[Gamma_Draconis]

After playing FS/FS2 for a bit, I began to question the role of cruisers. What are they good for? It seems like they're completely useless. In fact, they seem to even be a burden. A lone cruiser can be easily dispatched by a wing of fighters which means you have to assign patrols on the cruisers, and they don't seem to be capable of doing any decent amount of damage. Even their beam turrets are easily disarmed. Cruisers lack anti-fighter capabilities, anti-capital ship capabilities, and survivability.

If a new class of cruisers are to be designed, they should be armed to the teeth with anti-fighter/bomber weaponry. The new cruisers can then be used as escorts for capital ships although the corvette class ships seem to do a much better job at it. Or they can just trash the idea of cruisers.

To be fair, most of the cruisers on FS2 were from the FS1 era and shields practically nullified blob turrets. I would have to say the Aten was the worst ship ever. I'd rather have a wing of Ptahs than that floating vase in space.

[IceyJones]

a lone cruiser is worthless, sure.....but beware if you ever meet a fleet of them, mixed with different types. fight a leviathan cruiser, guarded by one ore two aeolus......have your fun and......play this without a maxim canon......

[TrashMan]

Since the player is a fighter pilot, all ships should be defeatable by him...so it's no wonder you can kill cruisers

The AI has a lot more trouble with it..especially some cruisers..like the Aeolus

[IceyJones]

and btw. give me an ursa, unlimited support ships and i also make toast of an SJ Sathanas alone

as trashman said.....every ship is defeatable by a human player.....as you can think about how to attack. the AI is not able to do that.....not without your guidance via comm.....

[Jeff Vader]

and btw. give me an ursa, unlimited support ships and i also make toast of an SJ Sathanas alone

Bah. A Bakha is more than enough. It took some time but I managed to do that once, when I replaced the Collie with a Raynor in High Noon. As you can guess, the Raynor went boom and I was like 'Oh, bum grapes', but then decided to avengne the destruction of the Raynor and beat the damn Sath alone. Of course, there was no debriefing, since obviously didn't take into account the possibility that both the Sath and the Collie were destroyed in the mission. It was still fun, though.

[IceyJones]

nah.....that takes too long

[Snail]

Two wings of Basilisks equipped with Hornets can toast a Fenris easy.

[Hellbender]

Well, this is true, Cruisers and indeed the rest of the capitol ships in Freespace are a lot more fragile than one would expect. I don't think it's the actual hull strength or subsystems, but yes the lack of effective turret coverage. Individually the armanents themselves are not too bad, but they are not effectively used by the AI, and there are large blind spots with no coverage on most ships.

I think much of the issues may arise from the game being programmed to be used with the slower hardware of the day it was released. I may be wrong, but the first computer I played FS2 on was much slower than my current beast, and I recall it was a bit more challenging.

The only way to change this would be for some sort of ship and AI increase mod to correct these issues, although this might skew the gameplay to the point of being very very difficult.

[Jeff Vader]

nah.....that takes too long

An hour, or an hour and a half. Let's say that it wasn't too long, but most likely I wouldn't do it again.

[Kosh]

GTVA cruisers are generally anti-fighter platforms, and should (though often not in the campaign) be deployed as such. They should never be deployed alone.

As for poor turret coverage, the Aeolus actually has excellent coverage; you can't go near it at any angle without getting blasted with torrents of flak. Unfortunately it is the exception, since the Fenris and Leviathan have some notable blind spots, although the Aten and Mentu certainly take the prize for the crappiest turret coverage.

As for shivan cruisers, their purpose is mostly fodder, except for the Lilith. The Cain in particular. It's anti-capital firepower is no better than an Aeolus, but it's anti-fighter weaponry pretty much sucks.

[Snail]

The Lilith's only good against capital ships, against fighters it's fodder.

[Kosh]

Not as much as the Cain, much better armor plus a pair of nasty cluster bomb launchers.

[nvsblmnc]

Personally, I think cruisers can be cut along three lines:

Standard - Carries a mix of weapons, jack-of-all-trades.  e.g. Fenris, Cain
Assault - Intended to hurt big ships fast, but vulnerable to fighters. e.g. Rakshasa, Lilith
Tactical - Primarily a defensive powerhouse, but with a limited ability to hit bigger ships. e.g. Aeolus (and perhaps Leviathan)

[IceyJones]

unfortunately an aeolus is also fodder when attacked by enough fighters. then it does not know which one to shoot first, as in the bastion guarding mission (guarded by 3 aeolus, which are popping during the first minute of the shivan attack) of fs2......

[Snail]

The Lilith is actually worse armed against fighters than the Cain because it has blob turrets instead of SLL and SHLs.

[Kosh]

unfortunately an aeolus is also fodder when attacked by enough fighters. then it does not know which one to shoot first, as in the bastion guarding mission (guarded by 3 aeolus, which are popping during the first minute of the shivan attack) of fs2......

Anything is fodder if you through enough bombers at it. Those cruisers were also all severly damaged.

[Desert Tyrant]

Two wings of Basilisks equipped with Hornets can toast a Fenris easy.

What doesn't, though?  The Fenris's armour is weak for a cruiser, it doesn't have enough AA beams, and the slasher beam it uses is of limited use.  (The GTC Fortune's slasher cannon in 'Endgame' barely does damage to the Iceni before it jumps.)

The Fenris is good for cruiser raids on friehgters and for rear guard duty, but not a whole lot else.  Then again, unlike the Leviathan, it's speed isn't too limited.

[Black Wolf]

Cruisers were built, I suspect, to project power intersystem without tying up a destroyer prior to intersystem jump drives on fighters. It's a silly system when you realy think about it - More moloch type dwarf carrier vessels would have been a better solution, with gunships playing the capship support and force projection role, but that's not what we were given.

[TrashMan]

unfortunately an aeolus is also fodder when attacked by enough fighters. then it does not know which one to shoot first, as in the bastion guarding mission (guarded by 3 aeolus, which are popping during the first minute of the shivan attack) of fs2......

Edit the mission, set the cruisers HP to 100 and watch the carnage.
F'course, if [V] did that in the original mission teh player would have nothing to do.

[achtung]

Arm a Leviathan with rapid-firing Maxims.

They tear through everything.