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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: DarthWang on June 24, 2005, 04:23:57 pm

Title: Meson bombs
Post by: DarthWang on June 24, 2005, 04:23:57 pm
I was just thinking, when the GTVA was trying to hold off the Sathanas fleet, why didn't they just strap engines on to some meson bombs and fire them at the juggernauts? Maybe give them some armor too so they would be hard to shoot down.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Jetmech Jr. on June 24, 2005, 04:30:58 pm
Meson Bombs aren't that impressive against Juggernauts, and the GTVA didn't have enough to do the job.

And no armor the GTVA had would be able to protect the bombs from Sathanas guns.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Ghostavo on June 24, 2005, 04:31:20 pm
Because the shivans might... blow the meson bombs up before they could detonate? Or perhaps they were in short supply? There's a whole lot of reasons for them not to do that.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Unknown Target on June 24, 2005, 04:44:24 pm
Have you ever launched a bomb from far away at a Shivan ship?
Have you ever watched that bomb get blown apart in seconds?
Have you ever wondered what would happen if the bomb was twenty times as large?

That would be what sending a Meson Bomb would be like.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Nuke on June 24, 2005, 05:06:43 pm
a magnetic accelerator assisted meson torpedo traveling at 600 m/s would do the job :D now who here is crazy enough to make one of those :D
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: TrashMan on June 24, 2005, 05:10:30 pm
Give it good engines and make the bomb jump in behind the Sath and 2-3 of them will take it out.

I recall seing the ani of the bastion - it was full of meson bombs - at least 25 of them. That + nierd around 50 bombs at least.

You can take out a few Saths with that...
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: aldo_14 on June 24, 2005, 05:11:30 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
Give it good engines and make the bomb jump in behind the Sath and 2-3 of them will take it out.

I recall seing the ani of the bastion - it was full of meson bombs - at least 25 of them. That + nierd around 50 bombs at least.

You can take out a few Saths with that...


Strangely, juggernauts and their fighter escort are very good at blowing up cargo pods.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Jetmech Jr. on June 24, 2005, 05:14:24 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
Give it good engines and make the bomb jump in behind the Sath and 2-3 of them will take it out.

I recall seing the ani of the bastion - it was full of meson bombs - at least 25 of them. That + nierd around 50 bombs at least.

You can take out a few Saths with that...


Yeah, 1. Maybe 2.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2005, 05:22:11 pm
Only takes 2 to take down a Sath.

Precise jumps would be required, but if you enter close enough to the target it wouldn't really matter. Of course, the GTVA lacks the technology for jumps that precise.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Jetmech Jr. on June 24, 2005, 05:54:11 pm
Quote
Originally posted by ngtm1r
Only takes 2 to take down a Sath.

Precise jumps would be required, but if you enter close enough to the target it wouldn't really matter. Of course, the GTVA lacks the technology for jumps that precise.


The hell are you talking about? The Meson Bombs explosion damage is only 50,000.

Sathanas has 1,000,000 hitpoints.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2005, 05:55:50 pm
Hmm...odd then that people have repeatedly quoted the "2" figure...

How does shockwave function? Possibly applies damage again as it hits different parts of a larger object...?
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Jetmech Jr. on June 24, 2005, 05:57:32 pm
I dunno.

Maybe these people misread it as 500000 instead of 50000.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: karajorma on June 24, 2005, 06:38:03 pm
Command answers the question the first time we ever hear of the meson bomb actually :)

Quote
Though its specifications are highly classifed, physicists claim the meson bomb has more explosive power than any other warhead in our arsenal, sufficient to destroy any small craft within a three-kilometer radius. The size of the bomb prohibits tactical deployment.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: DarthWang on June 24, 2005, 07:26:44 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Jetmech Jr.
Meson Bombs aren't that impressive against Juggernauts, and the GTVA didn't have enough to do the job.

And no armor the GTVA had would be able to protect the bombs from Sathanas guns.


That's assuming you fired them directly in front of the Sath at very low velocity.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Nuclear1 on June 24, 2005, 07:38:26 pm
The fact is that any warhead that gets launched is going to travel at low velocity, even when you have a good engine on its back--the Harbinger bomb had a Class II fighter engine strapped on the back, but it still was a slow bomb, simply because of the amount of space that was taken up by the actual warhead material.

