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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Ryan on November 29, 2007, 04:15:36 pm

Title: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Ryan on November 29, 2007, 04:15:36 pm
The GTVA cut of all acess to Capella because of the Shivan fleet, right?

They had the Firepower to fight them. We saw what missles could do to there main beam weapons, and they have nothing to defend the back of there ships. They also have those cool beam turrets they used against the Neo-terran front in one of the missions.

The First thing the GTVA should have done when they found the first knossos portal was secure it with those beam cannons and afew corvettes. Not even a mighty Sathanas can last long under that much firepower. They could have crippled the Shivan fleet just by jumping in behind the Juggernaut, not right infront of it's main cannons. Anybody else agree?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 29, 2007, 04:19:31 pm
Eh? They didn't have the firepower to fight the Sathanas fleet! And even if they had it, they would have suffered major losses!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on November 29, 2007, 04:26:19 pm
They might fight off a couple Sathanes that way... but 80? Come on! When you are outnumbered that much it is simply an unstoppable force.

You forget that the Saths had attendant fleets "flooding into Gamma Draconis"* behind them. If we figure just 2 destroyers per Sath, that's over 150 destroyers! And you can double that number for corvettes and at least triple it for cruisers. Compare to the GTVA's total combined fleets of about (I'm making an educated guess) no more than 40 destroyers. Do the math. The GTVA would've been annihilated.

And a Sath still stands up pretty well against a combined assault. In Blue Planet a Sath comes under fire from two destroyers, three corvettes, and at least three wings of bombers carrying the most powerful bombs in the arsenal. Still took over five minutes to kill the blasted thing, and it didn't even start at full health!


*As stated by late-game briefing.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 29, 2007, 04:29:54 pm
I don't think there were 150 or so destroyers, I think of a massive number of spacecraft. The Colossus can house 60 wings of spacecraft and the Sathanas could have an even bigger fighterbay. 80 Juggernauts should have an incredible attacking power. I don't think the GTVA could fight thousands of bombers. And remember that GTVA pilots aren't all supposed to be Alpha 1, just as sure as Shivan pilots aren't bad in dogfights. Don't confuse the game with the Universe and watch the FS2 intro.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Hellstryker on November 29, 2007, 04:32:22 pm
Canonly, i believe that it would have been fraking impossible. HOWEVER.. from our, the players, point of view, it would've been easy. i figure maybe 1 wing of bombers per sath, and keep in mind wings can always reload.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on November 29, 2007, 04:32:56 pm
@Mobius: To be fair, we never see the massive fleets of destroyers I'm talking about, but it makes sense. The briefing references the Shivans pouring into GC... after all the Saths came through. So obviously there were quite a number of ships following them.

Regardless of the actual number, my point is still the same: the GTVA was hopelessly outnumbered and would have been wiped out.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 29, 2007, 04:37:45 pm
That's a point of view you should never consider. It's a n00bish point of view far from reality.

No matter of how skilled the pilot is, a bomber can't survive a dogfight with a wing of fighters.


@Mobius: To be fair, we never see the massive fleets of destroyers I'm talking about, but it makes sense. The briefing references the Shivans pouring into GC... after all the Saths came through. So obviously there were quite a number of ships following them.

Regardless of the actual number, my point is still the same: the GTVA was hopelessly outnumbered and would have been wiped out.

No, but we see plenties of Shivan wings. That's why my theory makes more sense. The Shivans use their destroyer like oversized cruisers and deploy them when necessary. In Into the Lion's Den we see a Ravana, the Nebiros. The same destroyer conducts an assault against the Headquarters. Why the Nebiros? Why not one of the dozens of destroyers that, according to you, were fighting the GTVA in Capella? And why don't we see Shivan destroyers in other missions like Clash of the Titans II and Apocalypse?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on November 29, 2007, 04:39:21 pm
I didn't say any of those destroyers had actually entered the conflict yet. I just said they were coming.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 29, 2007, 04:46:04 pm
Uh? But the Shivans knew that Capella was about to go supernova. I accept the sacrifice of the forces fighting the GTVA, they were only forcing them to stay in system. This kind of sacrifice is acceptable. Forces entering the system after the explosion would be lost, with no avail.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on November 29, 2007, 05:20:02 pm
Is there any canoniacal mention of the skill of shivan fighter pilots at all?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on November 29, 2007, 05:22:10 pm
Uh? But the Shivans knew that Capella was about to go supernova. I accept the sacrifice of the forces fighting the GTVA, they were only forcing them to stay in system. This kind of sacrifice is acceptable. Forces entering the system after the explosion would be lost, with no avail.

Did they?

That leads to my theory that Capella was not supposed to go boom. The Shivans made an error.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Steel Prophet on November 29, 2007, 05:25:36 pm
And what (accordging to your theory) were they trying to do then?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: General Battuta on November 29, 2007, 05:29:02 pm
Pretty much any discussion on this topic consists entirely of theory.

The only people who are definitively wrong are the people who claim that they're definitively right.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Polpolion on November 29, 2007, 05:57:29 pm

No matter of how skilled the pilot is, a bomber can't survive a dogfight with a wing of fighters.[/i]


:wtf: I'm not sure what spectrum of skill your playing on, but I've refuted that statement many times.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on November 29, 2007, 06:02:16 pm
The GTVA cut of all acess to Capella because of the Shivan fleet, right?

They had the Firepower to fight them. We saw what missles could do to there main beam weapons, and they have nothing to defend the back of there ships. They also have those cool beam turrets they used against the Neo-terran front in one of the missions.

The First thing the GTVA should have done when they found the first knossos portal was secure it with those beam cannons and afew corvettes. Not even a mighty Sathanas can last long under that much firepower. They could have crippled the Shivan fleet just by jumping in behind the Juggernaut, not right infront of it's main cannons. Anybody else agree?
They didn't have anything like the firepower to defeat them.  If the Sathanes had gone around in groups of two they could watch each other's backs and raze planets simultaneously.  There're also the hundreds of fighters they carry, and the massive escort fleets they would have with them.  If all 80 stuck together the GTVA would be utterly arse-raped.  Your Mjolnirs + Corvettes idea is flawed, the Shivans would just clear the RBCs with fighters and bombers then send Saths through.

Sathanes also have an LRed on their rear, which is a Ravana's main armament.  2 Hecates will be long dead before they can deal enough damage to destroy a Sath.  You're also completely ignoring the Shivans' massive firepower advantage and additional fleet assets to the Sathanes.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Retsof on November 29, 2007, 06:03:15 pm
*Coming up with Shivan Error Theory as I write this.*
     The Shivans were bombarding the star with subspace waves, then at the end they make various strange subspace rings or portals or something.  Maybe they were attempting to channel the energy of the star into subspace, the reason for the small pulses was to get the star into a synchronous vibration with subspace, thus making it that much easier to transfer the energy, or perhaps taking the entire star into subspace.  But the Shivans made a miscalculation, and the sathanas portals collapsed, perhaps sending a cataclysmic subspace pressure wave straight to the core of the star.  The balance between gravity and radiation is upset, the star partially collapses on to the core and rebounds in a massive explosion.  Most of the Sathanas fleet was able to escape while a few stayed behind to keep the star in check long enough for the rest to leave.

It may be completely unreasonable, but Dark Hunter's idea intrigued me.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Agent_Koopa on November 29, 2007, 07:00:20 pm
The problem is that many of the juggernauts warped out. Where were they going? Unless they made an intergalactic node or something, there's no way to escape the confines of the system, which would have been totally cleansed.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on November 29, 2007, 07:14:26 pm
I think they were doing something similar to that, yes.

My theory isn't new. IIRC, the Shivan Manifesto has a similar idea on what the Shivans were doing to that star, which is where I got the idea.

Now, there are a very great number of things in the Manifesto I don't agree with, but with that particular part of it, I do agree.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: IceFire on November 29, 2007, 08:05:52 pm
Yeah I think that the GTVA was completely screwed if they were to fight that many ships.  The 80 Sathanas plus supporting ships was a complete and utter end game for the Shivans had they even used them to invade the GTVA systems.  Like I keep saying...if the intention was to destroy the Terrans and Vasudans they would not have bottled themselves up in Capella and they probably could have wiped out Terrans and Vasudans in pretty short order.  I'm sure the number was meant to both be impressive and send the message that the Shivans are essentially undefeatable.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mad Bomber on November 29, 2007, 09:12:30 pm
The problem is that many of the juggernauts warped out. Where were they going? Unless they made an intergalactic node or something, there's no way to escape the confines of the system, which would have been totally cleansed.

Maybe they just waited in subspace for a few minutes, long enough for the shockwave to pass them by. Sathanas hulls are strong enough to absorb high-energy beam cannons, and though they would take damage passing through a highly-ionized radioactive field of several thousand degrees ambient temperature, I think juggernaughts of that size could probably have survived long enough to get back to Gamma Drac.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: lenard27 on November 29, 2007, 10:04:56 pm
80 Santhanas's? No way the GTVA would have won.  Even if they don't have any significant firepower on the aft of the ship, with 80 of them, they would b able to set them up that multiple Santhanas's are covering the aft of a single Sathanas.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 30, 2007, 04:22:46 am
The problem is that many of the juggernauts warped out. Where were they going? Unless they made an intergalactic node or something, there's no way to escape the confines of the system, which would have been totally cleansed.

There's the node to Gamma Drac, for starters. Any other unstable nodes in the system that the Shivans might have known but not the GTVA, or the GTVA knew but couldn't use. They would have at least a few minutes to escape the system, much as Alpha 1 did, and perhaps longer.

More to the point, when considering the power of FS weaponry, there is a minor though real possiblity a Freespace ship could survive a supernova, particularly of a star like Capella which would be a great deal weaker than the geniune article due to insufficent mass. As a case in point, the Capella supernova appeared to us as two stages. The Moloch and the Deimos survived the first one.

And while people often forget the blue-white second stage, we don't even know if that was actually a part of the supernova or some kind of subspace disruption the Shivans triggered. Certainly it doesn't fit as part of a supernova's normal sequence of events.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on November 30, 2007, 05:28:21 am
Maybe they just waited in subspace for a few minutes, long enough for the shockwave to pass them by. Sathanas hulls are strong enough to absorb high-energy beam cannons, and though they would take damage passing through a highly-ionized radioactive field of several thousand degrees ambient temperature, I think juggernaughts of that size could probably have survived long enough to get back to Gamma Drac.

Given that large planets can't survive supernovas, methinks 6km warships suriving it is out of the question.

There is a very real posssibiltiy that the sath fleet was wiped out.
Node jumps require strong gravity wells (stars), and with the blowing up of one, all nodes would be fubar, if not collapsed. Thus, retreating to GD seems unlikely.
However, if they jumped to the fartherest edges of the system as it's possible with in-system jumping and made a full burn away from the sun, a few MIGHT survive.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on November 30, 2007, 05:49:05 am
Node jumps require strong gravity wells (stars), and with the blowing up of one, all nodes would be fubar, if not collapsed.
However, if they jumped to the fartherest edges of the system as it's possible with in-system jumping and made a full burn away from the sun, a few MIGHT survive.

That's an enormous assumption. If Capella formed a black hole the gravity well would be intact. In fact even if Capella compacted down to a standard neutron star it could easily still weigh more than stars like Barnard's Star which we know damn well can have jump nodes.

While I agree that the destruction of Capella could have caused shifts in the jump nodes it's ludicrous to claim that it had to. Or even that this is the most probable likelihood. Although we know nodes can be unstable we know so little about what causes them to form, stabilise or vanish that it's pointless to try to claim you can say with any certainty what would have happened to them following Capella's destruction.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Steel Prophet on November 30, 2007, 07:31:44 am
Quote
If Capella formed a black hole the gravity well would be intact.

I don't think so. The gravitiy would change one way or the other and then also the jump nodes would change. They probably won't disappear but they might become less stable or even change their position.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 07:41:25 am
IMO, I think we didn't see lots of Shivan destroyers because even the Shivans don't see the point of losing 150+ destroyers when they blow up the star.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on November 30, 2007, 08:32:55 am
Quote
If Capella formed a black hole the gravity well would be intact.

I don't think so. The gravitiy would change one way or the other and then also the jump nodes would change. They probably won't disappear but they might become less stable or even change their position.

There would still be a gravity well. And there is no proof that the mass of the star has any effect on the nodes. All we know is that there must be a stellar mass for nodes to form. That changing the mass would change the stability of the nodes is not proved.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Steel Prophet on November 30, 2007, 08:42:49 am
Not proved you're right. But (at least to me) it seems very plausible.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: admiral_wolf on November 30, 2007, 09:35:13 am
The Shivans are an unstoppable force.  Even with us supposingly cutting Capella off, I do believe that the Shivans will return.  As for our forces, it took a lot of sacrifice to destroy one Sathanas, the GTVA Collossus, the GVD Psamtak and thousands of good pilots and techincal crew.  We have no hope of destroying the Shivans as their technological developments and their resources far exceed our own.

We are a doomed race.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Flipside on November 30, 2007, 09:41:01 am
The way we dealt with it in TI is that the star disrupted Subspace itself when it was destroyed, it didn't change any of the established and stable jump-nodes, but because (we assume) there was some sort of subspace portal opened by the Shivans when it was destroyed, it's theoretically possible that the explosion ripped open some new 'exits', those exits could, because of the nature of subspace, lead practically anywhere. Of course, this science is based purely on what little information we have on Subspace, but I've always been of the opinion you can do what you want to the 'universe' in FS2 as long as you leave the canon stuff alone.

Of course, I've always wondered whether the only fault of the GTVA was to get between the Shivans and their actual target, they may have been going home, or they may have been fighting another race entirely, and needed to go through GTVA space to get to somewhere suitable for opening a jump gate. Let's face it 80 Juggernauts could have obliterated the GTVA in days, instead they simply flew in, blew up a star and vanished, that sounds like 'just passing through' to me.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Marcus Vesper on November 30, 2007, 01:41:45 pm
Quote
If Capella formed a black hole the gravity well would be intact.

I don't think so. The gravitiy would change one way or the other and then also the jump nodes would change. They probably won't disappear but they might become less stable or even change their position.

There would still be a gravity well. And there is no proof that the mass of the star has any effect on the nodes. All we know is that there must be a stellar mass for nodes to form. That changing the mass would change the stability of the nodes is not proved.
Strictly speaking all we know is that in-system jumps require the presence of a massive gravity well, people just tend to assume nodes between systems work the same way, in the absence of hard data on their formation from canon sources.  I would contend that we shouldn't make that assumption.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on November 30, 2007, 01:55:45 pm
There's no mention of any nodes that lead to deep space in the game. That might simply be cause there's very little point in going there though. :D

I do tend to agree though. My whole point is that you should give the loosest possible interpretation of the facts we do have.

Inter-system subspace jumps may require a gravity well at both, only one or neither point.
The destruction of Capella may or may not have had an effect on the nodes leading out of the system.
The destruction of Capella may or may not have had an effect on the nodes in other systems.

You can make reasonable arguments for any of those positions so it seems silly to me to pick any particular one and say that it must be true.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: nubbles526 on November 30, 2007, 02:00:22 pm
The shivans win because:
1. No body is willing to fight them
2. They have huge ass weapon which can destroy a star
3. They don't use money (no contractors, no tax etc.)
4. They destroyed the Ancients (the wise people we look up to)
5. Bosch can help them (wish there was a campaign based on this)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 02:06:09 pm
1. No body is willing to fight them
2. They have huge ass weapon which can destroy a star
3. They don't use money (no contractors, no tax etc.)
4. They destroyed the Ancients (the wise people we look up to)
5. Bosch can help them (wish there was a campaign based on this)

1. If they came marching back into GTVA space, I'm sure lotsa people would've liked to fight them. :P
2. Yup.
3. We never know, but I still agree with you.
4. The Ancients couldn't have been that powerful...
5. One human with a laptop wouldn't be able to help that much IMO. :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 02:28:59 pm
Is there any canoniacal mention of the skill of shivan fighter pilots at all?

I wonder if you're blind :P

Watch the FS2 Intro! That Manticore was superb...the Medusa was shot down by a missile launched from a fighter. The FS1 Intro tells us something about the skill of Shivan pilots. Alpha 1 is skilled enough to handle a Scorpion, but average Terran pilots weren't able to handle a few Shivan fighters.



No matter of how skilled the pilot is, a bomber can't survive a dogfight with a wing of fighters.[/i]


:wtf: I'm not sure what spectrum of skill your playing on, but I've refuted that statement many times.

I'm talking about the FreeSpace Universe, not the game! In a game, the player is supposed to win! He has the support necessary to win! Even the SWC, according to its members, isn't going to center their conversion on the actions of famous Star Wars characters, and they're doing the right thing.

Pretty much any discussion on this topic consists entirely of theory.

The only people who are definitively wrong are the people who claim that they're definitively right.

No, if we forget the game and think about the Universe.

Uh? But the Shivans knew that Capella was about to go supernova. I accept the sacrifice of the forces fighting the GTVA, they were only forcing them to stay in system. This kind of sacrifice is acceptable. Forces entering the system after the explosion would be lost, with no avail.

Did they?

That leads to my theory that Capella was not supposed to go boom. The Shivans made an error.

That leads me to think that the Shivan fleet is massive, that the there are no traitors in the Shivan armada...and that they die when the Hive MindTM expects them to do so. Those Shivans were tasked to engage GTVA forces. They inflicted major losses, but everything was up to the Sathanes.

Inter-system subspace jumps may require a gravity well at both, only one or neither point.
The destruction of Capella may or may not have had an effect on the nodes leading out of the system.
The destruction of Capella may or may not have had an effect on the nodes in other systems.

But the shockwave was enough to kill most Terrans nad Vasudans.

Approx., The distance between:
- Sol and Capella is 43 light years
- Antares and Capella is 644 light years
- Sirius and Capella is 40 light years
- Procyon and Capella is 37 light years
- Aldebaran and Capella is 35 light years
- Altair and Capella is 52 light years
- Deneb and Capella is 0.9 Kpcs
- Ross 128 and Capella is 45 light years
- Alpha Centauri and Capella is 47 light years
- Regulus and Capella is 74 light years
- Delta Serpentis and Capella is 234 light years
- Beta Aquilae and Capella is 75 light years
- Betelgeuse and Capella is 394 light years
- Barnard Provenzano's Star is 47 light years
- Dubhe and Capella is 100 light years
- Wolf 359 and Capella is 43 light years
- Alphard and Capella is 173 light years
- Beta Cygni and Capella is 395 light years
- Vega and Capella is 51 light years
- Epsilon Pegasi and Capella is 680 light years
- Mirfak and Capella is 551 light years
- Polaris and Capella is 400 light years
- Gamma Draconis and Capella is 148 light years

Considering that the shockwave is enough to kill most life forms in a 200(or very close to it) light years radius...

Even Shivan forces still in Gamma Draconis would sustain losses. The shockwave needs time to reach all those systems, but...where are the Terran and Vasudan races going to escape? Antares, Betelgeuse, Epsilon Pegasi, Mirfak and Beta Cygni? And the Terrans still in Sol?


