[The E]

Short answer: There's always a way through the defences of any ship class. If there wasn't, if there was a ship class that was completely protected from fighter attacks, it would not be interesting.

[QuantumDelta]

(Massive tangent) ....and you've just summed up why I hate the massive damage dynamic

[Mars]

I concur with your assessment of the Hyperion, but this is just wrong.  The Diomedes fails in 100% of the occasions we see it in the campaign, but I don't think anyone here would call it an ineffective warship, and they would be very, very wrong if they did.  There are very few occasions where the Nyx actually accomplishes anything.  Deimos next to none.

Every Aeolus we see in the campaign needs to be approached carefully.  Or not at all, in the Cho's case.  That one will kill you in no time at all if you don't get away from it at mission start (Standard Flak is horribly effective).

Fair enough.

EDIT:

Strikethroughed

[SaltyWaffles]

Since you wont drop it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6qR22XCKFEE#t=42s
Aeolus are food (This is on insane), so much for 'approach carefully'!

A tactic like that only works on a stationary target with no fighter or bomber escort. If the Cho had been moving/maneuvering, not only would your survival have been highly questionable, your ability to safely knock out its turrets would be...greatly diminished. Also, keep in mind that you (unlike any pilot in the UEF) know the Aeolus-class extremely intimately, have tons of experience fighting both alongside and against it, and even when you started almost right next to the cruiser (and slightly behind it), you still lost a third of your health just getting to its (small) blind spot.

Uriels can easily neuter ANY ship--particularly ones that aren't maneuvering--if they aren't attacked/harassed/countered by other fighters or capable warships. I assume this is why mass Treb spam is so effective against uncoordinated/mass Uriel tactics--they're either too busy evading or too busy dying, and even a few interceptors can get into the fray with major results in that scenario.

----

About the awesome post about the Hyperion a bit above: very good points. Yes, the Hyperion-class cruisers are sufficiently threatening (though probably only when faced in numbers of 2-on-1 or worse) as a screening element. However, the Nelson's decision to prioritize (or even focus on at all) the few Hyperion cruisers over, say, the pair of Chimera corvettes and the freaking Atreus itself is a little baffling. Hyperions simply can't be that much of a threat in that situation--there isn't enough time to deal the damage needed to stop a Karuna/Sanctus ramming charge in its tracks. Given that even a Karuna would be significantly outranged by the Atreus alone, it's a tad odd that the Nelson would divert any attention or effort away from his central goal of ramming the Atreus when the Atreus would open fire with its spinal beam before the Hyperions could be engaged for very long. I have to concede that, in that situation, it's not like there were a whole lot of other potential targets within range (and between the Nelson and the Atreus), but why have your fighters (the only 'X factor' you have) focus on the cruisers instead of the big, powerful beam cannons that will totally gut you before you get close?

Anyway, the Aeolus is more than just an anti-fighter gunboat, but again, keep its size in mind. It is by far the most heavily armed Alliance cruiser in FS2, relatively agile, and impressively durable--with a size that is surprisingly comparable (*not* equal to) to a wing or two of bombers, for example. And the Cho's attack on the Ranvir wasn't really a failure--consider a wing, or even two wings of bombers in its place--Laporte's wing could have mowed them down in seconds, with the Ranvir taking minimal (if any) damage. Instead, Laporte's wing got banged up by flak and PDB fire, the Ranvir took at least two SGreens (not much, but every noticeable chunk helps, especially when the whole idea is a tag-team 'mob-the-frigates' strategy), and it even provides a fairly secure zone/corridor for friendly fighters/bombers to approach the Ranvir. If it gets in range to use its flak guns, its damage output would be a threat, if a minor one.

In general, cruisers aren't meant to be threatening elements if you focus them down (or are capable of ignoring them). They're a threat when you can't ignore them but you're busy dealing with X threat Y kilometers away, and if given enough time you'll take some rather inconvenient (or worse) damage from them. They're a threat when they're deployed as anchoring/supporting elements with other cruisers and strike craft, requiring significant attention and prompt action (a wing of bombers escorted by an Aeolus and a pair of interceptors is no joke). They're a threat when, due to their numbers, expendability, and mobility/flexibility, they can be deployed at most points in a battle at opportune positions.

