Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: AlphaOne on May 12, 2006, 04:57:55 am
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WEll here is a thought that came into mi head. I mean could the GTVA actualy convert some of its warships i mean the basic design into something else.
For example could u corvert the basic frame or shape of the Deimos from a corvette into a small carrier fo example.
Also I believe that with the Orion beeing phased out of production as a warship which in mi belief is a grave mistake could u actualy use the hull, shape or wghatever u want to call it of an Orion and convert it into a carrier. I mean stripped out of all the beams and extra raectors to power its beam cannons you could actualy obtain a raesonable area which to convert into a fighterbay or something like that.
Also the viceversa is wanted i mean taking a Hecate strppit of its fighterbay or rather reducing it to say 50 fighter or something like that and make it as deadly against capships as the Orion.
I don mean create an uber ship but rather use existing desins to create new classes of warships. Its like with cars you have the same technichal platform used on 2,3 or even 4 cars. Which although are totaly different and some even have diferent uses they actualy use the same platform.
Would that be fesible could that actualy be done and if so what would actualy be the tradeoffs. Wouldnt it be cheaper then designing testing and building a new class of warships???
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Sooo.... you want to convert the Orion to a Hecate and convert the Hecate to an Orion?
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nope thats not what i said! I wanted to know if it is fesable to convert an Orion into a dedicated carrer. And convert for example a hecate so that it still carryes some fighters etc but is as deadly as an Orion. Also how many fighters could you fit into a corvette for example ! There would be tradeoffs in weapons capacity and perhaps even in armour but i just wanted to know if it would be ralistic to do so from a Fs point of view.
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nope thats not what i said! I wanted to know if it is fesable to convert an Orion into a dedicated carrer. And convert for example a hecate so that it still carryes some fighters etc but is as deadly as an Orion.
So you want to convert the Orion to a Hecate and convert the Hecate to an Orion.
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Convert the amazon into a Collossus.
Yes I realise that's not even funny but I'm bored so I'm saying it anyway.
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Orion is full of stuff needed to power the huge amount of weapons it got.
Hecate is bigger and got less weapons so it has more space in it to host more fighters and bombers than Orion.
Of course you can dope a Hecate almost full of stuff to power up additional weapons, or strip an Orion of its weapons to get some empty space inside it to host additional fighters/bombers.
It just doesn't make any sense. GTVA has moved towards smaller, faster ships with fearsome firepower (effectively, corvettes and to smaller extent, cruisers) that divide the firepower into smaller units, so if one unit gets destroyed the others can keep on fighting, whereas if a single Orion/Hecate gets blown the battle is over. Kinda the same trend as with Navy tactical development in real world (tm).
The two destroyers have their own roles, diverting them from one another would be time-and resource-consuming operation and the results would be an Orion with probably less armament than a Hecate and with a fighter complement perhaps rivalling one of Hecate's, and a Hecate with armaments perhaps some amount over Orion and with a fighter compliment of perhaps a little over an Orion. Not really worth all the money, time and resources for the GTVA but if you want to do that in a campaign and manage to invent a believable reason, go ahead. :D On the other hand, when did the GTVA High Command become known of their ability to think logically and make smart decisions?
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Well its feasable certainly but why bother? They're phasing out the Orion yes but they'll only be going to moffballs, they're not going to be torn up or anything (it'd cost more than it'd be worth) and'll still be there if the GTVA needs them so why bother putting your existing ships through an expensive refit program to improve their armaments when you've already have their bruisers in reserve?
The reason the Orion is being slowly phased out isn't becuase it's old, its becuase untill the start of the NTF rebellion its peace time. You dont need bruisers in peacetime, you need your faster fighter packed patrol ships like the Hecate that can blancket the important points in a star system with its fighters and happilly sit there and interdict a jumpnode while it waits. So you put your bruisers into storage (which is more cost effective than first paying to scrap them, then paying to build new ones later) and wait for the next war.
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The Orion is being phased out because bombers own the battlefield now, and whoever has the best ability to deliver and survive bomber attacks will win wars, rather than who has the biggest guns on their capital ships. Even if you look at the Sathanas, that was effectively taken out using a wing of Boanerges.
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What's the point in converting an Orion into a carrier? By the time you'd done it you'd end with a ship less powerful than one custom designed for the task and probably pay a significant portion of the cost.
And that's ignoring the whole Destroyer IS a carrier attitude that seems to be prevailent in the FS2 universe.
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What's the point in converting an Orion into a carrier? By the time you'd done it you'd end with a ship less powerful than one custom designed for the task and probably pay a significant portion of the cost.
And that's ignoring the whole Destroyer IS a carrier attitude that seems to be prevailent in the FS2 universe.
To the extent that the FS1 reference bible calls the Orion explicitly a "carrier/destroyer", may I add :)
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Well the arguments are sound but i cant but fell missunderstood. I nevre wanted to change the roles of the 2 ships just wanted to create spinoffs. Some of the Orions that were moftballed i thought could be onverted to carry some 200 fighters perhaps? Oh and about the weaponry i thought i said it gets stripped of its weaponry well most of it.
While the hecate would get stripped of most of its fighterbay in exchange fo some more powerfull weaponry not necesaryli more.
But then again youre probably right ! It would be cheaper to build a new ship for the specific task.
Also while the arguement regarding smaller more mobile ships with powerfull beams does hold some ground when i think of the Iceni it makes me tremble. Perhaps that is what the GTVa should concentrate in the future better corvettes and frigates while the destroyers are brought up for fighter support and if the situation requires it some more firepower.
Thanx for the replies they managed to point me in a reasonable good direction!
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Even if you look at the Sathanas, that was effectively taken out using a wing of Boanerges.
Don't you mean either the Ravana taken out by a wing of Boanerges, or the Sathanas tactically taken out by a wing of Bakhas?
I agree with you on the bombers owning the field idea. The Orion dominated in the days when fighters were unshielded or when shield systems had just been integrated into Allied tactics during the Great War or Reconstruction era. Of course, now that strikecraft have a much higher survival ability, large offensive ships aren't necessary where a wing or two of heavily-shielded bombers will suffice.
Refitting the Orion and Hecate for the roles you described would just be what aldo mentioned: switching the roles. Strip an Orion's firepower to give it more fighters, it's more of a carrier. Give a Hecate more firepower with less firepower, it loses its carrier role.
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Even if you look at the Sathanas, that was effectively taken out using a wing of Boanerges.
Don't you mean either the Ravana taken out by a wing of Boanerges, or the Sathanas tactically taken out by a wing of Bakhas?
Bakhas? *nips off* Ah, so it was. Strange; I always thought it was the Boanerges (interesting how having a common HUD blurs the mind).
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The Hecate can carry 12.5 squadrons of fighters to the Orions 8, effectivly giving it 156% the capacity of the Orion, it presumably also features enhanced C&C capability, and still posesses considerable frontal firepower. Granted, the Orion was a far better warship by itself, that extra 4.5 squadrons could make quite a difference in battle (if the Orion doesn't have Alpha 1 on board, that is.) Also realize that the squadron numbers don't nessesarially include stored fighter parts. (for all we know a destroyer can have an extra two squadrons if parts.)
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Woo niow that u've mentioned it that did not ome to mind! I alwais presumed that they received theyr spare parts and stuff like that via transports. but it does make sense to keep that mani spare parts around just in case u get into the heat of battle for too long and no resuply route available!
Also I have come to suspect that the GTVA high-command are actualy drones put there by the shivans ! I mean theyr brains were taken out and replace by some artificial controle thing..! It would explain theyr stupidity!
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Woo niow that u've mentioned it that did not ome to mind! I alwais presumed that they received theyr spare parts and stuff like that via transports. but it does make sense to keep that mani spare parts around just in case u get into the heat of battle for too long and no resuply route available!
Hmm. Or, perchance, if the enemy was attacking you logistics........nah, could never happen.
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No I think the player is supposed to get the impression GTVA command is covering somthing up, but that they're not incompetent.
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Yeah, well, they did clearly give that impression in Romans' Blunder with all that "I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense" -thing going on. Sadly, that plot line seems to have been forgotten in :v:, and you actually never find out was there something more behind the NTF and ETAK than a rampaging admiral and medieval painter, Aken Bosch. You also don't find out what actually happened to said admiral after all. You have your hands full of stopping the second Shivan incursion and other random stuff like that.
Anyway, when I first time played through the campaign and got pwned by Capella star (of course I did, I was about ten clicks from it when I got the first warning, battling some dragons and trying to destroy bombers) and watched through that sentimental end cinematics and heard the speech of admiral Petrarch, the first impression was "wait a second... did I miss something, or did someone forget something out of this game?" Actually I've always thought that when Alpha 1 perishes at Capella, it's a much more fitting end to the story than surviving the supernova in a nick of time - and it also adds up to "conspiracy"-impression. It's like this: maybe the command did try to cover something up. What it was, we can only guess. My guess is obviously that admiral Bosch's NTF and ETAK were originally a GTVA covert operation related to investigating shivans and perhaps even to try and contact them. Or something related, there's so many plot lines without clear close-up when you take a closer look on what happens.
Anywa, what the secret was is really not important. The point is, when Alpha 1 became the prominent fighter pilot of the GTVA, he practically went through every important things in the war and saw a *lot* of things: Iceni being let escape, Arthur Roemig's ship in the nebula, all alone
in the fog... covert operations inside NTF, triumph of Colossus over the Sathanas (which was of course completely teethless because of Alpha 1's tedious Helios hammering), and the fall of Colossus for practically nothing. How fitting that even though the science probes detected increasing subspace distortions around Capella, they put Alpha 1 in... and yet they found out about Capella going supernova only about a minute before the radiation and following shockwave reached the battlezone. Of course it was necessary to try and protect the civilian craft, but it also offered the command to get rid of a war hero who also happened to be "a man who knew too much".
This all would of course have been pursued and found out in a sequel, FS3. That's quite obvious at least to me. Unfortunately, :v: never had a chance to really make another sequel... so the open plot lines actually can come very useful as a subject of community campaigns.
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Is it worth it to kill 10,000 people in transports to kill one person who you could just prick with a poisined medal while your pinning it on him?
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:lol:
No... It's more like command thinks like this: "Oh crap, we have to get rid of this guy who knows too much. Oh, Capella might go supernova and we still have thousands of civvies on there, being attacked by bombers. We're screwed.
...wait...
We can hit two flies with ones stroke: let's put Alpha 1 there to harass the bombers so a bit more Civvies might get away from there, and Alpha 1 might die too..."
It's not like they would've let Capella blow if they could've prevented it, but honestly, I can't believe they wouldn't have at least suspected of something like that happening, what with strange subspace distortions increasing and about 80 Sathanasi around the star. The could have hinted their pilots to keep close to the node in case something like that happened... but they didn't. Granted it might just be that they did suspect but decided not to tell the pilots until it became reality, because if the fighters had kept that close to the node, they wouldn't have been able to protect civilians. Anyway, that's just pure speculation and it might just be that they just didn't see it coming (though they would have ben quite stupid not to at least suspect it.
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I very much doubt that Bosch was a secret operative of the GTVA. His monologues contain all kinds of things that make it seem very unlikely.
As a young pilot, I battled against the rebels of the Great War, the Galactic Terran Intelligence, whose research of Shivan technology and biology would form the cornerstone of my project. The Terran-Vasudan Alliance buried this knowledge, but I resurrected it. I alone realized our species had no future with the Vasudans. If we are to survive, our destiny must lie elsewhere.
Doesn't really sound like the words of someone who is working for the GTVA to me.
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Then, the GTVA (or rather, some faction inside it) is working for Bosch.
Bosch (and perhaps his co-pilots, but they are not montioned) found out things that GTI people were working on; GTVA buried them but didn't bury Bosch. So, perhaps there were other people like Bosch, who knew something about the Shivans that GTVA command was not willing to give into public? And perhaps these people were sympathetic to Bosch's cause (not the xenophobic movement, but the communicating with Shivans -thing)? It's possible there were more people in GTVA with similar records wih mr. Bosch: fought in GTI rebellion, found out something (what, we can again just guess), got themselves into positions of some influence, like admirals or generals and stuff like that.
Why did the Command let Bosch escape? Without giving reasons on or off the record? Any way, there definitely is something fishy about Bosch, and his Shivan-related activities, and the open plot lines do suggest that a sequel would have told us more about it, but it seems it never will do that now.
...does anyone else find it disturbing that we're debating of wheter or not there was some kind of a conspiracy going on in a fictional universe? Bah, perhaps there were no conspiracy, just spies giving bogus co-ordinates and conjuring sabotage on fire control systems of cap ships and stuff like that. But then again, you'd have to discredit the GTVI for not finding out and thwarting these counter-covert operations, if that's even a word.
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Why did the Command let Bosch escape? Without giving reasons on or off the record? Any way, there definitely is something fishy about Bosch, and his Shivan-related activities, and the open plot lines do suggest that a sequel would have told us more about it, but it seems it never will do that now.
Command likely let Bosch escape in Deneb due to his promise to withdraw NTF forces from the system and allow the GTVA to relieve itself of a three-front civil war. Command likely deliberately gave Alpha wing the wrong coordinates in order to allow Bosch to withdraw to Sirius, but still deployed the wing to allow the GTVA to destroy NTF ships en route to the node once Bosch was away.
My guess is obviously that admiral Bosch's NTF and ETAK were originally a GTVA covert operation related to investigating shivans and perhaps even to try and contact them. Or something related, there's so many plot lines without clear close-up when you take a closer look on what happens.
Well, we already know that ETAK was a project designed before the NTF regime, however not by the GTVA. I highly doubt that the GTVA had planned on the NTF rebellion either: likely, they sent tired old Bosch with a fleet to a backwater system to keep him happy and out of the picture.
Actually I've always thought that when Alpha 1 perishes at Capella, it's a much more fitting end to the story than surviving the supernova in a nick of time - and it also adds up to "conspiracy"-impression.
I agree with the first part of this statement, but not with the conspiracy idea. Alpha 1's death due to the supernova seems a fitting end to the story because it offers some closure for Alpha 1; he perishes, but he does it, as Petrarch says, selflessly defending civilians like a GTVA pilot should, and doesn't have to live through post-traumatic stress that he would have likely endured had he survived.
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It's not like they would've let Capella blow if they could've prevented it, but honestly, I can't believe they wouldn't have at least suspected of something like that happening, what with strange subspace distortions increasing and about 80 Sathanasi around the star.
This is much more believable, to borrow a quote, as "a failure of imagination" then a conspiracy. To destroy a star is so far outside of the realm of possiblity as the GTVA understands it that it never occured to anyone to even wonder if that's what the Shivans were trying to do, much less actually doing. I suspect that the GTVA's physicists are going to be scratching their heads over how it was accomplished for at least a decade.
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Assuming, of course, the Shivans intended to supernova the star.
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What ever happened to that carrier-style modification of the Orion, the one with an extra runway going diagonally out the other side from the normal hanger? I'd search for it myself, but the Search is being a real b**** and keeps nagging at me to be more f***ing specific...
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Assuming, of course, the Shivans intended to supernova the star.
That too.
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What ever happened to that carrier-style modification of the Orion, the one with an extra runway going diagonally out the other side from the normal hanger? I'd search for it myself, but the Search is being a real b**** and keeps nagging at me to be more f***ing specific...
Back when TrashMan was re-doing his Orion MK2, some of use were giving suggestions about flight deck options, and one was for an angled flight deck. It never happenned. His revised model had a shorter flight deck on the Port side.
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well even if the shivans did not intend for the star to go supernova you can rest asured that GTVA scientists will finda way to recreate the conditions that led to its eventual destruction. Why? Well because it might make for a good weapon against the shivans and because humans are just that wai alwais seking for more powerfull wais of crushing your enemies.
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I think you need a good number of juggernaughts for that to work.
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well even if the shivans did not intend for the star to go supernova you can rest asured that GTVA scientists will finda way to recreate the conditions that led to its eventual destruction. Why? Well because it might make for a good weapon against the shivans and because humans are just that wai alwais seking for more powerfull wais of crushing your enemies.
If a bunch of feudal knights saw a nuclear weapon they'd probably think that was a great weapon too. Doesn't mean they'd be able to replicate it.
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well even if the shivans did not intend for the star to go supernova you can rest asured that GTVA scientists will finda way to recreate the conditions that led to its eventual destruction. Why? Well because it might make for a good weapon against the shivans and because humans are just that wai alwais seking for more powerfull wais of crushing your enemies.
Yes, because it's piss easy for the GTVA to build 80 5km long vessels, find Shivan space, slip them through an unstable node, surround a star undetected, blow it and probably most of those 80 ships up, and thus deny the use of a star system to the Shivans.....who don't have any interest in holding territory anyways.
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Knowing the GTVA they would try and do that. Cause they're all on space- :pimp:
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Well, keep in mind that little probe the gtva had in the system checking out the sun with the sathani around it sending data back on what was happening to it. They could replicate if they wanted, they certainly don't have the resources for it. I don't really know here, but to get a supernova going don't you have to remove some of the stars mass to ruin the helium hydrogen balance, and then it blows? If sathani were doing that via a subspace field, maybe they were actually like warping some of the stars mass out of the system, the whole star was surrounded by sathani engulfing it in a subspace field. As far as the sathani warping out just before the star blew, you don't need a subspace node to do an in-system jump. I don't know where the sathani were able to go if they did an in-system jump, not like they would get far enough away from the nova. Unless they can actually get far enough away from the nova doing an in-system jump to somewhere else :) In other words, maybe the shivans pulled another "ross128" out of their asses ;)
Anyways, that's my theory, maybe the shivans did an in-system jump somewhere else, and maybe a star going nova can extend an in-system jump range considerably. So yeah, keywords here, in-system jump style that went "ross128" style.
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Actually my suggestion to "Whatever happened to Star Capella" would be that the Shivans speeded up the local time around the star as the cost of their subspace traveling, making the star to produce energy with much greater apparent power. This power was then probably coupled to subspace devices of the Sathanasi, which allowed them to create a node of their preference, leading to pretty much whereever they wanted to go.
In short - they probably just happened to speed up the aging process of Capella by several magnitudes. The star went through millions of years of energy producing years in those few seconds there, and then it blew up.
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Well, keep in mind that little probe the gtva had in the system checking out the sun with the sathani around it sending data back on what was happening to it. They could replicate if they wanted, they certainly don't have the resources for it. I don't really know here, but to get a supernova going don't you have to remove some of the stars mass to ruin the helium hydrogen balance, and then it blows? If sathani were doing that via a subspace field, maybe they were actually like warping some of the stars mass out of the system, the whole star was surrounded by sathani engulfing it in a subspace field. As far as the sathani warping out just before the star blew, you don't need a subspace node to do an in-system jump. I don't know where the sathani were able to go if they did an in-system jump, not like they would get far enough away from the nova. Unless they can actually get far enough away from the nova doing an in-system jump to somewhere else :) In other words, maybe the shivans pulled another "ross128" out of their asses ;)
Anyways, that's my theory, maybe the shivans did an in-system jump somewhere else, and maybe a star going nova can extend an in-system jump range considerably. So yeah, keywords here, in-system jump style that went "ross128" style.
That's like saying that Victorian era Brits could create an H-bomb after seeing Castle Bravo.
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i did not say they would do uit imediatly i sai that they would eventualy do that! And by the looks of thins i man the spped with wich the GTVa is actualy reverse engeniering shivan tech some better then the original some not so good they will eventualy be able to recreate the conditions of the cappella supernova without actualy having to build 80 jugs.
We all know how fast they adopted the shield tech. and how fast they managed to adapt the flux cannon tech of the lucier and even improve on it. Sure the Sivans managed to do a better job at it but hey they are a thousands of years ahead of the GTVA.
I mean if the GTVA keeps this up in about 50 years time they will be much much closer to the shivan tech then anyone else. I mean we could even presume that they will be almost on equal terms regarding weapons and stuff with the shivans and maibe a little behind them but still they would of closed off much of the huge technological gap between them.
So i ave faith in the GTVA not its commanders who are idiots but the scientists.
Also maibe for once the GTVA will win a god damn war against its enemies.(i'm not inclueding the NTF here).
Oki so there were onli the shivans but still they are quite anoing bastards. whwnerver youre getting all proud of yourself they come in and bust your party. that suck's. Also i have a rather personal problem against the for tryng to blow up such a beutiful ship like the Aquitane. Sure its not much of a ship(in terms of its beam cannons) but its a beutiful ship. I just want the GTVA to get even for once instead of getiing a bloody nose,arms,leg chest,head and well practicly beaten the living dailights out of it!
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I don't really know here, but to get a supernova going don't you have to remove some of the stars mass to ruin the helium hydrogen balance, and then it blows?
No. For a supernova to occur, the mass of a star, particularily its core, needs to exceed 1.2 solar masses (IIRC). Therefore you can do this by either finding a way to add mass to the core of the star, which would need to be made of heavier elements to avoid being flung upwards by thermal expansion, or by stealing energy from the star. A star is a ballance of gravity which is attempting to compress the star into a smaller and smaller space, and the forces of expansion generated by heat from the thermonuclear reaction. If you can remove the radiant energy from the star and its core, then the star may collapse in on itself and generate a supernova. Personally, I think that this second method is the more likely. The subspace field generated by 80 Saths, was bleeding the star's energy into subspace. Since the subspace field generated by the Saths had been going on for some time, it also fits (better) with the amount of time the loss of energy would take to have an effect on a star. This is displayed by the fact that it takes 50 years for radiant energy from our sun to travel from the core of the star where fusion is taking place, to its surface where it is expelled into space. So every moment the Saths were generating the subspace field, more and more energy was being robbed from the star, until gravity took over with a vengance, forcing the collapse and subsequent supernova.
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That's pretty much the theory I've posted a couple of times in the past (couple of errors in the numbers but that's unimportant). Natural supernovas occur when the star attempts to perform fusion on the iron generated earlier in the star's life. Since that takes in rather than gives out energy the star collapses as a result. If you could remove the energy from the core of a star you could cause it to collapse even if it wasn't a star that would naturally go supernova.
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What about chucking a Stargate SG-1 and using a wormhole or subspace gateway to bleed mass from the outer layers of a given star until the reactions pushing outward becomes more than the mass pushing inward, would that not also trigger a Supernova event?
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Well, Nova and Supernova...hey what about a Hypernova (Collapsar) ?, fits perfect for xenocidal species...
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i did not say they would do uit imediatly i sai that they would eventualy do that! And by the looks of thins i man the spped with wich the GTVa is actualy reverse engeniering shivan tech some better then the original some not so good they will eventualy be able to recreate the conditions of the cappella supernova without actualy having to build 80 jugs.
Yeah, cos the Shivans were just so sloppy in that one. I mean, pff, you'd think in millenia they'd have figured out blowing up a star and escaping with less than 80 juggernauts, but noooooooo............GTVA will have one whipped up in about a week, Now they just have to find somewhere to test it......
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hmm well i didnt mean to say that aldo . you should really stop twisting the words around.
All i was tryng to point out is that the GTVA has a talent for improving or recreating with its own tech the weapons of its enemyes. Some of them work better then others. That said i have no doubht thet they will eventualy manage to recreate the conditions which led to the supernova without actualy building 80 jugs. Maibe some other devices sure i'm not saing that they will stick a fighter there and cause a supernova by creating a subspace filed around the fighter. I'm just sayng that at the rate the GTVA is improving its technology they will be able to catch up with the shivans technologicly i mean a lot faster then anyone thinks.
