Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Desert Tyrant on March 30, 2007, 09:19:29 pm
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Were GTVA beam cannons developed to go through the the Lucifer's shield? Sorry, but I need this Info for a debate at spacebattles, and I think I alreadly Cluster-****ed it up BTW, the topic is Called Freespace vs Wing Commander.
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It's probably just a coincidence that they can pierce shields, but they still can nonetheless.
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Technically its implied that the Lucifers shielding wouldn't be able to stand up to whatever the Colossus was able to throw at it. That was the idea anyways with the Colossus. Also a bug in the Volition original code made shields go right through them.
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I think that the beam weapons would have been specifically created to be able to go through the Lucifer's shields. As far as we know Command had no idea about the Sathanas at the time beam weapons were created. If the beam weapons couldn't pierce the Lucifer's shields what would be the point of them, other than to quickly destroy demon-class destroyers quickly(I'm leaving out Moloch's and Ravana's b/c Command probably didnt know about them either). But then, a demon isn't anywhere near the problem that a lucifer is.
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My theory is that plasma weapons delivered damage to the Lucifer's shields, but completely negligible damage which recharged several seconds after impact, so a sustained stream of fire would be useless as the shield recharges. However, beam weapons delivered damage constantly so the shield has no chance to recharge.
That's my 2 cents.
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With all shielding being as nothing more than a ball of several layers of wet tp around your fighter. And being that the lucifer shield can stand up to any standard weapons with it's thicker layers of wet tp. Beams are very coherent weapons that bombard a target with insane amounts of destructive energy. While a mega super laser not in the fs universe might be able to put a tiny hole in the lucifers shields. Yes beams are able to penetrate shield, but it's more reasonable that the beam would be able to keep the hole in the lucifer's shielding open until the point of when the beam dies and then the lucifer's shielding would regenerate that part of the shield after beam bombardment quit.
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That sounds logical. The Lucy had 5 reactors... I'm sure when the planetary bombardment cannon(s) weren't going, there was plenty of energy to pass around.
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Beams can penetrate shields maybe because of their structure. They don't work in subspace, so they're not expected to be inpenetrable.
And, come on, the Lucifer can't be destroyed only into subspace!
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The Colossus was built to take out the Lucy...
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My theory is that plasma weapons delivered damage to the Lucifer's shields, but completely negligible damage which recharged several seconds after impact, so a sustained stream of fire would be useless as the shield recharges. However, beam weapons delivered damage constantly so the shield has no chance to recharge.
That's my 2 cents.
I don't think it has to be constant, it just has to be enough firepower. Let's face it - FS1 capship weapons SUCK.
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I disagree. If it was not constant damage, just get a rapeload of Ursas to pound the Lucy. That would take care of it.
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I disagree. If it was not constant damage, just get a rapeload of Ursas to pound the Lucy. That would take care of it.
....or Alpha 1.
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The Colossus was built to take out the Lucy...
The colossus was built to take out a lucy, but they don't actually know if it would have, unless the scans a1 did in fs1 provided enough tactical data to run simulations of beams hitting the lucy. Of course my previous post was talking about a beam penetrating the shields on the lucy.
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Well they'd have to be pretty sure that the Colossus would be able to destroy the Lucy or they wouldn't have been so sure. Hell, they probably wouldn't have the justification to build it if it couldn't.
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Since all elements of the gtva are up to the task. Namely gti with the hades, and then the gtva later with the colossus. Space forces are up to the task of making ships with tons of armor and weapons that are more powerful than average. Would have been interesting if they just made a super destroyer as armored as the hades, but without subsystems weakness. It'd be like a miniature colossus.
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SD Lucifer (Terrans) ?
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Since all elements of the gtva are up to the task. Namely gti with the hades, and then the gtva later with the colossus. Space forces are up to the task of making ships with tons of armor and weapons that are more powerful than average. Would have been interesting if they just made a super destroyer as armored as the hades, but without subsystems weakness. It'd be like a miniature colossus.
Well I believe the Hades' subsystem weakness was because it was not fully activated when it was deployed.
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I disagree. If it was not constant damage, just get a rapeload of Ursas to pound the Lucy. That would take care of it.
QFT. Each Harbinger does 3,000+ damage, almost as much as a Sathanas BFRED. If the GTVA built the Collossus to take out the Lucifer, it was likely nothing more than a desperate stopgap. Bombs are the real capship killers, and if they couldn't kill a shielded Lucifer with bombs then they couldn't kill it with beams. Most likely the Collossus was meant to destroy the Lucifer and its escort fleet in subspace. Shouldn't be too difficult, the GTVA discovered the technology to track "large ships" through subspace from the Ancients at the end of FS1.