The Hyperion is quite a bit better at standing on its own as a warship, granted, but unless its attacking a lightly defended, non-durable target, cruisers really shouldn't be used that way--it throws the potential synergy/combined arms effectiveness away and puts cruisers at huge risk from smaller threats.

[QuantumDelta]

Since you wont drop it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6qR22XCKFEE#t=42s
Aeolus are food (This is on insane), so much for 'approach carefully'!

A tactic like that only works on a stationary target with no fighter or bomber escort. If the Cho had been moving/maneuvering, not only would your survival have been highly questionable, your ability to safely knock out its turrets would be...greatly diminished. Also, keep in mind that you (unlike any pilot in the UEF) know the Aeolus-class extremely intimately, have tons of experience fighting both alongside and against it, and even when you started almost right next to the cruiser (and slightly behind it), you still lost a third of your health just getting to its (small) blind spot.

Uriels can easily neuter ANY ship--particularly ones that aren't maneuvering--if they aren't attacked/harassed/countered by other fighters or capable warships. I assume this is why mass Treb spam is so effective against uncoordinated/mass Uriel tactics--they're either too busy evading or too busy dying, and even a few interceptors can get into the fray with major results in that scenario.

Fighter escort AND it moving would have just meant I'd have backed off and taken out the fighters first.
Fighter escort and it not moving would have meant I'd have just sat in that spot and shot them like a friendly fire turret.
No fighter escort and it moving would have made absolutely ZERO. Difference.

I lost a third of my health on my first try, with no support from friendlies, while not really dodging much flak on insane vs the hardest to assault cruiser in the game (Assuming you're not coming at it from the correct position, which I'm not).
What do you want? I can and have done that while keeping 100% HP, it's just faster to do it taking collision damage to stop yourself instead of looping lots inside the Aeolus. Dodging flak isn't THAT hard, it just requires a bit of fine throttle / directional control work, anyone can do it.

Trebs wont stop a player (sigh at the AIs handling of trebs..) getting to a target like that, it wont even slow them down (not even a fraction of a second if they're good) unless it's fired straight along their flightpath (which depending on the position of the enemy fighter could change things a fair bit).

If you're going to make a fairytale combat scenario where more assets were committed though, you would expect to see a bigger UEF response (IE; Not just Uhlans), the point behind that mission though is to see two valuable ships go splat, so it's 3vsAWHOLECRAPLOADOFSTUFF.

All you need is 1 minute in a simulator as a UEF pilot to see where the weak points are on all the smaller ships that you can do stuff to as a fighter, it's practically a no brainer.
Situations change in combat all the time, but the approaches and blindspots don't, if people are using trebs to upset you in a uriel, just position yourself between their capital ship and them and they'll be helping you out instead of hindering you.

If you wanna see what a Uriel can do in a 'more difficult', 'more like what you were trying to describe as an obstacle' then feel free to watch; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bOKVguQpaY and proceed to STFU.

The example given was how easily a single fighter, not equipped with anything in particular designed to take out turrets / capital ships neuters a cruiser and then continues on with the mission when everyone seems to respect them far too much. Capital ships are back ground noise used to tell the story, the good game play comes from dogfighting or tactical play amongst the dialogue and stage play (yea I count beams as stage play).

Uriel with a tiny bit of rear-guard back up maims entire fleet. Want to keep escalating?

The rest of your point is just copying the stuff that has been said earlier in the thread. Cruisers are Support fire / Attention grabbers as part of a theatre of operation, not roost rulers or stage setters, they're game changers and play makers.

[NGTM-1R]

The idea that you represent the average combat pilot in FS and your exploits should be used to measure what they can do is hilariously hard to sustain, QD. The average pilot would be represented by an AI pilot, though of what level is probably open to debate. Players are singular, far outnumbered by AIs, and they are special. By their nature they are meant to represent some better, usually far better, than average.

So no, your video is pointless; your protestations of what the Uriel can do are pointless; we must proceed from what it will actually do in the game controlled by the average pilot, who in this case isn't represented by a human at all and thus neither you nor I nor Salty over there are actually valid examples.