1. No body is willing to fight them
2. They have huge ass weapon which can destroy a star
3. They don't use money (no contractors, no tax etc.)
4. They destroyed the Ancients (the wise people we look up to)
5. Bosch can help them (wish there was a campaign based on this)

1. If they came marching back into GTVA space, I'm sure lotsa people would've liked to fight them. :P
2. Yup.
3. We never know, but I still agree with you.
4. The Ancients couldn't have been that powerful...
5. One human with a laptop wouldn't be able to help that much IMO. :P

1) Ok.
2) Ok.
3) A Hive MindTM means no money.
4)  :mad: Please don't turn every single topic into...  :mad:
5)  :wtf:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 02:32:04 pm
I agree with you Mobius, we HAVE TO forget about the game if we're making storyline theories. We cannot just say "it's a fugging game!"
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 02:35:57 pm
Cooorect...but, for the same reason, you should change your consideration of FS1 inconsistencies :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 02:39:06 pm
Fine, let's settle this once and for all! :P

If we consider FS as its own universe, then we cannot ignore FS1 inconsistencies, unless they really do not make sense (like multiple jump nodes). In that case, I believe they should be ignored, especially if :v: has announced it was wrong themselves. However, if it is possible for them to be explained, and has not been announced as wrong by :v:, like why the Shivans in FS1 did not have beams, and why the Shivans in FS2 did, I do not think they can be ignored.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 02:44:52 pm
But the lack of infos regarding the Ancients in FS2 doesn't justify your low consideration of them.

And that theory about the Shivan fleet of FS1 implies that there are two kinds of Cains, Liliths and Demons?

In the first two episodes of Colony Wars there were beams. They vanished in the third episode. No explanation, no need to waste time with theories.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on November 30, 2007, 02:54:58 pm
This thread inspired me to do some FREDing:

4x GTF Erynies (armed with: 8x Maxim, all missiles: Hornets)
4x GTB Artemis D.H. (Armed with: 2x Maxim+Hornets in one bank and Cyclops bombs in bank 2 and 3)

VS

1x Sathanas

Outcome:
Sath disabled and partially disarmed in under 15 minutes, 2 Terran ships shot down.

With a Wild Weasel wing of 6 GTF Perseus ships armed with SDG's and Stiletto II's doing the disarming for me, the disabling takes less than 10 minutes, total of friendlies lost- 3.

So if the GTVA would use it's stealth ships to find Shivan jugs leaft without escort vessels, that have sent the majority of their strike craft somewhere and a group of 14 ships disarming&disabling covered by a dozen fighters could stop a jug in 10-15 minutes.
And if the GTVA constantly has 26 ships available for such missions, 80 jugs could be disabled in one day. All we need to do later is keep repair ships from reaching the Saths (since the SJ shot down by the big C couldn't fix it's turrets I assume Shivans also need repair ships to keep the fleet running) while slowly killing them off.
Which means we could stop their fleet, if they don't kill us all first.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 03:00:37 pm
Cough cough, we've just said that we should avoid this kind of things...

And the Sathanas is able to launch plenties of fighters. Please don't give for sure that GTVA fighters can easily destroy them.

We need that Shivan Mod done. It's the only way to change mind :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on November 30, 2007, 03:14:13 pm
But the shockwave was enough to kill most Terrans nad Vasudans.

Approx., The distance between:
- Sol and Capella is 43 light years
- Antares and Capella is 644 light years
- Sirius and Capella is 40 light years
- Procyon and Capella is 37 light years
- Aldebaran and Capella is 35 light years
- Altair and Capella is 52 light years
- Deneb and Capella is 0.9 Kpcs
- Ross 128 and Capella is 45 light years
- Alpha Centauri and Capella is 47 light years
- Regulus and Capella is 74 light years
- Delta Serpentis and Capella is 234 light years
- Beta Aquilae and Capella is 75 light years
- Betelgeuse and Capella is 394 light years
- Barnard Provenzano's Star is 47 light years
- Dubhe and Capella is 100 light years
- Wolf 359 and Capella is 43 light years
- Alphard and Capella is 173 light years
- Beta Cygni and Capella is 395 light years
- Vega and Capella is 51 light years
- Epsilon Pegasi and Capella is 680 light years
- Mirfak and Capella is 551 light years
- Polaris and Capella is 400 light years
- Gamma Draconis and Capella is 148 light years

Considering that the shockwave is enough to kill most life forms in a 200(or very close to it) light years radius...

Even Shivan forces still in Gamma Draconis would sustain losses. The shockwave needs time to reach all those systems, but...where are the Terran and Vasudan races going to escape? Antares, Betelgeuse, Epsilon Pegasi, Mirfak and Beta Cygni? And the Terrans still in Sol?

Except that this wasn't a standard supernova. Capella was induced to blow. We've got no idea how powerful the shockwave would be as a result.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 03:17:33 pm
It was an accelerated process, it could be even more dangerous than a normal supernova.

In any case, all systems in a 50 ly radius from Capella would be devastated.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 03:20:20 pm
But the lack of infos regarding the Ancients in FS2 doesn't justify your low consideration of them.

Neither is there any proof that they were a super-power like the Shivans.

And that theory about the Shivan fleet of FS1 implies that there are two kinds of Cains, Liliths and Demons?

There may be. My theory states there could be hundreds of kinds of Cains, Liliths and Demons. Each Shivan fleet may have its own set of weapons. The Lucy's fleet used plasma weapons. The Sath fleet used beams. Another Shivan fleet could use Pokemon to destroy their enemies.

In the first two episodes of Colony Wars there were beams. They vanished in the third episode. No explanation, no need to waste time with theories.

For now, forget FreeSpace is a game. Think of FreeSpace as the universe.

One day, the Shivans don't have beams.

The next, they do.


Would you say, "Oh, whatever, we don't care. We'll just ignore it. :D"

In any case, all systems in a 50 ly radius from Capella would be devastated.

Yeah, but it would take a while for the shockwave to reach there. :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 03:29:24 pm
1) So? No proof they were so powerful and no proof they were weak. In media stat virtus :P

2) Basically, you're saying that the Shivans are divided in clans? I hard believe they have fleets with different sets of weapons.

3) You want to find an solution because you think about the game and not the universe. The presence of beams in FS1 doesn't make the difference in terms of plot.

4) So?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 03:32:38 pm
1) So? No proof they were so powerful and no proof they were weak. In media stat virtus :P

2) Basically, you're saying that the Shivans are divided in clans? I hard believe they have fleets with different sets of weapons.

3) You want to find an solution because you think about the game and not the universe. The presence of beams in FS1 doesn't make the difference in terms of plot.

4) So?


1) Huh?

2) I'm sure you've read this, but you're just ignoring me so you can boost your post count. Click (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Snail%27s_Theory) :P

3) Think Mobius!!!

If it's in-universe, then you CANNOT ignore such things! Imagine that the Germans did not have nukes in WW1, then suddenly the Germans have them in WW2. Would you ignore it? NO!

4) So it doesn't matter to the GTVA at the time.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Aphil on November 30, 2007, 03:36:33 pm
Well if the GTVA Managed to get enough ships and flank the Saths from beinhd they MIGHT destroy 1 or 2 but 80? with its Fighter bays its near impossible (Well unless you use invincibllity)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 03:37:48 pm
The GTVA can't stand up to 80 Saths, period. Unless they have a new technology.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 03:53:14 pm
2) I'm sure you've read this, but you're just ignoring me so you can boost your post count.

Meh. I will never forget your "Let's turn HLP into a chatroom" on MSN :P

3) Think Mobius!!!

If it's in-universe, then you CANNOT ignore such things! Imagine that the Germans did not have nukes in WW1, then suddenly the Germans have them in WW2. Would you ignore it? NO!

It's not the case to compare WWI and WWII German forces to the Shivans. As an old space power, the Shivans shouldn't change their fleet in about 25 years.

Now tell me why no one in FS2 says "Damn it, where did they get those beams?"

Shivan beams are too similar to their GTVA counterparts, but they're much better under many points of view(load time and damage). Looks like GTVA's beams in FS2 are the result of the study conducted on Great War era Shivan beam weaponry. The GTVA created beam cannons, but they're not as powerful as the original Shivan ones. Makes sense.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 04:14:00 pm
It's not the case to compare WWI and WWII German forces to the Shivans. As an old space power, the Shivans shouldn't change their fleet in about 25 years.

Now tell me why no one in FS2 says "Damn it, where did they get those beams?"

Shivan beams are too similar to their GTVA counterparts, but they're much better under many points of view(load time and damage). Looks like GTVA's beams in FS2 are the result of the study conducted on Great War era Shivan beam weaponry. The GTVA created beam cannons, but they're not as powerful as the original Shivan ones. Makes sense.


They didn't they; changed after thousands of years of isolation. Each fleet developed differently because they were presented with different circumstances.

They probably did, just not with the player.

You really hate FS1 canon, don't you. FS2 opening cinematic. No beam cannonsEXC3PT 4 TEH LUCYFS2 intelanims. No beam cannons. FS1 itself. NO BEAM CANNONS.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 04:25:11 pm
In the first part of your post, you consider your theory a proved fact. It isn't.

I don't hate FS1 canon. I have only realized that FS1 has many bad features. The player isn't part of a squadron. How are you going to justify that?

"There were no squadrons in FS1, the GTVA came out with that idea after the Great War?" :P

Same thing for beam cannons. :v: had a great idea, FreeSpace beams are the best ones I have ever seen. They added them without caring about FS1...they did the right thing.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 04:30:27 pm
In the first part of your post, you consider your theory a proved fact. It isn't.

Of course I don't think it's canon. For grammar's sake, and because I'm lazy, I don't want to start every single post with "in my theory..." :P

I don't hate FS1 canon. I have only realized that FS1 has many bad features. The player isn't part of a squadron. How are you going to justify that?

"There were no squadrons in FS1, the GTVA came out with that idea after the Great War?" :P


Alpha 1 was in the squadron, at least on the Bastion. He may have been the squadron leader since he gets the briefings straight from the CO (that may why he doesn't get a "welcome to the 53rd Hammerheads" command briefing).

Same thing for beam cannons. :v: had a great idea, FreeSpace beams are the best ones I have ever seen. They added them without caring about FS1...they did the right thing.

Yes. FreeSpace rocks. But adding beams without caring about FS1... not the right thing. Spoils continuity. But the continuity can be restored.

I have to say that I think you hate FS1, and like FS2 too much... FS1 was great, and I don't think that everything that happened in FS2 can simply be "overridden" by FS2 canon without a single excuse.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on November 30, 2007, 04:37:01 pm
You really hate FS1 canon, don't you. FS2 opening cinematic. No beam cannons. FS2 intelanims. No beam cannons. FS1 itself. NO BEAM CANNONS.

Emphasis mine

(http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5943/nobeamspd2.png) (http://imageshack.us)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 04:42:57 pm
Except for the Lucy.

You know what I meant, you're just trying to make me look stupid. :(
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Flipside on November 30, 2007, 04:48:05 pm
As Snail says there were no GTVA beam cannons in Freespace, it is specifically mentioned when you are escorting the Lysander in fact, 'It's amazing we won the Great War, no Beam Cannon, no Flak, this time we'll really show those Shivans what firepower is all about'.. or words to that effect. That's from the horses mouth in Freespace 2.

As for the Shivans, once again no beams in-game, though it is interesting that no-one seemed surprised that they had them when they first started using them in FS2, however, had the FS1 Liliths and Cains had beams, the Great War would have been lost without a doubt.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Polpolion on November 30, 2007, 04:51:12 pm
The GTVA can't stand up to 80 Saths, period. Unless they have a new technology.

:nervous:
I like how you say "a new technology"

I can see it at the invention of the light bulbs, or any other display of a industrial revolution era invention: "omgf!! We has a technology now!!"

:nervous:


Anyway, the GTVA could fight Sathanas fleet in the same way that an Enrinyes fighter could fight 80 Seraphims.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 04:52:25 pm
Anyway, the GTVA could fight Sathanas fleet in the same way that an Enrinyes fighter could fight 80 Seraphims.

I wonder what would happen if the Seraphims were all player ships in a multiplayer co-op mission...
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on November 30, 2007, 05:01:22 pm

Of course I don't think it's canon. For grammar's sake, and because I'm lazy, I don't want to start every single post with "in my theory..." :P



Alpha 1 was in the squadron, at least on the Bastion. He may have been the squadron leader since he gets the briefings straight from the CO (that may why he doesn't get a "welcome to the 53rd Hammerheads" command briefing).




Yes. FreeSpace rocks. But adding beams without caring about FS1... not the right thing. Spoils continuity. But the continuity can be restored.

I have to say that I think you hate FS1, and like FS2 too much... FS1 was great, and I don't think that everything that happened in FS2 can simply be "overridden" by FS2 canon without a single excuse.

1) But you should :P

2) It doesn't justify the complete lack of references to squadrons. In FS1 you disrupt McCarthy's operation in "Avenging Angels". That was the name of a squadron. But in FS2, the credit for that success goes to the 242nd Suicide Kings.

Answer me, the GTVA decided to divide its numerous fighters in squadrons only after the Great War? :P

3) I don't hate FS1. I played many series of games, I can tell you that developers don't care about the changes they make. Let's say that episode 2,3,4,[n] usually are different from the very first episode of the series, and programmers either stop considering the first episode or tell the fans that it isn't canon.

Ace Combat is one such series. The first game took place in a separate world and developers told the community that AC1 isn't canon. AC2, AC3, AC4, etc. etc. are connected each other. Scarface 1 of AC2 and Mobius 1 of AC4, for example, are connected each other in an incredible way. They both contributed to the creation of an AC canon that doesn't take in consideration AC1.

Too bad there's no FS3, I bet it would have maintained FS2's canon references with minimal changes(errors of the developers...). With FS3 and other FSs taking distance from FS1, your theories would be unacceptable. "Consider yourself...fortunate!" :P

By the way, it's the fourth time we turn HLP into a chatroom :lol:


As Snail says there were no GTVA beam cannons in Freespace, it is specifically mentioned when you are escorting the Lysander in fact, 'It's amazing we won the Great War, no Beam Cannon, no Flak, this time we'll really show those Shivans what firepower is all about'.. or words to that effect. That's from the horses mouth in Freespace 2.

That pilot was just paragunating GTVA's technologies with GTA and PVE technologies. I know, it could mean something like "At that time, they had beam cannons, shields and flak guns while we had less competitive weapons and protections", but we can't give it for sure ;)

Except for the Lucy.

You know what I meant, you're just trying to make me look stupid. :(

One more thing...you say that the beams of the Lucifers are different from the others. They're, in fact, "Flux cannons". What if :v: decided to change the name of the flux cannons to beam cannons in FS2?

Anyway, the GTVA could fight Sathanas fleet in the same way that an Enrinyes fighter could fight 80 Seraphims.

I wonder what would happen if the Seraphims were all player ships in a multiplayer co-op mission...

Exactly. I'd also like to see the player using an Astaroth and see if that fighter sucks in dogfights.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on November 30, 2007, 05:07:19 pm
I don't get you sometimes.

I give you an entire plethora of reasons supporting my theories, but you seem to be so able to completely ignore them as if I never posted them. Truly unfathomable.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Flipside on November 30, 2007, 05:10:52 pm
I'm more than 50% convinced he's on a wind-up now ;)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on November 30, 2007, 05:53:32 pm
There would still be a gravity well. And there is no proof that the mass of the star has any effect on the nodes. All we know is that there must be a stellar mass for nodes to form. That changing the mass would change the stability of the nodes is not proved.

If it's a clear link then some correlation must exist. I don't know WHAT effect it would have, but it would be some. Maby a fluctuation or temporary instability of hte subspace corridor. Maby it would collapse totaly. but SOMETHING would happen.

It's like saying a human would be completely uneffected by the sudden drastic change in the oxygen levels in the atmosphere.


Quote
I wonder if you're blind

Watch the FS2 Intro! That Manticore was superb...the Medusa was shot down by a missile launched from a fighter. The FS1 Intro tells us something about the skill of Shivan pilots. Alpha 1 is skilled enough to handle a Scorpion, but average Terran pilots weren't able to handle a few Shivan fighters.

the manticore is more manuverable than a herc, and we have no idea how skilled the terran piltos was (or if his fighter was allready damaged)
Medusa getting showered with lazers and blowing up after being hit with a missile? It's not an uncommon site and tells little.

While I agree that shivan probably aren't as pathetic as they are in-game, IMHO terrans/vasudans are better pilots, since if there weren't, there wouldbe no GTVA to speak of.


Could the GTVA stop the Shivans? Hardly. they'd have to be EXTREEMLY lucky to stop 80 juggs. But it jsut may be possible.

Nodes are bottlenecks and with good blockades, you could make the shivans bleed..heavily. Also, a allready established system would house more fighters than several fleets - just think of all the room on planets/moons for fighter bases.
F'course, even considering a best-case scenario the GTVA would have a phyric victory - it would have to sacrifice many systems and a LOT of lives. and that's counting node-collapsers.

Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on November 30, 2007, 06:01:38 pm
My theory:
Beams cost (nothing cannon confirms this, but I didn't find anything against it).
Shivans rely on numbers.
When adding the two together- I come up with the idea of Shivans having different fleets for handling civilisations with different 'threat levels'.

In FS 1 the Shivans gave the GTA and PVN a low threat level- they lost 1 fighter during the first days of combat, killing cruisers and whole squadrons themselves.
The called in capships were the cheaper type, with no beams, and the Shivans held the beam-equipped units in reserve or in some other conflict.
To make sure that the Terrans and Vasudans get pwned quickly, a battleship with 2 huge beams was sent for breaking through defense lines and planetary bombardment.
The Shivans also decided to send a shield equipped capship, after noticing that Terrans and Vasudans have no weapons to counter heavy shielding.
So the Lucy was selected as flagship.

The plan failed, and the Lucy was lost in some 10 minutes of battle, attacked by a group of fighters.

After that, the Shivans officialy claimed the Lucy class obsolete and developed a new, huge-@$$ ship.

Then came FS 2. The GTVA got a 'high' threat level since the Shivans remembered their epic @$$-whooping from Alpha 1, and ships with beams were called, with a Sathanas en route to work as flagship.

The GTVA made a huge mess in the Shivan Nebula before the Sath appeared, forcing them to use units retired even in the FS 1 era, now serving as reserve and patrol ships (my little theory on why the SF Aeshma was so crappy compared to the Basilisk). The first Sath was also extinguished by a surprisingly huge water gun, so the Shivans gave the GTVA a 'F***ing High' threat level, and called the rest of the fleet.
In order to show the GTVA that they suck, and that destroying jump nodes when a fleet of jugs is assembling sucks too, Shivan command decided to test a new invention. A mechanism that would reactivate collapsed jump nodes by some ghey magic tricks the GTVA knows as subspace rifts.
Obviously, the 80 jugs set the rift generator power level too high, and instead of making the star artificially heavier (to create a large enough gravity well for a spontanous subspace node creation and recreation) it went KABOOM. Everyone, but those who noticed the plan isn't working and warped out, was smoked.

