[-Norbert-]

Apart from what's already been said, the current GTVA ships are designed to go against Shivans, who have vastly inferiour point defense compared to UEF ships.

One way or the other the GTVA-UEF war is going to end soon so the GTVA is very unlikely to develop any weapons specifically designed to crack UEF ships.

[Flak]

I doubt the Cyclops and Helios need an improvement, UEF's Jackhammer and Sledgehammer may be better, but not by a significant margin. If they want something to copy from the UEF bombs, it would be their adaptability, like being able to load Cyclops into heavy fighters. They would get more for reverse engineering the Warhammer instead since it is something the GTVA don't have.

[General Battuta]

We've never actually pinned down the Jackhammer and Sledgehammer's capabilities quite as much as we'd like. They probably won't see too much change in terms of damage but the UEF may roll out some kind of penetration aid - rapid aspect lock, armor, maybe decoys to help saturate point defenses.

[Drogoth]

Look, this discussion is totally absurd. The gameplay that happens in Blue Planet missions is as close as feasibly possible to the reality of combat in Blue Planet. The tactical realities of that gameplay are the tactical realities of Blue Planet. Mathing everything out with table values is pointless because it only gets at a fraction of the variables that really drive that combat.

Ship, weapon, and armor tables enable the gameplay and changing them can have significant effects. I'd hardly call them pointless.

Their point, if I'm reading it correctly is that the tables are adjusted every mission to fit canon lore in BP. The base values of the tables don't matter, because if lore says something will happen, the tables will just be adjusted to suit that reality.

The tables, and the relative effectiveness of weapons are determined by the storyline and background info, not the other way around.

[qwadtep]

Really though, I wish the GTVA would develop a Helios variant that could be fired without a lock and detonated manually. Would make life much easier.

[MatthTheGeek]

And it wouldn't even do half the damage. The point of a lock is for the warhead to find vulnerabilities in the target's hull in order to maximize the payload's efficiency.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

And it wouldn't even do half the damage. The point of a lock is for the warhead to find vulnerabilities in the target's hull in order to maximize the payload's efficiency.

This gets into GTVA economics as well. How much does a Helios cost to produce for example? They're definitely not as commonplace as Cyclops for example. Massed unguided Cyclops from bombers would probably be viable, at least in a gate-blockade mission where the bombers could reliably predict the trajectory of ships.

[Aesaar]

If we're translating in-universe reality to tables, I tend to think what Matth described isn't what gives bombs damage, it's what gives bombs the Huge flag.  Dumbfired bombs just couldn't do meaningful structural damage to targets bigger than cruisers.

[qwadtep]

And it wouldn't even do half the damage. The point of a lock is for the warhead to find vulnerabilities in the target's hull in order to maximize the payload's efficiency.

It doesn't take a lock to lob a warhead into a vulnerable hull breach or fighter bay. Forcing pilots to wait to fire on an easy target gives the enemy time to react; a bomber that dies before they get a shot off has a payload efficiency of zero.

[General Battuta]

Warheads universally need aspect lock so far, though; so presumably there's some good reason for this.

(The AI, of course, doesn't actually need any such thing...)

[MatthTheGeek]

(The AI, of course, doesn't actually need any such thing...)

It does. It's just handled differently, the game calculates some sort of timer based on the tabled lock values, IIRC.

[-Sara-]

I wonder. The UEF has the Sanctuary's crew. Some of them are bound to be döppelgangers of GTVA personnel. Should the GTVA worry about some semi-important officers being switcharooed as infiltration acts by the UEF? Sure, not feasible to pull off, but since the Feyadeen pulled off a lot of not so feasible things in act 3, I'm starting to think they might just manage to do that once or twice. Drop the weapons a destroyer just at the right time, sabotage battle plans through misdirection, spreading general paranoia about döppelgangers..

[-Norbert-]

I wouldn't be so sure. Most of the people on board the Sanctuary spent those 50 years in cold sleep and thus didn't age. And of those that did work in the (awake) crew, most would be old enough to retire, so there probably aren't all that many opportunities for such operations.

What I'd like to know is, what happened with those that were put into cold sleep due to the "hallicunations". Looking back it's very likely that they are Nagari sensitive and thus of interrest to people like the Fedayeen.

[The E]

What I'd like to know is, what happened with those that were put into cold sleep due to the "hallicunations". Looking back it's very likely that they are Nagari sensitive and thus of interrest to people like the Fedayeen.

Sometimes a hallucination is just that. Remember that the Sanctuary spent an unprecedented amount of time in that nebula, radiation and the constant exposure to something as headache-inducing as that may just cause these effects.

[General Battuta]

But, alternatively, many of them may well have been Nagari sensitives who ended up in a bad place.

[-Norbert-]

What I'd like to know is, what happened with those that were put into cold sleep due to the "hallicunations". Looking back it's very likely that they are Nagari sensitive and thus of interrest to people like the Fedayeen.

Sometimes a hallucination is just that. Remember that the Sanctuary spent an unprecedented amount of time in that nebula, radiation and the constant exposure to something as headache-inducing as that may just cause these effects.

Sure that's a possibility, but on the other hand they never found a cause for it despite spending almost 50 years of looking into the matter.

[MatthTheGeek]

They spent almost 50 years looking for it with failing equipment and medics that were probably not the best specialists humanity used to have.

[Luis Dias]

Beggining to think that BP uses Nagari like ME uses biotics, i.e. a scifi excuse for any kind of strange experience.

[Phantom Hoover]

luis are you just trolling these days

[Luis Dias]

Don't abuse an otherwise useful word like "trolling", ok phantom? I mean what I said. Every time some strange thing happens, a writer from BP team comes up and leaves a comment "perhaps it was Nagari ****". Yeah, thanks for that.