Gateworld Virtual Fleet

A curiously long-lived (four years and going, at this time) cross of fan fiction and World Building based on the Stargate Verse that can be found here, with the wiki for 1.0 through 3.0 here, and the wiki for 4.0 here.

The project is organized into "Fleets", which are numbered (GWVF 1.0, 2.0, etc.), and is currently into its fourth incarnation.

Over time, the complexity and quality of the stories and concepts used has grown from basically the creation of opposing military forces and the writing of glorified after action reports, to detailed overviews of cultural, economic and political factors for dozens of species and races and full blown myth arcs.

During the first fleet, Humanity fought a war with the Wraith in the Pegasus galaxy, who tried to create a race of supersoldiers called the Reapers who turned around and decided they had other plans.

In 2.0, the story focused on the Milky way and the consecutive wars with the Ashen and Adnihilo, whose defeat signaled Humanity's rise to the status of the Fifth Race.

By 3.0, the fleet had grown so complex, involving no less than three major enemies of galaxy-threatening might, that it ran out of steam and in the end, not one but several plots and myth arcs had to be cut out to bring it to a semi-satisfying conclusion. It was also the time when a lot of technology related plot holes began cropping up as contributors with a more hard science oriented approach began to join the Fleet.

Version 4.0 Is a revitalization of the fleet concept, starting from scratch in order to create a whole new universe and avoid the mistakes of the past.

In general, the focus of the fleets is on Humanity's role in the universe, which isn't surprising given that Most Writers Are Human, however at least as important is the creation of original or the continuing development of existing Stargate species and races, and how they interact with one another.

Tropes used:

 * Awesomeness By Analysis: The Razg, their computers run constant simulation during battle in order to predict the best possible response to an an enemy tactic, and sometimes figure out what the enemy will do before the enemy figures it out himself.
 * Badass Long Hair: Farha Shun'Wei
 * Blind Jump: A risky means to escape battle not in the danger of where they may emerge)(space is big), but in the fact that one has to strop all shields in order to feed a hypedrive's power needs, making a ship extremely vulnerable.
 * Blue and Orange Morality: How the Afar see the world, but they've managed to learn that it freaks out everybody else so they tailor what they do so as not to seem totally insane.
 * Body Horror: The fight between the Reapers and Razg drones. The latter were self-propelled swords with absurdly sharp blades, while the former were an army of biological war machines.
 * The Bridge: Most ships have these, through some species use virtual reality versions in order to minimize the chances of lucky hits getting all of the senior officers.
 * Combat Pragmatist: The whole Razg Concordiat Space Navy, who, rather than use flashy energy weapons, like to throw smart munitions at relativistic speeds. While smart weapons are less effective at taking down shields, once the shields are down nothing sort of a small planet will prevent those shots punching through any hull.
 * Comm Links: Subspace Information Transceivers (SWIFT).
 * Containment Field: Forcefields are used to compress fuel to fusion densities and to vector drive exhaust, as well as serving in containment cells, through most races are genre savvy enough to equip them with metal bars in case of Phlebotinum Breakdown.
 * Crystal Spires and Togas: The Alfar, who are literally crystal spires, fit this trope to a t. Then again, this is intentional because they want visitors to be impressed. It mostly works.
 * Dangerously Genre Savvy: Kebechet is rumoured to be this, according to some sources. Given that she has no canon appearance, the accuracy of this description remains to be seen.
 * Deflector Shields: In all the colors of the rainbow.
 * Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Physics defying Naqadah-Potassium warheads.
 * Doomsday Device: Where do we start? Reapers and Ashen used engineered plagues and toxins to kill, incapacitate or mutate planetary populations and most weapons have yields measured in megatons per second.
 * Energy Absorption: Reapers use dampening fields based on their Negative Space Wedgie home.
 * Everything Sensor: Averted or played straight depending on the author. Mostly all of a ship's detection equipment comes under the umbrella of "sensor", but ships have multiple types to deal with different parts of the EM spectrum and different tasks (like navigational and targeting RADAR).
 * Faster-Than-Light Travel: Hyperdrive, and it's precursor: the totally un-described FTL drive.
 * Fiery Redhead: Farha, quite literally.
 * Fun With Acronyms: The above mentioned SWIFT.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams: The Afar really love these, expect much Beam Spam when they show up to a party.
 * Going to Give It More Energy: Played straight, averted or justified depending on author.
 * Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Most species and races have gotten where they are today because they reverse engineered the stuff from existing high tech civilizations.
 * Inertial Dampening: Ubiquitous technology.
 * Invisibility Cloak: A lot of people use these, it's still a matter of debate why civilization continues to exist when ships can drop nukes without being detected.
 * Higher-Tech Species: All the different Ancient offshoots.
 * Horde of Alien Locusts: The Reapers, and in 4.0, the Scrounge.
 * Inside a Computer System: About 99% of the Tka-Tko-Tka species live in virtual reality; life is also easier there.
 * ISO Standard Human Spaceship: A side effect of using Google SketchUp for a lot of the models.
 * Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Humans, Tka-Tko-Tka, Razg … it's fairly common.
 * The Determinator: Drac,.
 * Mecha Mook: The Razg planetary combat forces use armies of these, except they're neither fragile nor easily dispatched.
 * Mind Probe: The Razg, Galarans, and Tka-Tko-Tka, on last count.
 * Neural Implanting: Galaran memory tech, Razg neural nanonics, Tka-Tko-Tka memory technology.
 * Nuke'Em: Humanity's favorite way of dealing with bad guys.
 * One-Man Army: Subverted, since Farha actually invokes this trope to distract from the whole army of small, cloaked agent helping her out.
 * Organic Technology: The Wraith, Reapers, and later the Razg (through reverse engineering form the former), in 4.0, the Tka-Tko-Tka (who mix organic and mechanical technology).
 * Powers As Programs: Literally with the Ragz and Tka, where skills can be downloaded. The catch is that the downloads give you only theoretical knowledge; you still have to train in order to get the muscle memory to make good use of said skills.
 * Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum: Most of the races that have memory-manipulation technology use it to skip schooling.
 * Self-Destruct Mechanism: Justified, in that most ship's reactors are putting out megatons per second of energy.
 * Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: The Humans and Navos each employ one.
 * Starfish Aliens: The Tka-Tko-Tka, Alfar and the Water Lifeforms
 * Starfish Language: Applies to all of the above.
 * Subverted with the Alfar who have both been to Earth in the past and can read thoughts. Part of A form you are comfortable with
 * States of Phlebotinum: Played straight with most of the phlebotinum.
 * Swiss Army Appendage: Tka-Tko-Tka forcefields can be manipulated to do more or less anything, from doing delicate brain surgery without opening up the scalp to crunching a human skull between its field projectors.
 * Tracking Device: Most Human off-world personnel have subcutaneous transmitters.
 * The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: They will address the actions of the main characters without the usual slew of cryptic double meaning, but the fact remains that we have no idea who the Black Body Objects are.