So today, post FS 2 we have a whole bunch of angry Shivans, working on a new master plan to open that can of whoop@$$ on us. Untill they will be absolutly sure this plan is perfect, they won't bother to come, and will concentrate on wars elsewhere instead.

Quote
Nodes are bottlenecks and with good blockades, you could make the shivans bleed..heavily. Also, a allready established system would house more fighters than several fleets - just think of all the room on planets/moons for fighter bases.

Gives me an idea: disable a Sath at the entrance of a node, and watch all the others that are already in subspace and can't turn back crash into it. :D
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on November 30, 2007, 06:03:21 pm
I don't think you people are quite grasping how powerful the Sathanas is.  One of the bastards was considered a threat to the GTVA and there were only 3 or 4 ships with the capability to damage it.    It can annihilate a Terran destroyer in One salvo and a Vasudan one in two.  It fought "The bulk of the allied fleet" at the Capellan end of the Capella-GD node and came through virtually unscathed.  The GTVA had one ship that could go toe to toe with a Sath and not get annihilated, and that was short lived because of the massive accompanying fleet the Sathanes had with them which managed to knock it down to 66%.  There were at least 2 Ravanas (one of which managed to toast the GTD Delacroix, and others in the Nebula)

Even if you ignore their massive firepower and numbers advantage, they can go around causing Supernovae as and when they feel like it, not even taking into consideration reinforcements they could bring in from beyond Knossos 3.

80 Sathanes could utterly massacre the entire GTVA fleet and raze all planets bar those in Sol within a week.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Steel Prophet on November 30, 2007, 06:12:33 pm
Nice theory Tiger, but it has a major flaw in my opinion.

Quote
The Shivans also decided to send a shield equipped capship, after noticing that Terrans and Vasudans have no weapons to counter heavy shielding.
So the Lucy was selected as flagship.

and

Quote
After that, the Shivans officialy claimed the Lucy class obsolete and developed a new, huge-@$$ ship.

Why didn't the new huge-@$$ ship get shields too, to make it invulnerable in normal space? If the Sath had Lucy's shields, not even the Colossus could have destroyed it. So why the hell did they remove a proven defense system on their new flagship?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on November 30, 2007, 06:49:12 pm
So here is my theory on that:

Beams aren't stopped by shields, so a Lucifer class ship is an easy target for any race that has beam cannons.
This limits the Lucifer's role to fighting more primitive civilizations. Once 'primitive' humans destroy a Lucifer with ease in a 10 minute battle, the Shivans realize they're doing something right, and analyze the cause of their failure. It turns out that the external reactors that power the massive shield generators (again- nothing cannon can confirm this, or prove it wrong) were the problem, so the Shivans figure out the Lucy is an expensive error and begin to mass produce the Sathanas, without vulnerable reactors outside it's armor. Since no additional reactors leave it without power supply to generate shields, the big S gets really heavy armor and a huge amount of turrets, as a countermeasure to the fact it is not invulnerable in normal space to strike craft weapons.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Steel Prophet on November 30, 2007, 06:59:51 pm
But Lucy's reactors were also protected by its shields in normal space. Only in subspace there are no shields.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on November 30, 2007, 07:25:02 pm
I don't think you people are quite grasping how powerful the Sathanas is.  One of the bastards was considered a threat to the GTVA and there were only 3 or 4 ships with the capability to damage it.

Where do you get that from?   

Quote
It can annihilate a Terran destroyer in One salvo and a Vasudan one in two.

It can kill a vasudan one in one savlo too actually.


Quote
It fought "The bulk of the allied fleet" at the Capellan end of the Capella-GD node and came through virtually unscathed.

The bulk of what the GTVA had in-system at that time. And they had little since they still hanv't brought most of the ships in GD or Capella.
Don't allso forget that it came unscrathced for gameplay purposes. Even if you put if against 5 corvettes they will bring a few % off it's hull integrity, yet it started in bearbating with 100%.. 


Quote
Even if you ignore their massive firepower and numbers advantage, they can go around causing Supernovae as and when they feel like it, not even taking into consideration reinforcements they could bring in from beyond Knossos 3.

For a single supernova they need a lot of Sathanases and apparently approx 3 days to charge up the weapon, during which the Saths stay still.
You seem to be forgetting the GTVA can pop nodes at will too and have a lot of static defenses.

So yes, I do believe the GTVA can put up quite a fight, and while it cannot score an outright victory it could at least gain a phyric one.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Flipside on November 30, 2007, 07:43:42 pm
Well, personally, I think [v] were trying to get the message across that trying to fight the Shivans is like trying to stop a tidal wave, meeting it head-on will never succeed, The problem is there are so many possible theories for why the Shivans are here and what they are doing, anything from expunging subspace civilisations to a race driven mad and desperately trying to escape something worse than they are, that, and anything in between could be true.

I think what Volition were getting at is that you don't stop the war by fighting the Shivans head-on, you can't win, the answer to this problem was never intended, I think, to involve some sort of climactic 'cage fight' between the GTVA and the Shivans, it was going to be solved some other way, I just wish I knew more detail than that.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Steel Prophet on November 30, 2007, 08:03:56 pm
And it was also a new way to finish a whole game. Freespace 2 is the first game (i can think of) in which you don't have to survive to "win" the game.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 02:09:48 am
Snayle's Theory (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Snail%27s_Theory)

Explain why the Shivans in FS1 were so different from the Shivans in FS2. Explains why Saths did not have shields. Explains why the Saths didn't attack the Terrans. Explains what the SCNs are. Explains why the Saths blew up Capella.

I do think this theory is the best thing I've done in this life. Man I suck. :doubt:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on December 01, 2007, 05:40:25 am
But Lucy's reactors were also protected by its shields in normal space. Only in subspace there are no shields.

So another update to my theory (a few more and it will be flawless and better than Snayle's :ha:):

Claim 1. AAA beams don't react with shields, they simply fly through.
Claim 2. The GTVA Big C was designed to kill the Lucifer, without chasing it into subspace, with the use of beams.

Theory based on the claims: As small beams shoot through small shields like a laser beam through glass, big beams (such as those on the Big C) shoot through big shields (such as the Lucifer's) with ease.

*gets to work on what Bosch was doing on a science cruiser*
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 01, 2007, 05:41:24 am
I don't get you sometimes.

I give you an entire plethora of reasons supporting my theories, but you seem to be so able to completely ignore them as if I never posted them. Truly unfathomable.


I don't get you sometimes.

I give you an entire plethora of reasons supporting my theories, but you seem to be so able to completely ignore them as if I never posted them. Truly unfathomable.

THIS is my reply :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on December 01, 2007, 06:12:14 am
There would still be a gravity well. And there is no proof that the mass of the star has any effect on the nodes. All we know is that there must be a stellar mass for nodes to form. That changing the mass would change the stability of the nodes is not proved.

If it's a clear link then some correlation must exist. I don't know WHAT effect it would have, but it would be some. Maby a fluctuation or temporary instability of hte subspace corridor. Maby it would collapse totaly. but SOMETHING would happen.

You're making the assumption that there is a relationship between stability and location of jump nodes and the size of the gravity well. You can't make that assumption.

1. Suppose that jump nodes simply require a threshold value to form. i.e if the star is over 0.5 solar masses jump nodes can form, below that they won't form at all since the physics simply don't allow it. Above that they form but the mass of the star has no effect on their distribution or location. Their stability depends on other factors (distance between the stars, relative velocity and a whole manner of other factors).
2. Suppose that jump nodes don't work on a local gravitational effect but are actually working on the gravitational effects of stars upon each other. Suppose it's some sort of Lagrangian effect with only two star systems whose gravity somehow cancels out able to create jump nodes between them.  Gravity moves at the speed of light. That means that it would take years before any local change of gravity would reach the stars further away and disrupt the subspace network. Furthermore if that is true blowing up Capella probably wouldn't have any effect at all on the nodes. When we're talking on the scale of the distance between Capella and Epsilon Pegasi, Vega and Gamma Draconis there have been no gravitational changes. All the mass of Capella is still in a big sphere surrounding the new neutron star/black hole.


Sorry but we do not know enough to say that there would be changes. You've assumed that jump nodes form because of the effects of the local gravity well and we certainly do not know that to be true. Jump nodes could easily be dependant on gravitational effects between the two systems they connect and if that's true then Capella's nodes wouldn't have been affected in the slightest by the supernova. Not on the minutes and hours time scale you're talking about at least.

The simple fact is that what happened to the nodes after Capella blew up is completely open to interpretation. If you want to make a campaign saying they shifted, you can. If you want to make a campaign saying they didn't you can too.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 06:33:41 am
So another update to my theory (a few more and it will be flawless and better than Snayle's :ha:):

Hmmm... Hole punching time methinks...

My theory:
Beams cost (nothing cannon confirms this, but I didn't find anything against it).
Shivans rely on numbers.
When adding the two together- I come up with the idea of Shivans having different fleets for handling civilisations with different 'threat levels'.

In FS 1 the Shivans gave the GTA and PVN a low threat level- they lost 1 fighter during the first days of combat, killing cruisers and whole squadrons themselves.
The called in capships were the cheaper type, with no beams, and the Shivans held the beam-equipped units in reserve or in some other conflict.
To make sure that the Terrans and Vasudans get pwned quickly, a battleship with 2 huge beams was sent for breaking through defense lines and planetary bombardment.
The Shivans also decided to send a shield equipped capship, after noticing that Terrans and Vasudans have no weapons to counter heavy shielding.
So the Lucy was selected as flagship.

The plan failed, and the Lucy was lost in some 10 minutes of battle, attacked by a group of fighters.

After that, the Shivans officialy claimed the Lucy class obsolete and developed a new, huge-@$$ ship.

Then came FS 2. The GTVA got a 'high' threat level since the Shivans remembered their epic @$$-whooping from Alpha 1, and ships with beams were called, with a Sathanas en route to work as flagship.

The GTVA made a huge mess in the Shivan Nebula before the Sath appeared, forcing them to use units retired even in the FS 1 era, now serving as reserve and patrol ships (my little theory on why the SF Aeshma was so crappy compared to the Basilisk). The first Sath was also extinguished by a surprisingly huge water gun, so the Shivans gave the GTVA a 'F***ing High' threat level, and called the rest of the fleet.
In order to show the GTVA that they suck, and that destroying jump nodes when a fleet of jugs is assembling sucks too, Shivan command decided to test a new invention. A mechanism that would reactivate collapsed jump nodes by some ghey magic tricks the GTVA knows as subspace rifts.
Obviously, the 80 jugs set the rift generator power level too high, and instead of making the star artificially heavier (to create a large enough gravity well for a spontanous subspace node creation and recreation) it went KABOOM. Everyone, but those who noticed the plan isn't working and warped out, was smoked.

So today, post FS 2 we have a whole bunch of angry Shivans, working on a new master plan to open that can of whoop@$$ on us. Untill they will be absolutly sure this plan is perfect, they won't bother to come, and will concentrate on wars elsewhere instead.

The first problem:
Why should they wait 32 years to send the Sath? If the GTA/PVN is a high threat level, why not send in a whole lot more while they're still weakened by the first fleet's attack? Or better yet, if the GTA/PVN is now a high threat level, send in the beam equipped ships immediately, send in lots of newer capships, to pawn them as quickly as possible, then get on with the other conflict. Why wait 32 years to let the GTA/PVN (now GTVA) recover and develop beams themselves?

Second:
It is implied that the Shivans nuked stars before Capella (during the Ancients). The Sathanes and the idea of star nuking was around for long before the GTVA. It was not a new creation.

Third:
Shivan Commander: Let's scare the GTVA by making a big jump node! They'll soil their pants!
Shivan Lieutenant: How will making a new jump node scare the GTVA? Why don't we use our shiny new @$$-kicking Saths to attack the GTVA?
Shivan Commander: You're demoted.

Forth:
The Shivans not need plan do. Use Saths/retired Lucys/everything they've got. Why do they need a plan? They can kill us right now anyway. Making large tactical errors, like sending a small fleet to deal with a small threat which turns out to be a very big one, then doing some ghey fancy magic tricks, only for them to go wrong and lose half their Saths... This makes GTVA Command look like the wisest man in the universe.

Fifth:
The Lucifer did not fail entirely. Look what it did:
1) Destroyed a lot of ships
2) Destroyed Vasuda Prime
3) Destroyed yet more ships.
4) Got through all of GTA space to the very core, ONLY JUST failing. Two more minutes and Earth would've been a giant crop circle.
5) Collapsed the node anyway, effectively cutting off Earth.

The FS1 strategy failed only by the skin of the GTA's teeth. If the FS2 fleet tried the FS1's fleet tactics, the GTVA would be no more. Instead, the Sathanas fleet decided to do this:
1) Nuke themselves. :P

Beams aren't stopped by shields, so a Lucifer class ship is an easy target for any race that has beam cannons.
This limits the Lucifer's role to fighting more primitive civilizations. Once 'primitive' humans destroy a Lucifer with ease in a 10 minute battle, the Shivans realize they're doing something right, and analyze the cause of their failure. It turns out that the external reactors that power the massive shield generators (again- nothing cannon can confirm this, or prove it wrong) were the problem, so the Shivans figure out the Lucy is an expensive error and begin to mass produce the Sathanas, without vulnerable reactors outside it's armor. Since no additional reactors leave it without power supply to generate shields, the big S gets really heavy armor and a huge amount of turrets, as a countermeasure to the fact it is not invulnerable in normal space to strike craft weapons.

Again, the Lucy did not entirely fail. It was destroyed only by a lucky fluke (even the mission is called "Good Luck").

If the Shivans could wipe out the GTVA just with sheer brute strength immediately, why wait?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 01, 2007, 06:48:28 am
Karajorma VS TrashMan and Mobius VS Snail :lol:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 01, 2007, 07:00:28 am
Personally, i think that they could have defeated the shivans in capella, if they sent in all fleets, basically every thing they had.
>1st - 12th Terran Fleets
>1st - 13th Vasudan Battle groups

I'd say about 600 ships and the ****-load od fighters and bombers that go with it.

but it would mean loosing their entire millitary. So its more beneficial to seal off the system
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on December 01, 2007, 07:14:07 am
I don't think you people are quite grasping how powerful the Sathanas is.  One of the bastards was considered a threat to the GTVA and there were only 3 or 4 ships with the capability to damage it.

Where do you get that from?

Briefing of the mission where you try to lure the Sathanas out by blowing up Cains.

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It fought "The bulk of the allied fleet" at the Capellan end of the Capella-GD node and came through virtually unscathed.

The bulk of what the GTVA had in-system at that time. And they had little since they still hanv't brought most of the ships in GD or Capella.
Don't allso forget that it came unscrathced for gameplay purposes. Even if you put if against 5 corvettes they will bring a few % off it's hull integrity, yet it started in bearbating with 100%..

Bear Baiting was at the Gamma Draconis side of the node.  Briefing to High Noon "The Sathanas entered the Capella system and obliterated the line of defence we had established to intercept it."  I expect the GTVA brought through ships from Vega.


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Even if you ignore their massive firepower and numbers advantage, they can go around causing Supernovae as and when they feel like it, not even taking into consideration reinforcements they could bring in from beyond Knossos 3.

For a single supernova they need a lot of Sathanases and apparently approx 3 days to charge up the weapon, during which the Saths stay still.
You seem to be forgetting the GTVA can pop nodes at will too and have a lot of static defenses.

Static defences stronger than the bulk of their fleets?  I was working of the assumption that the GTVA won't be destroying nodes based on the fact that it would make their strategy exactly the same as it was in the actual game and would result in a quick easy victory for them despite losing Capella.

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So yes, I do believe the GTVA can put up quite a fight, and while it cannot score an outright victory it could at least gain a phyric one.

Without collapsing nodes the GTVA will score no victory, phyrric or otherwise.

Personally, i think that they could have defeated the shivans in capella, if they sent in all fleets, basically every thing they had.
>1st - 12th Terran Fleets
>1st - 13th Vasudan Battle groups

I'd say about 600 ships and the ****-load od fighters and bombers that go with it.

but it would mean loosing their entire millitary. So its more beneficial to seal off the system

Being generous and assuming 3 Destroyers for each Fleet/Battle-Group.  That gives you 75 Destroyers.  The Shivans have that many Juggernauts capable of toasting them in one shot.  Each Sathanas contains tens, possible hundreds of fighters, and there are Ravanas, Demons, Liliths (Which are absolute beasts for their size) in the system already, and more coming through from Gamma Draconis.  You have a base of operations in Capella, a stronghold of some kind?  2 Sathanes will jump in and maul it. 

You send everything you have you will get utterly caned and lose everything for maybe a couple of Sathanes.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 08:04:19 am
You realize that probably most of the destroyers had already been deployed to Capella. IMO, I think only the core fleets have more than 1 destroyer. The fringe fleets might not even have a single destroyer....
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 01, 2007, 08:10:37 am
Where do you get that from?

Briefing of the mission where you try to lure the Sathanas out by blowing up Cains.

It sez that the guns of their capital ships will be required and that the Aquataine, Psamtik and Toeris will be conducting the attack - it doesn't say that other ships in the GTVA can't damage it..that's bollcoks.


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Bear Baiting was at the Gamma Draconis side of the node.  Briefing to High Noon "The Sathanas entered the Capella system and obliterated the line of defence we had established to intercept it."  I expect the GTVA brought through ships from Vega.

the Sath was a big surprise and came trough rather quickly. It's doubtfull the GTVA could have brought any significant number of ships there at such short notice, especially considering that GD was on the far side of nowheere and that they had a lot of resources invested in fighting the NTF.



Quote
Static defences stronger than the bulk of their fleets?  I was working of the assumption that the GTVA won't be destroying nodes based on the fact that it would make their strategy exactly the same as it was in the actual game and would result in a quick easy victory for them despite losing Capella.

Bottlenecks. They kinda make numerical superiority less of a advantage. A whole fleet with Mljonirs coming the node could take out a Sathanas in a single salvo. It couldn't hold forever against the shivan numbers, but the point is to inflict as big as losses you can with as little as investments.
Alltough none-poping is the soundest strategy to use, yes.


@Kajorama - yes, it's a assumption, but the most plausable one IMHO. In nature, when things are somehow tied, that tie is generally strong indeed.
It's like the size of the star and the supernova - we know there is a size/mass treshold after which the star wil lgo boom, but the size of the bang is still dependent on the mass of the star.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on December 01, 2007, 08:19:54 am
Where do you get that from?

Briefing of the mission where you try to lure the Sathanas out by blowing up Cains.

It sez that the guns of their capital ships will be required and that the Aquataine, Psamtik and Toeris will be conducting the attack - it doesn't say that other ships in the GTVA can't damage it..that's bollcoks.

