[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Eishtmo




The highlighted part in important.  Why would the pilots of fighters know that the shields don't work in subspace unless they had a reason to use it.  Chasing ships through the node may never have been done before, but battles in subspace do appear to have happened.  Or at the very least, they either expected that it would happen or planned for such an event.  In any case, it was researched enough that even the pilots were informed of this fact.

Check the ref bible; it states that
[q]
The camera shows a medium shot of the two scientists at the terminal, standing near a small enclosed test area.  Energy & light flickers from inside the test enclosure.

[watching monitor together]

TerranSci-1:   You see from this part of the captured ship breakdown the energy flow is constant.

VasudanSci-1:   Yes…but how do you explain what happens during a jump?  It doesn’t seem as if the rate is sufficient to support the required level.

TerranSci-1:   Very good observation “EEEEE”  You live up to your credentials.  You see…

[walking to another monitor]

The Terran gets out of his chair and the Vasudan follows him over to the research equipment where the other scientists are tweaking things.[possibly cut this part if we don’t want to show more scientists]

[cut to monitor displaying some sort of graphical test readouts]

TerranSci-1:   We’ve been able to get a prototype shield system working under normal conditions.  However when we simulate jump phenomena there’s no way to keep the power levels high enough.  

VasudanSci-1:   But under normal conditions the shields actually protect the inside structures?

[cut to show both scientists]

TerranSci-1:   Correct.  They stop almost all damage from getting through, at the cost of energy, which explains how the Shivan ships have been able to defend against our attacks so easily.  Despite its shortcomings in subspace, we should be able to start producing shield systems for use on our ships.

[/q]

There is (somewhere) a mention that destroying a ship in subspace can destroy a node, however this doesn't imply in-subspace combat... if blockades were in operation during the TV war (as I think they were), a ship could conceivably be blown up before exiting subspace completely... maybe even explaining the missing Talnia system?

[Solatar]

The Lucifer jumped into Ross 128 using an apparently non-existant jump node. Maybe some sort of special subspace reactor (or 5..?) allowed it to do so.  The destruction of such a powerful subspace motivator may have released LOADS of energy at the same frequency as the jump corridor...

As for the Meson bombs in fs2...uhh..maybe the jump drive/reactor/giant firecracker in the Lucifer had something along that lines in it?

meh..just a thought...

[Hippo]

Yeah, but the shivans also came from nowhere to get to Ikeya... And as they said in FS2: "blah blah blah shivans have made jumps without nodes blah blah blah"...

[Solatar]

Hadn't thought of that frankly, you're right.

Along similar lines however, what if the Lucy drew power from subspace? It was a rather large destroyer for the time period, and something like that to power it and it's rather large weapons systems may not be completely unfeasible.

Or it could have just been a cool plot idea.

[Charismatic]

Hmm. Come to think of it. Why did the lucy have 5 reactors? Whats so special about them. Besides the fact they powered its shields, but 3 would be enough.
So increased power allows capital ships, with certian design and alloys (stronger) do inter-systemal jumps, possibly without being near a planetary...buble game loop thing mentioned in some post somewhere in General Freespace. Bah. Sorry.
Note this:
Lucy has 5 reactors. Most iv seen in any other capital ship in FS1 or FS2, was 2 reactors. Possibly just one.

What hapend to all the reactors? Whats up with that?

Anyone else notice this?

[QuantumDelta]

Besides the general BS that people seem to spout around here about beams being able to rip through shields anyway more blah blah.

The Lucifer was the only capital ship ever regarded as impervious to weaponry.

I wouldn't be suprised if you could storyline in a few vasudan bigship-kamikazes to that list of things-that-tried-really-hard-to-kill-luci

Generally: Probably that.

Edit;
That and of course it's nice dramatic effect having to blow up the reactors to kill the big behemoth of doom.
Not only that, but it does make you fly over the whole ship, showing it off just a little more.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
Besides the general BS that people seem to spout around here about beams being able to rip through shields anyway more blah blah.

The Lucifer was the only capital ship ever regarded as impervious to weaponry.

I wouldn't be suprised if you could storyline in a few vasudan bigship-kamikazes to that list of things-that-tried-really-hard-to-kill-luci

Generally: Probably that.

