[Mars]

And some Tev ships have sprint drives as well; were I Serkr or the Atreus / whatever other units have the device, and my unit was on the offensive, and I were suddenly threatened by a Nara, it would perhaps be wisest to jump not away, but into close range. Naras are completely dependent on their range advantage vs. modern Tev combatants.

[-Norbert-]

Have you ever seen any FS ship make a jump of just a few kilometers (in official or BP missions that is)?
While that doesn't prove that Serkr can't do such a thing, it does make it rather unlikely. They could jump far away and then jump back in, though that would mean they lost their "backup jump-charge" and are stuck in the area untill they can recharge again, so even if they can do it, it would be very risky and thus reserved for major emergencies or the final battle.

[Aesaar]

The Lucy also has a speed of only 15m/s. At maximum range, a Narayana has seven minutes to disable the HReds and another five before the LReds can be brought to bear. Try it out in FRED; the poor Shivans get pecked to death.

I did.  The HReds get disabled by the time the two are 9 - 8km apart, then the Narayana gets a few minutes whittling away at those 800 000 hp.  5000m later, Lucifer gets there, and the Narayana dies.  Tried it with both ships starting 14km apart, with BP2-Colonel AI.  Lucifer typically wins with 10 - 20% health remaining.  Lost a couple times too.  If I actually give the Narayana an attack order, which means it's also closing at 25m/s, Lucifer wins with 50-40% or so.  It even got an HRed shot off once.

Still, it's too close for the best destroyer the Shivans have.  Shivans need a beam range and point defense upgrade.  Even the TerSlashBlue has longer range than the LRed.

If the UEF had to take down a Lucifer, they'd have a much easier time if they just sent a Durga squadron to do the job.  For all its anti-capital firepower, its point defenses are abysmal.

[General Battuta]

Of course, it's a moot point since the Narayana didn't get its artillery upgrade until the GTVA invasion and the Lucy would undoubtedly jump away and repair like it did against the Orestes, and battles in BP are decided by plot armor and not specs.

That's not really true. Where ship stats are modified FRED-side it's done to better reflect the unit's capabilities. If you've ever played a naval simulator like JFC or Harpoon, you know that a lot of the attributes that define big warships' capabilities just aren't modeled in FreeSpace. The attributes in question here aren't exactly the same as those in Harpoon, but they still need to be brought out of the fluff and into the gameplay space. So: look not to the table files for answers, but for how the ship actually performs in missions.

For example, slapping a Narayana and a Lucifer into FRED and letting them pewpew doesn't really capture the abilities both sides can bring to the fight.

[LordPomposity]

Also, neither the Tevs nor the Shivans would be stupid enough to just try to close 12 km "on foot". The Shivans would just send waves of bombers or warships to flank the Nara, the Tevs would just send a pop-up Trebuchet strike to bring down its guns and missile launchers.

In fairness, the Shivans sent the first Sathanas after the Colossus completely stripped of its anti-capital armament. The Shivans are pretty horrible strategists, but when you have as many juggernauts as they do, you can get away with that sort of thing.

I suspect they'd do just fine so long as nobody builds the Shivans a handy bridge to get into their system.

Who's to say the Shivans couldn't have done it themselves?  Haven't they shown the ability to use nodes that no one else could before?

There's a decent chance they could, but this ability also completely nullifies the only remotely effective strategy the GTVA has demonstrated in fighting the Shivans.

I can't recall, but wasn't there a really unstable jump node from Sol to Deneb?

Maybe. The FS1 nodemap shows Sol having three jumpnodes, and there's never been a canonical explanation for the discrepancy. Highly unstable jumpnodes are a common fan rationalization for Volition's animators not taking to anyone else on the team, and BO might have gone with that one. Not sure, though.

But yes, chances are that if the GTVA hadn't come back to Sol, the UEF wouldn't be threatened by the Shivans.  But that's irrelevant, because they did come back.  The UEF's been forced back into the galactic community, and now they have to contend with the Shivan threat like everyone else.  And they're just not ready to do that.

Their best defensive option is to send some large explosives through the node, which it's a safe bet the GTVA will stand in the way of. Any claim that they're somehow making the UEF's citizens safer is going to fall pretty flat...and that's before you even consider that they're actively destroying the UEF's defensive capability.

note: If I appear to sound patronising, that really isn't my intention

Don't worry, you're not.

[-Norbert-]

"We can defend you better than you can defend yourself. That's why we are blowing up all your ships even if it costs us some of our own ships to do so."
Unless destroyed ships can come back in ghost-form to haunt the Shivans into submission, that is hardly a good argument to make UEF citizens sympathize with the GTVA...

Maybe if it was a cold war, or advertising for the upcoming election the argument would make sense, but with all the war, destruction and attrition going on, that argument lost all it's value.

[Scotty]

Except that the combined industrial might of the GTVA and UEF would replace the lost warships in a matter of just a couple years?  You're vastly selling short the capabilities of the combined manufacturing outputs of the two polities.

[Jellyfish]

Except the GTVA wrecked the UEF's industrial might into oblivion, and it will take them years to repair. And that's before they start replenishing the losses.

[Ryuseiken]

But they're also targeting the manufacturing centers now as well, which is the main reason the UEFs war prospects took such a nosedive when Steele got in charge. The blitz, Luna, the Saab (?) shipyards and the Bretonia station being targeted by the Deimos before Delenda Est all suggest manufacturing centers are now prime targets.

