Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Mars on April 17, 2008, 11:50:18 pm
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I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me before, but does anyone else wonder why there's a cruiser with three quarter the hitpoints of an Orion and a beam that's better than the BFGreen?
It doesn't even seem to be used to further the story, as the Lilith occurs only once in the main FS2 campaign
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It is generally agreed that the Lilith is overly powerful. It had the same amount of HP in fs1, so clearly there was a reason :v: did that (probably superior shivan tech), but the LRed makes it capable of taking a corvette on most days and some destroyers. And it's a frakking cruiser (a relatively small cruiser at that).
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Very rare. Very powerfull. I wonder what would happen if a leviathon mistaked it for a cain?
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Very rare. Very powerfull. I wonder what would happen if a leviathon mistaked it for a cain?
The Leviathan just gets pwned badly.
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Very rare. Very powerfull. I wonder what would happen if a leviathon mistaked it for a cain?
Depends. Either the Leviathan is like "Oh ****! A Lilith!" and jumps away or the Leviathan is like "Oh ****! A---" and blows up.
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Since the model and (in retail FS1/FS2) the skin are identical between the Lilith and the Cain, I've got a feeling that the Lilith is just around for when Volition wanted a mission centered around a Cain that wasn't supposed to be piss-easy to kill/disable. In FS2, they most likely added the LRed, so that they could **** up a friendly warship, even if they couldn't rationalize the shivans deploying a destroyer.
Hmmm.... Now, given community opinion of the Colossus, I've just pictured Their Finest Hour with the Beast replaced by a whole gaggle of Liliths....
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The Lilith with that uber beam of doom sort of like looks out of place when compared to ANY other FS2 cruiser. Hell it looks out of place when compared to almost anithing even some destroyers. Cuz corvettes really have no chance against it unless they can dissable the blasted thing. In fact the only ship i see as standing a chance against the Lilith would be the Iceni with its 3 BG and 90k Hp.
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A Lilith will kill a Hecate 80% of the time, every time.
(who gets the reference?)
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A Lilith will kill an Orion if it can't get two BGreens focused on it... (Only four sides out of six - front, back, top, bottom)
In firepower and armor, the Lilith is closer to a corvette (or even a frigate - like the Iceni) than a cruiser. The only thing preventing it from being classified so (it seems) is its diminutive size.
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Hey, we've got a cain jumping in. Power up beams and take it down. *lilth fires beam* :eek2: BOOM!! :eek2:
What was that?! It just took out that deimos!! All fighters and bombers, take out that cain!! Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
Somethings wrong, no cain is that indestructable and destructive.
Hecate goes boom!!
I think it might be a new sort of cruiser!!
BOOM!! No one survives to tell anyone it's better than a cruiser.
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I think it just goes to show how the Shivans have superior technology and when they really want to kill a ship quickly they send a well armed cruiser or a couple of well armed cruisers and the Lilith has the power to do it. Its specialized and superior. Consider the Sathanas versus the Colossus and the firepower difference there. Now when you scale it down to an Aeolus versus a Lilith its not all that incredible.
To be honest I think with the Shivans Volition wanted to do the opposite of the Terrans and Vasudans. The Cruiser helps kill ships while the Vasudans and Terrans have decided that Cruisers are good escorts (AAA beams and flak) while Corvette class ships are ship killers. Corvettes for the Shivans are light carriers. The Moloch is a support vessel in comparison to the Lilith or Rakshasa.
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I think that the Lilith was meant as some sort of pocket destroyer.
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Whoever has it must have an awefully tough pocket to hold that sucker in!!
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I think that the Lilith was meant as some sort of pocket destroyer.
Thats actually a very good analogy for the Lilith.
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I think that the Lilith was meant as some sort of pocket destroyer.
Thats actually a very good analogy for the Lilith.
Yep.
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Rearm the Aeolus's main beams with Maxims or Helios launchers and the 2 ships will be more less even in terms of firepower (Flak guns do the real damage on the GTC, and the standard beams suck).
Also- since the Lilith is rarely seen in both games, it's possible that it is some really expensive ship, something like the King Tiger was among tanks (especially on the Western Front, and before the M26 Pershing was available).
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Since the model and (in retail FS1/FS2) the skin are identical between the Lilith and the Cain, I've got a feeling that the Lilith is just around for when Volition wanted a mission centered around a Cain that wasn't supposed to be piss-easy to kill/disable. In FS2, they most likely added the LRed, so that they could **** up a friendly warship, even if they couldn't rationalize the shivans deploying a destroyer.
Eh, did you play FS1? The Taranis wasn't piss-easy to kill or disable . . . Cruisers were actually a threat in FS1, rather than target practice. The Lilith is just an up-armoured cruiser.
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Liliths only kick the crap out of capships so long as their beams are left around. All it takes is two volleys of Trebuchets and suddenly that Lilith is toothless. I think it was designed that way on purpose - fighter/bomber cover is absolutely a requirement for a capship when a Lilith is involved.
Look at it this way:
-Cain's are the lightest of the capships, good for scouting and not much else. Any half-assed competent fighter can take down a Cain with relative ease.
-Lilith's are heavily armoured, designed to get in, beat the crap out of capships while taking a punding from fighters, and survive until the enemy target is gone.
-Moloch's are a light carrier / anti-fighter/bomber vessel. Their armament is specialized for taking down smaller craft. They do not fare well against a fully armed Deimos, but they'll chew through fighters rapidly. The Deimos is actually similar in this regard.
-Demon's are generally outdated and taken down with relative ease. Their beams mean trouble for corvettes and anything smaller, but they're easily dispatched by bombers.
-The almighty Ravanna takes the Lilith's anti-warship capability and combines it with the Demon's carrier capacity. They're all-round nasty.
The Shivan vessels are more role-specialized than GTVA vessels. Look at the Sobek/Deimos. Rather than doing one thing especially well, they try to be multi-role. They succeed somewhat in that regard, but sacrifice some of their capship fighting ability. The most specialized vessel in the GTVA arsenal is undoubtably the Aeolus. It is designed for basically nothing but escort (with fighter/bomber defense being paramount) and it does that exceptionally well.
The thing about the intense role specialization of the Shivans is that every single vessel is vulnerable to at least one type of basic attack. Hell, the only two Shivan ships that adequately fight off bombers are the Moloch and the Sathanas, and even then they aren't that great.
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I also believe :v: designed the Shivan ships this way so that the player stands a chance against them, but still must need to know what to do, or will get creamed fast.
ie. take out the Ravana's beam cannons quickly or watch your escort list disappear.
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Liliths are good for intense missions ( like the ones in BluePlanet ).
Liliths might be local command ships. You know- no destroyer or something is around, so a Lilith takes the lead in command of Shivan operations in the system.
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Lilith is a Shivan Mjolnir with engines and defensive batteries...
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A Lilith blockade would be pretty hard to push through, eh?
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I don't see why no one is taking in consideration the fact that many table entries in FS2 are ":wtf:", like the Mentu. The LRed probably was for the Ravana, Demon and Sathanas only. :v: simply didn't create a "MRed" beam or simply forgot about the LRed's recharge time.
That would explain why the Moloch is so weak, LReds would have been an exaggerate option for it. Please remember what these ships do in the main campaign: we have Molochs attacking convoys, small warships and destroyers and just one Lilith attacking a few warships. Game testing probably led to an exaggerate weakening of the Moloch with the Lilith remaining untouched by the power of BalanceTM.
Wait a second, wasn't the Asuras supposed to be a Lilith? :P
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Wait a second, wasn't the Asuras supposed to be a Lilith? :P
Yeah, but it pawned everything so they changed it to a Cain. :D
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A Lilith is so strong to strike fear in FS2. It shows how powerfull the Shivans are in FS2. Meant to scare the player and amaze him/her by the 'Power of the ShivansTM'.
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Wait a second, wasn't the Asuras supposed to be a Lilith? :P
Yeah, but it pawned everything so they changed it to a Cain. :D
The mission would have been more interesting and no, I don't think the Lilith would have won easily.
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Well it would have done too much damage anyhow (enough damage to warrant it being toned down).
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More damage than a Cain but not enough to handle two Deimos and Herc II fighters. The beam turret could be easily destroyed.
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No, I mean it would do too much damage to the Lysander or Actium, bringing them to around 50%, before the Ravana even arrives.
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Then the mission would have failed before the arrival of the Ravana. So?
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The Lilith would have done too much damage. :v: changed it to a Cain for balance reasons, end of story. You can't change history, Mobius!
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Who's changing what? :wtf:
The Great Hunt is basically a "sit and wait" mission where the player doesn't really change the general scheme of things. It must have been different with a Lilith instead of that Cain.
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Well this argument is completely pointless.
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Yes, it was a bit pointless to change the Asuras' ship class. :nervous:
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No, it was pointless to argue about why Volition changed its class when we all know we're both right, but we decided to go on a random rant about random stuff that is inconsequential as to whether or not corn looks similar to Hillary Clinton's ass.
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I think it just goes to show how the Shivans have superior technology and when they really want to kill a ship quickly they send a well armed cruiser or a couple of well armed cruisers and the Lilith has the power to do it. Its specialized and superior. Consider the Sathanas versus the Colossus and the firepower difference there. Now when you scale it down to an Aeolus versus a Lilith its not all that incredible.
It's still too far out there. The Sathanas isn0t that much better than a Colossus.... the Lilith just doesn't fit with the mold.
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I agree with TrashMan on that one. The Lilith is ridiculously overpowered. It's like a superdestroyer.
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I think it just goes to show how the Shivans have superior technology and when they really want to kill a ship quickly they send a well armed cruiser or a couple of well armed cruisers and the Lilith has the power to do it. Its specialized and superior. Consider the Sathanas versus the Colossus and the firepower difference there. Now when you scale it down to an Aeolus versus a Lilith its not all that incredible.
It's still too far out there. The Sathanas isn0t that much better than a Colossus.... the Lilith just doesn't fit with the mold.
Hrrmm I seem to remember the Colossus struggling to take down a disarmed Sathanas and another Sathanas wrecking the Colossus in just a few shots.
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I think it just goes to show how the Shivans have superior technology and when they really want to kill a ship quickly they send a well armed cruiser or a couple of well armed cruisers and the Lilith has the power to do it. Its specialized and superior. Consider the Sathanas versus the Colossus and the firepower difference there. Now when you scale it down to an Aeolus versus a Lilith its not all that incredible.
It's still too far out there. The Sathanas isn0t that much better than a Colossus.... the Lilith just doesn't fit with the mold.
The Sath has 4* the beams as the Collie.
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The Colossus STARTED disabled, with a damaged hull (66% methinks) and had to fight off a destroyer before the Sath arrived...not to mention it was placed JUST outside the range of most of it's beams.
In a 1 on 1 the Saht will win, yes, but the difference between the Sath and Collie is similar to the difference between any terran/vasudan capship and it's shivan counterpart. The Lilith is different tough.
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Ok so don't destroy any turrets in Bearbaiting and watch how quickly it goes down there. Or just put them together in FRED and watch what happens. Its a significant difference and its not unlike the Lilith versus its counterparts....
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Oh yeah sure so here in the red corner we have a 50 kg midget for the title of heavy weight champion at sumo. In the Blue corner we have a 180kg world heavy wight champion sumowrestler .
After just 1 minyte ladies and gentleman the midget managed to lift the 180kg plater to a height of over 2 metters and then ram him to the floor thus becoming heavy weight champion of the world.
Its ridiculous. A lilth can take donw a FRAKING DESTROYER . the Lilith is a CRUISER .
Cruisers shivan or not should not be able to take down with realative ease a fracking DESTROYER .
Thats is like sayng that the Collie can take out by its own a shivan jugg with just 2 beam cannons before the Sathani has enough time to inflict even 25% dammage.
the Lilith is realy a gameplay unbalacing ship. Wanna equal the odds? Oki then give the Aeoulus Mjolnir beam cannons at least one of them. Sure it might still get lown away but at least this way it will do some dammage. Hell with just a tini bit of luck it could actualy win if by any chance it hits the front of the ship and takes out the shivan LRed. Ive seen that happen on acasions on some campaigns altough not too often and never 2 times in a row or at the same time interval. (what gives? )
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Uh, what do you propose to do with it then?
It's made by :v:. It's canon. It's LRed is canon.
Plus, its not that deadly. A single fighter can render it inert in a matter of seconds (4-5 trebs)
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Man that is not the Point i can defang the Deimos in a matter of seconds too with trebs . Hell i can render the Collie just a big chunk of useless hull in a few minutes and with enough trebs . that is not the Issue here.
Also im not stating that it is not cannon. Im just sayng that such a ship is really really out of place with its other ships of the class. At least they should of named it some sorth of special heavy weapons platform.
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SCv Lilith
Happy?
Its more or less equal to a corvette in armor and firepower anyway.
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Almost but not quite there i would say. I never said its not cannon i just said its ridiculous.
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the Lilith is realy a gameplay unbalacing ship. Wanna equal the odds? Oki then give the Aeoulus Mjolnir beam cannons at least one of them. Sure it might still get lown away but at least this way it will do some dammage. Hell with just a tini bit of luck it could actualy win if by any chance it hits the front of the ship and takes out the shivan LRed. Ive seen that happen on acasions on some campaigns altough not too often and never 2 times in a row or at the same time interval. (what gives? )
The Lilith appears in one mission in FS2. Did it unbalance the mission?
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youre getting on my nerves with your narrow minded cannon thinking . Go away. If we see it once LOGIC dictates it is gooing to appear more then ONCE.
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youre getting on my nerves with your narrow minded cannon thinking . Go away. If we see it once LOGIC dictates it is gooing to appear more then ONCE.
Freespace 2 isn't a card game. The balance of a mission is in the hands of the FRED designer, if the mission is unbalanced its the fault of the FREDder not the ships within the mission.
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CANON is the only reliable thing we have to go by in these discussions.
A lot of FS1 ships appear only once in FS2 (Typhon, Lilith, etc).
When you consider it, the Lilith does seem a little too powerful, when considering its size. It seems much more like a corvette than a cruiser, it certainly is not deployed like other cruisers, but if used correctly it does not upset balance. What upsets balance is using it like any other cruiser, something no decent campaign would do.
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youre getting on my nerves with your narrow minded cannon thinking . Go away. If we see it once LOGIC dictates it is gooing to appear more then ONCE.
Freespace 2 isn't a card game. The balance of a mission is in the hands of the FRED designer, if the mission is unbalanced its the fault of the FREDder not the ships within the mission.
Gooing by the same LOGIC AND COMMON SENCE (since you like this common sence so much but really lack much of it) if i were to design a ship that is half the size of a corvette but has more firepower then 2 Collies pu toghether such a ship would not be unbalanced and ridiculous bu rather if by ani chance it happens to win agains several destroyers at once it a mere technical issue of how the mission was designed correct?
Gooing by this arguement (oh please god let other agree with him) anyone can make ani ship he wants no matter how ridiculous and overpowerd it is and such a ship would not be at fault but rather the way it is deployed?
Hey TMan you had some very good designs that ppl kept bashing you about beeing a bit too much did you not? See some ppl actualy believe such ships are and should be considered good and balanced.
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Gooing by the same LOGIC AND COMMON SENCE (since you like this common sence so much but really lack much of it) if i were to design a ship that is half the size of a corvette but has more firepower then 2 Collies pu toghether such a ship would not be unbalanced and ridiculous bu rather if by ani chance it happens to win agains several destroyers at once it a mere technical issue of how the mission was designed correct?
Actually going by common sense a race as old as the Shivans should be able to wipe out the whole GTVA with a single cruiser-sized vessel and not break a sweat.
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It seems that the Shivans stopped advancing their technology at some point.
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Gooing by the same LOGIC AND COMMON SENCE (since you like this common sence so much but really lack much of it) if i were to design a ship that is half the size of a corvette but has more firepower then 2 Collies pu toghether such a ship would not be unbalanced and ridiculous bu rather if by ani chance it happens to win agains several destroyers at once it a mere technical issue of how the mission was designed correct?
Actually going by common sense a race as old as the Shivans should be able to wipe out the whole GTVA with a single cruiser-sized vessel and not break a sweat.
That is a big negative there sir. I cant remeber where i read this but there aws such a debate a long time ago. And it is a proven fact that a race that reaches its development point has nowhere to go but down. Sure there will be some tech advancements but such tech's would be very far appart from one another and even less impresive.
The correct answear would of been that such an old race as the shivans should of become extinct or blow themselfs away by now and not be a threat to the GTVA.
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That is a big negative there sir. I cant remeber where i read this but there aws such a debate a long time ago. And it is a proven fact that a race that reaches its development point has nowhere to go but down. Sure there will be some tech advancements but such tech's would be very far appart from one another and even less impresive.
Proven by what? You're talking about theories, not facts.
Humanity has advanced how far in the last century? That's the only fact we have.
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A race that old should have evolved to make our headz explode with their minds :p (well, probably not)
sorry for the spam
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Oh yeah sure so here in the red corner we have a 50 kg midget for the title of heavy weight champion at sumo. In the Blue corner we have a 180kg world heavy wight champion sumowrestler .
After just 1 minyte ladies and gentleman the midget managed to lift the 180kg plater to a height of over 2 metters and then ram him to the floor thus becoming heavy weight champion of the world.
Its ridiculous. A lilth can take donw a FRAKING DESTROYER . the Lilith is a CRUISER .
Cruisers shivan or not should not be able to take down with realative ease a fracking DESTROYER .
Thats is like sayng that the Collie can take out by its own a shivan jugg with just 2 beam cannons before the Sathani has enough time to inflict even 25% dammage.
the Lilith is realy a gameplay unbalacing ship. Wanna equal the odds? Oki then give the Aeoulus Mjolnir beam cannons at least one of them. Sure it might still get lown away but at least this way it will do some dammage. Hell with just a tini bit of luck it could actualy win if by any chance it hits the front of the ship and takes out the shivan LRed. Ive seen that happen on acasions on some campaigns altough not too often and never 2 times in a row or at the same time interval. (what gives? )
Martial arts training suggests that weight can be used against ones opponent. All I see is a narrow analogy that suggests bigger (or heavier) is always going to win out.
The Lilith shows up a couple of times in the FS2 campaign and doesn't unbalance the missions at all. It does make them challenging at key moments that makes the player decide the outcome of the battle...which is of course what Volition's mission designers were going for in those particular moments.
Again...Shivan technology is such that they can apparently (going canonically of course) pack a fair bit of power into the size of a cruiser. There isn't anything that suggests otherwise. An Aeolus not being able to return the favour doesn't mean anything at all. And thank you for bringing up the Mjolnir weapons platforms as they are similar in size to a cruiser and carry a pretty big weapon of their own...obviously all of their power is being channeled for the beam rather than any other weapons, life support, serious propulsion and so forth like a cruiser would. So that gives us another baseline that a relatively small ship/emplacement in FreeSpace CAN infact carry around that kind of firepower....even at a lower technological level.
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i give up as soon as i go by his standards and actualy agree to a tiny bit with him he smashes my head in with "its just theory" The god damn realitavy factor regarding light speed has yet to be proven you ..............garhhhh YOU ! Noone has ever traveled at lightspeed in ordet to prove the whole time dilation effect as far as i know. subspace is not even theory. Fraking 6 km long ships dont exist and wont exist in just 200 years since it would take us 200 tears to buidl the fracking infrastructure for such a ship before we even begin contruction. Man you just dont get it.
Oh and i was right about the whole shivans should be dead stuff. Its a real life theory as stated by someone.
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not even theory. Fraking 6 km long ships dont exist and wont exist in just 200 years since it would take us 200 tears to buidl the fracking infrastructure for such a ship before we even begin contruction. Man you just dont get it.
Oh and i was right about the whole shivans should be dead stuff. Its a real life theory as stated by someone.
I don't get what? That there's a difference between fact and theory? You tell me it's fact, I tell you it's theory. Then you agree that a bunch of other stuff is just theoretical (even if it's accepted theory) so what's the problem?
And why should the Shivans be dead? Sure I'm sure people have theories, everyone has theories . . . but there's no "Fact" involved in it all. People can only theorize from a human perspective, not an alien one. Who knows how "real life aliens" (tm) even behave. Is everyone as self-destructive as we are? Maybe, but it's just a theory. And even if we are so self-destructive, we're still kicking today. Nuclear bombs and all.
Just because it's a fact that someone has a theory doesn't mean their theory is fact because in the end the fact is, it's just a theory.
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Liliths behave like Cains when you have 3 wings of Erinyes fighters all attacking it.
C + 3 + 1 ! = Nice ship rocks with 100+ hornets mixing with all its power = nice explosion.
Perhaps is over powered, but another thing to think about - the Shivans fit their beam cannons (if they are in fact cannons) into some tiny sharp point not very wide at all - why can't they have this on a cruiser? Unlike the Terrans - must be the size of a building...
Also, the Leviathan seems pretty underpowered in the fact that it must have 5* the engine area as compared to the Cain, Lilith or even the Molloch, but only manages 10 m/s - 36 km/h - a human can run that fast.
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Well, the actual turret is a small point. The cannon itself may extend farther into the ship.
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I've always though the turret was the triangle thing with the three red glowy dots, but then I found out it was a puny turret on the bottom farting out that huge ass beam.
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That was always a bit annoying for me too.
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i give up as soon as i go by his standards and actualy agree to a tiny bit with him he smashes my head in with "its just theory" The god damn realitavy factor regarding light speed has yet to be proven you ..............garhhhh YOU ! Noone has ever traveled at lightspeed in ordet to prove the whole time dilation effect as far as i know.
I'm going to have to be pedantic and point out that the colloquial meaning of the word "theory" (a guess, speculation) is very different to the scientific meaning of "theory" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory).
There is strong evidence for time dilation. Even GPS needs to correct for it. There is no evidence for declining technology levels in a technological civilisation, and such speculation is not a well formed scientific theory.
I subscribe to the Shivans-as-artifical-race-that-got-their-tech-from-their-creator theory to explain their lack of progress. AFAIK the wheel was invented by humans around five thousand years ago - which is three thousand years after the Shivans nuked the Ancients.
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Speaking of Erynies- aren't those things unbalancing the game? :p
Just take a look at how one of those compares to an Aeshma for example...
Back to topic- the Lilith is fine the way it is. It could simply be a special forces assault unit, and that's why it's used 1 time in FS 2 and it's also the reason it is so bad@$$.
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Hey TMan you had some very good designs that ppl kept bashing you about beeing a bit too much did you not? See some ppl actualy believe such ships are and should be considered good and balanced.
What? :wtf:
My ships are roughly balanced in regards to size and firepower with stock ships.
The Archangel would be the only exception but it has story reasons to be that powerful.
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Again...Shivan technology is such that they can apparently (going canonically of course) pack a fair bit of power into the size of a cruiser. There isn't anything that suggests otherwise. An Aeolus not being able to return the favour doesn't mean anything at all. And thank you for bringing up the Mjolnir weapons platforms as they are similar in size to a cruiser and carry a pretty big weapon of their own...obviously all of their power is being channeled for the beam rather than any other weapons, life support, serious propulsion and so forth like a cruiser would. So that gives us another baseline that a relatively small ship/emplacement in FreeSpace CAN infact carry around that kind of firepower....even at a lower technological level.
