Stargate tech and verse - some misconceptions

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's becoming a weirder experience for me reading debates that involve Stargate. I am honestly surprised at the lack of knowledge displayed by the posters. I even see some very spurious claims fly left and right.
There was a time when there were more knowledgeable people at SBC than there are now. In fact, there seems to be a lot of "amateurs" left. There's that overall feeling that several good debaters I saw over the years have not participated in a debate in ages.

Let's take a look at some strange ideas:

If the gould take the federation seriously, they could really do a number on it. you have a fleet of hataks strike deep into the AQ and strike targets of opportunity. Initially, Trek won't be able to mobilize enough ships to stand up to the invaders in any one location, while the gould can gather the ships very quickly. After two months the federation will be in tatters economically, and the gould might be able to start demanding surrenders.

This is within their capabilities. I don't think trek could mount a effective defense against the first two months.

alternatively, they can remove all their tech from world the federation approaches without significant loss, and play an underground war of infiltration, espionage, and sabotage. The federation won't be looking for the locals tales of egyptian gods to show up as parasites infecting the local populace.

Its not in character though. The gould probably won't take the federation seriously, which means the Federation will have plenty of time to capture and analyze gould tech. If they do this then the gould go down in flames as the Federation refits their ships with ridiculous tech from two bases that falls into their hands from undermanned and careless raids by the gould.

I have no doubt the gould can crush the federation if they put their minds to it.

I have no doubt that trek can reverse engineer and implement everything the gould have in a matter of months.

It is a rather strange conception about the Goa'uld that DV presented here, for it's been shown that even a minuscule threat such as Earth could be taken seriously, about three to four years after the Stargate program was necro'd. All that time the Goa'uld had bigger fish to deal with, as the entire dominion was in turmoil after Ra's demise.
The only thing that saved Earth - which actions against the entire Goa'uld dominion were at best trivial, as any downed Lord would be replaced by another one or see his forces assimilated by another Lord - was the Asgards' Planet Treaty.
In the OP, Goa'uld forces are united under Ra and they clash with the AQ powers. Certainly more potent than piddly 20th century SG Earth.
See, this is the kind of curiosity I was alluding to earlier on. I know that even three years ago, there would have been like 4 or 5 members already there to remind other posters that acknowledging an enemy of the size of the AQ forces and Goa'uld alliances against a common foe were very real and quick to happen.

It didn't take much time either for the System Lords to convene of a summit when, a few months before that, they started to see their forces attacked as a whole by an enemy never identifying himself and using fast attacks.

I don't think Starfleet is at all good at "revenge engineering". Reverse engineering is a different matter. As for the Goa'uld...they've never really struck me as all that innovative nor do they really show a strong concept for stealing technology from other races. The way this is going to end is probably be with Section 31 causing the System Lords to turn on each other while they smuggle technology to the UFP while they break out the transphasic torpedoes and work on phaser lances.

The transphasic torpedoes were specific anti-Borg weapons. They were built to defeat Cube shields, and those weapons were of much reduced relevance against the interspatial manifolds, which had their own shields regulated from the central nexus by the Borg Queen; a mere question of adapting the shields would have reduced the transphasic torpedoes to a negligible menace if she had managed to pull it off. This once again proving that TP weren't brute force weapons but ones of cheating nature, and the Borg were about to nullify that cheat.

Then, as far as the Goa'uld are concerned, they're fairly capable of uniting, even without a central leader (Ra in the OP). Especially when the menace is known.

Their ships may also possess internal sensor tech (at least Anubis' did and he's the other dude leading the Goa'uld forces in scenario 2), so much that if they have strong reasons to believe their ships can be infiltrated, they could tag intruders.

Here again is another sign that SBC saw its quality drop. Any decent SG debater, or even a regular debater knowing his minimal salt and not enjoying Trek or simply caring about accuracy regarding Stargate, would have easily reminded Trekkies of the existence of Ash'raks, the Goa'uld spy/assassins. Plus the cloaking ships, brainwash devices, host parasiting, etc.
Plus the fact that the Goa'uld are simply far more vicious than people remember. Using kids as hosts for WMDs has been shown twice, for example.

[replying to Mith]
Point of order. You say that, however all Goa'uld technology is, by definition, stolen from other races, the Goa'uld show an almost Chinese ability to make shitty copies of other races technology. Everything they have and use is an example of it.

The claim of shitty copies is again most incorrect.
Not only we have rarely seen the original tech that would be beyond the supposedly "extrapolated" device used by the Goa'uld, but it's known that they managed to crack the working of the resurrection cube and turn it into sarcophagi with frightening efficiency, granting them immortality.
It also goes without saying that aside from the Asgards, nigh untouchable, the Goa'uld didn't have much tech to scavenge, nor did have any big reason to push it hard beyond what they had, considering their feudal way of life and the superiority of their tech, largely based around the use of naqahdah and the wonderful healing systems they possess, which made them for all intents and purposes immortal as long as no one would break that cycle.
In fact, the claim of "shitty copies" is beyond being merely unsubstantiated, and no one called him on that. Mith even agreed, despite numerous past exchanges with Gaters and debating in threads involving Stargate's most known factions.


You also see some posts by people who really try it too hard to lowball the Goa'uld as much as possible:

THOR
They have decided it is a concern to be dealt with. The System Lords are capable of launching an assault one hundred times more powerful than that which you previously withstood at the hands of Apophis.

Well considering that Thor said 100 times rather than 99.5 or 100.2365 times more powerful, I'm going to assume he wasn't being exact, but rather rounding. But if you take him literally the Supreme Commander of the Asgard, a guy who is in a position to know his shit, said that the sum total of all power of the Goa'uld System Lords amounted to 100 times that of the two single worst Ha'taks ever seen in Star Gate. Now we can take that to mean the System Lords have 200 ships at their disposal, or rather that the total of all their power equals 200 such ships. With command ships being larger and more powerful, they would logically account for more than "1" ship on this list likely bringing the overall number of ships down from 200. Factor in space stations, Al'kesh and various other armed craft and you can further reduce the number of Capitol ships down from Thor's 200.
All told we're looking at the Federation alone fielding 10 times as many ships as the Goa'uld. Factor in the Klingons, Cardasians and the Romulans and the Go'uld get buried in sheer numbers.

The line from Thor is vague. It has always been. There's never been any information about what kind of power he spoke of, he never said how fast it would happen, or if it would involve the Goa'uld engaging all their forces, which is totally doubtful considering their nature (they barely trust their shadow, they wouldn't leave their worlds unguarded).
If merely established a lower end, and only a useful one if you thought it referred to ship count.
Talking of ship count, kinkade's methodology is just too weird.
For example, Al'keshes were never part of fleet counts. They were not displayed on tactical screens; only mother ships were, like at the battle of Dakara. They weren't even deemed relevant by the Tok'ra to require tagging.

I've seen Vasuda's sound calculation attacked for no other reason than it implied a number of ships that the Goa'uld had in stock and which could totally work with other elements, one of them reminded by SpartanElite's post, which got utterly ignored. It's a pity because it refers to an event providing a new view on what the Goa'uld had in their sleeves when they had no choice but engage all they had against the Replicators.

Some other points:

Trek has a numbers advantage, more ships, far better troops and many many more of them. The Gould have fewer ships, piss poor troops (more akin to thugs then soldiers) and a 13th century mud hut economy. The only thing the Gould have going for them is Hyperdrive (distance) and shields. They start out being able to dictate engagements, but the AQ powers would quickly exploit the Stargate network to infiltrate and gain tech to R&D. It wouldn't take long for the Romulans to get the idea to kidnap a minor Gould and steal a few Al'kesh to get at their Hyperdrives and shields. Since Gould tech scales so readily.......stealing an Al'kesh is like stealing a Ha'tak in miniature. It's just too easy for the AQ to get their hands on Go'uld tech for the Go'uld to keep their advantage for long.

We've seen a Goa'uld mothership be repaired by only two people largely working from the central control power chamber (with the crystal panels), despite the hull having suffered external damage, which did result into the destruction of the hyper engines and the shields ("Exodus"). Those systems were brought back online within one hour.
All Goa'uld ships are so automatized that they can be piloted by less than five men, even in theory just one or two (the second one handling all combat systems). That's very different from Trek ships requiring crews thousand times larger.
Goa'uld tech doesn't scale readily. An Al'kesh is certainly not a miniature Ha'tak, otherwise they'd come with battle shields in the high terajoule range at least (quite good for 30 meters ships, eh?) and their firepower would be comparable.

That said, kinkade was being needlessly facetious and strawmaning the other side, largely because he didn't face any opposition so he considered he could come with any piece of nonsense and fly free with it.