You're probably right, I haven't played the main campaign in a while.


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Bear Baiting was at the Gamma Draconis side of the node.  Briefing to High Noon "The Sathanas entered the Capella system and obliterated the line of defence we had established to intercept it."  I expect the GTVA brought through ships from Vega.

the Sath was a big surprise and came trough rather quickly. It's doubtfull the GTVA could have brought any significant number of ships there at such short notice, especially considering that GD was on the far side of nowheere and that they had a lot of resources invested in fighting the NTF.

Capella isn't on the far side of nowhere though, it was a major system and that's where the battle took place.  Hadn't the NTF been crushed by this point anyway?[/quote]
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Static defences stronger than the bulk of their fleets?  I was working of the assumption that the GTVA won't be destroying nodes based on the fact that it would make their strategy exactly the same as it was in the actual game and would result in a quick easy victory for them despite losing Capella.

Bottlenecks. They kinda make numerical superiority less of a advantage. A whole fleet with Mljonirs coming the node could take out a Sathanas in a single salvo. It couldn't hold forever against the shivan numbers, but the point is to inflict as big as losses you can with as little as investments.
Alltough none-poping is the soundest strategy to use, yes.

Mjolnir's potency is overestimated.  Couple of fighter wings can waste one no problem.  You'd send an expeditionary force in first before putting your Sathanas through that.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 08:21:07 am
the Sath was a big surprise and came trough rather quickly. It's doubtfull the GTVA could have brought any significant number of ships there at such short notice, especially considering that GD was on the far side of nowheere and that they had a lot of resources invested in fighting the NTF.

IIRC, every single ship save for six of them were pulled out of the nebula in preparation for the collapsing of the Knossos.

Bottlenecks. They kinda make numerical superiority less of a advantage. A whole fleet with Mljonirs coming the node could take out a Sathanas in a single salvo. It couldn't hold forever against the shivan numbers, but the point is to inflict as big as losses you can with as little as investments.
Alltough none-poping is the soundest strategy to use, yes.

What would happen if you just flooded the node with destroyers, cruisers, corvettes, juggernauts, freighters, transports, fighters, gas miners and space marines, coming in one after another, ten at once? The Mjolnirs and the sixty-four destroyers you stationed at the node wouldn't last very long. :P

There would be a lot of Shivan casualties, but they don't have "Shivan rights" groups and the families of dead Shivans protesting.

EDIT -
MjolnirBeams are more powerful than BGreens, only they shoot in one direction IIRC.

EDIT2 -

I'm sure even the most loyal of your soldiers would run away if the Shivans simply flooded the battlefield with hundreds of ships.

(http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/3028/floddensd3.png)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on December 01, 2007, 09:26:16 am
Great as that image is, it couldn't happen through a normal node.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 01, 2007, 10:07:41 am
WE don't know which ships were in the nebula or GD for that matter. Probably only cruisers and a few corvettes. How much time do you think passed from the sighting of the Sathanas till it's apperance in GD? Very little to be sure.


Secondly, what part of bottleneck don't you understand? They can't just send in 10 Saths at once - the node isn't big enough. that's why node blockades are so effective to begin with. If there's enough firepower on the other side of the node to take out a Sath in a single salvo, then it won't have much trouble with several corvettes or destroyers for that matter.

The blockade can't hold forever, as at least some shivan ships would get a shot off and the damage wound mount.. Let's not forget the shivan fighters/bombers.
It's whole purpose it to inflict asymetrical damage - for every one of your ship down take 10 shivans ones.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on December 01, 2007, 10:09:34 am
Seeing as the Shivans always seem to ridiculously outnumber us... I don't think that would be much of a problem for them... :blah:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 10:15:15 am
WE don't know which ships were in the nebula or GD for that matter. Probably only cruisers and a few corvettes. How much time do you think passed from the sighting of the Sathanas till it's apperance in GD? Very little to be sure.

There were SIX GTVA warships in the nebula when they attempted to close the node with the Meson Bombs in "A Flaming Sword" That's all we know.

Secondly, what part of bottleneck don't you understand? They can't just send in 10 Saths at once - the node isn't big enough. that's why node blockades are so effective to begin with. If there's enough firepower on the other side of the node to take out a Sath in a single salvo, then it won't have much trouble with several corvettes or destroyers for that matter.

The blockade can't hold forever, as at least some shivan ships would get a shot off and the damage wound mount.. Let's not forget the shivan fighters/bombers.
It's whole purpose it to inflict asymetrical damage - for every one of your ship down take 10 shivans ones.

The Shivans could send in multiple ships one after another, but many smaller ones at the same time. Seven freighters, then one destroyer, sixteen fighters, four cruisers, twelve fighters, twelve bombers, one more destroyer, a juggernaut, then another destroyer. The node blockade would be overwhelmed.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 01, 2007, 10:30:16 am
There were SIX GTVA warships in the nebula when they attempted to close the node with the Meson Bombs in "A Flaming Sword" That's all we know.

Precisely! The sath came out of nowhere and they barely had time to pull the other ships. The GTVA doesn't hve endless resources nor are they at their disposal everywhere 24/7.
GD is a sistem with no planets of little importance - thus the GTVA had no military presence there. Capella was not part of the frontlines with the NTF so It's doubt a full military presence was to be expected there.
With the NTF still alive and kicking, most GTVA resources would be focused here, not in GD or the nebula, where shivan presence was not considered a threat before the Sathanas came.
It's safe to assume that a Sath can reach the Capella node from the nebula faster than any reinforcements can come from the frontlines to Capella.



Quote
The Shivans could send in multiple ships one after another, but many smaller ones at the same time. Seven freighters, then one destroyer, sixteen fighters, four cruisers, twelve fighters, twelve bombers, one more destroyer, a juggernaut, then another destroyer. The node blockade would be overwhelmed.

Not really that simple. Bigger ships have a bigger exit speed and slide more before coming to a stop. If you send several cruisers and then a Sath, the Sath would kill them when jumping in, by simply running them over.
Secondly, if you can shread a sath with 80+ beam cannons, then you can shread cruisers with ease.
Granted, cruisers are more likely to get a shot off than a sath, since they don't travel that far when exiting GTVA ships would prolly still be in it's fireing arcs, while a sath would leave it's rear end exposed to all the GVA firepower and would have to turn first.
That said, debris from dying ships are dangerous and forming a choke point would be very benefitial to the GTVA, as any shivan ships entering would very likely be hit by debris or cought in hte shockwave of dying ships that came before them.

In time the blockade would fall, but it would take a while.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 10:58:50 am
I still think flodding can get past any blockade.

EDIT:
After posting this, I realized I was pulling a Mobius.

1) Send in a lot of non-combatants and cruisers and ships of unimportance to get past the blockade. They would slip through, or provide a diversion for the larger ships.
2) You can shred a Sath with 80+ beam cannons, but can you shred sixty cruisers and THEN a Sath?
3) If you deploy enough ships, they will provide a kind of herd, and some will get through. Safety in numbers sort of thing. 90% will fall, but the 10% of stuff that survives will still be able to wreak a bit of havoc.
4) They wouldn't do too much damage, and even if they did... Send in more soon-to-be-debris ships. ;)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on December 01, 2007, 12:42:55 pm
The first problem:
Why should they wait 32 years to send the Sath? If the GTA/PVN is a high threat level, why not send in a whole lot more while they're still weakened by the first fleet's attack? Or better yet, if the GTA/PVN is now a high threat level, send in the beam equipped ships immediately, send in lots of newer capships, to pawn them as quickly as possible, then get on with the other conflict. Why wait 32 years to let the GTA/PVN (now GTVA) recover and develop beams themselves?

They simply didn't have a spare fleet in our sector during FS 1, so they decided to bomb the living s*** out of Vasuda Prime and Earth, and then just chase down survivors when the GTA and PVN would be falling apart due to lack of leadership.

Quote
Second:
It is implied that the Shivans nuked stars before Capella (during the Ancients). The Sathanes and the idea of star nuking was around for long before the GTVA. It was not a new creation.
@goes to FS wiki....
Quote from: FS wiki
Though their empire was at one point extensive, they are believed to have been made extinct by a massive Shivan assault around 8,000 years prior to the events of Freespace 1 (i.e. circa 5,500 BC, note that this is also near the time the Crab Nebula would have been a supernova, hence leading to the question of whether the Shivans used their anti-stellar weapons on the Ancients).
It is not a proven fact that the Shivans nuked stars before FS 2, or that the Ancients lived in what became the Crab Nebula.
Also- I think the Shivans really just wanted to make Capella heavier through 'ghey subspace magic' in order to regenerate the nodes that the GTVA either collapsed or was preparing to, so they could continue pwning us on the other side. And here's their second epic failure, when the star colapsed and went Supernova.

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Third:
Shivan Commander: Let's scare the GTVA by making a big jump node! They'll soil their pants!
Shivan Lieutenant: How will making a new jump node scare the GTVA? Why don't we use our shiny new @$$-kicking Saths to attack the GTVA?
Shivan Commander: Without the new nodes we're stuck, along with our shiny new @$$-kicking Saths here in Capella. Oh, and you're demoted.


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Forth:
The Shivans not need plan do. Use Saths/retired Lucys/everything they've got. Why do they need a plan? They can kill us right now anyway. Making large tactical errors, like sending a small fleet to deal with a small threat which turns out to be a very big one, then doing some ghey fancy magic tricks, only for them to go wrong and lose half their Saths... This makes GTVA Command look like the wisest man in the universe.

Well nothing cannon implies that Command isn't wise :ha:
And since they assign threat levels to anyone they fight, it's because they need most of their fleet somewhere and they don't have resources to waste unless it's a real emergency. One more thing- what does a huge fleet give them when they can't move it to enemy space due to destroyed nodes?

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Fifth:
The Lucifer did not fail entirely. Look what it did:
1) Destroyed a lot of ships
2) Destroyed Vasuda Prime
3) Destroyed yet more ships.
4) Got through all of GTA space to the very core, ONLY JUST failing. Two more minutes and Earth would've been a giant crop circle.
5) Collapsed the node anyway, effectively cutting off Earth.

Well since it was the first time in thousands of years when someone survived their assault the destruction of Lucy WAS an entire failure, from the Shivan point of view:
1)they didn't kill us all
2)we killed them all, including their 'immune to primitive races' flagship
3)we actually weren't limited to hiding deep in a far away nebula and we were able to rebuild what they've destroyed (save 1 planet and 1 jump node)
4)who cares about a collapsed node when there are survivors on both sides?

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The FS1 strategy failed only by the skin of the GTA's teeth. If the FS2 fleet tried the FS1's fleet tactics, the GTVA would be no more. Instead, the Sathanas fleet decided to do this:
1) Nuke themselves. :P

Quote from: Snail's Theory
Before the cataclysm, the Sathanes used to nuke stars and other large objects of immense gravitational mass to create artificial Supernodes to travel large distances.

I actually use a very similar idea, but to recreate the normal nodes the GTVA was destroying.
But this time, after hundreds of succesful star nukings (I think that there were countless civilisations that tried to block off the Shivans, so they developed node-recreation technology), they made a supernova. And that's why only some ships warped out- the others simply didn't notice something went wrong untill it was too late.

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If the Shivans could wipe out the GTVA just with sheer brute strength immediately, why wait?

Maybe because the Sath fleet had to come from some very remote place (they can be seen in transit in the 'DIVE DIVE DIVE' mission)?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 01, 2007, 12:53:31 pm
I still think flodding can get past any blockade.

Did I said it can't?
nope..only that it's not as easy as you make it sound and that the attacker would suffer horrible losses if the defender is dug in well enough. Horrible loses however, don't seem to stop shivans from pushing further.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 02:50:22 pm
blahblahblahBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH...

Hmm... well thought out then...

nope..only that it's not as easy as you make it sound and that the attacker would suffer horrible losses if the defender is dug in well enough. Horrible loses however, don't seem to stop shivans from pushing further.

Damn it, I misspelled flooding again. :mad:

Anyway, what I meant was "I still think flooding is an excellent way to get past any blockade"
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 01, 2007, 03:10:43 pm
Actuall, has anyone ever noticed that there seems to be a front and back to the Jump Nodes?

They could position themselves so their behind the node, so to speak, insted of the front and give it to the Sathanas right up the Jacksie
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on December 01, 2007, 03:12:17 pm
blahblahblahBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH...

Hmm... well thought out then...

 :) Thanks...

So now I'll work on the details a bit...

Where do you sign up to have it hosted on the wiki, along with the other theories?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 01, 2007, 03:15:17 pm
Actuall, has anyone ever noticed that there seems to be a front and back to the Jump Nodes?

They could position themselves so their behind the node, so to speak, insted of the front and give it to the Sathanas right up the Jacksie

There has to be a reason they didn't do this. Maybe they can't, without messing up their subspace drives or something...
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 01, 2007, 03:53:37 pm
Actuall, has anyone ever noticed that there seems to be a front and back to the Jump Nodes?

They could position themselves so their behind the node, so to speak, insted of the front and give it to the Sathanas right up the Jacksie

They don't need to. When a Sath jumps our he crosses a few klicks before he comes to a full stop. The GTVA ships need to stand to the front of the node and to the sides and the rear of any large warship jumping in will present itself to them. Unavoidable beam raping for big ships. Small ships don't have that problem, but will still get carved from the front.

So your best bet for setting up a blockade would be the following. Project a cylinder from the node along it's exit vector, cylinder should be a bit bigger than a sath. Positions your ship outside that cylinder along it's whole length, prefering the broadsides for the Orion and Hatties, and above position for Hecates.
Maximum ownage of whatever ship, big or small.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on December 01, 2007, 04:05:46 pm
Except if they are smart enough to counter that by simply sending a meson bomb through first. In which case they've just taken out your entire fleet with no casualties.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 01, 2007, 04:45:07 pm
IIRC, Shivans don't have Meson bombs.

And given their positioning outside of that imagined cylinder (radius of minimum 2 klicks) and the radius of a meson bomb, it's damage, and damage falloff, only a few warship would be caught in the outer edges blast in a best case scenario for the attacker.

Unoless of course you deploy even bigger bombs..or the defender can send one trough to cripple the attackers massing at the other end.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Goober5000 on December 01, 2007, 05:54:15 pm
Gravity moves at the speed of light.
It moves faster actually. :nervous:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on December 01, 2007, 06:45:55 pm
Not according to the general theory of relativity it doesn't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2238452.stm


IIRC, Shivans don't have Meson bombs.

They took a very good long look at the ones the GTVA deployed.

And given how quickly the GTVA managed to copy Shivan designs and even improve on them it's taking a big risk to assume the reverse isn't possible.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Gamma_Draconis on December 01, 2007, 09:03:24 pm
I would send in a very big Shivan bomb to clear the node of fighters.  Then send in swarms after swarms of fighters and bombers to clear out the rest of the fleet.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Ryan on December 01, 2007, 09:36:29 pm
I just thought of something. Why don't the GTVA just put a small subspace drive on afew menson bombs or missles, then jump them  inside of th sathanas? The hull is moderatly damaged, half the crew dead... and a gaping hole in the ship.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BloodEagle on December 01, 2007, 09:46:17 pm
Why don't they just put subspace drives on asteroids?

Why don't they cover the nodes with Dyson sphere-ish objects?

Why is this thread starting to mimic another thread?

                        ;7
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 01, 2007, 11:14:44 pm
Well, i did read some where that Subspace Weapons like that were originally to be in to FS2, but due to time constraints, had to be cut.
*Same time constraints caused us to miss out on suface based missions as well*  :hopping::mad:
They may have been in a planned expansion pack, but as we know nothing came of that...

You do have to remeber that when FS2 occurs, the Meson  Bomb had just recently been developed...Kinda like when the States went after Japan in WWII...

But you point still stands...It could be workable...I'm sure someone somewhere has added an Engines subsystem to the MB.

Personally i say send 3/4.

Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Hellstryker on December 01, 2007, 11:27:02 pm
Actuall, has anyone ever noticed that there seems to be a front and back to the Jump Nodes?

They could position themselves so their behind the node, so to speak, insted of the front and give it to the Sathanas right up the Jacksie
That would mean turning the saths around within supspace. given their sheer size i dont think they would have enough time for that
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 01, 2007, 11:57:26 pm
Not to metition that they have the manoverablity of a cow
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on December 02, 2007, 12:51:00 am
I wonder... if you enter a node from the "bottom" in one side, do you exit from the "top" on the other?

I guess it's a moot point, since the nodes are totally symmetrical anyway and there is no up down or any other direction in space, but it does seem to me to be strange that all ships in FS happen to arrive on the same plane.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Agent_Koopa on December 02, 2007, 12:54:52 am
Has anyone tested the in-game destructive power of a meson bomb? All we see it destroy in the main campaign is two wings of Dragons and a Knossos.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Flipside on December 02, 2007, 01:39:44 am
Well, i did read some where that Subspace Weapons like that were originally to be in to FS2, but due to time constraints, had to be cut.
*Same time constraints caused us to miss out on suface based missions as well*  :hopping::mad:
They may have been in a planned expansion pack, but as we know nothing came of that...


At least until the SCP which, I believe, re-enabled the support for subspace weapons ;) And (using some creative fredding) planet missions (and for the old-timers, yes, I know we technically had the ability to make planet-ish missions in Retail :p).

I think it boils down to sheer mass, the GTVA Fleet was being ground down while the Shivan fleet was actually being reinforced, other than the Sathanas we simply cannot tell what else was coming our way, not that 80 Saths wasn't enough.

I personally think they would have just kept on coming, until the GTVA had too few ships to stop them.

Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: azile0 on December 02, 2007, 02:10:20 am
This IS testable - Make a mission where you, and about 50 other wings (lawl) Pit it out against 50+ Sath's (warping in one after another, of course) While you have your 100+ Cruisers, Corvettes, Destroyers behind you. Spatter in a few hundred shivan fighters/bombers, BOOM. Test complete, problem solved. Im gonna go and research FRED 2 Techniques to do this!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on December 02, 2007, 02:51:27 am
I just thought of something. Why don't the GTVA just put a small subspace drive on afew menson bombs or missles, then jump them  inside of th sathanas? The hull is moderatly damaged, half the crew dead... and a gaping hole in the ship.

Quote
To demolish the Knossos portal, we will detonate the meson bomb, an experimental new weapon under development at the Hideki Institute in the Vega system. Though its specifications are highly classifed, physicists claim the meson bomb has more explosive power than any other warhead in our arsenal, sufficient to destroy any small craft within a three-kilometer radius. The size of the bomb prohibits tactical deployment."

Not to mention the fact that after charging up it takes a good few minutes to actually blow up.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: NGTM-1R on December 02, 2007, 04:45:40 am
It prohibits tactical deployment at that time, anyways; a Meson bomb would need drives equivalent to those of a Triton, or a cruiser. Developing it into a functional warhead is no laughing matter and would have taken at least another three or four months. Also given its size it could have been targeted and destroyed with anti-capital beams, and I doubt it would function correctly when half of it's been turned to vapor.