Also i would imagine they would invest a huge amount of time and resources and money into subspace research. I mean better subspace engines etc. Now they also have the knossos tech from wich to improve. So who knows maibe given a reasonable amount of time they eould actualy cause a star to go supernova with realative ease.
All i'm saing is that nothing that the shivans can or will throw at the GTVA wont be reversd engeniered at some point by the GTVA or even improved. The terran Mara is the best example of that. They managed to get it working even better then the original.
Now is that specific and "realistic" enough ???
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Honestly...right, firstly it's rather daft to suggest what took the Shivans years to develop using 80 juggernauts can be replicated in a single fighter. I'd wager it to be against the laws of (freespace) physics for one thing. Now, assuming the GTVA can even begin to develop the same technology level as the Shivans is rather difficult to justify.... for one thing, they can't use unstable nodes, nor do they have any form of impermeable shield. Even assuming we've seen all the Shivans current tech whch, according to the laws of sequels, is highly unlikely.
So we have the concept of matching a moving barrier in technology terms. Let's not forget 'a huge amount of time and resources and money' into research. where does all this come from? The fleet is devastated, there are something like 100m refugees from Capella to be rehoused, and on top of that you have the worry of racial/species schisms in the aftermath of the NTF rebellion. But that'll all solve itself, because we have to pour money into research! To catch up over 8,000 years, let's not forget.
And just to note the Terran Mara example.... it's a little different to capture and even optimize a craft, than to be capable of developing it. Perhaps a bit like the difference between putting together a Pc from components, to being able to design and manufacture new components. That's if we assume Shivan fighters are the pinnacle of their engineering, which is in itself a little dodgy as they piss the things away like there's no tomorrow.
Anyways, we have this concept of a supernova weapon. So, what use is this technology to the GTVA that would lead them to prioritise it? About, I'd suggest, bugger all. They don't know where Shivan territory is, let alone being able to reach, let alone whether the Shivans have territory which, based on FS1 and 2, the probably don't. Moreso, using the weapon would destroy any GTVA forces in the vicinity (as well as the system itself and all its resources, meaning any defensive use is pointless, and offensive use would mean you would have increasingly overstretched supply lines, even if the nodes were there to allow an aggressive attack, which they probably wouldn't be).
So what advantage does this give that destroying the node doesn't? Er, none. Unless 'mass suicide' is an advantage.
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WEll if u look carefull i said: " Maibe some other devices sure i'm NOT saing that they will stick a fighter there and cause a supernova by creating a subspace filed around the fighter." Also since when does the stupidity of a weapon or its use managed to halt its developement?? Yes i'l give you the fact that the shivans are at least in terms of subspace way ahaed of the GTVA but the difference in other areas is not so big. I mean yeah sure u could use another 20 or 30 or even 50 years of developing that thing in order to get it to shivan specs but the again i failed to see them perform poorly just because they were less advanced then theyr counterparts. Infact i can safely say that some designs were better then theyr shivan counterparts.
I'm not tryng to say that the GTVA will become more tech advanced over night but in time i believ that teh diference between the two sides will begin to shink and who knows eventualy dissapear.
Also we tend to see a sort of stagnation of the shivan tech advances. i mean if you look carefully at it u can see that they had or have the same ships that they used to defeat the Ancients with. So the shivans in mi bilef are on a stalemate reagarding theyr technological evolutin. no more big tech brakethroughs and stuff like that while the GTVA is barely at its beginning.
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Also since when does the stupidity of a weapon or its use managed to halt its developement??
So you admit it's stupid?
Yes i'l give you the fact that the shivans are at least in terms of subspace way ahaed of the GTVA but the difference in other areas is not so big. I mean yeah sure u could use another 20 or 30 or even 50 years of developing that thing in order to get it to shivan specs but the again i failed to see them perform poorly just because they were less advanced then theyr counterparts. Infact i can safely say that some designs were better then theyr shivan counterparts.
In most of the major engagements in FS2 the Shivans explicitly stated by either command or in-mission characters to be superior. Also, any weaker performance by a Shivan ship has to be wieghed against its' quantity and deployment, i.e. the necessity of high technology for a cannon fodder fighter is debatable.
Again assuming we've seen the Shivan technological peak, of course.
Also we tend to see a sort of stagnation of the shivan tech advances. i mean if you look carefully at it u can see that they had or have the same ships that they used to defeat the Ancients with. So the shivans in mi bilef are on a stalemate reagarding theyr technological evolutin. no more big tech brakethroughs and stuff like that while the GTVA is barely at its beginning.
Er, what? We know this how?
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Hey now, don't say that. It's not good in the light you say that in. Just think of the possibilities you get when you get a fleet managed by those who don't have a will to live. Supernova :lol:
Ok, so the methods the shivans used to blow up the star with does range. It's not improbable though, subspace in the game does deal with space time also. But, if you made a star age that fast, i wouldn't want to be the person to do it, i'm just thinking of all those fast ass solar flares that'd be whipping around, and that would in fact be a problem for the sathani.
Lol, node or no node, it appears that the shivans ross128'd out of there regardless, that definitely seems to be something everyone agrees on. How much everyone want to bet that the sathani warped back to the nebula, or the space beyond the nebula? In the game the nebula and the node after it seemed to be what you could loosely call the extreme outer fringes of shivan territory. Why warp out anywhere else? The nebula is close by, and in the complete opposite direction there is terran-vasudan space.
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Hey now, don't say that. It's not good in the light you say that in. Just think of the possibilities you get when you get a fleet managed by those who don't have a will to live. Supernova :lol:
Ok, so the methods the shivans used to blow up the star with does range. It's not improbable though, subspace in the game does deal with space time also. But, if you made a star age that fast, i wouldn't want to be the person to do it, i'm just thinking of all those fast ass solar flares that'd be whipping around, and that would in fact be a problem for the sathani.
Lol, node or no node, it appears that the shivans ross128'd out of there regardless, that definitely seems to be something everyone agrees on. How much everyone want to bet that the sathani warped back to the nebula, or the space beyond the nebula? In the game the nebula and the node after it seemed to be what you could loosely call the extreme outer fringes of shivan territory. Why warp out anywhere else? The nebula is close by, and in the complete opposite direction there is terran-vasudan space.
One thing. The nebula is at least 2 jumps (GD) away, and subspace distance and relative distance have a kind of abstract relationship.
That, and you're forgetting jump option 3.
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Well i dont know about that aldo i mean i'm NOT sayng that you are wrong its just that at this rate the GTVA will never ever be able to win any srious battle against the shivans. Sure the whole technological peak regarding the shivans is debatable since there is no cannon proof to sugest that but then agains there is indirect proof of the shivans very slow technological advances over the course of several thousands of years. I mean look at it we have the same cruisers and fighter/bommbers deployed by the shivans when engaging the GTVA both in FS1 and in FS2 that they ued against the Ancients.
Of course that is also debatable since there is no clear evidence to sugest that these are actual designs used by the shivans several thousands of years ago. But there are a lot of indirect evidence to supot it. Also i believe that the Lucifer was the same ship that spearheaded the shivan destruction of the ancients or a ship similar to it.(same class i mean).
Also we must remember something that we have seen over the course of history whenever a society becomes too owerfull it begins to stagnate. technological breakthrougs are made at a much wider period of time just because they have the upper hand regardless of theyr technological superiority or not.
We must remember that the Ancients could in act have been just as advanced as the shivas in terms of waepons technologi except for the whole Lucifer shileds.(this is by no mean cannon but speculation). And in terms of subspace technologi there is definetly proof of the ancients vast knoldge and technological skills regarding this aspect. It would be safe to asume that maibe theyr tech rivaled that of the shivans(subsapce tech that is).
We all know thet the only thing that tipped the balance of power in favor of the shivans was the fact that the ancients could not get past the Lucifer's shields in time. And since we have cannon proof somewhere cant remember where exactly that the Ancients were only decades ahead of the GTVA in terms of ship/weapons tech it is safe to asume that the GTVA through a concentrated effort could in fact given some time equal the shivans in terms of ship/weapons tech. Subspace travell well thats something else but nothing is imposible as the FS universe tought us.
Also regarding the whole jump to the nebula thing it could be posible since we have seen the shivans apear out of nowhere before. But then again it cant be that simple. I mean why go through all this trouble and have countless bokber/fighters and even a few jugs and other cap ships destroyed just so that you could reach a certain destination which was raechable through other means.
Sure you might say that this is posibly because of the Colossus but then again that arguement doesnt really work in the end of FS2.
Why? Simply because the shivans have lost a great dael of warships and fighters and stuff like that before and never gave a damn about it. Also the ease with wich the Colossus was destroyed should of given them a clue as to the sthrenght of that class of ship.
Oh well we can speculate all we want but the fact is that blowing up capella just so that you can reach a sistem 2 normal jumps away is stupid each way you look at it. They must of had another destination posibli one thy could not reach that easely. Posibli a jumpnode to anotehr galaxy posibly a jump all the way to the other side of the galaxy who knows.
Actualy i'd like to think they all jumped into a blackk hole mi some error of calculation on thery part. But hey thatsjust me!
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What is jump option 3?
I woud figure that as long as supernova's are starting up, and ships are warping out, that the shivans must have had a way to escape.
In reality aldo they could have gone anywhere, and where is what we don't know.
As far as shivan tech not changing, why change a favorite effective bomber design that's been used for thousands of years by the shivans. The seraphim kicks ass, so does the taurvi and nahema.
Besides, since when are the shivans more advanced anyway? Terran and vasudan fighters are way better, not to mention the weaponry. The only thing the shivans really got good is juggernauts,bombers, superior knowledge of subspace, and more efficient beams(not the strongest). Speaking of which, i wonder how old the average sathanas is.
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If the Shivans were changing their technology every 50 years, would they have enough time to make the numbers of ships they apparently have?
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I'm going to have call BS on the Shivans having vastly superior technology then the GTVA, 'cuz frankly it's pretty obvious they don't. In a lot of areas the Shivans are starting to lag badly by FS2. Their fightercraft are poor; their defenses against fighters laughable. Shivan beams are marginally superior (and the GTVA did build the Mjolnir, which beats everything but the BFRed, so their superiority of technology is dubious; it may simply be that the Shivans don't need as much in the way of heatsinks to keep their ships' environment bearable), but the ships that wield them display no great superiority of technology. The Shivan advantage is largely one of aggressor's initative and tactics/equipment optimized for it, not technology.
I've also noted before that it seems as though the Shivans overinvested in those 80+ Sathanii. Shivan destroyers and corvettes are vastly underrepresented in the main campaign. For the destroyers in particular the same names keep being used, as though they don't have many of them. GTVA fighters have advanced by leaps and bounds; Shivan ones have made less impressive gains. The same can be said of capital craft.
And finally, there is the second option on the origin of the star-nuker: that it is Ancients, not Shivan, technology.
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Naw, the Shivans obviously have their advantage in numbers, as I said before, if they were always updating their designs, they would never finish 80+ Sathani, and I don't belive they "overinvested" in them, I belive they are the product of 8,000 years shipbuilding (theat would break down to ~100 years per ship, I don't belive they actually spent 100 years per juggernaught, they were doing more then just building Sathani, and I think we can safely assume that there were more ships in the second Shivan fleet than the player saw.
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SAy what Ancient star nuker not shivan??? Then what the hell where the shivans dooing around cappella field testing the blasted thing???
Woo now i'm really confused. Not that i wasnt before but now i'm really starting to get a head hurt.
I dont know something smellf fishi around here i mean look at it:
a)we have the shivans in the first shivan war whre they went around basting the hell out of planets and everithing in sight . i mean they were more interested in balsting away at the home planets of each faction then they were of the milatary forces. Hell they didnt have to wory cuz they had shealds on the blasted thing.
b)we have our second generation of shivans so to speak more interested in getting the GTVA out of the nebula. I mean they swept aside the GTVA forces (sure they destroyed everione else left surviving afterwards) and went straight fo the capella star. I mean no planet blasting no nothing. And they could of done it easely.
I mean something doesnt fit the picture here. I mean sure even if they were different shivans i mean different factions or stuff like that theyr goals are way to oposite adn wai to far from one another. If you look carefully they only deployed what some corvettes, cruisers and what a destroyer or something like that to keep the GTVA ocupied. I mean that was all just smoke into the eyes of the GTVA. All they wanted there was to be left alone to do they job around Capella. But something still bothers me how the hell did they knew another Collosus wasnt about to pop up and start blasting away theyr ships or even 2 or a whole fleet of the or even 80 of them...??? They were acting wai too calulated in the final acts of the war. This in term leads me to believe that they had very very good intel about the strenght of the GVTA or rather the lack of it.
Hey lets asume thats the case. From where the hell did they get that kind of intel i mean its not like they went around GTVA space poaking theyr heads around shipyards and stuff like that to see how many ships there were. To me that leaves only one option....yes you know it : Bosch!
I mean he wa the only one capable of delivering such intel to the shivans. This would also suggest that he had succefuly managed to contact the shivans. and that eh was actualy kept alive there by the shivans.
For those who say this is imposible i want you to think about the fact that it all fits way to perfect. I mean you have the virtual decimation of the GTVA forces. then you have the destruction of the jugg. Then you have the apearence of multiple jugs. Then the GTVA retreats to capella and the destruction of the colossus. And here lies the end of efective combat action of the juggs. The rest are all engagements of the cruisers corvettes and a destroyer i think. Just enough to keep the GTVA ocupied while they take position around capella and go around blowing it up. Also this would fi perfectly with Bosch's vision of a better future for the terrans. Hey sacrifice a few bilions so that other billions can survive and prosper.
Also if lets say they used the cappela supernova to open a jumpnode to another place then it must be far far away and it has to be huge in order to fit all the reamaining juggs in it. Perhaps another galaxy. Ths would be quite posible since we do have a hint from the ancient monologues that the Ancients empire streched across the galaxy and eventualy went beyond the border of our galaxy to another galaxy.
Also regarding the whole shivan tech stuff while i do admit that shivan beams are far more fective then theyr GTVA counterparts most of the time i would imagine this was largely due to them having the original prototipe available from wich to develop.(lucifer)
While the GTVA had only data on the subject and not the original which mi guess is would of provided for a much better beam tech in the end. Also there is the Mjolnir.
In terms of ship design i must say that some of the ships we see do seem superior in design to the GTVA but then again the GTVA have produced ships which are genraly a jack of all trades and not just defensive or ofensive in nature. Just imagine how would an Orion or a Hecate look if it were designed specificly for head on engagements with other ships. You cant?? Well just stick 4 or 5 Mjolnir beam cannons in front of it and see what happens. I meanthats what the shivans did. But regarding the whole AAAF defenses i must say i would feel a LOT more secure having a Deimos behind me then a shivan corvette.
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I think he means the Shivans stole it from the Ancients Alpha.
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what no way i mean come on they were never interested in alien tech before why start all of a sudden. Also if the Ancients had something like thsi dont u think they would of used it against the shivans before they entire race wat theoreticly made extinct.(I saidtheoreticly cuz to be honest i dont think they were all wiped out. some of them must of escaped some outpost some small cluster of colonies. I mean come on these guis were streched all over galaxies men not just start sistems. And it would of been imposible even for the shivans to have whiped them all of just like that) .
Also if the ancients had something like this then it would be safe to presume that the tech for the blasted things would have been recorded somewhere. And if thats the case then could it be safe to asume that the GTVA might or will uncover the specs for the thing??? I mean they uncovered quite a few degrees of ancient tech so far. Sure we dont actualy know that much but then again the GTVA has a talent for hiding stuff especialy the GTVI.
Yey the GTVA finali getn to blow up a star....er........eventualy......!(just fooling around regardint the last sentence) !
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Well i dont know about that aldo i mean i'm NOT sayng that you are wrong its just that at this rate the GTVA will never ever be able to win any srious battle against the shivans. Sure the whole technological peak regarding the shivans is debatable since there is no cannon proof to sugest that but then agains there is indirect proof of the shivans very slow technological advances over the course of several thousands of years. I mean look at it we have the same cruisers and fighter/bommbers deployed by the shivans when engaging the GTVA both in FS1 and in FS2 that they ued against the Ancients.
Well that's a completely unfounded guess right there......the only single mention of the Shivan forces that destroyed the Ancients is a) that they had a shielded destroyer class the Ancients could not destroy and b) something with Lucifer-esque weaponry destroyed Altair. The most you can map that to is the use of a/the Lucifer.
Of course that is also debatable since there is no clear evidence to sugest that these are actual designs used by the shivans several thousands of years ago. But there are a lot of indirect evidence to supot it. Also i believe that the Lucifer was the same ship that spearheaded the shivan destruction of the ancients or a ship similar to it.(same class i mean).
That's not actually evidence for technological stagnation, unless you want to suggest the Shivans developed beams, flak, and a supernova-causing juggernaut fleet in the time period between FS1 and FS2 (in which case they clearly have a greater capacity for advancement and manufacturing).
Also we must remember something that we have seen over the course of history whenever a society becomes too owerfull it begins to stagnate. technological breakthrougs are made at a much wider period of time just because they have the upper hand regardless of theyr technological superiority or not.
What, like the US?
We must remember that the Ancients could in act have been just as advanced as the shivas in terms of waepons technologi except for the whole Lucifer shileds.(this is by no mean cannon but speculation). And in terms of subspace technologi there is definetly proof of the ancients vast knoldge and technological skills regarding this aspect. It would be safe to asume that maibe theyr tech rivaled that of the shivans(subsapce tech that is).
Safe? I doubt that any assumptions regarding the Shivans and Ancients would be safe. Based on how you read the monologues, it's actually debatable whether the ancients took down a single shivan ship of any sort, even though I'd wager they had.
Of course, the other side is that the Ancients were more advanced than humanity; after all, it was their subspace tracking device that won the Great War, otherwise the GT(V)A was simply mincemeat. Quite why or where the Ancients figure in this little chain of reasoning, I don't know. After all, they were verifiably far more advanced than the GTVA (Knossos device, subspace tracking), but were annihilated by a Shivan fleet that may have been of the archaic specifications of the FS1 fleet.
You can argue, of course, that the victory in FS1 shown a human ability to adapt alien technology to survive; but that can't apply to the Shivans unless we've seen all their tricks, and I doubt we have.
We all know thet the only thing that tipped the balance of power in favor of the shivans was the fact that the ancients could not get past the Lucifer's shields in time. And since we have cannon proof somewhere cant remember where exactly that the Ancients were only decades ahead of the GTVA in terms of ship/weapons tech it is safe to asume that the GTVA through a concentrated effort could in fact given some time equal the shivans in terms of ship/weapons tech. Subspace travell well thats something else but nothing is imposible as the FS universe tought us.
We have absolutely no canon proof of the Ancients shield or weapons tech levels, let alone the relative difference between it and GTVA levels. It has never been mentioned anywhere within FS. Unless you can correct me with a source, of course.
In any case, all it means it that the GTVA has xx years to catch up with the Ancients, a race annihilated by the Shivans 8000 years ago.
If the Shivans were changing their technology every 50 years, would they have enough time to make the numbers of ships they apparently have?
Why not?
What is jump option 3?
I woud figure that as long as supernova's are starting up, and ships are warping out, that the shivans must have had a way to escape.
In reality aldo they could have gone anywhere, and where is what we don't know.
Option 3; jump 'into' the nova. I mean, it is a subspace distortion effect going on there, and we can't assume the nova wasn't a minor sideffect of doing something far more important to the Shivans.
(there's another option that springs to mind, that the Shivans jumped into subspace and waited within there, although I don't even know if that's possible)
I'm going to have call BS on the Shivans having vastly superior technology then the GTVA, 'cuz frankly it's pretty obvious they don't. In a lot of areas the Shivans are starting to lag badly by FS2. Their fightercraft are poor; their defenses against fighters laughable. Shivan beams are marginally superior (and the GTVA did build the Mjolnir, which beats everything but the BFRed, so their superiority of technology is dubious; it may simply be that the Shivans don't need as much in the way of heatsinks to keep their ships' environment bearable), but the ships that wield them display no great superiority of technology. The Shivan advantage is largely one of aggressor's initative and tactics/equipment optimized for it, not technology.
Are we talking the gameplay stats or the tech/cb/message brieifings here? Because i'm pretty sure the latter gives the Shivans a big upper hand, and I'd hold that over the stats simply because it's not much fun placing the player against a large number of invincible opponents.
I've also noted before that it seems as though the Shivans overinvested in those 80+ Sathanii. Shivan destroyers and corvettes are vastly underrepresented in the main campaign. For the destroyers in particular the same names keep being used, as though they don't have many of them. GTVA fighters have advanced by leaps and bounds; Shivan ones have made less impressive gains. The same can be said of capital craft.
And finally, there is the second option on the origin of the star-nuker: that it is Ancients, not Shivan, technology.
It doesn't strike me as a very good option, because I can't see a single use in nuking a star for the Ancients. There's not much point building an empire if you destroy all your possesions in doing so. Granted, I guess you could suggest that it was useful for creating mining fields of gas (NB: how long does a supernova take to cool down to a nebula?), but that strikes me as equivalent to nuking Chicago just so you can get some glass. There's definately not any evidence so far AFAIK for them using it against the Shivans (which would strike me as the most obvious deployment, if they couldn't seal a node any other way), because the only nebula in FS2 has a Knossos indicating post-exploration.
Moreso, I can't really see the Shivans as a goa'uld type scavenger race. It just doesn't sit with the 'invincible enemy' image for me.
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Are we talking the gameplay stats or the tech/cb/message brieifings here? Because i'm pretty sure the latter gives the Shivans a big upper hand, and I'd hold that over the stats simply because it's not much fun placing the player against a large number of invincible opponents.
I don't actually draw a distinction here, partly because, let's face it, Alpha 1 was there for all the really important stuff, and I can't really think of an instance where the two diverge drastically. What they say happens in the CBs/tech room/briefings is all possible, even likely, by gameplay standards.
It doesn't strike me as a very good option, because I can't see a single use in nuking a star for the Ancients. There's not much point building an empire if you destroy all your possesions in doing so. Granted, I guess you could suggest that it was useful for creating mining fields of gas (NB: how long does a supernova take to cool down to a nebula?), but that strikes me as equivalent to nuking Chicago just so you can get some glass. There's definately not any evidence so far AFAIK for them using it against the Shivans (which would strike me as the most obvious deployment, if they couldn't seal a node any other way), because the only nebula in FS2 has a Knossos indicating post-exploration.
Moreso, I can't really see the Shivans as a goa'uld type scavenger race. It just doesn't sit with the 'invincible enemy' image for me.
Everybody likes explosions. :p
But seriously. There are a number of possibly faulty assumptions at work here. The first and most fundemental is that the star-nuker was actually meant to nuke stars. (And you're the one who pointed out it might not be...) Perhaps the Shivans didn't read the owner's manual well enough, or translated it wrong.
Then there is the possiblity that the Ancients either never had the weapon in a deployable state, or when they did try to deploy it the Shivans blew it the hell up. Perhaps it never progressed beyond the drawing board, a simple curiousity that had been theorized but was never pursued; perhaps they couldn't get it ready in time. Or perhaps they did, but when they tried to use it the Lucifer waltzed in and fried the ships carrying it.