I'll skip on the repeated claims of easy reverse engineering. A few seem to be understand it can go both ways.
I'll also skip on the repeated notion of incompetence on the System Lords' part. It's not particularly worth wasting time on it as I haven't seen any substantiating of them at once.

There's also been a claim that Goa'uld industry was mediocre. Another claim that would have been quickly challenged years ago. The construction of a Ha'tak above a slave camp in the middle of nowhere at Erebus or the equally daring and recent construction of Apophis' new supership (aborted by SG-1 using super duper Atoniek gauntlets in "Upgrades") also in the middle of nowhere. We also saw Heru'ur's forces deploy seemingly self-building pyramidal structures on the ground that would have been used by three pyramid ships to land on. Those structures had whole sections growing out of the blue. And finally, let's count the fact that we never saw any real shipyard. As far as we can tell, we could literally claim they grow their ships from trees.

There's also Slayer_of_Gods quote mining from transcripts he doesn't read in full, and from episodes he didn't watch.





As I write that, I'm now on page 6 I believe, and things are slowly starting to get better, as the thread has gotten the attention from people who are more knowledgeable on the SG side. kinkade is unfortunately not getting any better.

Oh, I believe it must really hurt Inquisitor Ryan to have to quote me in order to obtain good evidence and win some points in the thread. :D
Brave boy, here's a cookie.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The myth of naqahdah that multiplies nuclear yields:

Where do you get your figures? In the movie, a small amount of raw naquahdah enhances a nuclear warhead 100 fold. In the first episode of the second season, a small amount of raw naquahdah enhances a 475 kiloton nuclear warhead to 1,000 megatons. That's a factor of over 2,000 fold, which if applied to the Tsar bomb gets a yield of in excess of 100 gigatons. This isn't even naquahdah; it's naquahdriah.

Tsar Bomba's yield won't be increased 2000 times. It all depends on the amount of naqahdah, as it's the naqahdah's energy density that dictates the final yield.
In the Goa'uld Buster, it's the small amount of naqahdah that delivered the energy. The nuclear warhead was just there to trigger a massive explosion.
Same with the Tsar Bomba, which real life yield would be dwarfed by the yield that's proportional to the amount and quality of naqahdah used.



The Goa'uld Buster used raw naqahdah. There are varying qualities in raw naqahdah, but in general it proved to be easily lifted. Refined naqahdah, the weapon grade used in cores, is so damn heavy that you need two bulky Jaffa to carry a small quantity of it:









Kinkade001 peddles the same nonsense about the Goa'uld using naqahdah bombs to shoot at planets. They don't use bombs in such fashion, and never did.
His equally silly insistance on the Goa'uld using something else than staff guns because a bolt was discribed as a beam by a panicked naval officer in "Continuum" really needs to be put to rest. It's just completely asinine at this point.





It's also good to point out that in "There But For The Grace Of God", the Goa'uld were taking their sweet time destroying population centers. They had started four days ago.

INT—AU SGC STARGATE CONTROL ROOM

[Carter, Catherine, and Daniel descend the stairs and enter.]

DAVIS
We're locking in coordinates.

[Carter leads them to a map on the wall with various red markings on it.]

CATHERINE
Every one of those red dots is a destroyed city.

[The map depicts Europe and it major cities with red dots covering them. Daniel looks at Catherine.]

SGC MAN VOICE OVER
Dr. Carter. There's another report coming on.

[The group move over to a television monitor.]

TV ANCHORMAN VOICE OVER
All military efforts to engage the alien ships have proven inconsequential.

DANIEL
The Goa'ulds?

CARTER
The Ships appeared four days ago.

TV ANCHORMAN
As is Europe, Asia, and Africa, they have slowly begun systematically annihilating all signs of civilization.

[The television shows images of structures burning and explosions.]

TV ANCHORMAN
Starting on the East Coast and moving west with frightening inevitability. There has been no response to attempted communications with the aliens.

[Close up on Daniel as he watches intently the news of the destruction of this version of Earth.]

TV ANCHORMAN
Thus far, they have left no survivors in the wake of their seemingly unstoppable wave of destruction.

The SGC had a world map of destroyed regions, and Europe clearly had suffered the most. However, it's possible that this map was out of date regarding the farthest regions considering that the same map didn't show any sign of massive damage on Asia, despite the highly populated areas out to be targeted in India, south east of China, Japan, etc.
The sequence ends with the final words of the journalist.
Shortly after that, right after the SGC has sent a bomb to Chu'lak and then get their stargate dial-locked by the Goa'uld, Jackson uses a vacant terminal and tries to find where his other he lives, then returns to the map and checks out somewhere Egypt and says he thinks he's dead. By that time, the map has been updated, with much more of Europe damaged and some little spots in east Asia as well. Clearly the ships above had accelerated their operations or the SGC had found a way to update their information.
It's at the same time that one of those two Ha'taks flies towards Cheyenne Mountain.

The fact that the map is most likely very limited is that while Daniel argued with O'neill that the Jaffa were slaves and needn't be killed by the nuke, O'neill told him that their current death toll estimate was about 1.5 billion, which would require much more of the map to be covered with red. But it wasn't.
For some reason, they knew there were more casualties, but probably couldn't pinpoint all the locations. Either their sources had a reason to think that the countries that were hit had suffered more than they thought, or they had reasons to believe that other regions were hit, but were going on indirect info and couldn't know where exactly.

All in all, the attack on the USA's east shore was most recent, as per the news flash.
As said above, the moment the nuke was sent to Chulak and detonated, one of the two motherships was seen flying towards Cheyenne Mountain. The ship descended into the atmosphere, flew rapidly, destroyed Air Force One (which was ten minutes away from the Peterson Air Force Base, while the mothership was one minute away from the SGC), and then landed on the top of the SGC's mountain and launched Death Gliders.

As usual, it's been up to the claimants of the existence of a bomb launching system to provide evidence, and they never did. Because it does not exist.
It requires a dishonesty equal to the one required to repeatedly deny the fact that three Ha'taks contributed to the fast expansion of an Ori planetary forcefield which was initially forced into expansion over a wide area by a continent-toasting nuke. Calculations here.
They happen to be perfectly in line with the 200 MT/shot of "There But For the Grace of God".

Two ships, which didn't show any fundamental difference with any other type of Ha'tak, did more in four days than what a huge fleet of Ha'taks from Continuum were poised to achieve in three.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Here's another one, probably spawned from the brainbug that Goa'uld can't invent anything and that they're not so smart, courtesy of Silver Fist this time, prideful author of a series of silly claims:

It's taken the Goa'uld thousands of years to reverse engineer the Ancients’ technology to the point it is now.

This is baseless and false. He even contradicts himself later on by saying that the Goa'uld didn't invent anything new in millennia. The sarcophagus technology, for example, already existed, but worked better with humans (possibly a link with the fact that the device it's based on is of near-human origin).
Now, we know Ra came to Earth millennia ago, to take on his first human host. The ship he was seen using was exactly the same. We have other relics from the past, ships thousands of years old, including a very small craft buried under the sands of Egypt.


Another one from someone who argued in favour of SG for the most time:

That just means they have a common subset. If both universes had the same set of laws, why haven't we seen anybody in StarGate use phasers or disrupters?

Goa'uld have been seen using two types of weapons which had similar effect. First of all, the zat'nik'tel handgun, or zat gun. It shoots white and blue beams, albeit short ones, which render unconscious, kill and disintegrate, if the same target is sufficiently "charged" in "zat energy" over a short period of time.
Then there's the weapon used by Major Thomas and Martouf, as part of the Goa'uld brainwashing. He was given a ring weapon that shot red beams (same stuff used by Osiris later on in S7) and could be activated to blast the wearer in such a way that it disintegrated him, with a similar effect made of jumping lightning arcs, albeit red this time.

On a sidenote, I notice that in terms of infiltration, all members completely forgot to mention the use of very efficient brainwashing techniques on humans and Jaffa.
Apophis used it on Teal'c and his young son Rya'c. A Jaffa later on tried to do it on Teal'c but didn't do it properly. Apophis wasn't trying to produce Za'tarcs, dormant agents. Both Rya'c and Teal'c were unaware of their programming and believed what it told them.
Rya'c was saved by zat-shock, but clearly the brainwashing put onto Rya'c was nothing like the one which many adult Jaffa, including Teal'c, went through. Four of such Jaffa, including Teal'c, went through the Rite of Mal'Sharran and only Teal'c was rescued from death. This rite requires the symbiote to be removed, which causes all sorts of problems, but allows for memory flashbacks. Trouble is, the most recent pieces of the memory are only accessed when the host is near death. Teal'c did die, and he only survived because his symbionte (Junior) was put back into him and defebrilators used multiple times.

