[BengalTiger]

And in pushing Corvettes and Hatshepsuts around.

[Stormkeeper]

And in pushing Corvettes and Hatshepsuts around.

I think the Hatshepsuts would own a Hecate in mano e mano combat.

[Snail]

I think the Hatshepsuts would own a Hecate in mano e mano combat.

Mano e mano, man to man, just you and me and my BOMBERS!

[Droid803]

From the looks of it, the Hecate is a carrier/command center, so its more well rounded, being able to handle fighters, bombers, cruisers, and corvettes - the things it'll most likely be facing. It'd leave the Destroyer-Destroyer combat to Orions.

Well, Liliths? The Hecate's ****ed. Its a wolf in sheep's clothing...kinda. Looking like the most worthless Shivan cruiser, while actually being the bane of destroyers and corvettes alike.

Now that you mention it, the Hecate has, what, four to five engines? How did a single cruiser and its fighter escort disable all of them? Given the Aquitaine's hull integrity at the start of Argonautica, the SC Urobach can't have been a Lilith-class.

The SC Urobach was a Rakshasa (I think it showed that or mentioned it in the briefing).
I'd guess it'd fire an SRED at each engine subsystem...and then have some bombers/fighters go after the last one.

And in pushing Corvettes and Hatshepsuts around.

I think the Hatshepsuts would own a Hecate in mano e mano combat.

Sorry, both the Hatshepsut and Hecate are females.
Hatshepsut = "foremost of noble ladies"
Hecate = the goddess of witchcraft

[General Battuta]

Mano a mano means hand-to-hand. It has nothing to do with men or women.

[Droid803]

But...Snail translated it!
damn this has been massively derailed...

[bfobar]

The hatshepshut wastes the hecate in 1 on 1 combat. The hecates are like wwii aircraft carriers in that they have decent point defense, weak big guns, and have massive combat squadrons and good command ship capabilities. I love their little dual towers in the back. The vasudan ships are more like battleships.

Anyway allow me to speculate on the Lilith some more: The shivans had what amounted to the only shield game in town until the terrans and vasudans stole the tech. I imagine that the capital ships like the lilith were just used against  ships and installations with good anti-fighter defense since the shivan fighters and bombers could dispense with anything smaller than a destroyer with no losses (assuming alpha 1 is somewhere else). By freespace 2, gtva fighter and bomber wings are as good as or superior to shivan fighters, so they can take air superiority and blast any cruiser out of existance without even calling in a bomber wing. The lilith is deployed where fighters aren't and alpha 1 only sees 1 in the entire campaign.

Most shivan capital ships take the anti capital ship approach and would need a strong fighter escort. If they are fighting against unshielded fighters with ML-16's like the ancients, terrans, and vasudans before they discover shields, its a complete turkey shoot.

The hecate is a good strategic ship in response to shivan ships. You've got 7 engines so you can always theoretically jump out even after losing an engine to keep the ship out of a shootout with another big cap ship, a good fighter squadron for offense, and just enough firepower to run off a cruiser or help the escorting corvettes that actually do the majority of the cap ship fighting. Jumping the sathanas with the colossus's weight in corvettes would have made for a quick allied win.
I'm rambling.
Anyway, the lillith makes sense if treated as a specialized ship in a campaign doing something like following around a moloch as an assault escort. Even with the hull and LRed, its a cruiser which only poses enough anti fighter weaponry to be considered an annoyance to the fighters a hecate launches. The hecate just has to stay out of range of the Lillith and launch an assault wing.

[Akalabeth Angel]

    I don't know why everyone assumes that the Ancients didn't have shields.

[Mars]

Because when they encountered shields they freaked out, then failed.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Because when they encountered shields they freaked out, then failed.

There's a difference between fighter Shields, and Lucifer shields.
The Terrans and Vasudans encountered the Lucifer, freaked out, and would have failed if not for the ancients.

Even unshielded Terrans and Vasudans with ML-16 lasers can take out Shivan ships (with their missile armament). The Ancients would certainly be able to do the same.

The Ancient's story parallels that of the GTA and PVN, that should be clear from the outset. It's reasonable to assume that the Ancients had the same level of success against the Shivans that the GTA and PVN did. But the Ancients, just like the others, could not breach the Lucifer's shields. Nothing matters except the Lucifer.

I think this is another case of people reading fan-brew ships as canon. The Ancients pack, like the AF Kato are NOT canon (ie strong hull and no shields), and never will be. The author likely just created them that way for the sake of uniqueness.

[bfobar]

I only mentioned the ancients since they died. I've never played their fan brew stuff. I would assume that they probably didn't start with shields either, and they never got to beams or intersystem jump drives for fighters from canon.

