Originally posted by CP5670
On the topic of the length of the war, I think that there must have been some revolutionary advance in armor plating between the present day and the Freespace period to make ships as strong as they are in FS1 (destroyers and so on) compared to the weapons of the time. In today's world, the weapons are generally much more powerful than the armor, but that seems to have changed if you look at the gameplay balance and the fact that the war lasted so long but both sides still had the resources to continue fighting.
It would seem that in by the beggining of FS1, weapons were far behind armor. When looking through the databases, one gets the impression that it took an imense amount of effort to take out a destroyer. Not only that, but it also seems to have taken unique tactics, and weapons to do that job also. Like the Goliath (the first Orion ever destroyed), was brought down by kamikaze piolets. By the beggining of FS1, only 2 Typhon class destroyers had been brought down.
The arrival of the shivans, a hudge emphasis on weapons reaserch, and sheilds for small craft, altered the balance so much, that weapons were pulled way ahead of armor protection, thus leading to horrendous losses.
By FS2, armor seems to be making some kind of a come back, for they start talking about depleted moboldyum armor (I misspelled that badly). Though weapons still have the lead.