A similar lethal procedure was applied to Telford in SGU, and he had to be killed, a violent way to shock his brain, so he could be free of the indoctrination he was put through by the Lucian Alliance (which uses Goa'uld tech). Immediate medical aid with defebrilators is what allowed him to be revived.
The Trust also used brainwashing techniques on humans.

Some unknown Goa'uld used it on Martouf, Major Thomas and his team. Despite being dead, we saw Heru'ur's guardsmen in the flashbacks the humans saw when put under the scrutiny of the za'tarc detector.




I also notice a common mistake in the thread. After a couple posts beyond the opening one, a new parameter was introduced, wherein the Trek side "had the Stargate". The lack of details and implication that there's one Stargate for both teams aside, it's necessary to point out that stargates need up to date coordinates of other stargates to work. Meaning that in that scenario, as stargates are placed left and right and that even the stargates of the Goa'uld aren't going to work since the Goa'uld dominion has been arbitrarily placed into a new position in the Milky Way, no side will be able to use them.

Stargates routinely autodial - it isn't said if they open a wormhole and their relevant event horizon or not, could be just a subspace event - in order to update their position every once in a while, but sufficiently so that a stargate is still within reach of its galacticv area of effect when it's contacted. But this could only work if the network configuration didn't change too much.
In the OP, it's obviously not going to.
So both sides will first need to understand how these devices work, and then attribute proper coordinates to each one of them. On this, those who used stargates for generations will have an advantage. Even more if they have a greater and better galaxy chart.




Another one from Slayer-of-Gods (FEAR):

It would take years for the Goa'uld to gather ships and to reach the Alpha Quadrant.

Months, at best, when power is divided, due to the feudal nature of the Goa'uld society. Anubis and Ba'al would only need a couple of days to assemble a fleet of several dozen Ha'taks to launch at a world.

[Lucky]

All Goa'uld ships are so automatized that they can be piloted by less than five men, even in theory just one or two (the second one handling all combat systems). That's very different from Trek ships requiring crews thousand times larger..

A Goa'uld ship works best with a crew larger then just two people as I recall.

A Federation ship does not actually need a crew as we have seen an EMH with no prior training effectively control a ship in combat, and we also saw Dr.Crusher pilot the Enterprise-D by herself.

[Picard]

Theoretically, Federation starships yould be flown just by bridge crew (which is some 5-10 men). Or one person, telling computer what to do.

But in practice, you also need security team, team in engineering, medical team, damage control teams and so on... not to mention science teams on Galaxy class.

Enterprise D had a crew of 1000, maybe less (I don't remember if 1000 figure is just crew, or all people on board). With three shifts, it is run by some 330 - 340 people (if Memory Alpha figure of 1014 is correct, that is 338 people per shift).

[Mr. Oragahn]

All Goa'uld ships are so automatized that they can be piloted by less than five men, even in theory just one or two (the second one handling all combat systems). That's very different from Trek ships requiring crews thousand times larger..

A Goa'uld ship works best with a crew larger then just two people as I recall.

A Federation ship does not actually need a crew as we have seen an EMH with no prior training effectively control a ship in combat, and we also saw Dr.Crusher pilot the Enterprise-D by herself.

The main difference being that a Ha'tak is already built to be optimal with a crew that could sit on a sofa, yet achieving combat performances and navigation which, when observed in Trek, required much more people working left and right. Those requirements are not going to vanish the moment the crew is suddenly shrunk to the amount of people you can squeeze at the back of a taxi cab.
So with the EMH, its control of the ship would logically be minimal, as one person would have to rely on presets for about everything. Optimal crews require several people at key systems at the very least, with the people on the bridge being more like managers of everything that goes on inside the ship, at various places.
I also doubt the EMH achieved anything spectacular, unless it used its unique nature to access all the ship's systems at once by using its internal computation capacity, divided intelligently. I'd consider this achievement an exception, unless the majority of Trek ships were fitted with such AIs.


I probably made a mistake when saying a typical Trek crew was a thousand times greater. But Picard says that a Galaxy-class can count a thousand people, while Anubis' supership was seen flown and used in combat with only his First Prime at the helm.

[Lucky]

All Goa'uld ships are so automatized that they can be piloted by less than five men, even in theory just one or two (the second one handling all combat systems). That's very different from Trek ships requiring crews thousand times larger..

A Goa'uld ship works best with a crew larger then just two people as I recall.

A Federation ship does not actually need a crew as we have seen an EMH with no prior training effectively control a ship in combat, and we also saw Dr.Crusher pilot the Enterprise-D by herself.

The main difference being that a Ha'tak is already built to be optimal with a crew that could sit on a sofa, yet achieving combat performances and navigation which, when observed in Trek, required much more people working left and right. Those requirements are not going to vanish the moment the crew is suddenly shrunk to the amount of people you can squeeze at the back of a taxi cab.
So with the EMH, its control of the ship would logically be minimal, as one person would have to rely on presets for about everything. Optimal crews require several people at key systems at the very least, with the people on the bridge being more like managers of everything that goes on inside the ship, at various places.
I also doubt the EMH achieved anything spectacular, unless it used its unique nature to access all the ship's systems at once by using its internal computation capacity, divided intelligently. I'd consider this achievement an exception, unless the majority of Trek ships were fitted with such AIs.


I probably made a mistake when saying a typical Trek crew was a thousand times greater. But Picard says that a Galaxy-class can count a thousand people, while Anubis' supership was seen flown and used in combat with only his First Prime at the helm.

"Message in a Bottle"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAztsRslPR0

A Galaxy Class's battle bridge has five or six seat, and one of those seats if for the captain.

THe typical crew of a Federation vessel is bloated with things like geologists, and can be absurdly smaller then they are if you just want to fly the ship or fight.

[Mr. Oragahn]

"Message in a Bottle"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAztsRslPR0

A Galaxy Class's battle bridge has five or six seat, and one of those seats if for the captain.

THe typical crew of a Federation vessel is bloated with things like geologists, and can be absurdly smaller then they are if you just want to fly the ship or fight.

Thank you. About the video; It confirms many things I presumed, in that the performance isn't impressive, that there's a need of three people at the very least, and that they're strictly users, while the people who take care of the systems are to be found elsewhere in the ship.
The Prometheus' multi-angle attack system is based on pre-loaded patterns, with an AI doing the chasing, flying and firing like units in a RTS game. Would these ships suffer damage, they'd require crews in specific regions to provide extensive repairs or alternatives. Engineering obviously is a main area of the ship, often seen populated by large numbers of technicians (and we get to see the size of engineering crews when the cores go critical, as all the people get really busy or are evacuated). That's just for the power management. There's little reason to consider that equally important sections (warp engines, fusion thrusters, main deflector dish, weapon stocks, etc.) wouldn't require roughly as many people, especially in the middle of battles.
This kind of remote control was also observed on Stargate's 304s, where most useful orders pertaining to combat and mobility could be managed by two people. But we know such ships are much more effective with more, and it's a kind of ship that requires other systems to be constantly checked, notably by damage repair squads.
Comparatively, in "Off the Grid", a few of Ba'al's Jaffa working on his Ha'tak's bridge managed to restore sensors, communications and later on shields, all that after and while being shot at by three other Ha'taks and having taken severe damage (hyperdrives were brought down and never recovered, but the urgency of the situation required other systems to be privileged and Ba'al insisted for shields to be put back online). This strongly presumes the existence of auto-repair systems of some kind which can be directed from the pel'tak (bridge) or the central power room (as hinted at in "Enemies"). This level of automatism would perfectly fit with the Goa'uld motto. They literally have to, as they naturally don't want to provide any kind of knowledge to their troops, even on ships. In that light, Ba'al's men were unique, but he's also been a very unique and open minded System Lord. The whole plot of Continuum was based on him making the transition from god to sovereign (hence the use of that term), like many past or current kings, emperors or dictators who claimed to be of a divine lineage. He was willing to rule Earth as it was, while other Goa'uld, typically weary of populations being so numerous and untamed, wished to wipe most of humanity out.

[Lucky]

Thank you. About the video; It confirms many things I presumed, in that the performance isn't impressive, that there's a need of at the very least three people, and that they're mostly users, while the people who take care of the systems are to be found elsewhere in the ship.

I think what the two EMH did was very impressive. They have almost no idea what they are doing, manage to figure out how to pilot the ship, and then drive off the attacking fleet. Had they had actually known what they were doing they could have changed where the controls were for example. It was as impressive as any example of piloting in Star Gate that I can recall.

The Doctor crewed Voyager very well in work force. He was using his ECH function at the time.


