Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: MT on July 18, 2008, 02:33:20 am
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Disclaimer: I'm sure this has been discussed before.
FS2 introduced a couple of new crafts:
SF Astaroth
SF Aeshma
SF Mara
SB Taurvi
SB Nahema
Of them, Astaroth and Aeshma seem to be simply degraded versions of Manticore and Basilisk (without any improvements in area to compensate). The Mara and Nahema seem to be worthy (improved) additions. The Taurvi is a mixed bag (higher HP for a smaller bomb load).
Especially in view of improvements in the GTVA arsenals, the Astaroth and Aeshma seem to make kills easier than ever.
As such, I was thinking about modding the stats of the Astaroth and Aeshma to boost their performance, and boost Shivan primaries by 25-50%. Any suggestions on this?
Also, I find the Serapis ultralight's hull and shields belonging to the FS1 era and I was thinking of boosting its hull and shield by 30, 100.
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What would be the gain?
You would break the balancing in retail missions.
You could create your own missions, but then why not just use whole new/other ships instead of A & A.
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Their stats are canon, nothing will change that.
However, the fact that they are getting weaker actually supports my theory that they aren't new designs, but different designs that the Lucifer fleet did not have. (Snail's Theory) (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Snail%27s_Theory)
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Uh, the SB Taurvi is light years ahead of the SB Shaitan.
Its got higher HP and a higher bomb load. (1000/600 - 40/40 vs. 1000/400 - 40) It actually has the highest armor rating (not including shields), of any Shivan fighter or bomber.
I've always found the Astaroth to be decent. Its not that much worse than a Manticore.
But the Aeshma sucks. I will agree on that one. The only thing its good at is flying in a straight line and launching swarm missiles at freighters.
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No. It's a canon ship, so that is not for us to decide. - Shade 10:12, 16 July 2008 (CDT)
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Given that the Ancients were wiped out with weapons that are distinctively Shivan, we can assume that Shivans don't exactly excel at advancing their capabilities... although that doesn't explain why beam weapons were common in FS2 but not FS1.
The sheer number of Shivans in FS2 makes it plausible that we might have only seen a small selection of Shivan crafts in service, but the time scales involved hint that either Shivans are ridiculously inflexible or that the Shivans have a good reason for building seemingly inferior craft. The split in weponry is even harder to justify - the Shivan Heavy Laser is vastly superior to the alternatives, and standardising fighter armament would seem to have advantages.
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I know those stats are canon but I was thinking of how one can rake kills up when the Shivans are supposed to so tough. In "As Lightning falls", one can basically sit in the nebula and get a hundred kills just like that.
I wasn't comparing the Taurvi to the Shaitan (which is crap), but with respect to the other Shivan bombers.
@Stormkeeper
You are a Typemoon fan?
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shivans are so much and have so much ships that instead of updating the old models they just keep using them to the last day of their days.
what we crushed into FS1 is just the remainings of the fleet that destroyed the ancients and so, this ships did not have beams because it was not common in that era.
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I thought that the FS1 shivan fleet was just a scouting party. Or the survivors of the Ancient-Shivan war.
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I know those stats are canon but I was thinking of how one can rake kills up when the Shivans are supposed to so tough. In "As Lightning falls", one can basically sit in the nebula and get a hundred kills just like that.
I wasn't comparing the Taurvi to the Shaitan (which is crap), but with respect to the other Shivan bombers.
Actually, you'll realize the reason the Shivans are so feared is because they're motives are unknown and cannot be understood. Some of their fighters are weak, yes, but their capital ships are far more powerful than equivalent GTVA classes. Fighters and bombers can destroy cruisers and the like, but without supplies, without a mothership to get those supplies, they're useless.
The GTVA's first Shivan encounter resulted in the destruction of Vasuda Prime and near destruction of Earth. It left both the GTA and PVN fleets in tattered ruins.
Their second encounter resulted in the destruction of a star, and the forced destruction of two subspace nodes leading to Capella.
