[Phantom Hoover]

I don't even get what you're trying to prove? Sure, if you want to you can totally write a setting where whoever ended up left in Sol reverse-engineered beams from the Lucifer and ended up with a suite of weapons more similar to the GTVA than the UEF's. The BP team decided they wanted an asymmetric war, so they wrote a setting where that didn't happen and the UEF developed their own thing, and they wrote it pretty well. WiH justifies most of its conceits very eloquently. That doesn't mean that it's the only way to develop the FS universe, and indeed the team have been pretty vocal in encouraging people to explore other directions in their own work; but people keep on misunderstanding that and trying to pick holes in BP for not including their pet concept.

[General Battuta]

In the BPverse I think GTI actually kept a lot of its more radical research outside Sol, to preserve its asymmetric advantage over other factions in the GTA power structure.

The front half of the Lucifer blew up, and then Solar civilization nearly collapsed. The newborn UEF had no access to Vasudan scientists, who are usually pretty important in helping Terrans make big leaps in energy related topics.

[NGTM-1R]

I don't even get what you're trying to prove?

Aside from the fact that Aesaar is offering justifications that don't hold water? Nothing. I'm fine with BP doing its own thing because they wanted to, but an answer that's complete sophistry isn't a satisfying one and good storytelling demands better.

Battuta's is.

The matter is closed for my part.

[Aesaar]

Again, what enemies would the collapsing GTA need beams to fight?

And since it took until FS2 for AAA beams to become commonplace on GTVA ships, it seems to me that they're developed from heavier beam systems.  No heavy beams, no AAA.  Sol GTA/UEF never needed heavy beams, so they never laid the groundwork necessary for AAA beams.  Went down more conventional lines instead.

Reductive. It took until FS2 for heavier beams to become commonplace on GTVA ships as well, so by that logic they were developed from AAA beams.

Hades had heavy beams.  They obviously came first.  Unless you think GTI had AAA beams but never used them or equipped them on anything.

[General Battuta]

The loss of the Idun Dictionary suggests that GTI info in Sol was scattered pretty badly.

[Aesaar]

Was it STR or BP that said GTI was primarily based on the GTD Legion and it decentralised after the ship was destroyed? I remember something about that.

[woutersmits]

satanus its mine favorite becouse its strongest freespace2 ship in univers

[Spoon]

If I could be a freespace 2 ship, I would want to be satanus, his power is maximum

[NGTM-1R]

Hades had heavy beams.  They obviously came first.  Unless you think GTI had AAA beams but never used them or equipped them on anything.

Hades had whatever beam-like weapons the Lucifer had. We really don't know the particular line of descent between those and GTVA beams, save for the Lucifer probably being an inspiration. Both sets got blown up and nothing in the modern GTVA's arsenal packs quite the punch of an SSL so it seems fair to assume the line's not as direct as you are suggesting.

I mean, by this logic, they built an exact copy once 23 years ago and have been working with watered-down knockoffs, despite having either a full or partial set of the original's blueprints, ever since. That...doesn't sound particularly plausible. Even the Colossus only had BGreens until they fried the safeties.

[Aesaar]

I don't know why you're so hung up on semantics, but whatever.  Point is, the GTA in Sol only had experience with Shivan heavy beams.  The Lucifer's forward beams are all that wound up in Sol when the node collapsed, and there were no threats in Sol that required the GTA or UEF to build heavy beams, so they didn't bother trying to replicate them. 

Yes, in hindsight, we know AAA beams are possible.  The GTA/UEF didn't.  In the absence of any threats requiring heavy beams, they had no reason to invest in the technology, and therefore no way to know AAA beams were possible.

The GTA outside Sol, however, did have a need for that technology.  GTI adapted it first, and some time after Silent Threat, the GTA and PVE followed suit.  At some point, they realised the technology could be downscaled and adapted to shoot at fighters.  This, to me, is the most likely explanation for why the UEF has no AAA beams.  If you have an alternative, do share it.

Who cares if the beams on the Hades were SSLs in tables?  BP replaced the beams on the Lucifer with something weaker (LReds), and getting hung up on table stats is the worst way of discussing BP. 

In a BP context, there's no reason to believe the beams on the Hades were carbon-copies of the Lucifer's LReds, or anywhere near as powerful.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

BP replaced the beams on the Lucifer with something weaker (LReds)

HReds for the front beams, and LReds for the side beams to be precise.

[FrikgFeek]

LReds aren't weaker than SSLs though. They both have a 10s recharge time but LReds do 23100 damage per pulse while SSLs only do 15000.

And if you're only looking at per-pulse damage rather than DPS then even BGreens are better than SSLs as they do 26400 damage per pulse. Even by BP no Terran beam can actually out-DPS an LRed if we take table stats as canon. Even the HBlue does just over half the DPS of an LRed. Yeah, A Lilith has more frontal firepower than a Raynor. Even the remade Erebus with an HBlue and BBlue only beats it by around 6%.

All of this is obviously just table wank. But if you're going to bring up table stats at least make sure you double check them.