Now try strapping anything onto a Meson bomb and sending it at any respectable speed at a juggernaut which has sufficient firepower on any side to destroy something as thinly armored as a cargo container in a split second.

The GTVA decided instead to put a whole bunch of these warheads into thickly-armored, tried-and-true Orion-class combat vessels that are designed to take a lot of crap from bombers and warships and sent one in with a huge escort and the other in from secure space to exploit a tactic which they had strong beliefs toward being effective.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: DarthWang on June 24, 2005, 08:05:26 pm
So gut a Leviathon and put one inside, then send it at the Sathanas.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Solatar on June 24, 2005, 08:37:25 pm
well, there were about 80 of them...
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 24, 2005, 08:37:39 pm
Anything short of a Deimos would be easy prey for a Sathanas + fighter escort.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Ghostavo on June 24, 2005, 08:59:14 pm
Quote
Originally posted by DarthWang
So gut a Leviathon and put one inside, then send it at the Sathanas.


Have you seen the speed of a leviathan or a fenris? Remember in FS1 where you had to defend 2 ships involved in "Project Tsunami" (can't remember exactly the ships) against a shivan onslaught? Imagine something far worse.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Boomer on June 24, 2005, 10:53:08 pm
Hey, here's some eye candy!

Ladies and gentlemen....

Now you see them.....
(http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y270/Salawat/nowyouseethem.bmp)

And now you don't...

(http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y270/Salawat/screen07.bmp)

Viva la UBERBOMB!
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Carl on June 24, 2005, 10:58:57 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Jetmech Jr.
no armor the GTVA had would be able to protect the bombs from Sathanas guns.


but by the time the bombs get close enough that they are in range of the sathanas's guns, blowing them up would still hurt the sath quite a bit.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Ghostavo on June 24, 2005, 11:03:45 pm
The Meson bomb being destroyed wouldn't trigger the same explosion as the detonation of it, otherwise command (with it's great and wise plans) wouldn't have tried to make you stop the shivans fighters from destroying the meson bomb during the knossos portal demolition.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 25, 2005, 01:44:41 am
Actually, I don't think Command really thought that through...

(http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/attachment.php?postid=475488)
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: karajorma on June 25, 2005, 03:45:20 am
Quote
Originally posted by DarthWang
So gut a Leviathon and put one inside, then send it at the Sathanas.


They didn't send one against the first Sathanas because by the time they had gutted a Leviathan, installed a Meson bomb and sent it in the Sath the events of High Noon had already occured. Gutting a Leviathan is a big task. (And that's assuming that it wouldn't fail for any of the other good reasons stated elsewhere on the thread).

 I'll bet that the Command refitted the Bastion and Nereid soon after the first Sathanas came though as a fallback plan.


It's also worth pointing out (yet again :rolleyes: ) that the Meson is experimental and they may not have the huge numbers of them that people are assuming exist.


The Sathanas fleet is described as having surrounded Capella. In the outro we only see about 10 or so Saths so it seems likely that they had arranged themselves in maybe 8 clumps in different places around Capella.
 We already know that a single meson bomb isn't sufficient to take out a Sathanas and the Saths are spaced out sufficiently that the explosion of a meson bomb near one Sath won't affect the others.


So to take out the Sathanas fleet we'd need a co-ordinated attack at maybe 8 different places, using 160 terran capships or so which have been gutted and filled with an experimental weapon which have been produced in mass numbers in the day or so since Command learnt of the existance of the Sathanas fleet.

Or they could realise they're f**ked and just blow up the EP and Vega nodes with the probably pre-prepaired Orions.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: TrashMan on June 25, 2005, 09:05:32 am
Quote
Originally posted by Ghostavo
The Meson bomb being destroyed wouldn't trigger the same explosion as the detonation of it, otherwise command (with it's great and wise plans) wouldn't have tried to make you stop the shivans fighters from destroying the meson bomb during the knossos portal demolition.


Actually, the shivans were attacking the TRANSPORTS that went to deploy the bombs. you have to protect them so tht the bombs could be precisey placed and the transpoert could escape.

shivans blowing the bombs while the transports are still there = dead crewmembers.
Title: Meson bombs
Post by: Ghostavo on June 25, 2005, 06:27:20 pm
Except the transport had already departed when the bomb was going to be detonated and command ordered you to destroy those fighters.