Each time they meet the GTVA barely stop the Shivans. That's part of their mystique. Also, the Shivans seem nearly endless, while the GTVA feels the loss of each of their pilots. And you cannot deny that Dragons are possible the most powerful fighter in the game because they can run circles around most GTVA craft.
You are a Typemoon fan?
More of a FS/N fan. I've not seen their other works though.
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Again, FS1 beats FS2 in terms of atmosphere for this reason.
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Y'know, Snail, I kind of disagree.
I felt that the terrifying thing about the Shivans in FS2 was that they clearly didn't need good ships. It wasn't even that they were a Zerg-type species, relying on pure numbers.
They simply didn't care what kind of resistance we offered. They didn't need to do their best and they knew it.
I have sometimes wondered if our most desperate resistance simply introduced minor perturbations into the vastness of the Shivan war machine -- perturbations corrected by the most basic reactive systems, perhaps even below Shivan consciousness.
For all we know, the Sathanas fleet was nothing more than platelets converging on a wound.
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Astaroth and Aeshma seem to be simply degraded versions of Manticore and Basilisk (without any improvements in area to compensate).
Perhaps so for the Aeshma, but I'm very curious as to wtf you were on when you decided the Manticore was better than the Astaroth.
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Astaroth and Aeshma seem to be simply degraded versions of Manticore and Basilisk (without any improvements in area to compensate).
Perhaps so for the Aeshma, but I'm very curious as to wtf you were on when you decided the Manticore was better than the Astaroth.
Manticore has stronger hull... Or shields... Don't remember.
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The Manticore IS better than the Astaroth.
Reasons:
The Manticore is faster than the Astaroth.
The Manticore has a shorter Rotation Time.
The Manticore has more shielding than the Astaroth.
The only good thing about the Astaroth is that it has a smaller target profile at certain angles.
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I wouldn't say that Shivan capitals are flat-out more powerful than GTVA ones, they are built differently: Shivan crafts tend to be optimised for direct attacks on ships their own size.
Their capital ships have impressive heavy weaponry (with an emphasis on forward firepower, which makes sense given that the Shivans seem to have the initiative most of the time) but lack anti-fighter defenses.
Similarly, their fighters' superior shields and manoeverability let them compete with GTVA fighters despite inferior weaponry... but neither will keep the paper-thin hulls intact in the face of anti-fighter beams.
I agree that Shivan fighters/bombers seem to vary wildly in quality though... Maras and Dragons are superior to GTVA craft (at least if no capitals interfere... see above), the FS2 additions seem weak, most others do their job about as well as GTVA equivalents.
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The Dragon is by far the most effective Shivan fighter.
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I know those stats are canon but I was thinking of how one can rake kills up when the Shivans are supposed to so tough. In "As Lightning falls", one can basically sit in the nebula and get a hundred kills just like that.
I don't really get that mission because all the Shivan pilots fly like they're drunk or something. Whenever I fly that mission I take a bunch of hull damage, not from enemy fire but from running into them. Everyone's just crawling around getting exploded. But anyway.
I thought that the FS1 shivan fleet was just a scouting party. Or the survivors of the Ancient-Shivan war.
I don't buy that scouting party bit. I think that's someone's idea of an marketing ploy to sell more games (it would've helped me to buy it if I hadn't bought FS2 before FS1). But yeah, I think they're the remnants of the ancient's destroyers who got caught on the wrong side of the Knossos.
As for the FS2 Shivans. Well, they're just more fighters. I just started replaying FS1 today (not the port), and the thing is, in most of the missions, at least the early ones (I'm only up to Judas), all you fight is canon fodder. When you fight the Vasudans, you fight pretty much nothing but Anubis's with the occasional Seth or Osiris bomber. When you fight Shivans, you pretty much fight Scorpions all the time with some Basilisks thrown in here and there, and the occasional Shaitan or Seraphim depending on the mission. The first time you even see a Dragon fighter is the mission where you have to capture it.
