[Snarks]

Let's expand on the history of this venerable weapon.

Yes, I know techroom descriptions are only semi-canon, but they still offer some insight.

FS1 tech description of ML-16

Argon laser weapon - uses transparent ceramic technology in order to create an optical system that is extremely durable and stable under battle conditions - provides adequate destructive damage to the hull of enemy ships by vaporizing molecular bonds at the target area and destabilizing molecular bonds across the grain of the hull material.

The GTA issues ML-16 Lasers to every fighter and bomber in service.

Now comparing it to its successor:

FS2 Subach HL-7

The Subach-Innes HL-7 is a xaser weapon, firing an intense, highly focused beam of x-ray emissions. Until the Shivans appeared with their shield technology, these weapons were considered an unnecessary and costly extravagance. But Great War dogfights against Shivan craft quickly taught the Allies that their ships didn't stand a chance unless they could punch through shields. The HL-7 works superbly against shields of all varieties and has become the standard issue Primary weapon for all Terran fighters and bombers.

Ignoring the technobabble, we note that the language regarding the economics of the weapons. The ML-16 is cited as being durable, stable, and adequate. The HL-7 is cited as being unnecessary and costly until the Shivans showed up. Also note the ML (probably stands for medium laser) and the HL (heavy laser).

So what can we conclude? It is possible that the GTA already had the technology to pierce shields. It would seem silly for the GTA to call a line of weapons medium lasers when a heavier line did not exist. In fact, an entire line of heavy lasers probably had been in service production with the GTA for a limited amount of time but was deemed to be too expensive for the kind of limited, colonial style war with the Terran and Vasudan. Obviously the Shivans showing up vastly increased the budget to a total war economy scenario. Now why didn't the GTA simply switch over to heavy lasers when they encountered the Shivans? 1) The GTA did not know that heavy lasers would have been effective. It is only in retrospect (probably after some weapons testing) that they made that connection. 2) The Avenger prototype seems to have been primed as a replacement for the ML-16 even before the advent of the Shivans, which means it was supposed to be a cost efficient replacement compared to heavy lasers. 3) Command had not yet properly assessed the threat of the Shivans. Putting a weapon into full production is very costly and is a strategic level decision.

In terms of narrative, there's a couple of things we can do. First, this makes the availability of new weapons from the GTA more sensible. Instead of simply developing a vast arsenal of new weaponry from scratch, they simply continued development of many prototypes that were deemed too expensive at the time. Second, you can totally make some GTI campaigns where special operations squadrons are armed with heavy lasers that fight the Shivans without being forced to wait for the Avenger's development or to use the ML-16. You can argue that the GTA did not make this public knowledge because the squadrons are unofficial and kept off records and to prevent mass protest to restart heavy laser production and potentially mess with strategic level decisions. And if we accept this second premise, then you can add even more weapons to a campaign by arguing it was part of the class of limited production, heavy laser weaponry reserved only for special squadrons.

[Firesteel]

Interestingly, the Prometheus is more or less a direct descendant of the ML-16 as both are argon and ceramic based weapons with better anti-hull capacity than anti-shield. We know very little about weapon development in the FS universe aside from some of the details surrounding the Avenger. I could see the Prometheus being in development since before the events of FS1 as an expensive, anti-cruiser cannon then being fast tracked into production with the Shivans' emergence and some of its effectiveness being limited by a shift towards compatibility.

The Avenger was definitely going to replace the ML-16 and its attempted capture by the Vasudans given its extreme effectiveness against hulls alone when compared to the ML-16. We don't know how long the ML-16 had been in service by the events of FS1, but it's safe to assume (both through gameplay and the narrative impact of the Avenger) that it had been in service for most, if not all, of the war with the Vasudans.

The HL-7 could certainly trace its roots back to the Avenger, if only as a failed prototype for the program as the Avenger was still primarily designed with the shieldless Great War in mind and any additional shield damage the more advanced and costly weapon could provide would have been effectively invisible.

[Kestrellius]

I wouldn't say the ML-16 was around for the majority of the T-V War. Remember, it went on four fourteen years. It was probably just in use for the last half-decade or so. Eh, could have been the whole time, I suppose, but that's a pretty massive use period considering the speed of weapons development in the FS verse.

