere all the while 'moving slowly'

"As in Asia, Europe and Africa, they have moved slowly, systematically annihilating all signs of civilization. Starting on the East coast, and moving west with frightening inevitability. There has been no response with attempted communication with the Aliens. Thus far, they have left no survivors in the wake of the seemingly unstoppable wave of destruction."

That sounds much more like they're flying around blowing stuff up than sitting in orbit.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Hmm...If it's a one-on-one, or if we're talking 'it's the future and the Earth now has a proper fleet' or something, I'd say Tau'ri warships would spank the UFP in either situation. Considering that the Ha'tak's shields are able to withstand multiple 200 megaton shots from other Ha'taks, and the Tau'ri have much much much stronger Asgard shields capable of withstanding Ori weapons, which are shown breezing through Ha'tak shields. I'd say they'd be able to withstand more punishment than any 5 ST ships could throw at them, and their Asgard wank weapons can mess up an Ori Mother ship pretty bad, so it should be able to one-shot most ST ships.

[Teleros]

The main advantage I can see for most of the Trek powers (vs SGC) is their numbers: the Tau'ri only have a handful of warships, which severely limits their ability to do lots of stuff at once. Heck, if Earth has only say two warships in orbit you could plausibly do some nasty damage by sending in a large fleet and ordering them to attack the planet whilst evading the defending ships.

[adam_grif]

On the other hand, Odyssey style Daedalus class ships have such a ludicrous hyperspace speed that this partially makes up for lack of numbers.

Zerg rushing Earth with hundreds or even thousands of ships to drop nukes everywhere is possible, but is very counter to the UFP's modus operandi. If they did pull something like that, the rules go out the window, and it's much easier for the Tau'ri to strike a distant target than it is for the UFP. Drop out of hyperspace, launch a couple of Horizon MIRVs, gg.

Just thinking about it now, the entire premise of Voyager was that crossing 1/4 of the galaxy was going to take the better part of a century (from memory). By contrast, we have Daedalus class ships routinely ferrying goods from Earth to the Pegasus galaxy in only a couple of weeks.

Actually,

Conceded. I didn't remember any of that stuff.

Are you shitting me? They look badass all the time. All the goa'uld ship designs are cool. Seriously, while there's no disputing taste, I question yours if you don't think they look helluva cool.

If you think otherwise, I would guess that's probably your impression of their technological weakness. If they had the abilities of Hathor's universe-crossing multi-exaton-firepower battleship Ra's Eye from the Bill McKay Stargate books, you'd probably think they were badass too.

It's got nothing to do with their capabilities, it's that I think they look really silly. The pyramid is probably the suspect here. I'm not a fan of most of the Asgard designs either, or the Prometheus. Although the Lantean / Wraith are ok, and I think the 304 looks really, really awesome.

Are SG novels cannonical? Because that description sounds a bit wanktastic. An Exatonne is 6 orders of magnitude higher than a gigatonne. Not even Wars ships can stand up to that.

[NecronLord]

Eh. Wraith and Tau'ri ships look pretty ordinary, I'd say, but whatever.

Are SG novels cannonical? Because that description sounds a bit wanktastic. An Exatonne is 6 orders of magnitude higher than a gigatonne. Not even Wars ships can stand up to that.

9 orders of magnitude. Giga < Tera < Peta < Exa.

Those ones definately aren't. They predate the SG1 TV series, and were based solely off the film. Ra was the last of his kind, actually made the stargates, and Abydos was billions upon billions of light years away. All his minions, like Hathor, were meant to be human. The aformentioned number is actually rather high, there's a scene in the first of those books where Hathor tests some of the battleship's weapons by firing on and vapourising an asteroid it describes as 'almost identical to Ceres' which is at the minimum, 30, petatons, and more likely twenty times that, say .6 exatons/volley. Ra's personal military flagship dwarfs it by orders of magnitude, and blows up planets. The ship in the film was meant to be a civillian craft, or more properly, it was meant to be equivalent of Picard's 'Captain's Yacht' for that ship.

To be wank, of course, it would have to contradict the original reference, which it really didn't.

Nothing to do with SG1, of course (well, Hathor in the series was possibly partly based on the villain of the books, but there's substantial differences too), and therefore not canonical, at least not regarding discussions of it.

[adam_grif]

9 orders of magnitude. Giga < Tera < Peta < Exa.

I could have sworn I got that right before I posted, but you are correct.

