[TwentyPercentCooler]

Basically the Shivan version of Killdozer.

For a minute, I thought you were referring to that dude who made a bulldozer into a homemade tank and went on a rampage.

[karajorma]

Well in that case we're talking about someone weaponising an everyday piece of equipment. Which might be appropriate there. For all we know the Sathanas might need those long arms for star manipulation and the Shivans realised they could stick some beam cannons in there to use up the empty space.

[Dragon]

Maybe the beam cannons are just a side function of the star manipulation device. Heck, maybe that's where all beam cannons come from. Originally a side effect of the star manipulator, Shivans scaled them down and adopted to use as weapons. That would be an interesting twist.

[Luis Dias]

That was just basically what I *always* thought since the nineties when I first played the game... The Sathanas was clearly a ship designed for doing something really important, and meanwhile they can slap the meaningless wasps and the bees with it. The fleet is not even a battle fleet, but a construction fleet with some minor escorts, and can anyone please get out these annoying terrorizing wasps on my face? Good god they destroyed one of our excavators! Jesus F Christ, someone call the security this is not a good working environment!

[Scotty]

Shivan BFReds are obviously not merely beam weapons, but instead self-contained mobile subspace nodes that the Sathanas can manipulate to open artificial, short duration jump gates to the heart of a star, channel through a "nozzle" toward enemy vessels.  That's how BFReds violate thermodynamics and get away with it.

[BengalTiger]

Well in that case we're talking about someone weaponising an everyday piece of equipment.

Like putting a beam cannon on a medical cruiser?

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I wonder if a few wings of bombers would be able to destroy all the medical frigates.