[Firesteel]

Remember, even today we are using military hardware that's been around for 30+ years (M-16s or B-52 for example) simply because nothing better has come along to replace it. In the FS universe, since we are lowly pilots, we don't know the timetables for any of the weapons that are "developed" during the campaigns. I have a feeling most of them were somewhere in development long before we arrive on the scene since it's hard to develop brand new technologies during wartime, though WWII has some noted exceptions.

Particularly with the Prometheus, they already had a reliable framework with the ML-16 to begin designing a more powerful weapon. We also don't know how long the Avenger was in development, as our introduction to it is in its prototype stage. As far as FS2 is concerned, the Perseus and the Pegasus are the few technologies developed during the Second Shivan incursion. IIRC the player "unlocks" the technology by advancing in the military, unlike the First Shivan Incursion where most of it was developed on the fly to some extent.

The Interceptor is a good example since it's a collaboration using preexisting technologies.

[Snarks]

The Prometheus stomps me a bit. By the end of the Great War, it seems like the Prometheus had become a favored weapon of Terran pilots. Yet, the time frame of 3 months in which it's developed and deployed is incredibly small.

It might be the case that the Prometheus had been in parallel development, primarily intended to be used in the Hercules. As an anti-cruiser weapon, the Prometheus coupled with the six gun points of the Hercules would make short work of many ships. It may also be the case that by the end of FS1, Alpha 1 had been assigned to elite squadrons, in which the Prometheus and other exotic weapons were made readily available. This would lead me to believe that the Avenger likely had remained in production for the typical fighter squadrons until its replacement with the Subach HL-7. The evidence for this dual weapon doctrine comes from FS2 where both Prometheus R and Subach HL-7 were readily available to the player, with the Prometheus R showing up when the player gets assigned to assault fighters.

More exotic weapons like the Banshee probably had highly limited availability by comparison.

[Mars]

I wouldn't take anything that the Freespace command briefings or tech room says about when things were developed. Though officially canon, it doesn't make any sense. IIRC nearly every piece of technology in the game was said to have been developed almost immediately before. Freespace 2 did it much better, pretty much nothing was said to be developed during the actual games timeframe exept for TAG missiles.

[Black Wolf]

I wouldn't take anything that the Freespace command briefings or tech room says about when things were developed. Though officially canon, it doesn't make any sense. IIRC nearly every piece of technology in the game was said to have been developed almost immediately before. Freespace 2 did it much better, pretty much nothing was said to be developed during the actual games timeframe exept for TAG missiles.

For what its worth, I came up with what I thought was a reasonably good explanation for this for Frontlines.

Just two years prior to FS1, the GTA had taken an almost completely unexpected pounding at the hands of the first Typhon class destroyer. I figured that might have been enough to shock GTA command into the realisation that the technological stalemate was ending, and that the Vasudans were pulling ahead. To counter that, they immediately invested big on R&D for new classes of advanced fighters and bombers, recognizing that they were more powerful than the ship they were carried on, so a better counter to the Typhon than heavier Orions might have been.

Essentially, what you're seeing in FS1 isn't a few months of ridiculously fast development and deployment of new classes, but the culmination of several years worth of work behind the scenes that got rushed out of the factories maybe a bit quicker because of the Shivan emergency.

It makes a fair bit of sense - the two projects we're slightly told are going on are the Avenger and the Tsunami - the Tsunami especially indicates that the GTA were looking to improve their strikecraft's chances of taking down bigger ships. Of terror, then it's probably the biggest stroke of luck in human history that the Ursa (presumably built to counter Typhons) happened to be ready just in time to counter the Lucifer.

I also have a theory about how the Trans and Vasudans were able to collaborate quickly enough to produce the Ulysses, but you'll have to wait for later FL chapters for that.

[FIZ]

I dunno about the HL/ML Heavy/Medium Laser designation.  From what was said in this thread alone, the Subach is a Xaser, so would have designation HX. 

All the starting weapons in FS2 were pretty poor against Shivans, an excuse was made for the absence of the the Prometheus-S, but the Banshee and certainly the Avenger were IMO (and what I can ascertain statistically) far superior to the Subach.  Avenger is weird case, it runs into Maxim syndrome where it's "technically an ammo based weapon," so energy usage can be argued to make sense, but intrinsically should have an ammo count.  Maybe that's why it went bye-bye.

FS2 does have the fix-all "they were all made in Sol and we don't have the capabilities to make such weapons" anymore argument going for it though, especially during 20 years of relative peace, resources being diverted to beam weapons / Collie.  I don't even know why they gave us the Prom-R*.