It takes three or four Meson bombs to blow a Sath to bits, and we know that the GTVA had perhaps 60 of them at most; enough for the test, enough to stuff the Neried and Bastion full of them, and maybe a few more. Thus even counting the Meson bombs they didn't have the raw firepower, much less the ability to deliever it to the target.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on December 02, 2007, 06:08:56 am
Quote
and above position for Hecates.

That would actually allow all 5 beam cannons to fire a broadside on a big S sized target

This IS testable - Make a mission where you, and about 50 other wings (lawl) Pit it out against 50+ Sath's (warping in one after another, of course) While you have your 100+ Cruisers, Corvettes, Destroyers behind you. Spatter in a few hundred shivan fighters/bombers, BOOM. Test complete, problem solved. Im gonna go and research FRED 2 Techniques to do this!

To have 100+ cruisers, simply make a wing of 5 cruisers, and set it to 20 waves (the only problem is with naming them). Same thing with the Sath- make it a wing of 1 ship and set 50 waves.
After that give everyone an initial order to attack the enemy, beam-free-all, and have fun watching.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 02, 2007, 07:14:45 am
90#msg1024990 date=1196549107]
Quote
IIRC, Shivans don't have Meson bombs.

They took a very good long look at the ones the GTVA deployed.
And given how quickly the GTVA managed to copy Shivan designs and even improve on them it's taking a big risk to assume the reverse isn't possible.

Shivans were never hinted to be adapting anyone elses tech. For the sake of pure reasoning, lets stick we the tech and forces we KNOW each side has.


Quote
I guess it's a moot point, since the nodes are totally symmetrical anyway and there is no up down or any other direction in space, but it does seem to me to be strange that all ships in FS happen to arrive on the same plane.

Well, if subspace is a tunnel, then logic dictates that you can only exit it by going straight, no?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 02, 2007, 07:21:24 am
It takes three or four Meson bombs to blow a Sath to bits, and we know that the GTVA had perhaps 60 of them at most; enough for the test, enough to stuff the Neried and Bastion full of them, and maybe a few more. Thus even counting the Meson bombs they didn't have the raw firepower, much less the ability to deliever it to the target.

IIRC, there was absolutely no number given for the amount of meson bombs. It could have been barely enough  for node collapsing or maby they had 10000 more. I wouldn't be surprised if they did have more, given the size of the GTVA and the manufacturing abilities.

As for the delivery...park it infront of a node when a Sath comes. :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on December 02, 2007, 07:53:43 am
Shivans were never hinted to be adapting anyone elses tech. For the sake of pure reasoning, lets stick we the tech and forces we KNOW each side has.

Why? No one else is. :p

The Mjolnir was experimental as was the meson bomb yet everyone is talking about defensive strategies that involve having lots of them.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 02, 2007, 08:03:56 am
but we KNOW the GTVA had those 8we don't know in what numbers) And honestly, while I can see why a Meson bomb would be expensive and difficult to make (like a nuke), beam cannons have been standard for a while in the GTVA, so I doubt a Mljonir is.

Even so, who ever mentioned defensive strategies with 1000' of meson bombs and RBC's? You don't even need those for a good node blockade (alltough they help)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 02, 2007, 09:57:12 am
The firepower discharged from a Mjolnir is considerable. The fire delay is very limited, have you ever noticed it? Also, remember that a Mjolnir is supposed to have multiple anti-fighter turrets. All these weapons need energy. The Mjolnir is definitely an advanced and expensive sentry gun.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Ryan on December 02, 2007, 11:17:27 am
but we KNOW the GTVA had those 8we don't know in what numbers) And honestly, while I can see why a Meson bomb would be expensive and difficult to make (like a nuke), beam cannons have been standard for a while in the GTVA, so I doubt a Mljonir is.

Even so, who ever mentioned defensive strategies with 1000' of meson bombs and RBC's? You don't even need those for a good node blockade (alltough they help)

Didn't they fill the Bastion with Menson bombs before the "Nuked" the jump node?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 02, 2007, 11:57:22 am
The firepower discharged from a Mjolnir is considerable. The fire delay is very limited, have you ever noticed it? Also, remember that a Mjolnir is supposed to have multiple anti-fighter turrets. All these weapons need energy. The Mjolnir is definitely an advanced and expensive sentry gun.

No more than a cruiser for that matter. The Mljonir is a beam cannon with a reactor. GTVA knows how to make both as they have been doing it for years. It might be expensive, but then again so are cruisers and the GTVA has a lot of them.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: azile0 on December 03, 2007, 12:57:48 am
Well, the Mjlonir would be, I think, less bothersome, and possibly Easier to make mobile than theMeson, because, it already has its own reactor. Now, if this could be adapted to run an Engine, than it could stratiegically place itself around a node for an ambush, whilst the rest of the fleet can position themselves, as well.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 03, 2007, 08:15:56 am
Mobile? You jsut tow it into position with a transport - it's allready mobile enough. Why add additional cost and complexity with engines when you allready have enough transport ships?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: azile0 on December 03, 2007, 10:28:41 pm
Well, what if you need to quickly move it? or, chamge it's position so that ships never know where it is.
This is just a suggestion, too.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 04, 2007, 07:28:29 am
A Mjolnir has little use besides node blockades. If you don't know from where the enemy will come, don't deploy the Mjolnir.

Unless they make a manuverable version that can rotate (some basic thrusters) and is equipped with point defenses, it's simply too vulnerable in other positions.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: azile0 on December 07, 2007, 12:55:45 am
Well, I meant this  :

A corvette comes through a node, and gets blown up by a Mjlonir. So, the other side plans ahead, and sends in fighters to attack the thing. Only, the Mjlonir has moved, and the fighters are taken out before they can transmit this. So, in comes another corvette, planning on destroying it, to find it isn't there. Then, they are rended from behind.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 07, 2007, 04:10:13 am
Or you can just stick a few AAAf's ont he Mjolnir and throw in  a few GOOD Sentry guns for good mesure...
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 07, 2007, 06:14:41 am
Yeah but for the anti-fighter beams, you need a tech accurate Mjolnir - see my thread on inacurate tech descriptions
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 07, 2007, 09:32:48 am
Yeah but for the anti-fighter beams, you need a tech accurate Mjolnir - see my thread on inacurate tech descriptions

Right..I'll make one..after I finish the Demon, the new colossus and a about a dozen other ships...which would mean it could be done in a week or two..assuming I don't start working on something new. which I allways do. In that case assume 28.12.2237
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 07, 2007, 11:15:19 am
When you're done, can you put up download links?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: instinctepyon on December 07, 2007, 11:20:40 am
They might fight off a couple Sathanes that way... but 80? Come on! When you are outnumbered that much it is simply an unstoppable force.

You forget that the Saths had attendant fleets "flooding into Gamma Draconis"* behind them. If we figure just 2 destroyers per Sath, that's over 150 destroyers! And you can double that number for corvettes and at least triple it for cruisers. Compare to the GTVA's total combined fleets of about (I'm making an educated guess) no more than 40 destroyers. Do the math. The GTVA would've been annihilated.

And a Sath still stands up pretty well against a combined assault. In Blue Planet a Sath comes under fire from two destroyers, three corvettes, and at least three wings of bombers carrying the most powerful bombs in the arsenal. Still took over five minutes to kill the blasted thing, and it didn't even start at full health!


*As stated by late-game briefing.

I think Dark Hunter makes a VERY valid point here, there are two main reasons for this:

1.  In the mission "Endgame" (where you are protecting the refugees fleeing from Capella), in the briefing it states something along the lines of "Try to keep as many of the escort ships intact as possible as their loss would be a terrible blow".  Judging from this, I think it is safe to assume that the GTVA fleet is in so much trouble that I would cut Dark Hunter's estimates of destroyers in the GTVA fleet by half.  Also the combat effectiveness of the fleet would have suffered because of the low morale after the setbacks caused by the Sathanas' ability to use uncharted or unstable jump nodes, the Colossus being destroyed by the Ravana and the sheer hopelessness of the prospect of facing 80 Shivan Juggernauts.

2.  The Sathanas is far too powerful a ship for anything to stand up to it.  Even a single Sathanas with it's support group of destroyers and cruisers could probably have destroyed the last of the GTVA fleet without too much trouble.  What a lot of people don't seem to take into consideration that going toe to toe with a Sathanas that has only fighter and bomber support is suicide.  The Colossus only managed to stand up to the Sathanas was because your bomber wing took out it's forward beam cannons, even then it had to stay out of range of the other beam cannons.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: karajorma on December 07, 2007, 11:34:09 am
Quote
With over one hundred thousand casualties and more Shivans incoming, we have no hope of holding Capella. Our only real chance is to seal off the system and prevent the invasion from spreading to other Terran-Vasudan worlds. If we fail to contain the Shivan advance, we will unleash the second Great War, a conflict we have virtually no chance of surviving. The Lucifer fleet we defeated 32 years ago is nothing compared to the strength of this armada.

I would have thought that alone pretty conclusively stated the GTVA's chance of beating the Sathanas fleet.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 07, 2007, 06:06:26 pm
In this case the numerical superiortiy was just too great for any fancy tactics to work.

If the GTVA had 10 Collies, then I'd say - hey, if you play it smart and make really, REALLY good node blockades...then you might stand a chance...but fighting 80 Saths?

That would be like sending 10 soldiers armed with muskets against a division of marines.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on December 08, 2007, 12:59:41 am
They might fight off a couple Sathanes that way... but 80? Come on! When you are outnumbered that much it is simply an unstoppable force.

You forget that the Saths had attendant fleets "flooding into Gamma Draconis"* behind them. If we figure just 2 destroyers per Sath, that's over 150 destroyers! And you can double that number for corvettes and at least triple it for cruisers. Compare to the GTVA's total combined fleets of about (I'm making an educated guess) no more than 40 destroyers. Do the math. The GTVA would've been annihilated.

And a Sath still stands up pretty well against a combined assault. In Blue Planet a Sath comes under fire from two destroyers, three corvettes, and at least three wings of bombers carrying the most powerful bombs in the arsenal. Still took over five minutes to kill the blasted thing, and it didn't even start at full health!


*As stated by late-game briefing.

I think Dark Hunter makes a VERY valid point here, there are two main reasons for this:

1.  In the mission "Endgame" (where you are protecting the refugees fleeing from Capella), in the briefing it states something along the lines of "Try to keep as many of the escort ships intact as possible as their loss would be a terrible blow".  Judging from this, I think it is safe to assume that the GTVA fleet is in so much trouble that I would cut Dark Hunter's estimates of destroyers in the GTVA fleet by half.  Also the combat effectiveness of the fleet would have suffered because of the low morale after the setbacks caused by the Sathanas' ability to use uncharted or unstable jump nodes, the Colossus being destroyed by the Ravana and the sheer hopelessness of the prospect of facing 80 Shivan Juggernauts.

2.  The Sathanas is far too powerful a ship for anything to stand up to it.  Even a single Sathanas with it's support group of destroyers and cruisers could probably have destroyed the last of the GTVA fleet without too much trouble.  What a lot of people don't seem to take into consideration that going toe to toe with a Sathanas that has only fighter and bomber support is suicide.  The Colossus only managed to stand up to the Sathanas was because your bomber wing took out it's forward beam cannons, even then it had to stay out of range of the other beam cannons.

Actually, the Colossus was destroyed by a second Sathanas, not by a Ravana, atleast for me.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 08, 2007, 05:13:40 am
the point about the collosus is very valid ! Also i do not believe the GTVA In the state it was in could of done anithing to stop the shivan armada let alone defeat it! Sure had they had 10 collossus class warships and perhaps 50 or 60 friggates to augment the heavy weaponry deployment in the fleets then perhaps they could of found a way to at least inflict severe dammgae to the Sathans fleet so much so that it would make the shivans retreat but that woyuld mean blowing up more then 60 of them juggs!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 08, 2007, 05:42:58 am
the point about the collosus is very valid ! Also i do not believe the GTVA In the state it was in could of done anithing to stop the shivan armada let alone defeat it! Sure had they had 10 collossus class warships and perhaps 50 or 60 friggates to augment the heavy weaponry deployment in the fleets then perhaps they could of found a way to at least inflict severe dammgae to the Sathans fleet so much so that it would make the shivans retreat but that woyuld mean blowing up more then 60 of them juggs!

If you had 10 Collies and adequate escorts fleets it's still possible. WE humies are good in defense :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 08, 2007, 06:49:58 am
yeah but the shivans are even better in offence!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 08, 2007, 07:22:47 am
Sez you. Honestly, the shivies lost most of their advantages from the Great War - the tech gap between the GTVA and them closed significantly.

They have numbers - a really crucial advantage and one that can be hardly matched by the GTVA.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 08, 2007, 07:42:07 am
What about ":v: should have created better Shivan primaries and original Shivan secondaries?"

You simply can't discuss about their real effectiveness and power in the Universe though you're free to do it when talking about the game.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on December 08, 2007, 07:51:34 am
Sez you. Honestly, the shivies lost most of their advantages from the Great War - the tech gap between the GTVA and them closed significantly.

They have numbers - a really crucial advantage and one that can be hardly matched by the GTVA.

Numbers, more powerful weapons, weapons that can fire more often, superior subspace technology, they can nuke a star in a couple of weeks.  It's a lot more than just numbers.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 08, 2007, 08:01:56 am
A Mjolnir has little use besides node blockades. If you don't know from where the enemy will come, don't deploy the Mjolnir.

Unless they make a manuverable version that can rotate (some basic thrusters) and is equipped with point defenses, it's simply too vulnerable in other positions.

Speaking of the Mjolnir...

Since SEXPs are useless(when a Mjolnir is set to face a target the beam points elsewhere) is there a way to create a meneuverable version?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 08, 2007, 08:41:15 am
well they indeed have more powerfull weapons that can fire faster but then again the GTVA started on a trend that also gives them and advantage and that is range! GTVA BEAM CANNONS CAN BE MADE TO FIRE AT LONGER DISTANCES AND IF SUCH AN ADVANTAGE WERE TO BE IMPROVED THEN THE SHIVANS WOULD find themselfs with a far smaller advantage then before also blowing up a star required over 80 juggs so in my book that equal to massive resources beeing tied down for very long periods of time!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 08, 2007, 09:51:07 am
Are you refering to the LRBGreen or whatever is called?

It's the result of a prolonged reactor overload. I bet it was also made to make High Noon beatable.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 08, 2007, 12:21:08 pm
well they indeed have more powerfull weapons that can fire faster but then again the GTVA started on a trend that also gives them and advantage and that is range! GTVA BEAM CANNONS CAN BE MADE TO FIRE AT LONGER DISTANCES AND IF SUCH AN ADVANTAGE WERE TO BE IMPROVED THEN THE SHIVANS WOULD find themselfs with a far smaller advantage then before also blowing up a star required over 80 juggs so in my book that equal to massive resources beeing tied down for very long periods of time!

What makes you think the Shivans can't do that to their beams themselves? Even if long-range sniping does succeed in taking out a few Saths the Shivans would still be able to win through brute force. Snipe off 10 Saths, the last 70 will still kick your ass.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 08, 2007, 12:56:57 pm
You will never be able to do something like that, the Shivans will most likely storm you with spacecraft and even destroyers.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 10, 2007, 02:56:04 am
Well if the shivans would of been able to make theyr beam cannons fire at longer ranges with increased dammega potential im sure they would of done so!

I mean its not like they somehow feel embarased about blowing up enemies faster.

Well they can send in all the fighters they want they will just get cut down to pieces by Deimos and Aeoulus warships. Also lets not forget that while the shivans can indeed send in warships to bust you to pieces unless they jump in at some distance from weapons range they risk the chance of overjumping and ending up besides you or even worse over jumping you completely. And that equal one more dead shivan warship. Also besides the Ravana which is the main threat and most deadly one to GTVA warships (exlueding the Sath) all other shivan warships get owned by theyr GTVA counterparts. Hell even a Deimos or a Sobek has an overall relative easy time killing off a Ravana once its taken out its main beam cannons !

GTVA long range weaponry is already improving one example would be the MJolnir which is currently not in use on any GTVA design. but you can bet that another improved and more flexible variant is already in the work for putting them on GTVA warships.

If that is the case then by all means you can call the shivans and tell them that they uber beams of doom have just gotten a lot less scary.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 10, 2007, 05:27:38 am
Shivans are scary on offense. On defense not so much.
But it would be extreemly foolish to underestimate them. the GTVA did that and nearly paid the ultimate price :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 10, 2007, 02:10:18 pm
Please keep in mind that beams are much more terrible in the FreeSpace Universe than in the FreeSpace game. I'd like to mention the Lucifer, the Behemoth(cb ani, when it ambushes the Vigilant), the cb ani showing Mjolnirs taking down a Deimos and several pictures of beams penetrating the hull of Deimos corvettes and an Orion so easily.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 10, 2007, 02:13:42 pm
Maby...or maby all those ships were already damaged when the shooting started :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 11, 2007, 11:35:47 am
Well the basic line here is dont underestimate the shivans ! Or rather do not underestimate theyr numbers! Find a dammned way to keep them tied down to one small area where you can concentrate firepower outside of theyr weapons range and with enough time you can chop them all to pieces!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 11, 2007, 04:18:53 pm
A LOT of time.....unless you have really huge AOE weapons...supernova style :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 12, 2007, 05:28:46 am
tahts not such a bad idea but why waste an entire solar sistem full of resources when you can chopt them up with Mjolnirs and RBC's and a few dozen Friggates orions and deimos calss corvettes! The shivans withh all theyr fighter numbers mean nothing agains the might of the Deimos class corvettes! And if they cant get to you fast enough to start shooting theyr beams of doom then you have won the battle!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on December 12, 2007, 05:46:38 am
Yes. Of course.

What about all these bomber wings? The Shivans have probably multiple thousand bomber wings. If you invent repeating ULTRA-Anti fighter beams, it's a different story, but not even whole battle groups of Aeolous class cruisers would be able to do much there.

Plus, viewn from a not pure gameplay side, the shivans are meant to be technologically superior in MANY aspects. Expect your 'but we could defense the RBC's with fighters'-argument to be crushed under the foot of a few Mara's.

I bet a true invasion of shivans, where everything would be mobilized, you'd have to expect thousands of bomber and fighter wings.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 12, 2007, 08:45:02 am
With a whole battlegroup of Aeoluses the possibilities are immense. Those things shred bombers for breakfest. Even wit hsuperior shivan fighters, aeoluses level the playing field when it comes to fighter power.

That still leaves the shivan capship superiority tough.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on December 12, 2007, 10:47:32 am
With a whole battlegroup of Aeoluses the possibilities are immense. Those things shred bombers for breakfest. Even wit hsuperior shivan fighters, aeoluses level the playing field when it comes to fighter power.

That still leaves the shivan capship superiority tough.

