Ha'tak

"It is a Goa'uld attack vessel."

- Teal'c

The Ha'tak is an advanced starship used mainly by the Goa'uld, Free Jaffa Nation, Lucian Alliance, and Replicators. The Ha'tak is one of the most powerful ships in use by these species, next to very few larger flagships. However, these ships are very weak when compared to those in the Asgard, Ancient, Ori and the Asgard upgraded Tau'ri fleet.

Overview
Ha'tak's contained a navigational computer that was able to map the stars in order to better facilitate movement in known space. This allowed it to note whether the ship was present within the Milky Way galaxy or not. In addition, it had sensors capable of detecting approaching ships. However, the sensors were rendered blind if the vessel was in the corona of a blue star and were incapable of detecting ships in such conditions.

The hull of the vessel was strong enough to allow crew of the ship to survive for an hour when in the corona of a blue star.

Design
The Ha'tak vessel is of a fairly simple design, consisting of a tetrahedron main structure with a protective structure surrounding it. All of the main components of the Ha'tak are located in the main pyramid core, including the command center and glider bay. The oldest class of Ha'taks, such as those used by the Goa'uld Ra, was ten thousands years old.

Some Ha'taks are definitely capable of landing on any type of terrain, while the variant used by Ra's lineage seem to lack this ability, and either rely on stone pyramids used as landing pads, or artificial pads (although it's argued that this is not mandatory, and has more to do with the symbolism of Goa'uld supremacy upon slave worlds). Other variants, notably the larger flagships used by Apophis and Anubis, seem to be limited to space and atmospheric flight, with no evidence of structural ability to land properly (possibly due to their larger size).

Pel'tak
The Pel'tak is the bridge of a Goa'uld Hatak vessel. In this room there are mainly two control consoles one for weapons which is usually concealed under the floor unless in use and another console which controls all other ship board functions. In front of this console lies a window which can be used as a view screen. At the back of the room can usually be found a throne for the vessel's commander. There are many different designs for Pel'taks but all usually share the same mandatory elements.

Engine room
The power source and hyperdrive equipment of a ha'tak are stored here. The engine room contains the control crystals necessary for many functions, such as hyperdrive and shields. They only contain one set of spares for the crystals. Replicators, upon infesting a ha'tak, will flock here, presumably drawing energy from the reactors, and using their knowledge to improve the hyperdrive of the Goa'uld ships

Glider bays
The glider bays of Ha'taks are located on the same side of the pyramid as the pel'tac. The gliders are then "shot" out of launchers that send them out at high speeds. Although the design of such bays can change significantly from one class of Ha'tak to another, all Death Gliders come out from an aperture at the base of the pyramid core, underneath the scaffolding black structure. When docked, gliders are held in racks which allow easy departure.

Cargo room
The cargo rooms of ha'taks hold cases filled with weapons, riches, naquadah, or whatever a Goa'uld needs to transport.

Occasionally, ha'taks have been shown to carry a full Stargate and DHD aboard in one of their cargo bays. This Stargate is configured to work only in close proximity of a planet, allowing it to function as if it was a Stargate of that planet, and using the point of origin as the planet below. Out of orbit of the planet, the Stargate cannot be dialed, but as soon as it arrives at another planet, the Stargate can work once again. Ba'al's storage room was large enough to hold several Stargates and DHDs. SG-1 used one of them to escape Ba'al's ship before it was destroyed by the Lucian Alliance.

Naquadah reactor
Little is known about the details of such a power core. The fact is, at least, that it consumes naquadah as fuel. We could expect the naquadah to be a refined version which may be as potent as weapon-grade naquadah and provide high power. Although much of this is open to speculation, it's more than likely that Goa'uld reactors are fusion based.

Sublight engines
Ha'taks use an advanced form of propulsion which circumvents the presence of chemical rockets or ion thrusters of any sort, and achieve great accelerations. These invisible systems, apparently able to manipulate inertia along given vectors, can easily take a Ha'tak to 5% of lightspeed and velocities where planets come in and out of view within a few minutes, and are the most likely system used to keep them at a stable altitude within gravitational fields. These engines are also used to slow the ship down when exiting hyperspace.

Hyperdrive
A standard Ha'tak hyperdrive can propel a Ha'tak through hyperspace at 32,000 times the speed of light, but this does not necessarily represent a standard, as Apophis' Ha'taks benefited from faster hyperdrives.

This made them incapable of a fast level of intergalactic travel as it would take over 125 years for a Ha'tak to move from the Ida galaxy and return to the Milky Way galaxy. The destruction of a star was capable of creating a blast wave that can send a Ha'tak spiraling into another galaxy if the ship is entering hyperspace.

The vessel made use of control crystals as part of the hyperdrive system.

Shields
Ha'tak vessels make use of defensive shields which protect them from several forms of weapons and collisions. They have been shown to be overwhelmed by Asgard, Tollan and later Tau'ri weaponry, but the naquadah-enhanced Mark 12A Minuteman nuclear weapon (estimated at 1 gigaton of explosive force), were unable to have any measurable decrease of the shield's power.

The generators themselves were located far below the vessel at the very bowels of the ship where a group of grenades were capable of destroying them. They have shown the capacity of protecting the crew for 10 hours inside the corona of a blue star.

However, the shields have proven to be little defense against the main weapon on an Ori mothership. It was also incapable of protecting the vessel from enhanced weaponry of Apophis' mothership. Ancient Drone weapons can also pass through them with no resistance whatsoever.