Spoiler:

rant tangent
M-16s and B-52s; M-16 has been on the chopping block for a while, but so many of them are available and still useful as a general assault rifle, also it's a bit iconic, but it's no AKM.  B-52s, they are used against opponents lacking the capability to even shoot them down (certainly not a disadvantage) but I would suggest that they are being phased out by drones/ JDAMs.  Carpet bombing is a total war tactic for attacks on infrastructure, 52s being designed for that and deploying nukes.  /rant

The Subach-Innes HL-7 is a xaser weapon, firing an intense, highly focused beam of x-ray emissions. Until the Shivans appeared with their shield technology, these weapons were considered an unnecessary and costly extravagance. But Great War dogfights against Shivan craft quickly taught the Allies that their ships didn't stand a chance unless they could punch through shields. The HL-7 works superbly against shields of all varieties and has become the standard issue Primary weapon for all Terran fighters and bombers.

I don't take away from this tech description that the Subach itself was already in development when the Shivans showed up the first time, just that it didn't make sense when the ML-16 was 'adequate' just us against the Zods.  The Avengers anti-shield (I would venture to say very fortunate side-affect) capabilities just happened to make it the right weapon ready to go when it became necessary.  The suggested idea that it [Avenger] was developed by both Terran and Zod intelligence apparatuses is interesting though.

*I've been playing around with some interwar ideas and one of the big ones is re-tabling the stats for the Prom-R, make it the 20mm to the Subachs .50 cal capabilities.  Perks and nerfs to make it a viable alternative to the Subach that would diversify the players combat options, yet still not as capable as the Prom-S.  Another thought, the most dreaded Shivan fighter in both games is that crazy Dragon bastard.  So developing the Subach (and the Mekhu) with a high ROF might have alleviated some Dragon anxiety.

Good discussion, I hope I was more contributing than detrimental   

[Snarks]

I really like Blackwolf's Typhon catalyst theory. It resembles the F-teen series of fighters in the US Airforce. The Apollo might have been the F-4 of the FS universe and then a larger selection of different crafts began to appear, e.g. F-14, F-15, F-16, etc. It also explains why we don't see as many immediate developments in FS2 since by that point, the GTVA had probably been committed to full capacity research because of the ever looming Shivan threat.

I dunno about the HL/ML Heavy/Medium Laser designation.  From what was said in this thread alone, the Subach is a Xaser, so would have designation HX. 

I've always been with the impression that the military jocks don't really know the scientific technobabble stuff behind the weapons. I figure the GTA had a system of weapon classification and the ML/HL designation is really for the caliber of the weapon. Afterall, none of the FS weapons are really like actual lasers because of their really slow velocity (but then again, ships are really slow too for gameplay reasons).

All the starting weapons in FS2 were pretty poor against Shivans, an excuse was made for the absence of the the Prometheus-S, but the Banshee and certainly the Avenger were IMO (and what I can ascertain statistically) far superior to the Subach.  Avenger is weird case, it runs into Maxim syndrome where it's "technically an ammo based weapon," so energy usage can be argued to make sense, but intrinsically should have an ammo count.  Maybe that's why it went bye-bye.

Well, the Banshee doesn't neccessarily disappear completely. I believe it gets replaced with the Kayser but still remained as a limited deployment weapon due to its high cost, reserved for the special or elite squadrons.

FS2 does have the fix-all "they were all made in Sol and we don't have the capabilities to make such weapons" anymore argument going for it though, especially during 20 years of relative peace, resources being diverted to beam weapons / Collie.  I don't even know why they gave us the Prom-R*.

It's a reasonable excuse for one weapon, but it's stretching it a bit when half of the GTA's arsenal can no longer be constructed because of special raw materials located only in Sol. And yea, the Prom-R is trash. But it's still fairly common, so the idea of a dual weapon doctrine for the standard squadrons kinda make sense.

I don't take away from this tech description that the Subach itself was already in development when the Shivans showed up the first time, just that it didn't make sense when the ML-16 was 'adequate' just us against the Zods.  The Avengers anti-shield (I would venture to say very fortunate side-affect) capabilities just happened to make it the right weapon ready to go when it became necessary.  The suggested idea that it [Avenger] was developed by both Terran and Zod intelligence apparatuses is interesting though.