So on the whole, I think most factions basically have their "fodder" craft. In Silent Threat, the fodder is the Loki. They're fairly weak, fairly easy to kill (Though the Scorpion's a lot harder to kill than the slow-ass Basilisk). I mean it's the same with FS2. But now the fodder is Basilisk and Aeshmas, both of which are just big targets imo. And if you raise the bar a bit you get Maras and Manticores and Astaroths instead.
So yeah, not all the Shivan craft are improvements, but whatever. Is the Herc2 an improvement over the Herc1? Is the Artemis an improvement over the Athena? If everything becomes an improvement, soon everything's so uber you've got no where else to go. Or you get some fighter like that EA one from Inferno with the ridiculous turning rate.
People also have to realize that the game doesn't give you the exact stats on craft. A player doesn't know the Serapis is weaker hulled than the Horus unless they open up the ships.tbl. If two fighters have 20 points difference in hull strength or whatever, is anyone going to notice? Probably not, if your interceptor's shields go down you'll be too busy watching your debris float away from camera while the death music cues up.
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Is the Artemis an improvement over the Athena?
Yes it is. The Artemis can actually carry bombs. The Athena can't.
The Boanerges, however, isn't an improvement over the Ursa, although :v: gets away with it by saying Boanerges are cheaper. :P
Maybe the Shivans are cheapskates as well :P
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Not to go off topic, but I had a friend who hated the second Matrix film compared to the first one for the exact same reasons some of you prefer FS1, being that everyone was scared ****less of the Agents durning the first film, but in the second film everyone decided to see if they could fight them.
Ok, back on topic. It really seems like the Shivans, while actively hunting down Terrans and Vasudans during FS1, were in the big picture ignoring them in FS2. The end cutscene speculation that the Capella explosion was a way to open a subspace gate would support this. Ive always wondered why the FS1 and FS2 fleets were so different tech wise though, mainly the different weaponry (beam cannons, flak) that Shivans have on their ships.
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Y'know, Snail, I kind of disagree.
I felt that the terrifying thing about the Shivans in FS2 was that they clearly didn't need good ships. It wasn't even that they were a Zerg-type species, relying on pure numbers.
They simply didn't care what kind of resistance we offered. They didn't need to do their best and they knew it.
I have sometimes wondered if our most desperate resistance simply introduced minor perturbations into the vastness of the Shivan war machine -- perturbations corrected by the most basic reactive systems, perhaps even below Shivan consciousness.
For all we know, the Sathanas fleet was nothing more than platelets converging on a wound.
I feel the same way. The fact that the Shivans are to be able to work the GTVA without seeming to really be all that focused on doing so adds an interesting dimension to them.
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Y'know, Snail, I kind of disagree.
I felt that the terrifying thing about the Shivans in FS2 was that they clearly didn't need good ships. It wasn't even that they were a Zerg-type species, relying on pure numbers.
They simply didn't care what kind of resistance we offered. They didn't need to do their best and they knew it.
I have sometimes wondered if our most desperate resistance simply introduced minor perturbations into the vastness of the Shivan war machine -- perturbations corrected by the most basic reactive systems, perhaps even below Shivan consciousness.
For all we know, the Sathanas fleet was nothing more than platelets converging on a wound.
I feel the same way. The fact that the Shivans are to be able to work the GTVA without seeming to really be all that focused on doing so adds an interesting dimension to them.
The Shivans returned because the Vasudan's and Terrans where moving in on places the Shivans didn't want which would fit the meaning of xenophobia. Now for all we know the shivans where lying dormant in ross 128 the whole time before the t-v war which would imply and confirm that the shivans and terrans already had contact before the incident at Ross 128 which would also fit what they said after the briefing on operation thresher. it would also fit the assumption that the shivans already knew that the future about the terrans or just lucky that the shivans where reactivated from dormancy in Ross 128 or deliberately placed their and reactivated on purpose .
speculation
i suspect that the shivans where programmed only to destroy the Ancients. Their creators probably had no idea that the Terrans or Vasudans would be around in/or after their life times, however the Shivans where probably only targeted to destroy ancients and mistook the Terrans as an ancient ship when proper contact was established. For all we know the Shivans don't even know the ancients ever have even been killed yet.