Ra's personal military flagship dwarfs it by orders of magnitude, and blows up planets. The ship in the film was meant to be a civillian craft, or more properly, it was meant to be equivalent of Picard's 'Captain's Yacht' for that ship.

Eh. Wraith and Tau'ri ships look pretty ordinary, I'd say, but whatever.

Well, I don't love Wraith, but they function well enough and fit the wraith aesthetic quite well. As for the 304 specifically, I have no idea why I think it's so awesome. It looks far more real than most of them do, and has that "military" look about it. *shrug*

[Revy]

What about Ba'al's fleet bombing the hell out of Earth in Stargate Continuum? I know he had a lot of ships there, and when the firing started there was no reason to hold back. Can we work out anything useful about Ha'Tak firepower from those scenes? It's been a while since I saw it and it's a bit hazy.

As for Stargate vs whomever, remember that they should technically still be able to pull off that stunt that Carter did where she helped an AU earth use Merlins phase shift device to cloak the entire planet and make it insubstantial and impervious to Ori fire. Especially if they have a spare ZPM lying around. Then there's that crazy ass time dilation device the Odyssey used to freeze time in the last SG1 episode. Not sure if it has any tactical benefit, but was there ever a reason given as to why they couldn't simply start the ships engines and move it out of the way of the beam attack before turning the device off?

Then of course if they wanted to be completely batshit insane, they could always make themselves some of the killer lego bricks and toss them at whatever enemy they're up against. Might bite them in the ass later, but Stargate has a pretty much 100% track record for (eventually) beating the Replicators.

[Darth Hoth]

I never liked the ha'tak ships (those are the "standard" Snake-Worm motherships, right?). Perhaps it was the CGI, but the design never looked the slightest bit menacing to me. Ra's ship from the movie was much more impressive.

Those ones definately aren't. They predate the SG1 TV series, and were based solely off the film. Ra was the last of his kind, actually made the stargates, and Abydos was billions upon billions of light years away. All his minions, like Hathor, were meant to be human. The aformentioned number is actually rather high, there's a scene in the first of those books where Hathor tests some of the battleship's weapons by firing on and vapourising an asteroid it describes as 'almost identical to Ceres' which is at the minimum, 30, petatons, and more likely twenty times that, say .6 exatons/volley. Ra's personal military flagship dwarfs it by orders of magnitude, and blows up planets. The ship in the film was meant to be a civillian craft, or more properly, it was meant to be equivalent of Picard's 'Captain's Yacht' for that ship.

Did the Boat of a Million Years actually blow up Abydos, as in vapourisation or exceeding gravitational binding energy? From what I recall of the books (although it was a while since I read them), Earth had no way of knowing after the StarGate [sic] was cut off, and they speculated on anything from planetary destruction to "mere" Base Delta Zero-style extinction event.

Although it was definitely said to be orders of magnitude more powerful than the Ra's Eye, which did blow up the Ceres-like planetoid, so it is still nothing to sneer at.

[adam_grif]

The replicator weapon wouldn't be necessary, and is a bit too dangerous. The only time it might be acceptable was if they had an AoT style kill switch built into the replicators, and a fleet on standby in case it didn't work. The replicators getting a 304 would really ruin people's days.

Also, making them immune to the ARG would not be advised.

The biggest issue would be getting them on board enemy ships. Can't beam through shields etc. Given the already impressive firepower displayed by the SGverse, I doubt it would be necessary. Of course, if they didn't want to risk a direct confrontation, they could always just "come in peace" and then beam down a dozen replicators instead of a greeting party.

Still, too risky for my taste.

Not sure if it has any tactical benefit, but was there ever a reason given as to why they couldn't simply start the ships engines and move it out of the way of the beam attack before turning the device off?

No reason stated, but that would have been the first thing they thought of.

[Teleros]

Zerg rushing Earth with hundreds or even thousands of ships to drop nukes everywhere is possible, but is very counter to the UFP's modus operandi. If they did pull something like that, the rules go out the window, and it's much easier for the Tau'ri to strike a distant target than it is for the UFP. Drop out of hyperspace, launch a couple of Horizon MIRVs, gg.

Well if we're honest a Tau'ri-UFP war is unlikely anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of the less principled factions (hello Tal Shiar / Obsidian Order). Certainly from what I've seen though the only defence against Tau'ri retaliation would be making sure they don't know where the hell the attack came from, or who did it.

[NecronLord]

The first imperative would be to torture SGC staff into revealing the addresses of their naquadah mines, then send antimatter bombs through the stargate. 304s won't search well without fuel; though they do have ZPMs.