The Ancients were, so far as we know, the masters of subspace, posessing the most advanced technologies related to that method of travel of any group. They managed to bridge the gap between galaxies, prop open nodes even the Shivans could not travel through. We aren't sure the Shivans even know how to build a Knossos (improbable though it is they wouldn't, with all the time they've had to stare at them). Subspace is a medium the Shivans are intensely interested in. They don't care a whit for the technology of the GTVA, true. But if the Ancients had developed subspace technologies more advanced then the Shivans themselves, I don't see why they would not have picked the pockets of their dead enemies.
Subspace is the one area of technology that the Shivans have a serious, insurmountable advantage over the GTVA in, the critical area, because if all things were equal in this category then the Shivans would have GTVA-esque jump accuracy, and their Ravana would show up in the wrong place and get trashed by the Lysander and Actium, or Sathanas 17 would be pointing the wrong way when it jumped in and the Colossus would get to use up a lot of red paint on a second Sathanas silhuotte. This is the single most critical element of Shivan superiority, they need to maintain their edge in this technology above all others. If they cannot, then all those attack-oriented designs start to look a lot less appealling. Encountering the Ancients, who were at least their equal in subspace terms, probably came as a rude surprise, and the need to stay ahead of anyone else would have made the Shivans at least examine Ancients technology in detail, if not adopt any of it.
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I don't actually draw a distinction here, partly because, let's face it, Alpha 1 was there for all the really important stuff, and I can't really think of an instance where the two diverge drastically. What they say happens in the CBs/tech room/briefings is all possible, even likely, by gameplay standards.
Well, just look at the Ravanas apparent decimation of the GTVA forces first sent to attack. Or, IIRC, your wingmans' comments upon first encountering the Mara in Lion At the Gate (or whatever it was called). Or even going back all the way to FS1, the Typhons' tech description versus its actual stats and armament compared to the Orion.
Everybody likes explosions. :p
But seriously. There are a number of possibly faulty assumptions at work here. The first and most fundemental is that the star-nuker was actually meant to nuke stars. (And you're the one who pointed out it might not be...) Perhaps the Shivans didn't read the owner's manual well enough, or translated it wrong.
Ok, that's fair enough, but to me that seems somewhat counterintuitive. Particularly given the late development of subspace tracking by the Ancients, as IMO that would seem to be 'easier' than anything of the magnitude that, erroneously or not, could destroy a star.
Then there is the possiblity that the Ancients either never had the weapon in a deployable state, or when they did try to deploy it the Shivans blew it the hell up. Perhaps it never progressed beyond the drawing board, a simple curiousity that had been theorized but was never pursued; perhaps they couldn't get it ready in time. Or perhaps they did, but when they tried to use it the Lucifer waltzed in and fried the ships carrying it.
For it to be something 'stolen' from the Ancients, rather than independently developed, it would surely have to be in a reasonably physically developed state. Beyond theory, I'd imagine, because the Shivans don't seem to have any interest in capturing intelligence documents or transports (let alone planetary research installations), so there'd have to be something physical to attract them to it. To pique the Shivans' interest, I'd imagine, it'd need to exist and be detectable. Which would raise the question as to what it was, particularly as the Shivan equivalent involved 80 5km long vessels whose apparent overreaching (given that the flexibility of those 'arms' on the Sath IMO indicates they were developed for this) purpose wasn't apparent until the end of FS2.
The Ancients were, so far as we know, the masters of subspace, posessing the most advanced technologies related to that method of travel of any group. They managed to bridge the gap between galaxies, prop open nodes even the Shivans could not travel through. We aren't sure the Shivans even know how to build a Knossos (improbable though it is they wouldn't, with all the time they've had to stare at them). Subspace is a medium the Shivans are intensely interested in. They don't care a whit for the technology of the GTVA, true. But if the Ancients had developed subspace technologies more advanced then the Shivans themselves, I don't see why they would not have picked the pockets of their dead enemies.
Well, we don't know if the Shivans couldn't use the Knossos. They certainly used other unstable nodes, including attacking through Vega. It's also unclear what prompted their incursion into Gamma Draconis anyways, and whether they were on their way and held up by the inactive Knossos, or not even going to use it until the Trinity popped up, etc. Or even how unstable the node was pre-Knossos activation, and whether the Shivans could have used it regardless. So IMO it's highly debatable whether the ancients were any more advanced at the actual art of subspace travel; for all we know the Shivans could have seen the Knossos as some sort of unnatural abomination they simply didn't want to build.
Subspace is the one area of technology that the Shivans have a serious, insurmountable advantage over the GTVA in, the critical area, because if all things were equal in this category then the Shivans would have GTVA-esque jump accuracy, and their Ravana would show up in the wrong place and get trashed by the Lysander and Actium, or Sathanas 17 would be pointing the wrong way when it jumped in and the Colossus would get to use up a lot of red paint on a second Sathanas silhuotte. This is the single most critical element of Shivan superiority, they need to maintain their edge in this technology above all others. If they cannot, then all those attack-oriented designs start to look a lot less appealling. Encountering the Ancients, who were at least their equal in subspace terms, probably came as a rude surprise, and the need to stay ahead of anyone else would have made the Shivans at least examine Ancients technology in detail, if not adopt any of it.
'At least their equal', to me, seems highly assumptive. The Knossos might be an impressive piece of kit, but it's surely not on the same level as, say, travelling a highly unstable node (or even the level of collapsing a star). To me, developing the Knossos is indicative of a reduced, not enhanced, capacity for the actual act of subspace travel which led to a necessity to bring nodes 'up to standard'. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ancients tried to seal off the Shivans via the Knossos, only to have them slip in via multiple other, supposedly untravelable nodes. Of course, going into wild speculation mode, we don't know the effect of the Sol node collapse upon those Fs1-used nodes; given the non-relativistic distances of subspace, it's possible they were sealed or too far destabilised for even the Shivans.
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WEll the fact thet the Ancients had the knossos dowsnt necesaryli mean that they were less technologicly advanced. Maibe they used the knossos just to stabalize node that were similar to the one leadng to SOL i mean way to trashe for even the shivans to travel through. Also i would imagine they also used these knossos in order to bringup to standar(civilian standard) the jump noda stabylity. I mean it would be useless to produce thousands of ships civilian ships carryng suplies and what know when u can stabilazi the node itself. Sure it mai seem like a waste of money in the short term but then again when you think of it in time it is very worth while.
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WEll the fact thet the Ancients had the knossos dowsnt necesaryli mean that they were less technologicly advanced. Maibe they used the knossos just to stabalize node that were similar to the one leadng to SOL i mean way to trashe for even the shivans to travel through. Also i would imagine they also used these knossos in order to bringup to standar(civilian standard) the jump noda stabylity. I mean it would be useless to produce thousands of ships civilian ships carryng suplies and what know when u can stabilazi the node itself. Sure it mai seem like a waste of money in the short term but then again when you think of it in time it is very worth while.
Eh?
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Does... does he type like that on purpose, or what?
Anyhoo, the existance of the Knossoss does not instantly denote a lack of knowledge by the Ancients regarding subspace, but could simply be a large-scale exploratory project stretching out of [currently] Terran-Vasudan space into the unknown via highly unstable jump nodes. The monologues mention the desperate need for expansion [...I think...], so attempts to stabalise Jump Nodes, in this case a series of Jump Nodes, seems a logical extension of that. And the fact that the Shivans came from the wrong end of the Knossoss network further supports the 'locking' mechanism the Knossoss also provided, hence establishing the Knossoss network as not simply a process of bringing Nodes 'up to standard', but as a defensive measure.
Regarding the artificial supernova, does it really matter who thought it up initially, the fact of the matter is the GTVA won't even be thinking about it for decades at the very least, and won't be able to mimic the technology for centuries, IMO.
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Anyhoo, the existance of the Knossoss does not instantly denote a lack of knowledge by the Ancients regarding subspace
It's worth, i suppose, reclarifying my statement. Developing the technology to make a node traversable, does not imply a higher or IMO even equal level of technology to having the ability to travel through that node sans Knossos. i.e. what is more advanced - a car that drives through a tunnel and the tunnel building machiner, or a car that can can demolecularise itself into an atom stream and reconstitute at the other side.
This does not, of course, reflect upon the relative Terran-Ancient tech.
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Maibe they used the knossos just to stabalize node that were similar to the one leadng to SOL i mean way to trashe for even the shivans to travel through.
All the jump points from Earth are gone. But the Shivans can rebuild them.
Say what now?
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The shivans started appearing after the Knossos was activated not because the node was "unlocked" but probably because they were drawn to it, just like they seem to be drawn to any subspace using race.
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As to the whole tiping thing usualy i'm in a hurry and spell like crap. Also mi spelling is that bad cuz well mi english gramar sucks big time.
About the whole shivan rebuilding jump node-you must be delerious. Since when?
The onli race that we know had the tech to rebuild/stabilize jump nodes were the ancients and soon to follow the GTVA.
Also i would tend to think that the shivans just because they could travel through very unstable or small jump nodes are not the most advanced. I mean for all we know the ancients could of had the same jumnode tech that the shivans had. There is nothing to sugest that they were any less advanced in this area. Also building the knossos should further reinforce the tech achievements of the ancients in terms of subspace that is.
sure they might of been outclassed in terms of ship design...but then again they might not have been.
for all we know the only reason they were trashed was because of the lucifers shilds.
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Well, just look at the Ravanas apparent decimation of the GTVA forces first sent to attack. Or, IIRC, your wingmans' comments upon first encountering the Mara in Lion At the Gate (or whatever it was called). Or even going back all the way to FS1, the Typhons' tech description versus its actual stats and armament compared to the Orion.
Fair points...but then again we've established that the GTVA can't jump accurately to save their lives, and anything that ended up in front of the Ravana was going to die. It's entirely possible by gameplay standards to have an Orion/Hecate hop in front of a Ravana and have its head handed to it. It's entirely possible they emerged ahead and tried to close to broadsiding range, and got murdered in doing it. Similarly the commentary on the Mara is perfectly natural from the standpoint of gameplay. They do move like nothing he's ever seen before...they slide.
As for the Typhon, it names a GTA destroyer...it does not name the class.
Ok, that's fair enough, but to me that seems somewhat counterintuitive. Particularly given the late development of subspace tracking by the Ancients, as IMO that would seem to be 'easier' than anything of the magnitude that, erroneously or not, could destroy a star.
It's a question of percieved need. If it's not meant to nuke stars, then we're really in the dark on what it is supposed to do, and so can't judge. The Ancients never had a reason to develop subspace tracking before the Shivans. They could defeat their enemies in normal space easily enough. They didn't need the intelligence; they just rolled right over everyone without it. (Rather like the Shivans, actually.)
For it to be something 'stolen' from the Ancients, rather than independently developed, it would surely have to be in a reasonably physically developed state. Beyond theory, I'd imagine, because the Shivans don't seem to have any interest in capturing intelligence documents or transports (let alone planetary research installations), so there'd have to be something physical to attract them to it. To pique the Shivans' interest, I'd imagine, it'd need to exist and be detectable. Which would raise the question as to what it was, particularly as the Shivan equivalent involved 80 5km long vessels whose apparent overreaching (given that the flexibility of those 'arms' on the Sath IMO indicates they were developed for this) purpose wasn't apparent until the end of FS2.
It's all dependant on how seriously the Ancients made an impression on the Shivans. They had a vast empire, in more then one galaxy, with commensurate resources. The war could well have been long and quite bloody, only the presence of the Lucifer or other sheathe-shielded ship(s) turning the tide for the Shivans. If they only had the Lucifer then it probably was, since the Lucifer cannot be everywhere at once, and it can run out of supplies if its supply lines are attacked. The Shivans have no need for intelligence against the GTVA, but this may not be true against every opponent.
Well, we don't know if the Shivans couldn't use the Knossos. They certainly used other unstable nodes, including attacking through Vega. It's also unclear what prompted their incursion into Gamma Draconis anyways, and whether they were on their way and held up by the inactive Knossos, or not even going to use it until the Trinity popped up, etc. Or even how unstable the node was pre-Knossos activation, and whether the Shivans could have used it regardless. So IMO it's highly debatable whether the ancients were any more advanced at the actual art of subspace travel; for all we know the Shivans could have seen the Knossos as some sort of unnatural abomination they simply didn't want to build.
To me it's fairly clear that the Shivans could not have traversed the node. The reason for this is simple enough; the Ancients found the Shivans, and found them at the far end of the Knossos network. Given the apparent xenocidal tendancies of the Shivans, it seems likely that if they had been able to reach the Ancients on their own, they would have done so. First contact between the two was probably not a clash of scouts. (Unless you accept the Lucifer as a scout...) The Ancients were militant and expansionistic; they did not send scout ships through newly discovered nodes, they sent battlefleets capable of crushing even reasonably advanced starfaring civilizations. The Shivans, on the other hand, at least pay lipservice to scouting; we did not get a Sathanas or the Ravana through the Knossos, only a cruiser; first contact with the Shivans occurred at least six months before the Lucifer trashed Riveria. (Silent Threat says as much; maybe a year even.) Yet the Ancients fleet was thrown back at once; there must have been something big and nasty at the other end, either a Shivan battlefleet of similar scale or a sheathe-shielded ship. This presents at least two possiblities: either the Ancients somehow managed to totally bypass the Shivan's leading edge, or the Shivans had come to the limit of their ability to advance. The former seems...unlikely.
As for the possiblity of the Shivans viewing the Knossos portals as abominations...well, they're still there. And the Shivans happily make use of them to move around. Doesn't seem to fit, particularly considering the Shivans penchant for blowing up every other non-Shivan non-natural thing in space. They make an exception for Knossos devices, however, so we have some precedent for the Shivans finding Ancients technology useful and keeping it around.
I'd also like to make another point. There are some possiblities regarding Shivan subspace use that seem to have been overlooked. Have we ever considered the possiblity that they are in effect not traversing an unstable node, but somehow make it more stable for themselves while they are in transit? (Something like a self-Knossos; possibly that too is either descended from or actually Ancients tech. Whether the Shivans had the ability to traverse unstable nodes during their war with the Ancients is unclear. The monologues make no reference to it.) Or, for that matter, the "unstable nodes" is something of an assumption on GTA Command's part. They say "must have", not "did" traverse an unstable node. The GTA wouldn't have been watching unstable nodes...they're unstable, after all. It's possible that the Shivans are not actually traversing nodes too unstable for GTA ships...they are traversing nodes the GTA does not know about. And the unstable node thing is not mentioned once in the course of the main campaign in FS2.
'At least their equal', to me, seems highly assumptive. The Knossos might be an impressive piece of kit, but it's surely not on the same level as, say, travelling a highly unstable node (or even the level of collapsing a star). To me, developing the Knossos is indicative of a reduced, not enhanced, capacity for the actual act of subspace travel which led to a necessity to bring nodes 'up to standard'. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ancients tried to seal off the Shivans via the Knossos, only to have them slip in via multiple other, supposedly untravelable nodes. Of course, going into wild speculation mode, we don't know the effect of the Sol node collapse upon those Fs1-used nodes; given the non-relativistic distances of subspace, it's possible they were sealed or too far destabilised for even the Shivans.
Without an actual Ancients ship to judge by, how well they traveled through subspace is somewhat speculative, but the tech room credits them with highly advanced subspace technologies. Knossos portals stablize nodes; without an actual idea of what the nodes were like before they were stablized saying that the Ancients ships did not have the ability to traverse nodes the GTA/GTVA (or even the Shivans!) could not is somewhat...questionable.
Considering that they managed to seal the Capella nodes to an extent they believe even Shivan ships couldn't traverse them, it seems unlikely that you can reach Sol via that node, whether you're Shivan or not. The Lucy's detonation was theoritically greater in strength then those of the Bastion or Nereid.
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Good arguements there.
And i tend to agree with you. But if that is the case then could it be safe to asume that the Ancients used the Knossos not only to stabilize nodes but actualy to force open new ones. I mean jumpnodes to sistems that were initiali isolated in a way. Because that would explain why we dont see Knossos devices all around.
Also I agree with the fact that an empire as large as the Ancients empire who were from the monologues militaristic and expasionist could not care about what race lied on the other side of the node. They just send in they battlefleets and crush them either through milatary technologi adn if that is not the case through numbers. The case with the shivans was that for the first time thei met an enemy of equal power equal tech but greater numbers. I cant but help think that the Ancient-Shivan war was one of the numbers and not of technologi. I believe that the ancients either failed to locate a homeworld or something like that wich to destroy/conquer thus reducing the overall numbers of its enemies or its ship building capabilities.
But the fact that the star destroyer was in fact ancinet in design would sugest that they actualy found something like a home base of the shivans or a homeworld and could not destroy it unless they destroyed the entire star sistem. I mean they could of had a jump node close to the star/s in that sistem. So the ancients not willing to sacryfice theyr entire armada of ships in order to conquer a single sistem developed this thing for use. faster cheaper and a lot more deadlier.
I would imagine that they had very strong defenses around thery home world/s too strong for the ancients to risk atacking.
Also another idea comes to mind what if the ancients first battle toock place around or in the sistem which would be like the home sistem for shivans? This would explain theyr fleets taking a beating from the first time around.?
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Okay......
There is no link whatsoever that the Capella supernova was caused by Ancient technology, nor do we know if the supernova was actually the desired effect. Also if the Ancients had the power to produce supernovas using a fleet of juggernauts, it is stupid that they wouldn't use such a fleet to say... track shivan ships in subspace?
The Ancient-Shivan war WAS a war of technology, the Ancients could not "harm" the shivans' "shields" (either they meant all of them, or just a Lucifer's style type of shield is anyone's guess).
The Shivans have no signs of having a homeworld. They attack, they destroy, they "win" and then they go about their merry way. Kind of like Caesar!
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It is possible as the shivans were advancing that, they could have stolen technology from other races that had desirably destructive affects for the shivans to wish to acquire. As far as the terran vasudan forces, the only subspace weapon they have (rather used halfway in subspace) is making a subspace node non-traversable. If the lucifer had exploded outside the sol node, terran-vasudans would be highly ****ed in the second shivan incursion. But terran or vasudan scientists would probably be theorizing later that a node can be destroyed with a meson bomb with an attempt at shutting down the knossos.
Hey, gvd typhon, seems to be a class of destroyer for the vasudans. Not just a name, but a class. http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GVD_Typhon (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GVD_Typhon) Wiki is your friend :)
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You didn't know the Typhon was a destroyer class?
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Actualy i believe it is clear that were talking about the lucifers shields. I mean it took the GTVA what a few montsh to figure out how to get paste the shields and adapt them? I would suspect that teh Ancients managed much of the same thing if not faster. Also we should remember that the only thing they couldnt figure out how to get past was the Lucifer shields. Also the ancients provided that answer.
Also considering how "large" the GTVA controled space is its no wonder we dont see any shivan homeworlds or something like that. I mean come on the GTVa holds what 1% of the empire the ancients had? remember the ancients had an empire that strecehd across galaxies not star sistems alone. I would suspect that the war raged on fow decades ! With the Shivans moping up most of the anciants sistems. till they finali made them extict...a least in theory. Cuz for its pretty obvious that the ancients must of surveived. unless the shivans actualy cared enough to investigate every asteroid cluster everi nebuna and so on and so on.
The game was won through numbers. I believe it is pretty obvious. I suspect that by expanding into another galaxy who know how mani they actualy controled the Ancients actualy provoqued the shivans by gooing into thery lair.
this would come in handy if we are tu sugest that capella was actualy used to create some sort of superjumpnode. And support the theory that the shivans are not actualy indigenous to this galaxy. Also if that is the case then ce idea of cosmic destroyers and great preservers of life that was given to the shivans is actualy uder dispute.
Well not necesarily. Why?
Well simpli because the Ancients MAYBE atracted the atention of the shivans a lot faster then they should of. Or it just took them that long to mount a decent response to the Ancients murderous wais. remember if we are to think of the cosmic time line the war lasted but a few minutes.
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AlphaOne, I'm a bit curious... Is that text you produce intentionally what it is, or does it come to you naturally to mutilate English? ;)
Anyway, you cannot really compare the GTVA to the Ancients. I'm betting quite a bit that what happened to Ancients was very much similar to what happened to Chinese culture thousands of years ago. There was no need for them to develop, as they had this huge-ass empire with probably no one to challenge them. They did go through wars but they always triumphed over weak enemies - until the Destroyers came, and they were not like the others. And the Ancients had probably not been running any technological research in centuries, probably in millennias. They simply didn't stand a chance, and had no means readily to help them reach the Shivan technological level. That's the only thing that explains why the Shivans beat the Ancients but seemingly cannot win GTA and PVN and later GTVA. Or perhaps it's just because the Ancients weren't made a game of, and thus they didn't have Alpha 1 amongst them...
Exactly the same thing happened in China. The development of technology and culture halted, there was no need to advance as everything worked quite nicely as it was - until the steam-run, steel-made ships with *big* guns arrived. The same thing happened to Japan also. Though, on this occasion the ships contained merely invaders and oppressors, not destroyers of everything like shivans are. China and Japan survived the initial contact with much more technically advanced culture, but that was mainly because the western invaders had no will to destroy them but to profit of them.
On the other hand, the GTA was IMO largely based on aggressive, expansionist culture (aka. European); this made it clear for them to constantly keep developing. About the PVN I don't know... but even if the GTA and PVN had been in hibernating state of technological advancement, the Terran-Vasudan war probably boosted the speed of technological development on both sides, giving both sides ability to research and reverse-engineer enemy technology and develop own, more and more lethal weaponry and advanced means of protecting themselves. In this regard the GTA/PVN and GTVA differ from the Ancients, or at least that's the only option that actually makes sense. The appearance of the Shivans happened in bad time for them - even though the T-V war had tired both GTA and PVN, they had the sense to put aside their differences (remarkapble thing IMO) and form an alliance against the Shivans, uniting their technological abilities and making 1+1 more than two in this case. As the Lucifer fleet was beaten and the Superdestroyed gone with Sol node, the newly formed alliance has managed to stay mostly intact, excluding the GTI and NTF rebellions, which of course with the continuous Shivan threat, kept the military research and development going, and when the Shivans came again, the GTVA was better prepared to meet them, which might or might not have limited the damage.
Of course there is always the possibility of the Sathanas armada being the scout group, and Lucifer fleet being just a first kamikaze-type probing mission from that scout group. The real destroyers might be yet to come, and we still don't know if we can destroy the Gargant. Or even Gigas. Or whatever. Though this is of course strictly off-canon, it is true that the style of the Sathanas armada differed hugely from Lucifer fleet. Lucifer fleet aimed for the capital systems of both Vasudans and Terrans, and effectively destroyed both in GTVA point of view. The Sathanas armada, however, aimed directly towards Capella and then they just got away. Why is that, I'm just asking? Probably another thing to be revealed in FS3 that never became. :nervous:
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Ancients weren't used to resistance, therefore it can be interpreted in one way or the other that the Ancients did or didn't destroy a single Shivan ship.
There is little left for us. Little time. But much irony.
We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.
But we have no way to deliver the hurt. We have the knowledge, but not the means. And so this is our legacy:
In subspace, they cannot use their shields. And into subspace, they can be tracked.