[QuantumDelta]

My first reaction to that was that I'm very concious that I tend to take my performance in the game for granted, and expect most (if not all) people who play to be capable of the same, and so feel the videos are roughly the equivalent of what one should expect from play once they have the tactics down... and, that I tend to be quite fervent when arguing from that position.
And, that what you say is correct, but having taken some time to think about it, and recall more and more of my multiplayer adventures... I can't agree.
While skill levels vary massively, and, even in a head-to-head a player may not be able to beat an insane level balls of steel AI, for example... they will always be /more useful/ than that AI, unless it's scripted ridiculously...

AI are blind to tactics and strategy, in so far as there are many tricks the player can use that the AI just cannot deal with, but a player would be able to just by sitting back for a split second and thinking about it (using a hostile cap ship to shield you from trebs for example, or even indeed dealing with someone who has done that), the AI only do what they have been told by the fredder, which usually is a very minimum required amount (guard this, attack this, disable this being the three fredded instructions that are used.. in fact if you went through all the campaigns written by V and the community, I wouldn't be too surprised to find that any one of those three commands outnumber all of the other commands put together (if you exclude manoeuvring for capships I guess?)) to make the AI be in the right sorts of places at the right times.
Mods like BP have gone through a fair amount of trouble to improve upon that and /still/ even the best of the AI doesn't approach the level of even a rookie pilot in terms of effect on the battle.

I can't subscribe to the theorum that the GTVA/UEF/Shivans/Whichever race your mod happens to use, should be represented by the entirely incapable AI... Perhaps my viewpoint is "skewed" by multi, but the multi missions always tend to play in a more engrossing fashion than even the /best/ mods, without even NEEDing a storyline to suck you in...
In such a foray, no matter how guarded (Even by other players!), All cruisers are fodder, but they demand immediate attention, either when used to defend an objective, or when used to attack / support an attack of an objective, they change the game. The display of the AI, however should most definitely not be taken as that of a 'standard' pilot. Even in BP :<

[Scotty]

The display of the AI, however should most definitely not be taken as that of a 'standard' pilot. Even in BP :<

The display of the AI must be inherently taken as standard when it appears, because it is literally everything that isn't the player.  That is the very definition standard.  The player is just as inherently not-standard by virtue of being the player.

[QuantumDelta]

My viewpoint couldn't be more different, mostly because of multi.
While ingame tends to be taken as > fluff, the fluff almost always contradicts the AIs performances (read; related to any time a squadron or pilot(s) are singled out in missions).
Multi adds to that feel, especially in the coops where multiple "AI couldn't do this without massive scripting" roles, or TvTs where the players are attacking / defending capital ships.

[Scotty]

And therein lies your problem.  Blue Planet is not a multiplayer mod, in and of itself.  Applying multiplayer standards and definitions to it is inherently wrong, because it is not multi (and the multi project for BP isn't exactly the same thing).

[Phantom Hoover]

Question, QD: in multi, would eliminating the fighter cover of an Aeolus still be an afterthought the way you treated it earlier? You can't just use the limits of the ai to excuse the stupidity of friendly pilots.

[QuantumDelta]

Yes and no, it depends on what tactic the enemy are using, most of the cruiser/corvette duels are 2 bomber 2 fighter, or all myrm or 3 myrm 1 eri (and the eri has maxim to strip away turrets from extreme range).
If both sides are all myrm then the most skilled pilot tends to get sent to run interference while the other 3 bomb, if 2 bomber 2 fighter, 1 fighter goes with 2 bombers 1 defends (does depend on what the other team are running but that was most successful unless they turtled up), and if you're running 3 myrm 1 eri you almost entirely ignore the opposing force no matter what they're running in the hopes you can burn their cruiser/corvette first.
Because of my play style I prefer to take out fighter cover first unless there's a time critical component to the mission, that actually applies in single player too, pull them away from their ship and then blat them to death.
There are people who much prefer to sit back at their ship and pull the enemy to them, and there are people who prefer to go all in and try to zerg stuff down.

Overall though, you can still do it.. you just have to be a lot more careful (If you hadn't guessed from the above I prefer the 2 fighter 2 bomber style, but it was extremely unpopular in squad wars because the bombers are so fragile and sluggish if your fighter pilots aren't up to the challenge the bombers /will/ end up deaded).