Also it would seem kindof strange to accept that the Hades had beams as good as the Shivan ones with the same recharge times. Those are based on so much more than the beam itself, no Terran reactor could handle a direct fire beam with a 10s recharge time and a 15000 damage pulse. It would seem much more likely that they managed to get the per-pulse damage around Shivan levels but couldn't refire it as quickly due to a reactor bottleneck. This would also explain the "downgrade" by FS2.

Also I wouldn't really take anything from the original ST as canon as it was under thought and just bad. I'd rather just pretend it never existed.

[Black Wolf]

We don't particularly see railgun systems, or for that matter heavy torpedo systems comparable to those the UEF uses on its warships, in FS1 at all.

Fusion Mortar? I'm pretty sure that in a damage per second sense, that was the most potent weapon in the Terran arsenal during FS1. Certainly, looking at the design of the Fenris/Leviathan, they've clearly been built around their missile turrets. Plasma weapons have the advantage of (probably) not really having significant ammo restrictions, but it makes a certain degree of sense that, if they needed to put out a lot of damage very quickly, upgrading the fusion mortar would be a good way to do it for post FS1 Terrans.

[mr.WHO]

In the BPverse I think GTI actually kept a lot of its more radical research outside Sol, to preserve its asymmetric advantage over other factions in the GTA power structure.

The front half of the Lucifer blew up, and then Solar civilization nearly collapsed. The newborn UEF had no access to Vasudan scientists, who are usually pretty important in helping Terrans make big leaps in energy related topics.

That's the explanation that actually sounds plausible to me. Cover all lose ends too.

[Aesaar]

LReds aren't weaker than SSLs though. They both have a 10s recharge time but LReds do 23100 damage per pulse while SSLs only do 15000.

And if you're only looking at per-pulse damage rather than DPS then even BGreens are better than SSLs as they do 26400 damage per pulse. Even by BP no Terran beam can actually out-DPS an LRed if we take table stats as canon. Even the HBlue does just over half the DPS of an LRed. Yeah, A Lilith has more frontal firepower than a Raynor. Even the remade Erebus with an HBlue and BBlue only beats it by around 6%.

All of this is obviously just table wank. But if you're going to bring up table stats at least make sure you double check them.

Don't have STR or FSPort installed, so I can't check how powerful the Hades and Lucifer beams are.  The wiki only has the stats for the original FS1 blobbeams.

HReds for the front beams, and LReds for the side beams to be precise.

Yes.  Which is weird because HReds are weaker than LReds are.  Unless I messed my calculations up.

[FrikgFeek]

Just checked FSPort and STR. The "SSL Beam" in Fsport has  $damage at 850 and +life at 3. The recharge time is still 10 so the full damage per pulse is 850*5.5*3=14025, a bit less than the blob-beam. So the SSL Beam in fsport does 1425 DPS, a bit more than the HBLue(and obviously the HBlue completely blows anything short of a BFRed in initial pulse damage).
STR doesn't seem to have new weapons or ships aside from hulls or a shivan(the one that jumps on your fighter).
The fc2 file for the last mission simply spawns the GTD Hades from the fsport table with the beams replaced with BGreens.
EDIT: Nvm, it uses SSL Beams if you select fsport-str as your mod, FRED just defaulted to BGReens when I didn't have SSLs loaded.


And yes, HReds are weaker than LReds. They do slightly more damage per-pulse but have a 30s recharge time instead of the LRed 10s. Forced Entry would probably be a lot easier if the Lilith had its LRed replaced by an HRed. Seems weird to let a cruiser have it but make Lucy downgrade  to HReds.

[Luis Dias]

That's because the plot never really makes you realise that.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Yes.  Which is weird because HReds are weaker than LReds are.  Unless I messed my calculations up.

From a meta perspective, I assume that this is so that the Lucifer doesn't stomp the Orestes 30 seconds after it starts firing. I'm not sure what in-universe reason we could come up with, though.

EDIT

Just checked FSPort and STR. The "SSL Beam" in Fsport has  $damage at 850 and +life at 3. The recharge time is still 10 so the full damage per pulse is 850*5.5*3=14025, a bit less than the blob-beam.

It's closer than you think, a beam actually tick 5.88 times per second rather than 5.5, according to this, which bring to total damage per pulse to 14994. Scratch that, see below.

EDIT #2: actually doing the full calculations:
3000 / 170 = 17.64 ticks
17 * 850 = 14450 damage per pulse
So yeah, it is a bit weaker than the blob.

[FrikgFeek]

Eh, Liliths are bull****. Cruisers with the firepower of an Orion(~3 Bgreens) shouldn't exist.
Then again Shivans in general are bull****. With the constant 1-upping their ships do I guess the Liliths skipped a few stages when it came to mounting beams.

[qwadtep]

Yes.  Which is weird because HReds are weaker than LReds are.  Unless I messed my calculations up.

From a meta perspective, I assume that this is so that the Lucifer doesn't stomp the Orestes 30 seconds after it starts firing. I'm not sure what in-universe reason we could come up with, though.

Beam overloading to increase effective damage against the Raynor-class' reactive armor.
Remember, the Orestes was winning tactical engagements with the Lucy, it just got worn down by Shivan logistics and repair.