[Rogue Assassin04]

I had a question.

If the Colossus was built to take down the Lucifer, why not see it real time? i mean, a mission....

I still have a lot of doubts:
- As told, if the Colossus' beams is designed to overcome the "impervious" shield around the Lucifer, why did destroying the SJ Sathanas become a big deal? (They needed to overload the Colossus Beam Cannons.)
- They told that it could face a beating from the Lucifer. How could a Ravana affect it considerably in "the finest hour"?

These are my questions...

[Luis Dias]

There are some inconsistencies between FS1 and FS2. One of the biggest unresolved setups from FS2 is to actually see how the GTVA could destroy a shielded shivan capital ship as they advertise they can. It's quite disappointing in a way that there are no such shivan capital ships.

You could read this in some different ways. First, they streamlined the game and dropped the shield issue in favor of other more pertinent themes and story arcs, etc.

Second, within the world canon, you can easily imagine that the shivans did not have any other capital ship with shields other than the Lucifer type, and their mission in Capella was of a significantly different nature than the one in FS1, thus they used different types of ship. In this scenario, the Collossus was not designed to take out Sathanas-class destroyers. The Sathanas' biggest threat is its 4 beam cannons, which we can imagine to be more powerful than the Lucifer's. It is also really really big. You have to work through its hull a lot more than you would against a Lucifer, and if you spend too much time, its beams will rip you apart first (they are, by far, the most destructive weapons in all of FreeSpace canon).

Regarding how poorly it does against the Ravana class, I would suggest some solutions to the apparent inconsistency. First, the GTVA may have oversold its project. They may have been way optimistic in terms of what the Collossus was capable of doing. It may have been the case that, if faced against the Lucifer, it would do poorly against it. Second, it may just be that the Collossus was just too damaged from the beggining in its struggle against the Ravana.

In "the finest hour", the Collossus' engines are disabled. It cannot maneuver in a way that would take it out of the Beast's line of fire. In the meanwhile, the Beast shock jumps right next to the disabled Collossus and delivers its maximum beam power, while the Collossus' own beams are spread around its hull. That is to say, its strategic function of serving as a distraction (so that the Bastion could destroy the node) made it utterly vulnerable to shivan shock beam jumps.

So, the Collossus is physically damaged, rendering it unable to move, is in a completely disadvantageous tactical position, and is still able to destroy the Beast. I'd suggest it would be able to do the same against a Lucifer, given that the beams should be able to rip through its shields, canonically.

[0rph3u5]

The impervious shields of the Lucifer are a bit of Shivan Clark's third tech - the only rule they were ever given is that they do not work in subspace and the GTVA never got the opporunity to test their new beam cannons against it. While beam cannons generally ignore shields (as per game engine) it is not certain that this would apply to the Lucifer's shields as well.

As to why destroying the Sathanas became such a long-winded engagement:

- Mission "Speaking in Tongues" (SM2-09) gives us the following set-up:

Your reconnaissance of the $h Sathanas identified weak points in the Juggernaut's defenses. However, exploiting these weaknesses will require firepower that can be provided only by the main guns of our capital ships. The $f GVD $f Psamtik, the $f GTD $f Aquitaine, and the $f GVD $f Toeris are standing by. Your mission is to lure the $h Sathanas into position.

This sets-up that even at it's weakest points it requires capital ship-level guns to do the kind of damage that expoits those weaknesses. Interestingly it is not mentioned if a bomber attack on these weakpoints would have any effect. Those two lead me to conclude that the vital systems of the Sathanas are deep within the ship and thus it takes considerable firepower from the beam cannons to actually get there - the Colossus is basically drilling through armour and redundant decks to hit something critical, and then only at diminished firepower.

Ps. This is also what I would change about "High Noon", have the Colossus "expose" weakpoint with her beam to be attacked by bombers. One day I will make that.

The plan in "Speaking in Tongues" also is predicated that the GTVA capital ships can out-maneuver the Sathanas to attack those weak points, propably counting on the fact that Psamtik, Aquitaine or Toeris could jump into favourable position.

The Colossus however doesn't engage the Sathanas from any favourable position in "High Noon", it has the upper hand as the Colossus has a more wide distribution of cannons allowing it to attack form different positions (instead of the Sathanas which has it's firepower concentrated at the front). So propabily it cannot exploit the detected weakness quite as effectively as an engagement with destroyers would have.

As for the Ravana in "Their Finest Hour":
The years and the realisation just how little hitpoints a Ravanas main beams have might have blunted the impact a bit but a Ravana's foward firepower is actually really ... powerful. The Lucifer's foward beams were never canonically classified (they are in the tables as SRed, same as the Ravana's secondary beams) so it's not quite fair to compare the two.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Another thing to keep in mind is that destroyer-grade Shivan beam are stupidly powerful. Canonically, the Ravana vaporizes the Lysander with its opening salvo, and from an in-game perspective it's got a good chance of taking out the Actium before it jumps out as well. Combine that with the points Luis Dias made regarding the setup in Their Finest Hour, and its not all that surprising the SD Beast's suicide attack is as effective as it is.

