For centuries the Goa’uld were kept relatively in check by Asgard motherships,
immense craft that were vastly more advanced than anything that the System Lords could field. They
were used to enforce the Protected Planets Treaty within the Milky Way, although direct intervention
became less common as the Asgard needed them for fighting the Replicators in their home galaxy.
Due to this, the Asgard turned the Goa'ulds' strategy of intimidation back on them, with
fear of the power of motherships keeping them in line. This was the case for a long time before
SG-1 first encountered one, with the ship, or one like it, being part of Jaffa legend.
Asgard motherships had a number of technologies on board that enabled
their protection and observation of less developed races within the Milky Way.
The first of these was the exceptionally fast hyperdrive that was capable of moving the ships
across galaxies, or even intergalactically, within a matter of minutes. The full
power of the ships generators was required to reach these speeds, which meant that the ships
could not be protected with shields, creating a window of opportunity for them to be destroyed.
To avoid being seen by primitive races, and to avoid breaking the Treaty with the System Lords,
motherships had simple cloaking technology.
Not even Tau’ri satellites that knew a ship was there were sufficient enough to detect it.
"We've been looking for it in orbit since Colonel O'neill disappeared. Still nothing."
Though the Asgard preferred peaceful options if they were available,
motherships had extremely strong shields and weapons compared to those of the Goa’uld.
This status quo changed when Anubis used the knowledge of the Ancients to upgrade his fleet.
The ships also had internal explosion dampeners if damage was sustained, or if
intruders somehow managed to board. This did mean SG-1 was forced to improvise when they needed to
destroy the Biliskner after Replicators had taken it over. Luckily they brought EVA suits with them
and managed to plant explosives on the outside of the hull where the dampeners wouldn’t work.
It’s not clear exactly how the teams gunpowder weapons still functioned with these dampeners in
effect, perhaps the explosions were too small for the system to work.
The most impressive feature of the ship was its extensive transporter arrays.
Combined with powerful sensors, these arrays could lock on to and beam away almost anything, from
anywhere relatively nearby. For example; specific individuals could be picked out from a crowd
while deep underground, or even large objects that were connected to others, like the SGC’s
Stargate. They could even mass transport entire armies. The system could also be preprogrammed to
transport items from a specific area to another area once triggered by an untrained individual.
Despite having all this powerful technology, it did not help in the fight against the Replicators.
Energy weapons barely even slowed Replicators down, and though
Tau’ri projectile weapons could break apart Replicators and damage individual blocks,
sheer numbers of them were still overwhelming.
Even the strong shields of the mothership could be easily bypassed in order to rapidly
infest the craft. Once Replicators were on board,
they first disabled any sensors that were capable of seeing them, which dramatically
limited any efforts to root them out of hiding and destroy them before they could replicate.
If any Asgard were wounded, they were unable to use the ships automated medical systems
as it would attract Replicator attention. Any wounded Asgard were
instead placed into mobile stasis pods, and hopefully rescued later.
The extremely capable mothership was the workhorse of the Asgard fleet for a very long time,
although they did reveal the Asgards weakness: a complete overreliance on their technology.
"Overconfidence in our technology has been our undoing."
Ironically, it was advances by the Replicators and Anubis that forced
the Asgard to eventually replace the ships with the vastly more capable O’neill class.
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