Doesn't common logic dictate that available power output will be comparable with ship size? You can put a bigger reactor and more and bigger coolants in a bigger ship, ergo, having more firepower available.
While shivans are somewhat ahead in technology, it's not by that big a margin.. Compare a Demon and a Hecate... Ravana and Orion.. the power disparity is no where as big enough as a Lilith - Leviathan/Aeolus
Terran Destroyers (Orion and Hattie in particular) will bring a whole world of hurt on shivan counterparts. While the GTVA destroyer will most likely loose, it will either HEAVILY damage the enemy or take it with him. This is true for every ship class comparison EXCEPT for Lilith.
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:rolleyes:
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I subscribe to the Shivans-as-artifical-race-that-got-their-tech-from-their-creator theory to explain their lack of progress. AFAIK the wheel was invented by humans around five thousand years ago - which is three thousand years after the Shivans nuked the Ancients.
While not a bad idea it doesn't explain the technological progress the Shivans display between FS1 and FS2.
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The god damn realitavy factor regarding light speed has yet to be proven you ..............garhhhh YOU ! Noone has ever traveled at lightspeed in ordet to prove the whole time dilation effect as far as i know.
Wrong. Time dilation has been experimentally tested, observed, and confirmed.
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I'd wager that the Shivans are very much like the Vorlons in regards to how much technology they show.
For those who might have not seen Babylon 5, the Vorlons were an extremelly advanced race that had existed for millions of years before any of the younger races of the show (which included the humans). They refused to share and even more surprisingly show their true technological level in order to avoid drawing any more attention to themselves (which failed I guess). They used outdated engines among other things. Of course by the end of the show, it all fell apart and they began stepping up on how much technology they showed.
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I like to replace the Lred on a Lilith with a BFred in missions I make, also make it untargetable by beams
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As if the Lilith wasn't overkill to begin with...
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That was sarcasm.
"DarthWang" :lol:
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Again...Shivan technology is such that they can apparently (going canonically of course) pack a fair bit of power into the size of a cruiser. There isn't anything that suggests otherwise. An Aeolus not being able to return the favour doesn't mean anything at all. And thank you for bringing up the Mjolnir weapons platforms as they are similar in size to a cruiser and carry a pretty big weapon of their own...obviously all of their power is being channeled for the beam rather than any other weapons, life support, serious propulsion and so forth like a cruiser would. So that gives us another baseline that a relatively small ship/emplacement in FreeSpace CAN infact carry around that kind of firepower....even at a lower technological level.
Doesn't common logic dictate that available power output will be comparable with ship size? You can put a bigger reactor and more and bigger coolants in a bigger ship, ergo, having more firepower available.
While shivans are somewhat ahead in technology, it's not by that big a margin.. Compare a Demon and a Hecate... Ravana and Orion.. the power disparity is no where as big enough as a Lilith - Leviathan/Aeolus
Terran Destroyers (Orion and Hattie in particular) will bring a whole world of hurt on shivan counterparts. While the GTVA destroyer will most likely loose, it will either HEAVILY damage the enemy or take it with him. This is true for every ship class comparison EXCEPT for Lilith.
Sure I'd agree that size is definitely a factor. Bigger ship means more space to make power needed to channel through to the beams....but we know that even Terran and Vasudan technology can put a very powerful beam on the same size of platform (namely the Mjolnir). If you compare the Lilith to the other cruisers in terms of its other capabilities it is weaker so it stands to reason that its focused on ship killing and is sort of like a mobile and defended version of a Mjolnir...and thanks to superior Shivan technology they can go ahead and do just that.
The Lilith, for its LRED beam up front isn't all that great in other attributes. Armor is very strong but anti-fighter defenses are weak with a single anti-fighter beam and just a few turrets all of which have low protection and can be easily destroyed including the main beam.
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ALL SHIVAN WARSHIPS have poor AAAF defences so the Lilith is no exception from this. But then again there is also a sort of ballance between beam firepower and other capabilaties of the warship. The Lilith does not fit that pattern as it is hugely overpowered . That is all.
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Just from a straight comparison, though, the Lilith is 33% slower than the Cain. That would suggest that the Cain shunts as much as 50% more power to it's engines (not allowing for any scale/efficiency gains). Assuming that they have identical power output, all of that free power could have been directed straight into the Lilith's beam.
Personally, I think the Lilith is more likely to have an improved reactor as well, making it a bit more believeable that it can support that beam. No canon support for this, of course...
The reduced speed also gives it one key weakness - if it arrives outside of beam range, interceptors will almost always kill the beam turret before it can get to killing distance, just because it is so much slower than a lighter cruiser.
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Sure I'd agree that size is definitely a factor. Bigger ship means more space to make power needed to channel through to the beams....but we know that even Terran and Vasudan technology can put a very powerful beam on the same size of platform (namely the Mjolnir). If you compare the Lilith to the other cruisers in terms of its other capabilities it is weaker so it stands to reason that its focused on ship killing and is sort of like a mobile and defended version of a Mjolnir...and thanks to superior Shivan technology they can go ahead and do just that.
The Lilith, for its LRED beam up front isn't all that great in other attributes. Armor is very strong but anti-fighter defenses are weak with a single anti-fighter beam and just a few turrets all of which have low protection and can be easily destroyed including the main beam.
A Mljonir is a cannon - it's got no engines, no compartments/space for crew (let's not forget shivans are big) and no other weapons...and is somewhat smaller than a Lilith to boot.
If the shivans can put a weapon of that power on a cruiser, why aren't their destroyers packing more power then? According to you a BFRed on a destroyer would be perfectly normal for shivans. What would a Sathanas use then?
I don't mind Shivans having X amount of power, as long as it's CONSISTENT. As it's stands, it isn't.
The Lilith has the greatest armor of all cruisers and excellent speed (compared to GTVA ships). It's anti-fighter defences are somewhat weaker, but it's not easy prey. The fact that the player can take it out sez nothing, since the player can take out most ships.
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Then again the Lilith is also bigger then the Cain. And more importantly the shivans have shown an incredibly annoing and dangerous abilaty to jump close enough to an enmywarship so as to be in weapons range fast. Most of the time a shivan warship would exit subspace open fire and get out fast. Needless to say that anithing that comes under attack from a shivan warship of equal size would get pawned to death in one max 2 salvos of fire from its beam cannons.
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The Lilith is the same size as the Cain
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The Lilith is exactly the same size as the cain. IIRC it originally used the same model.
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The Lilith is exactly the same size as the cain. IIRC it originally used the same model.
I thought it still did... they just have a slightly different skin.
Anyway, IMHO it´s way overpowered with that beam, it packs more than 3x the anti-capship firepower of a Moloch and has the same HP. The only thing thats keeping it from being totally unbalanced is the fact that it´s main beam cannon is quite easy to disable with a duo of Trebs fired from the right angle, after that it will just be a heavily armored sitting duck.
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The only thing thats keeping it from being totally unbalanced is the fact that it´s main beam cannon is quite easy to disable with a duo of Trebs fired from the right angle, after that it will just be a heavily armored sitting duck.
That's assuming you're packing Trebs. I've found it takes 3 missiles to take out the Turret myself, but maybe I hit the wrong angle, who knows. But again, balance is a part of mission design not the ships themselves (at least the canon ones).
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The only thing thats keeping it from being totally unbalanced is the fact that it´s main beam cannon is quite easy to disable with a duo of Trebs fired from the right angle, after that it will just be a heavily armored sitting duck.
That's assuming you're packing Trebs. I've found it takes 3 missiles to take out the Turret myself, but maybe I hit the wrong angle, who knows. But again, balance is a part of mission design not the ships themselves (at least the canon ones).
I carry a rack of them in most missions they are available and assuming my chosen fighter/ bomber can carry them... it's a habit I got after getting pounded to death by flak cannons and AAA beams one time too often while trying to disarm capships :p
Anyway, I thought that 2 Trebs was enough to take out a LRed provided you score a direct hit and the mission desgner hasn't been fiddling with it's toughness... might be me or the difficulty I'm playing on though (medium).
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Sure I'd agree that size is definitely a factor. Bigger ship means more space to make power needed to channel through to the beams....but we know that even Terran and Vasudan technology can put a very powerful beam on the same size of platform (namely the Mjolnir). If you compare the Lilith to the other cruisers in terms of its other capabilities it is weaker so it stands to reason that its focused on ship killing and is sort of like a mobile and defended version of a Mjolnir...and thanks to superior Shivan technology they can go ahead and do just that.
The Lilith, for its LRED beam up front isn't all that great in other attributes. Armor is very strong but anti-fighter defenses are weak with a single anti-fighter beam and just a few turrets all of which have low protection and can be easily destroyed including the main beam.
A Mljonir is a cannon - it's got no engines, no compartments/space for crew (let's not forget shivans are big) and no other weapons...and is somewhat smaller than a Lilith to boot.
If the shivans can put a weapon of that power on a cruiser, why aren't their destroyers packing more power then? According to you a BFRed on a destroyer would be perfectly normal for shivans. What would a Sathanas use then?
I don't mind Shivans having X amount of power, as long as it's CONSISTENT. As it's stands, it isn't.
The Lilith has the greatest armor of all cruisers and excellent speed (compared to GTVA ships). It's anti-fighter defences are somewhat weaker, but it's not easy prey. The fact that the player can take it out sez nothing, since the player can take out most ships.
I realize the Mjolnir is a cannon and I've already stated that it doesn't have those particular features. This is not new to me. Theres also no reason to assume that a destroyer class would similarly step up to a BFRed. The Ravana and Demon both sport four main ship killing beam cannons of which two are LRed. Thats allot more power than the Lilith. Given how little we know about Shivan crew...it could be possible...although not specifically supported by canon that the Lilith and most other Shivan ships are relatively short on crew except when needed...so a Destroyer with fighters needs a bigger crew but a cruiser with primarily offensive operations in support of a larger fleet need only a minimal number. Depending on how automated their systems are...which we can assume are relatively automated given their tech level.
Level of power for a beam doesn't have to be consistent across an entire line. Development happens organically. Nobody just starts out with a completely empty roster of ships and decides that they want a fleet from top to bottom with the classes all perfectly aligned with the smallest being the least powerful and the biggest being most powerful. We can then speculate that perhaps the Lilith has been retrofitted with a better reactor system than other ships in the fleet and thus sports a powerful weapon for its size. Or it makes compromises in terms of cruise duration where as the Cain could be on a prolonged scouting operation.
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The even if the Lilith was just meant to offensive strikes, and the Cain was supposed to be a scout... the Leviathan is designed as a "mobile defense battleship"
In my view means that it's supposed to be a kind of mobile heavy sentry gun... and yet all it packs is a Fusion Mortar and a SGreen.
This might have more to do it's age, but does that mean, that if the GTVA created a new defensive cruiser it would pack a BGreen? Most definitely not.
A BGreen is vastly inferior to a BRed, but cruisers just don't mount that kind of fire power.
Except the Lilith
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Look, you can strap a Mjlonir to the front of a Leviathan and it'll probably be able to move it around.
No talk about reactors and crap since you're just strapping the stand-alone platform onto a ship so it moves.
It'd probably work...(just that now, the Levy will be moving at 5m/s instead of 10)
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The even if the Lilith was just meant to offensive strikes, and the Cain was supposed to be a scout... the Leviathan is designed as a "mobile defense battleship"
In my view means that it's supposed to be a kind of mobile heavy sentry gun... and yet all it packs is a Fusion Mortar and a SGreen.
What's defensive about an SGreen and a Fusion Mortar? Those are offensive ship to ship weapons. Defense Battleship? Hell with 4 AAAf and the hitpoints to take a beating from any flight of fighters, I'll take that.
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A Mljonir is a cannon - it's got no engines, no compartments/space for crew (let's not forget shivans are big) and no other weapons...and is somewhat smaller than a Lilith to boot.
If the shivans can put a weapon of that power on a cruiser, why aren't their destroyers packing more power then? According to you a BFRed on a destroyer would be perfectly normal for shivans. What would a Sathanas use then?
I don't mind Shivans having X amount of power, as long as it's CONSISTENT. As it's stands, it isn't.
The Lilith has the greatest armor of all cruisers and excellent speed (compared to GTVA ships). It's anti-fighter defences are somewhat weaker, but it's not easy prey. The fact that the player can take it out sez nothing, since the player can take out most ships.
Is there actually any canon proof that Shivan cruisers actually carry crew? Hall Fight was aboard a freighter.
While I'm sure power would be a function of size, it could also be a function of cost. Maybe Liliths are high cost ships, which would also explain their rarity in FS2.
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Small, Powerful, Cheap
Have any two of the three.
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What's powerful and cheap?
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I subscribe to the Shivans-as-artifical-race-that-got-their-tech-from-their-creator theory to explain their lack of progress. AFAIK the wheel was invented by humans around five thousand years ago - which is three thousand years after the Shivans nuked the Ancients.
While not a bad idea it doesn't explain the technological progress the Shivans display between FS1 and FS2.
We've had this conversation recently before.
Two possible options:
1. The Lucy fleet wasn't low tech so much as it was cheap. This could be a product of strategic overstretch. It is suggested the Knossos portal goes to a distant part of space, far from Ross 128, so Shivan territory could be vast. Shivans can use more nodes than the GTVA can, so could spread more easily, and had a lot of time in which to do so. Beams could be particularly expensive. Perhaps most of the expensive bit are embedded deep in the hull, and not in the turret that can get blown off, or the economic value of them at all would be questionable. They sent the Lucy as they wanted some beam weapons to kill big stuff quickly, and the Lucy's shields prevent the GTA and PVN getting lucky hits and knocking out the beams. As the GTA/PVN started to field shields and better weapons, the Shivans sent less rubbish fighters into combat.
2. Modified from your idea: the Lucy fleet was the fleet that killed the Ancients and got trapped as the Knossos portal closed. During 8K years even the dumb Shivans can shrink beam weapons and mount them on smaller ships. Apparently they can't do the same with Lucy shields. It's quite impressive to keep a fleet functioning for that long though.
I note that some of the better FS2 Shivan fighters and bombers are also in FS1 (Dragon, Seraphim). They also still use the same dogfighting weapons. IIRC the only evidences of advancing technology are better torpedoes, beams, and a few new ship designs, which are generally improvements. And the Sathanas. Apart from the torps, these could equally be explained by cost cutting in the Lucy fleet. Torps are easier to handwave than beams.
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What's defensive about an SGreen and a Fusion Mortar?
My point exactly.
Those are offensive ship to ship weapons. Defense Battleship? Hell with 4 AAAf and the hitpoints to take a beating from any flight of fighters, I'll take that.
You assume that any attack will be carried out by fighters only. As I said, one would assume a DEFENSIVE vessel would not only be armored but also armed well, both anti-fighter and anti-capital weapons are in order, and the SGreen doesn't cut into the "well armed" department.
What's powerful and cheap?
Alpha 1... kinky ;7
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What's powerful and cheap?
Alpha 1... kinky ;7
True. What the GTVA ought to concentrate on developing for the next fight against the Shivans is better co-operative multiplayer abilities. :nod:
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Those are offensive ship to ship weapons. Defense Battleship? Hell with 4 AAAf and the hitpoints to take a beating from any flight of fighters, I'll take that.
You assume that any attack will be carried out by fighters only. As I said, one would assume a DEFENSIVE vessel would not only be armored but also armed well, both anti-fighter and anti-capital weapons are in order, and the SGreen doesn't cut into the "well armed" department.
So what makes a ship offensive or defensive exactly? You're just describing a good warship. Is the only thing that makes a ship defensive its speed? If so, isn't avoiding being outflanked or alternatively responding quickly to a situation part of defense??
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2. Modified from your idea: the Lucy fleet was the fleet that killed the Ancients and got trapped as the Knossos portal closed. During 8K years even the dumb Shivans can shrink beam weapons and mount them on smaller ships. Apparently they can't do the same with Lucy shields. It's quite impressive to keep a fleet functioning for that long though.
You're talking about the Shivans, you know. They could have been in 'hibernation', or have a life span of thousands of years...
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If they can power an impenetrable super shield and fire beams out their (assuming) faces.......
Who's to say indeed as mentioned that they, like the duracell bunny, go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, etc.....
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Well, they obviously need something to power their ships, as evident from the presence of gas miners ...
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Indeed, they probably didn't have lots of supplies with them. That still doesn't rule out the possibility of hibernation, however.
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Well, they obviously need something to power their ships, as evident from the presence of gas miners ...
Standby mode :p
(when-true->
(And->
(deactivate_glowaps
(play_dead
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You don't need the and. I agree that they can probably go for long periods of time without supplies (especially when hibernating).
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So i didn't "add_operator" sue me :lol:
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2. Modified from your idea: the Lucy fleet was the fleet that killed the Ancients and got trapped as the Knossos portal closed. During 8K years even the dumb Shivans can shrink beam weapons and mount them on smaller ships. Apparently they can't do the same with Lucy shields. It's quite impressive to keep a fleet functioning for that long though.
Are you suggesting that the Shivan civilization collapsed some time after building the Lucy and before building the Sath?
It gives me an idea:
'After pwning the Ancients with a fleet of Lucy's, the Shivan civ. fell apart. As the remains were decaying, more and more tech was lost. Thousands of years later, as the new Shivan civ. was researching beams, the sacred ships (Lucy class) were found to be equiped with 'normal' weapons, not some 'lightning of Zeus', who's secret was known only by the misterious monks living on them. Shivan scientists figured out how to reverse engineer the Lucy's beams, creating the infamous LRed and BFRed.
They have yet to find a way of making shields for capships, but they already know it will require mounting additional reactors on the external shell, due to power demands.'
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The even if the Lilith was just meant to offensive strikes, and the Cain was supposed to be a scout... the Leviathan is designed as a "mobile defense battleship"
In my view means that it's supposed to be a kind of mobile heavy sentry gun... and yet all it packs is a Fusion Mortar and a SGreen.
This might have more to do it's age, but does that mean, that if the GTVA created a new defensive cruiser it would pack a BGreen? Most definitely not.
A BGreen is vastly inferior to a BRed, but cruisers just don't mount that kind of fire power.
Except the Lilith
Terran and Vasudan cruisers don't mount that firepower. The Leviathan is also a Great War design.
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The firepower ratio between ship classes remains roughly the same for all races....except for the Lilith.
It stands out so bad it's making my eyes bleed.
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Ok so...
The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races. There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do. The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities. The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities. The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily. Hrrmm....
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Are you kidding? The Moloch's anti-fighter defenses are much weaker than the Deimos's (as long as you avoid the flak gunz ... )
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The Moloch deserves at least one SAAA...but sadly, it doesn't have one.
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Ok so...
The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races. There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do. The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities. The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities. The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily. Hrrmm....
This discussion was not what I intended
My argument is not "all cruisers should be exactly the same" it's that "the Lilith can happily take out a destroyer... is that odd to anyone else?" It's not like I want to change the original game... I just find the Lilith to be unusual.
I wanted to know if Volition really intended the Lilith to be a a roving Juggernaught of destruction, or just a cruiser with a bigger bite than usual.
I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me before, but does anyone else wonder why there's a cruiser with three quarter the hitpoints of an Orion and a beam that's better than the BFGreen?
It doesn't even seem to be used to further the story, as the Lilith occurs only once in the main FS2 campaign
On the other hand:
Although I disagree with Trashman that there is a consistant ratio between races, I would agree that in general the firepower of classes tends to be in the same ballpark.
An Aeolus may be better than any other T/V cruiser, but will nearly always loose to any corvette. as will Fenris, Leviathan, Mentu, Aten, Cain, and Rakshasa. It's really really hard for a Corvette to be taken out by a cruiser alone.
A Lilith however handily beats the Corvettes and severly damages destroyers
A Moloch may not be as powerful as a Deimos, but it can still damage one. I would compare them to an Aeolus and a Leviathan.
The Ravana 1:) was supposed to seem like a second Lucifer and 2:) Had a tendency to loose subsystems alarmingly quickly when faced with a corvette.
You definitely have a point about the Vasudan cruisers lacking big guns. The Aten was stated to be weak, but the Tech Room suggested the Mentu had considerable firepower. I suspect it might have had to do with balance in Rebels and Renegades... but it would have been easier (I would think) to just not beam free the cruiser in that mission.
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Or reassign the turrets to non-beam weapons (they do that for a lot of missions).
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Yeah I'm not sure about the Mentu. It was one of the first FS2 cruisers to be implemented...it was available way back in the Beta when the beams were just a rare thing that a few ships had. But the Volition was so happy with the effect that nearly every ship got beams. So I think the Mentu ended up not being changed and just added some extra AAAf instead of flak. Lots of decisions like that probably affected the outcome.
Its unusual for a smaller type to beat up on a larger type yes, but in real life I can think of many scenarios where you'll have a smaller/lower class type such as some tank destroyers in use which emphasize being smaller but able to pack a massive hit and surprise a MBT. Or a torpedo boat which is meant to damage or sink larger vessels while being too small to hit with dreadnought guns. Warfare has many examples of such kinds of weapons. In air combat there was a long period where it was felt that the bomber would fly too high, be too fast, and be too well defended for a much smaller fighter to defeat the bomber effectively.
Using a ship like the Lilith is a gamble. Its small enough so as not to get hit by all of a destroyers beams at once...or at least its not as likely depending on the angle. It won't last long against a destroyer but if its gun is not disabled in the fight either by the destroyer its attacking, an escorting ship, or fighter/bomber screen then it has a chance to win. But its a gamble. As soon as the beam is gone or if the Lilith is out of position then its no match for a larger ship. A FreeSpace destroyer is much more than just a bunch of beam cannons...a destroyer class vessel leverages a fighter and bomber complement as well...so any serious battle is against not just one ship but its escorting compliment...and this is where the Lilith looses. So if we look specifically at the Lilith ship to ship...yes very impressive...but from a wider viewpoint the situation is different.
I do have to say that I'm not sure if it was a conscious decision to gun the Lilith up all the way or not. The way that beam cannons changed during FreeSpace 2's development means that it may not have had the beam until much later and they decided to differentiate the Cain from the Lilith in a larger way than before. So they upped the beam to the larger size and didn't want to add another table entry for a medium beam. It works quite well for mission designers if the intent is to force the player to disable a capital ship before it gets into range and obliterates a convoy or a similar or slightly larger sized vessel. And of course when this proved to be an issue in certain missions you'll note that the Lilith either has a SRed or beams aren't freed.
No idea how that all came about...but perhaps involved large amounts of coffee beans, pizza, and other creative elements present at the Volition offices :)
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Yeah, but who actually disables beam turrets besides Alpha 1?
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The AI is too retarded. Even if you explicitly add-goal to take out that beam, they'll still fail.
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Though if you get eight or so of them all on the same subsystem, they will usually take it out.