Invulnerable, shields, plural in both uses. So either many Lucifer type shields... or no Shivan ship was destroyed.
The Ancients did perish, unless another monologue proves to be false, this time this one.
There are few of us left. We know we will soon be gone. And so we can see our fate as others will see it.
There will be little legacy. No great expressions of what we once were. Our technology, our achievements, if ever they are seen again, will spawn none of the awe that filled our conquests.
We know our fate. We are being eliminated. When we travelled subspace, the Cosmic Destroyers took note. When we conquered and colonized in galaxies where we had no place, the destruction and the anguish and the loss were the clarion call of our doom.
And so the destroyers came for us.
The Shivans have no lair, no base of operations visible or mentioned in both games, and all implies that the Shivans came to Ancient space, not the other way around as in...
When the destroyers came for us, we attacked. Never had we been defeated. They were like the others: strange, hideous, resisting, fighting. Only these were not like the others: They did not die.
We made our first retreat. We could forego one system. We left it to the destroyers and went elsewhere. But they followed. They hunted us. They followed us when we retreated, discovered where we lived.
For a long time we did not know why they chased us. They were no ordinary enemy. They did not seek our territory, our technology, our resources.
Now we know our crime was sin.
And as repeated before, the Capella incident has almost no facts, only speculation can derive from it. If you see user made campaigns, ideas vary a lot, see Mind Games for example on a very different take on the Capella incident.
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Err about the whole english mutilating thing....I'M SORRY but as i said mi spelling is horible. I'm froma non english speaking country and although i speak enlghish good enough mi spelling is not as good. So Sorry about that.
Well the monologues are that of the few ancients left probably on theyr homeworld. I mean there must have been some colony or outpost or something like that wich survived the slaughter. I mean come on these guis were streched across galaxies for crying out loud.
About the whole shivans coming after the Ancients thing...well...er...well that would explain a lot bt still a war wich probably lasted several years must of produced some sort of evolutionari cascade. Also since the Ancients were expansionist and militaristic in nature i seriously dought that they were not technologicly advanced posibly on equal terms with the shivans or perhaps more advanced. I'm saing this because we have no evidence of the battles and theyr casualti list. I mean i doubght that the shivans sent out several dozens lucifers to engage the Ancients. Sure they sent out multiple Lucifers as the backbone of theyr fleets but there must have been other ships out there that were not shielded like that which could be brought down. And so the Ancients found that after they eliminated ship after ship they were left with the Lucifers. Geez it must have been frustrating.
I mean taking out ship after ship only to find yourself beaten back and loosing the battle when one of these things came at you.
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Actually, it was somewhere quoted on the forums from some dude at volition that said that the ancients were at about the same level of technological advancement as the terrans and vasudans in the TVwar(the television war :lol:). And given how that the ancients were populating a ton of space, most likely one or two galaxies, maybe more. It seems to me that the shivans aren't indiginous to the milky way(or at least i hope). Back to the ancients, given that the tv war went on for 14 years, i'd imagine that the AS war (ancient shivan war...the ass war) would possibly have gone on for many decades to a century or more. To make a species practically extinct populating so much of space like a couple of galaxies, would take forever. Sounds to me a lot like a generational war for the ancients. It'd even take a long time to make a species populated all over the milky way extinct. Even if you had fleets and fleets and fleets of ships like the shivans had, it'd take a lot of searching. Plus maybe the ancients were on par in numbers next to the shivans, i mean there was obviously a ton of ancients, and they did get around. The shivans were superior to the ancients anyway. Another thing, the shivans were around for a lot longer than 8000 years. There was an 8000 year period between ancients and gta. The shivans are very old. Brings me back to i wonder how old the average sathanas is ;)
Someone should make a campaign about the AS war :) That'd be big **** :nod:
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Okay, I didn't want to hurt your feelings about the spelling thing AlphaOne, especially if you are not a native English speaker. It's just that way too many native english speakers write just like that just for the lack of interest in learning spelling, or rather, reading (which automatically develops spelling skills). I mean... I'm not a native english speaker either. Just do some reading in English and it will improve quite automatically.
And I tend to think that whereas the Ancients naturally had sometimes been aggrssive and expansionistic enough to build their huge empire, they could have had several thousands or millions of years of peace and prosperity behind them when the Shivans came to them, so it is entirely possible they had strong enough militia to keep the criminals and occasional renegade brigands under control, but they might not have been prepared for an equal, much less superior foe. The Chinese certainly didn't expect anyone to attack them, they were too powerful a nation for a long long time and thus there was no need for development for them, and they didn't develope things but kept doing things the old way, until everything they knew was locked onto "old ways" and they didn't make anything actually new. The Chinese didn't have the infrastructure for research and development, and they were technically behind the western invaders in the 1800's... so, they very fast succumbed under colonialist rule.
The Ancients probably suffered much similar fate. They could control their territory quite well from internal threats, but they probably didn't expect an entire hostile race superior to their technology. It's possible that they had had no problems dealing with other sentient races they had previously encountered, as is suggested in monologues. And it's possible they had been on a similar level of technological advancement for generations as there had been no reason for them to invent things. Who knows, perhaps they had even found out how to prevent economical highs and lows and keep it all steady and static.
My main point being, that static states that don't develop migt last for thousands of years but when a superior external, unexpected power comes into pictures, they lose and disappear to great extent, leaving just their greatest landmarks and pieces of their old culture behind them. Examples of such occasions including Egypt - Rome, Persia - Alexander the Great, China/Japan - Western invaders, Aztecs - Conqistadors, African Kingdoms - European invaders/colonialists. All these had been running more or less status quo for quite long times, some longer than others, but the pattern is similar, and on Earth, the history has favoured European culture (heavily based on technological advancement followed by industrialization). Had the ancient China encountered more difficulties, they might have developed quite a bit of technology. They had the tools like advanced mathemathics, they just hadn't got the need to do it. Same applies to ancient Greece people who vere on the verge of inventing a fricking steam turbine thousands of years B.C. but they reasoned that as the slaves' only right was to do work, what rights would they have had if steam turbines and other machinery would have done the work for them?
The history is full of these little things that make you think what the world would be like now, had things gone a little different... I mean, the Greek people were literally on the verge of industrialization 3000 years or so before it actually happened, and as the development accelerates the development - how would the world be now? Either they would have destroyed human civilization ages ago, or things would be much much more advanced. Meh, I'm getting distracted again, sorry about that.
And the length of the A-S war would be entirely susceptible to the amount of Shivans. Anyway, what S-99 says fits the picture - probably the Ancients had reached the FS1 era level of GTA and Vasudans a long time ago (plus some more advanced subspace technology to stabilize unstable nodes, that would significantly speed up the spreading of Ancients throughout the galaxy and between them), invaded a couple of galaxies with that technology and lived happily with that level of tech for a long time. That's my view on this subject.
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WEll it takes a few things to hurt mi feeling and stuff like that but anyway lets get back to our sheeps. In this case the shivans and the ancients.
sure that may be true on earth but even aging empires tend to invent suff once in a while.
I mean come on even if lets say a new weapon was developed every 100 years that would still alow the Ancients more then enough time in order to develop new powerfull weapons.
Also about the thing reagarding the Ancients as advanced as the terran and vasudans in the first shivan war i think thats an under statement. I believe there was also another thread stating that the Ancients were onli a few decades ahead of the terrans and vasudans. Something like fs2 era ships versus fs1 era ships. If that is the case and we all know that Fs1 era ships were quite capable of taking down the shivan cruisers and stuff like that(not the Lucy) then the battle mus of really been horible and long. I mean come on there are several bilion stars in our galaxy alone. If only 20% of them ara inhabitable then that leaves what a few hundred milion start sistems inhabited by the Ancients?? In our galaxy alone.
So mi point is that the war was decided by the numbers and not by the numbers f the Ancients but by the numbers of the Shivans! Why? Because it would of taken the shivans so much time to make them extinct that by the time they were finished with the ancients from one galaxy they would of gotten theyr behinds kicked all over the other galaxy because the ancients would of found a way to get past the shielding of the Lucy.
So i believe that the numbers involved were HUGE. Also i believe that the actual numbers present in the fs2 era for the shivans that is are actualy only a fraction of what they used to be. I believe that most of the milatary was decimated during the ancients war. And what we see here today are but the remenants of the shivan armada. And if that is the case then OMFG. I mean they have more then enough numbers to put a fleet of jugs in everi sistem the GTVA holds.
Also I believe that the fact they maibe used capella as a mean to get to who knows where would tend to sugest that they are lets say overtstreched at the least.
About the sugestion that the shivans are actualy indigenous to this galaxy...! If that is the fact and the ancients came from another galaxy here then that would sugest they were here for quite some time before running into the shivans. And if that is the case that would sugest that the Ancient monologues were not in fact refering to theyr entire race but in fact the ancients that inhabited this galaxy. There is some indirect proof to sugest that the ancients in fact managed to seize a big portion of thi galaxy. This would sugest they were anihalated in this galaxy. and that in fact the monologues were refering to the ancients present here and not theyr entire race.
err...mi head hurts for lack of sleep and beer during the past 45 hours. I will continue again tomorow when i wake up.
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Umm, got it a little backwards, everyone's suspecting that the shivans were from a different galaxy, but that does present another finding. We also really don't know where the ancients are from either.
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Altair, IIRC.
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Altair, IIRC.
It's by far the most consistent with the monologues, given that they describe developing the tracker around or after they retreat to their homeworld and have lost their fleet and hence ability to transfer the prototype elsewhere.
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Well sure from theyr point of view. But think about the fact that they retreated to they homeworld in this galaxy. Maibe this was theyr home for thousands of years. Perhaps they were like tribes or something like that each tribe havin a different homeworld. Who knows the fact is that a race that spans galaxies has more then enough chances to escape anihalation at the hands of the shivans simpli by hiding.
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Well sure from theyr point of view. But think about the fact that they retreated to they homeworld in this galaxy. Maibe this was theyr home for thousands of years. Perhaps they were like tribes or something like that each tribe havin a different homeworld. Who knows the fact is that a race that spans galaxies has more then enough chances to escape anihalation at the hands of the shivans simpli by hiding.
The Ancients Monologue tells a story parallel to the FreeSpace story. It is the story of a race that was annihilated by the Shivans at an unspecified point in the very distant past
Definitions of annihilated on the Web:
* destroyed completely
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LOL
So anyway, who recieved a personal message from the ]C[rusader? It's very good.
It also points out what some people have been saying about the shivans. The shivans are not very thorough. Shivans don't even have landing parties. All they do is destroy any ship they see, and bombard planets. And suggesting from the vasudans standpoint, the planet bombardment really is a deadly experience as they had to find a new home world in aldebaran. If a planet bombardment is so bad that you can't hope to salvage your homeworld, then the shivans probably know for sure how to make it really bad, and that they don't need troop deployments. But, i am betting you could possibly live there still, it'd be really hard, and that there were a great deal of survivors left. The only thoroughness the shivans had for the survivors, was destroying most of the transports and shuttles leaving the surface. After that the shivans had a mission to destroy the survivors where of course alpha 1 was there for that and stopped them :nod: Shivans really do not let transport or civillians get away, any mission with a transport and shivans, shivans try to destroy them all. The only other case is if the shivans get a mission where they are not to focus on destroying everything. But, overall, if there is an aggressive target, available shivans will go after it instead of transports, greatly demonstrated in some of the moments of the last mission in fs2. In other words, the shivans do care less about escaped transports that they missed. So for survivors, or those hoping to hide, a matter of escaping at the right time, and technically meeting some conditions, could mean a successful relocation period. As for the ancients, it said they did escape to their homeworld where they thought they would be safe. But for an empire that stretched all across the galaxy and another. Maybe only chosen ancients were allowed to go back, and certainly not every ancient went back to their homeworld anyway.
There are a few of us left. We know we will soon be gone. And so we can see our fate as others will see it. There will be little legacy. No great expressions of what we once were. Our technology, our achievements if ever they are seen again will spawn none of the awe that filled our conquests.
We know our fate. We are being eliminated. When we travelled subspace the cosmic destroyers took note.
When we conquered and colonised in galaxies where we had no place the destruction and the anguish and the loss were the clarion call of our doom. And so the destroyers came for us.
It says here that they colonized galaxies, and they use it in the plural, and i'm betting it means more than two :nod:
Apparently, the shivans are not from the milky way at all, and yes the ancients are from there. Speaking about the first knossos device you encounter in fs2 that takes you to the nebula, where the **** does the second knossos take you? I'd like to know if that one took you to a different galaxy or not for that short mission :p
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AlphaOne, for the love of FS and all that is holy, please read the monologues.
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Well i have read them i guess i just failed to get it or didnt want to...!
Aniway here is a thought! If the GTVA has like these instalations in every sistem arcadia was it?? Well if u want tio guard a sistem or lets say guard a node somewhere around the border wouldnt it be cheaper to convert an Orion or a Typhoon around there somewhere where it cant be openede fire upon the instantn u exit subspace. I mean Double the armour and keep the armamament around hell u could even strip out the engines because that thing aint gooing nowhere. And there u have it one perfectly good instalation so to speak to keep watch over the node and stuff like that. I mean that has to be cheaper then building an entire instalation. Im saing this in regard to the areas whre a milatary instalation is prefered to the clasic one you know the kind that gets blown up by a cruiser.
I mean an Orion has a decent amount of fighter wings plus more the adequate beam weaponry.
Also would it be better for lets say convert a destroyer intro o stationary gun platform? I mean kind of like the RBC's. Stick 4 Mjolnir on the side of it bring around all the aaf defenses and stich there lets say 4 or 5 wing of interceptors and u have a much more powerfull and safer gun platform then the RBC's. Sure its not as mobile as the RbC's and it would take longer to repair but then again it would be safer for the cannons i mean. Imagine 2 of these gun platforms taking 2 flanking positions. I mean would be one very heavely defended jump node. I dounght even a jug could survive long in these conditions.
And if you want more u can always stick more of them around the node this way no jug would last more then 20 seconds there. I tink.
If it is a completely stupid idea please tell me! I just wanted to see if they would work in the fs universe...those and a missile bomb/torpedo tipe corvette or friggate or destroyer. With like 30 or 40 missile /bomb/torpedo launchers.
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*imagines the Shivans sending in a meson-bomb derivative weapon that obliterates the entire front line defense because the fighter platform is stationed too close to the node*
*also imagines how much cheaper and mobile an RBC is than a 10,000-manned but disabled destroyer*
*not to forget imagining the vast expense of hauling out engines from a destroyer, let alone the difficulties of doing so on-site or towing the disabled ship to a position, or the further huge expense of bolting on extra armour*
*imagines Jessica Alba naked and some whipped cream*
Whoops, sorry, tuned out there. What?
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The Arcadia is built in every major system IIRC. And the few times it has appeared, I'm not sure if it was built near a node.
Either way, their job is not to defend the node. That's a job for blockades as seen many times in FS2. Permanently guarding a node must be very taxing one can assume.
It's not a stupid idea, but it fails to notice what has been done throughout the game.
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It'd be daft to put a huge installation as a blockade; where the hell would your fall back/rally point be when the blockade failed? Why would you place C & C - tactical command - right in the middle of the danger zone, where your command staff could feasibly be wiped out by a single bomber? Etc.
So, they're not obviously not going to be used for that. I would imagine that blockades are mobile (with only minimal fixed defenses) because a) it's impossible to cover every node without huge costs and b) you don't know where the Shivans could come from, and where their 'beachhead' would be.
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i did not say you would stick the bloody thnih in front of the node but rather somewhere in a position that would provide them with a tactical advantage over the exiting point of ships from subspace. Also since mobilaty is so treasured then leave the engines stick 4 Mjolnir to one side an they can actualy mode to the place where they have to provide beam cannon fire in order to blocade.
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Ah, so it's a magic Orion with magic extra beam weapons!
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oh for cryng out loud they would be customized orions! Geez u sure cant see the point now can you? CUSTOMIZED Orions. modified especialy for node blocades. I imagine that although expensive they would actualy be a much more versatile weapon compared to the RBC's . Sure RBC's are very very impresive and usefull but this would be even more usefull. I mean it would be a fast wai to deploy RBC's where you ant them sort of..! magine 4 mjolnir cannons openind fire on a target. there wouldnt be lost of the only lets say 4 or 5 of these ships. U cant actualy move a RBC where you want in time and without fear of them beeing destroyed. At least an Orion can flee and offer a better degree of protection. Also since when the hell do the shivans use messons. They never ever use such tactics. they kick the door and flood the place with jugs.
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oh for cryng out loud they would be customized orions! Geez u sure cant see the point now can you? CUSTOMIZED Orions. modified especialy for node blocades. I imagine that although expensive they would actualy be a much more versatile weapon compared to the RBC's . Sure RBC's are very very impresive and usefull but this would be even more usefull. I mean it would be a fast wai to deploy RBC's where you ant them sort of..! magine 4 mjolnir cannons openind fire on a target. there wouldnt be lost of the only lets say 4 or 5 of these ships. U cant actualy move a RBC where you want in time and without fear of them beeing destroyed. At least an Orion can flee and offer a better degree of protection. Also since when the hell do the shivans use messons. They never ever use such tactics. they kick the door and flood the place with jugs.
Maybe you should stop, take 5 minutes, and think.
We have an Orion. An Orion only has a finite capacity for power, stress, armour, etc, beyond which refitting it would become more difficult and unweildy than simply making a new class of ship. And yet we're somehow refitting an Orion to withstand a juggernaut assault and use mutiples of the most powerful weapon the GTVA has, without sacrificing the mobility offered by a fleet blockade. i.e. we - well, you - are suggesting an Orion which isn't any different to a normal Orion except it has vastly more powerful weapons, which seemingly have come from nowhere. And can we assume you can mount xx weapons on one side and strip the rest? No! Because each of those weapons will have specific power, cooling, stress, etc requirements of their own. Moreso, by mounting weapons on a single side, you're just creating a huge hole and making it a sitting duck from the other. Not to mention that if you can't bring all your weapons on said Orion to bear very quickly, you are most definately screwed.
As you point out, the Shivans use juggernauts (although they could easily use Meson Type devices if they so desired, I'd wager - they just haven't needed to). The Colussus sustained damage from the power output required to destroy the Sathanas, and that was using weaker beams and facing a single crippled ship. What on earth makes you expect a smaller, older frame could survive any better? Oh, it can run away, you say! Well, that's bugger all use given that you've lost the node, and your little blockade destroyer is useless for open space combat because you've lumped all the beams on the one side.
So what do we have? An infeasibly super-powered Orion whose sole benefit is a) being a big target and b) running away.
Let's look a Mjolnirs, too. Hard to move? Most certainly not - dock to an Elysium, warp in or out, bob's your uncle. And that's assuming they don't have a capacity to re-orient in space. Less protection? Sure - but then again, they're a ****load cheaper, easier to move about, and you're not losing thousands of crew when they get blown up. Fighter cover? Makes a lot more sense for your fighter platform to be away from the combat zone - if it goes down early on in a blockade, you're ****ed (this, incidentally, would be why the Aquitane sends you in to cover for the Carthage and Dakshor).
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JUGS ;7
I wish i could be flooded with jugs :D :v: had something on the mind ;)
Well, out of the 80 jugs (that's a lot), and these are jugs, not cruiser sized. Well, with 80 jugs, they come in all different names and nationalities. First you start off with your russian jugs olga and helga, then you move on to mexican jugs like maria, then there's american jugs like rita-g. And don't forget those canadian jugs like melyssa ford and pam anderson :lol:
When i first watched the first of the 80 jugs coming through the node, i saw rita-g stamped on the side of that jug...and i knew it was my day for flying into her fighterbay.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH YEEAAAAAAAHHH!!!
(http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/3290/untitled979ao.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/4166/untitled994ps.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
Satisfaction ;)
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Mjolnirs to take out a sathanas would be great, do something like position them in back of the node or on the very sides of the node (where the sathanas doesn't have much of any weapons cover). Believe me, i'm not joking about the weapons cover on that thing, i was able to fly from the front to the rear into the fighter bay with only a couple of hits from the laser turrets on that thing (did that in a horus as everyone can see). But, like a mara did take me out. Have a couple of mjolnirs just start tagging that thing in the engines, it might get disabled, or at least become really slow :lol:
And i don't know if you can have a mjolnir docked with an elysium (probably can). But, don't forget, elysiums do have fighter cover which was like 2 flak cannons. It's enough to keep you away from the elysium :D
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Errr.....you sure have a lot of anger.(Aldo)
I see the point in what you are saing but there is one thing i dont get. Whats up with the superbeamcannon i just said it could use the mjolnir. Hey wait a sec the mjolnir is a cannon available in the FS2 campaign right?(now i'm confused) .
Aout the Colossus arguement well lets put it this way...the Colossus wasnt meant to take on anything near as big or as armoured or with that much hp as a jugg. Oh and the wai the big C was designed and gun emplacement put at well to be honest I would of used a whole differen areangement but hey thats past not.
Also the reason the big C suffered damage from its own beamcannons was because they overloaded the beam cannons in order to do much more damage. And so the heat sinks melted reactors melted etc etc. we all know what happened. I have a feeling that if the C used its weapons in the standard way there wouldnt have been any problem.
All im tring to say is that the RBC's are taken down way too fast for mi confort and that I would of liked to see an alternative to the standard RBC's .
Also if lets say you wanted a ship or a devide or something that is customed designed for blocades what would you make it. I mean would you use a LRBFG or that mjolnir thing stick them up in front of the thing strap a couple of engines behind it or what? I'm just curios to know. there was this topic somewhre that sugeste an RBC' with engines.
2nd post!
Yeah the jugg sure has crappy aaaf defenses but it has a ****load of fighter/interceptors/bommbers ! oh well just take out its fighterbay(s) and its engines and that thing is useless. I mean just get out of its foreward firing ark and you can pound on it all you want. Also i believe that not even a jugg can withstand that kind of punishement from mjolnirs. i mean one hit from 4 of these things to the engines and they MUST of been take out.
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@S-99: Elysiums have a single HL-7 turret and Mjolnirs don't have any dock points.
@AlphaOne: I've always wanted a giant beam installation pointed at a node, that doesn't mean it's practical.
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Well its not its giant or anithing i just thought you could pair up 2 or 3 mjolnirs to deliver that musch punishemnt all in one place. This is because we all know that well one RBC can miss its target if its moving fast enough but when u have like 3 or 4 of the things stacked up (4 rbc's or something like that each one with 2 mjolnirs) no matter how fast u move u are still gooing down from the first shot. off course this does not apply to jugs but then again as we have seen no ship is indestructible.
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Errr.....you sure have a lot of anger.
I see the point in what you are saing but there is one thing i dont get. Whats up with the superbeamcannon i just said it could use the mjolnir. Hey wait a sec the mjolnir is a cannon available in the FS2 campaign right?(now i'm confused) .
Aout the Colossus arguement well lets put it this way...the Colossus wasnt meant to take on anything near as big or as armoured or with that much hp as a jugg. Oh and the wai the big C was designed and gun emplacement put at well to be honest I would of used a whole differen areangement but hey thats past not.