[sirocco]

The first imperative would be to torture SGC staff into revealing the addresses of their naquadah mines, then send antimatter bombs through the stargate. 304s won't search well without fuel; though they do have ZPMs.

You certainly mean "they do have ONE ZPM"

[Revy]

You certainly mean "they do have ONE ZPM"

Ehh, Enemy at the Gate? Atlantis? I can't remember exactly, but didn't they have a full compliment of ZPM's when the city touches down on Earth? Plus they still have Todd, who may have more tucked away as bargaining chips (I'd have kept at least one from the humans as a get out of jail free card or something).

The first imperative would be to torture SGC staff into revealing the addresses of their naquadah mines, then send antimatter bombs through the stargate. 304s won't search well without fuel; though they do have ZPMs.

That'll only work a couple of times, before the SGC starts putting iris or shields around the stargates for said locations. Plus the Odyssey has an Asgard power core and no more Ori to worry about, not to mention all the technical specs for said power core and a machine that can replicate any component they might need.

[NecronLord]

The first imperative would be to torture SGC staff into revealing the addresses of their naquadah mines, then send antimatter bombs through the stargate. 304s won't search well without fuel; though they do have ZPMs.

You certainly mean "they do have ONE ZPM"

Have you seen the Atlantis finale? At last count, they had five. One situated in the Antarctic Outpost, which assuming they don't go and get The Tower's throne chair and work out how to integrate it with the outpost, or link it to Atlantis' chair, it isn't going to be doing much there and would probably be moved onto a 303, another on board the Odyssey. Todd gave them instructions in finding a further two to restore Atlantis to full power in order to head off the Wraith attack on Earth.

That'll only work a couple of times, before the SGC starts putting iris or shields around the stargates for said locations.

The idea is, obviously, if you're the Obsidian Order, to roll in with a whole fleet, purge Earth, torture folks until they talk, and then destroy every Tau'ri offworld base. The only offworld SGC facilities we've seen have not possessed irises, mostly because actually having one would defeat the point of them (Alpha sites). Taking Earth, on the other hand, would be quite a problem.

And their permanent offworld holdings have never seemed very extensive. After a 'couple of times,' there might be nothing left of the Tau'ri but the people on Destiny.

Plus the Odyssey has an Asgard power core and no more Ori to worry about, not to mention all the technical specs for said power core and a machine that can replicate any component they might need.

We don't know the limitations of that replication machine, but it must need raw materials from somewhere, or it's a perpetual motion machine. They obviously can produce new asgard cores, but there's nothing saying that's an easy process or one they can do indefinitely without a support base. The only asgard power device we've heard named is a 'Neutrino-Ion Reactor' which may use something commonly available as fuel, or conversely, may require a rare and vulnerable facility to make fuel for it. ZPMs, on the other hand, will continue to run until exhausted.

And no, Unending doesn't give anything reliable to derive the power core's endurance from, as the time dialation field was also powered by the ZPM, which one must presume did the heavy lifting, too, given that they've not just installed those same asgard generators on Atlantis to power it.

In short, there's no reason to think it's got anything like a ZPM's independence from logistics.

[adam_grif]

If Earth falls the SGC will have self destructed anyway, so they can't hope to get a shortcut to the alpha sites etc. During this time, presumably the 304's will started wrecking shit. Actually capturing Earth is a huge problem. They can no doubt destroy it all before the 304's can blow their ships all up, but actually landing an invasion force to conquer takes far more time tha nsimply destroying it does, which means the Tauri ships will be inflicting disproportionate casualties on all of their craft.

If they take more than a few hours to conquer everything, they'd need to have nigh infinite fleets to avoid getting wiped out, unless the asgard beams weapons are somehow not effective against ST shields or the 304's simply run out of power.

[sirocco]

You certainly mean "they do have ONE ZPM"

Have you seen the Atlantis finale? At last count, they had five. One situated in the Antarctic Outpost, which assuming they don't go and get The Tower's throne chair and work out how to integrate it with the outpost, or link it to Atlantis' chair, it isn't going to be doing much there and would probably be moved onto a 303, another on board the Odyssey. Todd gave them instructions in finding a further two to restore Atlantis to full power in order to head off the Wraith attack on Earth.

The ones on Atlantis got depleted from all the instant-crap-wormhole travel and Mexican standoff and landing on Earth. At best you have 50% of energy left in one of those. But well even without that it seems to me that it no longer have any drones left.
Superhive ZPM - destroyed
Atlantic outpost ZPM - buried under the remains of Area 51.
Odyssey ZPM - still safe I guess (after all that happened during the Ori arc, I wondered how much depleted it is)

So OK. we have between 1 and 2.5 ZPM left. but to power what?