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Given a good amount of time.
They can take out Ravana turrets alright though, which is nice. Telling them to disarm a sath's main beams is futile, however.
Not sure how well they can shoot at the Liliths chin-mounted gun. They might just end up hitting the "nose".
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I always tell Alpha to take out the LRed in the SathanAss while I deal with the main beam cannons and beta deals with the Flak... and the AI seems to preform remarkably well with those tasks.
It's when you tell them to take out a smaller subsystem or turret that it's a problem.
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So the AI is not completely retarted but its not that far from such a designation is that correct? Well wopiidoodaa who cares if they can take out a beam turret the size of a cruiser when you need them to take out something a lot smaller and of more importance.
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Ok so...
The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races. There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do. The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities. The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities. The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily. Hrrmm....
Heh..The Mentu is indeed a dissapointment. The TechRoom mentiones a beam cannon yet it doesn't have one. A [V] mixup?
As far as other ships go - a Moloch doubles as a light carrier so it makes sense it carries less firepower.
A Orion vs. Ravana will either end up with both ships dead or the Ravana victorious, but HEAVILY damaged.. sometimes the Orion can even win.
Aeolus is a much more modern design than the Levi or Fenris, and while great, it's not THAT superior to the others. It has a bit more HP and it's slightly faster. It exchanged one Fusion Mortar for a SGreen - DPS wise, a bad tradeoff. The Levi has 4 AAAf's, while the Aeolus has more flak.
In any shivans vs. GTVA ship engagement of same class the GTVA ship will be able to return the favor, maybe even destroy the shivan if lucky. With the Lilith vs. any GTVA cruiser - it the Lilith scores a hit with it's beam it's all over, the GTVA cruisers won't be able to return much damage or nothing overall. So the disparity is obvious.
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Its unusual for a smaller type to beat up on a larger type yes, but in real life I can think of many scenarios where you'll have a smaller/lower class type such as some tank destroyers in use which emphasize being smaller but able to pack a massive hit and surprise a MBT. Or a torpedo boat which is meant to damage or sink larger vessels while being too small to hit with dreadnought guns. Warfare has many examples of such kinds of weapons. In air combat there was a long period where it was felt that the bomber would fly too high, be too fast, and be too well defended for a much smaller fighter to defeat the bomber effectively.
I don't think comparing naval vessels to FS vessels is a good analogy. Not to mention that the way damage and HP work in games has nothing to do with RL at all. Lilith was just a poor balance job.
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:lol:
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I don't think comparing naval vessels to FS vessels is a good analogy. Not to mention that the way damage and HP work in games has nothing to do with RL at all. Lilith was just a poor balance job.
Why is the Lilith rare? Even in Freespace 1 it was exceedingly rare, why is that when it's the same size as a cain but with much more firepower? I don't remember the FS1 description but I think it mentioned that the Lilith was able to stand up to GTA destroyers. Well the FS2 Lilith can do that as well. Hold it's own against much superior opponents.
The Lilith is rare because it's expensive, maybe not in terms of "Shivan Dollars" but in terms of manufacturing and deploying. It's got super-dense armour, heavy beam cannons and an obviously powerful reactor.
The Lilith is balanced by its rarity and only the false perception that each unit will be deployed in equal numbers makes people think it's unbalanced. I mean, yes, it's an anomaly. Its power out-performs is brethren, but at the same time we see all of ONE Lilith in the entirety of the FS2 campaign. If the Lilith was equal to the Cain in deployment then people can cry foul, but when it's barely ever seen I don't see why people have cause to complain.
And some people (ie AlphaOne?) have said "well, I don't care if we just see one, obviously there's going to be more than one" but that honestly doesn't matter. If we only ever see 1 Lilith for every 9-12 Cains it's balanced; and I imagine the ratio for the FS2 campaign is much higher than that.
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Occasionally it is amusing to see people complaining that, for example, the Lilith is poorly balanced. Concidering that the Shivans are a race that has annihliated possibly countless other species over several millennia, I really don't think they give a rat's ass about balance.
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Occasionally it is amusing to see people complaining that, for example, the Lilith is poorly balanced. Concidering that the Shivans are a race that has annihliated possibly countless other species over several millennia, I really don't think they give a rat's ass about balance.
:yes:
If it's shivan, it's meant to be overpowered.
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Ok so...
The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races. There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do. The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities. The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities. The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily. Hrrmm....
Heh..The Mentu is indeed a dissapointment. The TechRoom mentiones a beam cannon yet it doesn't have one. A [V] mixup?
As far as other ships go - a Moloch doubles as a light carrier so it makes sense it carries less firepower.
A Orion vs. Ravana will either end up with both ships dead or the Ravana victorious, but HEAVILY damaged.. sometimes the Orion can even win.
Aeolus is a much more modern design than the Levi or Fenris, and while great, it's not THAT superior to the others. It has a bit more HP and it's slightly faster. It exchanged one Fusion Mortar for a SGreen - DPS wise, a bad tradeoff. The Levi has 4 AAAf's, while the Aeolus has more flak.
In any shivans vs. GTVA ship engagement of same class the GTVA ship will be able to return the favor, maybe even destroy the shivan if lucky. With the Lilith vs. any GTVA cruiser - it the Lilith scores a hit with it's beam it's all over, the GTVA cruisers won't be able to return much damage or nothing overall. So the disparity is obvious.
And thats the point...the disparity in power is obvious because its supposed to be obvious for reasons already previously outlined.
I can also make comparisons to naval units, ground units, and other forms of warfare as they are the only other points of comparison that can be made outside of the game environment. They serve as excellent examples and while yes hitpoints don't exist in real life the relative levels of power do.
In a RTS balance is important for competitive play but in a space sim balance is less necessary because the objective is to challenge the player. So its hardly a poor balance job.
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Why is the Lilith rare? Even in Freespace 1 it was exceedingly rare, why is that when it's the same size as a cain but with much more firepower? I don't remember the FS1 description but I think it mentioned that the Lilith was able to stand up to GTA destroyers. Well the FS2 Lilith can do that as well. Hold it's own against much superior opponents.
Rare? The player itself didn't fight many Liliths, but that doesn't mean they are rare in the shivan armada. There are countless of fights the player never saw, so judging the rarity of a ship based soley on Alpha 1 missions is just flat out wrong.
And IIRC, there were quite a few Liliths out there.
The Lilith is balanced by its rarity and only the false perception that each unit will be deployed in equal numbers makes people think it's unbalanced. I mean, yes, it's an anomaly. Its power out-performs is brethren, but at the same time we see all of ONE Lilith in the entirety of the FS2 campaign. If the Lilith was equal to the Cain in deployment then people can cry foul, but when it's barely ever seen I don't see why people have cause to complain.
And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC(TM)..
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Why is the Lilith rare? Even in Freespace 1 it was exceedingly rare, why is that when it's the same size as a cain but with much more firepower? I don't remember the FS1 description but I think it mentioned that the Lilith was able to stand up to GTA destroyers. Well the FS2 Lilith can do that as well. Hold it's own against much superior opponents.
Rare? The player itself didn't fight many Liliths, but that doesn't mean they are rare in the shivan armada. There are countless of fights the player never saw, so judging the rarity of a ship based soley on Alpha 1 missions is just flat out wrong.
And IIRC, there were quite a few Liliths out there.
Generally, the number of ships you see correlates to a general estimate of the number of those ships total.
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Plus, the FS1 tech room description explicitly states Liliths are exceedingly rare. The fact that only one appears in the entire FS2 campiagn contributes to this belief.
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They certainly aren't turning up every time the player encounters the Shivans. In neither game was this true. So one can assume that they are not in use in large quantities but as a force mix.
BTW: More than one appears in the campaign to my knowledge.
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The wiki says only one, and everyone else remembers only one. I remember only one. It seems likely that there was only one. (it appeared in "Their Finest Hour")
There were at least 4 in FS1 though (I only remember 4 off the top of my head).
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And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC(TM)..
Or maybe it's a fractal stressed-space subspace topology system, or a remote reactor transmitting energy through a subspace portal, or...heck, who knows?
Shivans are not intended for balance!
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And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC(TM)..
No, it's crammed into there by the power of MONEY(TM). Maybe for example, the Lilith uses more automation than the average cruiser. You know how much extra room you can get by stripping out some living quarters and other irrelevant things. Look at hitpoints alone, it has much higher level of hitpoints compared to the Cain but that doesnt seem to be an issue. We know that they can layer the same ship hull with much, much tougher armour (since no one complains about the FS1 Lilith). .. so why can't they throw much better power systems in there as well?
And yeah, it's entirely possible that there was more than one Lilith . . . but is it the case that the majority of the Liliths fought where the player didn't? That's a stretch I think. .. rather I think it's fairer to say that the combination of enemies fought by the player was in general a good indication of the fleet ratio as a whole.
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Yeah I'm not sure about the Mentu. It was one of the first FS2 cruisers to be implemented...it was available way back in the Beta when the beams were just a rare thing that a few ships had. But the Volition was so happy with the effect that nearly every ship got beams. So I think the Mentu ended up not being changed and just added some extra AAAf instead of flak. Lots of decisions like that probably affected the outcome.
So that's the real reason why all the old Shivan ships are equipped with beams. If beams were available to only a few ships, then canon would make alot more sense.
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If the Cain had no beams it would be conquered by cargo containers in FS2 though.
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If the Cain had no beams it would be conquered by cargo containers in FS2 though.
Yea, at least the Fenris would still have a Fusion mortar, which does more damage than an SGreen. The Cain would have NOTHING! (ok, blobs, but who cares about blobs. you can bathe in blobs).
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Well, actually the Cain has $hivan Light Laz0rz, which are better anti-fighter defense than the Lilith's $hivan Turret Laz0rz. They both pretty much suck though, and fighter killers/shivan clusters don't help that much.
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Replace the ShivanCluster/Fighterkiller with flak, and Cain's/Lilith's become that much more deadly. However, that would probably make the Lilith (more) overpowered.
And I always though the Shivan Turret Lasers were better. One fit hit from one of them apparently depletes an entire shield quadrant of a Serapis (on easy, no less)
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Well, the Shivan Turret Laser does do more damage, but the slow blobs are easy to avoid (even for something big and slow). They are better at shooting down bombs though.
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Yea, its not like I can expect to live very long if I'm moving slow enough to be hit by blobs in a Serapis.
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And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC(TM)..
No, it's crammed into there by the power of MONEY(TM). Maybe for example, the Lilith uses more automation than the average cruiser. You know how much extra room you can get by stripping out some living quarters and other irrelevant things. Look at hitpoints alone, it has much higher level of hitpoints compared to the Cain but that doesnt seem to be an issue. We know that they can layer the same ship hull with much, much tougher armour (since no one complains about the FS1 Lilith). .. so why can't they throw much better power systems in there as well?
And yeah, it's entirely possible that there was more than one Lilith . . . but is it the case that the majority of the Liliths fought where the player didn't? That's a stretch I think. .. rather I think it's fairer to say that the combination of enemies fought by the player was in general a good indication of the fleet ratio as a whole.
Yeah, and we humans can find or make up alternate explanations for everything, no matter how weak those explanations actually are or how little sense they make.
If the shivans are able to make a super-cruiser version of the Cain, why don't we see a super-version of a Destroyer, or a corvette, or even a super-version of a Sathanas?
If FS1 the Lilith was tough, but it wasn't that big of a deal compared to a Levi. In FS2 it turns into a super-duper capship killer.
If it's automation, they why doesn't the GTVA have it's own ship like that? It's not like automation and such technology are known only by shivans. And it still doesn't explain half hte other stuff, but what the heck...
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What TMan said.
Simply throwing out such shameless explanations should be an outrage .
Automation lol. Look noone is stating that shivans dont have more advanced tech in some areas. However what we are debating is the fact that the Lilith for a cruiser that we see in FS1 for the love of god has gotten a LOT stronger much more stronger then a damned corvette . I mean hell a Deimos or a Sobek is toast if a Lilith can get the jump on it (and shivans do have this nasty habit you know of pinpointing the jumps they make to a very precise area) .
I mean gooing one on one most of the GTVA warships can not stand theyr ground against the shivan counterparts on a 1v1 battle. There is the Deimos and Sobek corvette ckasses wich actualy stand a chance and are in fact somehwat superior to the shivan counterpart.
However when you have a cruiser that, is not suposed to be a match for corvettes let alone anithing bigger , can take out with a bit of luck a state of the art destroyer like the Hecate well that is just plain stupid.
I can see why having such a cruiser would serve the campaign story along but then again anithing else would be absolute ridiculous.
And simply because by some miracle of life the shivans managed to survive till today does not mean they have to be the ubertechfreacks of the universe all knowing and all powerfull. This arguement i find to be the most iritating of them all when defending a shivan atribute that does not fit with the rest of the pack.
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If the shivans are able to make a super-cruiser version of the Cain, why don't we see a super-version of a Destroyer, or a corvette, or even a super-version of a Sathanas?
Uh, Lucifer "Super" Destroyer anyone? It's barely longer than a Ravana (400m) but carries impenetrable shields and weapons that just like the LRed can destroy a Terran capital ship in just a few hits (and no, don't tell me "it's only got SReds or something lame").
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I've written this some few months ago, and I'll have to do it once more.
Here we go:
Lilith:
Type Cruiser
Max Velocity 20.0 mps
Hitpoints 75 000
Length 190 m
Shivan Turret Laser 5 x 50 HP hull damage per second
Shivan Cluster 2 x 3
Anti-Fighter Beam 1 x 49.5
Large Red Beam 1 x 1359
Total damage per second:
250 + 6 + 49.5 + 1359 = 1664.5 HP/s
Aeolus:
Type Cruiser
Max Velocity 30.0 ms-1
Hitpoints 38 000
Length 272 m
Terran Huge Turret 2 x 41.7
Standard Flak 6 x 200
Anti-Fighter Beam 2 x 77
Small Green Beam 2 x 61
Total damage per second:
83.4 + 1200 + 154 + 122 = 1559.4 HP/s
Speed: 20 m/s vs 30 - Aeolus is 50% faster
HP's: 75 000 vs 38k - Aeolus has about 50% the HP of the Lilith
Damage: The Aeolus does 105,1 HP/s less than the Lilith.
And the Aeolus is not intended to fight capships- it's an antifighter unit.
Who still thinks the Lilith is an unbalanced ship?
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The main reason the Lilith is unbalanced is because the huge beam lets it chew up destroyers.
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Yeah, anyway, flak never does as much damage as its supposed to and blobs tend to miss sometimes (even capships). In a broadside, the Aeolus might be a ble to hurt the Lilith a bit but most of its weapons don't activate until you get down to 1000m.
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The Lilith can chew up and spit out corvettes and with just a tiny bit of luck destroyers. Still think the Lilith is not overkill??? What seems to be forgotten is the fact that the Lilith beam cannon has a hell of a lot more range and dammage then the Aeolus with its flack cannons which are limited to what 1500m ??
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And simply because by some miracle of life the shivans managed to survive till today does not mean they have to be the ubertechfreacks of the universe all knowing and all powerfull. This arguement i find to be the most iritating of them all when defending a shivan atribute that does not fit with the rest of the pack.
They have demonstrated abilities more worring than having a cruiser that has a LRed. If I was assessing Shivan abilities for inbalances, I'd be more worried about their ability to blow up stars than a cruiser that has very good anti-capital ship weaponry.
Again, they're Shivans.
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Who still thinks the Lilith is an unbalanced ship?
Me. That calculations only work if the Aeolus comes close in and personal - and it will still get pwned.
What would normally happen is that the Lilith would fry the Aeolus with a single shot from the LRed...sometimes it might need two.
The Aeolus might return fire if it's lucky...
And no, I don't think the Aeolus is a fighter-defense cruiser - it's a all-purpose cruiser.
It has roughly the same ammount of anti-capital firepower as other GTVA cruisers. If it was a specialized anti-fighter cruiser it would trade that for more AAAf's.
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Here we go:
Anti-Fighter Beam 2 x 77
Small Green Beam 2 x 61
:eek2: AAAfs do more DPS than SGreens? Wow, SGreens are sure useless POS'es.
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That's what the FS Wiki says...
Also- if we're into unbalanced ships- the Terran Mara's HP, Shields and secondaries are >can't even find a word to describe how crazy they are<
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The main reason the Lilith is unbalanced is because the huge beam lets it chew up destroyers.
A torpedo boat can sink a destroyer or a cruiser. Where does the balance come in?
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What would normally happen is that the Lilith would fry the Aeolus with a single shot from the LRed...sometimes it might need two.
It will always take two shots if the Aeolus is at 100% hull integrity. The LRed doesn't do that much damage per shot. Unless you have been tinkering with the tables *cough*
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The main reason the Lilith is unbalanced is because the huge beam lets it chew up destroyers.
A torpedo boat can sink a destroyer or a cruiser. Where does the balance come in?
IIRC, a torpedo boat sunk a battleship... (Pommern)
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Here we go:
Anti-Fighter Beam 2 x 77
Small Green Beam 2 x 61
:eek2: AAAfs do more DPS than SGreens? Wow, SGreens are sure useless POS'es.
While SGreens are pieces of dog poo, he fudged the numbers. The AAA beams should do 24 sustained damage per second damage not 77.
And as for the rest of the conversation, why are so many people obsessed with balance? FreeSpace isn't an RTS...
Edit: It appears that verbs were an undervalued commodity in my first sentence...
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Here we go:
Anti-Fighter Beam 2 x 77
Small Green Beam 2 x 61
:eek2: AAAfs do more DPS than SGreens? Wow, SGreens are sure useless POS'es.
While SGreens pieces of dog poo, he fudged the numbers. The AAA beams should do 24 sustained damage per second damage not 77.
And as for the rest of the conversation, why are so many people obsessed with balance? FreeSpace isn't an RTS...
I have no idea...
Some people here are just raving RTS fans (like myself), although, I do not think the Lilith is overpowered in any way. It's just...good.
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Here we go:
Anti-Fighter Beam 2 x 77
Small Green Beam 2 x 61
:eek2: AAAfs do more DPS than SGreens? Wow, SGreens are sure useless POS'es.
While SGreens are pieces of dog poo, he fudged the numbers. The AAA beams should do 24 sustained damage per second damage not 77.
And as for the rest of the conversation, why are so many people obsessed with balance? FreeSpace isn't an RTS...
Edit: It appears that verbs were an undervalued commodity in my first sentence...
I'm not even sure where the balance thing comes in. Its like everything must fit within a certain class and if its outside of that then its wrong...I don't know.
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I'm not even sure where the balance thing comes in. Its like everything must fit within a certain class and if its outside of that then its wrong...I don't know.
Tell that to the Tiger II tank.
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The abilaty to blow up stars is not something they do on a day by day basis. It takes a whole lot of jjuggs to do that and more important it takes a lot of time to actualy achieve the desired effect. During this time the FLEET is exposed and by all means the shivans might not have the required whatever they need to blow up a star if you take a few of the juggs out.
Why are we comparing torpedo boats to a Lilith again?
Also the Mara is weaker then its terran counterpart. The game says so.
We can all agree that shivan subspace tech is miore advanced then terran/vasudan tech . However given the rate at which GTVA tech is advancing the shivans might just find themselfs in the not so distant future outpaced by the GTVA in this area. And not just this area. Fotr all we know the shivans have always battled lesser species that did not really stand a fighting chance against them. For all we know they might of never known defeat.
While the GTVA did not defeat them it did manage to survive them on 2 different ocasions altough the second one was a strange and close call.
Also shivans dont battle eachother for all we know and dont have the constant need to improve themselfs like the GTVA does. War bring about tech. advancements. And when not fighting the shivans the GTVA is adept at fighting enemies from within.
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The abilaty to blow up stars is not something they do on a day by day basis. It takes a whole lot of jjuggs to do that and more important it takes a lot of time to actualy achieve the desired effect. During this time the FLEET is exposed and by all means the shivans might not have the required whatever they need to blow up a star if you take a few of the juggs out.
It's still something abnormal when compared to anything in the game. The collective mass (or size for the pedantic who want to insist we cannot assume mass without reference) of the Sathanas fleet is incomparably small to their target. A much bigger diference than between the Lilith and any other ship in the game. The other ship of that class, the Colossus, doesn't have that ability either. Should we say that the Sathanas is not balanced too?
Also the Mara is weaker then its terran counterpart. The game says so.
So if the game said that the Lilith was more powerful than the Cain or any other cruiser it would be alright? Wait, what is that in the FS tech description?
FS1 Tech Room Description
While far more rare than its counterpart, the Cain-class cruiser, the Lilith is one of the most ferocious cruisers we have had the misfortune of combating. It has extremely strong weapon systems, as well as a very thick armor which our cannons can barely penetrate. One for one, the Lilith can easily destroy any of our cruisers. It is for this reason that they should be considered a primary target for all bomber squadrons in the GTA.
FS2 Tech Room Description
The SC Lilith class of Shivan cruisers is a far-deadlier foe than the Cain class. Nearly impenetrable armor plating enables it to withstand tremendous punishment, enabling its nine turrets to lash out at warships and combat spacecraft with impunity.
We can all agree that shivan subspace tech is miore advanced then terran/vasudan tech . However given the rate at which GTVA tech is advancing the shivans might just find themselfs in the not so distant future outpaced by the GTVA in this area. And not just this area. Fotr all we know the shivans have always battled lesser species that did not really stand a fighting chance against them. For all we know they might of never known defeat.
The Shivan could have battled two ants and a mushroom, it still doesn't change what is presented ingame.
Also shivans dont battle eachother for all we know and dont have the constant need to improve themselfs like the GTVA does. War bring about tech. advancements. And when not fighting the shivans the GTVA is adept at fighting enemies from within.
You assume something we don't know about the Shivans, which even if it were true, doesn't change anything about what we've seen ingame.
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I have no idea...
Some people here are just raving RTS fans (like myself), although, I do not think the Lilith is overpowered in any way. It's just...good.
Dude, no one is advocating symetrical balance (at least I am not). What I want is LOGICAL balance. I want things to make sense
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Why are we comparing torpedo boats to a Lilith again?
Because apparently some folks have a hard time understanding whats going on here. Think back to World War I and World War II naval warfare for a moment. You have all of the various classes of ships from the tiny torpedo boats up to destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts, and so forth. All arranged logically in nice displacement/firepower and the bigger one will obviously beat the smaller one. Right? Wrong. Torpedo boats were too small to be bracketed by the larger vessels so the idea is for a torpedo boat to use its inherent qualities as a smaller vessel plus potent torpedoes carried by the larger vessels to kill much larger ships. Often a single or pair of torpedo boats could lay on serious harm by using big weapons normally carried by larger vessels.
Its an example of one class of vessel not "logically" falling into the balance of naval warfare. There are many examples of this in warfare.
Is this not clear enough? Does everything have to be nice and logically aligned in a straight forward fashion?
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Epic Fail..