Also the reason the big C suffered damage from its own beamcannons was because they overloaded the beam cannons in order to do much more damage. And so the heat sinks melted reactors melted etc etc. we all know what happened. I have a feeling that if the C used its weapons in the standard way there wouldnt have been any problem.
All im tring to say is that the RBC's are taken down way too fast for mi confort and that I would of liked to see an alternative to the standard RBC's .
Also if lets say you wanted a ship or a devide or something that is customed designed for blocades what would you make it. I mean would you use a LRBFG or that mjolnir thing stick them up in front of the thing strap a couple of engines behind it or what? I'm just curios to know. there was this topic somewhre that sugeste an RBC' with engines.
If it was easy, why do you think the GTVA isn't already using Mjolnirs on all its ships? Why do you think not all Terran ships use the BFGreen on all their turrets?
Also, if the Colossus used its weapons in the standard way, then it'd have taken even longer to destroy the effectively defenseless Sathanas. Remember the key aspect here is stopping the enemy before they can jump out again. The Colossus is clear evidence that beam cannons, when overused or pushed heavily, cause structural damage. And that's upon a larger, purpose built hull, not a 60+ year old ship that was built around plasma turrets.
I wouldn't custom design a ship for blockades, because such a ship would be a severe liability as soon as the blockade was broken. I'd bung 10-20 Mjolnirs (depending on availability and the likely enemy forces), stick some cruisers and corvettes in position around the node for immediate egagement, and hold destroyers on the perimeter to provide the fighter support and C & C. You don't need mobile Mjolnirs, because you have bombers and heavy warheads.
Elysiums have a single HL-7 turret and Mjolnirs don't have any dock points
Put it this way - you're not going to be shifting much during a battle anyways, only beforehand, and they have to get Mjolnirs into position even if the game itself never needed to show it.
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Just pointing out about the Elysium.
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WEll there is a valuable point in the whole 10-20 mjolnirs. and cruisers and destroyers but that implies a much more ample movement of troops then what i was aiming for. I wanted an efective deadly blocade force with as few ships men and materials as posible. The RBC's would be great if u could actualy put mjolnirs in them.
I get the point about the Orion beeing old but it is a usefull design notheless. It has the best defensive/offensive capabilities of any GTVA destroyer. It has a decent fighterbay and the most powerfull beam cannons of any GTVA destroyers. So that sais a lot about ship designs and quality in FS2 era.
They just dont make 'em like they used to.
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No, the Orion, whether it is good or not, definitely isn't the best-- a single bomber squadron could take it out (if AI worked well).
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well sure if you ant to go into details but it sure is better at beam fights then its more modern counterparts. I wasnt refering the its AAAf defenses wich by all mean suck big time theyre crap. I was reefrng to it from a heavy weapons point of view. Sure you will say that a destroyer doesnt get involved in front line action that is why they built the Hecate and the hatshepsuit(sp?) but as we see through out the entire fs2 campaign that is a flawed conception. An more then once destroyers get blown away because they lack the adequate beam fire to deal a way fast with any aproaching capship.
A ship can be ambushed . and if u dont have the beams to deal with the situation then you mi frind are welll lets just say not in a good place.
Must i point out how useless the hecates slashers are? and yet it is rated more powerfull from a beam cannon point of view then the Orion. why because it has more of them or because it has better AAAF defense. Well good for them but i dont think a good aaaf defence will save your behind when you are exchanging cannon fire with an Orion for example. i'm not pitting it against a Ravana cuz..well theres not one destroyer in the GTVA that can withstand the Ravanas beam fire.
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The Orion may be better at beam fights, but that's contingent upon it getting into one; any sensible enemy would be hitting it with bombers well before it got into a firing range. The Aquitane or Psamptik may have got into trouble more than a few times, particularly the latter, but consider the amount of damage they did by-proxy thanks to their better fighter and bomber complement. I would imagine the Orion exists only as a class because the corvettes aren't quite prevelant enough; any co-ordinated effort to take down a destroyer would probably seek to have a pair of those (or more), with bomber and fighter support from a distant capship.
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Well yeah you would take it down using bommbers but as we see quite often the shivans arent exactly shy about throwing capships into cap ship battles. Also i believe that corvettes are better suited for aaaf support then for actual beam fire support. Well actualy that is one of the main reasons for them beeing built. But I would much rather have a frigate like the Iceni onli with the aaaf defenses of a corvette on mi side then a couple of corvettes.
I mean this way you have a very good beam cannon support and decent aaaf defenses and a good fighter suport from the destroyer. I believe that the Hecate could do without 2 or 3 slashers in exchange for 2 BG . i mean that would be a much better configuration.
Also there is a lot of room in an Orion so why does it have so few AAAf defensive sistem. I mean its about the same volume as a Hecate. I never understood that. Oh and dont tell me its because of its ancient design cuz i dont buy that. They fitted beam cannons on it didnt they so why not a few more misile launchers and some aaaf beams not many just lets say 4 more missile launchers at least one more aaaf beam and 3 or 4 more flack cannons and that would a much better aaaf defence then what it curently has.
Oh and about taking down a destroyer: just ambush the sucker with and Orion and see wat happens. I mean the hecate gets blown away so fast it makes your head spin.
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Technicly speaking, since Mljonirs are automated, they come with everything included. They have their OWN power supply and targeting mechanism..
So actually attaching them to a Orion (externally) would really require no drastic changes.
You could park a modified Orion like that behind the node, so when a jug enters it can unleash hell at it's reat and bug out if it gets too hot. Saves you hte Mjlonirs that you might otherwise loose.
And hte shivans never used a meson-liek warhead trough the node tactic. Even if they do have something liek that they would first have to know that ablockade liek that exist before sending anything trough.
And their standard tactic seems to be - send in big warships. If hte defense obliderates them would Shivans know about it? After all that ship is in a nother system...how does communication between systems work anyway?
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Well i would suspect they have some sort of subspace comunication relays inside the jumpnodes. Or they actualy use the existing jumpnode network to send subspace transmision the same way you send a ship thtough a node open the node. Well not actualy opening the node but rathera micro opening.
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I wouldn't exactly call the Hatshepsut weak. IIRC it is more powerful than the Orion, and prettier to boot. (seriously, who doesn't like the "old" vacuum cleaner? :D)
Anyway, there is no prof that you can actually attach ships/sentry guns onto another ship without compromising structural integrity. Think of it like bolting a tank's turret to the side of a battleship. Also, remember that the Orion is a FS1 design, it was never intended to wield beam cannons, flak guns and such weaponry. I find it amazing that it managed to be so sucessful when compared to the Typhoon.
Blockading Shivans is somewhat difficult (useless? impossible?), due to their ability/practice to use nodes the GTVA can't use, and IIRC uncharted nodes as well, and their seemingless infinite ammount of ships (not to mention the Sathanas).
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Hatshepsut is overbalanced if you ask me.
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No army is infinite no weapon is infinite they just look that way till u destroy the last one.
Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.
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huh hows that overbalanced. i dont exactly know the weaponry of the vacuum cleaneer as you pointed out!
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OK, lets like drop the idea of turning an orion into a hecate (giving an orion less power and more fighters) and the turning a hecate into an orion (more power less fighters). The simple logic of this is pointless in the fact that you'd end up with what you started with :lol:
Anyway, the orion is an old design, it is still powerful though. The orion was developed during the tv war, so it was a war machine pretty much, later it was refitted with additional beam cannons.
The hecate was a new ship developed during a time of peace. It's not as powerful, but it does have a **** load of fighters, and it's weaponry is not an additional refit for itself like it was for the orion. The hecate was built around the idea of having beam cannons and flaks on there. The orion wasn't. My theory for possibly why the orion is more powerful, is quite simply when flak, AAAbeams, and big beams came out, you are putting a ton more turrets on a ship that already has an armada of laser turrets. The fact that the hecate is less powerful is sort of practical, and not just for the fact that it was developed during peace time for less weapons. The hecate was developed during a time of peace, has a lot of fighters, built around the idea of using the new flak and beam weaponry. The hecate is also a ship that currently fills a similar but different role compared to the orion. The hecate will operate like a destroyer, but differently, as it will offer support and everything else differently, because that's what you do when you have a different ship. Also, while the hecate is cheaper, i bet it's more flexible of a design than the orion is, meaning that perhaps the hecate was designed with ease of refit in mind for the future. I mean, command is researching new stuff like meson weaponry, and you know they're researching shivan weaponry as well. Perhaps they plan to add more power to the hecate when the need arises, and they can still do that anyway with the existing weaponry they already have. Why doesn't anybody create keyser turrets for capships?
Also, if anyone knows this, but the weaponry of a vacuum cleaner sucks :lol:
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No army is infinite no weapon is infinite they just look that way till u destroy the last one.
Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.
And all those blockades sure were successful... even with the much more limited ammount of ships belonging to the Lucifer Fleet.
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Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.
Yeah, the Shivans have to use jumpnodes, we already knew that, it says so in a command breifing.
The Lucifer fleet BTW, bypassed the allied blockade at Antares at some point.
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a) Mjolnirs have a slight, teensy, tiny, design feature that is of relevance; they're entirely self contained and sitting in open space. As soon as you connect them up to a conductive material, then it changes the thermodynamics. It's pretty obvious, really, that the Mjolnir must have some special feature in order to fit the beam weapon it has, because otherwise you'd be seeing mjolnir-esque beams bolted onto capital ships.
b) There's no evidence that the node exit vector is fixed or predictable. And the default Mjolnir beam is fixed-fire.
c) Shivans haven't needed to send a meson warhead through, yes, but they haven't had to because the GTVA doesn't use tactics vulnerable to such a tactic. They are certainly technically capable of it, which is the whole point.
d) We know there's inter-system communication thanks to the last messages of FS2, amongst others. It'd be trivial to send a scout fighter through; and AFAIK we've never seen the actual start of a Shivan.
e) What seems to be most relevant is...... the Mjolnir was developed as a remote beam cannon. Independent of capships. So what on earth would be the point of taking it and bolting it onto a capship? Clearly, the relative cost, risk, etc of such a weapon would be considered in creating it - which can only imply it's considered cost effective even given the risk of losing it. If it was going to be prohibitively expensive to lose an RBC, they wouldn't exist.
No army is infinite no weapon is infinite they just look that way till u destroy the last one.
Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.
In FS1, the Shivans were searching for Sol, so couldn't just pick a route but had to attack every system they could. And, yeah, they did circumvent the Antares blockade.
In FS2.... we don't know what they did, or where they were going. The Sathanas did blitz its way through the blockades put against it, though, as did the Iceni....
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WEll you have good points there aldo. But as stated above the Mjolnir firing vector is fixed while the exit vector of subspace is not. Or at least so everyone says. I mean there is no proof there has to be only one exit vector. The idea was just that: to take the existing Mjolnir and bolt it onto a ships hull so that its firing vector is no longer fixed. That would greatly improve the RBC's eficenci and make it a far deadlyer weapon then the existing version. Also who says you have to have the mjolnir encased in anything. Just expose it to the vacuum of space. I mean surely they can find a way of dooing that and still puting it onto a ship.
Also id didnt say that the shivans wont take advantage of existing unstable jumpnodes its just that i doubght there that many of them the shivans can use. I mean a star sistem can have only so much conections. And you would imagine the GTVA would be focusing on fiding everyone of them. I would suspect that given the recent knossos tech aquired by the GTVA they will be capable of improving theyr detection techniques of the mentioned jumpnodes. Also here is a question i wanted to ask: If the knossos device can act as a jumpnode seeling device then does that mean the gtva could actualy close off jumpnodes that could be used by the shivans to enter GTVA space?
I mean open them when they want and close them when they want? Because that would be great if you ask me. Imagine them opening a jumpnode to the nebula send in a task force colect rawmaterials for a while then retreat back to the safety of the jumpgate!
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I think capships exit nodes at the same direction in which they enter.
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errr then how the hell can the fighters move around subspace coridors. I mean that sort of beats the logic. If u enter a certain vector then you must maintaind that vector in order to exit the same vector. but then again you are actualy dogfighting in the subspace coriodor. Isn't that sort of..i dont know...ilogical....? I'm no expert i'm just here for the answers.
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Well, I don't think an objects oreintation in subspace is really equivalent to its oreintation in realspace... it's like bi girls in high-school.
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SAy what?? what do highschool girls have to do with subs....of for.....nevermind that!
That would be interesting but still sort of ilogical. i mean if a ship enteres subspace y axis the it must exit the same axis right? then that would mean it would exit what somewhere on the top of the node????
This is a great way to bypass blocades and stuff...! But then agin we dont actualy see them do that!
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Lol
Very true on the capships exiting in the vector in which they entered.
But, that completely matters on which vector the ship entered the node now doesn't it? I bet if you entered a node from the very top of it, you exit the other side in a different system coming out from the bottom.
If you wanted to position mjolnirs to fire at the ass end of a ship, you could just set up mjolnirs to take advantage of the average exit vector of a node. Most ships on average exit a node coming straight out from the front of it horizontal, the only exception to the average, is sometimes the vessel is upside down. Also the other exception to how ships enter or exit a node at different angles is due to maneuverability. A fighter can fly all around a corridor as it wants, usually taking out pirates or something, but it a deimos is in a corridor, it never maneuvers, because there's no point to it other than exiting the node or blasting anything that comes close to it. Corvettes, cruisers, destroyers, and transports, usually only go in straight lines because they maneuver like my mom. That's why you usually see fighters enter and exit subspace at different angles, and the most variation you see in capships and transports is maybe they went in upside down. As far as exiting the node in the position or vector you were in, probably depends on the nodes convergeance with real space and where you're located in the node.
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WEll you have good points there aldo. But as stated above the Mjolnir firing vector is fixed while the exit vector of subspace is not. Or at least so everyone says. I mean there is no proof there has to be only one exit vector. The idea was just that: to take the existing Mjolnir and bolt it onto a ships hull so that its firing vector is no longer fixed. That would greatly improve the RBC's eficenci and make it a far deadlyer weapon then the existing version. Also who says you have to have the mjolnir encased in anything. Just expose it to the vacuum of space. I mean surely they can find a way of dooing that and still puting it onto a ship.
Also id didnt say that the shivans wont take advantage of existing unstable jumpnodes its just that i doubght there that many of them the shivans can use. I mean a star sistem can have only so much conections. And you would imagine the GTVA would be focusing on fiding everyone of them. I would suspect that given the recent knossos tech aquired by the GTVA they will be capable of improving theyr detection techniques of the mentioned jumpnodes. Also here is a question i wanted to ask: If the knossos device can act as a jumpnode seeling device then does that mean the gtva could actualy close off jumpnodes that could be used by the shivans to enter GTVA space?
I mean open them when they want and close them when they want? Because that would be great if you ask me. Imagine them opening a jumpnode to the nebula send in a task force colect rawmaterials for a while then retreat back to the safety of the jumpgate!
Like I said in another thread, the knossos can't seal off nodes.
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Bummer. Then why werent the shivans able to get to GD sooner? I mean the node was there and they must of had some idea of its stabilaty!
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Probably wasn't stable enough even for Shivans
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I was thinking the reason why the mjolnir was so powerful, was probably one of the facts that it's a completely independent structure designed only for one purpose. It has a power supply, and big beam cannon, everything on the mjolnir is devoted to the beam firing aspect of it. It's a whole entire platform devoted to beaming. It doesn't need to worry about life support or other weapons mounted on it, it can have probably a higher heat tolerance than the beams built into ships. The mjolnir can keep going as it wishes until it overloads or something like that. The fact that the mjolnir is a dedicated platform for 100% beamage, is probably one of the reasons gtva was able to make it a lot more powerful than beams on ships.
But, mjolnirs can be automated, or they can operate with tag missiles.
Another thing that would be cool, is if their was something like the mjolnir, but like half the size or something, had multiple turrets, and just be a AAA beam platform that could be very fun, and protective as all hell. :nod:
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I just want a Mjolnir that can turn around.
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I just want a Mjolnir that can turn around.
Actually, when the Hi-Poly Mjolnir was released, a re-positioned version was exported at the same time. It had been re-oriented so that the beam end was front-facing rather than upward-facing as in the :V: version. I'm not sure if it was included in the MediaVPs or not, but since it faces forward, all you need is altered tables to give it rotational mobility and then give it attack orders.
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Sexy, and the search works to... thanks.
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Bummer. Then why werent the shivans able to get to GD sooner? I mean the node was there and they must of had some idea of its stabilaty!
I tried to answer this in this very thread... :doubt:
The shivans started appearing after the Knossos was activated not because the node was "unlocked" but probably because they were drawn to it, just like they seem to be drawn to any subspace using race.
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well that as hell sure dosnt make any sence. I mean why bother stayng all that time in the nebula then all of a sudden get out blast the oposition and then head off to capella to bloow the star. This is basicly what the shivans did! It just doesnt make any sence!
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Like I said in another thread, the knossos can't seal off nodes.
We don't actually know that.
WEll you have good points there aldo. But as stated above the Mjolnir firing vector is fixed while the exit vector of subspace is not. Or at least so everyone says. I mean there is no proof there has to be only one exit vector. The idea was just that: to take the existing Mjolnir and bolt it onto a ships hull so that its firing vector is no longer fixed. That would greatly improve the RBC's eficenci and make it a far deadlyer weapon then the existing version. Also who says you have to have the mjolnir encased in anything. Just expose it to the vacuum of space. I mean surely they can find a way of dooing that and still puting it onto a ship.
Why on earth would they bolt it onto a ship rather than bung on a couple of engines? The whole advantage of a Mjolnir is based around not being part of a ship. Moreso, if you affix more than one Mjolnir onto a ship then you are automatically limiting the positions that can be fired from due to keeping those Mjolnirs together.
Also id didnt say that the shivans wont take advantage of existing unstable jumpnodes its just that i doubght there that many of them the shivans can use. I mean a star sistem can have only so much conections. And you would imagine the GTVA would be focusing on fiding everyone of them. I would suspect that given the recent knossos tech aquired by the GTVA they will be capable of improving theyr detection techniques of the mentioned jumpnodes. Also here is a question i wanted to ask: If the knossos device can act as a jumpnode seeling device then does that mean the gtva could actualy close off jumpnodes that could be used by the shivans to enter GTVA space?
The vast majority of subspace nodes are extremely unstable, forming and dissipating in nanoseconds. Other nodes have a longer lifespan, existing for centuries or millennia before collapsing. The jump nodes sanctioned by the GTVA for interstellar travel are expected to remain stable for many years.
errr then how the hell can the fighters move around subspace coridors. I mean that sort of beats the logic. If u enter a certain vector then you must maintaind that vector in order to exit the same vector. but then again you are actualy dogfighting in the subspace coriodor. Isn't that sort of..i dont know...ilogical....? I'm no expert i'm just here for the answers.
How would you know the entry vector (given that we're talking about positioning weaponry? Not to forget subspace is non-relativistic.
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Like I said in another thread, the knossos can't seal off nodes.
We don't actually know that.
Then why didn't the Ancients just build Knossos devices all over their empire and stopped the Shivans from destroying them?
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Like I said in another thread, the knossos can't seal off nodes.
We don't actually know that.
Then why didn't the Ancients just build Knossos devices all over their empire and stopped the Shivans from destroying them?
Dare I suggest the obvious?
a) there wasn't time
b) there wasn't the resources with an ongoing war
c) they didn't have charts of all the nodes the Shivans could use
and
d) the Shivans used their subspace abilities to jump into tactical positions where they could prevent any such devices being created.
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Like I said in another thread, the knossos can't seal off nodes.
We don't actually know that.
Then why didn't the Ancients just build Knossos devices all over their empire and stopped the Shivans from destroying them?
Dare I suggest the obvious?
a) there wasn't time
b) there wasn't the resources with an ongoing war
c) they didn't have charts of all the nodes the Shivans could use
and
d) the Shivans used their subspace abilities to jump into tactical positions where they could prevent any such devices being created.
Oh :nervous:
forgot about that one
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Oh well then all the GTVa has to do is map every conceivable jumpnode that the shivans may use and seel them all! Oh wait..thats imposible....! Oh well then i guess theyl get theyr behinds blown all the way to Sol!
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Actually, when the Hi-Poly Mjolnir was released, a re-positioned version was exported at the same time. It had been re-oriented so that the beam end was front-facing rather than upward-facing as in the :V: version. I'm not sure if it was included in the MediaVPs or not, but since it faces forward, all you need is altered tables to give it rotational mobility and then give it attack orders.
Well it was a nice idea, seems, in order to turn around, a ship needs engines.
Edit:
Now it works (it was my bad tabling skills) this is the coolest thing ever, I'm inspired.
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What seems to be most relevant is...... the Mjolnir was developed as a remote beam cannon. Independent of capships. So what on earth would be the point of taking it and bolting it onto a capship? Clearly, the relative cost, risk, etc of such a weapon would be considered in creating it - which can only imply it's considered cost effective even given the risk of losing it. If it was going to be prohibitively expensive to lose an RBC, they wouldn't exist.
Simple - to save it! It's not mobile. It's fixed!
If the blockade fails and you have to flee, the Mljonirs wil lstay and get destroyed...And they can easily get destroyed with no protection.
Simply bolting them to a old capship is actually quite plausible. Insted of sending that old Orion to a scrapyard, you just glue 4-5 Mjlonirs to it on preselected spots to effectivly double it's broadside firepower. The Orion can stand guard of the node, and can turn to face the enemy ship should it come out in a different vector (I havn't seen the Mljonirs turn by themselves).
We know the GTVA uses node blockade tactics that are somewhat vulnerable to a meson warhead (I say somewhat, since the meson blast radius is 3km, and the ships are usually just in beam range).
Second, in all the missinos I played warship allways exited nodes facing the same way. Allways.
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Simple - to save it! It's not mobile. It's fixed!
If the blockade fails and you have to flee, the Mljonirs wil lstay and get destroyed...And they can easily get destroyed with no protection.
That's the whole point. You lose a bunch of Mjolnirs - so what? It's a piece of machinery. It's not, for example, a huge capital ship with thousands of crew. Do you worry about the cost of losing a Watchdog sentry gun? Same principle. Hell, odds on that the principle of developing such a thing would be to save money and resources by not deploying bloody great capships and crew into a combat zone when the enemy you expect (Shivans) have a clear numerical advantage and ability to win any war of attrition. The whole point of an RBC is that you don't worry about losing it, because you can always manufacture more.
Simply bolting them to a old capship is actually quite plausible. Insted of sending that old Orion to a scrapyard, you just glue 4-5 Mjlonirs to it on preselected spots to effectivly double it's broadside firepower. The Orion can stand guard of the node, and can turn to face the enemy ship should it come out in a different vector (I havn't seen the Mljonirs turn by themselves).
Yeah, because Orions can turn on a pin........odds on if it were caught out, it'd be stripped and struck down before it could re-manouver. And even when it's moving, the enemy can move, too! This thing needs to be able to cripple the enemy before they can hit it or, more likely, just jump out. Any time delay, and the blockade is ****ed; it's now defending the node and trying to cover its ass from the ship/s that escaped.
Not to mention that old Orion needs rather a lot of people to crew it. And that you can't just 'glue' Mjolnirs on; I'd wager you'd need a substantial amount of superstructure to reinforce it, prevent heat buildup, etc. And that those Mjolnirs would be pretty much almost as vulnerable as the standalone RBCs, except now they'd have 10,000 people sitting behind them. We can't just magic up these people - or the Orion - out of nowhere, after all (and would they be scrapping an Orion without a superior replacement, unless it was due to crew shortages? I doubt it myself.)