And the fact there are only about 10 Aelouses left by the end of FS2, and they are extremely expensive to produce.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 12, 2007, 12:16:52 pm
IIRC, there is no mention that they are extreemely expensive, just that a batch of them was produced and then the production run ended.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 12, 2007, 02:10:46 pm
The shivans withh all theyr fighter numbers mean nothing agains the might of the Deimos class corvettes! And if they cant get to you fast enough to start shooting theyr beams of doom then you have won the battle!

The GTVA with all their Deimos corvettes means nothing against the might of 80 Sathanas class corvettes! :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 12, 2007, 02:19:10 pm
Maby...or maby all those ships were already damaged when the shooting started :P

It means nothing. A ship might have sustained damage to its engines. A beam shot hitting the opposite side of the ship would penetrate the hull as if nothing happened.

IIRC, there is no mention that they are extreemely expensive, just that a batch of them was produced and then the production run ended.

They're expensive to maintain and repair, if I remember well.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 12, 2007, 02:22:26 pm
It means nothing. A ship might have sustained damage to its engines. A beam shot hitting the opposite side of the ship would penetrate the hull as if nothing happened.

It does mean something. A ship may have sustained damage to that part of the ship. A beam shot hitting the correct part of the ship would penetrate the hull and go right through it.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 12, 2007, 02:32:44 pm
It means nothing. A ship might have sustained damage to its engines. A beam shot hitting the opposite side of the ship would penetrate the hull as if nothing happened.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the battle at Deneb was a big furball. It would  be a miracle if the Orion managed to get close to a Lucifer in such a big fight without damage - with all those fighters, bomber and cruisers flying around.

And no beam made it TROUGH the vigilant...look at the ani again.

As far as the Mjolnirs and that Deimos goes, getting hit by 4 Mjolnirs is enough to kill a Deimos (beam goes trough), and the VTF warships were running trough several blockades, thus the chances of them being undamaged are miniscule.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 12, 2007, 02:40:42 pm
I'll have to agree with the TrashMan here.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 12, 2007, 02:46:21 pm
The beams penetrated the Vigilant's hull! Check!

And mine was a reference to the Universe. There's a pic of a SRed penetrating the hull of a Deimos without problems. There also is a LRed penetrating an Orion. Are you aware of the fact that beams are HOT and nothing can resist to them?!?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Bob-san on December 12, 2007, 03:01:13 pm
After reading the entire thread (whew that was long)...

The GTVA simply doesn't have the resources to defeat 80+ Sathanas. Even taking on one every 15 minutes, the losses would be immense. Ok here's a blockade scenario for you... you scatter at least three wings of heavy bombers and at least ten wings of fighters. Around a node, everyone scatters so they don't bounce off a Sathanas. So, the Sathanas jumps in and is ambushed--the fighters immediately go for the fighter bay--as you can't fight if you can't escape. the bombers take out the engines as well. After a few minutes, the bombers can basically run out of weapons range and wait for the next Sathanas. If the next one jumps in, it will collide with the first Sathanas--and be in good range of any following Sathanas. When Sath #1 is parked and Sath #2 hits, destroying the front arms. The impact puts it closer to the node--where the bombers can quickly disable the ship. Now you have a problem--you'll have swarms of Shivans attack shortly, though the Sathanas problem is taken care of. So you'll probably be expecting at least one more Sathanas to jump though, right? Wait for it... waiiiit for ittt... *bam* you've solved at least one problem by now--it's most likely that the middle Sath is out for the count and the other two are heavily damaged.


Next, you need something to stop the fighters. We can't simply build a Dyson Sphere around it, so we have to do something else. My personal way to stop this would be to launch Ursa bombers, filled with Rockeyes. Have them constantly circle the node and have the turrets aimed towards the incoming fighters. This would be highly effective in the short-term... not much of a problem. We can assume that the Shivan fighters can't jump from one system to another (why? because... they've never done that before... and after the Ravana was destroyed, we had no more Shivan fighter problems). So we still have a large problem--the Sathanas are all jumping in with fighter-bays intact. We have to solve that, ne? Easier said then done. Our best system would be to disable the rear beams and bring cruisers in to destroy the bay.

Now it's a waiting game--the Sathani are disabled and heavily damaged, and they can't get much more support. The shivans can, however, send in destroyers and other smaller ships. So they do. In comes a few destroyers. Same procedure, right? Right! Only this time, make sure we disable them, take out their fighterbay, and destroy all beams. So now you have probably 2 sitting-duck destroyers as well as 2 sitting-duck juggernaughts clogging up the node. What to do for the Shivans? Suicide, in short.

I hope that demonstrates a way we could actually STOP a Shivan advance. With enough time (probably 1 hour for this battle), we could clog the node. They'd probably send a few Sathanas to destroy the others to clear a path. Rinse and repeat--every time they send in a sath, disable it and wait for another Sath to destroy it. Eventually they'll pull back or we'll kill enough of them that they simply leave.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 12, 2007, 03:04:41 pm
The beams penetrated the Vigilant's hull! Check!

But they don't go right through. They graze the top.

And mine was a reference to the Universe. There's a pic of a SRed penetrating the hull of a Deimos without problems. There also is a LRed penetrating an Orion.

That looked a LOT more like an LRed to me. I again return to the claim that the section of the Orion was damaged before the beam sliced through it.

Are you aware of the fact that beams are HOT and nothing can resist to them?!?

Many things are hot. But things can resist them. [there is only ONE meaning to this phrase, if you see another meaning you are a complete pervert]
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mobius on December 12, 2007, 03:36:44 pm
1) Are you sure? The beams simply passed through!

2) How do you know that? You can see the beam as it passes through the ship...how do you know about the conditions of the armor plating hit by the beam?!?

3) :wtf:

No, they might have better resistance, but they can't prevent a beam from penetrating the hull. Look at the Deimos, in the Tech Description it is stated that the molybdenum offers better protection against beams: though the beam is too hot for it, the molybdenum can prevent a fire from spreading...
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on December 12, 2007, 03:51:56 pm
My third thought on this is again about the GTVA being totally pwned.

Assuming that, with MUCH of luck and careful planning, the GTVA could sucesfuly defend one node, one has to expect multiple nodes at the same time would be invaded. And the GTVA can't bring up enough resources and shippower for defending multiple nodes assuming they send like 5 Sathanas Juggernauts per node.

That'l be -1 points for GTVA a a bazillon of thousands of points for Shivans.

P.S.: AlphaOne, please fix your grammar. Please.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Marcus Vesper on December 12, 2007, 03:55:34 pm
He has the !!!!!!! title for a reason you know, heh.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 12, 2007, 04:02:34 pm
1) Are you sure? The beams simply passed through!

Uuuuuhh... No?

2) How do you know that? You can see the beam as it passes through the ship...how do you know about the conditions of the armor plating hit by the beam?!?

We don't know, but it is the only explanation for the differences from in-game and in-universe.

No, they might have better resistance, but they can't prevent a beam from penetrating the hull. Look at the Deimos, in the Tech Description it is stated that the molybdenum offers better protection against beams: though the beam is too hot for it, the molybdenum can prevent a fire from spreading...

Do you have a SINGLE SCRAP OF EVIDENCE to support this? :rollieyeses:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 12, 2007, 04:08:30 pm
1) Are you sure? The beams simply passed through!

2) How do you know that? You can see the beam as it passes through the ship...how do you know about the conditions of the armor plating hit by the beam?!?

3) :wtf:

No, they might have better resistance, but they can't prevent a beam from penetrating the hull. Look at the Deimos, in the Tech Description it is stated that the molybdenum offers better protection against beams: though the beam is too hot for it, the molybdenum can prevent a fire from spreading...


1. I have to agree with Snail, the beam didn't pass trough at any point. It does cut at the hull, but it's effect is that of a slashing would that only penetrates the surface, not goes straight trough.

2. How do you know it's not damaged? Does it make sense for it to NOT be damaged when it's that close to the Lucifer? After all, it had to close the distance and I doubt the shivans would just be waiting.

3. Eh? Beams are indeed might weapons since you can destroy a 2k long warship with a few hits with it..but one-shot-kills don't happen unless you bring a beam of overkill size to the fight.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Retsof on December 12, 2007, 05:01:11 pm
Just caught up with this thread, and, going back a page or two, if you want a mobile molnhir (sorry if spelled wrong) just strap it to an ursa, there you go, instant mobility.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: terran_emperor on December 12, 2007, 05:10:38 pm
you do know that an Ursa is about as manouverable as a Cow riight?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 12, 2007, 05:12:05 pm
Even a sedated cow with broken legs is better then nothing... :lol:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Retsof on December 12, 2007, 05:29:43 pm
Well, can you think of anything else smaller than a cruiser that could actually haul a molnhir.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on December 12, 2007, 06:53:44 pm
Elysium
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 12, 2007, 06:57:28 pm
Or every other small transport for that matter.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 13, 2007, 07:02:35 am
well they would work but they have lower armour then a Ursa and no shields ;))
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 13, 2007, 08:21:18 am
but more turrets in general.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on December 13, 2007, 10:54:43 am
A lot of good thos blot turrets will do you ! I take armour and shields versus crap for weapons anyday. At least with more armour and shields you might have a chance at getting away before you get blown up.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 13, 2007, 10:59:02 am
Re-git it for Mjolnir-hauling duty. Give the transport a better reactor and put Keysers in those turrets....hehehehe
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mustang19 on December 13, 2007, 01:01:18 pm
Actaully, you can just go into FRED and have something tow around a Mjolnir. How do you think they're deployed in the first place?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 13, 2007, 03:45:41 pm
Magic? The Force?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Bob-san on December 13, 2007, 05:32:12 pm
No. They ran away from the Atrocious (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,33461.0.html). Do NOT look at that linked web page.

Anyways--I would like to see a modified Ursa that replaces most of the systems with Kayser turrets would do very well towing a Mjolnir. Fast-ish and heavily shielded.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: azile0 on December 15, 2007, 01:13:42 am
Well, why an Ursa when we have newer, shinier, BETTER (as in More heavily plated, and faster) Bombers, like an Artemis, or Boangeres? They are faster, and more suitable, I think for towing. get in, get out, giterdone.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on December 15, 2007, 01:59:25 am
AAHHHHH MY EYYYYYEEEEEEESSSS!!! MY EYEBALLS ARE BLOWING UP! All this PAIN!!! My very life consists of agony alone!

Ahem.

Ah oh yeah. Well, you DO know the Ursa, a FS1 era ship, has the 2nd-strongest hull in the game, only seconded by the mighty potato (...).
Maybe you'll want to build a entirely new class of ships, double the size of a ursa, completely remove weapon systems (except the mjolnir, o.c.) and take armour and shields instead.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 15, 2007, 05:06:51 am
Methinks the GTV should just mass-produce the mighty potato, Keysers, trebs and Harpoons.

Immagine a force of 5000 Ares fighters with that loadout flying at you :shaking:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Desert Tyrant on December 15, 2007, 11:39:20 am
Methinks the GTV should just mass-produce the mighty potato, Keysers, trebs and Harpoons.

Immagine a force of 5000 Ares fighters with that loadout flying at you :shaking:

But where are they going to get all this?  It's a very potent force, but it costs money and costs a massive amount to even keep properly maintianed.  The Ares was mentioned to be prohibitely expensive, the Kayser IIRC was very expensive, and I see no reason why the Trebs aren't.

And if there's one thing the GTVA probably doesn't have, post-Capella, is a piss ton of money. 
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Bob-san on December 15, 2007, 01:21:05 pm
AAHHHHH MY EYYYYYEEEEEEESSSS!!! MY EYEBALLS ARE BLOWING UP! All this PAIN!!! My very life consists of agony alone!

Ahem.

Ah oh yeah. Well, you DO know the Ursa, a FS1 era ship, has the 2nd-strongest hull in the game, only seconded by the mighty potato (...).
Maybe you'll want to build a entirely new class of ships, double the size of a ursa, completely remove weapon systems (except the mjolnir, o.c.) and take armour and shields instead.
I told you not to look. :rolleyes:

Anyways--the GTVA would do its best by using its numbers against the Shivans. I think that the only way the GTVA could really beat the Shivans in a 1v1 fight would be to use the swarm tactics as well. Also remember the GTVA should be able to produce older ships quickly and inexpensively.

Imagine this... instead of having many huge Potatoes flying at you, there is something even scarier. Ok now...

A large carrier--about 3K long. On it about 5 fighter bays. Whats in those bays? In short... compact ships. Say you can fit 200 Ulysses in each fighter bay, plus enough primaries and secondaries to sortie all of them three times. So, even with 1k Ulysses flying at you, imagine the firepower even with cheap weapons and armor. Having them loaded up with Subach HL-7 and Rockeyes... I wouldn't want a swarm of highly maneuverable and quite fast fighters at me.

Anyways--it'd be easier to produce thousands of Ulysses and their respective weapons then produce even hundreds of Ares and their weapons. Besides--Ulysses should be capable of atmospheric flight. Launching from a moon-base or even planet-side hangers can make a very effective assault.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 15, 2007, 01:27:29 pm
Are we even sure of the cost and build time of various ships? We're throwing around conjectures.

Wehave no clue how mucha potato costs, or how much a Ulysses costs. That said, mass producing ships with a lot of primaries is effective even if you outfit them with cheap weapons.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Bob-san on December 15, 2007, 06:30:58 pm
I would guess that a Ulysses is one of the easiest ships for the GTVA to manufacture. Plus the basic primary Subach HL-7 and secondary Rockeye should be quite cheap. The hardest part of it would be to hire the thousands of pilots and flight crews to make use of these ships in such a scale.

Overall, it should be less-expensive to put out Ulysses--even if crew costs a fortune.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on December 16, 2007, 12:00:24 am
You could build AIs into the Ulysseses, and truly piloted Ares wings would be reserved to the Elite Wings.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 16, 2007, 05:37:54 am
You could build AIs into the Ulysseses, and truly piloted Ares wings would be reserved to the Elite Wings.

that's a good one. If nothing else they will serve to distract the enemy while the elites pound them into oblivion.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 16, 2007, 06:32:29 am
There has to be a reason AI has not been used other than in training.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Bob-san on December 16, 2007, 01:31:17 pm
I'd think that every AI fighter would simply die whenever hit with EMP or in an EMP-like shockwave. That, or a high rate of failure... the AI, despite programming, may not be opportunistic enough to fire when it would be natural to actually fire. Besides--its probably easy to dodge AI fighter--as there are set specifications at which they'll fire and how. If they only aim when 100% on--erratic maneuvers on the part of human pilots should be more than enough to set the shots off-course. Also, I'd guess poor engine/shield/weapon EMS.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 17, 2007, 07:13:04 am
Even if they are crappy shots, there would he 100's of them.

The proverbial - bury your enemy under the corpses of your own soldiers :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 17, 2007, 07:14:45 am
Even if they are crappy shots, there would he 100's of them.

Maybe the AI was expensive or hard to produce...


AND SACRIFICING HUMANS WAS MORE EFFECTIVE!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! :mad2:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on December 17, 2007, 07:37:48 am
"I was given this medal for my brilliant victory over the killbots! The tactics was simple - the killbots had a programmed kill limit, so I just threw wave after wave of my men at them, till they shut down!"
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on December 17, 2007, 11:18:56 am
Even if they are crappy shots, there would he 100's of them.

The proverbial - bury your enemy under the corpses of your own soldiers :P

You're proposing defeating the Shivans by swarming them?  You're going to run out of materials before you kill half the Shivans.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Vidmaster on December 17, 2007, 11:42:21 am
"I was given this medal for my brilliant victory over the killbots! The tactics was simple - the killbots had a programmed kill limit, so I just threw wave after wave of my men at them, till they shut down!"

Furturama rocks  :p
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: General Battuta on December 20, 2007, 12:35:08 pm
I'd think that every AI fighter would simply die whenever hit with EMP or in an EMP-like shockwave.

That doesn't make sense, I think. If a human-piloted fighter was hit by an EMP there are two possible outcomes: controls shut down due to EMP burning out electronics, pilot and ship die OR controls are hardened and pilot continues.

If the controls can be hardened (in a Faraday cage) so can the AI, as they're made of the same components.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: castor on December 20, 2007, 02:49:35 pm
There has to be a reason AI has not been used other than in training.
The AI needs to be remotely controllable, not necessarily safe :nervous:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: krankes_hirn on December 20, 2007, 03:09:03 pm
I agree with kietotheworld. I don't think swarming the Shivans would be a good choice, since Shivans are already a huge swarm. How about bottlenecking them? So that they bigger numbers can't be of some use to them.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Hades on December 21, 2007, 06:19:32 pm
"I was given this medal for my brilliant victory over the killbots! The tactics was simple - the killbots had a programmed kill limit, so I just threw wave after wave of my men at them, till they shut down!"

Furturama rocks  :p

That it does. :nod:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Bob-san on December 23, 2007, 09:39:29 am
There has to be a reason AI has not been used other than in training.
The AI needs to be remotely controllable, not necessarily safe :nervous:
If it was remotely controllable (depending on what you mean exactly), then it's not AI.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: FSW on December 28, 2007, 04:20:57 pm
There has to be a reason AI has not been used other than in training.
The AI needs to be remotely controllable, not necessarily safe :nervous:
If it was remotely controllable (depending on what you mean exactly), then it's not AI.
By 'remote control' I think he means that the AI would need to have the capacity to receive new orders from Command. And what happens when the enemy figures out the command codes?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on December 28, 2007, 04:27:20 pm
We get pwned twice as fast?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on December 29, 2007, 05:58:54 am
For the GTVA to have defeated the Sathanas fleet would be quite difficult. They might be successful if they got a wing of bombers to blow up that rear LRed, then get a destroyer to jump in behind it. But does the GTVA have 90 destroyers?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on December 29, 2007, 05:30:03 pm
They don't need 90 destroyers if they use a few and a bunch of bombers to disable the Juggs.

I think the GTVA would be capable of stopping transports and freighters with spare engine parts and gas miners with fuel untill the SJ's get slowly finished off, one by one, similar to the German Tiger tanks in WW II that were useless due to lack of parts and fuel.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on December 29, 2007, 05:40:10 pm
Except that it doesn't take that long to go from place to place in FS. The jump to Sol at the end of FS1 took a mere 20 minutes for the Lucy, and about 10 for the fighters that pursued it.

The Saths could just send two Juggernauts per system of the GTVA and be knocking on Sol's door in about a day.

That fleet would have been unstoppable with the GTVA's current strength. End of story.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on December 29, 2007, 09:49:14 pm
They don't need 90 destroyers if they use a few and a bunch of bombers to disable the Juggs.

Ever heard of "Shivan Fighters"?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Desert Tyrant on December 29, 2007, 10:03:41 pm
They don't need 90 destroyers if they use a few and a bunch of bombers to disable the Juggs.

Bombers are vulnerable to Interceptors and multi-role ships like the Mara.  They cannot escort themselves without suffering enormus casulaties, and a Ursa or even a Boangeres is not a cheap machine.  And neither are the bomber's warhead payloads.