Star Gate ships excluding the Asgard are designed to function best when crewed by more then two people. Even the Goa'uld ships that can be crewed by just one or two people function best with larger crews. If this wasn't the case then there would be no reason for Goa'uld to bother with crews at all.

The Prometheus's multi-angle attack system is based on pre-loaded patterns, with an AI doing the chasing, flying and firing like units in a RTS game. Would these ships suffer damage, they'd require crews in specific regions to provide extensive repairs or alternatives. Engineering obviously is a main area of the ship, often seen populated by large numbers of technicians (and we get to see the size of engineering crews when the cores go critical, as all the people get really busy or are evacuated). That's just for the power management. There's little reason to consider that equally important sections (warp engines, main dish, weapon stocks, etc.) wouldn't require roughly as many people, especially in the middle of battles.

We have the Doctor and Voyager's computer fight a battle and win "workforce".

7 of 9 and the Doctor were also expected to crew the ship in "One" do to radiation of the week.

Actually we can safely assume most of those people aren't needed because one person was enough. As I have been repeatedly telling you, Star Fleet vessels have fleshy crews because that is how the fleshies want it. We know you don't need to constantly check things.

This kind of remote control was also observed on the 304s, where most useful orders pertaining to combat and mobility could be managed by two people. But we know the ship is much more effective with more, and it's a ship that requires other systems to be constantly checked, including damage repair squads.

Just like Goa'uld ships.

Comparatively, in "Off the Grid", a few of Ba'al's Jaffa working on his Ha'tak's bridge managed to restore sensors, communications and later on shields, all that after and while being shot at by three other Ha'taks and having taken severe damage (hyperdrives were brought down and never recovered, but the urgency of the situation required other systems to be privileged and Ba'al ordered shields to be put back online). This strongly presumes the existence of auto-repairs which can be directed from the pel'tak (bridge). This level of automatism would perfectly fit with the Goa'uld motto. They literally have to, as don't provide any kind of knowledge to their troops, even on ships. In that light, Ba'al's men were unique, but he's also been a very unique and open minded System Lord in this department.

That sounds like Star Trek where the guy on the bridge reroutes power here or there, and bypasses damaged system to get the ship working again. You can't actually fix anything from a control console. We know SG-1 had to physically repair damage many times.

It seems like Federation ships have self repair functions because Voyager was always in pristine despite getting hull beaches repeatedly.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I think what the two EMH did was very impressive. They have almost no idea what they are doing, manage to figure out how to pilot the ship, and then drive off the attacking fleet.

They had no relative idea of what was going on. If they were truly clueless, they'd have never gotten anything out of the consoles in time. Fact is that we saw them recognize patterns, like when they stopped the self destruct.
Plus if there's a clear indication of any program that can be ran on the GUI, then one can safely navigate through them and make an educated choice. For example, for the alpha pattern. The doc just tried one, he tried alpha because he knew that it would be used (otherwise there's like a million other terms which he could have used and which would have failed).
Then, winning the battle was mostly due to the impressive shields on the ship while it was sitting there, the arrival of the UFP ones which also attacked the Romulans, and finally the alpha pattern that did all the job on its own. A pattern which, by the look of it, isn't exceptional and most useful against one big target that would have engaged the Prometheus while thinking dealing with just one ship.

Had they had actually known what they were doing they could have changed where the controls were for example.

They clearly knew what they were doing to a large degree. They had to have some minimal knowledge of the ship and its systems. Otherwise, again, they'd have been as useful as monkeys hitting buttons randomly.

Also, changing controls is a knowledge that is not necessary. EMH are machines that should adapt. Are they programmed to be rigidly at loss if they can't have their touchscreen buttons where they want them? That would be a pity!

It was as impressive as any example of piloting in Star Gate that I can recall.

That UFP ship is not the template that represents what Trek ships do. There's also no demonstration that it was running at its best level. In general, Trek ships require large crews to get the best out of any main system, within the boundaries of those available systems.

Thus far, Ha'taks have been safely pushed to their height with only one guy working on the pel'tak console with that odd interface that's a mix of GUI on the main screen and something that is transmitted to from and to the mind: there are no buttons and no displays on the console, and the wide variety of inputs always involve people placing their fingers or palm the same way on the control panel, as there isn't any keyboard of any sort. Sometimes, we have someone eventually working on a battle console when there is one (not all Ha'taks had a separate battle console).
Ra's ship was known for having weapons yet its control console was most exotic and simplistic, without any tangible interface save for that slot behind his sarcophagus, where he put his hand.

It's a bit like the way Basestars are controlled in nBSG, although they still require several Cylons at the main pool-console to communicate with the hybrid -- but it's possible I'm forgetting a case of a Basestar solely ran with just one Cylon humanoid and a hybrid; Basestars can handle most of the repairs as a living organism.

Same goes for the Wraith's ships. Hiveships do have their own sentience, but the Wraith control them manually. A few dudes working on 3-4 consoles on the small bridge can control everything, including autorepair.

The Doctor crewed Voyager very well in work force. He was using his ECH function at the time.

What did he do that was good?
If there are several people at multiple consoles and more behind the scene working on the main hardware in the vast majority of UFP ships (and probably the same goes for Klingon, Cardassian and Romulan ships), there's a reason for that.

Star Gate ships excluding the Asgard are designed to function best when crewed by more then two people. Even the Goa'uld ships that can be crewed by just one or two people function best with larger crews. If this wasn't the case then there would be no reason for Goa'uld to bother with crews at all.

Where have you seen that they bother with large crews. We haven't seen anything that ever demonstrated a superior efficiency with crews greater than the number of fingers of the hand. Goa'uld System Lords typically surround themselves with soldiers who, at best, are allowed to be users and strictly that.

The Prometheus's multi-angle attack system is based on pre-loaded patterns, with an AI doing the chasing, flying and firing like units in a RTS game. Would these ships suffer damage, they'd require crews in specific regions to provide extensive repairs or alternatives. Engineering obviously is a main area of the ship, often seen populated by large numbers of technicians (and we get to see the size of engineering crews when the cores go critical, as all the people get really busy or are evacuated). That's just for the power management. There's little reason to consider that equally important sections (warp engines, main dish, weapon stocks, etc.) wouldn't require roughly as many people, especially in the middle of battles.

We have the Doctor and Voyager's computer fight a battle and win "workforce".

That is good, but if it's just about scanning the enemy, flocking, shooting and moving, today computers do it impressively well in RTS games.
The complete managing of a starship isn't limited to that.
This isn't limited to UFP ships either, as the topic covered all main forces of the Alpha Quadrant.

7 of 9 and the Doctor were also expected to crew the ship in "One" do to radiation of the week.

With, most likely, a reduced efficiency. You don't go from large tech crews that are a staple to only two users and expect that all will work wonderfully.

Actually we can safely assume most of those people aren't needed because one person was enough. As I have been repeatedly telling you, Star Fleet vessels have fleshy crews because that is how the fleshies want it. We know you don't need to constantly check things.

If that's the way they want it, that's the way it is. That is the point, knowing precisely the way it is, not how it could or should have been. It is a good thing that under some circumstances left to be explained, a ship could be entirely run on a computer (we've seen it with those moon-cracking Cardassian dreadnoughts although again the actions are nothing exceptional, limited to scan, fly, aim and shoot), but the use and obvious necessity of crews isn't due to fluke when the ship is to be used properly, especially when things start to go wrong. While they could gain in speed by using computers, UFP AIs aren't seen capable of much imagination btw.

It's just that the Goa'uld don't do it that way.
The Wraith neither, as a matter of fact.

The point is that it's a two fold system, both in terms of users and hardware management, and on both points, I have seen Goa'uld motherships work well.
Crews are extremely small (we can barely call them crews), and the hassle of hardware management is reduced to an after thought that is alternatively managed from a console or a set of control panels. It doesn't mean all smaller systems benefit from the same level of survey and autorepair (broken door consoles and the like aren't autorepaired), but at least important ones do seem to be handled remotely fairly well.

This kind of remote control was also observed on the 304s, where most useful orders pertaining to combat and mobility could be managed by two people. But we know the ship is much more effective with more, and it's a ship that requires other systems to be constantly checked, including damage repair squads.

Just like Goa'uld ships.

No. 304s are known to require crews working at several secondary stations. The bridge itself is often chokeful of people. There's no automated system for damage control. Nor is there one for any form of repair as far as we know of, which typically take time to complete with crews anyway.