Last time I checked Torpedo Boats didn't have the armor equalent of a battleship, nor was their firepower that great. You needed to use them in greater numbers (name one instance when a single torpedo boat sank a battleship)
When you show me a destroyer that has battleship-grade armor AND carrier one of those tripple barreled 406mm turrets, then we can talk.
The Lilith fires a beam that's bigger than the whole ship, let alone that turret.
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@Ghostavo : Mass has nothing to do with the shivan abilaty to blow up a star. Hell we dont even know if that is what they wanted we just know it happened. Also if they were indeed intent on blowing Capella then we should remember the fact that they used some sort of wierd high powered subspace thing that eventualy made the Capella sun become unstable and blow up. Also we must not forget that there was a game refference that says that the field was geeting strionger and stronger as time passed by.
As for the Terran Mara yeah its ingame in one of the briefings i believe.
@IceFire: Agreed on your asesment of the torpedoboat however one has to remember a moder day destroyer carries more firepower then a WW2 battleship.
Also the fact that torpedo boats could not be countered by the larger vessels was not because they could not shoot or because they were too weak. In fact one of the main reasons is beacause they were too powerfull . The main guns were so powerfull and large shooting them at such a small target in such a short range became almost imposible. Why do i say this? Because torpedo boats normaly have to get pretty close in order to be efective.
Also ww2 era torpedo tech was very primitive and was not considered such a great threat. It wasnt until much later that torpedoes were recognized as a powerfull weapon against capship of the line. Most kills were scored against civilian ships. And most kills via torpedoes were not done by torpedo-boats but by torpedo-planes or dive-bombers altough sometimes at very high casualties.
I can not dispute the Lilith's firepower since its in game but the sheer armor and beam-damage it can do it off the scale of every other shivan cruiser of corvette for that matter.
That is why we believe it just doesnt fit the pattern of the shivan ships. Its just ubercruiser of doom.
And no not everithing has to be neat and tidy but also it must not be this out of place either.
Anyway on a personal note if i were GTVA Command i would copy that Lilith capture one and reverse engenier one whatever work and stop building destroyers corvettes and other warships just Lilith and some support carriers . Then lunch them all and see them turn the jugg fleet to dust. :D
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@Ghostavo : Mass has nothing to do with the shivan abilaty to blow up a star. Hell we dont even know if that is what they wanted we just know it happened. Also if they were indeed intent on blowing Capella then we should remember the fact that they used some sort of wierd high powered subspace thing that eventualy made the Capella sun become unstable and blow up. Also we must not forget that there was a game refference that says that the field was geeting strionger and stronger as time passed by.
Mass doesn't have anything to do with the Lilith's ability to blow up other ships too, it uses some sort of weird high powered beam cannon thing that eventually blows ships up. See the parallel?
As for the Terran Mara yeah its ingame in one of the briefings i believe.
I don't dispute that, but the argument goes both ways. If you want to acknowledge the Terran Mara's abilities, you cannot ignore the Lilith's abilities.
I can not dispute the Lilith's firepower since its in game but the sheer armor and beam-damage it can do it off the scale of every other shivan cruiser of corvette for that matter.
That is why we believe it just doesnt fit the pattern of the shivan ships. Its just ubercruiser of doom.
Again, the Sathanas reference, it has an ability that's unbelievebly beyond anything displayed in the game, and no other ship or group of ships has anything even close to an effect of that magnitude. Same argument, different target.
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Also the fact that torpedo boats could not be countered by the larger vessels was not because they could not shoot or because they were too weak. In fact one of the main reasons is beacause they were too powerfull . The main guns were so powerfull and large shooting them at such a small target in such a short range became almost imposible. Why do i say this? Because torpedo boats normaly have to get pretty close in order to be efective.
And that's why battelships had a large number of secondary armaments - to engage smaller, faster ships with them.
Agreed on your asesment of the torpedoboat however one has to remember a moder day destroyer carries more firepower then a WW2 battleship.
ERm...no. No it doesn't.
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Starting to go way of topic but....
Just a couple of notes... Originally - at least according to pre-WW2 era naval manual of Kriegsmarine that i have stated that torpedo boats (note - not motor torpedo boats) were a great threat to capital ships - apparently referring to Jutland type engagement - and there fore the battleships needed screening force of torpedo boat destroyers (ie. ships designed to destroy torpedo boats) to destroy them. Eventually these (both torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers) merged to create the 'modern' WW2 era destroyer. So torpedoes.. starting even from the early ramming torpedoes were considered to be significant threat to capital ships.
And also... A motor torpedo boat is whole different thing than a torpedo boat.
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I know people are gonna say "waah, it's the lucifer. It doesn't count" but I'll post it anyway. The Lucifer is rare, and so is the Lilith.
Weapon damage per second: ((Beam Damage*5.5)Lifetime) / (LifeTime+FireWait+WarmUp+Cooldown)
LRed Damage per second: 1074
SRed Damage per second: 133
Shivan Super Laser per second: 1500
Ravana Destroyer
Width: 1442
Height: 1468
Length: 2346
Lucifer Super Destroyer
Width: 1254
Height: 845
Length: 2777
In dimensions, the Ravana and Lucifer are comparable. The Lucifer, though longer tends to be narrower especially in the aft section.
Hitpoints:
Ravana: 100,000
Lucifer: 800,000
The Lucifer has 800% the hitpoints of the Ravana, compare this to 375% hitpoints of a Lilith compared to a Cain.
Speed:
Ravana: 20 m/s
Lucifer: 15 m/s
Ravana is 33% faster than the Lucifer.
Main Anti-ship Beam Damage per second:
Ravana: 2414 ((1074)2)+((133)2))
Lucifer: 3000 ((1500)2))
Lucifer has the advantage with 124% of the beams of a Ravana.
Secondary Armaments:
Ravana:
5 Flak Cannon
2 Shivan AAA
17 Shivan Turret
1 Fighter Killer
Lucifer:
11 Shivan Turret
2 Fighter Killer
2 Shivan Cluster Bomb
The Lucifer also has a shield system which proved impenetrable to all weapons of the period.
What's my point?
Despite only marginal increase in beam firepower, and less secondary defensive capabilities the Lucifer has hull armour which far outclasses the Ravana and due to its shields one must assume it has a power requirement far above the Ravana and yet the size of the two ships is roughly the same. So if the Shivans can create an incredibly advanced ship at the Destroyer scale, I'm pretty damn sure they can create a somewhat advanced ship at the Cruiser scale.
And yeah, one might say "oh, the Lucifer doesn't have 800k hitpoints, you only have to kill the reactors to take it out. Well that's honestly irrelevant, because achilles heel aside the Lucifer's hull can still take that much damage AFTER you manage to circumvent its otherwise impenetrable shields.
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Epic Fail..
Last time I checked Torpedo Boats didn't have the armor equalent of a battleship, nor was their firepower that great. You needed to use them in greater numbers (name one instance when a single torpedo boat sank a battleship)
When you show me a destroyer that has battleship-grade armor AND carrier one of those tripple barreled 406mm turrets, then we can talk.
The Lilith fires a beam that's bigger than the whole ship, let alone that turret.
Epic fail for you sorry. The armor doesn't mean anything so you've missed the point. Apparently nobody understand analogies.
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No, it means a lot. It is you who brought in this analogy and when it doesn't work, you simply ignore bits that don't?
As far as the Lucy goes it was one of the kind and I think the high HP were initaly meant to make it feel indestructable.. Maybe before [V] made it invulnerable.
IMHO, the Lucy's hull stats on paper don't make sense, but they had to be that high or else the player could destroy the Lucy without blowing it's reactors.
The Harbringer was way powerful a bomb..upping the HP on the subsystems would do no good.. They could have just made a different bomb for the last mission, but there's no telling what craft an loadout the player might choose, so that wouldn't work. I blame techincal limitations and deadlines for some things in FS1 and 2 that felt incomplete...
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yes, lets give the Lucifer 10 HP. Everyone will fear it now!
While we're at it, let's strip the Lilith of its LRED and give an SGreen.
Now the shivans are balanced! [/sarcasm]
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Fine, you want a better analogy?
HMS Abercrombie. Monitor of WW2, carried a single twin 15" gun turret forward, was a light cruiser in nearly every other respect. (And I mean a European or Japanese light cruiser, not one of the monsters like the Brooklyn the US turned out since they designated cruisers on gun size and not ship size.) Abercrombie never engaged an enemy ship larger than an MTB, but she was one of a number of prewar design studies conducted by many nations in the concept of a cruiser packing battleship guns, and much thought was given to the proper employment of such a ship.
The general consensus was that employing such a vessel against a genuine capital ship not previously badly damaged would be tantamount to suicide, but she would be a valuable asset in a cruiser vs. cruiser battle or for bombardments, bringing the weapons of a battleship in a lighter, faster package. The problem was that such a ship would be difficult to provide protection similar to her cruiser brethern (only the Germans managed it with their panzerschiffes, but they made the only truly serious attempt), and being armed like a battleship, somebody somewhere was going to be tempted to use it like one.
Sounds like a Lilth, yes?
Granted Abercrombie was slightly underarmored for a ship of her size, but as we're dealing with FS where weapons hit a lot more often then they did in the 1940s, and Abercrombie was significantly more sprightly then a true battleship (she handled like a light cruiser, because that's essentially what she was), the parallel is actually quite workable. The Lilth isn't speedy and sprightly but lightly armored because that wouldn't help it much. Instead it's heavily armored but slower than its apparent ability to generate power suggests it should be.
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No, it means a lot. It is you who brought in this analogy and when it doesn't work, you simply ignore bits that don't?
No it doesn't. The point of the torpedo boat is to negate the need for armor because it was smaller and harder to hit. Why is the armor important? I've laid my points out in detail and I had already mentioned that armor was less important for these ships and that their role was to be a smaller package in a "lesser" class that effectively competes with a much larger type of ship. That was the basic analogy which has been lost.
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(LifeTime+FireWait+WarmUp+Cooldown)
This isn't correct. I've seen an LRed fire every ~13-14 seconds, but by your logic, it should be more like 20 seconds.
EDIT: The code seems to say that it should be able to fire every [fire wait] seconds. Tests support this theory. Beams can fire as often as they want, regardless of their lifetime and warmup/warmdown.
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I don't remember where I read this, but I like it:
The Cain was originally meant for light combat, with mainly fighters involved. This is evidenced by the lack of blob turrets (the main capship-to-capship weapon in FS1) and only one SRed in FS2 (which still makes it slightly more powerful than GTVA cruisers, by the way).
Instead, it carries Shivan Light/Heavy Lasers, which are more of a threat to fighters/bombers than the blobs. It's also quite fast (30mps, as opposed to e.g. the 45 of the Medusa), but it sacrificed some armour for that.
The Lilith was designed for capship combat. It has Shivan Blobs for FS1 anti-capship warfare, and an LRed in FS2. It has more HP's for prolonged battles, but sacrifices some speed for that. It probably has a more powerful reactor, which makes them less used by the Shivies (that doesn't mean it's expensive, they could be unstable or made of rare materials as well).
The ideal would be a combination of the two. Deploy them in wolfpacks, so the Cain can cover the Lilith against fighters/bombers and vice versa. And what do we see in FS1? Indeed - wolfpacks.
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If the Shivans think that a Cain is a good anti-fighter cruiser than I will have to whack them repeatedly with an Aeolus. Well, I guess its OK in FS1...
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No, the Shivans think the Lamia is a good anti-fighter cruiser. Sadly, it doesn't exist in canon FS2, so the Shivans don't have any anti-fighter cruiser. The Cain is just the unfortunate useless POS a.k.a. hornet fodder cruiser. It is in the same class as the Fenris and Aten. They were ok in FS1, but utterly useless in FS2.
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(LifeTime+FireWait+WarmUp+Cooldown)
This isn't correct. I've seen an LRed fire every ~13-14 seconds, but by your logic, it should be more like 20 seconds.
EDIT: The code seems to say that it should be able to fire every [fire wait] seconds. Tests support this theory. Beams can fire as often as they want, regardless of their lifetime and warmup/warmdown.
I dunno, is the warm-up cooldown included in the fire wait or is it separate from it?
Waste of time on my part any since predictably, people pulled the "oh, it's one of a kind and I know exactly what the game designers were thinking . . . lalala" cop out as per usual.
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So a modern day destroyer cant dish out more firepower then a WW2 battleship now? And where have you been living kind sir? A moder day destroyer can chew up and spit out battleships like im chewing gum right now. Of course it has to have the proper anti-warship missiles for such a task. Go to the wiki and look up the latest destroyer builds.
Also the Lilith is by all intents and purpose a cruiser (YET IT HAS THE ARMOUR OF A CORVETTE) The lilith by all intents and purposes being a said cruiser is not supposed to be able to threaten a destroyer in a very serious manner let alone destroy one.
Why? Because if the Lilith specs are not exaggerated and are not overkill then that must mean that EVERY OTHER SHIP IN FS2 WERE SCREW-UPS. Why? Well according to many of the ppl. here thinking the Ravana should be armed with at least 4 BFReds to start with have 800 k HP and a fighter complement of 300 crafts.
As for the Sath well leth's not even get there......!
As for the whole analogy used that the shivans can blow up a star so this and that can ...happen etc etc. I have just one thing to say: Are you for real??? that has got to be the most imature logic thinking i have ever seen.
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No, it means a lot. It is you who brought in this analogy and when it doesn't work, you simply ignore bits that don't?
No it doesn't. The point of the torpedo boat is to negate the need for armor because it was smaller and harder to hit. Why is the armor important? I've laid my points out in detail and I had already mentioned that armor was less important for these ships and that their role was to be a smaller package in a "lesser" class that effectively competes with a much larger type of ship. That was the basic analogy which has been lost.
And how does that relate to the Lilith? The Lilith has incredible armor, so it's nothing like a torpedo boat. And if a tropedo boat is not comparable to a Lilith, why did you bring it up in the first place?
Fine, you want a better analogy?
HMS Abercrombie. Monitor of WW2, carried a single twin 15" gun turret forward, was a light cruiser in nearly every other respect. (And I mean a European or Japanese light cruiser, not one of the monsters like the Brooklyn the US turned out since they designated cruisers on gun size and not ship size.) Abercrombie never engaged an enemy ship larger than an MTB, but she was one of a number of prewar design studies conducted by many nations in the concept of a cruiser packing battleship guns, and much thought was given to the proper employment of such a ship.
The general consensus was that employing such a vessel against a genuine capital ship not previously badly damaged would be tantamount to suicide, but she would be a valuable asset in a cruiser vs. cruiser battle or for bombardments, bringing the weapons of a battleship in a lighter, faster package. The problem was that such a ship would be difficult to provide protection similar to her cruiser brethern (only the Germans managed it with their panzerschiffes, but they made the only truly serious attempt), and being armed like a battleship, somebody somewhere was going to be tempted to use it like one.
Sounds like a Lilth, yes?
No, it doesn't. For one it doesn't have the uber-armor like the Lilith has.
A more correct analogy would be a supporting ship class that has the armor of a ship-of-the-line and the same guns such ship use, while at the same time being constructed with methods, materials and limitation used to build the ship-of-the-line. to my knowledge, no such ship exists.
So a modern day destroyer cant dish out more firepower then a WW2 battleship now? And where have you been living kind sir? A moder day destroyer can chew up and spit out battleships like im chewing gum right now. Of course it has to have the proper anti-warship missiles for such a task. Go to the wiki and look up the latest destroyer builds.
No, it can't.
A destroyer tipicly has 1-2 120mm cannon and various misiles. The combined firepower of all the main and secondary guns of a WW2 battleship exceed that of a destroyer.
If you want to get technical, let's compare modernized BB's like the Iowa, who not only retains it's min guns, but also has multiple missile launchers installed and CIWS systems. It carries more missiles and more firepower (figures, it's bigger, has got room for more missiles and guns) than any modern destroyer (but it's expensive as hell).
Alltough such comparisons aren't exactly accurate, since FS ships don't use missiles as main weapons, but rather beam, and unlike missiles they require s***loads of power - thereby firepower is limited by the size, power and cooling of hte reactor.
and if you look up rocketscience you will see that bigger ships can generate more power for various reasons.
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Well I've said my bit and I think I'll leave it at that. I've laid out my arguments but they seem to have been in vain as they haven't been understood or the bar set is just moved around. It'd be nice to get past that and move deeper into the discussion but we're still at the same point we were pages ago.
Certainly this isn't going to change the way the tables were done in 1999 but it has been interesting to consider what Volition was thinking at the time. I'll still submit that this is much more straight forward than its made out to be and that things don't fit into nice cookie cutter alignments but thats where the understanding seems to diverge so...best to leave it as is.
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Why? Because if the Lilith specs are not exaggerated and are not overkill then that must mean that EVERY OTHER SHIP IN FS2 WERE SCREW-UPS. Why? Well according to many of the ppl. here thinking the Ravana should be armed with at least 4 BFReds to start with have 800 k HP and a fighter complement of 300 crafts.
Why can't it all be correct? Why must there be screw ups?
As for the whole analogy used that the shivans can blow up a star so this and that can ...happen etc etc. I have just one thing to say: Are you for real??? that has got to be the most imature logic thinking i have ever seen.
I find amusing you think that is "immature logic" since it's exactly what you are doing, I'm just using reductio ad absurdum. Can't you see it's the same argument you are using? A ship (Sathanas/Lilith) has an ability (blow up stars/ships) on a magnitude that no other ship of it's class has, so you find it "overpowered". It's exactly the same thing. All that changes is the target of the argument and it's ability.
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Well I've said my bit and I think I'll leave it at that. I've laid out my arguments but they seem to have been in vain as they haven't been understood or the bar set is just moved around. It'd be nice to get past that and move deeper into the discussion but we're still at the same point we were pages ago.
Certainly this isn't going to change the way the tables were done in 1999 but it has been interesting to consider what Volition was thinking at the time. I'll still submit that this is much more straight forward than its made out to be and that things don't fit into nice cookie cutter alignments but thats where the understanding seems to diverge so...best to leave it as is.
This is called Mobius syndrome.
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Well I've said my bit and I think I'll leave it at that. I've laid out my arguments but they seem to have been in vain as they haven't been understood or the bar set is just moved around. It'd be nice to get past that and move deeper into the discussion but we're still at the same point we were pages ago.
Certainly this isn't going to change the way the tables were done in 1999 but it has been interesting to consider what Volition was thinking at the time. I'll still submit that this is much more straight forward than its made out to be and that things don't fit into nice cookie cutter alignments but thats where the understanding seems to diverge so...best to leave it as is.
This is called Mobius syndrome.
Also Trashman doesn't understand analogys well. Or at sometimes at all. Atleast I get what you where trying to say IceFire.
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Also Trashman doesn't understand analogys well. Or at sometimes at all. Atleast I get what you where trying to say IceFire.
Perhaps it could be called the TrashMan Syndrome... Mobius Syndrome is the need to post in multicolour.
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I dunno, is the warm-up cooldown included in the fire wait or is it separate from it?
Its separate. For a test, I set the fire wait of the LRed to 3 seconds, set difficulty to Insane (difficulty affects fire rate), and had a ravana shoot something. The warmup of the second shot started almost exactly 3 seconds after the warmup of the first. So it fired every three seconds.
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so...in reality, an LRed basically fires continuously, given the warm up time of 3 seconds and fire time of 7 seconds and recharge of 10...adds up to a continuous beam.
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Are you sure you're not getting confused by The Great Hunt's Ravana?
Perhaps it could be called the TrashMan Syndrome... Mobius Syndrome is the need to post in multicolour.
:wtf: O rly?
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so...in reality, an LRed basically fires continuously, given the warm up time of 3 seconds and fire time of 7 seconds and recharge of 10...adds up to a continuous beam.
Yes ... Except for the difficulty thing and the random turret fire delay.
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:wtf: O rly?
Ya rly.
(come on, can't you take a joke?)
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You should say "it's a joke" at the end of the incriminated post, NOT after my reply!
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You should say "it's a joke" at the end of the incriminated post, NOT after my reply!
Dude, I'm sorry, man, okay?! :shaking:
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[size=8]Whatever.[/size][/color]
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so...in reality, an LRed basically fires continuously, given the warm up time of 3 seconds and fire time of 7 seconds and recharge of 10...adds up to a continuous beam.
Yes ... Except for the difficulty thing and the random turret fire delay.
Urgh, its more insane than I thought, then...
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[size=8]Whatever.[/size][/color]
*yelps*
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You should say "it's a joke" at the end of the incriminated post, NOT after my reply!
Oh, c'mon! You couldn't tell that it was a joke :rolleyes:
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You should say "it's a joke" at the end of the incriminated post, NOT after my reply!
Wouldn't that partially take the edge off a joke? I mean, you throw a punchline and then say "Psst. It's a joke!".
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You should say "it's a joke" at the end of the incriminated post, NOT after my reply!
Wouldn't that partially take the edge off a joke? I mean, you throw a punchline and then say "Psst. It's a joke!".
That's what I do at school :lol:
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Ever get that feeling that there's a mod reading over your shoulder with his finger on the lock button?
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Ever have the feeling that a thread has outlived its usefulness?
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Ever get that feeling that there's a mod reading over your shoulder with his finger on the lock button?
Does it count if I have a feeling that someone is actually watching over my shoulder?
Ever have the feeling that a thread has outlived its usefulness?
Every day. Sometimes even twice a day.
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Also Trashman doesn't understand analogys well. Or at sometimes at all. Atleast I get what you where trying to say IceFire.
Apparently I get them better than you do.
Hm....Hades syndrome (or Snail syndrome?) - not being capable of understanding a discussion and impulsively accusing someone of not understanding arguments to compensate for his lack of the said ability.
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Hm....Hades syndrome (or Snail syndrome?) - not being capable of understanding a discussion and impulsively accusing someone of not understanding arguments to compensate for his lack of the said ability.
/me calls Karajorma
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Also Trashman doesn't understand analogys well. Or at sometimes at all. Atleast I get what you where trying to say IceFire.
Apparently I get them better than you do.
Hm....Hades syndrome (or Snail syndrome?) - not being capable of understanding a discussion and impulsively accusing someone of not understanding arguments to compensate for his lack of the said ability.
Actually from what I read from you responding to IceFire, you are not getting them at all... :lol:
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*grabs shovel*
You want me to use it to sling mud your way or for your grave? Your call.
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You want me to use it to sling mud your way or for your grave? Your call.
This thread has been pointless for about 2 pages.
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No kidding Sherlock! :lol:
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No kidding Sherlock! :lol:
I believe the phrase is "No **** Sherlock"
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Hey TMan i was not refering to moder day BS . I was comparing a moder day destroyer witha ww2 BS .
I got the distinct impression that a moder day destroyer is more then a match for any ww2 era BS . I mean it would take like that 2 - 3 missiles to take down a BS. Asuming they hit at the proper places. Also a moder day destroyer usualy has a helicopter which can fire torpedoes. Anyway someone lock this up this is getting ridiculous. Noone is gooing to budge one inch here. I sure as hell am not.
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Hey TMan i was not refering to moder day BS . I was comparing a moder day destroyer witha ww2 BS .
