Apollo: I'm not doing this omnislashing quote wall stuff anymore. It prevents anyone else from participating.
The TerPulse has a Big Ship Flag. The Big ship flag doesn't allow a gun to do the final 10% to a capital ship. Only Huge does, but other than allowing that, it has no effect whatsoever on gameplay. The problem is that the TerPulse is a very multipurpose weapons, and is important to the Raynor's fighter screen. So it can't have the Huge flag.
This doesn't meant it can't kill capital ships in-universe. Stop thinking the tables are the final word on a weapon's combat performance. If there was a flag that allowed a gun to kill a capship while still allowing it to target fighters, the team would have used it. There isn't.
We don't have the science on plasma beams, but given the statements by team members and the implications from the fiction, beams are much, much more ammo-efficient than torpedoes and other solid ammunition weapons are. This isn't in any way uncertain, and the fact that you're asking for a direct quote for the Solaris having significantly less endurance than the GTVA destroyers makes me thing you're being deliberately obtuse, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and walk you through it.
The Solaris was designed for operations in the Sol system. The designers never intended it to fight for large amounts of time independently, because in Sol, resupply is always one intrasystem jump away, which really doesn't take long. Remember that military ships don't need to use the gate network as they have their own drives.
So perhaps you'd care to explain to me why the Solaris would have been designed for long periods of time alone when it was built specifically for operations in Sol, where logistics are barely a concern.
GTVA ships, on the other hand, were built for operations in the GTVA, where stations for resupply could be a whole other system away. In addition, they were built for operations against the Shivans, who have a habit of destroying everything they come across, meaning that the resupply station in the next system might not even be there. This necessitates that ships be able to perform for extended periods of time without resupply. The Anemoi was built to improve this ability even further. The 14th was seriously hurt by the events of AoA, despite not losing any capital ships and having two Anemois with them. A UEF battlegroup wouldn't have survived. They'd have run out of ammo much faster.
If that logic isn't enough for you, then I don't see the purpose of arguing with you further.
The Solaris could replace the Hecate because it has comparable effectiveness after it runs out of Apocalypses. Before then, it will be far more capable against enemy warships.
No, a Hecate is, generally speaking, more effective than a torpedoless Solaris . 1 BGreen and 4 TerSlash are more effective than 12 Gattlers (which require ammo too, you know). This doesn't even consider that many Hecates have probably had their big turret guns replaced by pulse weapons. No examples, but TerPulse doesn't have the power grid problems blue beams have, and can be retrofitted on some older ships (Battuta, I'd really appreciate it if you could confirm or deny this bit).
Now, to the superdestroyer discussion: Did you miss the fact that a Sathanas shock jump killed a Vishnan Sacred Keeper effortlessly? You know, a juggernaut built by the only race that can match the Shivans? The same thing happened to the Colossus, which took 20 years to build. Superdestroyers/juggernauts/"death star" units are worthless unless you can mass produce them, which the GTVA can't do. They have no place in modern fleet doctrine.
You claim superdestroyers/juggernauts outpace smaller ships. In realspace, that might be the case. It is not the case in subspace. It's a BP general rule that the smaller the ship, the less time it takes to recharge subspace drives*. So a destroyer can redeploy faster than a juggernaut. A Hecate could redeploy faster than the Colossus.
*Sprint drives might make you think otherwise, but a sprint drive is basically two drives in one.
Flank the Sathanas isn't something that only a superdestroyer can do, you know. Seriously, replay AoA. You seem to have completely forgotten that the 14th destroyed a Sathanas with no casualties and no superdestroyers.
Also, the Colossus was only able to destroy Sathanas 1 because the former overdrove its beam cannons and the latter's were destroyed. A Colossus has absolutely no chance of defeating a Sathanas under normal circumstances.
Define "normal circumstances". "Sit in front of each other and shoot" isn't "normal circumstances" either.
Most of the GTVA's destroyers in Sol are Hecates, which are terrible against warships at any angle except the front. The Imperieuse is powerful, but very vulnerable to flanking maneuvers. The only really scary things they have are the Atreus, the Carthage, and Serkr Team. Their Diomedes corvettes are also very dangerous, but the GTVA tends to deploy them in a manner that gets them killed at a far greater rate than any of their other corvettes.
The UEF also has numerically superior forces, so they have the firepower to retake Sol. After they forced the GTVA out, they could simply blockade the Delta Serpentis jump node with a Solaris and a few frigates, preferably positioned in a manner that would allow them to flank incoming warships.
I'm going to even bother arguing this point, because it isn't the way the war happened. By the end of WiH, the GTVA both outnumbers and outguns the remaining UEF forces (including 1st Fleet), they don't have crumbling morale, and aren't close to complete logistical collapse. If the secret project can't change the playing field somehow, GTVA victory is absolutely certain.
For a pre-WiH situation, I hate recommending this, because it doesn't match the strategic situation at all (and no fighters) and is therefore of dubious canonicity, but play bp2-massivebattle
at a decent framerate. GTVA almost always wins. That's if you want a pure stand and fire measure of firepower, of course. The actual situation is obviously more complex.
It is certainly worth pointing out that the GTVA may have reasons to go to war beyond those revealed so far. You might even find a few hints if you look!
"Did we do the right thing? We couldn't let them go forward with it, not once we knew. We will not be tools. But...was it right?"