And, as has been mentioned, FS1 & FS2 operate on somewhat different rules. From a gameplay standpoint, if you strip its shields off, the Lucifer is actually a crappy ship given its size by FS2 standards. If you like looking at the actual in-game stats, the Ravana is actually better in terms of raw anti-ship firepower :
- after 22 seconds, the 2xSSL have fired 3 times --> 2*15,000*3 = 90,000 damage
- after 22 seconds, the 2xLRed have fired twice & the 2xSRed once --> 2*23,000*2 + 2*4,100 = 100,200 (well, more than that actually, I've rounded down the damage per salvo value, plus at 22 seconds LReds are firing their third salvo)

[Lorric]

I always thought the implication was the Colossus was severely damaged from the engagement with the juggernaut (even though in-game it had been stripped of all 4 beams, making it nothing more than a target dummy.)

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Well, they do say that the damages from that battle would take months to fully repair. It could also be that the Colossus had been in several other battles prior to Finest Hour. Or both.

[Novachen]

I always thought the implication was the Colossus was severely damaged from the engagement with the juggernaut (even though in-game it had been stripped of all 4 beams, making it nothing more than a target dummy.)

Interestingly on highest details the Colossus was always heavy damaged by a collision of the Sathanas wreckage in nearly all of my playthroughs. Even you were able to destroy all four beams beforehand, the wreckage was always able to bring down the Colossus to 75%.

This never happens on lower detail settings, because the wreckage is not rendered then  .

But story wise i had always the impression, that this battle has a so big toll on the Colossus, especially electronic wise because they overload their beams, that it was more or less only a six kilometres long flying scrap after that and so it was never be in service after that.

[potterman28wxcv]

I would have loved seeing more epic battles with the Colossus ; something where you actually see the Colossus reaping Shivans apart, like it was designed for. And only then you get to know about the big baddy Sathanases.

Also, from the wiki page :

Logging in with a length of six kilometers, this behemoth was equipped with over eighty weapon turrets, in addition to over 240 combat spacecraft.

I've never seen these 240 combat spacecraft in combat personally. Because of engine limitations I guess.

[General Battuta]

I wonder why the Ravana wasn't a Lucifer. Story and theme-wise it'd fit in perfectly.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Maybe it was until someone looked at the Lucifer model ... ^^

[0rph3u5]

I wonder why the Ravana wasn't a Lucifer. Story and theme-wise it'd fit in perfectly.

Maybe but then what would happen to the end of Monologue 3 if it wasn't established that a Ravana is a scary nebula-predator?


EDIT: ps. there is of course the whole additional argument about preserving the originals exceptional statue to further its mystery and the Shivan's mystery as whole (which to fully dispell I've come to accept as the hugest mistake you can make within the FS-universe... but a discussion for another time)

[Spoon]

I wonder why the Ravana wasn't a Lucifer. Story and theme-wise it'd fit in perfectly.

I dont think Axem would have liked that

[FrikgFeek]

I don't think the Ravana should've been a Lucifer. For the parallels between the Sathanas and Lucifer to be drawn and expectations later subverted the Lucifer has to stay a super-special one off. It makes the player think the Sathanas will also be a super special one off but just bigger.

[Asteroth]

I wonder why the Ravana wasn't a Lucifer. Story and theme-wise it'd fit in perfectly.

I think it would have been too distracting, the Ravana comes and goes so quickly that the player would do a spit-take. Wait, that was a Lucifer? Do they have more of those too?? What happened to its shields? Where did it come from? If you wanted to have the Lucifer in FS2 I think thematically it would work better as a straight replacement for the sathanas in act 2. We get time to establish some context about it, and drum up some tension 'is our lucifer better than their lucifer?', and then yay it is! And then we show they have a million, much larger ships.  Although now the Sathanas is kind of ill-explained.

[0rph3u5]

The merit of replacing the Ravana with a Lucifer Battuta was pointing at, is most appearant if you take into consideration the hyperbole that is arriving right at the debrief of "Slaying Ravana":

The destruction of the Ravana is the most significant victory over the Shivans since the end of the Great War. We have secured the subspace node linking the nebula with Gamma Draconis, and we have demonstrated our technological superiority over our Great War nemesis. We have proven without a doubt that we have the firepower to neutralize any Shivan threat.

Emphasis mine

You might also take it's echo in the Command Briefing for "Return to Babel" into consideration:

At 0345 hours, the GTVA Colossus destroyed the Shivan juggernaut Sathanas near the Gamma Draconis jump node in Capella. This victory proves without a doubt our technological superiority over our Great War nemesis. For the second time, the Alliance defeated a species which has annihilated entire civilizations across this galaxy.

With the Colossus, we will have nothing more to fear.