I got the distinct impression that a moder day destroyer is more then a match for any ww2 era BS . I mean it would take like that 2 - 3 missiles to take down a BS. Asuming they hit at the proper places. Also a moder day destroyer usualy has a helicopter which can fire torpedoes. Anyway someone lock this up this is getting ridiculous. Noone is gooing to budge one inch here. I sure as hell am not.
Eh, I've heard different. WW2 Battleship would probably take those missiles and keep on going, unless they were like hit below the waterline.
Ships today aren't what they were in the 40s. Like the British ship hit by an exocet during the Falklands, if that was an old WW2 battleship that ship would've kept on going. Yeah, people would've died, etcetera . . . but they've got a hell of a lot armour than the newer ships.
You want me to use it to sling mud your way or for your grave? Your call.
This thread has been pointless for about 2 pages.
Yeah, 2 pages, which interestingly enough coincides exactly with one of your posts. What a straaange coincidence.
Funny how the death of a discussion is brought about not by its contributors but by the peanut gallery who feel compelled to post for no particular reason.
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Also the Lilith is by all intents and purpose a cruiser (YET IT HAS THE ARMOUR OF A CORVETTE) The lilith by all intents and purposes being a said cruiser is not supposed to be able to threaten a destroyer in a very serious manner let alone destroy one.
Why? Because if the Lilith specs are not exaggerated and are not overkill then that must mean that EVERY OTHER SHIP IN FS2 WERE SCREW-UPS. Why? Well according to many of the ppl. here thinking the Ravana should be armed with at least 4 BFReds to start with have 800 k HP and a fighter complement of 300 crafts.
Eh, the Lilith had that armour before anything called a "corvette" even existed. If the Lilith was called a Corvette instead would it suddenly become acceptable? The fact that it's called a Cruiser is irrelevant. And incase people haven't really noticed, ships aren't really scaled all that well in terms of hitpoints. Faulting the Lilith for too many hitpoints is like faulting the Hecate for two few.
Leviathan: 35,000 -- 253m
Deimos: 80,000 -- 717m
Hecate: 100,000 -- 2174m
Are these scaled very portionally? The hecate is three times as long as the Deimos yet only has 25% more armour. The Leviathan is only a third the length of a Deimos yet it has nearly half the number of hitpoints.
One should note that Volition had time to modify the Lilith's stats.
The Fenris only had 8500 hitpoints in FS1, in FS2 it was bumped to 10000. The Lilith was 75000, and remained 75000. And hell if the Lilith never made an appearance would anyone even noticed? It appears in the campaign whether people like it or not, but there's nothing saying that Volition had to use it. Some of the older ships they used so rarely at all . . . if a ship was "broken" why wouldn't they just leave it out?
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No, it doesn't. For one it doesn't have the uber-armor like the Lilith has.
A more correct analogy would be a supporting ship class that has the armor of a ship-of-the-line and the same guns such ship use, while at the same time being constructed with methods, materials and limitation used to build the ship-of-the-line. to my knowledge, no such ship exists.
Armored Cruisers of WWI might be close.
But anyways, I beg differ, and note you cut out the part of the post where I made the the point that Abercrombie's speed and manuverability served in effect as extra armor for her; at 34 knots and with a turning radius just over four times her own length at that speed she would have been very hard to kill. If you doubt that, see how many rounds were exchanged in things like the Battle of the Komandorskis. Three heavy cruisers spent literaly hours slugging it out over ranges of eight to ten miles with gunfire. The sum total of hits for the 3000-odd rounds of 8" shell fired was about 12. Somebody zigzagging at 28 knots is hard target when you have to deal with time-of-flight issues for your guns. Or for another example, take the destroyers and destroyer escorts of Taffy 3, which took on the majority of the heavy gunships of the Imperial Japanese Navy; they lost three of six, but they survived for far longer than their pure durablity merited because they were dashing around almost at random at 30 knots and it's damn difficult to hit a destroyer that doesn't want to be hit.
But since in FS speed and manuverability won't save you from the beams, the Lilth has actual and not functional armor. In any case, the way a Lilth is employed tactically and the way Abercrombie was meant to be are almost identical.
But you quibble over a detail easily explained away.
You're digging your hole again, stop while you can still see the surface.
Regarding a modern destroyer being more powerful than a battleship: modern surface-to-surface missiles are all high-explosive warheads. Some of the very large Russian ones like the Shipwreck or Kingfish could probably put a noticible dent even in the armor belt of an Iowa-class, but aside from a supercarrier, they're likely the only ships in the world that have a hope in hell of taking such a hit and continuing that battle, and definitely the only ones that would live through several. Destroyer-scale weapons, such as the US Harpoon, French Exocet, and Russian Sunburn, would simply be laughed off by the armor belt of a 1940's era heavy cruiser. A battleship? It wouldn't even blink.
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*snip*
You're again switching the discussion to speed instead of armor.
Lilith has armor + firepower and you're constantly comparing it with a ship that has decent firepower + speed, but not the armor. Sorry, but speed is not = armor, no matter what broken logic you try to apply to rationalize that. And even in fS2 a fast small cruiser can evade beams.
I'm trying to talk about logic.
Armor requires more space, makes the ship heavier, makes it slower, so you need so use more powerfull engines to move the ship.
Beam cannons use a helluvalot of power and produce heat - requireing a powerful reactor and cooling systems - and as modern science will tell you - bigger ships can mount bigger reacotrs and bigger ship = bigger surface area for cooling, more room for stuff like armor and weapons.
In that respect the Lilith makes no sense, but then again, neither does the Lucifer. In FS1 it has Flux cannons (3 salvos needed to kill the Galatea) and in FS2 is has..what? SRed? LRed?
Different firepower (not that it appeared in the game) But it just goes to show you that [V] didn't spend much time worrying over continuity or balance (missing nodes, different nodemaps?)
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Hey hold on ww2 era battleships had to my knoledge wooden deck's . Is that correct?
A missile coming on a descending angle would go down and through the bottom of the ship. Also moder day torpedoes that incedently can be fired form destroyers are a hell of a lot more powerfull .
I do remember the fact that ww2 era battleships have this insane thick armour belt around them for taking kinetic dammage from shells. However arent the missiles designed to burn through that armor belt?
I saw this demonstration once somewhere and it was said that some missile had the abilaty to burn thourgh almost 2 m of reinforced steel . They might have exagerated perhaps.
But if they were noit wouldnt that mean BS would get toasted? Well not at first anyway but hell since the BS with its limited main guns wont be able to shoot back at the destroyer the destroyer can just smash the BS to pieces. Make a down angle trajectory on them missiles and the BS is burning faster then you can immagine.
Also the Lilith did not have the same amount of HP in fs1 as it does in FS2 !
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In that respect the Lilith makes no sense, but then again, neither does the Lucifer. In FS1 it has Flux cannons (3 salvos needed to kill the Galatea) and in FS2 is has..what? SRed? LRed?
Different firepower (not that it appeared in the game) But it just goes to show you that [V] didn't spend much time worrying over continuity or balance (missing nodes, different nodemaps?)
The Lucifer isn't even used in FS2, except as a tech room entry... However, the Lilith is.
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Trash if you can point out where a cruiser, no matter how small or fast, "evades" a beam in FS2, then I'll be impressed. I've seen instances get grazed by a beam and pull away, but they never, ever evade a beam that is fired at them.
Seriously, back up your arguments with evidence and concrete examples, not blanket statements and you'll do a whole lot better.
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Hey hold on ww2 era battleships had to my knoledge wooden deck's . Is that correct?
Not usually, typically their decks were made of armor type steel. Even the fairly aged Queen Elizabeth class battleship had a steel hull.
Battleships have more firepower, but a modern destroyer will be able to use what firepower it has extremely accurately.
Also the Lilith did not have the same amount of HP in fs1 as it does in FS2 !
Are you sure about that? Seems to me it has 75000 in both games.
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I've seen beams miss a cruiser completely, especially if it's turning. More comonly it either hits it or the cruiser gets grazed, but we are talking about beam weapons, which are practicely insta-hit, now normal cannon shells.
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I've seen direct-fire beams miss the Colossus (!) with frightening regularity, so its very possible to miss a cruiser.
Slash beams are actually more accurate (they will slash across the target, and may only connect for a very short time, but they almost always at least slash across a small fraction of the hull).
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I've seen slash beams miss entirely, more often than direct-fire beams miss entirely (except Mjolnirs).
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AFAIK missing beams in FS2 has nothing to do with size or distance.
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Hmm interesting i cant remember which country used wooden deck's on its battleships but i do now they got a huge shock when they were sunk.
Also Beam do tend to miss. I could not believe it myself but they do miss so bad at times its horrible.
I Believe it was in the VWatch archives or something that i read the specs of the Lilith a couple of days ago and it clearely stated that the Lilith's armour was not the same in FS1 as it was in FS2 . Hol on il do a check to see .
Edit: My bad the lilith appears to have the same HP in both FS1 and FS2 the only difference i could find was the weapons in FS1 the huge armor was balanced by weapons in FS 2 it has speed armor and firepower.(which is unheard of for any shivan or GTVA warship)
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Except that it is the same.
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Hmm interesting i cant remember which country used wooden deck's on its battleships but i do now they got a huge shock when they were sunk.
How many anti-ship missiles come down at a ship like a bomb anyway? They attack from the side. Watch the ship trials of Phalanx defense guns firing down missiles, the anti-ship missiles are always just above the water. They don't do "plunging fire" as far as I know.
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I think SM2s do, Harpoons and most hypersonic anti-ship missiles come in from the side.
Gun fire of course comes down ballistically.
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Edit: My bad the lilith appears to have the same HP in both FS1 and FS2 the only difference i could find was the weapons in FS1 the huge armor was balanced by weapons in FS 2 it has speed armor and firepower.(which is unheard of for any shivan or GTVA warship)
I would hardly call 20 m/s "speed". It can move, yes, but not very well. Hell, the Sathanas manages 25 m/s. Its got more speed than a destroyer, uber heavy armor (thanks to supercap flag), and unstoppable firepower (courtesy of 4 BFREDs). It apparently is heard of in the Shivan armada.
Oh, look there's the Iceni: 35m/s, 90,000 HP, 3 BGreens. An Iceni will kill a Moloch with the (almost) same ease a Lilith takes down an Aeolus. Paired BGreens, it'll bring down the Moloch in less than a minute and take trivial damage from its single frontal SRed. Speed, armor and firepower apparently is heard of for Terrans.
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Edit: My bad the lilith appears to have the same HP in both FS1 and FS2 the only difference i could find was the weapons in FS1 the huge armor was balanced by weapons in FS 2 it has speed armor and firepower.(which is unheard of for any shivan or GTVA warship)
Balanced by weapons in what context? You're looking at the FS1 stats in FS2 terms . . the Lilith was well armed by Freespace1 too. While the Cain had fighter-mounted shivan lasers, the Lilith has full turrets. By the wiki the Lilith had 6 Shivan Turrets, 1 Shivan Hvy Laser and 2 Cluster Bomb. Compare this to Orion which had 5 Huge Turrets and 11 Terran Turrets. Only 16 turrets? The Lilith has nearly half the firepower of an Orion and better fighter defences (though I'm sure the Shivan turrets, as per normal, are inferior for whatever reason) plus more than half the number of turrets (total of 9).
EDIT - oh my bad, according to the wiki the Shivan Turret actually does more damage than the Terran Turret (while the Terran Huge dishes out less damage per second than the Terran Turret). So in actuality the Lilith in FS1 _does_ have around half the firepower of an Orion Destroyer. Some things never change.
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The Shivan Turret Laser is the best blob in terms of average damage per second (or was it the Megafunk?)
However, you do have to remember that the Orion's Terran Huge Turrets are triple mounts. They fire three times as often, meaning an orion in actuality mounts 15 THT's on 5 turrets. 15 THT + 11 TT = 26 turrets.
When you factor in the fact that Shivan Turret Lasers are better than TTs and THTs, then the Lilith ends up with somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 the firepower of an Orion, leaning closer to 1/2.
EDIT: Here's the math:
Lilith (FS1)
STL = 50 DPS x 6 = 300
SHL = 30 DPS x 1 = 30
Shivan Cluster = 3 x 2 = 6
Total: 336 DPS
Orion (FS1)
THT = 41.7 DPS x 15 = 625.5
TT = 43.8 DPS x 11 = 481.8
Total: 1107.3 DPS (approx 3.3x Lilith)
Lilith (FS2)
5 STL = 250
2 Shivan Cluster = 6
SAAA = 20
LRED = 1359
Total = 1635 DPS
Orion (FS2)
12 THT = 500.4
3 TT = 131.4
3 AAAf = 72
3 TerSlash = 549
3 BGreen = 2328
Total = 3577.8 = (approx 2.2x Lilith)
The gap narrowed quiet a bit, but it's all in the form of a single turret. A lucky TerSlash or two can remove it.
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The Shivan Turret Laser is the best blob in terms of average damage per second (or was it the Megafunk?)
However, you do have to remember that the Orion's Terran Huge Turrets are triple mounts. They fire three times as often, meaning an orion in actuality mounts 15 THT's on 5 turrets. 15 THT + 11 TT = 26 turrets.
Eh, is that triple mount thing firing three times as often actually true? Or does the ship simply alternate firing points when it fires??
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No, they're three separate turrets.
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Oh, i thought they fired with three times the strength, like in a fighter. Meh, heres an idea.
A few pages back someone mentioned RTS Games. So, anyone here play or has played Age of Empires II (that's the one i've got). The Elite War Elephant has 600 htps and does 20 damage, a militia has 40 htps and does 4 damage. The elite war elephant has 1500% more htps, and 500% more damage. It's not unbalanced. Can someone tell me why?
Here's a hint. The Elite War Elephant is far more expensive and takes far more time to make than the militia (you have to go through all the ages and that), it is a far more advanced, and far slower.
The Lilth is rare, 1 is seen in the FS2 campaign, 4 are seen in the Conflict/Derelict : The Great War. I'm not going to start counting fenris' or leviathons and such, they are far weaker, and far cheaper. Though for the price of one Elite War Elephant you can buy 3 militia, which the EWE can PWN in seconds.
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The Lilth is rare, 1 is seen in the FS2 campaign, 4 are seen in the Conflict/Derelict : The Great War. I'm not going to start counting fenris' or leviathons and such, they are far weaker, and far cheaper. Though for the price of one Elite War Elephant you can buy 3 militia, which the EWE can PWN in seconds.
Yeah, I said the a little while back that the Lilith is good because it was expensive and it's rarity is the balance to its firepower but no one bothered to take any notice.
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A modern destroyer has the obvious advantage over a WW2 battleship of superior range.
Rocket assisted projectiles are starting to increase cannon range. There's also a warhead design that burns fuel not for propulsion but for better aerodynamics.
I've heard knowledgeable people (military historians) speculate than an Exocet may be able to penetrate a battleship's armour belt. During the first Gulf War, an Iraqi Silkworm (A 1950s Chinese copy of a Russian design, still very common) was heading for an Iowa-class battleship, but was destroyed by a British warship. There is genuine doubt as to what kind of damage it would have done had it hit.
NATO codenames two entirely different weapons Sunburn. One is rocket powered, the other is ramjet powered and has exceptional range.
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No, they're three separate turrets.
Actually, it goes ( "Terran Huge Turret" "Terran Huge Turret" "Terran Huge Turret" ), meaning its one turret, with three barrels and three guns. They don't fire at the same time, but one right after the other. Still, its closer having 15 THTs not 5.
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Hmm interesting i cant remember which country used wooden deck's on its battleships but i do now they got a huge shock when they were sunk.
How many anti-ship missiles come down at a ship like a bomb anyway? They attack from the side. Watch the ship trials of Phalanx defense guns firing down missiles, the anti-ship missiles are always just above the water. They don't do "plunging fire" as far as I know.
A mortar is a muzzle-loading indirect fire weapon that fires shells at low velocities, short ranges, and high-arcing ballistic trajectories. It typically has a barrel length less than 15 times its caliber.
A howitzer is a type of artillery piece that is characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at trajectories with a steep angle of descent. In the taxonomies of artillery pieces used by European (and European-style) armies in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the howitzer stood between the "gun" (which was characterized by a longer barrel, larger propelling charges, smaller shells, higher velocities and flatter trajectories) and a "mortar" (which has the ability to fire projectiles at even higher angles of ascent and descent).
High angles of descent.
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I'm pretty sure Lilith cruisers are probably made of somekind of rare alloy and a very powerful reactor also made out of rare materials. I would imagine it to have a crack crew as well. It also fits in with the Shivan's mysterious background. No one really knows why there are Lilith class cruisers.
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Oh, i thought they fired with three times the strength, like in a fighter. Meh, heres an idea.
A few pages back someone mentioned RTS Games. So, anyone here play or has played Age of Empires II (that's the one i've got). The Elite War Elephant has 600 htps and does 20 damage, a militia has 40 htps and does 4 damage. The elite war elephant has 1500% more htps, and 500% more damage. It's not unbalanced. Can someone tell me why?
Here's a hint. The Elite War Elephant is far more expensive and takes far more time to make than the militia (you have to go through all the ages and that), it is a far more advanced, and far slower.
The Lilth is rare, 1 is seen in the FS2 campaign, 4 are seen in the Conflict/Derelict : The Great War. I'm not going to start counting fenris' or leviathons and such, they are far weaker, and far cheaper. Though for the price of one Elite War Elephant you can buy 3 militia, which the EWE can PWN in seconds.
Milita is a basic human, barely trained soldier, the War Elephant is ...well, and ELEPHANT..not even human. How bigger than a human is the elephant?
If you'd want to compare, a more accurate comparison would be a human footman vs. a super-knight of darkness (TM) where that knight of darkness, despite being just a human itself and wearing similar armor and sword, somehow has 10x more HP and does 10X more damage.
Balanced in game due to the presense of a Paladin? Yes. Balanced by logic...hardly, but then again this is a fantasy example. :lol:
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My .02:
The weather deck on the Iowa class, as seen, is covered by wood:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/BB61_USS_Iowa_BB61_broadside_USN.jpg/300px-BB61_USS_Iowa_BB61_broadside_USN.jpg)
Underneath the wood (and it was a nice couple inches thick) was 1.5 inches of special treatment steel (STS, something up to 2x harder to penentrate than normal armor steel). Any shell, bomb or missile (maybe excluding bunker-busters) would detonate on this deck, and probably drill a hole in it. That's why the next deck was armored, and measured 6 inches in thickness, including over an inch of STS (a CD-ROM is about 4.7 inches in diameter, to show the scale). That way the explosion of the projectile that hit the weather deck would have a whole 7-8 feet of air to loose it's shockwave before even touching the armor.
Also- stuff hitting a bunch of wood backed by STS could bounce off or skid across it, and that's why there is only 7.5 inches of steel, configured to create 'spaced armor' protecting the top of the ship. If anything was powerfull enough to cause the armor deck to shatter and throw pieces of metal around, there was the splinter deck, .625 inches thick to stop the debris.
Now for the hard part- low angle projectiles.
These are to be decapped (WW II AP shells had an armor piercing 'cap' on the nose to better drill through battleship belts) or detonated (more modern stuff) on a layer of STS, and then the de-capped shell, or explosion would fly through an outboard room inside the ship. After doing that, it would hit the 12.1 inch thick belt (again with some STS on it), that was inclined 19 degrees to deflect some of the energy that was hitting it.
Protection against torpedoes is another, long story. Whoever wants to find out can go ahead and read about it.
How does modern warship armor look like?
P.S. Comparing the Lilith to a monitor is a good idea. The HMS Abercrombie was 102 meters long, had battleship guns and cruiser armor, at the cost of a 6 knot max speed.
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Maybe the Shivans are still playtesting the Lilith, and all the bug reports they're sending home to the Great Programmers of Subspace say that it's a seriously broken ship.
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:wtf: Wait a minute... How exactly did we get from the Lilith to wooden decks?
I agree with Killer Whale on the War Elephant thingy. And a few pages back someone said that the rarity of the Lilith makes it balanced. In an unconventional way, yes, but balanced nonetheless.
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Back in color...
IIRC AlphaOne posted something about BB's having wooden decks and the fact that an anti-ship missile would shoot through the ship and xplode on the bottom...
so I got motivated to write a few things.
Also- maybe we should stick closer to monitors when talking about Liliths. The SC doesn't actually look like an elephant to me....
More like a mouse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus)
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What's the difference between a bomber taking down a destroyer and a Lilith taking down a destroyer? It makes more sense to me that a cruiser is able to take down a destroyer than a bomber. It is a capital ship, after all. In RL a (lone) bomber can take down a large capital ship in a few shots if it's lucky, but the capital ship is more likely to be taken down by another ship (be it with guns, missiles or torpedoes).
As an aside, just because something's small doesn't mean it has to be weaker. Nuclear bombs seem to stay the same size and they get more and more powerful.
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A single bomber isn't supposed to be able to take out a destroyer.
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What's the difference between a bomber taking down a destroyer and a Lilith taking down a destroyer? It makes more sense to me that a cruiser is able to take down a destroyer than a bomber. It is a capital ship, after all. In RL a (lone) bomber can take down a large capital ship in a few shots if it's lucky, but the capital ship is more likely to be taken down by another ship (be it with guns, missiles or torpedoes).
As an aside, just because something's small doesn't mean it has to be weaker. Nuclear bombs seem to stay the same size and they get more and more powerful.
And the bigger ship is more likely to take out the smaller ship. The bomber on the other hand, has a pretty decent chance of taking out the destroyer but has an even lower chance of escaping but they're more expendable than cruisers.
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Well, several bombers with a couple of fighters for escort would be perfectly capable of taking out a destroyer, while:
a) being possibly cheaper than a badass cruiser like a Lilith
b) having possibly less crew = less casualties
c) it's harder for big ships to take out several smaller targets than one big
Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?
Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.
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Beams probably have some kind of protection for that kind of accidents. It would just be dumb not to.
However, I think the Lilith is dangerous for the Shivans, which makes it rare (yelling about the price doesn't make sense when we're talking about the Shivans). It could be the reactor. It might be a high-output reactor, which isn't stable and explodes sometimes. Or so.
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yelling about the price doesn't make sense when we're talking about the Shivans
"Price" is a convenient shorthand for expendable resources, such as materials and manhours (some of which may be more valuable than others due to differing skill sets), and including resources used for the tools to make it, and indeed materials used for the tools to make the tools. Real world prices aren't arbitrary, you know.
The Lilith could be using technologies and techniques radically different from the Cain for energy generation and armour, that for whatever reason are harder to implement.
The above discussion of naval cannon is IMO a poor analogy. It is all basically the same technology, and we know that size is directly related to the firepower produced. The use of LReds could be limited by energy generation, and different power technologies could have radically different power to volume to cost ratios.
Edit: better analogies. Cannon firing base-bleed shells for a massive range increase. Same size as conventional cannon, but much greater range for a higher cost per projectile. Or compare conventional cannon to rail guns, which the DD(X) class destroyers were reportedly going to use. Rail guns are more expensive partly because the rails need to be replaced frequently.
