[Galemp]

...The Terran-Vasudan War took fourteen years and came to a standstill, but the Great War against the Shivans took less than a month and they were utterly defeated in the end?

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Revisit the Great War at The Freespace-Freespace 2 Port Project

[an0n]

They weren't totally defeated. The Lucifer was only a scout. They had very little in the way of construction and repair facilities and only a few destroyers and cruisers and such. And lets not forget that in the 14 years of war neither side was able to level the others homeworld.

[Carl]

and let's not forget it was two against one.

[LAW ENFORCER]

the reason is becasue all they had were those piddly little laser things - it took months to get to the battle then it took months to blow up another ship!  

[LtNarol]

dont forget they both had about the same level of technological stupidity.  It took the shivans to get them to start thinking, "desperation is the best inspiration"

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[Tar-Palantir]

Acording to the info in the weapons data base (for the Subach HL-7 I think) in FS2, during the T-V War weapons which it turned out later would effect shields were consisered an extravigant waste of money. Of course they did not know at the time that they would effect shields. So before the Shivan's they had already done some experiments on lasers which would effect shields. So that research could go quite fast.

As for the fast ship research... that's anyones guess.

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'Honour the valiant who fall beneath your sword, but pity the warrior who slays all his foes.' - G'trok, in the poem lu geng

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[CP5670]

I have been wondering about this too. How long exactly was the Great War anyway?

Also, military R&D tends to go much faster during wartime since more funds are allocated to it and, of course, the people are driven by necessity. Still, this kind of time difference doesn't make any sense; the only thing I can think of is that FS1 might have went on for well over a year, but your pilot didn't have a mission every day.

[Galemp]

 

Originally posted by CP5670:
...but your pilot didn't have a mission every day.  

I just played the mission where you have to capture the Taranis, and afterwards Command says "Feel free to take a few days off. You deserve it." Thus implying that you do, in fact, have missions every day.

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"An evil mind is a constant comfort."
Revisit the Great War at The Freespace-Freespace 2 Port Project

[karajorma]

Maybe but you probably don`t see the boring missions in the game. We don`t get to see the patrol missions where nothing happens.  

[Eishtmo]

Technology can only advance so far in a long war.  In any case, the was an industrial scale war, meaning numbers were far more important than tech.  Just look at the Vasudans, they used the flying coffin (Anubis) for the majority of the war because they could crank them out by the thousands.  The Apollo was probably just as easy to mass produce.  Switching from a numbers game to a tech game became necessary because the Shivans had much, much higher numbers than both the Terrans and Vasudans combined.

Then you have to take in consideration resources.  Creating new, fancy fighters/ships is more expensive than using cheap, easy to build ones.  And as the 14 Year War ended, the game was more about bleeding the ********  white, not winning territory.  Just look at the losses in Operation Thresher!  If the pilots are going to die anyway, why give them good tech?  When the Shivans showed, they had to give out the good stuff, or be wiped out.  At least against each other, odds were good that there could still be a come back from near defeat.  Against the Shivans, no such idea existed.

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[CP5670]

 

I just played the mission where you have to capture the Taranis, and afterwards Command says "Feel free to take a few days off. You deserve it." Thus implying that you do, in fact, have missions every day.

But if they took breaks, then that shows that they do not have missions every day. There was probably no set interval between missions; sometimes it might have been weeks between missions, while at other times pilots were called into the field as soon as their previous mission ended. (depending on wartime situations)

[aldo_14]

 

Originally posted by CP5670:
But if they took breaks, then that shows that they do not have missions every day.   There was probably no set interval between missions; sometimes it might have been weeks between missions, while at other times pilots were called into the field as soon as their previous mission ended. (depending on wartime situations)

zigackly.... also, you probably don't fly every sortie a 'real life' couterpart would - that would probably make the game hundreds of misisons long.

Also, there are 2 key factors for the war vs the Shivans being shorter;

1 - Destruction of the Lucifer - the key ship which their ships relied upon.  Remember that, were it not for a pluck pilot named Alpha 1  , the GTVa would have been crushed in a few months by the Lucifer, not the other way round.

2- Shivan forces - the Shivans were pretty weak compared to later incarnations (Ravan, Sathanas, beam equipped ships etc), and their forces were mainly dependent on the Lucifer and Demon class destroyers for fighter / bomber support, whereas the GTVA would have Arcadias, etc for support.  Also, the GTVa had 2 full fleets, on a war footing.

3 - Scout wing - The Shivan force was only a small force, scouting the GTVA (according to the fS2 box  )

4 - Adaptation - the GTVA was able to (jointly) adapt Shivan tech for shields, etc.  Had either side had this in the TV war, they may have gained a tactical advantage.




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[IceFire]

I think FS1 goes from February to October of 2335.  The T-V war went on for such a long time because both sides were fairly evenly matched and probably at the onset of the war, the ships just didn't do what they could later on.  If the Shivans were just another set of Vasudans, The Great War would have lasted as long because neither side could gain a foothold.  The Great War ended quickly because the Shivans just anhiliated everything and pushed forward.

[an0n]

The Battle of Deneb was 28th feb. It says so on the FS2 intro.

[an0n]

Yeah, the Shivans didn't have to divert forces back to protect planets and stuff. They pushed on relentlessly and caused massive damage but didn't have enough support and so were worn down until the Lucifer was attacked directly.

[phreak]

 

Originally posted by IceFire:
I think FS1 goes from February to October of 2335.  The T-V war went on for such a long time because both sides were fairly evenly matched and probably at the onset of the war, the ships just didn't do what they could later on.  If the Shivans were just another set of Vasudans, The Great War would have lasted as long because neither side could gain a foothold.  The Great War ended quickly because the Shivans just anhiliated everything and pushed forward.

just checked the FS1 missions.. A1's first mission is 1/10/2335.  The last command briefing is in "Clash of the Titans" which occurs on 3/29/2335

[Eishtmo]

Yeah, he's right.  FS1 covers three months, from the beginning of January to the end of March.  The Great War itself probably ended late that year though.

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I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.