[Space/Thaumatology] Stargate: Fantasy - Worldbuilding thread

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Earth's gate was inside Cheyenne Mountain and had 20mm gatlings aimed at it and you did need an entry code to come through. The gate on Atlantis was inside of course closed with a force field. There were other inside gates and defenses were common on any technologically advanced world.

All those outdoor gates were on low tech planets with few inhabitants and an uncanny resemblance to Western Canada. The Chain of Astarte won't be set up like that.

Yeah, and by giving them a stargate there's nothing stopping Astarte from hopping through the gate and expanding into British Columbia. If you want to stop Astarte from expanding, you can't let them have a gate. Whoever holds the gate has too much temptation from hopping across to the other side.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Only the Wraith sent space fighters through gates and the Wraith "Darts" were effectively larger on the inside than the outside (advanced "beaming" tech). A lot of the gates in the Pegasus galaxy were space gates (but not Supergates)anyway.

Well there were also the puddle jumpers, and those were the size of a pickup, but I digress.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Yeah, and by giving them a stargate there's nothing stopping Astarte from hopping through the gate and expanding into British Columbia. If you want to stop Astarte from expanding, you can't let them have a gate. Whoever holds the gate has too much temptation from hopping across to the other side.

s.

For military purposes jumpships will do anything that a simple land-based Gate would do and do it better. Remember when O'Neill explained to the high command that the Goa'uld didn't need gates to get to Earth because they had giant motherships?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Chain of Astarte Question V

YES.


1,2,3,4,5, or 8a: multiple stargates

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For military purposes jumpships will do anything that a simple land-based Gate would do and do it better. Remember when O'Neill explained to the high command that the Goa'uld didn't need gates to get to Earth because they had giant motherships?

Speed of travel and quantity of troops might be in favor of the gate. Moving soldiers through two abreast at a modest jog could get you six per second, 360 per minute, and 21,600 in an hour.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Speed of travel and quantity of troops might be in favor of the gate. Moving soldiers through two abreast at a modest jog could get you six per second, 360 per minute, and 21,600 in an hour.

You can't hold gates open an hour. I think the limit might be 20 minutes. You wil then say that's still 7000 to which i reply that those are dismounted infantry with noting but what they have in their packs.

That's even assuming that there are no gate defenses. If there are there may be only limited survivors of your 7000. Meanwhile that jumpship was free to land anywhere on the planet and use its' heavy energy weapons on any targets in the vicinity.

<shrug>Maybe you can invade Western Canada through an undefended gate but that's not really a military operation.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For military purposes jumpships will do anything that a simple land-based Gate would do and do it better. Remember when O'Neill explained to the high command that the Goa'uld didn't need gates to get to Earth because they had giant motherships?

Vaguely; it has been a decade. Though if I do recall, that was like a collection of System Lords all together or one of the really major System Lords. However many jumpships Astarte can muster is going to be limited by the fact that they are a match for a minor system lord and that they are divided. Get all the ships together to defend Astarte? Doable. Go conquer Faroffia? Hang on, who gets Faroffia when we win? The Joneses? Screw that, we're taking our ball and going home.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You can't hold gates open an hour. I think the limit might be 20 minutes. You wil then say that's still 7000 to which i reply that those are dismounted infantry with noting but what they have in their packs.

