[QuantumDelta]

I've seen no links or material from the Devs.

[Mars]

Well lets see here, in bp-17 "Fallen Angel" we see that the Boreas, the Orestes, and the Miranda can pierce the Lucifers shields. The Lucifer was shown earlier in Freespace 1 and bp-03 "Lucifer" to be invulnerable to normal attacks.

The UEF is stated to use non-beam cannons, although they do have access to one Hyperion and one Chimera class vessel

. . . the GTC Duke, GTCv Labouchere, and GTL Solace had defected wholesale to the UEF.

We know that beam cannons are considered much more destructive than the weapons that Karuna's are armed with.

Believing the GTVA warships comparably armed to his own Karuna, Leicester engaged the Orestes while calling for the 3rd Fleet to respond. He promptly found his ship gutted by the Orestes’ plasma beams – the first occurrence of a tactical nightmare that would plague the UEF for the rest of the war.

Those anti-shipping weapons are either some type of projectile cannon:

Firing explosive-tipped ceramic rounds,

Excellent range and precision compensate for laughably small damage from a depleted uranium penetrator

Plasma cannons:

Jovian-designed Khatvanga rapid-fire plasma pulse weapon

in spite of vast improvements over its predecessor - doubled damage, enhanced range and projectile speed - the fundamental concept of the Great War-era plasma weapon was obsolete.

The Uller improves on older Djinn and Houndtooth designs primarily through improved power draw and heat generation.

(The Djinn and the Houndstooth are the FS1 era plasma turrets you see on everything from freighters to the Orion.)

Or anti-matter bomb

the GES-101 Apocalypse is an anti-ship torpedo empowered by the antimatter harvest of the Federation's Mercury-orbit stations.

The Federation's Mercury-orbit antimatter manufacturing stations have been active for decades. The result is a formidable stockpile of antimatter for use in heavy anti-warship torpedoes.

And we know that:

Unfortunately for Han-Ronald, these weapons continued to underperform against shielded fighter attack,

In the Great War

The fact that it is protected by a sheath shielding system which makes it completely impervious to any kind of kinetic or plasma damage makes it impossible to destroy.

Thus it is conjecture that the UEF cannot penetrate the Lucifers shields. Given that they've had 50 years to figure it out, it could be they've managed it. There is, however, no reason to think that they could except for this:

But let us say that it would be stupid of the UEF not to have thought long and hard about how to defeat those shields.

[Scotty]

Isn't bp-03 "Lucifer" a dream sequence?  I don't think that counts for canon with regards to ship capabilities, especially given that as you referenced, bp-17 "Fallen Angel" directly contradicts it.

[General Battuta]

Lucifer is not a dream sequence, it's a recording. You're thinking of Curse of Prescience.

[Scotty]

Orite.  Whoops.

Still, recent field data > 50 year old recording.

[Ravenholme]

Isn't bp-03 "Lucifer" a dream sequence?  I don't think that counts for canon with regards to ship capabilities, especially given that as you referenced, bp-17 "Fallen Angel" directly contradicts it.

Bp-17 doesn't contradict the point he is making, as the ships he mentions use beam cannons.

It actually makes his point.

[NGTM-1R]

I've seen no links or material from the Devs.

That's because you're a lazy asshole who can't take advice, go find it.

Actually it may have been in a Colossus thread, but I already wasted my daily allotted time for searching threads on you so unless you do it yourself I'm done for today.

[General Battuta]

i - what

what does those links have to do with anything BP, they're in Gen FS 

[Scotty]

Isn't bp-03 "Lucifer" a dream sequence?  I don't think that counts for canon with regards to ship capabilities, especially given that as you referenced, bp-17 "Fallen Angel" directly contradicts it.

Bp-17 doesn't contradict the point he is making, as the ships he mentions use beam cannons.

It actually makes his point.

Aaaaand all the non-beam weapons in the mission damage the Lucifer as well.  Contradicted.

[Droid803]

The beams have already shorted out the shields!

[MatthTheGeek]

General consensus on this has always been "The Tev beams have already got the shields" (remember the Lucy has been making multiple passes against the Orestes battlegroup, and we have no idea how long it takes to recharge the shields), or "Lucy realized it was against beam-armed opponents and shunt the shields into moar beam powa".

[Dragon]

Note that, because of Lucifer's enormous amount of HP, damage from anything other than beams and Vishnan weapons doesn't matter to it.
It most likely put shield power into it's forward beams, as BFReds (which it, IIRC, uses) are more powerfull than SSLs.

[MatthTheGeek]

It uses only HReds and LReds in that mission IIRC.

[Droid803]

LReds are basically the same as SSLs.
HReds are even better than that.

(at least IIRC)

[NGTM-1R]

i - what

what does those links have to do with anything BP, they're in Gen FS 

They're about QD denying the existence of statements by the FS Dev team regarding the Lucifer being vulnerable to FS2 weapons and beams in particular.

[karajorma]

That's because you're a lazy asshole who can't take advice, go find it.

Any further examples of flaming like that and you're spending a week not posting anywhere public.

And consider yourself lucky that I'm in too much of a hurry to actually monkey you on the spot.

[Dragon]

It uses only HReds and LReds in that mission IIRC.

Right, HReds.
They're still stronger than SSL beams.

[QuantumDelta]

Where are the statements?
They're not in the links, seriously, I have never ever seen such material.
There's been people posting inference of it based on the Collie's existance, but again, that could quite easily be a gamble on commands part.
Considering the amount of foolish mistakes GTA and GTVA command especially have made over the course of FS1, ST, and FS2 it's not really solid evidence even if they were to say it in the cutscene, which, they do not.
The entire issue is swept under the rug in FS2 because of the advent of the massive damage tag, which isn't shielding, and is never hinted to BE shielding, but basically does the same functional job from the players perspective except for the occasions where they're bombing, and most of the bombing missions in FS2 are very piece meal and unpolished compared to a vast majority of the others.

So yea, the reason you couldn't find it after your 'hours' of searching, is because as far as I can tell, it doesn't exist.
I'm not going to search for it because you think it exists.


BP, which isn't canon, has beams piercing shields, and I wouldn't be too surprised if some of the more powerful UEF weaponry could 'puncture' the shields too, but realistically speaking, that's BP canon. Not Retail.

[-Norbert-]

LReds are basically the same as SSLs.
HReds are even better than that.

(at least IIRC)

On medium difficulty two LRed and two HRed need the about the same time to destroy an Orion. While the HRed does more damage per salvo, the LRed has a higher refire rate. If I remember that little experiment correctly the LReds needed 3 salvos and the HReds only two, but took the same amount of time, but it's a few month since I tried that out, so maybe my memory is a bit fuzzy.

[Hades]

LReds are basically the same as SSLs.
HReds are even better than that.

(at least IIRC)

HReds are actually weaker than LReds, they're supposed to be between lreds and sreds in power, AFAIK.