Comparatively, in "Off the Grid", a few of Ba'al's Jaffa working on his Ha'tak's bridge managed to restore sensors, communications and later on shields, all that after and while being shot at by three other Ha'taks and having taken severe damage (hyperdrives were brought down and never recovered, but the urgency of the situation required other systems to be privileged and Ba'al ordered shields to be put back online). This strongly presumes the existence of auto-repairs which can be directed from the pel'tak (bridge). This level of automatism would perfectly fit with the Goa'uld motto. They literally have to, as don't provide any kind of knowledge to their troops, even on ships. In that light, Ba'al's men were unique, but he's also been a very unique and open minded System Lord in this department.

That sounds like Star Trek where the guy on the bridge reroutes power here or there, and bypasses damaged system to get the ship working again. You can't actually fix anything from a control console. We know SG-1 had to physically repair damage many times.

We don't really know that at all. They precisely repair systems by doing nothing about changing parts when it comes to Ha'taks.
However, we've clearly seen or heard of SG-1, or more precisely Carter, and at other times humans, fiddle with systems on other ships to repair them: 304s, the Seberus, a tel'tak (which is a much less advanced Goa'uld ship).

You can fix stuff from a console if you can send orders to autorepair systems. At the absolute, for example, a typical Culture ship can monitor its own repairs. The principle would be the same, the Mind managing its own console to lead repairs.
Goa'uld fully master nano-technologies. The auto-repair could be as simple as having tanks of ready to use bots delivered into the damaged areas of the superstructure, mixed to local spare parts waiting there. It could be spare parts, even very complex ones, folded as we know Goa'uld fold other devices (masks, battle consoles, ring weapons, the spike underneath Osiris' ship).
In "Off the Grid", despite weapons and hyperdrives being directly targeted and shot at by the Lucian Alliance ships, as Netan ordered, Ba'al, seeing that he's still in a dire position soon after shields were recovered, told his FP to "forget weapons" and "bring [their] hyperdrive online". Without having the luxury of sitting in a shipyard, how did Ba'al expect those systems, precisely directly exposed to enemy fire and formerly hit by said fire, to be repaired within minutes if not by virtue of using remote repair systems capable of working in the areas exposed to vacuum?
In "Exodus", Jacob, despite very negative in the rest of the episode, never voices any concern about being unable to repair, from the engine room, all the systems that fell after the Al'kesh's run.

It seems like Federation ships have self repair functions because Voyager was always in pristine despite getting hull beaches repeatedly.

Or that technicians worked on it and patched the holes when needed.

[Lucky]

They had no relative idea of what was going on. If they were truly clueless, they'd have never gotten anything out of the consoles in time. Fact is that we saw them recognize patterns, like when they stopped the self destruct.
Plus if there's a clear indication of any program that can be ran on the GUI, then one can safely navigate through them and make an educated choice. For example, for the alpha pattern. The doc just tried one, he tried alpha because he knew that it would be used (otherwise there's like a million other terms which he could have used and which would have failed).
Then, winning the battle was mostly due to the impressive shields on the ship while it was sitting there, the arrival of the UFP ones which also attacked the Romulans, and finally the alpha pattern that did all the job on its own. A pattern which, by the look of it, isn't exceptional and most useful against one big target that would have engaged the Prometheus while thinking dealing with just one ship.

The EMH know how to use the operating system, and know how to read the consoles. That puts them on the same level as jaffa and SG-1. The EMH had to actually learn how to target photon torpedos, and work everything on the spot. It wasn't a matter of simply saying a command once and the ship did what they wanted.

The point is that the EMH are just AI in the ships computer, and could have been able to control the entire ship like the M5 if the ship had been programed that way

They clearly knew what they were doing to a large degree. They had to have some minimal knowledge of the ship and its systems. Otherwise, again, they'd have been as useful as monkeys hitting buttons randomly.

They knew how to read, work Star Fleet computers, and the Doctor had two shuttle piloting lessons.

Also, changing controls is a knowledge that is not necessary. EMH are machines that should adapt. Are they programmed to be rigidly at loss if they can't have their touchscreen buttons where they want them? That would be a pity!

The EMH did adapt to the new situation. They are programed to be doctors, and only doctors. They only have skills pertaining to being doctors, and are only programed to know how to apply those skills to being a doctor.

Changing the locations of the controls would have made it so they didn't have to keep running from one end of the bridge to the other and back again. They could have in theory at least had all the control at one or two locations, or even set things up so they could have gone M5 of the Romulans, but that would require they know what they are doing.

That UFP ship is not the template that represents what Trek ships do. There's also no demonstration that it was running at its best level. In general, Trek ships require large crews to get the best out of any main system, within the boundaries of those available systems.

The only thing different about the Prometheus class is the multi-vector attack mode. We see Galaxy Class, Intrepid Class, Defiant Class, and Constitution Class all crewed by only about people, but even this number can be shrunk. Look at the battle bridge on a Galaxy Class. It only has 4 stations. Star Fleet crews are extremely bloated.

Thus far, Ha'taks have been safely pushed to their height with only one guy working on the pel'tak console with that odd interface that's a mix of GUI on the main screen and something that is transmitted to from and to the mind: there are no buttons and no displays on the console, and the wide variety of inputs always involve people placing their fingers or palm the same way on the control panel, as there isn't any keyboard of any sort. Sometimes, we have someone eventually working on a battle console when there is one (not all Ha'taks had a separate battle console).
Ra's ship was known for having weapons yet its control console was most exotic and simplistic, without any tangible interface save for that slot behind his sarcophagus, where he put his hand.

And Star Fleet has done the same except it was an ECH program doing it, or a human doctor giving vague voice commands, or an ex borg drone while having to deal with a phobia and radiation of the week. Everything done in Star Gate was almost always done in Star Trek first.

Heck, Work Force shows that Federation Ships have a self repair feature.

Same goes for the Wraith's ships. Hiveships do have their own sentience, but the Wraith control them manually. A few dudes working on 3-4 consoles on the small bridge can control everything, including autorepair.

Wraith ships are living creates. They don't have auto repair.

What did he do that was good?

Went about repairing a damaged ship on his own, fought off an attack, avoided others ships looking for him, and saved the crew. The Doctor was very busy in Work Force.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Workforce_(episode)
http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/714.htm

If there are several people at multiple consoles and more behind the scene working on the main hardware in the vast majority of UFP ships (and probably the same goes for Klingon, Cardassian and Romulan ships), there's a reason for that.

Things get done faster because there are more people to do the work. The fact that a single person can crew a Federation ship without much trouble and even make extensive repairs shows the large crews aren't really needed.

Where have you seen that they bother with large crews. We haven't seen anything that ever demonstrated a superior efficiency with crews greater than the number of fingers of the hand. Goa'uld System Lords typically surround themselves with soldiers who, at best, are allowed to be users and strictly that.

Pretty much any time we see a ship in Star Gate they have lots of people on them just like in Star Trek, but in Star Trek a large number of those people are things like geologists and smaller ships.

That is good, but if it's just about scanning the enemy, flocking, shooting and moving, today computers do it impressively well in RTS games.
The complete managing of a starship isn't limited to that.
This isn't limited to UFP ships either, as the topic covered all main forces of the Alpha Quadrant.

[EMH narrative - Bridge]
EMH [OC]: The crew abandoned ship and I began to assess the damage caused by the mine, but before I could even get started with the repairs I got some unexpected company. 

EMH: Computer, report. 

COMPUTER: An alien vessel has locked on to Voyager with a tractor beam. 

EMH: Open a channel. This is the Federation Starship Voyager. Disengage your tractor beam. 

COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Our scans show no life signs aboard your vessel. Identify yourself. 

EMH: I am the Emergency Command Hologram. 

COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Hologram. 

EMH: That's right. Now release my ship. 

COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Your crew's abandoned it. It belongs to me now. 

EMH: I beg to differ. Computer, target the vessel's tractor emitter and fire. Come about, heading nine zero three mark six. Engage at warp two. 

COMPUTER: Warp engines are offline. 

EMH: Evasive pattern beta four. Target the vessel's engines. 

COMPUTER: Warning. Two vessels approaching bearing three three six mark one. 

EMH: Reverse course, full impulse.

[Bridge]

EMH: I managed to evade the other two ships and hid inside this nebula. I vented the radiation repaired as many systems as I could but with no help let's just say I'm glad you found me. 

KIM: It wasn't easy picking up your homing signal. 

EMH: Well, I had to encrypt it. Every time I left the nebula I detected more ships searching for me. 

CHAKOTAY: Any idea who they are? 

EMH: No, but I've analysed all of their weapons signatures. They match the subspace mine. It was a deliberate attempt to disable Voyager. 

CHAKOTAY: Good thing you were here. 

KIM: What about the rest of the crew? 

EMH: Not a word.
_____
{Bridge]

KIM: I can't penetrate their shields. 