Quote
I think the GTVA would be capable of stopping transports and freighters with spare engine parts and gas miners with fuel untill the SJ's get slowly finished off, one by one, similar to the German Tiger tanks in WW II that were useless due to lack of parts and fuel.

Actually, you're off.  The Tiger tank was extremely formidable in combat, but it suffered from lack of standarnization(It wasn't the lack of parts so much as it was lack of standarizing parts.) and the King Tiger was so heavy a bad driver could snap the entire transmission.  Plus Allied airsuperiority was absolutely overwhelming by '44, and quite a few Tigers were killed at this point.  You also fail to mention that the Allies, not the Germans, were the ones overwhelming.  (US produeced 52,000 shermans vs. maybe above 10,000 Tigers.)

Lastly, you're assuming that the Sathanas does not have the supplys to repair itself, something which is unfounded.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Killer Whale on December 31, 2007, 03:46:26 am
A fighter escort usually arrives with a bomber wing, i bomber wing called Alpha, and a fighter wing or two can take out the anti-warship beams of a sathanas, Alpha 1 could probably take out the anti-warship beams in 30-45 min (very easy difficulty{estimate, could be 15}), while the rest of the wing could do minor hull damage and the fighters could take out shivan fighters (strangely enough, if alpha 1 is busy against a capital ship, the shivan fighters don't take up much of his time), once the main beams are gone, move onto another sathanas, the GTVA has more than 3 wings though and that could take on other Sathanaseseses (what's the plural). After a while, at least a couple of hours of Sathanaseseses would be done and the warships could come in and beam them (I love sobeks, they are really good). Fighters could take on enemy fighters and bombers.

Though still... Not to mention Alpha 1 is as good as 30 other pilots. Though that lieutanant guy when we were taking on the Comm nodes was pretty good, that wing was.

The Psamtic was taken by suprise, it was facing all four beams and was already damaged by other warships and bombers
The Phonecia will survive if you hit one of the Sathanas beams with one or two double trebuchets.
The colossus took minimal damage when up against the first sathanas, but the clip after said 20% damage, that would take months to repair!
What other warships were lost to Sathanas

After all that explination, i still don't think so, 80 sathanas were sighted, hundreds more may have been en-route. Alpha 1 eventually runs down on htps, facing a couple of Sathanas would be alright, but AAA hit here and there and fighters can do some damage, Alpha 1 destroyed after maybe 10 or less disablings of beams.

To the final question, nah, don't think so. :no:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on December 31, 2007, 06:51:46 pm
...Sathanaseseses (what's the plural).


Sathanes.

Or just call them Saths. ;)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 06, 2008, 08:20:28 pm
...Sathanaseseses (what's the plural).


Sathanes.

Or just call them Saths. ;)
nghtm1r called them Sathani in his Shivan Theory. By the way, it may be possible for 120+ Ursas to destroy a Sathanas juggernaut. I saw it on YouTube, but I'm not if the video's still there.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on January 07, 2008, 01:02:01 am
I believe there was a discussion on this very recently and it was decided (correct me if I am wrong) that Sathanes was the "modern" plural, while Sathanai was the "old" plural, and the correct English plural (the other two were Greek) is Sathanases. Technically they are all correct.

Want proof? Click the link! (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,50822.40.html)

I use Sathanes because it is correct in the modern form of the original language.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 07, 2008, 10:05:03 am
nghtm1r called them Sathani in his Shivan Theory.

Well then he's wrong. :P
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Marcus Vesper on January 07, 2008, 03:30:25 pm
Quote from: Killer Whale
The colossus took minimal damage when up against the first sathanas, but the clip after said 20% damage, that would take months to repair!
Every time I play that mission it takes exactly 0 damage, because the Sathanas has no beams (OR forward flak for that matter), so it never even gets in range to scratch the Colossus.  The 20% makes sense though because it's self inflicted damage caused by them overcharging the beams during the firefight.  Apparently it damaged the reactor cores doing that.

Somehow the necessity of damaging your internal systems to destroy a target that can't fire back as quickly as possible is lost on me, but then again it IS possible to complete the prior mission with only 2 cannons down.  But who does that?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 07, 2008, 06:18:42 pm
Somehow the necessity of damaging your internal systems to destroy a target that can't fire back as quickly as possible is lost on me, but then again it IS possible to complete the prior mission with only 2 cannons down.  But who does that?

Command does.
Seriously, i hate how volition has made command so stupid in their story. You can kill any single sathanas if you park your capital ships behind it and disable the engines with bombers so it doesen't move anywhere. All the time you can defend your ships from bombers with fighter wings.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: General Battuta on January 07, 2008, 07:24:00 pm
I'm pretty sure that approach would require Volition making the Shivans stupid.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 07, 2008, 07:53:22 pm
shivans are stupid if they put all their beams for the ravana and the sathanas only in the front.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BlueFlames on January 07, 2008, 08:08:42 pm
Quote
shivans are stupid if they put all their beams for the ravana and the sathanas only in the front.

To counter....

Quote
The theoretical knowledge of the weapon, and of the appropriate tactics, must be supplemented, in the last resort, by the decisive requirement of a war-like spirit and an audacious outlook.  The essence of submarine shivan warfare is the offensive!  For the commander of a submarine shivan warship, therefore, the maxim:  "He who wants to be victorious on the sea must always attack!" has special meaning.

--Submarine Shivan Commander's Handbook (http://www.hnsa.org/doc/uboat/index.htm)

The shivans' biological plasma beams don't stick out of their arses, so why should they design their ships with beams pointing backwards?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 07, 2008, 08:21:07 pm
to counter their only flaw. If they are smart enough to engineer such powerful ships to begin with...
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Agent_Koopa on January 07, 2008, 09:05:31 pm
I thought we agreed that the Sathanas was not built for attacking warships.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 07, 2008, 09:42:35 pm
i wasen't here(meaning i didn't read it)when that happened, so I apologize.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on January 08, 2008, 09:46:50 am
For me, the Colossus toke more dmg in the mission where that crazy bastard drives his Orion in to it then in the Sathanas encounter.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 08, 2008, 02:55:24 pm
the orion gets destroyed before it even touches the colossus for me.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Killer Whale on January 09, 2008, 11:40:04 pm
Though it sill does though, also, sathanas jumps in, colossus sitting duck, gets ready to fire and bam, it might do a couple of shots but it's down! Sathanas terrifies all ships in area (including command) and they jump out, a lone fighter disarms, disables, and smashes the ship to pieces, then takes a look at the hull with it's maxims and trebuchets, gets bored and jumps out. I can get a juggernaut smashed to pieces, but there's not beams to take out the defencless warship so i give up.

The warship fires beams straight away (bear in mind they can take out a hecate/hatsesput in one shot both warhships at 100% If you fire a double trebuchet at one beam it takes another). So a juggernaut is more designed to jump in and suprise a warship and knock it down, rather than stand around and let someone jump in behind it (there's a couple of anti-warship beams at the rear of the ship, they can knock warships out to).

Its designed to, Jump, sathanas, >>>> BOOM!!, Jump.
Not, Jump, Sobek, ><<<, BOOM!! Jump, deimos><<< BOOM!! Jump, hatsesput, >><<< BOOM!! Jump, Orion, >><<< BOOM!!

It takes everything in front of it, and swallows it!! Not defend an area from attacks coming from all and every direction. That it's well suited in doing
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 10, 2008, 05:46:31 pm
thats all the flaw of shivan design, is that some of the ships are attack-oriented, so if you catch one off guard and disable it it's toastied.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on January 10, 2008, 08:31:09 pm
True, but they can deal absolutely devastating blows right off the bat... provided their target's in front of them.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Polpolion on January 10, 2008, 10:09:07 pm
thats all the flaw of shivan design, is that some of the ships are attack-oriented, so if you catch one off guard and disable it it's toastied.

Actually the Moloch has pretty decent coverage, just the wrong weapons. The Moloch is probably used as the fleet's defensive power.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Mustang19 on January 11, 2008, 08:35:18 am
People don't realize that almost all of the Shivan heavies are actually poorly armed compared to their GTVA counterparts. Like you mentioned, the Moloch has good weapons placement but only has, say, 4 flaks compared to the Deimos' 6, no anti-fighter beams versus the Deimos' 4, and 3 SReds versus the Deimos' 4 TerSlashes. Look at the Ravana too. It has the most beams of any Shivan capital below juggernaut, but this only ammounts to 2 SReds and 2 LReds versus the Hecate's 4 TerSlash.

So yes, Shivan warships are surprisingly underarmed. The only exceptions are the Sathanas and Lilith. The Rak has something going for it with 3 SReds, but lacks any real anti-fighter armament other than its one AAAh.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 11, 2008, 09:20:47 am
The argument that the GTVA could have defeated the Shivans simply by backstabbing them is more annoying than FS3 questions IMO, because nowadays it's said far more than FS3 questions.

The Shivans aren't idiots. If you warp your destroyer behind them they'll either jump out or deploy a Ravana to backstab you. And if that isn't enough, you seem to have forgotten that the Sathanas has something called a 'fighterbay.'
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 11, 2008, 09:31:10 am
True, but so do the GTVA ships.

It becomes the question : Who has more ships deployed ATM,  who can deploy them faster and who has better AF defences.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 11, 2008, 09:32:27 am
Oh, and did I mention ships can turn faster than ships can move?

(Specially the Colossus... Baseball bat. ;7)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on January 11, 2008, 11:49:03 am
Well sure in ideal circustances the GTVA MIGHT of had a CHANCE to at least hold the line against the shivans but defeat them?? Well that is another question . The GTVA doesnt have 80+ Destroyers so it is a very dificult question to anwear properly.

However the GTVA does have superior af defences superior fighter/bommber tactics. This in itself could of helped to equal the balance of the 2 oposing forces.

Also the GTVA does have the abilaty to scramble aditional reinforcements from bases all aroun the GTVA something which the shivans aparently do not have the abilaty to do at least not as fast.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 11, 2008, 12:04:42 pm
Also the GTVA does have the abilaty to scramble aditional reinforcements from bases all aroun the GTVA something which the shivans aparently do not have the abilaty to do at least not as fast.

Well IMO the only reason the Sathanes didn't arrive earlier was because they were further away. Once they're all at your doorstep, you're screwed. You saw how fast the Sathanes started to arrive in Into the Lion's Den. They were probably all moving as a pack, with the first Sathanas being a scout or something.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Gamma_Draconis on January 11, 2008, 05:46:24 pm
That paints a weird image in my mind. A Sathanas as a scout?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 11, 2008, 07:17:11 pm
Oh, and did I mention ships can turn faster than ships can move?

(Specially the Colossus... Baseball bat. ;7)

Not really. The pivot point of the Colossus is at the rear (where its Large Engines are). All ships have only one pivot point. Perhaps Volition should have made a front pivot and rear pivot for realism. It just doesn't make sense for a capital ship to swing "like a baseball bat". Maybe that's why you never see the Colossus moving and turning around much in the FreeSpace 2 Main Campaign.

People don't realize that almost all of the Shivan heavies are actually poorly armed compared to their GTVA counterparts. Like you mentioned, the Moloch has good weapons placement but only has, say, 4 flaks compared to the Deimos' 6, no anti-fighter beams versus the Deimos' 4, and 3 SReds versus the Deimos' 4 TerSlashes. Look at the Ravana too. It has the most beams of any Shivan capital below juggernaut, but this only ammounts to 2 SReds and 2 LReds versus the Hecate's 4 TerSlash.

So yes, Shivan warships are surprisingly underarmed. The only exceptions are the Sathanas and Lilith. The Rak has something going for it with 3 SReds, but lacks any real anti-fighter armament other than its one AAAh.

It may be possible that Shivan warships are underpowered because they fire their beams more quickly.
However, I would think that, for the Moloch, it really IS strange that it has no anti-fighter beams. Having a couple of those would make it a bit of a nightmare.

Though it sill does though, also, sathanas jumps in, colossus sitting duck, gets ready to fire and bam, it might do a couple of shots but it's down! Sathanas terrifies all ships in area (including command) and they jump out, a lone fighter disarms, disables, and smashes the ship to pieces, then takes a look at the hull with it's maxims and trebuchets, gets bored and jumps out. I can get a juggernaut smashed to pieces, but there's not beams to take out the defencless warship so i give up.

The warship fires beams straight away (bear in mind they can take out a hecate/hatsesput in one shot both warhships at 100% If you fire a double trebuchet at one beam it takes another). So a juggernaut is more designed to jump in and suprise a warship and knock it down, rather than stand around and let someone jump in behind it (there's a couple of anti-warship beams at the rear of the ship, they can knock warships out to).

Its designed to, Jump, sathanas, >>>> BOOM!!, Jump.
Not, Jump, Sobek, ><<<, BOOM!! Jump, deimos><<< BOOM!! Jump, hatsesput, >><<< BOOM!! Jump, Orion, >><<< BOOM!!

It takes everything in front of it, and swallows it!! Not defend an area from attacks coming from all and every direction. That it's well suited in doing

The Shivans may have thought that a rear-facing LRed was enough flank cover. Try this: get a Hatshepsut to jump in directly behind a Sathanas. You'll notice that, even with that single beam cannon, it can seriously damage, even destroy, the Hatshepsut.

the orion gets destroyed before it even touches the colossus for me.

That depends on where the Orion jumps in. If you get it to jump in behind the Colossus, it may have a fighting chance. Heck, you could use a Hades if you want to (although it'll probably get disabled very quickly).

It becomes the question : Who has more ships deployed ATM,  who can deploy them faster and who has better AF defences.

I think the Shivans are better at fighter-bomber deployment.

Keep in mind that they fought against a race with slightly superior technology than the GTVA 8000 years ago and won.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 11, 2008, 07:39:34 pm
Quintuple post much?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 11, 2008, 07:47:00 pm
Sorry about that. I just find that posting a separate reply for each separate quote is easier and less time-consuming.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 11, 2008, 08:09:17 pm
I fail to see how it's easier, since when you reply you can scroll down and see other people's posts, and there is a little quote button in each one.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 11, 2008, 08:12:14 pm
Indeed there is. However, it only works for a single quote. To do them all at once, you need to have, what, five tabs open all at once? My computer cannot handle that many tabs without jamming up.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 11, 2008, 08:13:28 pm
Indeed there is. However, it only works for a single quote. To do them all at once, you need to have, what, five tabs open all at once? My computer cannot handle that many tabs without jamming up.

No, when you press the "reply" button you see a list of posts under the body of the message. It's in a box called "topic summary"
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 11, 2008, 08:18:16 pm
...hunh? I think I must have overlooked it...viewing now.

Ahh cock...I saw everything but that "insert quote" thingie. I've made the changes. :nod:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 11, 2008, 10:54:28 pm
Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?

No :(
Because the title of this thread is grammatically incorrect
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeat the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Hades on January 11, 2008, 11:17:59 pm
Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?

No :(
Because the title of this thread is grammatically incorrect
80 juggs + 15(+) destroyers + 40(+) corvettes + 100(+) cruisers.
No freaking way the GTVA could defeat the Shivan fleet.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Dark Hunter on January 11, 2008, 11:19:21 pm
/me wonders where Hades got those figures.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: haloboy100 on January 11, 2008, 11:38:49 pm
the only canon information about the sath fleet was that there was +80 jugs.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Agent_Koopa on January 11, 2008, 11:45:43 pm
The thing is that one on one, in an ideal environment, a Sathanas is very easy to destroy, as long as you blast it for long enough. However, eighty juggernauts are going to sweep through whatever you have in no time, not to mention the huge fighter complement and warship support. In order to disarm a juggernaut, you need it to stay still for a while, and you need space from the hundreds of fighters bearing down on you. In addition, you need something to stop it from just cruising through your star systems and killing ur d00dz, so to speak. However, anything you put in front of it besides the Colossus is likely to get blasted to pieces within two seconds.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 12, 2008, 01:50:18 am
Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?

No :(
Because the title of this thread is grammatically incorrect

Well the gtva could have had a chance (not a sure one) at defeating the sathanas fleet had they included the word "have" in the title "Could the GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?".
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Admiral_Stones on January 12, 2008, 03:39:15 am
Or even better, 'Could the GTVA defeat the Sathanas Fleet?'.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 12, 2008, 03:46:17 am
That paints a weird image in my mind. A Sathanas as a scout?

The Sathanas was not a scout, but it was simply nearer to the GTVA than the other Sathanes. When the Ravana was destroyed, the Sathanas decided to see what was going on through the Capella node, then it got destroyed by the Colossus.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 12, 2008, 03:51:48 am
Or even better, 'Could the GTVA defeat the Sathanas Fleet?'.
I like your motivation pilot :cool:

Now the challenge for the gtva against the sathanas fleet gets more literal and toughened up you see. Because the shivans don't talk. And as long as they don't talk we must defeat them with out grammatical success :nod:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: FreeSpaceFreak on January 12, 2008, 04:17:11 am
Or even better, 'Could the GTVA defeat the Sathanas Fleet?'.
I think you're making the same mistake here as the GTVA did when they decided to build the Colossus. They thought that the Shivans would return with more Lucifers... They didn't. IMHO, the Shivans will not return with Saths now. As :v: said: Think bigger.
And I seriously doubt that the GTVA COULD HAVE DEFEATED the Sathanas fleet. Remember the rate at which they jumped in in 'Into the Lion's Den'? We simply didn't have enough beam cannons to stop that kind of invasion. Even disabling a Sath so the next one would crush into it would take too long (it has 8 big engines, IIRC) and it would certainly be too risky (Imagine you, in a Boanerges, being sandwiched between two Saths...)
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 12, 2008, 05:20:45 am
If a Sathanas got stuck in the way, I don't think the Shivans would hesitate to either blow it out of the water or move it out of the way with a large tow-truck.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 12, 2008, 05:30:19 am
But, this is great. The first disable sath will sit there, and the next one will come through the node at like 200ms and ram the back of the disabled sath and probably take out it's forward beams in the process (the one that runs into the disabled one that is).
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 12, 2008, 05:44:24 am
But, this is great. The first disable sath will sit there, and the next one will come through the node at like 200ms and ram the back of the disabled sath and probably take out it's forward beams in the process (the one that runs into the disabled one that is).

But it's much harder than that. The Sath has 6 engines, and by the time you've disabled all of them it's probably moved out of the way. Plus, the Shivans wouldn't hesitate to blow it up, as I said.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 12, 2008, 06:00:05 am
But it's much harder than that. The Sath has 6 engines, and by the time you've disabled all of them it's probably moved out of the way. Plus, the Shivans wouldn't hesitate to blow it up, as I said.

Well if and when a sath gets disabled in the right position. A warping in sath at 200ms for a brief time period isn't going to have enough time to destroy the sath right in front of it. The warping in sath will claw the disabled sath in the ass to the point where it will break off it's 4 pincers.