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The Manticore IS better than the Astaroth.
Reasons:
The Manticore is faster than the Astaroth.
The Manticore has a shorter Rotation Time.
The Manticore has more shielding than the Astaroth.
The only good thing about the Astaroth is that it has a smaller target profile at certain angles.
However the Manticore's raw speed and greater afterburner capacity are in fact a false advantage, because they encourage the AI to go fast and do a lot of afterburning. Which murders its turn radius (basic physics strikes again), making it relatively easy to turn inside a Manticore. (Other notable offenders in this category often include AI-controlled Serapis.) A Herc II can turn inside a Manticore very consistantly because of this. This cannot be said of an Astaroth.
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That's a flaw in the pilot though. Manoeverability I can understand, at least in the hands of humans using suboptimal controls, but 'too much speed' can be solved by shunting some more power to shields or simply not flying at full throttle...
Regarding improvement: Volition generally avoided having one craft be strictly superior to another. Apollo/Perseus and Hercules/Ares might come close enough that there is no reason to pick the older craft in practice though. Unable to carry real bombs, the Athena was essentially an assault fighter with a focus on secondaries, and I'd say the true successor in spirit is the Hercules Mk II (Trebuchets do the job of disabling subsystems just as well as Stilettos).
While the Athena had advantages that made her more pleasant to fly (even better gun placements, more endurance on afterburners) I'd say the Herc II is generally the stronger craft.
Regarding 'fodder' craft: How well the AI performs in a given craft doesn't necessarily reflect how good it is in the hands of a human pilot. I for one never understood why the AI seemed to do decently in a Ulysses when they otherwise suck in light craft (I still think that the Scorpion and Loki* are the ultimate dogfighters of their respective factions; as AI-controlled opponents they tend to die quickly though). On the other hand, the AI's use of fighter suppression missiles is more competent than my own.
*when having unrestricted access to weapons at least
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The Shivans returned because the Vasudan's and Terrans where moving in on places the Shivans didn't want which would fit the meaning of xenophobia. Now for all we know the shivans where lying dormant in ross 128 the whole time before the t-v war which would imply and confirm that the shivans and terrans already had contact before the incident at Ross 128 which would also fit what they said after the briefing on operation thresher. it would also fit the assumption that the shivans already knew that the future about the terrans or just lucky that the shivans where reactivated from dormancy in Ross 128 or deliberately placed their and reactivated on purpose .
speculation
i suspect that the shivans where programmed only to destroy the Ancients. Their creators probably had no idea that the Terrans or Vasudans would be around in/or after their life times, however the Shivans where probably only targeted to destroy ancients and mistook the Terrans as an ancient ship when proper contact was established. For all we know the Shivans don't even know the ancients ever have even been killed yet.
As you said -- speculation, all of it. We don't know!
I always found the Astaroth more difficult to kill than the Manticore, but perhaps that was power of suggestion, what with your wingmates yowling THEY'RE TOO FAST when all the Astaroths start jumping in.
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Each time they meet the GTVA barely stop the Shivans. That's part of their mystique. Also, the Shivans seem nearly endless, while the GTVA feels the loss of each of their pilots.
That's the point, shivans are invincible.. that's what scares the **** out of every terran-vasudan, even the ancients knew this, in one of the cuts it says that "they do not die"
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However the Manticore's raw speed and greater afterburner capacity are in fact a false advantage, because they encourage the AI to go fast and do a lot of afterburning. Which murders its turn radius (basic physics strikes again), making it relatively easy to turn inside a Manticore. (Other notable offenders in this category often include AI-controlled Serapis.) A Herc II can turn inside a Manticore very consistantly because of this. This cannot be said of an Astaroth.
Hmm that's true.