EMH: Maybe we don't have to. The battle of Vorkado, it's in my tactical database. A Romulan Captain disabled two attacking vessels by creating a photonic shock wave between the ships. 

KIM: How'd he do that? 

EMH: Watch and learn. I don't think they'll be bothering us again. 

KIM: Good work. Let's go back for Chakotay. 

EMH: Five more ships on an intercept course. 

KIM: What's your tactical database telling you now? 

EMH: Transporters are damaged, shields are failing. We have to retreat, come up with a new plan. 

KIM: Agreed
_____
[Ready room]
EMH: I've been analysing our scans of the Quarren patrol ships that attacked us and I think I've devised a way of evading their sensors. 

KIM: You do have a knack for tactical planning. 

EMH: That's something I've been meaning to discuss with you. Once we've succeeded in this mission, and I'm certain we will, I'd like you to help me programme a new medical hologram. 

KIM: You don't like the idea of going back to your old job now that you've had a taste of command. 

EMH: I'm a skilled officer. 

KIM: No offence, doc, but that skill was programmed into you. 

EMH: Yes. 

KIM: I'm sure once you're back to your old self you'll be happy being a full-time Doctor again. Commander Chakotay's hailing us. We're receiving you, sir. Go ahead. 

CHAKOTAY [OC]: I'm having trouble with my transceiver. This may be to last chance we have to talk. 

KIM: What's your status?
_____
[Bridge]
KIM: So much for evading their sensors. 
EMH: The only way they could've found us is if they knew exactly where to look. 
TORRES: Transporters are offline.
_____
[Bridge]

NEELIX: We're losing shields. 

KIM: Any advice from your tactical database? 

EMH: Nothing relevant. 

KIM: How many escape pods do we have left? 

TORRES: Five. 

KIM: Stand by to eject three of them. 

EMH: I don't think abandoning ship is the answer. 

KIM: Neither do I. Can you create a dampening field around the Briefing room that'll mask our life signs? 

EMH: I believe so. Why? 

KIM: Watch and learn. 

COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Your crew's abandoned you again. I suggest you surrender your vessel. 

EMH: You should realise by now that I'm not programmed to do that. (the escape pods that are being tractored explode, disabling the attackers) Bravo, Ensign. 

KIM: B'Elanna, I need those transporters.

Honest I suggest you just watch the episode, or read the script at least. Things will make more sense that way.

With, most likely, a reduced efficiency. You don't go from large tech crews that are a staple to only two users and expect that all will work wonderfully.

Except it is done in Star Trek. Large numbers of crew on Star Fleet vessels aren't there to run the ship. All a Galaxy Class needs is about 4 people to crew it in battle, and even less outside of battle.

If that's the way they want it, that's the way it is. That is the point, knowing precisely the way it is, not how it could or should have been. It is a good thing that under some circumstances left to be explained, a ship could be entirely run on a computer (we've seen it with those moon-cracking Cardassian dreadnoughts although again the actions are nothing exceptional, limited to scan, fly, aim and shoot), but the use and obvious necessity of crews isn't due to fluke when the ship is to be used properly, especially when things start to go wrong. While they could gain in speed by using computers, UFP AIs aren't seen capable of much imagination btw.

It's just that the Goa'uld don't do it that way.
The Wraith neither, as a matter of fact.

The point is that it's a two fold system, both in terms of users and hardware management, and on both points, I have seen Goa'uld motherships work well.
Crews are extremely small (we can barely call them crews), and the hassle of hardware management is reduced to an after thought that is alternatively managed from a console or a set of control panels. It doesn't mean all smaller systems benefit from the same level of survey and autorepair (broken door consoles and the like aren't autorepaired), but at least important ones do seem to be handled remotely fairly well.

The Goa'uld and Wraith need large crews to do things like man the guns, run basic maintenance on everything, man the fighters, cook, and so on. Those fighters are a very important of the defensive capabilities of Goa'uld ships. The claim that one or two people can properly crew Goa'uld or Wraith ships without a major loss in capability is just not true.

Conversely we know for a fact that only a tiny fraction of the crew of a Star Fleet vessel are in fact needed to work and maintain it, and that a single AI can do it all.

No. 304s are known to require crews working at several secondary stations. The bridge itself is often chokeful of people. There's no automated system for damage control. Nor is there one for any form of repair as far as we know of, which typically take time to complete with crews anyway.

We see 303s/304s crew by only by the bridge crew. It seems like in Unending that a 304 was successfully crewed by only SG-1?

We don't really know that at all. They precisely repair systems by doing nothing about changing parts when it comes to Ha'taks.
However, we've clearly seen or heard of SG-1, or more precisely Carter, and at other times humans, fiddle with systems on other ships to repair them: 304s, the Seberus, a tel'tak (which is a much less advanced Goa'uld ship).

You can fix stuff from a console if you can send orders to autorepair systems. At the absolute, for example, a typical Culture ship can monitor its own repairs. The principle would be the same, the Mind managing its own console to lead repairs.
Goa'uld fully master nano-technologies. The auto-repair could be as simple as having tanks of ready to use bots delivered into the damaged areas of the superstructure, mixed to local spare parts waiting there. It could be spare parts, even very complex ones, folded as we know Goa'uld fold other devices (masks, battle consoles, ring weapons, the spike underneath Osiris' ship).
In "Off the Grid", despite weapons and hyperdrives being directly targeted and shot at by the Lucian Alliance ships, as Netan ordered, Ba'al, seeing that he's still in a dire position soon after shields were recovered, told his FP to "forget weapons" and "bring [their] hyperdrive online". Without having the luxury of sitting in a shipyard, how did Ba'al expect those systems, precisely directly exposed to enemy fire and formerly hit by said fire, to be repaired within minutes if not by virtue of using remote repair systems capable of working in the areas exposed to vacuum?
In "Exodus", Jacob, despite very negative in the rest of the episode, never voices any concern about being unable to repair, from the engine room, all the systems that fell after the Al'kesh's run.

Sounds exactly like Star Trek.

In all honesty it matters what the problem is, and we never see these magic Baal self repairing ships actually fixing themselves do we?

Or that technicians worked on it and patched the holes when needed.

That would require Voyager to have large amounts of duranium, and the equipment to forge it into ship armor. We are looking at something on the scale of Borg ship regeneration.

We also see the Doctor fixing things by telling the ship to do certain things in "Work Force".

[Mr. Oragahn]

The EMH know how to use the operating system, and know how to read the consoles. That puts them on the same level as jaffa and SG-1.

Which therefore completely negates your earlier claim that they were clueless. The Jaffa at the consoles are not clueless about what they do. Daniel Jackson is a smart dude and knows how to read Goa'uld but he wasn't really at east with controlling the Ha'tak in "Exodus".
It's basic. You can't be clueless and be that lucky in all the things you do so much that you not only avoid blowing yourself up, but also manage to survive against an enemy flotilla.

The point, however, is that the two EMHs were doing a not so impressive job at all, aside from the dumb luck due to plot fiat in a supposedly funny moment that all shows of that kind had to have at least once per season.

The EMH had to actually learn how to target photon torpedos, and work everything on the spot. It wasn't a matter of simply saying a command once and the ship did what they wanted.

There was some of that. The alpha pattern thing. For the rest, it's best to assume the GUI to be very intuitive and noob friendly, which is not what I'd say I get when looking at the panels.

The point is that the EMH are just AI in the ships computer, and could have been able to control the entire ship like the M5 if the ship had been programed that way

I already said it: what they *could* have done is not relevant. What they did, for the vast majority of their ships, is.

Also, changing controls is a knowledge that is not necessary. EMH are machines that should adapt. Are they programmed to be rigidly at loss if they can't have their touchscreen buttons where they want them? That would be a pity!

The EMH did adapt to the new situation. They are programed to be doctors, and only doctors. They only have skills pertaining to being doctors, and are only programed to know how to apply those skills to being a doctor.

Actually, they're programmed to mimic humans with a talent for medicare. Otherwise, not only their limited programming would have really showed and made them useless in front of those consoles, but in fact, their medical programming, if really done right, would have had them refuse to kill.

All in all, I don't see much relevance in over debating a special case of very rare EMHs being present aboard an equally rare space ship.

That UFP ship is not the template that represents what Trek ships do. There's also no demonstration that it was running at its best level. In general, Trek ships require large crews to get the best out of any main system, within the boundaries of those available systems.

The only thing different about the Prometheus class is the multi-vector attack mode. We see Galaxy Class, Intrepid Class, Defiant Class, and Constitution Class all crewed by only about people, but even this number can be shrunk. Look at the battle bridge on a Galaxy Class. It only has 4 stations. Star Fleet crews are extremely bloated.