But this plan sounds nice in idea, but in application would take too much resources and time in something that in application would only take out 2 saths. The third one could just warp in because the disabled one is floating off into space from the impact of the crash with the other one being declawed and cruising along on it's mighty own way.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 12, 2008, 06:05:50 am
Well if and when a sath gets disabled in the right position.  A warping in sath at 200ms for a brief time period isn't going to have enough time to destroy the sath right in front of it.  The warping in sath will claw the disabled sath in the ass to the point where it will break off it's 4 pincers.

But this plan sounds nice in idea, but in application would take too much resources and time in something that in application would only take out 2 saths.  The third one could just warp in because the disabled one is floating off into space from the  impact of the crash with the other one being declawed and cruising along on it's mighty own way.

How can you disable them? Each of the engines is very strong, and there are six of them. It's a lot harder to disable a Sathanas than you think. Unless you have super-high-precision-Mjolnirs-which-can-move-around, then it's going to be very hard to do this in the long term.

The plan may be a nice idea, but as you said, it would only take out 2 Saths (which might actually only be heavily damaged and not destroyed), and you can't do it 40 times before the Shivans get the point. If you want to make a node/road block, then just put a load of Meson bombs in front of the node. Same result, much easier to apply.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on January 12, 2008, 06:21:59 am
The plan may be a nice idea, but as you said, it would only take out 2 Saths (which might actually only be heavily damaged and not destroyed), and you can't do it 40 times before the Shivans get the point. If you want to make a node/road block, then just put a load of Meson bombs in front of the node. Same result, much easier to apply.

You can't do that 40 times over either.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 12, 2008, 06:22:28 am
Why not? You have enough meson bombs.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 12, 2008, 06:54:49 am
How can you disable them? Each of the engines is very strong, and there are six of them. It's a lot harder to disable a Sathanas than you think. Unless you have super-high-precision-Mjolnirs-which-can-move-around, then it's going to be very hard to do this in the long term.

The plan may be a nice idea, but as you said, it would only take out 2 Saths (which might actually only be heavily damaged and not destroyed), and you can't do it 40 times before the Shivans get the point. If you want to make a node/road block, then just put a load of Meson bombs in front of the node. Same result, much easier to apply.

I wasn't talking about the disabling of the sath's engines, i was just refering to what would happen after you were somehow able to do so. It's like i said, it sounds nice in idea, but it would take too much resources, and i guess i should have included a little too many casualties to achieve. No it would not destroy any of the two sath's. You would end up with one engineless sath, and a forward facing de-beamed sath that would keep going on it's marry way with it's engines. As far as the destroying part goes. That's where after command sent in numerous corvettes and destroyers and wings of bombers to take out the the first saths multiple engine subsystems in the precise location right in front of a jump node, would send in more fewer ships and start blasting the saths for about an hour until they're blown up.

Very bad plan, we should stop talking about this, it's so dumb, it's a zapp brannigan plan.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 12, 2008, 07:27:46 am
I think the Shivans are better at fighter-bomber deployment.

Keep in mind that they fought against a race with slightly superior technology than the GTVA 8000 years ago and won.

Why? Shields. there's really nothing to indicate that shivans can launch fighters faster.

Even if they could, the Sathanas has 2 fighterbays... .Vasudan destroyers have 2
So assuming 2 vasudan destroyers attack a Sathanas, even if the sath has more fighters (presumably), the speed at which it launches fihgters is a constant. Simply put it will be swarmed. By the time it gets 2 wings out the vasudans will put 4 out.

I consider a single fighterbay a real weakness of the Colossus, but to be fair it wasn't supposed to be a carrier.
IMHO, any ship that calls itself a carrier and has only 1-2 fighterbays is a bad design. That's why any carrier ship I make have 5+ fighterbays. Disable that!
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Snail on January 12, 2008, 07:28:31 am
The Sath has 1 fighterbay.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 12, 2008, 07:33:54 am
I wasn't talking about the disabling of the sath's engines, i was just refering to what would happen after you were somehow able to do so. It's like i said, it sounds nice in idea, but it would take too much resources, and i guess i should have included a little too many casualties to achieve.


With the survival of your race in question I doubt such a a thing as high resource cost will be a problem.
Park every Orion and Hatie and Deimos and Aeolus you have around the node (actually, park everything you have, period), throw in some Mjolnirs for good mesure.

We're talking some serious beam firepower here, enough to destroy a sath in a single salvo..it probably wouldn't even have time to say "What?"
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 12, 2008, 05:27:15 pm
Taking a little hint from the movie 300?

Essentially gathering a small number of really powerful forces around a node is pretty  much the same tactic that the 300 used. Where they lure the enemy into a really tiny passage, in this case a node, and just pick them off one by one.

Of course with this you'd want to assemble all the most powerful beams you got, but it could be done, the gtva has slow beams but they are very powerful.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 12, 2008, 05:41:39 pm
That's the general idea. When faced with superior number good usage of choke points is a must.

Any military that doesn't know how to use them for maximum effect isn't a military I'd want to serve in.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on January 12, 2008, 06:01:20 pm
Gathering all your resources in one place is not practical, especially against an enemy such as the Shivans.  Firstly, a substantial part of your defensive force will get massacred by swarms of fighters and bombers pouring through the node.  Secondly, Shivan juggernauts exploding will do significant damage to your warships.  Furthermore, your ships will need resupplying.  The Sathanes would not all come through at once, if they wait a few days, sending through a few scouts to check for activity every now and again, you'll end up with massive logistics problems.  The swarms of Shivan fighters coming through will go for your supply convoys instead of your warships, and your destroyers will have to withdraw to resupply, exposing weaknesses in your line of defence.

Even if you could avoid these problems, if the Shivans find another node into GTVA space, a Sathanas with accompanying fleet (Ravana, Demon, Cruisers) could raze all your planets in a few systems before you have a chance to do anything about it.

EDIT: By the way, there are 2 nodes from Capella to GTVA space, spreading your defensive line thinner.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 12, 2008, 06:26:39 pm
You don't need all of your resources silly. Just enough. Putting too much ships wouldn't help anyway, it would get awfuly ycrowded, since beams have a fixed range :P

Defensive force massacred by shivan fighters?
Wouldn't it be the other way around? You got Deimoses, Aeolues, Levis parked around and 100's of fighters deployed, no to mention sentry guns.

Juggs exploding doing damage? It possible if you put your warships too close. So don't.

Resupplying?
Since when is that a problem? You hold the system and the door is blocked. You got a LOT of fighters in system. Even assuming some shivans fighter live long enough to jump and go harass your supply chain, why do you think it will be unguarded? A convoy of supply ships has a decent number of turrets and even a standard escort (cruiser or two + fighters) is enough to fend of most shivan attacks.

Would the shivans eventually breach even such a blockade? Most likely..it's a matter of attrition, they would wear the defenders down eventually.
but the object is to buy as much time as possible and inflict as big as losses as possible to the shivans.

There's no better way to do this than a blockade. You can take 10 of their ships for each one you loose, if not more.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Kie99 on January 12, 2008, 07:07:49 pm
You don't need all of your resources silly. Just enough. Putting too much ships wouldn't help anyway, it would get awfuly ycrowded, since beams have a fixed range :P

How many's enough though?  According to a briefing, I think it was Speaking in Tongues or the one before it, the only ships even capable of damaging a Sathanas are Hecate and Hatshepsuts (And the Colossus, but that's not a factor here).  It'd take a massive amount of firepower to take out a Sathanas before it can take out at least some of your fleet, you're going to need a lot of destroyers.

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Defensive force massacred by shivan fighters?
Wouldn't it be the other way around? You got Deimoses, Aeolues, Levis parked around and 100's of fighters deployed, no to mention sentry guns.

The Shivans have many, many times more resources than you do.  80 Juggernauts worth of fighters, god knows how many destroyers worth.

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Juggs exploding doing damage? It possible if you put your warships too close. So don't.

Debris, the Sathanas will turn towards your ships to fire it's beams, and the Debris from its explosion will destroy them on the off chance the beam salvo hasn't.

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Resupplying?
Since when is that a problem? You hold the system and the door is blocked. You got a LOT of fighters in system. Even assuming some shivans fighter live long enough to jump and go harass your supply chain, why do you think it will be unguarded? A convoy of supply ships has a decent number of turrets and even a standard escort (cruiser or two + fighters) is enough to fend of most shivan attacks.

You're making assumptions about the size of the Shivans force which go against what we've seen.  They tend to have huge numbers of fighters.  They could jump out quickly after entering your system and just wait until they detect a supply convoy.   Having Corvettes stationed right next to the node would be a bad idea for obvious reasons.

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Would the shivans eventually breach even such a blockade? Most likely..it's a matter of attrition, they would wear the defenders down eventually.
but the object is to buy as much time as possible and inflict as big as losses as possible to the shivans.

Definitely, it'd be very quick as well.

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There's no better way to do this than a blockade. You can take 10 of their ships for each one you loose, if not more.

There is a better way, the GTVA did it, they destroyed the nodes.  That's the only way they could have survived if the Shivans had wanted to annihilate them.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 12, 2008, 07:16:45 pm
1. Every beam capable ship can damage a Sathanas. And you really don't need that many ships at the node. Do some FRED simulations and you'll see that 10 destroyer + a few Mjolnirs is more than enough to vaporize a sath.
Imagine how many corvettes and cruiser you could throw in as extras.

2. They might have more fighters but they can only send a fixed amount at a time. The node is a choke point. Any fighter exiting the node will be greeted with flak and AAf beam fire and a bout a dozen trebs on his ass, and they can't jump out instantly.


3. A sath would be toast before he even starts to turn. In my simulations in never managed to turn even half way. It has a lot of speed when exiting the node, so it and the debris drift quite nicely away.

4. Look under 2.

5. We're operating on the assumption that the node cannot be destroyed (no mesons or to valubale a node for Command)
Of course blowing it up is hte best solution.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 12, 2008, 11:53:00 pm
1. Every beam capable ship can damage a Sathanas. And you really don't need that many ships at the node. Do some FRED simulations and you'll see that 10 destroyer + a few Mjolnirs is more than enough to vaporize a sath.
Imagine how many corvettes and cruiser you could throw in as extras.

2. They might have more fighters but they can only send a fixed amount at a time. The node is a choke point. Any fighter exiting the node will be greeted with flak and AAf beam fire and a bout a dozen trebs on his ass, and they can't jump out instantly.


3. A sath would be toast before he even starts to turn. In my simulations in never managed to turn even half way. It has a lot of speed when exiting the node, so it and the debris drift quite nicely away.

4. Look under 2.

5. We're operating on the assumption that the node cannot be destroyed (no mesons or to valubale a node for Command)
Of course blowing it up is hte best solution.
1. The Alliance does not have that many destroyers to spare. I am also willing to believe that Mjolnirs are expensive to build. Furthermore, keep in mind that a wing of fighters should be capable of taking out Mjolnirs on their own. I've seen one get destroyed in such a manner before.

2. Do you know that a node is pretty big and fighters are quite small? The choke point is not the node, but how fast the Shivans deploy their fighters. If can deploy 100+ fighters at once, we're toast, but they can't.

3. The pivot point of the Sathanas is its midsection. All large ships can't turn very fast even if they can move very fast.

4. ...hunh?

5. No arguments there.

However, I note that the damage calculations of FreeSpace are a bit off. A single chunk of flying debris should not be able to kill a destroyer instantly. Just Another Day seems to drive this point home.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 13, 2008, 12:19:27 am

1. The Alliance does not have that many destroyers to spare. I am also willing to believe that Mjolnirs are expensive to build. Furthermore, keep in mind that a wing of fighters should be capable of taking out Mjolnirs on their own. I've seen one get destroyed in such a manner before.

2. Do you know that a node is pretty big and fighters are quite small? The choke point is not the node, but how fast the Shivans deploy their fighters. If can deploy 100+ fighters at once, we're toast, but they can't.

3. The pivot point of the Sathanas is its midsection. All large ships can't turn very fast even if they can move very fast.

4. ...hunh?

5. No arguments there.

However, I note that the damage calculations of FreeSpace are a bit off. A single chunk of flying debris should not be able to kill a destroyer instantly. Just Another Day seems to drive this point home.

1. The alliance has plenty of destroyers available, the problem is how many were told to go to the systems near capella and to capella.

2.Nodes are big but not that big.

3. A fighter can turn very fast, a sathanas can not turn very fast. And with this turning speed of the sathanas, the sathanas would have to do pretty much a 180 degree turn to gets it's forward firing beams in position. By the time the sath is like half way into it's turn or less it's already destroyed anyway.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on January 13, 2008, 03:50:03 am
Well ive seen a lot of discusion about this and the main idea to hold on to is that the GTVA as it was at the end of the FS2 campaign im talking about the final 2 or 3 missions had an imposible task to it. I mean it already lost A LOT of heavy hitting ships (im talking about Orions here cuz they are the only really good heavy hitters of the GTVA) And while i do agree that the GTVA still had  a decent number of destroyers left there is a problem of getting them in place . All this takes time. In theori in an IDEAL situation the GTVA could of stopped the Shivan advance and inflict huge casualties to the shivans .

However defeat them completely NO FRICKING WAY ! Not at this point in time or even in the close future. Give them 40 or more years with and IDEAL situation and then perhaps with incredible luck and complete blundering on the part of the shivans they might inflict such huge losses as to consider the shivans deafeated.

Also the GTVA COULD IN THEORY match or perhaps even out tech the shivans in many areas but there is a question of costs. If you end up with a destroyer that can outgun and outperform a Ravana but costs as much as a fricking Collie then you get nowhere fast now do you?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 13, 2008, 10:50:44 pm
Well ive seen a lot of discusion about this and the main idea to hold on to is that the GTVA as it was at the end of the FS2 campaign im talking about the final 2 or 3 missions had an imposible task to it. I mean it already lost A LOT of heavy hitting ships (im talking about Orions here cuz they are the only really good heavy hitters of the GTVA) And while i do agree that the GTVA still had  a decent number of destroyers left there is a problem of getting them in place . All this takes time. In theori in an IDEAL situation the GTVA could of stopped the Shivan advance and inflict huge casualties to the shivans .

However defeat them completely NO FRICKING WAY ! Not at this point in time or even in the close future. Give them 40 or more years with and IDEAL situation and then perhaps with incredible luck and complete blundering on the part of the shivans they might inflict such huge losses as to consider the shivans deafeated.

Also the GTVA COULD IN THEORY match or perhaps even out tech the shivans in many areas but there is a question of costs. If you end up with a destroyer that can outgun and outperform a Ravana but costs as much as a fricking Collie then you get nowhere fast now do you?

I'm not too sure. It has been theorised that GTVA technology in 2367 is close to that of the Ancients. Plus, the GTVA has subspace-tracking technology, so if their technology advances to rival that of the Ancients, the Shivans are in deep trouble.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Gamma_Draconis on January 14, 2008, 12:25:46 am
I'm pretty sure the Shivans are decades ahead of the Ancients as well. If anything, subspace is like a second home to the Shivans.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: S-99 on January 14, 2008, 12:56:26 am
Well ive seen a lot of discusion about this and the main idea to hold on to is that the GTVA as it was at the end of the FS2 campaign im talking about the final 2 or 3 missions had an imposible task to it. I mean it already lost A LOT of heavy hitting ships (im talking about Orions here cuz they are the only really good heavy hitters of the GTVA) And while i do agree that the GTVA still had  a decent number of destroyers left there is a problem of getting them in place . All this takes time. In theori in an IDEAL situation the GTVA could of stopped the Shivan advance and inflict huge casualties to the shivans .

However defeat them completely NO FRICKING WAY ! Not at this point in time or even in the close future. Give them 40 or more years with and IDEAL situation and then perhaps with incredible luck and complete blundering on the part of the shivans they might inflict such huge losses as to consider the shivans deafeated.

Also the GTVA COULD IN THEORY match or perhaps even out tech the shivans in many areas but there is a question of costs. If you end up with a destroyer that can outgun and outperform a Ravana but costs as much as a fricking Collie then you get nowhere fast now do you?

Be specific, not enough destroyers in the general vicinity, or not enough destroyers in the gtva period?
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: AlphaOne on January 14, 2008, 10:37:08 am
Well not enough destroyer in the GTVA . I mean i honestly believe the GTVA at the end of the second shivan invasion after capella and all are left with a hole in theyr destroyer forces since well they took out enough of them on theyr own thanx to the NTF not to mention those that were lost to the NTF and to the shivans so my belief is that about 40% of the total destroyer forces was lost perhaps less.

However even at full strenght the GTVA did not have the ships to asign even one destroyer per Sathanas. 80 destroyer the GTVA did not have 40 or so i believe it is very posible.

However I also believe the GTVA was short on large warships such as the destroyer class because they were either phasing out older designs or they were just starting construction on the newwer classes.

So i believe there was a low number in terms of available destroyers. Given another say 5 years or so the GTVA might of come to full power at about 60 or so destroyers perhaps more perhaps less im not to sure it all depends on the number of destroyers per fleet.

And given the fact that the GTVA i believe was also looking for new ways to expand i believe they would of increased they fleets even more.

The reason why I state that the GTVA would of increased its fleets and expanded was about that debriefing you get about the science cruiser that scanned for subspace portals a few years back .
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: TrashMan on January 14, 2008, 01:21:40 pm
the point of the choke point is that you don't have to assign your ship in a 1 to 1 ratio compared to the enemy.

Enemy ships can only come 1-2 at a time trough the node, then they have to move out of the way so the ones behind them can jump in.


At you're end of the node, you'll outnumber the enemy.

Now, even under the best conditions the GTVA could not win IMHO, but it could give the Shivies a trashing of the lifetime.

Throwing saths at such a defense doesn't work very well...In my simulations, after 10 saths, only one ship in the defending force was destryed...a corvette..and thast due to debris. Throwing lots of cruisers worked a bit better.

In any case, the shivan losses were epic.
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 14, 2008, 06:30:41 pm
Weeellll, considering that the Ancients had a huge empire back then, that must mean that either the Shivans have even more forces than the Ancients, or that they only had the Lucifer back then. After all, the Ancient monologue did they that "they didn't die".
...or it could even be because the Ancients had no shield-penetrating weapons like the GTVA. :bump:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: Killer Whale on January 14, 2008, 07:56:46 pm
I can't put 10 beam carrying warships in FRED, it crashes. Do you know how powerfull RBCs are, quite powerfull, but terrible on hitpoints. 1 or 2 maras can take them out before you travel 2 clicks (aren't they supposed to have a missile launcher or something? meh). A squadron can protect an RBC for quite a while, 10 RBCs could probably take out a sath quite quickly, and it'd be best to put them a couple of clicks from the blockaded node because jump drives gain speed very quickly. On the other side of the node you could put in corvettes and destroyers, but after all this...





Is command really a good admiral? Does he even know what a choke point is? :lol:
Title: Re: Could The GTVA defeated the Sathanas fleet?
Post by: BengalTiger on January 15, 2008, 09:59:40 am
So something's wrong with FRED on your PC- I've made a couple BoE missions with dozens of beam carrying ships and all was fine.