 * However, no defense system such as a shield was ever heard of by the SGC, so it's more than likely that the warheads didn't detonate properly while preemptively intercepted by said shield, and exploded before any nuclear reaction could occur. The resulting EMP fizzle being easily explainable by the nature of naquadah regarding electromagnetic radiations.

Staff cannons
A Ha'tak possesses 60 staff cannons for ship to ship combat and orbital bombardment. Despite their size, they are extremely fast and maneuverable.

The heavier staff cannons are placed around the superstructure that surrounds the pyramid, which can be used to on attack ships and to orbitally bombard planets. On the latest standard Ha'tak variant, such cannons are placed on the diametrically opposed sides of the domes present on the scaffolding structure, along the slope of each arm, making it a total of two cannons per dome, and therefore twelve cannons covering the upper side, with an equal amount of domes, and thus cannons, on the underside of the black structure. Therefore, their optimal position and hemispherical arc of fire allows a Ha'tak to hit any target with a balanced amount of fire, from any position. The various observed levels of firepower, rates of fire and even projectile ejection speeds indicate that these weapons can be recalibrated at will. The maximum observed range thus far has been orbital, and their maximum firepower is unknown, but indirect evidence would put them at least at 200 megatons per bolt, if not more (based on engagements between Ha'taks and their estimated shield capacities).

Several point defense lighter cannons are notably present around the base of the pyramid core. On Sokar's Ha'taks, such cannons could even fire homing projectiles. How this was achieved is unknown. Considering the nature of the projectiles, it's likely that their trajectory was altered by ranged systems on the Ha'taks, possibly a form of advanced electromagnetic fields (which would provide an explanation as to how Goa'uld ships could capture drifting objects if they had to).

Bombs
Some few Ha'taks also seem to come with a small complement of roughly two feet high spherical and heavy bombs. As Samantha Carter was deploring the lack of nukes that would be beamed onto an Ori mothership to destroy it, Cameron Mitchell asked Teal'c if there were any "fancy Jaffa bombs", to which he replied that they had "explosives that should be effective".

Communications
Ha'taks in general possess the capacity to transmit and receive high quality FTL communications over long ranges measured in lightyears.

Detection
Like many ships, Ha'taks come with a variety of passive and active sensors. FTL capable, they've been shown capable of picking starships in hyperspace transit seconds before they'd arrive in a system.

Sensors are also capable of picking up and engaging target immediately upon exiting hyperspace.

In general, all sensors are eluded by cloaking devices, no matter the size of a target. But the upgrades brought by Anubis to his own fleet enabled his Ha'taks to notice the presence of cloaked ships such as Tel'taks.

These same Ha'taks were shown incapable of reading through a stormy, dense and ionized atmosphere, and had to rely on the relayed feed from Death Gliders sent into the chaos in order to obtain better readings.

Globally, sensors obey line of sight principles, since planets, moons and suns (including coronas) are all capable of masking the presence of ships to a Ha'tak's attention.

Goa'uld
The Ha'tak was one of the main means of power in use by the Goa'uld Empire due to their strength, especially in large numbers. The Goa'uld System Lords typically invaded planets using small numbers of such ships, and counted on orbital supremacy to constrain generally inferior civilizations into rendition. Rarely would they wipe them out unless it would be absolutely necessary. More than anything else, the Ha'taks would be used as a demonstration of the Goa'uld's power. However, in a handful number of cases, certain battles to be fought could only be won with larger fleets.

Free Jaffa Nation
With the fall of the Goa'uld, a number of Ha'taks were absorbed into the Free Jaffa Nation. The number of Ha'taks were initially minimal, but their numbers kept growing over time, despite the increasing threat of the Ori, Lucian Alliance and Ba'al.

Lucian Alliance
The fall of the Goa'uld also saw part of the missing power to be handed to the Lucian Alliance, who had already started to take control of various Goa'uld technologies in 2005. The fall of the Goa'uld presented further opportunities for the acquisition of more Ha'tak vessels, beyond the commodities of Al'keshes.

Tau'ri
Acquiring technology to fight against the Goa'uld and other threats was a major goal for humans with the Stargate program. One of the greatest goals was to acquire a Ha'tak class vessel. This goal has been achieved twice, with assistance of the Tok'ra, however both times the acquired vessel had been destroyed.

Replicators
After taking Goa'uld motherships and upgrading their weapons to surpass even the Asgard, these ships were used against the Goa'uld fleet and the Asgard. They were also used in a failed attack on the Dakara superweapon.

Goa'uld Ha'taks

 * Anubis' Ha'tak
 * Apophis' Ha'tak
 * Ares' Ha'tak
 * Ba'al's Ha'tak
 * Cronus' Ha'tak
 * Heur'ur's Ha'tak
 * Klorel's Ha'tak
 * Nirrti's Ha'tak
 * Sokar's Ha'tak
 * Tanith's Ha'tak
 * Zipacna's Ha'tak

Free Jaffa Ha'taks

 * Bra'tac's Ha'tak
 * Cha'ra's Ha'tak
 * Gerak's Ha'tak
 * Teal'c Ha'tak
 * Yat'Yir's Ha'ta

Lucian Ha'taks

 * Netan's Ha'tak
 * Anateo's Ha'tak
 * Tenat's Ha'tak