You just forget all the people working at the hardware stations. Again, the users are just the surface. You don't routinely require hundreds of people throughout the entirety of your ships for them to work perfectly (leaving out security teams, scientists, teachers, kids, barmen, etc.) and suddenly claim that all will go fine with three of them only.

Thus far, Ha'taks have been safely pushed to their height with only one guy working on the pel'tak console with that odd interface that's a mix of GUI on the main screen and something that is transmitted to from and to the mind: there are no buttons and no displays on the console, and the wide variety of inputs always involve people placing their fingers or palm the same way on the control panel, as there isn't any keyboard of any sort. Sometimes, we have someone eventually working on a battle console when there is one (not all Ha'taks had a separate battle console).
Ra's ship was known for having weapons yet its control console was most exotic and simplistic, without any tangible interface save for that slot behind his sarcophagus, where he put his hand.

And Star Fleet has done the same except it was an ECH program doing it, or a human doctor giving vague voice commands, or an ex borg drone while having to deal with a phobia and radiation of the week. Everything done in Star Gate was almost always done in Star Trek first.

Please describe what the ex borg drone, 709, did, and how do you know she got the best of the ship?
Isn't it a trademark of Trek to have, at the very least, a Scotty and his teams managing the engines and pushing them on demand?

Heck, Work Force shows that Federation Ships have a self repair feature.

Of what kind? Please cite the script.
What I found seems to argue for the contrary:

EMH: Re-initialise the subspace transponder.
COMPUTER: Warning. Main computer is failing.
EMH: Switch to backup processors.
COMPUTER: Main computer stabilised.
EMH: Good. Now, let's try this again. Re-initialise the subspace transponder.
COMPUTER: Unable to comply.
EMH: Why not?
COMPUTER: Insufficient power.
EMH: And they say I'm difficult. Reroute power from the replicator system.
COMPUTER: Unable to comply.
EMH: Clarify.
COMPUTER: Relays to the transponder are fused.
EMH: Any suggestions?
COMPUTER: Please restate inquiry.
EMH: Can the power relays be bypassed?
COMPUTER: Negative.
EMH: Then I suppose I'll have to replace them by hand.

These systems are internal. Likewise, crystals are changed by hand on Ha'taks, but external systems can be repaired without crews seen doing so or, actually, even able to physically do so on their own.

Same goes for the Wraith's ships. Hiveships do have their own sentience, but the Wraith control them manually. A few dudes working on 3-4 consoles on the small bridge can control everything, including autorepair.

Wraith ships are living creates. They don't have auto repair.

Odd statement, that is!
They do, like actually ALL life forms on Earth. Only a few things can't be repaired or changed. Humans can't repair their teeth, for example, nor can change them.
Hiveships can repair entirely, even reconfigure their internal structure. The repairing is a proven ability through dialogue.

What did he do that was good?

Went about repairing a damaged ship on his own, fought off an attack, avoided others ships looking for him, and saved the crew. The Doctor was very busy in Work Force.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Workforce_(episode)
http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/714.htm

A quick look at it reveals that the Doctor used the other ECH to give orders one at a time and was relying on simplified automated orders:

EMH [OC]: The crew abandoned ship and I began to assess the damage caused by the mine, but before I could even get started with the repairs I got some unexpected company.
EMH: Computer, report.
COMPUTER: An alien vessel has locked on to Voyager with a tractor beam.
EMH: Open a channel. This is the Federation Starship Voyager. Disengage your tractor beam.
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Our scans show no life signs aboard your vessel. Identify yourself.
EMH: I am the Emergency Command Hologram.
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Hologram.
EMH: That's right. Now release my ship.
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Your crew's abandoned it. It belongs to me now.
EMH: I beg to differ. Computer, target the vessel's tractor emitter and fire. Come about, heading nine zero three mark six. Engage at warp two.
COMPUTER: Warp engines are offline.
EMH: Evasive pattern beta four. Target the vessel's engines.
COMPUTER: Warning. Two vessels approaching bearing three three six mark one.
EMH: Reverse course, full impulse.

There's also the other obvious fact being that if the ECH were so good, the UFP wouldn't have them as an emergency and they'd either work on their own or support humans.
We also see that they have to press buttons and vocalize orders, instead of directly controlling the computer or being part of it.

If there are several people at multiple consoles and more behind the scene working on the main hardware in the vast majority of UFP ships (and probably the same goes for Klingon, Cardassian and Romulan ships), there's a reason for that.

Things get done faster because there are more people to do the work. The fact that a single person can crew a Federation ship without much trouble and even make extensive repairs shows the large crews aren't really needed.

Let's see the real extent of those "extensive repairs" please.
By the looks, a Ha'tak would require one or two people on the pel'tak, and one or two when problems happen to change damaged crystals. Can't see more.

Where have you seen that they bother with large crews. We haven't seen anything that ever demonstrated a superior efficiency with crews greater than the number of fingers of the hand. Goa'uld System Lords typically surround themselves with soldiers who, at best, are allowed to be users and strictly that.

Pretty much any time we see a ship in Star Gate they have lots of people on them just like in Star Trek, but in Star Trek a large number of those people are things like geologists and smaller ships.

Crews are different than troops just educated to use weapons and take cover.
I don't get why you assume that all the goons we see on a Ha'tak, when they're loaded full of troops, are part of the necessary crew, when there is in fact nothing to prove that they do anything but execeute their basic Jaffa role.
Again, the main difference being that a Ha'tak already runs at maximum efficiency with crews small enough to fit in a bath tube.
This is simply not the case with Trek.
Sure, there's clearly progress done on the way to smaller crews, but it's just not there yet.

That is good, but if it's just about scanning the enemy, flocking, shooting and moving, today computers do it impressively well in RTS games.
The complete managing of a starship isn't limited to that.
This isn't limited to UFP ships either, as the topic covered all main forces of the Alpha Quadrant.

[EMH narrative - Bridge]
EMH [OC]: The crew abandoned ship and I began to assess the damage caused by the mine, but before I could even get started with the repairs I got some unexpected company. ?
EMH: Computer, report. ?
COMPUTER: An alien vessel has locked on to Voyager with a tractor beam. ?
EMH: Open a channel. This is the Federation Starship Voyager. Disengage your tractor beam. ?
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Our scans show no life signs aboard your vessel. Identify yourself. ?
EMH: I am the Emergency Command Hologram. ?
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Hologram. ?
EMH: That's right. Now release my ship. ?
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Your crew's abandoned it. It belongs to me now. ?
EMH: I beg to differ. Computer, target the vessel's tractor emitter and fire. Come about, heading nine zero three mark six. Engage at warp two. ?
COMPUTER: Warp engines are offline. ?
EMH: Evasive pattern beta four. Target the vessel's engines. ?
COMPUTER: Warning. Two vessels approaching bearing three three six mark one. ?
EMH: Reverse course, full impulse.

[Bridge]

EMH: I managed to evade the other two ships and hid inside this nebula. I vented the radiation repaired as many systems as I could but with no help let's just say I'm glad you found me. ?
KIM: It wasn't easy picking up your homing signal. ?
EMH: Well, I had to encrypt it. Every time I left the nebula I detected more ships searching for me. ?
CHAKOTAY: Any idea who they are? ?
EMH: No, but I've analysed all of their weapons signatures. They match the subspace mine. It was a deliberate attempt to disable Voyager. ?
CHAKOTAY: Good thing you were here. ?
KIM: What about the rest of the crew? ?
EMH: Not a word.
_____
{Bridge]

KIM: I can't penetrate their shields. ?
EMH: Maybe we don't have to. The battle of Vorkado, it's in my tactical database. A Romulan Captain disabled two attacking vessels by creating a photonic shock wave between the ships. ?
KIM: How'd he do that? ?
EMH: Watch and learn. I don't think they'll be bothering us again. ?
KIM: Good work. Let's go back for Chakotay. ?
EMH: Five more ships on an intercept course. ?
KIM: What's your tactical database telling you now? ?
EMH: Transporters are damaged, shields are failing. We have to retreat, come up with a new plan. ?
KIM: Agreed
_____
[Ready room]
EMH: I've been analysing our scans of the Quarren patrol ships that attacked us and I think I've devised a way of evading their sensors. ?
KIM: You do have a knack for tactical planning. ?
EMH: That's something I've been meaning to discuss with you. Once we've succeeded in this mission, and I'm certain we will, I'd like you to help me programme a new medical hologram. ?
KIM: You don't like the idea of going back to your old job now that you've had a taste of command. ?
EMH: I'm a skilled officer. ?
KIM: No offence, doc, but that skill was programmed into you. ?
EMH: Yes. ?
KIM: I'm sure once you're back to your old self you'll be happy being a full-time Doctor again. Commander Chakotay's hailing us. We're receiving you, sir. Go ahead. ?
CHAKOTAY [OC]: I'm having trouble with my transceiver. This may be to last chance we have to talk. ?
KIM: What's your status?
_____
[Bridge]
KIM: So much for evading their sensors. ?EMH: The only way they could've found us is if they knew exactly where to look. ?TORRES: Transporters are offline.
_____
[Bridge]

NEELIX: We're losing shields. ?
KIM: Any advice from your tactical database? ?
EMH: Nothing relevant. ?
KIM: How many escape pods do we have left? ?
TORRES: Five. ?
KIM: Stand by to eject three of them. ?
EMH: I don't think abandoning ship is the answer. ?
KIM: Neither do I. Can you create a dampening field around the Briefing room that'll mask our life signs? ?
EMH: I believe so. Why? ?
KIM: Watch and learn. ?
COYOTE [on viewscreen]: Your crew's abandoned you again. I suggest you surrender your vessel. ?
EMH: You should realise by now that I'm not programmed to do that. (the escape pods that are being tractored explode, disabling the attackers) Bravo, Ensign. ?
KIM: B'Elanna, I need those transporters.

