[That Man]

Necessity is the mother of invention. The Terran-Vasudan war had been ongoing for fourteen years with neither side gaining a decisive edge during that time (that we know of). It's not out of line to think that both sides had settled into a more-or-less comfortable stalemate while developing new weapons and fighters in preparation for an ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. The GTW Avenger had presumably been in development for some time before the arrival of the Shivans. And when the Shivans did come, the stakes changed from simply "winning a war" to "survival of two sentient species," which I think is motivation enough to speed up research and development of projects already on the drawing board. Political, bureaucratic, and economic considerations are meaningless if one is not alive to deal with them.

[Mars]

I remember the FRED tutorial said something about the Orion needing two years or so to build.

[Rheyah]

It only makes sense when you consider game mechanics.  Nothing else.  Remember - until FS2 no game had EVER made its capships a threat.  That was the biggest gameplay selling point.

Also consider the mathematical nightmare of balancing shieldless and shielded combat.

To make TV war era weapons and capships feel right, use the armor tbms to seperate out the different ship types by scale.  This means you can put fighter dps level weapons in turrets without breaking cap ship combat.

You don't even need new weapon design.  I seperated the ships by type and the capship blobs into normal, impact and siege.  Further with FSOpens tbl and tbms it makes sense to make them look stronger which gives the capships more character too.

[Lorric]

It only makes sense when you consider game mechanics.  Nothing else.  Remember - until FS2 no game had EVER made its capships a threat.

Um... define threat.

Here, watch someone slowly get broken by one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGAelrZ3980#t=6m53s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PBmCyz3PlA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk_oeP2EhV0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EzYYYn-7mk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1DUnCJthA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olfFa42-dKs

A few minutes will suffice to show you it's a threat, but near an hour will be required to watch the breaking down process of this player.

But don't rely on that guy for an opinion of the game. He doesn't know how to play the game properly, and it's funny! 

It's Colony Wars! First Axem thought there were no beam games before FS and I showed him he was wrong. Now Colony Wars rises again! 

[Mongoose]

I split out all the fun Star Wars wankery to here, so have at thee!