If two or four of these Gorgons are powerful enough to blow up the Masyaf...why did the GTVA even bother building Erebus spaceframes?
I don't think it's that simple. Take a look at the Erebus' tech description:
But a modern Alliance admiral asks about the weapons last. The platform's truly revolutionary capability lies with her tactical systems.
Communications systems built to the Alliance's BACKBREAKER standard provide common operational capability in the face of most jamming, but the Erebus also boasts a command theater for battle group coordination in non-permissive comm environments. The Erebus' informational weapons systems are built to partner with a Titan-class destroyer, incorporating the Titan's air wing and battle group into force awareness. When multiple Erebus-class destroyers operate in the same theater, BACKBREAKER can designate a group leader or coordinate a flat, decentralized operational schedule which intelligently distributes tasks across the Erebus battle groups. Future upgrades may integrate AWACS capability directly into the destroyer.
The Erebus' primary design tradeoffs lie in her fusion drive, air wing, and logistics. As a line combatant, the Erebus carries few strike craft. She is as fast as a Sathanas, but no faster, relying on her subspace drive to keep the range. And while tactically independent, the Erebus requires more logistical tail than many next-generation warships.
But it would take something radically new to challenge an armada of more than eighty Sathanas juggernauts. And here there was room for conflict. Some factions pushed for an end to the destroyer class, moving to a doctrine of corvettes and light carriers. Others wanted supercarriers, or 'juggernaut destroyers', massive flying beam cannons with limited defensive capability.
Ultimately, a verdict was achieved. Supercarrier and Massive Mjolnir advocates would get an answer in the Titan destroyer. But something more was needed.
There's a lot more in the Erebus and Titan's descriptions, but that describes why the Erebus was not only laid down, but why it's
good. It might not be as much of a "massive flying beam cannon" as the Titan or a supercarrier, but instead, it only does everything. Think of the 14th BG; All of the TEI warship assets are supposed to work together, not as independent assets. While there might be some disagreement about just how they're supposed to be used (See: How steele uses the Impereuse and Serkr, and the Titan tech entry), they're still supposed to be used together, and the Erebus shines in such situations. While the Titan has big beams and stuff, the Erebus has a lot of attributes that can't be tabled.
Run into a sathanas fleet? Bomb the forward beams & slice them up with the carrier's beams.
You make it sound like that's easy. You're forgetting that:
- It's been referred to as a risky procedure in "A Time for Heroes"
- We can hit restart if you mess up the bombing and your ships die. When you die in-universe, you're
dead.- We're also Alpha 1. Not every pilot can be as incredible as shooting Helios at turrets as we are.
- Bombers are flying coffins. If your escort messed up, you'd be swarmed and shot to hell by the Sathanas' air wing, even with your balor turrets.
- The Sathanas
fleet has other options available to them then just plodding straight at you at 25 m/s. What happens if one shock-jumps you from the side like Their Finest Hour? A Ravana is sortied as a distraction? Your air wing is busy performing miracles, so you have nothing available to cover you.
Amongst other things.
A bomber of this magnitude would solve every (military) problem the Tevs have. So one of the following is likely true:
1: Bomber is brand new, not in mass production, and the UEF is royally screwed the instant this changes.
2: Giant ships are sexy, so the super-bomber does not enjoy mass production for stupid political reasons.
3: Masyaf is going to be fine, the new bomber is just a modern Ursa with turrets that don't suck.
The Gorgon is a TEI Wave 2 craft, meaning that like the Nyx and co, it's only recently come out. I couldn't find the details of the TEI in the fiction viewer entries/table/vps - if someone could point me towards them that'd be great - but I did find
these two forum threads which might give you a bit more info on the TEI.
While the Gorgon, operating at 100% narrative potential, looks fairly nightmarish (As the gorgon handles now, just as it's tabled, it's a pretty hilarious deathtrap if you're not careful - if great at spamming trebuchets and heavy ordinance), I think it's fairly naive to think that it's going to simply solve
all the GTVA's military problems - for example, what if it's ridiculously expensive and thus limited to high priority operations? The GTVA isn't made of money or resources, after all - as much as they want to, you can't just use "muh shivans" as justification for anything to the civilian populace. What if it's very fuel and power intensive and thus can only operate for a short period of time (similar to the UEF craft), as opposed to the extended operating capabilities of regular Tev fighters? There's no such thing as a magic bullet that's going to fix everything, there's always a downside somewhere.