Honest I suggest you just watch the episode, or read the script at least. Things will make more sense that way.

Done.
See my remarks earlier on.
As for the extent of the damage, it was minimal and when there weren't alternate power conduits, internal systems' fused parts had to be changed by hand.

It's also telling that in a time of war, the UFP didn't decide to use more of those holograms, even if only on less elaborate small battleships.

With, most likely, a reduced efficiency. You don't go from large tech crews that are a staple to only two users and expect that all will work wonderfully.

Except it is done in Star Trek. Large numbers of crew on Star Fleet vessels aren't there to run the ship. All a Galaxy Class needs is about 4 people to crew it in battle, and even less outside of battle.

False. Are we suddenly to forget the large tech crew inside the engineer rooms for example? These people are necessary. I usually don't focus much on damage control crews either but I don't know how Trek ships handle that.
As I already said, you're thinking of users only and completely forgetting the people constantly working on the hardware.

If that's the way they want it, that's the way it is. That is the point, knowing precisely the way it is, not how it could or should have been. It is a good thing that under some circumstances left to be explained, a ship could be entirely run on a computer (we've seen it with those moon-cracking Cardassian dreadnoughts although again the actions are nothing exceptional, limited to scan, fly, aim and shoot), but the use and obvious necessity of crews isn't due to fluke when the ship is to be used properly, especially when things start to go wrong. While they could gain in speed by using computers, UFP AIs aren't seen capable of much imagination btw.

It's just that the Goa'uld don't do it that way.
The Wraith neither, as a matter of fact.

The point is that it's a two fold system, both in terms of users and hardware management, and on both points, I have seen Goa'uld motherships work well.
Crews are extremely small (we can barely call them crews), and the hassle of hardware management is reduced to an after thought that is alternatively managed from a console or a set of control panels. It doesn't mean all smaller systems benefit from the same level of survey and autorepair (broken door consoles and the like aren't autorepaired), but at least important ones do seem to be handled remotely fairly well.

The Goa'uld and Wraith need large crews to do things like man the guns, run basic maintenance on everything, man the fighters, cook, and so on.

You're making shit up, clearly. There are no crews for the guns. There's no crew ever seen for maintenance on "everything". Fighters are used by Jaffa if needed and they're not part of the crew necessary to make the ship work (I never counted redshirts so why count Jaffa?).
Cooking... ha, that's funny. Goa'uld sleep in sarcophagi. Jaffa could go kel'no'reem for all we care. Perhaps you could also count the cleaning ladies for the toilets? I'm pretty sure a nice chicken soup is essential to the proper running of a starship.

Those fighters are a very important of the defensive capabilities of Goa'uld ships.

No, they're shit.
Defense is assured by shields and weapons. Death Gliders only harass other DGs and are used to attack ground targets, mostly for the scares.
If, at least, they were equipped with missiles and gigaton nukes I think we could say they're relevant to Ha'taks.
The only time they could make a difference in terms of defense would have been in "Exodus", if they had already been deployed, and then attacked the Al'kesh that flew close to the Ha'tak and fired those bizarre blue bombs we never saw again (possibly the only use of anti-capital ship weaponry for a small ship of that kind).

The claim that one or two people can properly crew Goa'uld or Wraith ships without a major loss in capability is just not true.

Two people on the vast majority of Ha'taks is already sufficient to push the ship to near max efficiency. The only plus being a need to replace burnt crystals in emergency, but seeing how even Cronos' ship had few spare crystals, it doesn't seem to happen that often (or Earth had looted a lot of the ship's stock before handing the craft to the Tok'ra for their plan to blow up Vorash).
Even Wraith darts have rarely been seen used as a mean of defense unless they were already deployed. Their firepower is too nimble to ever hope denting a cruiser or hiveship. Even hundreds of them.
Scratching the paint, maybe.

Conversely we know for a fact that only a tiny fraction of the crew of a Star Fleet vessel are in fact needed to work and maintain it, and that a single AI can do it all.

The single AI can only do a number of things at a time, run pre-saved routines (which means plenty of problems the moment you want to combine routines or walk out of one to think it out or modify it since they're already pre-defined) and had to do repairs by hand for anything beyond rerouting power through alternative routes. It was a good thing, but again, an exception which the UFP doesn't deem good enough due to its reliance on larger human crews, and it's again a complete ignorance of the existence of real technical crews constantly at work on the hardware at various points of the ships.

No. 304s are known to require crews working at several secondary stations. The bridge itself is often full of people. There's no automated system for damage control. Nor is there one for any form of repair as far as we know of, which typically take time to complete with crews anyway.

We see 303s/304s crew by only by the bridge crew. It seems like in Unending that a 304 was successfully crewed by only SG-1?

As I said there's a variety of commands which they can run with a few people on the bridge. But that's not how a 304 runs at peak efficiency.
You may have not noticed that in Unending, after the fist kill against an Ori ship, the damage they had taken wasn't sufficiently repaired during their trip through hyperspace, and that despite the ship choke full of people on it. During the final battle, we see Teal'c use a fire extinguisher. Now just imagine the same going on everywhere on the ship, that tells a lot about the control damage crew.

We don't really know that at all. They precisely repair systems by doing nothing about changing parts when it comes to Ha'taks.
However, we've clearly seen or heard of SG-1, or more precisely Carter, and at other times humans, fiddle with systems on other ships to repair them: 304s, the Seberus, a tel'tak (which is a much less advanced Goa'uld ship).

You can fix stuff from a console if you can send orders to autorepair systems. At the absolute, for example, a typical Culture ship can monitor its own repairs. The principle would be the same, the Mind managing its own console to lead repairs.
Goa'uld fully master nano-technologies. The auto-repair could be as simple as having tanks of ready to use bots delivered into the damaged areas of the superstructure, mixed to local spare parts waiting there. It could be spare parts, even very complex ones, folded as we know Goa'uld fold other devices (masks, battle consoles, ring weapons, the spike underneath Osiris' ship).
In "Off the Grid", despite weapons and hyperdrives being directly targeted and shot at by the Lucian Alliance ships, as Netan ordered, Ba'al, seeing that he's still in a dire position soon after shields were recovered, told his FP to "forget weapons" and "bring [their] hyperdrive online". Without having the luxury of sitting in a shipyard, how did Ba'al expect those systems, precisely directly exposed to enemy fire and formerly hit by said fire, to be repaired within minutes if not by virtue of using remote repair systems capable of working in the areas exposed to vacuum?
In "Exodus", Jacob, despite very negative in the rest of the episode, never voices any concern about being unable to repair, from the engine room, all the systems that fell after the Al'kesh's run.

Sounds exactly like Star Trek.

In all honesty it matters what the problem is, and we never see these magic Baal self repairing ships actually fixing themselves do we?

We never see the power core of a Ha'tak either, if we go down that route. What is your point?

Or that technicians worked on it and patched the holes when needed.

That would require Voyager to have large amounts of duranium,

They obviously have it otherwise they patch the ship with lesser materials.

... and the equipment to forge it into ship armor.

Well, seeing that those plates return after a while, there has to be a way for them to build them or at least store them. It doesn't mean it automatically translates into remote autorepair.

We are looking at something on the scale of Borg ship regeneration.

Borg regen takes place within seconds, over thousands of square meters.
That's quite different.

We also see the Doctor fixing things by telling the ship to do certain things in "Work Force".

Yes, rerouting power. As I have shown, when things are fused, the Doctor had to change these things manually.