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Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?
Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.
Ever hear of circuit breakers? The beam goes down or overheats, the circuit breaks, no power from the reactor.
The excess energy is probably then bled off though radiators or whatnot into space.
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yelling about the price doesn't make sense when we're talking about the Shivans
"Price" is a convenient shorthand for expendable resources, such as materials and manhours (some of which may be more valuable than others due to differing skill sets), and including resources used for the tools to make it, and indeed materials used for the tools to make the tools. Real world prices aren't arbitrary, you know.
The Lilith could be using technologies and techniques radically different from the Cain for energy generation and armour, that for whatever reason are harder to implement.
You're still talking about the Shivans.
Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?
Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.
Ever hear of circuit breakers? The beam goes down or overheats, the circuit breaks, no power from the reactor.
The excess energy is probably then bled off though radiators or whatnot into space.
:yes:
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Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?
Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.
Ever hear of circuit breakers? The beam goes down or overheats, the circuit breaks, no power from the reactor.
The excess energy is probably then bled off though radiators or whatnot into space.
Well, yeah, I thought about that, but those radiators must be helluva efficient if they are to vent all this energy into space. And as we know from the Colossus, the GTVA isn't that good with heat sinks and all that beam installations (although this could be the case of Collie's age). Perhaps this would explain why smaller ships, like Fenrises and Leviathans or even Aeoluses (sp?) get those crappy SGreens with ridiculous recharge time - their heat sinks just couldn't manage anything bigger or faster. Now, what kind of heat sinks do Sathani and Liliths have if they are able to fire those uberbeams so often...
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How did the GTVA manage to put enough heat sinks into a Mjolnir to make it fire once every 7 seconds (as opposed to 10 for a LRED)?
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The reason the beams do so much damage is because chances are the target won't be in their FOF for long.
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The Mjolnir#home beam has the same recharge (albiet a lower damage rating)
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Basicly less power output or damage output for a shorter recharge time. Whichever way you slice it the GTVA seems to be gaining ground in this area and catching up to the shivans . Crude and not very practical for the moment but then again they are brand new tech . It still has time to mature and develop into something far more deadlier.
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How did the GTVA manage to put enough heat sinks into a Mjolnir to make it fire once every 7 seconds (as opposed to 10 for a LRED)?
since nobody is ever aboard a mjolnir, it can use more effective (albeit dangerous) methods of cooling.
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How did the GTVA manage to put enough heat sinks into a Mjolnir to make it fire once every 7 seconds (as opposed to 10 for a LRED)?
since nobody is ever aboard a mjolnir, it can use more effective (albeit dangerous) methods of cooling.
Possibly. I think that all those spires have something to do with cooling systems - maybe gigantic radiators ? I guess that it won't take the GTVA really that long to miniaturize this technology and incorporate it in the bigger ships. No more than 5 years if I were to guess.
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Look at it this way- Mjolnirs are newer than modern GTVA capital ships, and we only seen them in 1 mission. Their beam cannons/heat sinks should be newer than on other ships. Unless I'm mistaking on the tech age, due to the time . . .
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We do get some indications about the Mjolnir being brand new tech for the GTVA and are treated almost like prototipes. Nevertheless they are much more new that the BGreen beam canons. ANd are more new then the Hecate or the Deimos or even the Erynies since the Erynies had to have been developed for at least a few years to get to op eval with the SOC and since the Mjolnir never got a field test untill the whole blow 'em up fast thing.........
No more then a few years to miniaturize the tech and implement it into cruiser corvettes and destroyers but IMHO it will be a brand new very powerfull and expensive ship that will use them first.
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The Mjollnir#Home beam does almost the same sustained damage / second as the BGreen, whereas the Mjollnir is a truely powerful beam.
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Do you reckon they'll ever stop flickering so much? Surely this would increase damage to focus the beam better - or has this allready been taken care of in FS2_Open?
btw, I never thought the mjollnirs were that powerful - I only really looked at their damage per second in the table files, which isn't much, but I didn't notice the recgarge time...
On a side note, once I had a Colossus with all 64 turrets or whatever it has on BFReds, recharge time 1 second. Then I sent in a Sathanas and watched it go down like a Sath vs Leviathan - well, almost. And then the Collie went into subspace, and watched beams coming out of nowhere moving at 867 ms-1 .
EDIT: now that is what I call balance. ;)
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Flickering? The MVP adveffects beams do not have this issue. They're all smooth.
However, the GTVA beams are like a hazy line, while the Shivan ones, you can see the energy flowing inside the beam in a very evil way.
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The Lilith crams awesome firepower into a tiny package, but the Shivans don't seem to have many of them. This suggest either exorbitant cost or limited capabilities.
I don't really know anything about standard cruiser architecture/crew sizes etc, but how does this sound: The Lilith is fully automated and carries only a tiny crew; this frees up space for additional armour plating, larger weapons and an enormous power plant to support them. However, it doesn't even have enough crew to remain combat-ready around the clock, let alone the manpower to do any maintenance in-flight... it's great for a quick assault or reinforcement during a battle but can't perform typical cruiser duties, making the demand for the ship quite limited.
Terrans and Vasudans have no interest building an equivalent since it wouldn't be cost effective; a few wings of fighters/bombers armed with Maxim Cannons would have the same stand-off anti-capital capability (and also risk being thwarted by a few volleys of Trebuchets).
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:welcomesilver:
I don't think the cost matters for the Shivans, generic Hive mind and alien theories don't tend to give cost so much importance. In my opinion it could be a pocket and versatile weapon with an exaggerated table entry(hitpoints, LRed).
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The lilith is IMHO essentially a flying beam cannon.
I reckon about 2/3 of it's space is dedicated to the focuing coils and reactors and other gizmos needed for beam cannons. The rest consists of the Subspace drives and normal space engine, heavy armour, defence turrets and a small command area.
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Yeah, its just a Shivan Mjolnir on engines.
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I think it must have some command ability...I mean, the fact that it has an overkill weapon it doesn't make it an "all muscle, no brain" thing.
Try to imagine the situation...Shivan ships get separed, a group of Cains and Rakshasas remains with a Lilith. Which ship should partially tke control over them?
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The one with the biggest command centre :nervous:
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Which should be the strongest one too, IMO...
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Which should be the strongest one too, IMO...
That's too obvious. Its should be on the weakest one so noone notices it.
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Which should be the strongest one too, IMO...
That's too obvious. Its should be on the weakest one so noone notices it.
And so that anyone can kill it easily.
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Which should be the strongest one too, IMO...
That's too obvious. Its should be on the weakest one so noone notices it.
And so that anyone can kill it easily.
Unless you're playing along, you didn't notice he was joking.
The Lilith could be used for commanding other ships, and as seen in FS1 even a Cain (the Taranis) could do so.
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Shivan General #1: The Terrans Expect our command ships to Destroyers or bigger. Lets make them the last class anyone would expect.
Shivan General #2: Cain, Lilith or Rakshassa?
Shivan General #1: Erm I would say Cain because even a Cain can do the job of being a command ship, but i'll go with a Lilith...their tough SOBs.
Shivan General #3: They may anticipate that we hide our C-ships by making them cruisers. Have either of you heard of hiding in plain sight? It means make the command ship the obvious choise - like a Ravana or Lucifer. Because its sooo obvious the will overlook it.
Random Shivan: Those will never work because those suggestions are too too crazy. Make the command ship a pathetically weak fighter like a basilisk or Aeshma. No one with any sense would ever think of or expect that
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The Lilith is an awful bugger to take down. I need to send at least 4 bombers and 8 fighters to ensure destruction of the target. That's what I send for destroyers. Heaven only knows what will happen if this so called "Corvette" class of war vessel gets built. Damn GTVI and GTA/PVN High Command can be so difficult at times..
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Oh, I just got it.
In retail FS and FS2, Cains and Liliths are visually identical.
Shivan General #1: Erm I would say Cain because even a Cain can do the job of being a command ship!
Shivan General #2: Then lets slap some extra armor and a bigger guns on it.
Shivan General #1: Now, that, is thinking.
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Uhm the Shivans have been quickly dispatched when, without the Lucifer, there was nothing controlling them.
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Uhm the Shivans have been quickly dispatched when, without the Lucifer, there was nothing controlling them.
That's not canon, that's commonly accepted fanon. Give me some canon evidence and I'll believe you.
The Lilith is an awful bugger to take down. I need to send at least 4 bombers and 8 fighters to ensure destruction of the target. That's what I send for destroyers. Heaven only knows what will happen if this so called "Corvette" class of war vessel gets built. Damn GTVI and GTA/PVN High Command can be so difficult at times..
Wow, only 12 small ships to take down a destroyer? No wonder you and your piss weak Galatea got vaporized. :P
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FS2 Intel entries?
BTW check INFA Internal...
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FS2 Intel entries?
Quote said intel entries.
BTW check INFA Internal...
I don't know which smiley or wisecrack one-liner would be good enough for this occasion, so I guess I'll just check anyway.
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"32 years after the Great War, we still know almost nothing about the Shivans.
Physically, the Shivans have multiple, compound eyes and five legs with claw-like manipulators. Their insect-like carapace does not appear original to the creature's physiognomy, suggesting the Shivans are a cybernetic fusion of biology and technology. The integrated plasma weapon also exhibits properties of an organic-artificial fusion. The weapon may be a kind of focusing device powered by the energy of the being itself, though this point is the subject of heated controversy.
These details are cited as evidence that the Shivans could not have evolved as the Terran or Vasudan species had, but that they were likely constructed by another entity. Only a handful of Shivans have ever been captured, and all research on live specimens ended with the GTI's Hades rebellion in 2335. The results of these studies remain highly classified.
Though the Shivans are obviously xenocidal, their motives and origins have yet to be determined. According to Ancient artifacts, the Shivans seem to possess some kind of sensitivity to subspace disturbances. We do not know if the Shivans returned to this corner of the galaxy by chance, by cycle or pattern, or by their detection of Terran-Vasudan subspace travel.
Xenobiologists know very little about Shivan society. A leading hypothesis is the hive mind theory, arguing that Shivan society is broken down in specialized functions driven by a collective intelligence. The most convincing evidence supporting this theory is the behavior of Shivan forces following the destruction of the Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts caution against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior. Shivan communication seems to occur in the electromagnetic spectrum, though efforts to decode their transmissions have yielded no meaningful results to date."
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Alright then.
Still, the Shivan fleet wasn't in complete meltdown, the Hellfire fleet did in fact try to regroup and plan a strategic attack.
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That can be connected to what I said about the Lilith a few posts ago. The Hellfire was a Demon, the strongest ship among the one that remained.
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It says 'the behavior of Shivan forces', rather than explicitly state that they were quickly dispatched.
You assume they were quickly dispatched, but there really isn't any canon evidence. It states it supports the hive-mind hypotheses, but really, destroying all the flagship of any fleet would throw the forces into disarray, especially if they were spread out and proper chain-of-command couldn't be reestablished.
Btw, Mobius, I'm confused about which side you're on again >.>
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That can be connected to what I said about the Lilith a few posts ago. The Hellfire was a Demon, the strongest ship among the one that remained.
Yeah if you read my theory again, then you'd find that I actually included the possibility of lesser hives in my one.
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Although your theory has many good and valid points I'd like to base discussions on canon sources...
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Although your theory has many good and valid points I'd like to base discussions on canon sources...
I was just saying that I wasn't the one who dismissed the lesser hives theory.
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In any case fanon theories shouldn't count(here)...
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No elaborate theories are needed to explain how a ship to perform extremely well for its class yet isn't seen in large numbers.
The best real-life example I can think of: if we had a cold war-era submarine simulator with the same level of depth as Freespace (so table entries for speed, durability, power output etc but no information on costs, ease of maintenance, ability to actually do its job for extended periods of time) the Lira class would beget many comments of OMFG IMBALANCED!
For those not familiar with it, the craft featured full automation, a titanium hull and a liquid-metal-cooled reactor; performance was beyond impressive but their actual military value wasn't worth the cost and maintenance issues.
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I don't think the Shivans have economical problems that reduce the number of Liliths they can produce.
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The Shivans would have economical limitations, unless they are a LOT more advanced than they show (to the extent where pretty much anything goes). Whether their economy resembles any known to us doesn't matter; snippets seen during Playing Judas for example seem to indicate that they don't use any incomprehensible über-tech to construct fighting ships.
Their limitations and organisation are pretty hard to judge; the actual battles taking place and the huge fleet of Sathanas Juggernauts don't match. Reasons for not launching their full might against the GTVA are pure speculation.
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This thread is STILL going?
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Yeah :D
The Hive mind theory, if true, doesn't imply economical issues.
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The Shivans would have economical limitations, unless they are a LOT more advanced than they show (to the extent where pretty much anything goes)
80 juggernauts. Enough said, my friend.
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The Hive mind theory, if true, doesn't imply economical issues.
what about material issues? if you need some sorta super rare metal to use in a dangerous chemical reaction that could kill shivans both aboard the ship AND during construction just to power the thing, then yeah, I think there (or is it their?) would be issues.
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what about material issues? if you need some sorta super rare metal to use in a dangerous chemical reaction that could kill shivans both aboard the ship AND during construction just to power the thing, then yeah, I think there (or is it their?) would be issues.
There would certainly be issues, but I don't think it has anything to do with money or labor strikes.
And it's there, "their" is possessive (as in "The Shivan was over there" and "The Shivan was their pet")
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80 Juggernauts...deployed to destroy Capella. It doesn't mean their max number of Juggernauts is 80 :P
what about material issues? if you need some sorta super rare metal to use in a dangerous chemical reaction that could kill shivans both aboard the ship AND during construction just to power the thing, then yeah, I think there (or is it their?) would be issues.
The Lilith is heavily armored and has one LRed beam. There's nothing about it that implies gathering rare materials...
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80 Juggernauts...deployed to destroy Capella. It doesn't mean their max number of Juggernauts is 80 :P[/color]
Agreed, unless Capella was like mindblowingly important or something, the Sathanes had to be expendable for them to sacrifice them like that. Which is why I think that the theories saying the Shivans only have 80 jugs yet only used Capella as a signal to scare the GTVA are absolute bull****.
The Lilith is heavily armored and has one LRed beam. There's nothing about it that implies gathering rare materials...
Rare materials for the armor? You can't just use thicker armor or have more layers, it has to be something different.
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Good point about the material, maybe it is incredibly rare...so that there aren't ships larger than a cruiser protected by it. Who knows...
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80 Juggernauts...deployed to destroy Capella. It doesn't mean their max number of Juggernauts is 80 :P
what about material issues? if you need some sorta super rare metal to use in a dangerous chemical reaction that could kill shivans both aboard the ship AND during construction just to power the thing, then yeah, I think there (or is it their?) would be issues.
The Lilith is heavily armored and has one LRed beam. There's nothing about it that implies gathering rare materials...
there is nothing to imply that it has rare metals or somesort, but that is really the only explanation for having such a powerful ship and not building a lot of them.
besides there has to be a reason that you can't put a lred on a small ship. my guess would be that small generators are not powerful enough to make a beam like that. so, on a lilith they use a very advanced , dangerous and costly (in terms of rare materials) generator.
Good point about the material, maybe it is incredibly rare...so that there aren't ships larger than a cruiser protected by it. Who knows...
well the only time I can remember a lilith is when you had to capture it in fs1. maybe the shivans wanted
it to be captured. they left their best tech for us so that we wouldn't resist taking it. remember what happened to the station that took it, right? it was just so that the shivans would find the GTA's best, nearby base so that they could come and destroy it.
heh, or maybe the shivans are just playing with us...
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The Taranis was a Cain.
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ok then... when did we see any liliths?
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There were a few in FS1, but they weren't very plot significant. The Zenith and one of the Hellion cruisers were Liliths, but those are the only ones I can name off the top of my head.
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One of the Hellions was a Lilith. The Zenith is a Lilith. The Asuras was initially supposed to be a Lilith. In "Their Finest Hour" you can see another Lilith.
The fact that the Lilith is rare can be easily explained , in a game strong components are usually rare and their number is limited.
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I meant in FS1, the only ones I could name are one of the Hellions and the Zenith. I believe 2 Liliths were part of the Eva's battlegroup, but I forget their designation.
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Why would we limit the discussion to FS1? :wtf:
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I don't know.
Anyway, the Hela is the only Lilith in the FS2 campaign.
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That's probably why the Lilith has one LRed, :v: used that ship once in FS2 and didn't realize it was overkill. :doubt:
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Do we accept Silent Threat? There was one Lilith in the Hellfire group.
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Well yeah Silent Threat is canon...
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I meant in FS1, the only ones I could name are one of the Hellions and the Zenith. I believe 2 Liliths were part of the Eva's battlegroup, but I forget their designation.
They were designated Genma Wing i think...Sounds like someone was a Ranma 1/2 fan
Do we accept Silent Threat? There was one Lilith in the Hellfire group.
I accept the story line from ST as canon, but not the missions. ST was in my opinion a late-Alpha/Beta build of the campaign IMHO and was thus incomplete
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That's probably why the Lilith has one LRed, :v: used that ship once in FS2 and didn't realize it was overkill. :doubt:
Its also because it had to be stronger than the Cain, but there is no MRed.
Its also why the Moloch is pissweak.
I have a feeling we've been through this before.
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I have a feeling we've been through this before.
This thread is on page 16
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I have a feeling we've been through this before.
This thread is on page 16
Why indeed. We're gong in circles :lol:
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I played that mission the other day (Their Finest Hour - though it isn't really) and realised how annoying the Lilith is to stop (in hard). The "fleet" gets destroyed pretty quickly, and the LRed never seems to cease firing... :nervous:
But then I used trebs on it and disarmed and disabled it ;)
EDIT: all with the almost full hull integrity of 3% !
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The reason you should always disable the LRed, do that and the Lilith becomes a heavily armoured Cain.
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That one mission in Blue Planet where you had to scramble around disabling the two Ravanas, one Moloch, and two Liliths was a nightmare. Mostly because of the Liliths.
It's weird how a cruiser can seem more deadly than a destroyer, if only because its anti-fighter weapons cover a greater relative percentage of its surface area.
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... Actually, the Lilith has only one AAAF beam, located beneath and to the rear. Iirc, it can't hit targets behind it. Remove it and the Lilith is easy prey for a well flown fighter.
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Provided said fighter has several minutes to spend strafing said Lilith while ignoring everything else in the mission.
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Lol, true. We still need to remember its one tough cookie to crack. Twin Helios will only dent its armour.
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Well, what can't a lone fighter do with enough time?
The GTVA doesn't need to build ships like the Lilith because they have Maxims... only they never use the huge edge they have.
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They need massive scale Maxims. Like the gauss cannon I made.
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I don't think comparing naval vessels to FS vessels is a good analogy. Not to mention that the way damage and HP work in games has nothing to do with RL at all. Lilith was just a poor balance job.
Wha? :wtf: Aren't you the same Trashman who in several threads tried to prove that battleships in FS would be massively more powerful than any other ship class ever specifically by doing exactly that?
I don't really understand this argument. I read 16 pages (well, about 12 - I skimmed all the WW2 stuff) and basically got... nowhere. Canon is canon. The lilith is canon. [V] had time to change it, they had time to balance it, they chose not to. Hell, creating an MRed would have taken all of, what, a minute? Maybe 10 if they wanted to put new beam effects on it.
Thus, the Lilith as it exists now is canon. Various real world examples have been posted to support the potential existence of a ship like this, they're ignored. The Abercrombie is perfect - so it's got speed instead of strength - speed, back in the day, was probably of equivalent value to strength in FS2 as they both translate directly into battlefield survivability.
Why on earth is rarity or expense not a valid balancing point for the lilith? (In the insane world where you need balance against a killing machine in a fighter who is perfectly capable of killing any ship in the game, or for that matter, the insane world where you need balance in a shipset of a game where balancing occurs at the mission design phase)
More to the point, what are the anti-Lilith people hoping to accomplish? Wide ranging consensus that the Lilith is a silly ship that will mean absolutely nothing because everyone will continue using it because its canon? So, even if you "win", it's utterly meaningless.
Think about the Lilith from a FREDding perspective. Here we have a small Shivan ship that can't launch fighters, but can utterly maul a cruiser or a corvette 90% of the time. That right there is storytelling gold. Or you have aq ship that looks like a Cain, command mistake it for a cain and boom - awesome mission fodder. You people should be loving the Lilith, loving that [V] gave us this amazingly cool, hyper powered ship and made it canon, loving the mission potential of the thing
I just don't understand it.
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You are a wise man, BlackWolf. I think your points are the closest this thread has come to a conclusion so far, and while they are doubtless going to be disputed, I think they're very strong.
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That one mission in Blue Planet where you had to scramble around disabling the two Ravanas, one Moloch, and two Liliths was a nightmare. Mostly because of the Liliths.
It's weird how a cruiser can seem more deadly than a destroyer, if only because its anti-fighter weapons cover a greater relative percentage of its surface area.
No, the Lilith is a nightmare because its LRed can actually take a beating. Unlike the Ravana's which can be relatively quickly killed with even conventional armament (and by conventional I mean non-Trebs or bombs).
More to the point, what are the anti-Lilith people hoping to accomplish? Wide ranging consensus that the Lilith is a silly ship that will mean absolutely nothing because everyone will continue using it because its canon? So, even if you "win", it's utterly meaningless.
. I just don't understand it.
I think part of the problem is that in many user made campaigns the Lilith is no longer rare. Because people tend to over-use it. And then people forget what the original campaign is all about, they just keep seeing this smae ship beating the crap out of everything they've got. It's like in the favourite faction thread, someone said they like the GTVA because "in blue planet, they were really cool". Well Blue Planet isn't canon, and arguably in many ways they GTVA doesn't behave like the GTVA of FS2. But people take 3rd party missions as the norm whether deliberately or not.
But yeah, Lilith rocks.
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I would expect nothing less from a ship-class named for Adam's exiled first wife
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I just read the entire thread.
*dies*
But seriously, I'll say something meaningful. I'd appreciate it if you'd not begin to reply to it before you've read it all.
The "How I would have made it if I were making it" credo: :v: shouldn't have made it as powerful as it is. But they did.
The "It's just a game" argument: a casual player (one who doesn't check the stats and is just playing it to enjoy it) can still enjoy a fight with a Lilith. It works in the main FreeSpace 2 campaign, because the player can disable its main gun, and it works in FreeSpace 1 just fine.
In response to the "realism/economic factors" debate: although other ships in FreeSpace 2 of similar size have nowhere near the firepower of the Lilith, that doesn't mean that it's impossible or even hard to do so. The question you have to ask, though, is under what conditions to do so. While we don't know what sort of economy, if any, the Shivans had, it still takes energy and time to do work. There may be no monetary cost, but there is still an energy/time/material cost. If HP costs some amount of these things, and firepower per unit time does as well, (and probably some other things), then it should cost more energy/time/material to build it. The Shivans have already decided to build a fleet with many distinct types of ship. The Lilith would have to have a specific role.