I'm also interested in how exactly the GTVA thinks Ubuntu culture will be destroyed simply by removing the leaders. If it's as central to the belief system of Earth as the Chrysalis chapter hinted at it's not like they could be easily persuaded to give it up, especially by the people persecuting them. It's not like Sol is some fringe colony with a small population either, even if they lose the war the GTVA's plans for Sol will probably be riddled with social revolts.

[LordPomposity]

But they're also targeting the manufacturing centers now as well, which is the main reason the UEFs war prospects took such a nosedive when Steele got in charge. The blitz, Luna, the Saab (?) shipyards and the Bretonia station being targeted by the Deimos before Delenda Est all suggest manufacturing centers are now prime targets.

I'm also interested in how exactly the GTVA thinks Ubuntu culture will be destroyed simply by removing the leaders. If it's as central to the belief system of Earth as the Chrysalis chapter hinted at it's not like they could be easily persuaded to give it up, especially by the people persecuting them. It's not like Sol is some fringe colony with a small population either, even if they lose the war the GTVA's plans for Sol will probably be riddled with social revolts.

Agreed on all points. I suspect we haven't heard the GTVA's real reason for going to war, and that the ones we've heard so far were ways for the Security Council to justify it to the citizenry without creating a security crisis, causing a panic, and/or appearing to be completely insane. Remember this from "Ken"?

Secretary-General Toqueville: "Did we do the right thing? We couldn't let them go forward with it, not once we knew. We will not be tools. But...was it right?"

[-Norbert-]

Except that the combined industrial might of the GTVA and UEF would replace the lost warships in a matter of just a couple years?  You're vastly selling short the capabilities of the combined manufacturing outputs of the two polities.

With the constant and ever present threat of a Shivan incursion haging over the two races, a couple of years can become a very long time. Especially if the first two appearances of the Shvans during times of war shows a pattern, rather than an incredible chaining of coincidences.

I believe those two things are part of the reason why the GTVA is willing to sacrifice so much of Sols infrastructure to make sure the war is ended quickly (along with the socio-political and economic considerations of course).

[CT27]

Strategically, where should the GTVA attack more?  Should it try more Blitzes on Earth, or focus on Martian assets and try to knock it out of the war like Jupiter?

[Drogoth]

I thought only beam weapons could pierce the Lucifer's shields? Wasn't the rational for the BP Lucifer not having shields was that they had shut them down to pump more power through the frontal beams since the GTVA main weapon was beams, rendering the shields useless?

Put the Lucy up against UEF units and it just turns its shields on and its laughing. Scratch one Nary, and anything else the UEF cares to throw at it.

[-Norbert-]

We don't know. We only know that FS1 era weapons couldn't penetrate the Lucy shields, but since then both the UEF and GTVA have made great leaps in weapon technology.
It is possible that anti-matter or meson based weapons are able to penetrate the shield, but since there were no "official" missions or comments to proofe either way, there is just no way to tell.
We don't even know for sure wether the old Terran green beams and Vasudan yellow beams would have worked, since we only saw the meson-based blue beams of the 14th battlegroup pierce the Lucifers shields.

[Drogoth]

Has anyone from the BP team said anything about the BPverse Lucifer in that regard?

[Klaustrophobia]

in my own personal canon, i regard the lucifer's shields as REALLY poorly implemented plot armor and nothing more.  i.e., the lucifer has no shields.  or the FS1 one is the only one that did. 




just in case anyone cares what goes on inside my head.

[redsniper]

But the Lucy you fight in AoA IS the FS1 Lucy.

[qwadtep]

I really don't think the Lucy's beams were powered up in AoA. The next beam down from HRed is LRed and it seems odd that the superdestroyer which destroyed two, three, maybe more civilizations would have no greater firepower than a common Ravana or Demon.

I also seriously doubt that Sol, after 50 years with a population greater than the entire GTVA combined and the technology to perfectly manage them all, hasn't developed an answer to the Lucifer's shields--even if that answer is simply more warheads than the Lucifer's shields can take. An elegant solution, to be sure.

[CT27]

Continuing on my question I recently posted here, it might not be unwise to hit Earth again.  That could draw some defenses away from Mars.

[-Norbert-]

Unless they want that to hit Mars hard, while the martian defenders are hurrying to defend Earth. It all depends on how many ships they need to provoke such an attack and how many others still remain to carry out the attack on Mars.
Oh and also wether the Martians take the bait and send enough ship towards Earth to seriously compromise their own defense and how quickly they can return to Mars, after they get wind of the GTVAs plan.

I really don't think the Lucy's beams were powered up in AoA. The next beam down from HRed is LRed and it seems odd that the superdestroyer which destroyed two, three, maybe more civilizations would have no greater firepower than a common Ravana or Demon.

I also seriously doubt that Sol, after 50 years with a population greater than the entire GTVA combined and the technology to perfectly manage them all, hasn't developed an answer to the Lucifer's shields--even if that answer is simply more warheads than the Lucifer's shields can take. An elegant solution, to be sure.

I did a little experiment in FRED once and found out that the HRed need about as many salvos and time to kill an Orion, as the superlaser needed in FS1, suggesting roughly the same damageoutput. On the other hand the GTVA did improve their armor technology in those 32 years, so maybe the Lucy had to strengthen their beams to compensate. Also the FS1 Lucifer didn't have side-mounted beams, or at least never used them while it's shields were on (ie every time is was ingame, except the last mission.... where no capship was present).
Either way the worst problem with the Lucifer was never her immense firepower, that is something that can be overcome. The real problem was her invulnerbility to anything the GTA and PVE could bring onto the field of battle. Even without the shield, she still packs a ridiculous amount of HP for a ship it's size.