[ShivanSpS]

So i was bored today, and i did this, its a nice step by step



I can see now why this thing is so heavily armed for what it is. Im still unsure if was always armed like this or it was a "emergency procedure", like ordering to arm all civilians ships.

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[Phantom Hoover]

The Hippocrates has an LTerSlash; it's about as heavily-armed as a Myrmidon.

[Veers]

As slow as that was, with clippy sound and everything.

I did enjoy watching the Sat devour whatever it felt like while being slow.. slashed to death.

It gave up after a while, which was also rather amusing.

[Aesaar]

Played on Insane, Sath won with 16%.  It would have probably lost if it hadn't gotten out of the the swarm and then turned around.  Once it turned around, it took about 2 minutes for the attack force to go from 35 to 0.

[ShivanSpS]

The only way it can win if it goes down, way down, so it gets outside the firing arc of the slashes, in that case you can order the hippocrates to attack him, that ends in a mess but they will attack him again.

Its quite unrealistic that a ship of that size and mass can make those 360° turns like that and able to outmarouver the small ships, i was thinking about using waypoints to simulate something better, but the AI is not smart enoght to fly waypoints as wings, keeping distance and height from each other, there no way i gona do 51 waypoints paths.

The Hippocrates has an LTerSlash; it's about as heavily-armed as a Myrmidon.

Its still a lot for what it is, and the LTerSlash its quite good to destroy turrets and subsystems, if a Cain decides to attack 2-3 Hippocrates and its on the firing arc of the slashes, there is a high chance all of them to survive because the slashes will destroy the Cain main turret, but it depends a lot of luck too.

[Aesaar]

From the start position's perspective, the Sathanas went right, which put it out of range of a lot of the swarm.  LRed picked off quite a few of them, but the BFReds were ridiculous (as expected).  If the swarm spawned in from of the Sath instead of below, they wouldn't have a chance.

I wish I could have recorded it.

[Luis Dias]

In my case it sit there taking it like a boss. Then suddenly it stopped behaving like a boss and went full blowny on me.

[ShivanSpS]

From the start position's perspective, the Sathanas went right, which put it out of range of a lot of the swarm.  LRed picked off quite a few of them, but the BFReds were ridiculous (as expected).  If the swarm spawned in from of the Sath instead of below, they wouldn't have a chance.

I wish I could have recorded it.

it does not change much, if they spawn in front and give all of them the order of attack they will get out of the foward beams firing arcs fast, and foward flaks will get destroyed.

Also, trying to jump in in front of a Sathanas is not a smart thing at all.

[Lorric]

I gave this a try on insane. They crushed the Sathanas. 33 ships survived. Screenshots attached.

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[Kolgena]

When 30 hospital ships trumps a colossus...

I'm curious about all the tests run until now: if this mission doesn't perform well, it's important to remember that beam damage in FSO drops if the framerate is very low. (Related to the same bug of x16 time compression causing beams to do less damage)

[Luis Dias]

My PC ran it quite well, never stuttered or anything. Sathanas still loses. Those hospitals kick ass!

[Lorric]

It was smooth as silk for me.

[docfu]

Ditto, was nice for watching beam effects, especially when the Sathanas drops to 5% and the beams sweep through the hull.

[Lorric]

Ditto, was nice for watching beam effects, especially when the Sathanas drops to 5% and the beams sweep through the hull.

Hm? Does something different occur when the ship drops to 5%?

[MatthTheGeek]

Piercing effects.

[ShivanSpS]

The problem is that the Sathanas has way too few weapons, on the hull, they are mostly AA, except for the LRED, the ship is just not designed to be attacked, its more, "go there, blow up stuff fast, jump out", like the Lucifer.

If you plan any attack on them its easy, just do not attack it from the front, the Colossus is harder to kill.


As for the Hippocrates, they definately designed to aid in convoy escort, 2 of them can easily kill a Cain, 3 of them can bring a Rakshasa down to 50%, its not like you gona send them to the front lines, but they can help a lot.

[Lorric]

The problem is that the Sathanas has way to few weapons, on the hull, they are mostly AA, except for the LRED, the ship is just not designed to be attacked, its more, "go there, blow up stuff fast, jump out", like the Lucifer.

It's a big, but highly specialised ship. It's there to kill big targets with all it's firepower at the front. You'd imagine, even though you don't see it in FS2, that it should have a big escort. It would crush the fleet vessels in front of it, and the escorts would take care of the rest.

I was particularly surprised with the "destroy navigation subsystem" directive, the way those bombers simply went up to it and then just sat there shooting, there were no turrets at all to impede them.

[ShivanSpS]

I was particularly surprised with the "destroy navigation subsystem" directive, the way those bombers simply went up to it and then just sat there shooting, there were no turrets at all to impede them.

Me too, thats the one point in where the Zeus is better than the others bombers except the Ursa, dual Maxim.

As for the attack itselft, i did what i think command wanted to do with it on the nebula (but with destroyers), and they never got a chance to do it, lure it intro a trap, take out nav so it cant jump, them attack it from the sides.

[Luis Dias]

The Sathanas is probably designed with so few weapons for cpu reasons. If it had been designed without speed optimization in mind, it would probably wreck everything that was close to it.

Anyways, [V] is off the hook on this one for we are never told that the Sathanas' design is one of space superiority and area suppression, etc., however we are visually told that its main purpose is to create crazy subspace phenomena near stars that will eventually blow them up as well. In this sense, we can see the Sathanas not as a giant juggernaught but as a giant Excavator whose main mechanism at the front also performs admirably well as a weapon.

[karajorma]

Basically the Shivan version of Killdozer.