Musings, you may stop reading if you wish:
Possible roles for the Lilith: Since it's so high a priority for fighter pilots and so easy to disarm, the Lilith doesn't have long to get in and do its job. It probably would be most useful in large-scale battles, where they are smaller and (maybe?) less deadly than the destroyers, and have better survivability than Cains or Rakshasas. Even so, if the force engaging the Shivans has any sensible commander or wing leaders, its main turret would get taken out quickly, and it would sit powerlessly while the rest of the fleet engaged the Shivans' destroyers, corvettes, and whatnot. The trick, then, is to do the damage without being singled out. Once the pilots make the distinction, the Lilith loses its value.
In that sense, it would have been better just to make the Lilith a more heavily armored cruiser than the Cain, but with Aeolus-like anti-fighter defenses. That way, if used in combination with a Cain, its opponents would have to devote fighters to the potentially suicidal role of taking out the "Lilith"'s turrets, or sortie one or more additional warships to engage the Cain. If they choose to spend their time attacking the Lilith first, the Lilith might go down, but the Cain could still finish its work and depart. If they send in another warship, the Cain and/or Lilith might be destroyed, but the area that warship left from would have less protection.
/musings
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In that sense, it would have been better just to make the Lilith a more heavily armored cruiser than the Cain, but with Aeolus-like anti-fighter defenses. That way, if used in combination with a Cain, its opponents would have to devote fighters to the potentially suicidal role of taking out the "Lilith"'s turrets, or sortie one or more additional warships to engage the Cain. If they choose to spend their time attacking the Lilith first, the Lilith might go down, but the Cain could still finish its work and depart. If they send in another warship, the Cain and/or Lilith might be destroyed, but the area that warship left from would have less protection.
Hmmm...like the SC Lamia? So suicidal to attack one of those. :shaking:
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In that sense, it would have been better just to make the Lilith a more heavily armored cruiser than the Cain, but with Aeolus-like anti-fighter defenses. That way, if used in combination with a Cain, its opponents would have to devote fighters to the potentially suicidal role of taking out the "Lilith"'s turrets, or sortie one or more additional warships to engage the Cain. If they choose to spend their time attacking the Lilith first, the Lilith might go down, but the Cain could still finish its work and depart. If they send in another warship, the Cain and/or Lilith might be destroyed, but the area that warship left from would have less protection.
Perhaps, but I detect a clear trend in FS2 by Volition to give the Shivans relatively weak anti-fighter defences. There's basically not one ship that's particularly scary on the Shivan side of things. The Moloch is annoying because of its flak and clusterbabies but it has not AAAf, all the other cruisers have only a single AAAf. And the Destroyers, well their stuff is so spread to hell and back.
[Volition did something clever imo, by making Shivan fighters difficult opponents for the player (strong shields vs Player) but vulnerable to ships (weak hull vs AAAf) to make allied ships useful. While enemy cruisers are difficult opponents for the allied ships (better beams), but weaker vs the player (weak AF capabilities) making them player useful there. So the player can help his ships, but he also can get help from them in a big way too.]
Just as in FS1, often the more lethal missions are against rebel forces because Terran and Vasudan ships have much superior anti-fighter capabilities.
I know a lot of 3rd party ships address these problems, but whether they're "filling a gap" in Shivan forces, or simply ignoring the trend laid down by Volition is up for debate.
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So one day I got bored and started a steel cage death match between the capital ships. I was figuring to use the data for play balancing anything I fredded, you know, picking the right spread of cruisers to just die vs a destroyer if alpha 1 doesn't do the mission right.
All tests involve starting the ships outside of beam range and traveling towards eachother, turning beams on, and closing to about 1k in a good firing arangement for their main batteries. (No I'm not putting sobeks up against the back side of a ravana. that's just not fair or true to the death match ideal.) I ran the battles until 1 ship was destroyed and then recorded the time and hull % of the winner. If the battle seemed weird, I tried a few different angles until I saw a consistent pattern and let that stand. (i.e. The Deimos does a fantastic job of shooting turrents off of superior ships and winning when they can't shoot back. It suprised me.) All ships have stock configuration.
Anyway here is the data from the SC Lilith:
-----SC Lilith WINS------
GTC Fenris 100% 0:05
GTC Leviathan 96% 0:24
GTC Aeolus 93% 0:23
GVC Aten 100% 0:31
GVC Mentu 100% 0:39
SC Cain 95% 0:10
SC Raksasha 81% 0:42
SC Lillith 6% 0:47
GVCv Sobek 99% 1:06
SCv Moloch 89% 1:04
GTD Hecate 21% 1:02
GVD Typhon 12% 1:30
So the Lilith spanks all other cruisers. The double beams of the aeolus are the only things that can scratch the paint before it blows up. The Lilith is actually slightly superior to the Hecate and Typhon destroyers, mano e mano.
----- SC Lilith LOSES -----
GTCv Deimos 16% 5:33
GTD Orion 12% 1:00
GVD Hapshetsut 83% 0:52
SD Demon 56% 0:49
SD Ravana 100% 0:22
NTFr Iceni 27% 0:54
GTSD Hades 100% 0:49
SSD Lucifer 92% 0:38
GTVA Colossus 90% 1:18
SJ Sathanas 98% 0:07
The Deimos and Icini are the only sub-destroyer size ships that can stand a chance, and a lilith hurts them. Most of the victor ships have several beam banks and are able to shoot the beam off the front of the shivan ship consistantly. (It's a big target really). The Deimos can bring 3 beams to bear on a ship if it approaches at an angle, making it superior to the sobek in battle in many cases.
Here are my notes on the battles for your amusement:
The SC Cain (and lilith) usually looses its forward beam canon in the first 2 volleys, and then is effectively defenseless.
The Aten and Mentu lack heavy beam cannons and have much better survivability if they can flank and get out of the firing arc of a cruiser with their superior speed.
The Mentu seems to lack the ability to shoot straight ahead.
All Matches involving the Mentu changed from waypoint travel to ship attack orders.
All Matches vs. cruiser class ships are performed head on.
The GTCv Deimos and GVD Hapshetsut could consistantly destroy the SC Lillith's main turret.
The GTSD Hades has bizzarre firing arcs and only likes to shoot things straight above it.
The SSD Lucifer was granted Lred beams in the arms because their damage output is much closer to the FS1 shivan superlaser.
The GTVA Colossus suffers from drunken gunners on its slash beam turrets.
The Deimos excels at destroying turrets.
The key to fighting a lilith is to target the beam cannon. Every ship that consistently hits the beam cannon on its first or second shot wins. Amusingly, the lilith can blow up a fenris faster than the sathanas can blow up a lilith.
My conclusion is that the lilith is completely overpowered unless you consider the ship as being very expenisve and stripped of everything not relating to guns or armor. This ship really is a flying beam turret and the shivan crew probably has to sleep at their stations and eats cold food from sacks, if the ship has enough fuel to run through lunch time that is. The entire thing must be devoted to the beam. (logically, not canonically of course)
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As I said before, the Lilith makes a good plot point in stories and campaigns.
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As I said before, the Lilith makes a good plot point in stories and campaigns.
Well, so does the violition bravos ship. That doesn't really say anything.
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So how did a Levy take down a lilith? lucky turret hit?
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It parked itself above and behind the Lilith?
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the Lilith's beam can rotate 360 degress on the lower half of the ship which means even if you where behind it, it can still shoot you down, the best place is above the ship or above the thrusters near the engine if you were a capital ship trying to destroy a lilith.
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the Lilith's beam can rotate 360 degress on the lower half of the ship which means even if you where behind it, it can still shoot you down, the best place is above the ship or above the thrusters near the engine if you were a capital ship trying to destroy a lilith.
What I said. :yes:
Actually, that would also be a very good spot for bombers to launch their ordnance, since the SAAA can't hit them there either.
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If I could, I'd make the Lilith the speed of a Leviathan so I could increase the power of the LRed, (an uber-LRed) - not that it needs it anyway!
Just use it like in campaigns like a long-range beam cannon.
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If I could, I'd make the Lilith the speed of a Leviathan so I could increase the power of the LRed, (an uber-LRed) - not that it needs it anyway!
Just use it like in campaigns like a long-range beam cannon.
The BFRed is what you're looking at, I think. Go to FRED2 and change the Lilith's LRed to BFRed, and you're done.
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no androgeos what i mean is, you said that your behind it and didnt say anymore i was trying to make sure people dont take your advice as seriously as that, so no one has to sit behind it and be killed for not known where bhind it :D. however your right with the above part.
i sound like caboose :lol:. sorry androgeos.
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I also tested the Lilith vs Aeolus (probably inspired by this thread's previous life), and the Aeolus's 2 beams had about a 30-40% chance of killing the LRed. After that, either the Lilith was lucky enough to disarm the A's turrets that were facing it, or it got flaked to death pretty quickly. If the LRed survived, the Aeolus was doomed in seconds, unless the ships were close enough to orbit each other, where the LRed would merely scratch the A and send most energy to outer space, because the A moved out of the beam (and it's narrow mid section seems to help with that).
Anyways, the Lilith lost like 1 fight out of 4 or 5.
And if we added a wing of strike craft to both sides (cruiser vs cruiser 1 on 1 fights are rather rare), the Shivan Seige Gun is doomed, and the Shivan strike team dies a painfull death in a fireworks show made by friendly Flak.
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I also tested the Lilith vs Aeolus (probably inspired by this thread's previous life), and the Aeolus's 2 beams had about a 30-40% chance of killing the LRed. After that, either the Lilith was lucky enough to disarm the A's turrets that were facing it, or it got flaked to death pretty quickly. If the LRed survived, the Aeolus was doomed in seconds, unless the ships were close enough to orbit each other, where the LRed would merely scratch the A and send most energy to outer space, because the A moved out of the beam (and it's narrow mid section seems to help with that).
Anyways, the Lilith lost like 1 fight out of 4 or 5.
And if we added a wing of strike craft to both sides (cruiser vs cruiser 1 on 1 fights are rather rare), the Shivan Seige Gun is doomed, and the Shivan strike team dies a painfull death in a fireworks show made by friendly Flak.
Well, the Aeolus IS quite nimble. Pity GTVA only made twenty-four of them, and out of the twenty-four...
/me pauses to note the destruction of the Adamant, Malta, Ertanax, Templar, Alba (?), Loyola, and Pax (?).
...seven of them are gone.
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Alba was a Levi, Pax was a Deimos.
Liberty, Camisard, Hellespont, and Mylae were all destroyed, so make that 10.
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Shivan Siege Gun.
Nice nick name for the Lilith. It fits, too.
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siege gun? the only thing close to that is somtaaws salvaged betusi altered beast destroyer cannon :P.
more like a mobile death box with antennae.
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Shivan ARTILLERY
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ICB(M)'s anyone? :D
if the shivan turret in that lilith was more powerful wonder what damage it could do to a colossus or a sathanas
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Alba was a Levi, Pax was a Deimos.
Liberty, Camisard, Hellespont, and Mylae were all destroyed, so make that 10.
The Camisard was a Fenris/Leviathan IIRC.
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Alba was a Levi, Pax was a Deimos.
Liberty, Camisard, Hellespont, and Mylae were all destroyed, so make that 10.
One more, I think. Was it the NTC Saharan that attacked you in ...But Hate the Traitor?
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Yeah, that was the one.
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That still makes ten.
About the Lilith...wasn't it the splitting image of the Cain in retail FS2?
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Yup.
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There was also the Epigomi (last ship to die in Sicilian Defense).
And I'm very certain Camisard was an Aeolus.
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The .ani is only something like 5 pixels, but yeah, it does look more like an Aeolus.
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That makes eleven. :(
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The Vigilant appeared to be an Aeolus as well.
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Dude... The Aeolus race is endangered...
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Especially since only two dozen were made to begin with (IIRC :nervous:)
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It would probably be extinct by the time of Foxtrot Sierra Theta Holda Revan Echo Echo.
Wonder why they only built 24 of them. I think they're pretty efficient cruisers. And look pretty sleek to boot.
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Well after the shivan and ntf wars, the GTVA is short a whole lot of cruisers, so maybe the ships will be re ordered since they're the best GTVA cruisers.
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If I were them I'd improve it before I made more of them...
even if they are the best cruisers available, the GTVA did just lose half of them
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If I were the gtva I'd concentrate on makeing a blob launcher that can shoot out to 3000 meters and target trebs. and maybe cap shields. That would make one nasty aeolus.
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Here are all the Aeolus cruisers in FreeSpace:
Single:
GTC Adamant
GTC Vigilant
GTC Warwick
GTC Agrippa
GTC Stalwart
GTC Templar
GTC Malta
GTC Ertanax
GTC Sparta
NTC Camisard
NTC Liberty
NTC Epigoni
NTC Loyola
NTC Mylae
NTC Hellespont
NTC Saharan
Multi:
GTC Ascendant*
GTC Ashaton*
GTC Zanthar*
GTC Alpha*
GTC Zeta*
NTC Retribution
NTC Righteous
NTC Vindication
NTC Vengeance
The ones with an asterisk are "simulated".
These are all the confirmed ships. It's implied that there are other Aeoluses but we don't see them in-game. So, depending on your counting strategy, there are 16 (single-player only), 20 (single plus multi), or 25 (single plus multi plus simulated) distinct Aeoluses. So I find it very hard to believe there are only 24 total, especially since the first production run ended before the NTF insurgency even began.
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The canon tech description says there were only 24.
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The canon tech description says there were only 24.
The canon tech description also says the Mentu has anti-ship beams.
Another description says the Hatshepsut has 5 anti-ship beams.
Another describes the Artemis D.H. as being statistically different from the standard Artemis.
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The GTC Aeolus is the first cruiser class ever produced by the RNI shipyards orbiting Laramis II. Only two dozen of these cruisers were put into service in GTVA fleets, with production ending in 2365. Allied Command assigns Aeolus-class ships primarily to guard slow-moving convoys against fighter and bomber wings, as these cruisers are severely out-gunned by most capital ships in service today. Their flak and AAA turrets serve as marvelous deterrents to smaller craft, however.
directly from the tables file..
it never stated how many directly or indirectly.
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it never stated how many directly or indirectly.
Only two dozen of these cruisers were put into service in GTVA fleets, with production ending in 2365.
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It should be noted, that war tends to stimulate the production of more war materials. To have production stop during peace time makes perfect sense, just as it makes sense for production to both resume and ramp-up during war time.
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when i said never stated directly, like was their 24 aeolus ever in service? by your standards
and indirectly like their are 25, and confuses you.
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The canon tech description says there were only 24.
The canonity of the Aeolus tech description is questionable because it is never seen in game (without help)
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The canon tech description says there were only 24.
The canonity of the Aeolus tech description is questionable because it is never seen in game (without help)
Wait... what?
Are you implying that the tech room's descriptions aren't canon?
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Since pople love using the Aeolus, they're trying to find excuses to break the limit of 24 (21 or which actually appear in canon missions, plus two more simulated ones). So, they jump onto any possible hope they can of making the limit of 24 non-canon (in this case, stating that you never actually see it, becaue its not flagged "in tech database")
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That doesn't make sense. 87.5% of all the Aeoli in the GTVA in the third fleet?
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Maybe the Third Fleet lost most of her cruisers during the NTF Rebellion?
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But the Aeoli were made before then, the NTF had several.
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Maybe Laramis II is part of 3rd Fleet territory?
And besides, this topic is about the Lilith.
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Wait... what?
Are you implying that the tech room's descriptions aren't canon?
I'm saying if the player can't generally see it, it never happened. Are the Volition Bravos canon? I think not.
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And the Volition Bravos is in the Tech Room since when?
The Tech Room is part of the game's story and supplies the player with information about the game's universe, so it's canon by default.
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Yes, this topic is about Lilith... :nervous:
Lilith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the demoness Lilith. For other uses, see Lilith (disambiguation).
Lilith (1892), by John Collier.
Lilith (Hebrew לילית) is a mythological female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 4000 BC. Many scholars place the origin of the phonetic name "Lilith" at somewhere around 700 BC despite post-dating even the time of Moses.[1] Lilith appears as a night demon in Jewish lore and as a screech owl in the King James version of the Bible.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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The most well known Lilith legend is the biblical one, in which she's the first woman ever made.
And the Volition Bravos is in the Tech Room since when?
The Tech Room is part of the game's story and supplies the player with information about the game's universe, so it's canon by default.
Yes, but the Aeolus tech description never appears to the player without cheat codes / modification.
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There are cheat codes to reveal a techroom description of the Aeolus?
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Ctrl + Shft + S.. I think
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If the Lilith was pitted in a friendly race with the Aeolus, will the Aeolus win?
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Yes, this topic is about Lilith... :nervous:
Lilith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the demoness Lilith. For other uses, see Lilith (disambiguation).
Lilith (1892), by John Collier.
Lilith (Hebrew לילית) is a mythological female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 4000 BC. Many scholars place the origin of the phonetic name "Lilith" at somewhere around 700 BC despite post-dating even the time of Moses.[1] Lilith appears as a night demon in Jewish lore and as a screech owl in the King James version of the Bible.
Wrong!
This is Lilith!:
(http://www.kuliniewicz.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/lilith-scaled.jpg)
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If the Lilith was pitted in a friendly race with the Aeolus, will the Aeolus win?
The GTC Aeolus goes 30m/s. The SC Lilith goes 20m/s.
The Aeolus will win, unless it gets disabled.
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If there is no evidence to the contrary, I think the Tech Descriptions should be counted as fully canon.
(and lol @ the NGE Lilith)
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But then the Lilith would go past, and it would be disabled, then destroyed by the flak.
What do you think of this? http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/game_art/lineage_2/lilith.jpg
As for this, the 13th result for "Lilith class cruiser":
[attachment deleted by admin]
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I think the Lilith would fall behind, the Aeolus would be like "Eat mai dust lol" and then the Lilith would shove an LRed up its ass.
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lol, the aeolus tech room descriptions dont count you cheated to get them. so can not be counted as canon, unless interplay came back and said yes by cheating that is canon to the storyarc... unless i see truth to that. i dont think this argument will go away.
enough of the aeolus cruiser from me.
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lol, the aeolus tech room descriptions dont count you cheated to get them. so can not be counted as canon, unless interplay came back and said yes by cheating that is canon to the storyarc... unless i see truth to that. i dont think this argument will go away.
Still, if there is nothing to say it ain't true, it should be considered canon. It's in the game. It's just like how the Ganymede is canon, even though it didn't appear in the main campaign.
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I concur with Snail and disagree with Al Tarket. I believe the Aeolus techroom description, like V's statement that the hallfight Shivans are the real Shivans and not some kind of robot or pet, is canon in spite of the fact that it never appears in the main game narrative.
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lol, the aeolus tech room descriptions dont count you cheated to get them. so can not be counted as canon, unless interplay came back and said yes by cheating that is canon to the storyarc... unless i see truth to that. i dont think this argument will go away.
Still, if there is nothing to say it ain't true, it should be considered canon. It's in the game. It's just like how the Ganymede is canon, even though it didn't appear in the main campaign.
Eh, but that's what people are saying. It's NOT in the game, because it never appears in the game. The Ganymede appears in multiplayer, the tech description for the Aeolus does not.
But really, who cares??? People making campaigns are going to use it anyway, no difference either way. People are arguing about nothing.
I concur with Snail and disagree with Al Tarket. I believe the Aeolus techroom description, like V's statement that the hallfight Shivans are the real Shivans and not some kind of robot or pet, is canon in spite of the fact that it never appears in the main game narrative.
I don't really see how that's comparable. Since the species description for the shivans in FS2 shows that same model. The whole pet/robot thing is speculation on the part of the player. Why anyone would assume that they weren't shivans is beyond me anyway.
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Eh, but that's what people are saying. It's NOT in the game, because it never appears in the game. The Ganymede appears in multiplayer, the tech description for the Aeolus does not.
Put it this way: The statement "There are only 24 Aeolus cruisers built" is MORE canon*, if you will, than a statement to the contrary.
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(and lol @ the NGE Lilith)
Arrh, I knew I saw it somewhere. I just couldn't recall it at that moment. Neon Genesis Evangelion is pretty old, but it's still being referenced here and there. :yes:
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I concur with Snail and disagree with Al Tarket. I believe the Aeolus techroom description, like V's statement that the hallfight Shivans are the real Shivans and not some kind of robot or pet, is canon in spite of the fact that it never appears in the main game narrative.
I don't really see how that's comparable. Since the species description for the shivans in FS2 shows that same model. The whole pet/robot thing is speculation on the part of the player. Why anyone would assume that they weren't shivans is beyond me anyway.
Because if you take a good, long look at what we know about the Shivans, there is no reason -- aside from V's statement -- to believe that those creatures were actually Shivans as opposed to sophisticated Shivan sentries, or Shivans in power armor, or the white cells in the corridors of a living Shivan vessel.
The fact that the same image is used in the FS2 techroom entry is because it's the only image the GTVA has of the Shivans.
Material written by V describing the Freespace universe is generally considered canon, except where it specifically contradicts something seen in the games. The Aeolus tech description is just such material.
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Material written by V describing the Freespace universe is generally considered canon, except where it specifically contradicts something seen in the games. The Aeolus tech description is just such material.
Where in the game does its tech description contradict with anything?
The way I see it, the TD is written by V, and comes under a canon heading. The fact that the TD is not seen is irrelevant to me because V wrote the TD, and just because we don't see it doesn't mind that we can discount the TD as non canon. And this is off topic, by the way. Make a new topic if you wanna discuss it.
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Because if you take a good, long look at what we know about the Shivans, there is no reason -- aside from V's statement -- to believe that those creatures were actually Shivans as opposed to sophisticated Shivan sentries, or Shivans in power armor, or the white cells in the corridors of a living Shivan vessel.
Eh, I don't get it. Some marines board some Shivan ship, they're attacked by creatures. The creatures must be shivans. It's that simple. Occam's Razor or whatever.
What information exactly would lead anyone to believe anything to the contrary? What exactly DO we know about the shivans? Even the FS2 tech description tells very little beyond the hive mentality theory.
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so you take it at face value and ignore comments? then by all means im finished here. information like all things are not always 100% accurate no matter if it came from the horses mouth because there will always be a few things that wont be mentioned about that such thing. and you take it at face value and slap a sticker on it calling it canon. then what is canon? something someone made up to say "ok look apparently their are ONLY 24 aeoli and i will not listen to propaganda about 25 or 23. then i start driveling on a about something to do with shivan exo-skeleton which has no bareing on this arguement" and just for the fun of it taking a cheap shot to try throw my comment off. go ahead.
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blah blah blah
Put it this way: The statement "There are only 24 Aeolus cruisers built" is MORE canon*, if you will, than a statement to the contrary.
On the note of there being 25, I wouldn't count the simulated ones as actually existing. Somehow I doubt that there would be a cruiser named the GTC Alpha :doubt:
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On the note of there being 25, I wouldn't count the simulated ones as actually existing. Somehow I doubt that there would be a cruiser named the GTC Alpha :doubt:
There are cruiser-sized transports named Omega, why not a cruiser named Alpha?