How many people remember a Mjolnir is 93 by 108 by 91m in size? That makes it larger than many freighters (the Poseidon, for example, is about half that size). About, I'd estimate, 40-50% the volume of an Aeolus. That's not a small thing to affix to a ships hull.
And lets not forget; these ships need a lot of people. 10,000 for an operational Orion (and anything less than a fully operation Orion - with - shiny - extra - beams is a liability once it's exposed away from a blockade). That's 10,000 people you'll need to find, for an old mothballed ship.
We know the GTVA uses node blockade tactics that are somewhat vulnerable to a meson warhead (I say somewhat, since the meson blast radius is 3km, and the ships are usually just in beam range).
Technically, they don't. All the blockades I can think of offhand had capships at standoff range, and the players' fighter / bomber wing is deployed from outside of the combat zone.
Second, in all the missinos I played warship allways exited nodes facing the same way. Allways.
And this means what, exactly? That the mission designers laid out the missions on a more or less flat plane with a logical left-right type progression?
We simply don't have an answer for this issue.
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And this means what, exactly? That the mission designers laid out the missions on a more or less flat plane with a logical left-right type progression?
Gameplay balancing, perhaps? What's easier: bombing an Orion that's coming out of a node at 200+ meters/second in your direction, allowing you to close the distance much quicker, or bombing an Orion that's headed away from you at 200+ meters/second in the opposite direction?
That's 10,000 people you'll need to find, for an old mothballed ship.
Well, to be a total nitpick, I would guess that it would not necessarily have to be 10,000 exact for an Orion whose primary purpose is to sit around with some beam cannons attached. A good number of that 10,000 is probably pilots, squadron leaders, mechanics, and other hangar crew that would be otherwise unnecessary if the ship was used primarily as a mobile gun platform.
It's still an implausible idea, however, for the reasons aldo stated.
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That's 10,000 people you'll need to find, for an old mothballed ship.
Well, to be a total nitpick, I would guess that it would not necessarily have to be 10,000 exact for an Orion whose primary purpose is to sit around with some beam cannons attached. A good number of that 10,000 is probably pilots, squadron leaders, mechanics, and other hangar crew that would be otherwise unnecessary if the ship was used primarily as a mobile gun platform.
It's still an implausible idea, however, for the reasons aldo stated.
Mmm. Bear in mind what I said elsewhere in that post; away from the blockade, that Orion is a massive liability unless it can fully defend itself. If the whole point of strapping cannons onto a destroyer is to protect the cannons if the blockade is abandoned, it's not very useful to make those cannons effectively defenseless away from the blockade anyways. If you strip the fighter squadrons, for example, then the Orion is hugely vulnerable to bomber attack. If you strip down on general crew or maintenance numbers, then the ability for that destroyer to operate 24 hour watches would presumably also be impinged. Either way you're looking at thousands, but I would guess that the 10,000 is around the minimum required for a combat-operational and deployed Orion, and as soon as it leaves the blockade, the uber-bearzor-rion will need to be operational or it'll either suck up resources for its defense, or face destruction in open space.
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Ok ok i see the pont but that still doesnt invalidate the arguement regarding a dedicated blockade platform something that has the power of a mjolnir and still be quite mobile.
This is in mi opinion one of the more adequate measures that the GTVA has to take in order to mount a credible node blocade. Especialy sisnce the shivans have the juggs.
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Ok ok i see the pont but that still doesnt invalidate the arguement regarding a dedicated blockade platform something that has the power of a mjolnir and still be quite mobile.
This is in mi opinion one of the more adequate measures that the GTVA has to take in order to mount a credible node blocade. Especialy sisnce the shivans have the juggs.
What, you mean like adding engines to a Mjolnir. (why? It'd never be able to move quickly enough to reposition tactically)
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then add really big engines i mean what the hell they can move a 3 km behemonts along at 20 or 30 ms ps and they cant move a beam cannon??But the again putting engines on them mai not be the best solution but rather a dedicated platform or something like that with massive thrusters and a good engine if posible make it a vasudan one cuz they sure are better at building reactors and engines the the terrans. Also it doesnt have to turn on a dime but have the manouverabilaty of a cruise a fenris for example or something like that.
Enough fo it to reposition its firing solution as to target the ships exiting more eficently.
This would graetely help with the blocade.
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then add really big engines i mean what the hell they can move a 3 km behemonts along at 20 or 30 ms ps and they cant move a beam cannon??But the again putting engines on them mai not be the best solution but rather a dedicated platform or something like that with massive thrusters and a good engine if posible make it a vasudan one cuz they sure are better at building reactors and engines the the terrans. Also it doesnt have to turn on a dime but have the manouverabilaty of a cruise a fenris for example or something like that.
Firstly, a cruiser isn't maneuverable enough for that type of defense; a cruiser has the advantage of multiple weapons to bring to bear, so it can turn slowly whilst still having some form of offensive capabilitity whilst it is brining the main weapons to bear. An RBC has a single-straight-forward beam, and if it can't fire more or less immediately then the enemy can quickly escape. How useful is fighter with the maneuverability of a cruiser? Not very - and an RBC is the same fixed-fire principle.
In terms of engines; let's not forget that capital ships probably have huge reactors. Given that the Mjolnir is about 100m long, it entails that the reactor for it's single-but-powerful beam weapon is similarly huge. now, you can add new engines, but bear in mind the consequences - it'd be a much larger target, it'd be a lot more expensive, there'd arguably be more splash damage when it goes down due to the larger reactor, and you'd have probably constraints upon the design due to stresses of movement when it shifts.
Given that these weapons are essentially disposable, there's not all that much point in replacing them with what is not all that different to a Helios-armed bomber or a small cruiser. I suspect that because the RBC beam is so powerful, you think that it's easy to replicate and shove on some form of large structure. But that beam is also the result of a purpose-built shell the size of a freighter, dedicated to that purpose (I'd bet it also has huge heat sinks so it can fire frequently, too, which would be an additional problem as part of a larger structure ala the Colossus). If it were easy to integrate that form of weaponry in a meaningful, aimable manner on a ship, you'd be seeing them on the likes of the Colossus.
Enough fo it to reposition its firing solution as to target the ships exiting more eficently.
This would graetely help with the blocade.
Actually, any time requirement to turn screws up the blockade. Anything beyond fighter-level maneuverability will find itself out-turned and exposed if it's not in a correct firing position initially. Given that the first ships through a blockade would expect to carry or be escorted by fighter cover, you can't assume you'd have time to reposition RBCs for the next wave before they can under attack; which is why i'd imagine they'd not be cost effective.
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WEll then there is only one solution build them in numbers. I mean huge numbers. Like 100 or so even more if posible since theyre that cheap that they area viewed as disposable.
Stick them all where you need them and there you have it a blocade which no jugg can pass.
Also is there a way to move them aroud with a freighter or something like that?? i mean toe them fast from one sistem to the other.
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WEll then there is only one solution build them in numbers. I mean huge numbers. Like 100 or so even more if posible since theyre that cheap that they area viewed as disposable.
Be realistic here - cheap and disposable does not equal free, it means they cost less and are easier to make than a comparable, crewed vessel of similar capabilities. It's financial and resource constraints that make RBCs useful; it's the same constraints that prevent overloading of nodes with them, same as you can't blockade with 30 or 40 cruisers at each node.
In any sensible blockade, RBCs would be merely part of a staged defense involving fighter and bomber cover, fleet vessels, and perhaps even the lowly sentry gun. RBCs are more effective and efficient than a cruiser or destroyer at close-ish range in a blockade, so they go in close and positioned as an initial defence. Bombers, with fighter cover, form the 2nd line. Destroyers and beam-armed warships form the final lines, including perhaps reserve forces well-back from the blockade which interdict escapees.
Stick them all where you need them and there you have it a blocade which no jugg can pass.
Also is there a way to move them aroud with a freighter or something like that?? i mean toe them fast from one sistem to the other.
Almost certainly they can be picked up by transports and moved, but it's unlikely to be any faster than normal fleet travel would be.
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I tend to disagree....
Since with node blockades you KNOW where the enemy will come from your beam cannon willl not have to move much. Given the re-charge times of beam cannons, cruiser type mauverability is more than enough.
RBC's aren't cheap. If they were we would be seeing many more of them. Giving them the abiltiy to turn around and jump out means you can save them and re-use them. It's efficent from any point of view, as you can mount a even stronger a defense at the next node.
And techincly, hte GTVA could hold a blocake quite well with the tech it has.. Put several RBC'ss, Orions and Hatephsuts around the node and I guarnatee that no Sathanas will make it trough. A jump node is a tight spot where only one destroyer/jugg can pass trough at once.
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I tend to disagree....
Since with node blockades you KNOW where the enemy will come from your beam cannon willl not have to move much. Given the re-charge times of beam cannons, cruiser type mauverability is more than enough.
Firstly, we don't know where the enemy will come from. There's no conclusive evidence that the exit vector from subspace is fixed. Secondly, the beam cannons need to manuever, fire, and inflict disabling damage in the time period before an attacking ship can jump out. That's not a long time; not to mention that an attacking destroyer (or fighter-carrying carrier) will be able to deploy fighters as cover (whilst a sensible blockade will have protective fighter cover of its own, it's best to make sure the Mjolnirs have a good chance of hitting).
Note, again, Mjolnirs are not perfect in this regard. But they are, most likely (due to the fact they were developed) cheap and effective for their cost-loss ratio. It's probably a LOT cheaper to position a reasonable number of Mjolnirs in a good 360 firing arc round a node, than to have the same coverage via capital ships. This does not abdicate other ship types from a role in a blockade, of course.
RBC's aren't cheap. If they were we would be seeing many more of them. Giving them the abiltiy to turn around and jump out means you can save them and re-use them. It's efficent from any point of view, as you can mount a even stronger a defense at the next node.
Actually, we don't see many because they are developed fairly late on in the campaign and marked as experimental. After that point in the game you don't see many blockades, period.
And techincly, hte GTVA could hold a blocake quite well with the tech it has.. Put several RBC'ss, Orions and Hatephsuts around the node and I guarnatee that no Sathanas will make it trough. A jump node is a tight spot where only one destroyer/jugg can pass trough at once.
The GTVA tried that in Capella. The Sathanas decimated them;
[A small task force will oversee the demolition of the Knossos while the bulk of the allied fleet blockades the jump node leading to the densely-populated Capella system. Command has begun the process of evacuating the two hundred fifty million civilians inhabiting Capella, the largest exodus since the Great War. The Colossus will remain in that system to engage the Sathanas should we fail.
The Sathanas decimated our fleet at the Capella node. Your bomber wing will be scrambled to destroy the Juggernaut's forward beam turrets before it reaches Capella. You must destroy at least two turrets to give the Colossus a fighting chance. You will be armed with the new long-range Trebuchet missile and the Helios torpedo, the GTVA's most powerful tactical warhead.
Either the bulk of the GTVA fleet is smaller than several RBCs and multiple destroyers (meaning that strategy would be unfeasibly resource-intensive with the risk of Shivan attacks from other unstable nodes), or it was that size and simply annihilated by the superior vessel. If the storyline of FS2 shows one thing about blockades, it's that they are frequently broken. Also, there's a potential issue that beam cannons overheat with continuous fire on a capship, i.e. the Colossus. I'd imagine Mjolnirs would be designed from scratch to avoid this.
Whilst I would agree RBCs with fighter cover and warship (but not primarily destroyers; you need to keep them at a safe distance or you risk losing your entire fighter and bomber cover) cover in the perimeter, you can't hold out against a vastly superior force under any prolonged circumstance.
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Stick them all where you need them and there you have it a blocade which no jugg can pass.
Not true. If they're packed together at the node, then all it would take is a few lucky Cyclops bombs to cripple the line. If they're too spread apart, then the fighter cover won't reach them fast enough.
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The Sathanas decimated our fleet at the Capella node. Your bomber wing will be scrambled to destroy the Juggernaut's forward beam turrets before it reaches Capella. You must destroy at least two turrets to give the Colossus a fighting chance. You will be armed with the new long-range Trebuchet missile and the Helios torpedo, the GTVA's most powerful tactical warhead.
Either the bulk of the GTVA fleet is smaller than several RBCs and multiple destroyers (meaning that strategy would be unfeasibly resource-intensive with the risk of Shivan attacks from other unstable nodes), or it was that size and simply annihilated by the superior vessel. If the storyline of FS2 shows one thing about blockades, it's that they are frequently broken. Also, there's a potential issue that beam cannons overheat with continuous fire on a capship, i.e. the Colossus. I'd imagine Mjolnirs would be designed from scratch to avoid this.
I have a theory on this actually; it relates to the rather unimpressive amount of fighters the Sathanas launched in High Noon. Specifically that the Sathanas did not on its own do most of the decimating. Rather it launched, and lost, most of its fighters to engage the GTVA fleet at the node, and the fighters did most of the damage while the Sathanas just cruised on.
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I have a theory on this actually; it relates to the rather unimpressive amount of fighters the Sathanas launched in High Noon. Specifically that the Sathanas did not on its own do most of the decimating. Rather it launched, and lost, most of its fighters to engage the GTVA fleet at the node, and the fighters did most of the damage while the Sathanas just cruised on.
That'd make sense, yeah, although there'd likely be equally many GTVA fighters covering the blockade as launched. I'd imagine the ability of the Sath to incenerate just about anything in front of it would be the key, though; it could probably destroy the fighter-carrying destroyers sharpish.
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Well yeah it would sugest that it was in fact a great fighter/bommber engagement and since thy didnt have alpha1 there...!
But still how many destroyers were scrambled there and how mani fighters from other sistems??
You would imagine them sending most of theyr forces!
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Firstly, we don't know where the enemy will come from. There's no conclusive evidence that the exit vector from subspace is fixed. Secondly, the beam cannons need to manuever, fire, and inflict disabling damage in the time period before an attacking ship can jump out. That's not a long time; not to mention that an attacking destroyer (or fighter-carrying carrier) will be able to deploy fighters as cover (whilst a sensible blockade will have protective fighter cover of its own, it's best to make sure the Mjolnirs have a good chance of hitting).
Note, again, Mjolnirs are not perfect in this regard. But they are, most likely (due to the fact they were developed) cheap and effective for their cost-loss ratio. It's probably a LOT cheaper to position a reasonable number of Mjolnirs in a good 360 firing arc round a node, than to have the same coverage via capital ships. This does not abdicate other ship types from a role in a blockade, of course.
From what I've seen everything suggest the exit vector is more or less fixed (or very limited).
And I'm talking about a Mljonir with a engine, not the slap Mljonirs on a destroyer idea (not practical really)
The GTVA tried that in Capella. The Sathanas decimated them;
The FRED tells a diffent story. Normally, a blockade would pawn hte Sath....Of course in the game it decimated them. It *HAD* to decimate them for hte player to save they day. Chuck the logic and balance out of the window....
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I made slow turning Mjolnirs, the GTVA should try it. Four of them can completely destroy a Hecate within 30 seconds of it's jumping in (small problem though, which I mentioned in this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39894.0.html) post)
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Why can't the sathanas do something worth its fighter bay in size (and unique). like launching liliths and cains :)
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I don't think that've done much good, except in Bearbaiting. Colossus would've vaporized them in short order (maybe not the Liliths, but definitely the Cains)
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Think of deploying liliths and cains along with fighters ;)
Serioulsy though, the sathanas is huge as ****, so is the colossus, it's probably going to be a factory for fighters and stuff.
If the sathanas was also manufacturing liliths and cains, that'd also give the limited use of the sathanas more of a role. It'd make sense to for it's size and fighterbay size. The sathanas so far has forward beam cannons, doesn't deploy many fighters, and has subspace abilities. Something tells me since it's not very offensive, it's either a support role, or used by the shivans for it's subspace manipulation and technology. Besides any type of role, the sathanas is really a dumb**** lumbering giant if you're not in front of it.
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WEll you could say that except that one of these lumbering giants just one of them managed to anihalate more then half of the GTVA forces involved in the war in just a couple of what?..weeks??
So yeah this is something neither the NTF not convencional shivan forces managed to do!
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True, but i'm also saying, get behind that sath, i mean, once you're out of the way of those forward beams, you might as well call it all good. That's why i was thinking the sath was perhaps a different type of vessel specialized for something, i mean, a more imposing vessel than the sath would be the ravana, the ravana has a lot more cover all around it.
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From what I've seen everything suggest the exit vector is more or less fixed (or very limited).
And I'm talking about a Mljonir with a engine, not the slap Mljonirs on a destroyer idea (not practical really)
Well, you still have technical issues with that approach, particularly cost and structure. Even if we have viable engines (able to turn quickly), adding them raises the cost and complexity of the RBC. And then it is getting expensive, so you end up considering how to protect them, so maybe slap in a jumpdrive....and eventually you end up with more or less a single turreted cruiser, and need a new and cheap RBC solution.
The FRED tells a diffent story. Normally, a blockade would pawn hte Sath....Of course in the game it decimated them. It *HAD* to decimate them for hte player to save they day. Chuck the logic and balance out of the window....
Yes, well you can FRED a Fenris destroying a Sath - it doesn't necessarily make it the likely result. Storyline trumps gameplay all the time; otherwise how else would the player be able to enjoy fighting in a losing war?
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From what I've seen everything suggest the exit vector is more or less fixed (or very limited).
And I'm talking about a Mljonir with a engine, not the slap Mljonirs on a destroyer idea (not practical really)
Well, you still have technical issues with that approach, particularly cost and structure. Even if we have viable engines (able to turn quickly), adding them raises the cost and complexity of the RBC. And then it is getting expensive, so you end up considering how to protect them, so maybe slap in a jumpdrive....and eventually you end up with more or less a single turreted cruiser, and need a new and cheap RBC solution.
Not neccesarily. Why go through the cost of putting the engines on the Mjolnir itself, when you can simply leave it docked with a freighter, a Triton for example. Sure, that's adding a human element to the situation, but should the s*** really hit the fan, the freighter can simply uncouple and jump away in seconds, no harm, no foul.
An idea i've been kicking around is having small fleets of freighters standing in for operational battlegroups. You'd have Tritons docked with RBCs for firepower, and Tritons docked with a Hanger/Carrier pod, as in the one that was designed not to long ago by god-knows-who, for aerospace superiority, and Bob's-your-uncle you've got yourself in essence a destroyer in 20 pieces.
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Think of this scenario. Putting engines on a mjolnir would be like putting engines on a sentry gun. Now does the idea sound dumb to more people?
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Actually I cannot understand why FS ships are designed like they are. Modular design would be so much more useful. You could lierally build any ship imaginable from quite few modules (command, beam weaponry, missile weaponry, anti-fighter weaponry [flaks&turrets], propulsion, navigation, sensors and communications, hangar, power supply). These modules would be attached to a base bulk structure differing by the purpose of the ship - a convoy ship would have good AF-weaponry, whereas a anti-cap ship would have more beam weaponry and so on. Size of the ship is easily modifiable, only thing you need to do is increase the size of the bulk structure and increase the amount of modules attached onto it. Furthermore, different kinds of ships would be much cheaper to assemble with similar modules being mass-produced and bolted onto base structure of a ship. Mjölnir beams could possibly be potential modules, yes.
Further advantages include possibility to have self-propelled, self-powered, individually armoured modules that regain some limited abilities as individual space ships. This would increase the chances of a capital ship surviving the battle more or less intact and what more important, keep it able to fight longer than traditional ships. When for example a beam would cut a ship in half, severing the rear end from the front, both parts would still be able to fight.
Of course it would not give so cool-looking ships. With modular design, the most sensible design would be a hollow ball structure that has different kind of modules attached onto it. Why ball, then? Because a ball would be the form providing the smallest angular momentum in relation to ship's mass, giving the best possible maneuverability - not that it would be very necessary to maneuver a symmetric space ship anyway, if you put two thruster systems on every three axis.
Actually I'll have a Deimos or Sobek in my game any time rather than a modular minuscule Death Star. :p
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Modular designs are inherently fragile. Otherwise they get rather less modular then they were originally.
The single-turreted cruiser/monitor design is among the more reasonable methods of defeating a Sathanas I've come up with. The less reasonable ones include 120 Helios bombs in a salvo from a corvette-size craft.
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ummm.....the idea about the helios sounds good but then agin you would have to get quite close. also they would what fire the salvo and be left without any ofensive weaponry whatsoever..!
i beliebe that half that amount would be usefull in cripelling the juggs sistems i mean the fighterbay the engines and rear beam turret as well as weapon sistems and sensors. then just go ahead and pund at it with beams . cuz it cand fire the weapons no more.
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Aaah, verbose.
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Well, you still have technical issues with that approach, particularly cost and structure. Even if we have viable engines (able to turn quickly), adding them raises the cost and complexity of the RBC. And then it is getting expensive, so you end up considering how to protect them, so maybe slap in a jumpdrive....and eventually you end up with more or less a single turreted cruiser, and need a new and cheap RBC solution.
Considering that EVERY fighter and freighter has engines and jumpdrives I don't think the price would increase by much...
Yes, well you can FRED a Fenris destroying a Sath - it doesn't necessarily make it the likely result. Storyline trumps gameplay all the time; otherwise how else would the player be able to enjoy fighting in a losing war?
That's my point. The Sath isn't strong enough to break a good blockade (at least not the one composing of the bulk of the GTVA fleet). Even story-wise it could have been handeled better....
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Well, you still have technical issues with that approach, particularly cost and structure. Even if we have viable engines (able to turn quickly), adding them raises the cost and complexity of the RBC. And then it is getting expensive, so you end up considering how to protect them, so maybe slap in a jumpdrive....and eventually you end up with more or less a single turreted cruiser, and need a new and cheap RBC solution.
Considering that EVERY fighter and freighter has engines and jumpdrives I don't think the price would increase by much...
Every fighter and freighter (fighter is irrelevant if we're considering engines bit enough to reliably shift a chunky Mjolnir) is designed to have engines, though. Their powerplants, internal structure, etc, are all based around that, and I think it's not an unfair presumption that you'd need to add, shield, and properly construct a substantially sized new reactor to maneuver a Mjolnir at adequate speeds, all of which add costs. And AFAIK they've never been described as disposably 'priced' anyways.
As someone else noted, would you add engines to a sentry gun?
That's my point. The Sath isn't strong enough to break a good blockade (at least not the one composing of the bulk of the GTVA fleet). Even story-wise it could have been handeled better....
"The giant invincible Shivan juggernaut we've spent the last few missions telling you is a horrific, GTVA threatening monstrosity, scraped past our slightly damaged blockade with 1% hull integrity and its weapons missing - you're our last hope!"
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you allways tend to complicate things... Adding engines should not be hard or pricey.
Didn't terrans re-engineerd fighters to use shields? That would require more work than simply bolting a engine on it.
Don't forget that the engine doesn't have to be integrated into hte Nljonir - it cna be a aprt that can be attached - with it's own powersource - only the AI (targeting) of it would have to be linked/controled with the cannon...
Besides, the cost of a Mljonir far outstrips the cost of a engine module + software update.. so a cost increase of 1-5% really isn't a big deal when it makes hte cannon mroe effective and prone to survive..