Emphasis mine

If the Ravana had been a Lucifer that first one would have rung doubly true and same for its repetition which is also the set-up for the eventual shock of a Sathanas fleet.

(Note: I am just stating that I get the logic of the argument. I don't think it works because e.g. setting up new shivans ships is an early indicator that the rule book of the Great War no longer applies (which gets a further boost as the destruction of the Ravana actually has the opposite effect of the destruction of the Lucifer; same goes for the first Sathanas).

[Luis Dias]

My guess as to why they had the Ravana as a Lucifer stand in, rather than the Lucifer itself (and it's a good question, given how much more designed the Lucifer as a model is compared to the Ravana), is about gameplay. In FreeSpace 2, we get to attack the Ravana within the nebula, and even if we grant that the whole mission to destroy it would have to be different (we would have to change the mission to bomb it into a mission to pin-point it so that our Destroyers could beam it apart), there's the technical question of how to render its shields in a 1998 era computer. Maybe they were simply unable to do this?

There's also the issue that such a mission would be less entertaining and more of the same regarding the rest of the game, in how you're basically reduced to a witness to beam fights.

I also like the idea that the Lucifer is its own unique thing, like a machine perfected to destroy a civilization's belly without it being hampered by anything else. Given how the shivan campaigns were so different in their purpose, it stands to reason that the Lucifer wouldn't make much sense to exist in the nebula. Their purpose was not to destroy neither the human nor the vasudan civilization in FS2, so it wouldn't make sense for this fleet to use a ship of that design.

Instead, they used a different design, giant excavator ships whose purpose was apparently to excavate something very misterious in Capella.

[potterman28wxcv]

My guess as to why they had the Ravana as a Lucifer stand in, rather than the Lucifer itself (and it's a good question, given how much more designed the Lucifer as a model is compared to the Ravana), is about gameplay. In FreeSpace 2, we get to attack the Ravana within the nebula, and even if we grant that the whole mission to destroy it would have to be different (we would have to change the mission to bomb it into a mission to pin-point it so that our Destroyers could beam it apart), there's the technical question of how to render its shields in a 1998 era computer. Maybe they were simply unable to do this?

I don't see why the shield render would be any different. Just apply the same kind of shield hit you have on a fighter, but on the local part of the Lucifer instead ?

There's also the issue that such a mission would be less entertaining and more of the same regarding the rest of the game, in how you're basically reduced to a witness to beam fights.

"We developed a brand new type of weapon, the GTX-Santa. It temporarily disables the shields of your target within a range of 150 meters, for 30 seconds. Use it just before bombing the Lucifer, on the part that you want to bomb."

That, or a defense mission where you defend your capital ships hard as nails while it tries its best against the Lucifer.

I also like the idea that the Lucifer is its own unique thing, like a machine perfected to destroy a civilization's belly without it being hampered by anything else. Given how the shivan campaigns were so different in their purpose, it stands to reason that the Lucifer wouldn't make much sense to exist in the nebula. Their purpose was not to destroy neither the human nor the vasudan civilization in FS2, so it wouldn't make sense for this fleet to use a ship of that design.

I like this explanation better But the Lucifer isn't just a "planet destroyer", it's a real flagship in FS1. I'm quite sure that in a canon campaign, it's explicitly stated that as soon as the Lucifer went down, Shivans lost the will to fight, which allowed Terrans and Vasudans to gain back the advantage.

If it was just a planet destroyer, they would have sent many others to destroy other planets ; surely Earth isn't the only planet that Terrans settled in. There might be actual bigger planets that have even more population than Earth.

[Luis Dias]

You'll find that most of the time, such things "begging" for an explanation in games, are 99% due to technical limitations. Regarding the shield, you should be aware that the shield mechanic in fighters means that another mesh is applied to the ship, which only renders some vague vertex to vertex shader when your lazors hit it. The problem I could see with doing this with the Lucifer is how it's just too big, which means that its shields' mesh would also be too big, and not only would it become ugly as ****, it would also probably create a huge confusion in the collision code.

I'm merely guessing here, I can be way wrong.

Also, Earth was by far the biggest planet in terms of human population. FreeSpace canon says so. In fact, it had as much population as the entire rest of the colonies IIRC.

[Mito [PL]]

I think it is stated that whole Sol has as big Terran population as all other Terran systems combined (if not even larger).

I also believe that Lucy being the single unique vessel with shields on her is the most logical explanation. If there were technical capabilities of rendering such a huge shield, Lucy wouldn't be the only Shivan vessel to have such a technology, I suppose multiple T/V ships could also utilise that tech (Hades?).
I like the explanation for that difference in Blue Planet: the fleet accompanying Sathanii is a completely different type of organism than Lucy fleet was. Period.

[FrikgFeek]

If wanted the Lucifer in FS2 they would've put it in. It didn't have real shields in FS1(just an invulnerability flag) and they could've used the same trick in FS2.