38 minutes apparently, and then it's simply a matter of redialing and reopening the wormhole, which I think takes around a minute using SGC's rotary dialing system (using the gate's original dialer is a lot faster, but the Earth gate didn't have one by the time it was rediscovered). You need a few seconds after the gate opens (upon opening it spits out some swirly energy that I believe destroys anything in the way, although somehow the Iris blocks that), and you'll want to leave a few at the end so nobody gets sliced in half while running through, but that's still potentially a lot of people in a short period of time. For a gate with bare-minimum defenses (rather than the "Canadian wilderness" gates with no defenses), the first ones through the gate are going to be Forlorn Hope, and their bodies will probably slow down the rate of people coming through. But, of course, while standard gates are small (I believe we decided there would be a wide variety of gate designs, meaning some larger ones are possible), they're still wide enough you could send small vehicles through. Puddle Jumpers, Needle Threaders (discontinued due to the high level of skill needed as they lacked the automated systems of Puddle Jumpers), and Wraith Darts are examples of flying craft. SGC could up-armor and enclose an ATV, or even make custom small armored vehicles. I think a lot of war chariots could also fit in the 6.5m width (one at a time, but still) - IIRC the distance between rails on a railroad is the same as the distance between wheels on a Roman chariot, and the former is a bit under 1.5m - so long as you have ramps rather than stairs, riding a war chariot through at full speed should be readily doable, and you should be able to manage many types of wagons for carrying supplies (SGC could use modified ATV's with trailers, custom-made logistics variants of the small APC's above, etc). More advanced magitech cultures could have magical horseless chariots, wagons, etc that they utilize.

Of course, if the gate has more than bare minimum defenses, an invasion isn't much of an option - sure, many societies won't have something as fancy as SGC's Iris or Atlantis' forcefield, but a portcullis, metal circle, etc on pulleys should serve just fine. In a case like that, you've either got to invade by other means (with the Stargate serving as a back door you can take control of to bring in reinforcements), or you need to start the invasion with some subterfuge, such as infiltrating into the area disguised as merchants, then when it's time for the invasion sabotage the defenses. With the direction the setting we're building seems to be going, I'd assume the subterfuge route is the typical way to go.

EDIT: All that said, weren't there some episodes where it showed people going through a Stargate for the first time stumbling, getting sick, etc? SG1 were old hands, but if it's disorienting to go through a gate, that's potentially a lot of training you need to put all your soldiers through (say going through a Stargate requires a roll against Body Sense*; SG1 all had skill 16+ and No Nuisance Rolls, but training up everyone to that level would be problematic; even with it at 12 - 800 hours of typical training for someone with DX 12, 2400 hours for someone with DX 10 - nearly a quarter of those going through are going to be momentarily disoriented, and a bit less than one in 50 is going to fall down, physically stunned; that's going to slow down the rate at which you can push people through).
*Body Sense normally applies to all manner of teleportation and the like; you can cut down the training time if you allow for an Optional Specialization such that it only really works for Stargate travel (400 hours with DX 12, 1600 hours with DX 10). You may also suggest that many gates - and their platforms - are designed to make the transition easier, more akin to walking through a doorway, which would result in a bonus to Body Sense.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Varyon

For a gate with bare-minimum defenses (rather than the "Canadian wilderness" gates with no defenses), the first ones through the gate are going to be Forlorn Hope, and their bodies will probably slow down the rate of people coming through.

Well surely you could also just start firing into the wormhole to destroy the defenses before going through. If you don't need to retreat immediately, the fact that wormholes are one way probably works in your favor. I recall schemes where they fired a laser or something at the iris which caused it to slowly melt (the continuous beam caused the 38 minute time limit to be suspended). I feel that "unscheduled wormhole detected" is probably one of those pants filling sentences.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Vaguely; it has been a decade. Though if I do recall, that was like a collection of System Lords all together or one of the really major System Lords..

No, it was in the first or maybe second TV episode when he was explaining why just burying the gate wouldn't necessarily solve your potential problems.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Well surely you could also just start firing into the wormhole to destroy the defenses before going through. If you don't need to retreat immediately, the fact that wormholes are one way probably works in your favor. I recall schemes where they fired a laser or something at the iris which caused it to slowly melt (the continuous beam caused the 38 minute time limit to be suspended). I feel that "unscheduled wormhole detected" is probably one of those pants filling sentences.

The 38 minute limit was still in play in that scenario, it's just that OpFor was able to dial out faster than SGC's manual dialer could manage. As for firing into the wormhole, that's a lot of ammunition you're blind firing, and it wouldn't be too difficult for the defenders to set up a kill box where you cannot shoot at them until you're through the gate (basically set your defenders to the sides and behind/above... or just have cover they can hide behind until the attackers stop shooting and start pouring through).