"The giant invincible Shivan juggernaut we've spent the last few missions telling you is a horrific, GTVA threatening monstrosity, scraped past our slightly damaged blockade with 1% hull integrity and its weapons missing - you're our last hope!"
They either should have made it less vulnerable / more powerfull or adjusted the storyline....
Like the shivans storming the blockade in numbers...or the Sath taking the defense fleet by surprise
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ummm.....the idea about the helios sounds good but then agin you would have to get quite close. also they would what fire the salvo and be left without any ofensive weaponry whatsoever..!
i beliebe that half that amount would be usefull in cripelling the juggs sistems i mean the fighterbay the engines and rear beam turret as well as weapon sistems and sensors. then just go ahead and pund at it with beams . cuz it cand fire the weapons no more.
Well, there were several considerations. You have to overwhelm the defensive turrets of the Sathanas, and its fighter screen. Testing it with a hacked Aeolus and swarm-tagged bombs got me the 120 figure for the minimum needed to defeat the turrets and inflict crippling damage with a single strike. Outright destroying a Sathanas in a single salvo would probably take twice that number of bombs, and escorting fighters shooting down some of the bombs make the number even higher, but 120 is really about as far as I'm willing to stretch player credibility. The basic concept is to jump in, launch, and jump out again immediately...the problem is GTVA ships rarely jump that well.
My current ideas about the subject are to have a corvette-sized ship with 120 warheads to each broadside and light flak-type armament for self-defense. The player would tag the Sathanas (or other juggernaut <,< >,>) to enable an accurate jump, then defend the ship while it acquires a lock, fires, and plots another jump out. Ideally the ships would attack in pairs, one from either flank of the juggernaut, to help disperse the defending fighters. It would make for a nice, short, and very intense mission.
However I'm still torn between whether that would work better then my other similar mission concept, which would be defending a specialized AWACs-type ship from a juggernaut's escorting fighter wings while it passes mid-course guidance data to some kind of planet-launched heavy missiles.
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wtf? planet side launched missiles?? I liked the corvette idea better. It would be fesable you know. WEll sort of. I give it a thums up !
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you allways tend to complicate things... Adding engines should not be hard or pricey.
Really? Do it to your car.
Didn't terrans re-engineerd fighters to use shields? That would require more work than simply bolting a engine on it.
Don't forget that the engine doesn't have to be integrated into hte Nljonir - it cna be a aprt that can be attached - with it's own powersource - only the AI (targeting) of it would have to be linked/controled with the cannon...
So we have to have physical connections between the two, sensory feedback for maintenance, control systems, and a strong superstructure so the engine isn't a weak point whose destruction leads to internal damage on the cannon. All of these systems will need integration and possibly EMP shielding and you'd need to adjust the base Mjolnir design to facilitate them.
Now, shielding is an interesting point. You are correct in the sense it was knocked into a fighter without structural changes, but then again we don't know exactly how big a shield generator is, and how much power output you get from an Apollo powerplant (or whether there were 'invisible' side effects like the reduction of operational range, etc). Also it's not entirely infeasible there was room already allocated for it, given that the GTA at least was working on deflector-type technology at Ross 128. In any case, I'd imagine adding shielding to be vastly different in impact to adding engines, like the difference between adding a new set of speakers to a car and adding a new, well, engine.
That is, of course, ignoring the ships that came after the introduction of shields in FS1, which could be developed or modified to use shields before deployment.
Besides, the cost of a Mljonir far outstrips the cost of a engine module + software update.. so a cost increase of 1-5% really isn't a big deal when it makes hte cannon mroe effective and prone to survive..
Based on what calculation of cost? Software alone would be more expensive than you think.
They either should have made it less vulnerable / more powerfull or adjusted the storyline....
And made High Noon 2 hours long?
Like the shivans storming the blockade in numbers...or the Sath taking the defense fleet by surprise
In other words, destroying the entire image of the ship as a thing of terrifying power and reducing it to 'lucky'.
Are we entering into the realm of 'Trashman tells developers how to make their game' again?
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you allways tend to complicate things... Adding engines should not be hard or pricey.
Really? Do it to your car.
Now, that's not really fair, is it? :p
Bolting a thruster unit or two on the side of a space ship is slightly different than having to install another piston powered engine somewhere onto a car, dealing with power transfer issues, making the two engines work more or less simultaneously, synchronizing things up and finally operating the car. The difference is, in space no one can hear you cursing.
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you allways tend to complicate things... Adding engines should not be hard or pricey.
Really? Do it to your car.
Now, that's not really fair, is it? :p
To be fair, the car does have the advantage of existing fuel supply & control systems.
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Just hack off the bloody end of a Triton and use several thousand rolls of duct-tape to lop it on the arse of the Mjolnir. No muss, no fuss, and all you need is a blowtorch to shred the Triton, and a s***-load of tape.
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well that might work better then actualy building and engine for the blasted thing. LOl !
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Vasudans came to love duct tape as much as humans do. In fact, after the destruction of vasuda after the great war. They're economy jump started with the all new vasudan made duct tape. Since the duct tape empire was sealed off because of the lucifer blowing up halfway in the node. Vasudans have since renamed the earth tape "vasuda tape", which instills pride and morale among the vasudans about their old homeworld. The terrans being pissed off by this nicknamed it "fish tape". Since the terran rename, vasudans found a new purpose for the tape after being pissed off by the terrans by using vasuda tape to re-attatch heads along with the re assuring catch phrase that any terran wouldn't know the difference.
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Really? Do it to your car.
A mechanic could do it with relative ease..Alltough a more correct comparison would be bolting a external jet engine to the rear of a car...
So we have to have physical connections between the two, sensory feedback for maintenance, control systems, and a strong superstructure so the engine isn't a weak point whose destruction leads to internal damage on the cannon. All of these systems will need integration and possibly EMP shielding and you'd need to adjust the base Mjolnir design to facilitate them.
Now, shielding is an interesting point. You are correct in the sense it was knocked into a fighter without structural changes, but then again we don't know exactly how big a shield generator is, and how much power output you get from an Apollo powerplant (or whether there were 'invisible' side effects like the reduction of operational range, etc). Also it's not entirely infeasible there was room already allocated for it, given that the GTA at least was working on deflector-type technology at Ross 128. In any case, I'd imagine adding shielding to be vastly different in impact to adding engines, like the difference between adding a new set of speakers to a car and adding a new, well, engine.
That is, of course, ignoring the ships that came after the introduction of shields in FS1, which could be developed or modified to use shields before deployment.
Just how much power do you think simle manouvreing engines use up? The Mljonir is a beam cannon so it would have energy to spare...and thats IF the engines shared the power supply...
That leaves you with solidly attaching the engine module to the rear of the cannon - which not only can be done but can further increase the integrity of the cannon (just attach it with big, thick beams). EMP shielding is not needed (I don't think the Mljonir has it either) and such a small engine cannot result in the Mljonirs destruction..
Based on what calculation of cost? Software alone would be more expensive than you think.
And I wander on what do YOU base those calculations...
Jump drives are common, so they sure as hell aren't expensive..
Simple directional thrusters are cheap even now, let alone in the future.
Hmmm...software indeed might be the most expensive thing there :D
Of course, you only pay for ONE and then copy it to all the cannons.
They either should have made it less vulnerable / more powerfull or adjusted the storyline....
And made High Noon 2 hours long?
I can see your creativity at work here... are you realyl serios? Is that the only way you can think of adjusting the storyline?
How about making the Collie allso stronger?
Or giving it *gasps* help?
Like the shivans storming the blockade in numbers...or the Sath taking the defense fleet by surprise
In other words, destroying the entire image of the ship as a thing of terrifying power and reducing it to 'lucky'.
Are we entering into the realm of 'Trashman tells developers how to make their game' again?
A ship that can destroy a entire fleet is what I what I would call powerfull (even though it had to use surprise). But I guess you consider powerfull = unrealisticly overpowered...
B.t.w. - you might want to check the previos point about making it STRONGER....
Seesh... :rolleyes:
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A mechanic could do it with relative ease..Alltough a more correct comparison would be bolting a external jet engine to the rear of a car...
Oh, well that's just piss easy then.
Just how much power do you think simle manouvreing engines use up? The Mljonir is a beam cannon so it would have energy to spare...and thats IF the engines shared the power supply...
That leaves you with solidly attaching the engine module to the rear of the cannon - which not only can be done but can further increase the integrity of the cannon (just attach it with big, thick beams). EMP shielding is not needed (I don't think the Mljonir has it either) and such a small engine cannot result in the Mljonirs destruction..
This is a rather substantial vessel we're talking about, bigger than most transports. That alone implies a signficant power requirement (and possibly further structural alterations as it's not clear how FS ships damp their inertia). What is more critical, IMO, is the structural changes implied by bolting something large onto the arse-end of the Mjolnir, as it provides a heat conduit. and also, of course, tidal-type forces caused by the rear-end rotating.
And I wander on what do YOU base those calculations...
Jump drives are common, so they sure as hell aren't expensive..
Simple directional thrusters are cheap even now, let alone in the future.
Hmmm...software indeed might be the most expensive thing there :D
Of course, you only pay for ONE and then copy it to all the cannons.
Structural redesign costs. Anyways, if it's that cheap and easy, why don't sentry guns have engines and jumpdrives?
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I can see your creativity at work here... are you realyl serios? Is that the only way you can think of adjusting the storyline?
How about making the Collie allso stronger?
Or giving it *gasps* help?
You do understand the cultural context of the phrase 'High Noon', don't you?
Also, making the Colussus stronger would be unrealistic; you'd invariably have to strengthen everything else so make the C relatively believeable as a TV construct, and we'd be right back where we started.
A ship that can destroy a entire fleet is what I what I would call powerfull (even though it had to use surprise). But I guess you consider powerfull = unrealisticly overpowered...
B.t.w. - you might want to check the previos point about making it STRONGER....
Seesh... :rolleyes:
Ah, we are talking telling the developers how to make their game again!
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In my personal opinion the Mjolnir was originally supposed to turn, but the fact that the model was messed up wasn't discovered until it was too late to fix. I could well be wrong, but the Mjolnir turning... just looks right, when it didn't work they used the Mjolnir#home instead. But I have to agree, part of the point of High Noon was that the Collie couldn't compete with the Sathanas.
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Structural redesign costs. Anyways, if it's that cheap and easy, why don't sentry guns have engines and jumpdrives?
Becosue compared to the RBX they are dirt cheap? Becoause they are far smaller and easier to replace? Becosue they usualyl guard installations and not jump nodes?
You do understand the cultural context of the phrase 'High Noon', don't you?
Also, making the Colussus stronger would be unrealistic; you'd invariably have to strengthen everything else so make the C relatively believeable as a TV construct, and we'd be right back where we started.
Simply buffing the beam cannon power of the collie (rate of fire, duration) and the sath would be enough.
No, you wouldn't have to make everything else stronger...
Unrealistic? To you maby...not to me...
Ah, we are talking telling the developers how to make their game again!
That would be pointless since the game was made years ago, no?
Meh..I'll jsut continue posting my oppinions and let you jump to any misguided conclusion you want...
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Becosue compared to the RBX they are dirt cheap? Becoause they are far smaller and easier to replace? Becosue they usualyl guard installations and not jump nodes?
Basis? Would it not be just as cheap then to, ooh, bolt on maneuverable thrusters and jump drives so they could escape?
Why isn't an RBC dirt cheap? I mean, if it's that cheap to add an engine to it, it can't be that expensive to start off with, can it? Why would they even develop it as-is if it wasn't cheap?
We are talking about economies here, aren't we? i'm sure it's self-evident that a node has a higher value than a supply dump most of the time, ergo the economies allow for more 'disposable' spending upon it. Question is why should you take that and then begin to build effectively a mini-cruiser-with-a--big-gun, eroding all the advantages an RBC brings as a cheap defensive asset.
Simply buffing the beam cannon power of the collie (rate of fire, duration) and the sath would be enough.
No, you wouldn't have to make everything else stronger...
Unrealistic? To you maby...not to me...
It's certainly unrealistic within the context of the game; the game says that the Colossus can barely fire it's own beams for that long without suffering power and structure problems, let alone have stronger or faster firing beams. If you want it to have them, then you have to raise the tech - beam - level of every shape, otherwise the Colossus becomes inconsistent.
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Why isn't an RBC dirt cheap? I mean, if it's that cheap to add an engine to it, it can't be that expensive to start off with, can it? Why would they even develop it as-is if it wasn't cheap?
We are talking about economies here, aren't we? i'm sure it's self-evident that a node has a higher value than a supply dump most of the time, ergo the economies allow for more 'disposable' spending upon it. Question is why should you take that and then begin to build effectively a mini-cruiser-with-a--big-gun, eroding all the advantages an RBC brings as a cheap defensive asset.
So you're saying, adding a few simple thrusters and a jump drive to a RBC would increase it's price by such a large margin that it would becme economicly unwise????
Kinda hard to belive that tthose two SIMPLE (in fs universe) components could alter the price so much, isn't it?
NOTE - those are manouvering thrusters, ther just so a RBC can turn aroun to track a target. They are not full-blown engines for system patrols.
It's certainly unrealistic within the context of the game; the game says that the Colossus can barely fire it's own beams for that long without suffering power and structure problems, let alone have stronger or faster firing beams. If you want it to have them, then you have to raise the tech - beam - level of every shape, otherwise the Colossus becomes inconsistent.
The Collie was 20 years in the making, the pinnacle of T-V tech. For it to mount some better beams than a Orion doesn't sounds unrealistc to me....
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Good points. I believe that new impoved beam weapons for the GTVA are aroun the corner. Because they are starting to develop more powerfull beams already. Next they have to do something about the energy consumption so that they can actualy use more eficeintly the ractors. Actualy I believe that if they actualy manage to get the energy consumption of a beam lower!
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So you're saying, adding a few simple thrusters and a jump drive to a RBC would increase it's price by such a large margin that it would becme economicly unwise????
Kinda hard to belive that tthose two SIMPLE (in fs universe) components could alter the price so much, isn't it?
NOTE - those are manouvering thrusters, ther just so a RBC can turn aroun to track a target. They are not full-blown engines for system patrols.
Why else would it not have them? Y'know, presuming it needs them. Or how beneficial they'd be, because it'd just be rotational rather than being able to save the thing from fighter attack or blockade compromise; maybe they're not expensive but rather a waste of money at any cost. I'm not sure rotating a 100m+ cannon is entirely trivial either.
Worth considering, of course, how you'd setup up maneuvering thrusters; FS never makes it clear how it works, but if it entails any form of 360-outlets, i.e. thrusters on the top, bottom, side, etc you're looking at pretty major changes to the structure of the thing there. That's assuming it doesn't have any already, except that they'd be used solely to stabilise the position whilst firing.
(Why simple-in-capitals? what basis? That they exist? By that basis, insystem drives are simple. Storing hundreds of rather large warheads in a bomber is simple. Of course, simple does not entail cheap to do.)
The Collie was 20 years in the making, the pinnacle of T-V tech. For it to mount some better beams than a Orion doesn't sounds unrealistc to me....
Well, it doesn't. Assuming that the Orion class has never been upgraded to a more reasonable tech level, of course (which is has), and ignoring the other modern beam-firing ships.
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Or improve the reactors, FSRB says that Orions use Fusion Pile Generators, I reckon those savvy scientist types wil develop a new reactor sytem if not already in use by newer ships.
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well its not that simple i mean sure a bigger reactor or a more powerfull one more modern one can increase the beam cannons refire rate or damage but then agin what about all the extra heat. the mai problem is heat in this case the lack of an eficient heat disipation unit.
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well its not that simple i mean sure a bigger reactor or a more powerfull one more modern one can increase the beam cannons refire rate or damage but then agin what about all the extra heat. the mai problem is heat in this case the lack of an eficient heat disipation unit.
Assuming there's not a physics limit on these things, though. Or limitations based upon energy transfer rate, which may come down to the actual physical medium (i.e. maybe the Shivans have some really good conductive material they can use), or even the method used to control the beam cohesiveness (it may be possible to get a lot more energy output, but not to control and aim it, or even just stopping it spilling 'over' and damaging the ship like an overload).
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you sure have a neck for beeing pesimistic dont you??!!!
for cryng out loud man then what about the mjolnir. It has been proven that you can make a beam more powerfull. I for one believe that the mjolnir is just a rough diamond right now. With a little more polishing you count envisage a future where you have them mounted on ships.
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you sure have a neck for beeing pesimistic dont you??!!!
for cryng out loud man then what about the mjolnir. It has been proven that you can make a beam more powerfull. I for one believe that the mjolnir is just a rough diamond right now. With a little more polishing you count envisage a future where you have them mounted on ships.
I'm not sure you know the difference between pessimism and common sense.....
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i'm not sure you can actualy make a difference what so ever. You are nagtivistic all over.
:P
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I'm not nagtiv!
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:hopping: :mad: :confused: :lol: :eek2: :wtf: :hopping: :hopping: :rolleyes: :mad: :drevil:
<c>Why all the hostility?<c/>
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Why else would it not have them? Y'know, presuming it needs them. Or how beneficial they'd be, because it'd just be rotational rather than being able to save the thing from fighter attack or blockade compromise; maybe they're not expensive but rather a waste of money at any cost. I'm not sure rotating a 100m+ cannon is entirely trivial either.
"If it were really that good it would allready have them" is no argument. I can't tell you why it wasn't in. Maby [V] hasn't thoguh of it. Maby they like the Command is stoopid idea so they design stoopid ships to go with it.. I don't know.
(Why simple-in-capitals? what basis? That they exist? By that basis, insystem drives are simple. Storing hundreds of rather large warheads in a bomber is simple. Of course, simple does not entail cheap to do.)
Simple - since they are used everywhere. If every ship has those (and they have them now) then they can't be that expensive or complex.
Insystem drives are allso on every fighter. If they really were are so expensive only select units would have them (like inter-system drives).
the GTVA can afford thrusters, engines and jump drives on all fighters... It only makes sense they can afford two of those components oin something bigger and more expensive too, right? (unless you think a fighter costs more than a RBC..)
The Collie was 20 years in the making, the pinnacle of T-V tech. For it to mount some better beams than a Orion doesn't sounds unrealistc to me....
Well, it doesn't. Assuming that the Orion class has never been upgraded to a more reasonable tech level, of course (which is has), and ignoring the other modern beam-firing ships.
So you're saying "if the GTVA has better beams why aren't they mounted on all modern warship like Deimos?"
LOL.. the collie is one of a kind... any new beams would be tailored specificly for a ship of it's size and tech level..
Or do you think they mounted the best guns on every new warship, or do they mount cannosn that are best suited for that specific ship?
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:hopping: :mad: :confused: :lol: :eek2: :wtf: :hopping: :hopping: :rolleyes: :mad: :drevil:
<c>Why all the hostility?<c/>
You mean Aldo?
He was born that way :p
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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
No offence but that was funny :nod:
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"If it were really that good it would allready have them" is no argument. I can't tell you why it wasn't in. Maby [V] hasn't thoguh of it. Maby they like the Command is stoopid idea so they design stoopid ships to go with it.. I don't know.
It's no arguement you can answer, yes.
So you're basing this on you having a better idea of the rules and restrictions of FS than Volition? Essentially, your arguement is 'everyone is stupid but me' here, including the people who developed the game and decided what was sensible to put in (I'd wager they thought a beam-cannon-with-an-engine would be effectively a pointless addition of what amounted to a single gun cruiser), and that doesn't fly unless you want to scrap every ship, weapon and piece of tech in Freespace canon and make Trashspace instead..
Simple - since they are used everywhere. If every ship has those (and they have them now) then they can't be that expensive or complex.
Insystem drives are allso on every fighter. If they really were are so expensive only select units would have them (like inter-system drives).
the GTVA can afford thrusters, engines and jump drives on all fighters... It only makes sense they can afford two of those components oin something bigger and more expensive too, right? (unless you think a fighter costs more than a RBC..)
Within context, computers are used everywhere. Jet airliners are used everywhere. That doesn't make them cheap, or simple. It makes them cost effective for the task (or simply the only solution). And a fighter may very well cost more than an RBC; I suspect it does, even ignoring the pilot training cost, because it's a versatile, fully autonomous vessel with things like navigation, jump drive, long range comms, ability to rearm, life support, modular weapons and ammo storage, rearming systems, etc. I'd venture it could be compared to the relative cost of, say, a stationary AAAf cannon (this is admittedly tough given the highly reusable nature of an RBCs' armament) versus a Jetfighter.
So you're saying "if the GTVA has better beams why aren't they mounted on all modern warship like Deimos?"
LOL.. the collie is one of a kind... any new beams would be tailored specificly for a ship of it's size and tech level..
Or do you think they mounted the best guns on every new warship, or do they mount cannosn that are best suited for that specific ship?
Do you think suitability for a purpose contradicts 'best available'?
Unless the GTVA deliberately underarmed the Colossus, it has the most powerful and best weaponry the GTVA has to offer, simply because its role dictates that. So if it's not got more powerful weapons than the Orion, the GTVA simply doesn't have more powerful beams that it could use on the Colossus. If the Colossus has more powerful beams, then the GTVA does. If it does not, then the GTVA does not have more powerful (ship-mountable) beam weaponry. Hell, LRBGreens strain the Colossus' reactors and superstructure, after all. There's no way you can upgrade the armament of it without upgrading the whole ship, or it'd melt every time it fired rather than just when it pushes itself as in High Noon.
Not ignoring the rather uneconomic & tricky nature of weapons designed for a single ship class, which makes repairs trickier and more expensive as you need to have a prefab parts supply rather than, for example, reusing common component designs across vessels and having a common store in the supply dump/s.
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Not ignoring the rather uneconomic & tricky nature of weapons designed for a single ship class, which makes repairs trickier and more expensive as you need to have a prefab parts supply rather than, for example, reusing common component designs across vessels and having a common store in the supply dump/s.
So basicly you are saing that because new weapons cost more to produce and make them available for some ships then we shouldnt build them? Not that's "common sense" right?
Who cares that you can not use a beam cannon designed for a specific ship. Or can you actualy use the spare parts or engine of the Deimos to repair/replace the engine of the Hecate???
I really dont think so. This arguement is totaly flawed. If we were to go by your pont of view aldo the we should all fall back to one single weapon stick with it an not develop anythin g else cuz well its not economicly feaseble as you put it to crate new weapons ships etc. hell why not just sit there for the next 200 years with what is already a hardened tested model of a gun/ship/engine/deign feature and wait for the shivans cuz well they should probably go backwards in time form a tech point of view because its unfesable to develop anything new acording to you.(Aldo)
Why should they go back in time from a tech point of view..welll cuz they are way ahed in some regards to the GTVA. :P
I really really hope you arent planning a carrer as a scientist. Cuz well there you actualy must have an OPEN mind and accept what seems unrealistic and unfesable and imposible sugestions. Give em a go to see if you can actulay make something out of them and if you cant then and only then scrap them or postpone them until the tech alows you to improve them.
:P You are so mean.
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So basicly you are saing that because new weapons cost more to produce and make them available for some ships then we shouldnt build them? Not that's "common sense" right?
Who cares that you can not use a beam cannon designed for a specific ship. Or can you actualy use the spare parts or engine of the Deimos to repair/replace the engine of the Hecate???