Even without invincibility, though, the Lucifer would probably win. Its front beams aren't like anything in FS2. They're not even beams, but rather (in game engine terms) "ultra-long-range dumbfire missiles with a long trail and invisible warhead", to quote the FSwiki. They have a range of 15,000+ and a damage of about 20,000 per hit. Remember how the Galatea was killed by one or two hits from the Lucy? Orions have HP of over 100,000. That gives you an idea of how powerful the Lucifer's beams are. Much more powerful than anything the Collossus has. To kill a Lucifer, you need to either use bombers or approach it from the flank. A head-on charge with a capship, even the Collossus, wouldn't be a good idea.
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For some reason, I disagree. I fired double Helios at the Lucy and it only did 2% damage...
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Each Harbinger does 3,000+ damage, almost as much as a Sathanas BFRED.
A BFred can take out an Orion in one shot :nervous:
EDIT: BFred - 2100 damage every few miliseconds, lifetime of 25s (refire 10s)
BFgreen - 1900 damage every few miliseconds, lifetime of 30s (refire 35s)
SSL - 850 damage every few miliseconds (from FSport 3.0.4), lifetime of 30s (refire rate of 10s); 15,000 damage total from fs1 wiki (1.5% of colly hitpoints)
Lucifer hitpoints - 800000 (again, FSport 3.0.4)
Colossus hitpoints - 1000000 (retail)
I don't know what mod you're using, but I think the Colly easily beats the lucifer.
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I know that Goober, karajorma, or possibly someone else ran a rather comprehensive Colossus-vs-Sathanas scenario a while back, starting each of the ships in various positions. Even in the setup that was least favorable to the Colossus, it still decimated the Lucifer while suffering only relatively minor damage.
As for the issue of shield penetration itself, I've always theorized that it wasn't only the amount of power applied, but how it was distributed. Remember, a Harbinger most likely deals damage to a relatively wide area of a target's hull; the fact that one bomb can take out multiple closely-spaced subsystems is proof enough of that. In contrast, look at a beam cannon; it's delivering a comparable amount of power to a relatively small area of hull. Perhaps it's this characteristic that allows beam weaponry to pierce right through shielding, while ordinary matter weapons are distributed across them. There could also be some electromagnetic or other physical characteristic of shielding in general (and the Lucifer's in particular) that renders it vulnerable to however FS2's beam cannons actually work.
The bottom line is, I just can't see the GTVA sinking 20 years and God knows how much money into such a massive project as the Colossus without being absolutely certain that it would be able to more than handle itself in a fight against the Lucifer. Between Alpha 1's scans in "Playing Judas," the information obtained from the Ancient remains in Altair, and whatever data was confiscated from the GTI at the end of Silent Threat, I'm fairly certain that Command had more than enough data available on the Lucifer's shields to ensure the Colossus's success against them.
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Some FSwiki links related to beams
Weapon Comparison table for FS2 (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_%28FS2%29)
BFRed (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/BFRed)
BFGreen (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/BFGreen)
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The Colossus was designed to handle Shivan capital ships, you would have the same effect if you deploy many destroyers at once. The Colossus was a symbol of the TV Alliance, something massive that would encourage every single Terran or Vasudan fighting the Shivans.
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I disagree. If it was not constant damage, just get a rapeload of Ursas to pound the Lucy. That would take care of it.
Not really..if we assume a beam and a pulse weapon have both optimal efficiency, then the ammount of energy you can throw at a target eaquals the power output of your reactor - you can only squeze as much power trough a beam as your reactor can produce.
A pulse weapon does not fire a constant stream but blobs/pulses in regular intervals. Assuming it doesn't store power between the shots (charging hte weapon) the least damage it can do per shot equals the power output, but it would lose in damage/second ratio to a beam weapon.
The most damage it could do would equal a beam cannon however:
Assuming it fires a blob every 5 seconds, each blob could have a max power of 5Xpower output...
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Eh, with the beams, don't forget the limitations of the power conductors, the cooling systems, maybe some other stuff, I dunno... but at least those two will also limit the power it can produce.
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Would have been interesting if they just made a super destroyer as armored as the hades, but without subsystems weakness. It'd be like a miniature colossus.
:drevil:
I know that Goober, karajorma, or possibly someone else ran a rather comprehensive Colossus-vs-[Lucifer] scenario a while back, starting each of the ships in various positions. Even in the setup that was least favorable to the Colossus, it still decimated the Lucifer while suffering only relatively minor damage.
Yup: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,37868.msg793865.html#msg793865
FYI, everyone: the formula for calculating total beam damage per shot is Beam Damage * Beam Life * 100/17. This would be good to put in the Wiki somewhere. :)
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How does 100/17 factor in there? :wtf:
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How does 100/17 factor in there? :wtf:
Dunno
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Wow. Goob's formula!
Beam Damage * Beam Life * 100/17.
ZOMG!