I agree with the assessment that the HL-7 itself wasn't in active development. But I did get the impression that the technology was already there, and so there may have been a HL-4 in limited service at some point but was replaced by the much cheaper ML-16. Canon-wise, the HL-7 would presumably be cheaper, more efficient, and so on than whatever predecessors it had.

[Firesteel]

IIRC the technologies that get deployed over the course of FS2 are the Prometheus S, Perseus, Pegasus, (possibly) Erinyes. Pretty much everything else has seen at least limited deployment, the Kayser's description even makes note of this.

As for the Prometheus R, considering how well regarded the original Prometheus was by pilots, I could almost see it being kept around as a reminder about Earth, given its sorry state as a weapon, though why a military would do this is questionable.

When I mentioned the HL-7 being "in development" I meant it more as the type of weapon, not the HL-7 itself as there weren't any deployed "xaser" weapons to our knowledge in FS1. The general design could have been mothballed after the Avenger was greenlit (for its cheaper cost and similar effectiveness?) and finally resurfaced with the arrival of the Shivans, though its development hiatus would mean any "xaser" weapon would never reach full scale production before the end of the first Shivan Incursion.

Blackwolf's note about the Typhon seems reasonable, given the techroom descriptions of the ship. With the Typhon being such a threat, it probably played a part in the development of the Tsunami and possibly even the Prometheus as an answer to its hull strength. .

[FIZ]

When I mentioned the HL-7 being "in development" I meant it more as the type of weapon, not the HL-7 itself as there weren't any deployed "xaser" weapons to our knowledge in FS1. The general design could have been mothballed after the Avenger was greenlit (for its cheaper cost and similar effectiveness?) and finally resurfaced with the arrival of the Shivans, though its development hiatus would mean any "xaser" weapon would never reach full scale production before the end of the first Shivan Incursion.

Pretty much what I was trying to say, you elaborated much better than what I articulated 

[qwadtep]

Maybe the original "heavy lasers" were those used on capships? Which absolutely could pierce Shivan shields from the start of the war.

[Snarks]

Maybe the original "heavy lasers" were those used on capships? Which absolutely could pierce Shivan shields from the start of the war.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Now I'm imagining fighters armed with the blob lasers. That said, did the blob turrets really do much damage against shields?

[NGTM-1R]

We really only know that two weapons in the games were developed specifically with the Shivans in mind, the S-Breaker from Silent Threat and the bomber-deployable version of the Harbinger.

EDIT: Mars is wrong. The techroom/CB never makes specific reference to dates of development; indeed, during FS2 it doesn't even make specific reference to dates of deployment a lot, leaving us with the impression we're simply being issued the gear now rather than that it's new.

[Firesteel]

Many of the weapons "received" during the campaign come with the explanation that the player is "authorized" to use them unless they were just brought into service (as in many of the weapons in FS1).

[Phantom Hoover]

FS1 does have a few embarrassingly explicit instances of paradigm-shifting technology being developed and distributed fleet-wide in a couple of days, though.

[Kestrellius]

As a side note, a xaser would just be a specific type of laser. X-rays are a type of light, after all. Or at least, it's close enough.

[Mars]

EDIT: Mars is wrong. The techroom/CB never makes specific reference to dates of development; indeed, during FS2 it doesn't even make specific reference to dates of deployment a lot, leaving us with the impression we're simply being issued the gear now rather than that it's new.

Where was I wrong?

Best example of FS1 is "The Aftermath" in which the Flail is implied to have been widely deployed recently after development, and the Interceptor, explicitly stated to be a blending of Terran and Vasudan technology - is developed and deployed just over a month after the first mission of the game, and seventeen days after the non-aggression pact between the species is signed.

Freespace 2 by contrast did exactly as you said. It didn't list dates and implied that you were being issued existing gear.

[NGTM-1R]

Where was I wrong?

Best example of FS1 is "The Aftermath" in which the Flail is implied to have been widely deployed recently after development

Which tells us nothing about how long it's been there, natch.

[karajorma]

As for the Interceptor, yeah it's a blending of Terran and Vasudan tech. But does the techroom say that the Vasudans willingly handed over that tech recently? Cause it could mean that it was based on stuff stolen/scavenged from them instead. With the new alliance the Vasudans may have simply handed over a few small secrets that had eluded the Terran scientists or might not even be needed to make the weapon work.

That said, I do agree that the tech room descriptions for both weapons do make it sound more like those weapons were researched and deployed very quickly. But you can easily explain it as the above if you want a longer development time.