I really dont think so. This arguement is totaly flawed. If we were to go by your pont of view aldo the we should all fall back to one single weapon stick with it an not develop anythin g else cuz well its not economicly feaseble as you put it to crate new weapons ships etc. hell why not just sit there for the next 200 years with what is already a hardened tested model of a gun/ship/engine/deign feature and wait for the shivans cuz well they should probably go backwards in time form a tech point of view because its unfesable to develop anything new acording to you.(Aldo)
Why should they go back in time from a tech point of view..welll cuz they are way ahed in some regards to the GTVA. :P
I really really hope you arent planning a carrer as a scientist. Cuz well there you actualy must have an OPEN mind and accept what seems unrealistic and unfesable and imposible sugestions. Give em a go to see if you can actulay make something out of them and if you cant then and only then scrap them or postpone them until the tech alows you to improve them.
:P You are so mean.
Not wishing to be mean, but what in the name of **** are you on about?
The point - the purely theoretical point - was that if you develop beam cannon turrets (because these by nature will constrain the weapons available) as being unique for this one single ship (the Colossus), it's adding a big logistical and economic burden when that ship becomes operational. Think of how often ships in FS2 lose turrets - quite frequently. Think of the difficulty and cost of getting replacement parts if that turret is unique across the entire class; you'd need supply dumps specifically for that one ship, and a supply chain to match getting them to it. You'd need manufacturing capacity unique to the one model, and to have that manufacturing 'area' able to transit parts.
I will admit 'single ship class' was somewhat misleading, but you have come up with a patently idiotic conclusion that this somehow entails disregarding weapons development. What I said as a suggestion entails the logistic and economic difficulties of making a single unique gun for a single unique ship. Take it in context - the advantage of the Colossus sharing turret types and hence possibly parts with other classes.
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Hmmm, getting heat out of space ships. To do that with a beam cannon, i'd highly recommend what the gtva already uses(heatsinks) to start with. A long with heatsinks, make sure it's made out of a highly heat conductive metal(to radiate heat off the beam cannon faster, sort of like copper vs. aluminum). Another thing, you should probably do something cool like make the beam cannon also liquid cooled, you could do something like pump liquid nitrogen through the heatsink until it makes contact with the hot beam cannon. Another cool idea would of course to rely on heat radiation, like to design the beam cannon to radiate as much heat off of it as it can outside the ship into space. And when things get really hot for the beam cannon i was thinking of keeping a hatch that would open up to space. Like when the beam cannon start getting really hot, you could open up the little hatch to suck the superheated atmosphere out of the room that has all the stuff for keeping the beamcannon cool, after it's vacuum in there, close the hatch and add room temperature atmosphere again(rather any type of gas if you wanted or water for that fact, just immerse the room in water :)). And when you do all that venting out into space like that, that's like an over extreme take on radiating heat into something, then getting that something out of the room. Getting rid of heat is easier when you got stuff to move it onto like gasses and other stuff. Of course doing all of this, the room that has the beam cannon would very likely be separate from humanoids, except when the room still has atmosphere. But, it's likely you don't need to be near the beam cannons and they may operate with all the targeting and firing done from the bridge like star trek.
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I'd bet the 'blades' on the Mjolnir are part of a heat dispersal mechanism, BTW.
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for cryng out loud man then what about the mjolnir. It has been proven that you can make a beam more powerfull. I for one believe that the mjolnir is just a rough diamond right now. With a little more polishing you count envisage a future where you have them mounted on ships.
The Mjolnir has a powerful cannon, but for a massive tradeoff. The cannon is essentially the only system that the Mjolnir's power source is working for, unlike on, say, a Deimos, that must power life support, engines, subspace drives, communications, and countless other allocations in addition to its four anticapital ship beam cannons. The Mjolnir is powerful, but at the cost of mobility and defense.
The GTVA did make a more powerful beam--and it took twenty years to make. The Colossus, like aldo said, was the best that the GTVA had to offer in terms of firepower, and even it was strained when firing its more powerful weapons.
Take it in context - the advantage of the Colossus sharing turret types and hence possibly parts with other classes.
Exactly. Interchangeable parts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts) FTW.
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Now I hate to inturrupt Aldo's and Trashman's holy war, and I feel weird saying it, but I agree with Trashman on the RBCs. Maybe not the Mjolnir, but an RBC with the ability to turn around is much more effective than a normal RBC, I've tested it. I don't know how much more it could cost, but I'd say it's worth at least as much as Fenris, and is probably cheaper.
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Mjolnir, rbc, same thing, until a different rbc gets developed. Yeah, sentry guns don't have engines, but they do rotate in a couple of dimensions.
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Militaries have never been particularly parts-sharing concious when they have high funding. (as presumably the GTVA's does...after all, they are the ones who end up standing on the bridge if the Shivans come back.) Navies in particular are apt to use a bewildering array of guns and mountings if you let them. The logistical strain of the Colossus was already quite large; it seems doubtful that having two or three more Tritons following it around would have made a substantial difference. At the very least it would have been well-served by some kind of large spinal beam mount; it might not have mattered for Their Finest Hour, but it would have been useful for High Noon.
On the other hand, one should also consider the philosophy behind the Colossus' design before making that assumption. It was designed with destroyer targets in mind...and the Colossus eats destroyers for breakfast already. For its design purpose, the ship is superb. It didn't need anything more.
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Militaries have never been particularly parts-sharing concious when they have high funding. (as presumably the GTVA's does...after all, they are the ones who end up standing on the bridge if the Shivans come back.) Navies in particular are apt to use a bewildering array of guns and mountings if you let them. The logistical strain of the Colossus was already quite large; it seems doubtful that having two or three more Tritons following it around would have made a substantial difference. At the very least it would have been well-served by some kind of large spinal beam mount; it might not have mattered for Their Finest Hour, but it would have been useful for High Noon.
On the other hand, one should also consider the philosophy behind the Colossus' design before making that assumption. It was designed with destroyer targets in mind...and the Colossus eats destroyers for breakfast already. For its design purpose, the ship is superb. It didn't need anything more.
On the subject of supplies, look at the consequences of the 'lose' debrief in the mission where you escort a fuel convoy to the Colossus; logistics do matter. Also, it's worth bearing in mind the Colossus is a single, standalone ship, which IMO is rather different than where you have (a distinction I should have made, and made far clearer in my initial suggestion of it) a class of ship. It's fair enough to presume there are more than a few factories and supply dumps spread about carrying Orion or Deimos parts (etc), because those are pretty standard fleet vessels and there's a few of them. But for a single, unique vessel which covers the entire GTVA, there are issues as to how you best provide it with parts (including manufacture and transport from the place of manufacture) and keep that logistics chain intact. Intersystem travel, for example could be potentially quite long if not realspace length; I think the only exact canon time give is for the Lucifer in FS1 travelling to Sol, which is something like 24-48 hours IIRC.
Albiet I'd point out this was just a thought. I'm not suggesting it as a literal advantage, i.e. that we can assume is inherently there, but one which is worth positing as a side benefit.
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The Royal navy has a fleet dedicated to supply alone,
http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/nav.2714
With regards to parts and storage, we've all played missions where you must "Guard the transport carrying parts" IE Aquitaine repair, PVD Pinnacle repair. Collossus is huge enough that i'd imagine it carries a wide range of logistical resourrces. But Its a big ships, the scale of components would be larger than most destroyer standard parts.
I reckon that most major repairs/refits could only take place in a Ganymede anyway to be honest.
But thats my opinion, I'm sure there could be a huge range of other possibilities.
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If you look at well recorded naval engagments (e.x. Midway) the combatant ships are always heavily outnumbered to the supply ships
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So then the supply ships are not the problem right? That is if i understend corectly what you want to say!
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It's no arguement you can answer, yes.
So you're basing this on you having a better idea of the rules and restrictions of FS than Volition? Essentially, your arguement is 'everyone is stupid but me' here, including the people who developed the game and decided what was sensible to put in (I'd wager they thought a beam-cannon-with-an-engine would be effectively a pointless addition of what amounted to a single gun cruiser), and that doesn't fly unless you want to scrap every ship, weapon and piece of tech in Freespace canon and make Trashspace instead..
No, what I'm saying that I have every right to post my oppinions no matter what you or anyone else thinks of them. And just for the record while I love [V] and FS, I don't think that everything is perfect. (alltough it allmost is :D )
Apparently, you belive that every ship, every eapon is as best as it possibly could be. the GTVA designed everything perfectly..no need for any improvements whatsoever...Good heavens if someone thinks of something that actually might be better than what allready is in the game! It's heresy!!!! : :)
You see, I don't start with the assumption that [V] thought of everything from every angle, since they didn't have either the time or the will to disect and analyze it like we fanboys do....a lot of their stuff is murky and somewhat strange and unrealistic.
Unless the GTVA deliberately underarmed the Colossus, it has the most powerful and best weaponry the GTVA has to offer, simply because its role dictates that. So if it's not got more powerful weapons than the Orion, the GTVA simply doesn't have more powerful beams that it could use on the Colossus. If the Colossus has more powerful beams, then the GTVA does. If it does not, then the GTVA does not have more powerful (ship-mountable) beam weaponry. Hell, LRBGreens strain the Colossus' reactors and superstructure, after all. There's no way you can upgrade the armament of it without upgrading the whole ship, or it'd melt every time it fired rather than just when it pushes itself as in High Noon.
Not ignoring the rather uneconomic & tricky nature of weapons designed for a single ship class, which makes repairs trickier and more expensive as you need to have a prefab parts supply rather than, for example, reusing common component designs across vessels and having a common store in the supply dump/s.
You jsut don't get it do you...if hte GTVA had a specifc beam cannon designed for something as big as the collie then it would be used only on the collie. No other ships would need to be changed.
Yes, the BGreen seems to be the most powerufll beam the GTVA has, but - remeber that we're talking about story and balance changes here, so what is currently in is irrelevant.
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No, what I'm saying that I have every right to post my oppinions no matter what you or anyone else thinks of them. And just for the record while I love [V] and FS, I don't think that everything is perfect. (alltough it allmost is Big grin )
Apparently, you belive that every ship, every eapon is as best as it possibly could be. the GTVA designed everything perfectly..no need for any improvements whatsoever...Good heavens if someone thinks of something that actually might be better than what allready is in the game! It's heresy!!!! :
You see, I don't start with the assumption that [V] thought of everything from every angle, since they didn't have either the time or the will to disect and analyze it like we fanboys do....a lot of their stuff is murky and somewhat strange and unrealistic.
Ach, bringing out the strawmans!
All I ever really said was that Volition set the rules about what is realistic and not in FS2s' universe. If you want to add in new concepts, you need to address the reasons why they don't already exist first. Because relying on 'we analyze it more' isn't really any more different from 'they're wrong'. I mean, how can you say it's unrealistic? As soon as you apply new external rules for that 'realism', then there's a lot more that becomes unrealistic - like having fighters.
You jsut don't get it do you...if hte GTVA had a specifc beam cannon designed for something as big as the collie then it would be used only on the collie. No other ships would need to be changed.
Yes, the BGreen seems to be the most powerufll beam the GTVA has, but - remeber that we're talking about story and balance changes here, so what is currently in is irrelevant.
What is currently in is highly relevant if you want to keep calling it 'Freespace'. The current beam strength of the Colossus is determined as much by the technology level of the GTVA-as-a-whole as it is by the Colossus as an individual ship. The Colossus, by standard, cannot have more powerful armament without causing itself damage and energy shortages. Unless, I guess, if you strip out weaker beams, but in that case you are affecting the suitability of the remaining weapons given that the Colossus was essentially built to duke it out with fleets, not single juggernauts.
(NB: must be careful not to assume, say, the BGreen wasn't on the Colossus before it was any other ships when we're talking about this sort of thing, of course)
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Apparently, you belive that every ship, every eapon is as best as it possibly could be. the GTVA designed everything perfectly..no need for any improvements whatsoever...Good heavens if someone thinks of something that actually might be better than what allready is in the game! It's heresy!!!! : :)
You see, I don't start with the assumption that [V] thought of everything from every angle, since they didn't have either the time or the will to disect and analyze it like we fanboys do....a lot of their stuff is murky and somewhat strange and unrealistic.
For one, nobody claimed that V was perfect when they made the FS series, and we've all seen what can happen when V really does mess up (read: Silent Threat). There are some things in FS2 which don't make any sense to the average player either, particularly the Maxim. Still, it's no grounds for saying that V didn't think through the game thoroughly before they released it.
If V had intended to make FS an actual realistic portrayal of what space combat would be like, then I'm sure we wouldn't have anywhere near the same FS that we have today. FS, like other sci-fi universes like Star Wars and Homeworld, was designed with WWII-era naval battles and dogfights in mind, and the fleet battles in FS seem to reflect that very well. If V had made FS more "realistic", the FS we know and love today would not have existed.
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Ach, bringing out the strawmans!
All I ever really said was that Volition set the rules about what is realistic and not in FS2s' universe. If you want to add in new concepts, you need to address the reasons why they don't already exist first. Because relying on 'we analyze it more' isn't really any more different from 'they're wrong'. I mean, how can you say it's unrealistic? As soon as you apply new external rules for that 'realism', then there's a lot more that becomes unrealistic - like having fighters.
Ahh - but there's the problem. What is realistic is based on a few lines of text, some numbers and custcenes. Each one of us is trying to piece together the parts into a whole on his own way. We have lot of data - but there is not just one way to interpret all of it. Some areas are murky - and with it some things cannot be immediately proclamied imposible or unrealistic.
What is currently in is highly relevant if you want to keep calling it 'Freespace'. The current beam strength of the Colossus is determined as much by the technology level of the GTVA-as-a-whole as it is by the Colossus as an individual ship. The Colossus, by standard, cannot have more powerful armament without causing itself damage and energy shortages. Unless, I guess, if you strip out weaker beams, but in that case you are affecting the suitability of the remaining weapons given that the Colossus was essentially built to duke it out with fleets, not single juggernauts.
(NB: must be careful not to assume, say, the BGreen wasn't on the Colossus before it was any other ships when we're talking about this sort of thing, of course)
For hte love og god - we were talking about changin the Sath or Collie or both for a more belivable interaction beetween gameplay and story. If you change hte story, then what WAS is irrelevant sine it isn't there anymore.
Assuming [V] changed both the sath and Collie to be twice as powerfull (and thus making the sath breaking of the blocakde more realistic) the "old" stats of both ships would be irrelevant, no?
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For one, nobody claimed that V was perfect when they made the FS series, and we've all seen what can happen when V really does mess up (read: Silent Threat). There are some things in FS2 which don't make any sense to the average player either, particularly the Maxim. Still, it's no grounds for saying that V didn't think through the game thoroughly before they released it.
If V had intended to make FS an actual realistic portrayal of what space combat would be like, then I'm sure we wouldn't have anywhere near the same FS that we have today. FS, like other sci-fi universes like Star Wars and Homeworld, was designed with WWII-era naval battles and dogfights in mind, and the fleet battles in FS seem to reflect that very well. If V had made FS more "realistic", the FS we know and love today would not have existed.
I didn't say they didn't think it troughly.. FS1 and 2 are some of hte best games I ever played with a load of effort and love put inot it. But like all games, they had deadlines, they made changes and they don't have as much time as we have to check every crack, every nut and bolt.. That was my whole point.
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For hte love og god - we were talking about changin the Sath or Collie or both for a more belivable interaction beetween gameplay and story. If you change hte story, then what WAS is irrelevant sine it isn't there anymore.
Assuming [V] changed both the sath and Collie to be twice as powerfull (and thus making the sath breaking of the blocakde more realistic) the "old" stats of both ships would be irrelevant, no?
Volition did change the Colossus. Look at the colussus introduction cutscene and the commented out table lines.
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For that matter both the Hecate and the Deimos had turrets that got nuked between CBani rendering and release.
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Wasn't FS2 released ahead of schedule?
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Perhaps, but the turrets still weren't there.
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Yeah - you can even see a row of rotating turrets on the Hecate (probably flak turrets)
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The Deimos turrets were removed because they were side multipart turrets, which out programers are having problems with currently (I think they gave up)
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Break for comedy...
IP Andrews said, - "Convert the amazon into a Collossus."
Shivans say - "Screeeeech Scree!" (ops, activate ETAK next time)
"Go ahead and do it! In fact convert the 'Colossus' into a Amazon while your at it. We think it's sorta redundant..." :lol:
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Someone should remake the colossus to have some real frontal power, but it'd have to be close :p Give the colossus like 100 kayser turrets on the front of the ship, next thing you know, 100 kayser blasts come at your ship and that'd be pretty bad.
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Umm how much damage are we talking about cuz i know the kayzers can do a lot of damage. Also since we are talking about capship damage wouldnt it be better to actualy give it maxims?? Oh yeah id love to see what a ship does agains those..! I must be nuts...
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You should leave it as kaysers :D The reason being, it'd seriously damage everything. I mean everything, from capships to fighters. That's right, maxims do almost zilch to shielding, but imagine how much of an overdone anti-fighter screen that would be to any wing in front of the colossus from 100 kayser turrets that just keep shooting monodirectionally. It'd be hell and lucky to escape that kind of fire from such a big area on the front of the colossus :lol:
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Yep yep you are right kaisers it is! What about trebs??
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Something else along with trebs, would be 100 infyrnos. Now that is overkill, sounds like something the galactica would do in the new bsg :lol:
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100 what??? Inferno?? Umm....oki have no clue but it mai just be cuz i pulled a 24h shift! What is 100 Infernos what are those bombs/torpedos ??
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Infyrno (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTM_Infyrno)
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Infyrno is a dumbfire missile, when fired it has a range indicator for how far it's travelling, when it reaches the distance of your desire, you detonate it. The resulting blast is just a huge explosion that's about fighter wing sized, and great for shaking up formations, and causing some heavy damage. Imagine 100 of those being launched and going off simultaneously. Instant death for many fighter wings, and the biggest explosion you've ever seen.
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Just fighter wings?? I would imagine them as dooing some rious damage to ships cap ships that is. That would be like what 5 time the average Helios bomb?
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Yeah, another thing that could be done is launching 100 emp advance missiles at say like a cruiser, corvetter, destroyer, or even a good area of a juggernaut. That would be just over kill on temporary disabling of any target. But if you really want to permanently disable a ship, the collie should fire 100 stilleto 2's at that thing trying to cover every subsystem equally with all of the missiles. :lol:
But personally the 100 infyrnos sounds the best. ;)
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that sounds like a good idea so this is the new colie of the future just strip out some of its beamcannons and use infernos at the blasted thing!
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Problem - limited range..
You need longer ranged missiles. Trebs are the way to go :mad2:
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There was that missile from FS1 that paralysed a cruiser for a few moments, Phoenix V was it?
A few of those would lock down a destroyer surely.
<additional>Why dont torps have an emp effect, The basic nuke ones cyclops etc?<additional>
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That was the Disruptor Missile, or D-Missile as it was often called.
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That was the Disruptor Missile...
I think I tried those once... On the Anvil when escorting the scientists from Altair. I just spend them all in one strafing run, and didn't really notice anything different. I won anyway :p
Did they really do what the description said? Shut down an entire destroyer for a while?
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The D-Missile is designed to temporarily stop a cruiser or destroyer from firing its laser turrets. The effect will last about 10 seconds per missile fired, so using these to temporarily disable a cruiser should usually be for suppression until the cruiser is destroyed, or whatever was trying to evade the cruiser has gotten out of range. Only a few ships can carry these - and they are very scarce - so proper utilization is important.
I always figured that the D-Missile existed almost purely for the a counter against the Zenith's turrets should Omega actually have to face it in the red alert mission.
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Only place I ever noticed those things being used was the new version in Inferno.
Pretty much everyone ignored them in FS1.
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I used stillettos or he D-Missile on the kamikaze aten trying to head-butt the galatae.
Cant remember which.
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I used stillettos or he D-Missile on the kamikaze aten trying to head-butt the galatae.
Cant remember which.
You more than likely used Stilettoes here, as the D-Missile wasn't available at the time.
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Yeah, the D-Missile became available in Reaching the Zenith
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The emp missiles are awesome, because it only takes one to stop a demon destroyer. I used those a ton on the mission where it's the bastion versus that demon destroyer in that ambush mission. I used the emp missiles to disable the demon so the orion could catch up, and i used those to make sure that the orion got in more bang for it's buck :D They're fun as **** missiles, i tried the emp advance on the sath, i wasn't sure if it worked, but i sure bothered the hell out of the nahemas with them :lol:
Here's the thing, collie should like switch to trebs at long range, and then switch to infyrnos at close range :lol: That'll get it done :lol:
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You mean the D-Missiles?
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I used hte D-missile a lot.
Works like a charm :D
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Source code guys, any chane of a Deuce - Missile? (<smug>See what i done there</smug>
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The D-Missile is useless in the Freespace Port I've found, there's barely any range that you can shoot it at that won't disrupt your fighter.
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Yes i meant the D-missile. The emp advance is the successor to it in fs2. Last time i played the port, the d-missile worked fine:p You just need to not be next to the explosion when it happens, it does have a pretty extended range on that missile(shoot from far away). Other than that, umm i know you can temporarily shut down a demon with them :) Someone may want to try this or not, but with the extended range thing on the emp blast radius might work good on fighter wings. I know in fs2 that's what they try to encourage you to use the d-missile successor for on nahemas. Theoretically speaking in fs2, you should be able to shut down a destroyer in fs2 using the emp advance. D-missile and emp advance are pretty much the same missile.
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No the EMP Advance is the sucessor to the EMP Missile in Silent Threat, actually
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The EMP missile works by disrupting the targeting systems of the ships caught in the blast. This typically affects only strikecraft from what I've seen, and it's essentially the same as being caught by EMP in a nebula mission. While EMP is aimed at disrupting targeting systems for a specific amount of time and playing herky-jerky with the HUD, the D-Missile completely shuts down a vessel with a blast of focused energy.
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umm can ai have 100 of those aimed at the jugg's? ??
each time they wnat to use theyr beam cannons just shoot 100 of theose at the blasted thing and there you have it one easy victory!
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So pretty much the d-missile and the emp advance are for different tasks :) The emp advance is just for disorienting a target for a long time. I'll stick with the d-missile, which most undoubtedly works through the use of emp's also. The d-missile is a lot better because it not only disrupts subsystems, it does it by just shutting down the whole entire target temporarily :D
Actually maybe the collie doesn't need 100 missile launchers, maybe it just needs the capability to use the d-missile. Cruisers and destroyers are more than capable enough of getting tons of streaming rockeyes to it's target. Why not just replace that with streaming d-missiles, or streaming infyrnos, or trebs for that matter. Overkill yes, but it'd be worth it :) I'm still opting for the idea of 100 launchers on the front of the collie though launching 100 simultaneous infyrnos, because that'd be one suppressively destructive huge ass wall of flame :lol:
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well who sais it has to be front mounted. Just put them to the side and now you have both the advntage of shutting down the target and blasting it away with beam cannons. O boy I can only imagine the look and the shivan faces when thy get like shut down and blasted at...!
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True, sidemounting would be a lot effective. Just want to put something nice and major on the front of the colossus though. The front of the colossus isn't too opposing, but, oh man the ntd repulse would really not like 100 infyrnos :lol: