[Liberator]

I've been reading the thread and I just thought of something.

The GTVA is probably the primary force for order within it's borders.  You don't see the USA leveling everything it has in Iraq or Afganistan, not because it couldn't but because the absence of forces in other areas would promote less orderly conduct from sources that would keep their heads down otherwise.(and don't start the BS about how the US isn't the world's police, I don't wanna get banned here too ) Also, it's over kill.  Your greatest enemy shows up with a tank and a half dozen APCs, you don't send the entire Big Red One at him.  You blow up his tank and proceeds to carpet nuke the place.  Then a whole army is pointless and more lives wasted.

[Luis Dias]

I think the Phoenicia's fate is ambiguous. Sometimes it dies. Sometimes it lives. Though FS2 defaults on Easy mode, it has a higher chance of dying in any other mode higher.

I never seen it survive, and so I was flabbergasted with Battuta's reply. I also had never seen the mission in Fred, so.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, the Phoenicia is "supposed" to survive in that there's a FRED event that sets it invulnerable when it reaches a few percent hull integrity.  The trouble is, sometimes the Sathanas damages the Phoenicia so quickly that the FRED event doesn't get a chance to trigger, since the damage that the game calculates skips right past its trigger value; this is especially true on harder difficulties.  I'm guessing the issue never triggered for during testing, as they could have avoided it by setting the FRED event to trip if the Phoenicia's hull hit a certain value or less, instead of only that value.

[Scotty]

Yeah, the Phoenicia is "supposed" to survive in that there's a FRED event that sets it invulnerable when it reaches a few percent hull integrity.  The trouble is, sometimes the Sathanas damages the Phoenicia so quickly that the FRED event doesn't get a chance to trigger, since the damage that the game calculates skips right past its trigger value; this is especially true on harder difficulties.  I'm guessing the issue never triggered for during testing, as they could have avoided it by setting the FRED event to trip if the Phoenicia's hull hit a certain value or less, instead of only that value.

Actually, there is no such event.  On IRC a few weeks ago I opened it up to see what the threshold was set to, and lo and behold, there isn't one.

[ssmit132]

Hmm. Could departure make it invulnerable (if the cue is triggered)?

[Marcov]

Yes.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

It will, yes. However, it may be possible for the Sathanas to get the Phoenicia's hull from 4% to nothing faster than it takes for the departure cue to trigger. On lower difficulties, the Phoenicia usually stands a higher chance of jumping out because enemy beams do less damage. Having played FS2 on Very Easy for most of the past few years and cheating on Insane for much of the rest, I've observed that, on Very Easy, the Hecate usually jumps out with around 3% hull, but on Insane, it always jumps out with 1% hull.

I have never personally seen the Phoenicia being destroyed by the Sathanas, so I assume the performance of the computer running FS2 comes into play as well.

[Luis Dias]

I have never personally seen the Phoenicia being destroyed by the Sathanas, so I assume the performance of the computer running FS2 comes into play as well.

Funny, I have the opposite experience, and I've played FS2 with many different computer specs for more than 10 years.

[General Battuta]

Yes.

No, Jesus Christ. Why would you say that? A departure cue does not in any way render a ship invulnerable. The closest you'll get is sometimes weapons will clip through the hull as it's accelerating to jump.

[Paladin327]

well that was kind of uncalled for batt,

back on topic, keep in mind that after the Ravana was destroyed by a wing of bombers, lieutenant samsa's debrief says that the gtva has proven without a doubt humanity's technological superiority over their great war nemesis. and this is with a wing of bombers and anti-cruiser bombs. so because of this, gtva ships from the outer regions would be less likely to mobilize when the sathanes comes around.

[Marcov]

No, Jesus Christ. Why would you say that? A departure cue does not in any way render a ship invulnerable. The closest you'll get is sometimes weapons will clip through the hull as it's accelerating to jump.

Um...as far as I know, ships go invulnerable when they jump out. At least that's how I experienced it. I saw the Phoenicia with 1% hull integrity left while still being bombarded by BFRed's but can't die since it was jumping out (or maybe it was an SEXP...)

Moreover, I warped out while being pummeled by a mass of laser fire and missiles from Shivan fighters in some nebula mission, yet didn't die.

[General Battuta]

No, Jesus Christ. Why would you say that? A departure cue does not in any way render a ship invulnerable. The closest you'll get is sometimes weapons will clip through the hull as it's accelerating to jump.

Um...as far as I know, ships go invulnerable when they jump out. At least that's how I experienced it. I saw the Phoenicia with 1% hull integrity left while still being bombarded by BFRed's but can't die since it was jumping out (or maybe it was an SEXP...)

Moreover, I warped out while being pummeled by a mass of laser fire and missiles from Shivan fighters in some nebula mission, yet didn't die.

Ships can be destroyed while warping out. Players, to the best of my knowledge, can't be. Neither of those, however, is related to the ship becoming invulnerable when the departure cue becomes true, which does nothing except tell the ship to begin its warpout/blinkout sequence (depending on whether warp effect is on or off).

[Scotty]

Marcov, there is no invulnerability or guardian SEXP in that mission except for the player.  If the difficulty is less than Medium, and the player is too close to the node, they get invulnerability until the Sath completes its jump.

[Drogoth]

No, Jesus Christ. Why would you say that? A departure cue does not in any way render a ship invulnerable. The closest you'll get is sometimes weapons will clip through the hull as it's accelerating to jump.

Um...as far as I know, ships go invulnerable when they jump out. At least that's how I experienced it. I saw the Phoenicia with 1% hull integrity left while still being bombarded by BFRed's but can't die since it was jumping out (or maybe it was an SEXP...)

Moreover, I warped out while being pummeled by a mass of laser fire and missiles from Shivan fighters in some nebula mission, yet didn't die.

Ships can be destroyed while warping out. Players, to the best of my knowledge, can't be. Neither of those, however, is related to the ship becoming invulnerable when the departure cue becomes true, which does nothing except tell the ship to begin its warpout/blinkout sequence (depending on whether warp effect is on or off).

Yeah I can confirm ships do NOT get invulnerability when warping out, more often then not I've destroyed a fighter or freighter as it was entering its subspace portal.

As for the player being killed while warping out, I have been. Once. On Playing Judas, but I don't know if it was a glitch because its only happened once, and never any other time in all my years of playing, and I was completely shocked

[Kie99]

In Deus ex Machina's last mission

Spoiler:

Your ship self destructs during the warp-out.

[Mars]

I always think it's funny when something, especially something fairly large like a cruiser, almost totally jumps out before it's destroyed. Then you get a large, explosion, no ship to be seen.

WiH is a good campaign to get that, since the GTVA ships jump out when they take heavy damage.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Ships can be destroyed while warping out. Players, to the best of my knowledge, can't be. Neither of those, however, is related to the ship becoming invulnerable when the departure cue becomes true, which does nothing except tell the ship to begin its warpout/blinkout sequence (depending on whether warp effect is on or off).

Yes, they can, and I've personally ~ + K'ed an Argo that was about to do so (it exploded in subspace). However, there are some ships that need to accelerate before they open a subspace portal and jump out; during the acceleration process, they can be killed. In the case of the Phoenicia, however, it opens the subspace portal immediately and bypasses the acceleration process.

When it comes to small ships, they will need to get their speed reduced to around 40 m/s before they begin the jump to subspace. During the process of increasing or decreasing their speed to this value, they can still be shot down if they are hit hard enough.

[Qent]

I used to destroy things all the time after the portal opened. Then something happened and I couldn't anymore.

[Lucika]

I can't remember where but somebody posted about the three stages of subspace jumps and stated that only one or two stages where the ship is damageable.

[MatthTheGeek]

IIRC, basically, the ship is damageable while adapting its speed to initiate the jump and while the whirl closes. Shots pass through it while the whirl is open.