[NecronLord]

The ones on Atlantis got depleted from all the instant-crap-wormhole travel and Mexican standoff and landing on Earth. At best you have 50% of energy left in one of those. But well even without that it seems to me that it no longer have any drones left.

That there is fanon, I've seen it repeated too, but that doesn't make it so, unless it's in the commentary or Malozzi's blog or something. All that's said in the show is that the shield is going to collapse; which does not equate to the ZPMs being depleted. Never mind that 'do you think they'll take it back to Pegasus' comment - you'd think someone would have mentioned 'we've exhausted our ZPMs' if that were the case.

EDIT: Sheppard even goes so far as to say "Take your time. The city's pretty banged up. Even with the ZeePMs we're not going anywhere for a while." At the very least, those ZPMs are still there and working.

Superhive ZPM - destroyed

Err, lost, not destroyed. When they explode, they take out solar systems. There's about a half dozen that are lost throughout the series without being destroyed; for example those on board the Asuran city ship. This rather suggests they suck at finding them of course, but they're still around.

Atlantic outpost ZPM - buried under the remains of Area 51.

There's no reason to think they took the platform with them to Area 51; it wasn't in the fucking chair. And it logically needs to be wired into the drone hive to work.

Odyssey ZPM - still safe I guess (after all that happened during the Ori arc, I wondered how much depleted it is)

So OK. we have between 1 and 2.5 ZPM left. but to power what?

Are you brain dead? In the context of the discussion, I'm talking about using ZPMs to make 303s independent of fuel requirements.

[NecronLord]

If Earth falls the SGC will have self destructed anyway

Clearly it's literally impossible to take Stargate Command without a self destruct, just like it did when Apophis took it in Point of View; oh wait. Let alone if this hypothetical Cardassian/Romulan attack just says "Surrender your stargate and your personnel to us or we poison your planet's atmosphere and wipe your population out in five minutes" (A canonical Klingon ability, amusingly). They can then do it later, to taste.

If they take more than a few hours to conquer everything, they'd need to have nigh infinite fleets to avoid getting wiped out, unless the asgard beams weapons are somehow not effective against ST shields or the 304's simply run out of power.

We have no idea of an Asgard weapon's actual firepower. It could bounce of ST shields for all you know.

[adam_grif]

Clearly it's literally impossible to take Stargate Command without a self destruct, just like it did when Apophis took it in Point of View; oh wait. Let alone if this hypothetical Cardassian/Romulan attack just says "Surrender your stargate and your personnel to us or we poison your planet's atmosphere and wipe your population out in five minutes" (A canonical Klingon ability, amusingly). They can then do it later, to taste.

Yes, if they know about Stargate command and know what a Stargate is / how to use it, and know where Earth is, and can fly there in a straight line and get there before SGC can mount a viable defense, they might be able to do such a thing. If their plan is to zergrush Earth to get to things then presumably SGC will have either mounted a counter attack or blown up Cheyenne mountain to prevent them getting hands on the tech.

They can only even know these things if you grant them this knowledge by magic or torture it out of personnel, as you say, but what personnel? Did they find the Alpha site? Did they somehow capture a 304 in tact with it's crew alive? I suppose that's possible, but as long as the Tauri aren't brain-dead they'll be traveling in packs and retreating at the first sign of trouble. It's not like the Trek powers can pursue them at any great speed.

We have no idea of an Asgard weapon's actual firepower. It could bounce of ST shields for all you know.

Right, and maybe turbolasers won't do any damage to the Enterprise either. We obviously can't run lab trials here. There are so many unknowns in this vs that we either have to start making assumptions or abandon it entirely.

The Asgard beams haven't yet encountered a shield they can't cut straight through without effort, and they're clearly powerful enough to destroy starships several times larger than the Odyssey. The only ship they've ever had trouble with was the wanktastic ZPM hive, which apparently overcomes their power by having an ultra dense hull (??). We don't have any idea how the Asgard beams work, although SGWiki says they're plasma beams.

The Biliskner is powered by four neutrino-ion generators. In your Earth units of measurement, each engine outputs a maximum of one billion kilojoules.

Are the units they gave correct? Shouldn't there be a "per second" in there somewhere? Or is that total energy it can output with maximum fuel stores?

That strikes me as... very unimpressive.