[QuakeIV]

But wouldn't the higher ranking officer have the more advanced warship?

[AdmiralRalwood]

But wouldn't the higher ranking officer have the more advanced warship?

Severanti doesn't outrank Steele, though...?

[Snarks]

Well, maybe not in terms of ranks, but in terms of authority right? If Severanti was the theatre commander, then isn't he issuing orders to Steele? There's a few reasons I can think of that would have him in a Hecate. 1) He's attached to the ship and has refused offers to take command of a TEI ship. 2) GTVA Command had intended for him to be an interim commander all the along, but why wait 18 months before putting Steele in charge? 3) Maybe Severanti prefers to be in a position where he can coordinate strategic actions which makes sense in a dedicated carrier while Steele (as per the campaign) likes to be on the actual frontlines and so would benefit more from commanding an Erebus.

I always felt a bit sorry for Severanti because while Steele was more decisive, Steele also had more resources in terms of the 15th battlegroup joining the fight.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Well, maybe not in terms of ranks, but in terms of authority right? If Severanti was the theatre commander, then isn't he issuing orders to Steele?

As far as I'm aware, that authority doesn't extend to being able to commandeer Steele's flagship, but even if it did, it would be a catastrophic strategic and tactical mistake to upend the 15th BG's entire order of battle just because the CO of the 13th BG thought his flagship was getting a bit long in the tooth. If Admiral Severanti felt a Hecate was insufficient as a flagship in the Sol theatre, the proper thing to do would be to pull it back to Delta Serpentis. However, the Hecate is still a perfectly serviceable flagship; at the very least, it's almost certain to be more capable in that role than the Titan, the C&C capability of which seems (based on purely my personal impression) to be dedicated more towards strikecraft control than fleet command. I'm sure a Titan can serve as a flagship in a pinch (the Temeraire certainly seemed to be able to fend for itself and its escorts when separated from the Orestes), but the Hecate was designed from the outset as a flagship, and I highly doubt that the upgrades its been given over the years would make it any worse in that role.

[Lykurgos88]

Hi, here are 2 potential bugs that I forgot to mention:

1) The entries for "The Rift 1" and "The Rift 2" are empty in menu database. The text files for those do still exist inside the core VP fiction subdirectory, so I'm puzzled, why they are empty in-game. So far they are the only selectable but emptry entries in the main menu database

2) The nearest Oculus ship in the mission "Her Finest Hour" continously explodes with 10-11 second intervals. However, this explosion doesn't seem to actually do damage for the ship. Is anyone else having this? It seems so odd, even though it doesn't prevent completing the mission.

[Rheavatarin]

But wouldn't the higher ranking officer have the more advanced warship?

Not necessarily. There are lots of reasons why an admiral might fly his flag from some other ship. As a historical example: In WW2, Admiral Spruance commanded the 5th fleet during the Battle of the Philippine Sea (by some measures the largest carrier to carrier battle in history) from the Heavy Cruiser USS Indianapolis, rather than one of the advanced fleet carriers that were his major strike force.

[General Battuta]

The USA didn't deploy its SSBNs to Vietnam. The TEI warships are major strategic assets and any attrition against the UEF would have been politically catastrophic.

2) The nearest Oculus ship in the mission "Her Finest Hour" continously explodes with 10-11 second intervals. However, this explosion doesn't seem to actually do damage for the ship. Is anyone else having this? It seems so odd, even though it doesn't prevent completing the mission.

The Oculus is radiating EM pulses to assist in beam jamming.

[Lykurgos88]

The Oculus is radiating EM pulses to assist in beam jamming.

Oh, okay then 

[General Battuta]

You can see the same effect on the decoy shuttles used by the Katana and Altan Orde.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Was the ever a rough estimate of the size of the GTVA? I know there's a huge amount of detail that's gone into explaining the fleet strengths on both sides in the Sol theater, but what about total? If there's 20 Hecates according to Laporte, I'd assume a smaller number of new destroyers. With the number of Corvettes seen in Sol, I'd say the Deimos class runs into a hundred or more alone.

Also, was there ever an explanation given for "excessive" Terran losses during the Second Shivan invasion? I know some work went into justifying the semi "split" between the human and vasudans of the GTVA, but from Freespace 2 proper, discounting the NTF's losses, it didn't seem like the Terrans took any worse losses than the Vasudans.

[Dark Hunter]

Except that any loss the NTF took was also a loss to the Terran bloc of the GTVA's forces. The NTF is made up of personnel who defected from the GTVA, took their ships with them, and most of those ships ended up getting destroyed in the ensuing conflict.

The NTF was a large enough organization to be a credible threat to the GTVA, which means the forces they took with them would constitute an enormous loss of manpower and firepower.

[General Battuta]

Check out the 'canon sources for BP stuff' thread in the Library. There's also a complete GTVA order of battle on the wiki somewhere. Or maybe it's linked in the Library too!

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Check out the 'canon sources for BP stuff' thread in the Library. There's also a complete GTVA order of battle on the wiki somewhere. Or maybe it's linked in the Library too!

For reference : http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Blue_Planet_Orders_of_Battle

[manwiththemachinegun]

Except that any loss the NTF took was also a loss to the Terran bloc of the GTVA's forces. The NTF is made up of personnel who defected from the GTVA, took their ships with them, and most of those ships ended up getting destroyed in the ensuing conflict.

The NTF was a large enough organization to be a credible threat to the GTVA, which means the forces they took with them would constitute an enormous loss of manpower and firepower.

Well yes, but there's a difference between that and combat explicitly with the Shivans. Not trying to be overly picky, I'm just reading what the data entry said.

[EuclidianGeometry]

I have two questions that comes to mind.

- What armaments does the Hecate II refit have? I know it's got torpedoes and what seems to be shotgun flak, but are there more? In general, what does the refit add to the Hecate?

- The Vasudan Mysticism lore file mentions a "P-sensitive" namely Nabirasul. What does this mean? Shouldn't Nagari-sensitive be N-sensitive?

[-Norbert-]

Just going off of what I can see in FRED, it seems to have six additional weapon hard-points (most likely the torp launchers).
The heavy and long range FLAKs seem to have been replaced with something called "Hecate FLAK".
It got six Eos Torpedo launchers with 4 tubes each.
The terran turrets were replaced with terran turret 2.
And the terran huge turrets were replaced with pulse weapons.

The Hit Points have also been upped from 100.000 to 120.000, which is visually represented by additional armour places.

[AdmiralRalwood]

- The Vasudan Mysticism lore file mentions a "P-sensitive" namely Nabirasul. What does this mean? Shouldn't Nagari-sensitive be N-sensitive?

I think you mean the Project Nagari database entry (Vasudan Mysticism doesn't mention "P-sensitive" anywhere). However, it's entirely possible the "P" stands for "Prophecy" in this context.

[EuclidianGeometry]

Yeah, my bad there.

[Snarks]

Are Kulas fighter pilots redshirts? As I understand it, the Kulas are very low cost and seems to perform on par or below par with the FS2 era crafts despite being a TEI ship. It seems like getting assigned to a Kulas squadron is like being at the bottom of the totem pole.

[-Norbert-]

If I had the choice between flying the Kulas or the Myrmidon, I'd pick the Kulas. Even when fighting against these two in WiH.

And as I understand it there is no such thing as a classical red-shirt in the GTVA fleet. Even their rookies go through extensive training by veterans before being sent on the frontline.

They certainly aren't using the FS2 era fighters and Kulas as throwaway kamikaze pilots. The GTVA just doesn't have and can't produce enough 2nd wave fighters to fit every one of their pilots with one.