But personally I wouldn't count the simulate ships either. Holodeck or hwatever.
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There are 21 that actually count, and 2 (from Aeolus Duel) that are simulated, for a total of 23. See the GTC Aelous talk page. Lists them all.
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Of course, it says 24 were put in service with GTVA fleets, which proves nothing about any non-fleet organizations, the possiblity they might have been sold to non-military concerns (might still be governmental though), or possibly a number of them went direct from the shipyards to mothballs due to temporary insanity on the part of those responsible for military procurement. (Or perhaps the GTVA has a reserve force they don't normally keep active?)
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Material written by V describing the Freespace universe is generally considered canon, except where it specifically contradicts something seen in the games. The Aeolus tech description is just such material.
Where in the game does its tech description contradict with anything?
The way I see it, the TD is written by V, and comes under a canon heading. The fact that the TD is not seen is irrelevant to me because V wrote the TD, and just because we don't see it doesn't mind that we can discount the TD as non canon. And this is off topic, by the way. Make a new topic if you wanna discuss it
I'm agreeing with you. It was just a poorly worded post. I was saying the Aeolus techroom description is canon, and does not specifically contradict anything seen in the games.
so you take it at face value and ignore comments? then by all means im finished here. information like all things are not always 100% accurate no matter if it came from the horses mouth because there will always be a few things that wont be mentioned about that such thing. and you take it at face value and slap a sticker on it calling it canon. then what is canon? something someone made up to say "ok look apparently their are ONLY 24 aeoli and i will not listen to propaganda about 25 or 23. then i start driveling on a about something to do with shivan exo-skeleton which has no bareing on this arguement" and just for the fun of it taking a cheap shot to try throw my comment off. go ahead.
I don't understand what you're saying or who you're saying it to. In case you are unclear on this point, the techroom description about there being only 24 Aeolus cruisers produced was written by Volition, not made up by the community.
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If it's from :v:, it's canon. Simple as that.
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Basically, yeah.
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Yes!
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I wouldn't take tech descriptions that aren't seen ingame as entirely accurate, considering what's written in the Ares and and Zephyrus's descriptions.
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Could you expand on that? I'm not seeing anything wrong, unless you mean the light humor.
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Indeed. Are you by chance referring to the fact that it is inaccurate to say that the Ares handles like a potato, since there have been very few tests concerning the maneuvering capabilities of a potato in outer space?
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Indeed. Are you by chance referring to the fact that it is inaccurate to say that the Ares handles like a potato, since there have been very few tests concerning the maneuvering capabilities of a potato in outer space?
To look at it realistically, all a potato does in space is fly straight; an Ares can fly in all directions.
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Could you expand on that? I'm not seeing anything wrong, unless you mean the light humor.
Exactly, it's taking the piss, I don't think an official GTVA document on the abilities of a spacecraft would refer to a fighter as handling like a potato.
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Perhaps they have potatoes with small thrusters for some reason in the 2300's...?
BTW- back to the Shivan Seige Cannon, aka Maus Tank of Freespace, aka Lilith:
What if most civilizations the Shivans were fighting never invested huge amounts in creating strike craft that really strike, and really heavy armor on the LRed turret or heavy anti-fighter defense was never needed until they've met the GTVA with a load of Maxims and Trebs?
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Perhaps they have potatoes with small thrusters for some reason in the 2300's...?
BTW- back to the Shivan Seige Cannon, aka Maus Tank of Freespace, aka Lilith:
What if most civilizations the Shivans were fighting never invested huge amounts in creating strike craft that really strike, and really heavy armor on the LRed turret or heavy anti-fighter defense was never needed until they've met the GTVA with a load of Maxims and Trebs?
You might have a point there. Keep in mind that they are not us, so they might think differently. Perhaps they thought: "Why build small insects that can be blown up in an instant when you can build something that's bigger, better, stronger?"
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Actually, the way you say it, having a cruiser with a BFG is a pretty good surprise to have in the wings. I mean, the Lilith handles like a cruiser but hits like a destroyer. Its size means that in an initial encounter, it would be discounted, and its similarity to the Cain would make an unassuming opponent assume its just a Cain variant.
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Exactly, it's taking the piss, I don't think an official GTVA document on the abilities of a spacecraft would refer to a fighter as handling like a potato.
Beg differ, it was written for pilots and probably by pilots so it makes sense it sounds like...a pilot.
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Yeah, the techroom is written for you, a pilot.
I would be guessing an official document for a captain of a capital ship would be different.
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When there's a cruiser that hits like a destroyer, I'm waiting for a destroyer hittin like a cruiser... then again, we have the Hecate.
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Exactly, it's taking the piss, I don't think an official GTVA document on the abilities of a spacecraft would refer to a fighter as handling like a potato.
Beg differ, it was written for pilots and probably by pilots so it makes sense it sounds like...a pilot.
None of the ones visible in the techroom have a similar tone to the ones for the Zephyrus and Ares.
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Yeah, the techroom is written for you, a pilot.
I would be guessing an official document for a captain of a capital ship would be different.
He would probably get the tables on FSWiki that detail the ship's default loadout, max velocity, max burn velocity, and so on.
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When there's a cruiser that hits like a destroyer, I'm waiting for a destroyer hittin like a cruiser... then again, we have the Hecate.
The Hecate has a lot of firepower... it just can't bring it all to bear on any particular target.
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I think the Hecate was supposed to be able to hit at targets from all directions. Jack of all trades, master of none. :p
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From the looks of it, the Hecate is a carrier/command center, so its more well rounded, being able to handle fighters, bombers, cruisers, and corvettes - the things it'll most likely be facing. It'd leave the Destroyer-Destroyer combat to Orions.
Well, Liliths? The Hecate's ****ed. Its a wolf in sheep's clothing...kinda. Looking like the most worthless Shivan cruiser, while actually being the bane of destroyers and corvettes alike.
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From the looks of it, the Hecate is a carrier/command center, so its more well rounded, being able to handle fighters, bombers, cruisers, and corvettes - the things it'll most likely be facing. It'd leave the Destroyer-Destroyer combat to Orions.
Well, Liliths? The Hecate's ****ed. Its a wolf in sheep's clothing...kinda. Looking like the most worthless Shivan cruiser, while actually being the bane of destroyers and corvettes alike.
Now that you mention it, the Hecate has, what, four to five engines? How did a single cruiser and its fighter escort disable all of them? Given the Aquitaine's hull integrity at the start of Argonautica, the SC Urobach can't have been a Lilith-class.
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Actually, it has seven. Only four engine subsystems though.
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Actually, it has seven. Only four engine subsystems though.
Definitely not a Lilith's work of art. :p
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I think most of the Hecate's firepower lies in its strike fighter squadrons.
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And in pushing Corvettes and Hatshepsuts around.
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And in pushing Corvettes and Hatshepsuts around.
I think the Hatshepsuts would own a Hecate in mano e mano combat.
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I think the Hatshepsuts would own a Hecate in mano e mano combat.
Mano e mano, man to man, just you and me and my BOMBERS!
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From the looks of it, the Hecate is a carrier/command center, so its more well rounded, being able to handle fighters, bombers, cruisers, and corvettes - the things it'll most likely be facing. It'd leave the Destroyer-Destroyer combat to Orions.
Well, Liliths? The Hecate's ****ed. Its a wolf in sheep's clothing...kinda. Looking like the most worthless Shivan cruiser, while actually being the bane of destroyers and corvettes alike.
Now that you mention it, the Hecate has, what, four to five engines? How did a single cruiser and its fighter escort disable all of them? Given the Aquitaine's hull integrity at the start of Argonautica, the SC Urobach can't have been a Lilith-class.
The SC Urobach was a Rakshasa (I think it showed that or mentioned it in the briefing).
I'd guess it'd fire an SRED at each engine subsystem...and then have some bombers/fighters go after the last one.
And in pushing Corvettes and Hatshepsuts around.
I think the Hatshepsuts would own a Hecate in mano e mano combat.
Sorry, both the Hatshepsut and Hecate are females. :P
Hatshepsut = "foremost of noble ladies"
Hecate = the goddess of witchcraft
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Mano a mano means hand-to-hand. It has nothing to do with men or women.
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But...Snail translated it!
damn this has been massively derailed...
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The hatshepshut wastes the hecate in 1 on 1 combat. The hecates are like wwii aircraft carriers in that they have decent point defense, weak big guns, and have massive combat squadrons and good command ship capabilities. I love their little dual towers in the back. The vasudan ships are more like battleships.
Anyway allow me to speculate on the Lilith some more: The shivans had what amounted to the only shield game in town until the terrans and vasudans stole the tech. I imagine that the capital ships like the lilith were just used against ships and installations with good anti-fighter defense since the shivan fighters and bombers could dispense with anything smaller than a destroyer with no losses (assuming alpha 1 is somewhere else). By freespace 2, gtva fighter and bomber wings are as good as or superior to shivan fighters, so they can take air superiority and blast any cruiser out of existance without even calling in a bomber wing. The lilith is deployed where fighters aren't and alpha 1 only sees 1 in the entire campaign.
Most shivan capital ships take the anti capital ship approach and would need a strong fighter escort. If they are fighting against unshielded fighters with ML-16's like the ancients, terrans, and vasudans before they discover shields, its a complete turkey shoot.
The hecate is a good strategic ship in response to shivan ships. You've got 7 engines so you can always theoretically jump out even after losing an engine to keep the ship out of a shootout with another big cap ship, a good fighter squadron for offense, and just enough firepower to run off a cruiser or help the escorting corvettes that actually do the majority of the cap ship fighting. Jumping the sathanas with the colossus's weight in corvettes would have made for a quick allied win.
I'm rambling.
Anyway, the lillith makes sense if treated as a specialized ship in a campaign doing something like following around a moloch as an assault escort. Even with the hull and LRed, its a cruiser which only poses enough anti fighter weaponry to be considered an annoyance to the fighters a hecate launches. The hecate just has to stay out of range of the Lillith and launch an assault wing.
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I don't know why everyone assumes that the Ancients didn't have shields.
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Because when they encountered shields they freaked out, then failed.
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Because when they encountered shields they freaked out, then failed.
There's a difference between fighter Shields, and Lucifer shields.
The Terrans and Vasudans encountered the Lucifer, freaked out, and would have failed if not for the ancients.
Even unshielded Terrans and Vasudans with ML-16 lasers can take out Shivan ships (with their missile armament). The Ancients would certainly be able to do the same.
The Ancient's story parallels that of the GTA and PVN, that should be clear from the outset. It's reasonable to assume that the Ancients had the same level of success against the Shivans that the GTA and PVN did. But the Ancients, just like the others, could not breach the Lucifer's shields. Nothing matters except the Lucifer.
I think this is another case of people reading fan-brew ships as canon. The Ancients pack, like the AF Kato are NOT canon (ie strong hull and no shields), and never will be. The author likely just created them that way for the sake of uniqueness.
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I only mentioned the ancients since they died. I've never played their fan brew stuff. I would assume that they probably didn't start with shields either, and they never got to beams or intersystem jump drives for fighters from canon.
I was thinking more that in FS1 shivan fighters are really nasty until you get a herc with shields, proms, and banshees, and the lucifer beams are completely in their own class of megadeath. In FS2, everything has beams, and while the shivan cap ships are really "a class A threat" to any friendly cap ships, the shivan fighters are kind of a joke vs gtva craft.
FS1
"I used all my tempests to blow up 1 stupid fighter! What is this cloudy thing around the back end that glows when I shoot it?" "OMFG Lucifer has BEAMZ! Where'd my destroyer go?"
FS2
"Oooooh it's shooting little red blobs at me. EAT KEYSERS!!! *Boom*" "Awww that manticore wing flew too close to the aeolus and they all blew up in a hail of white hot flak." "I've got 2 helios on my air superiority fighter. DIE CRUISER! WEE!" "OMFG everything has beamz! *Boom* ouch, stupid crossfire."
Basically, I can see the Lilith as mobile artillery and was speculating on why that kinda makes sense.
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Basically, I can see the Lilith as mobile artillery and was speculating on why that kinda makes sense.
Thing is you mention how the Lilith has weak AAAf but really that's not anything particular to the Lilith. All Shivan ships have crap AAAf. So really the Lilith isn't any more or less AAAf capable than any other shivan ship, the only thing is, it carries a big gun with it. No Shivan cruiser has more than one AAAf beam. No Shivan Cruiser even has flak. The Moloch, has flak, but no AAAf. The Destroyers have few AAAf beams and what good AF guns they have are scattered to hell and back.
In FS1 the Lilith wasn't nearly as rare, and seemed to be deployed more as a heavy cruiser than anything else. Sometimes leading Cains into battle, sometimes appearing without. I general though, the original FS1 ships seem pretty rare in FS2. With the exception of the Cain.
Artillery as well seems a bad analogy for what is essentially a naval battle, not a land based one. There's no artillery in sea battles. Just guns, and bigger guns. Land Based artillery also tends to be rather vulnerable to attack, but the Lilith packs much heavier armour than its lesser counterparts (the Rak and Cain).
The Lilith is just a kickass cruiser.
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The Lilith is just a kickass cruiser.
I endorse this message.
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The Lilith is just a kickass cruiser.
I endorse this message.
I endorse it too.
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I don't think artillery or some time of seige weapon is an unfair comparison for the lilith. I'm saying that it looks totally overpowered if you put it in as a 1 on 1 ship battle, but when you look at the overall shivan strengths and weaknesses vs the GTVA, it doesn't come out to be so overpowered since fighters can still rip it up quickly.
I also just speculate that logically a lilith should be more expensive and less able to do things like extended patrols than a cain, so it would likely be in a supporting role of big cap ships and fleets that need some heavy beam firepower.
Although comparatively weak, the moloch has the best shivan anti fighter weaponry and can launch fighters, so pairing a lilith with a moloch would make a good task force to counter a GTVA destroyer, since in reality a GTVA destroyer can either swarm a lilith with fighters and jump away, or just beam a moloch to death.
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Oh no, the Lilith can be quite a threat on the highest difficulty level. The Stalwart is usually the ship that bears the brunt of the SC Hela's LRed.
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Mano e mano, man to man, just you and me and my BOMBERS!
I like the quote.
Seriously, though, I think the Hecate's carrier capacity would be decisive in a brawl with a Lilith. Unless the cruiser nails the fighterbay with it's opening shot, the Hecate can just sit back keep the Lilith from fleeing with some well-placed beams and let wave after wave of fighters and bombers demolish it.
On the flipside though, if that first shot does nail the fighterbay, it's effectively over for the Hecate. Doesn't matter how many engine subsystems you have, an LRed is still gonna make a mess of your destroyer.
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To be honest, I doubt the GTVA would be insane enough to attack a Lilith from the front. I'd backstab it, or come in above it in an upside down Orion and cream the Lilith, or scramble bombers and fighters for a long range strike.
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Death from above!
Death from behind!
Death to the Lilith!
Death! Death! Death!
:drevil:
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I like the quote.
It's from an old parody Robin Hood movie I watched a while back, actually.
To be honest, I doubt the GTVA would be insane enough to attack a Lilith from the front. I'd backstab it, or come in above it in an upside down Orion and cream the Lilith, or scramble bombers and fighters for a long range strike.
I also doubt the GTVA would spend that much time to take out 1 cruiser. I'd just send in a few bombers with a little escort. I mean, they'd do the job twice as well with half the hassle.
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I like the quote.
It's from an old parody Robin Hood movie I watched a while back, actually.
Men in Tights?
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Yeah, I think it was that. :blah:
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Death from above!
Death from behind!
Death to the Lilith!
Death! Death! Death!
:drevil:
Back in your cage, you. :P
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...what? :wtf:
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By writing that the Hec pushes ships around I meant it acts like a bully-boss, not that it defeats them in battle.
Second thing- a Hat can kill even an Orion if it can bring all 3 BVas's on it, no matter what the Orion does (I once FREDded a small test to see who's stronger, and Hat won like 75% of the fights).
And the SC Rakshasa has rather good antifighter defence. Try the mission where you first meet it in the main FS 2 campaign on extreme if you don't believe me.
So, where were we with the Lilith, I lost the topic a few posts ago...?
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So, where were we with the Lilith, I lost the topic a few posts ago...?
More like a few pages ago :P
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The Sathanas can destroy a Hecate as quick as the Lilith can destroy a Levi?
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The Sathanas can destroy a Hecate as quick as the Lilith can destroy a Levi?
Faster. A single salvo of four BFReds could destroy a Hecate 3 times over. But it would take two shots from an LRed to destroy a Leviathan.
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Well, how long does a Lilith take to destroy an Aeolus?
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3 shots I believe... with a delay of 7 seconds... so 21 seconds... which is less than half the time it would take for the Aeolus to get off another volly.
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http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/LRed
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Aeolus
Two shots, about 22 seconds.
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That 22 seconds rarely works unless the Aeolus is standing still. I've noticed that almost any cruiser can get out of a beam before it does any really serious damage, but either way, with the uber long beam recharge on the A, don't expect much unless it kills the L's beam in the first hit.
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So if you all look back a few pages, you can see that I posted exactly how long the battle of alilith vs any other cap ship in the game takes. And you can see the hull % left on the winner. Just sayin.
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So if you all look back a few pages, you can see that I posted exactly how long the battle of alilith vs any other cap ship in the game takes. And you can see the hull % left on the winner. Just sayin.
Such tests are rather strongly influenced by a number of factors
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So if you all look back a few pages, you can see that I posted exactly how long the battle of alilith vs any other cap ship in the game takes. And you can see the hull % left on the winner. Just sayin.
Such tests are rather strongly influenced by a number of factors
I'll summarise: 1 on 1. Converging from max firing range. Beams free command after 10 seconds. favorable firing positions. Several runs. Good rule of thumb numbers for wildly generalized cases. post 325
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Another factor you cannot control: Luck. :p
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A final factor: Artifical Inaptness.
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A final factor: Artifical Inaptness.
Is that a reference to their ship-banging tendencies?
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you can control luck with multiple runs. Then luck becomes probability. AI ineptness can be controlled with some sensible fred commands a ship captain may likely give, like making the ships stop instead of waltzing around in circles and ramming eachother. So, yes I can and I did. Nya.
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A final factor: Artifical Inaptness.
Inaptness? I thought it was ineptitude? :/
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I thought standard capital ship procedure when the general quarters alarm sounds was to flood the ventilation with laughing gas.
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I thought standard capital ship procedure when the general quarters alarm sounds was to flood the ventilation with laughing gas.
I might quote that.
What does that do?
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The whole crew rolls around on the floor giggling while the ship rams into everything around it and the beams shoot randomly at nebulae.
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The whole crew rolls around on the floor giggling while the ship rams into everything around it and the beams shoot randomly at nebulae.
Um, right... :wtf:
Quoted your post. :D
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yay! I can add another cool point to my internet score! *Dances*
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So page 24 looks like a totally new topic... :wtf:
But the AI is stupid sometimes - most times when they circle, their beams come on for 0.1 seconds before they re-adjust their orbit and put it out of range... :doubt:
btw, if you lined up heaps of Fenris' cruisers, how many could a BFRed take out?
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I reckon 1.5 to 3. :drevil:
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I'd reckon slightly more than that.
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Five? :confused:
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Fenris = 10000HP
LRed = 23000Atk
1 Fenris dies after 3 seconds, piercing the next one. 3 seconds more, and the second is destroyed. The third receives approximately 3000 damage.
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That's an LRED. We're talking about a BFRED.
A BFRED does 11 550 per second. That'll go through 8 fenris with a bit to spare.
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Is the damage calulated per-second or in real-time?
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Is the damage calulated per-second or in real-time?
What? :wtf:
For beams, damage is done every frame. Typically 5.5 times per second. That can vary based on framerate though...
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I took that value from the FSWiki. the BFRed does 80 850 per pulse.
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Is the damage calulated per-second or in real-time?
What? :wtf:
For beams, damage is done every frame. Typically 5.5 times per second. That can vary based on framerate though...
Wait a second... doesn't that mean that a beam does vastly different damage at 30, 60, and 120 frames per second?
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No, it shouldn't.
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I haven't looked at the code for beam damage, but I would expect there to be some sort of check for that ... then again, I have seen time compression reduce a beam's damage to almost nothing...
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I haven't looked at the code for beam damage, but I would expect there to be some sort of check for that ... then again, I have seen time compression reduce a beam's damage to almost nothing...
So in future, if your convoy comes under assault from beam weapons, kick time compression up to max and watch the Phoenicia survive the BFReds, and even strike back!
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Anti-bulletime. :drevil:
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I remember the first time I discovered about time compression when learning how to double missiles in a mission...I didn't know how to put it back! So I always used to restart the mission.
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Well, if you're a regular cheater (like me), you may notice that bullet-time can only be achieved by typing www.freespace2.com in a mission before decreasing time compression. It's very useful for you to get up to an extra four seconds of decision-making per second.
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What the ... is bullet time? Anyway in case you didn't know what I was talking about, I meant increased time compression, i.e. 2x and 4x speed (in retail), which can be done without cheats. :)
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.25 and .5 time compression = bullet time.
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I remember the first time I discovered about time compression when learning how to double missiles in a mission...I didn't know how to put it back! So I always used to restart the mission.
Yeah I did that too. I was trying to see if I could double link primaries so they wnet twice as fast or something... They did, but so did everything else...
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Vintage mode. Pity it's coloured. :drevil:
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I remember the first time I discovered about time compression when learning how to double missiles in a mission...I didn't know how to put it back! So I always used to restart the mission.
Yeah I did that too. I was trying to see if I could double link primaries so they wnet twice as fast or something... They did, but so did everything else...
I always did that in retail, then I figured out that it was a feature and not a bug.
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They probably added such a feature because they guessed that new FREDders might draw out sequences, such as flying ten klicks with nothing happening whatsoever.
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They probably added such a feature because they guessed that new FREDders might draw out sequences, such as flying ten klicks with nothing happening whatsoever.
Or for skipping dialog during testing.
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They probably added such a feature because they guessed that new FREDders might draw out sequences, such as flying ten klicks with nothing happening whatsoever.
Or for skipping dialog during testing.
Oh yeah, that too, as Blue Planet might imply.
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That doesn't work, I've tried it once. The messages just keep coming at normal pace, no matter how much you speed it up. In retail, anyway.
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That doesn't work, I've tried it once. The messages just keep coming at normal pace, no matter how much you speed it up. In retail, anyway.
In my experience, what happens is that the messages can be sped up, but their sound files cannot, so the messages are only played as fast as their sound files are.
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The head ANIs will speed up, though... :drevil:
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It's actually quite funny when you do that, because they get all mixed up, so it's like
"stand down, we're on yer side here!"
"Damn it, Command let Bosch escape"
"You can discuss this at your debriefing..." etc.
Usually I use it to skip boring parts, like waiting for ships to arrive or exit, or return to their waypoint path.