I was thinking more that in FS1 shivan fighters are really nasty until you get a herc with shields, proms, and banshees, and the lucifer beams are completely in their own class of megadeath. In FS2, everything has beams, and while the shivan cap ships are really "a class A threat" to any friendly cap ships, the shivan fighters are kind of a joke vs gtva craft.

FS1
"I used all my tempests to blow up 1 stupid fighter! What is this cloudy thing around the back end that glows when I shoot it?" "OMFG Lucifer has BEAMZ! Where'd my destroyer go?"

FS2
"Oooooh it's shooting little red blobs at me. EAT KEYSERS!!! *Boom*" "Awww that manticore wing flew too close to the aeolus and they all blew up in a hail of white hot flak." "I've got 2 helios on my air superiority fighter. DIE CRUISER! WEE!" "OMFG everything has beamz! *Boom* ouch, stupid crossfire."

Basically, I can see the Lilith as mobile artillery and was speculating on why that kinda makes sense.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Basically, I can see the Lilith as mobile artillery and was speculating on why that kinda makes sense.

     Thing is you mention how the Lilith has weak AAAf but really that's not anything particular to the Lilith. All Shivan ships have crap AAAf. So really the Lilith isn't any more or less AAAf capable than any other shivan ship, the only thing is, it carries a big gun with it. No Shivan cruiser has more than one AAAf beam. No Shivan Cruiser even has flak. The Moloch, has flak, but no AAAf. The Destroyers have few AAAf beams and what good AF guns they have are scattered to hell and back.

      In FS1 the Lilith wasn't nearly as rare, and seemed to be deployed more as a heavy cruiser than anything else. Sometimes leading Cains into battle, sometimes appearing without. I general though, the original FS1 ships seem pretty rare in FS2. With the exception of the Cain.

      Artillery as well seems a bad analogy for what is essentially a naval battle, not a land based one. There's no artillery in sea battles. Just guns, and bigger guns. Land Based artillery also tends to be rather vulnerable to attack, but the Lilith packs much heavier armour than its lesser counterparts (the Rak and Cain).

      The Lilith is just a kickass cruiser.

[Cobra]

      The Lilith is just a kickass cruiser.

I endorse this message.

[Stormkeeper]

      The Lilith is just a kickass cruiser.

I endorse this message.

I endorse it too.

[bfobar]

I don't think artillery or some time of seige weapon is an unfair comparison for the lilith. I'm saying that it looks totally overpowered if you put it in as a 1 on 1 ship battle, but when you look at the overall shivan strengths and weaknesses vs the GTVA, it doesn't come out to be so overpowered since fighters can still rip it up quickly.

I also just speculate that logically a lilith should be more expensive and less able to do things like extended patrols than a cain, so it would likely be in a supporting role of big cap ships and fleets that need some heavy beam firepower.

Although comparatively weak, the moloch has the best shivan anti fighter weaponry and can launch fighters, so pairing a lilith with a moloch would make a good task force to counter a GTVA destroyer, since in reality a GTVA destroyer can either swarm a lilith with fighters and jump away, or just beam a moloch to death.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Oh no, the Lilith can be quite a threat on the highest difficulty level. The Stalwart is usually the ship that bears the brunt of the SC Hela's LRed.

[nvsblmnc]

Mano e mano, man to man, just you and me and my BOMBERS!

I like the quote.

Seriously, though, I think the Hecate's carrier capacity would be decisive in a brawl with a Lilith.  Unless the cruiser nails the fighterbay with it's opening shot, the Hecate can just sit back keep the Lilith from fleeing with some well-placed beams and let wave after wave of fighters and bombers demolish it.

On the flipside though, if that first shot does nail the fighterbay, it's effectively over for the Hecate.  Doesn't matter how many engine subsystems you have, an LRed is still gonna make a mess of your destroyer.

[Stormkeeper]

To be honest, I doubt the GTVA would be insane enough to attack a Lilith from the front. I'd backstab it, or come in above it in an upside down Orion and cream the Lilith, or scramble bombers and fighters for a long range strike.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Death from above!
Death from behind!
Death to the Lilith!
Death! Death! Death!

[Snail]

I like the quote.

It's from an old parody Robin Hood movie I watched a while back, actually.

To be honest, I doubt the GTVA would be insane enough to attack a Lilith from the front. I'd backstab it, or come in above it in an upside down Orion and cream the Lilith, or scramble bombers and fighters for a long range strike.

I also doubt the GTVA would spend that much time to take out 1 cruiser. I'd just send in a few bombers with a little escort. I mean, they'd do the job twice as well with half the hassle.