Edit;
That and of course it's nice dramatic effect having to blow up the reactors to kill the big behemoth of doom.
Not only that, but it does make you fly over the whole ship, showing it off just a little more.

Lucifer was only impervious to FS1-era weaponry anyways, IIRC.  It's possible it only has 5 reactor subsystems for the sake of making the final mission interesting.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Hippo
Yeah, but the shivans also came from nowhere to get to Ikeya... And as they said in FS2: "blah blah blah shivans have made jumps without nodes blah blah blah"...

Just because there's only one jump node in Ikeya that we can use, doesn't mean there aren't a few other, weaker ones that the Shivans can use, and that aren't on the nodemap. The Ribos-Vega node that the Lucifer used to evade the Antares blockade in FS1 is likely one of those weak nodes.

The Lucifer may also have used a weak node to get to Ross 128 early on, but for all we know it might have just waltzed in through the Laramis node without anyone noticing. Laramis was an unexplored and relatively unknown system at the time, after all. But eh. (I'm far more nerdly than is legal when it comes to this.)

Also, what Petrarch says is that the Shivans are just as reliant on nodes as we are. If they could jump without any nodes at all, there'd have been no point to sealing off Capella, or to most of the FS2 campaign in general. Replay that command briefing.

But, I hope the Shivans have no weak-nodes to work with in Gamma Draconis...

[Eishtmo]

Originally posted by aldo_14
There is (somewhere) a mention that destroying a ship in subspace can destroy a node, however this doesn't imply in-subspace combat... if blockades were in operation during the TV war (as I think they were), a ship could conceivably be blown up before exiting subspace completely... maybe even explaining the missing Talnia system?

I think in that quote, it's implying that the shields are connected to the jump drives in some odd way (building a prototype so quickly might be explained as an expansion of current subspace theories rather than a brand new technology).  Relating it to the jump might just mean that powering the shield and the jump drive at the same time might not be possible.  Still, the point is why would the pilots need to know such a thing if they never intended to use the shield and the drives together?  AKA, fights in subspace.  In anycase, the text of the cutscene is not clear at all on what they're refering to or why.

From FS2, we're given an indication that there needs to be a great deal of force necessary to destroy the node (cramming an Orion full with Mesons would be a touch excessive otherwise).  Battles in the nodes likely doesn't threaten the node a great deal, only when a truly massive (Lucifer scale) explosion takes place does the node collapse.

And I've had to admit that Talinia was never a star system, so we can stop talking about it like it was.  In any case, it's much better and easier to simply say the nodes collapsed naturally rather than were forced closed.

[Hippo]

Originally posted by Mad Bomber


Just because there's only one jump node in Ikeya that we can use, doesn't mean there aren't a few other, weaker ones that the Shivans can use, and that aren't on the nodemap. The Ribos-Vega node that the Lucifer used to evade the Antares blockade in FS1 is likely one of those weak nodes.

True, but they put unsafe nodes on the map nonetheless (albeit they are still useable)... I think that if it was detectable, it's on the map... They act like the Lucifer made (some) jumps without ANY nodes...

[Rico]

The Lusifer probably had the 5 reactors so that it could jump through 'unstable' nodes GTVA ships cant jump through since they dont have the power. That and it needed extra power for its sheilding system (after all, the lusifer is huge, you'd need of power to cover it with a sheild). Simply put, the Lusifer was 1 huge power consumer

[Jal-18]

/resists SUV joke

But yeah, I think the five reactors were a split between unstable node travel, shields, and super long missile trails of doom.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Eishtmo


I think in that quote, it's implying that the shields are connected to the jump drives in some odd way (building a prototype so quickly might be explained as an expansion of current subspace theories rather than a brand new technology).  Relating it to the jump might just mean that powering the shield and the jump drive at the same time might not be possible.  Still, the point is why would the pilots need to know such a thing if they never intended to use the shield and the drives together?  AKA, fights in subspace.  In anycase, the text of the cutscene is not clear at all on what they're refering to or why.

Well, all I can say is that it implies they know the Shivan ship they captured can't power it's shields in subspace.  And later from the Ancients data / monologues, of course (I'm not sure what they kept in the actual shield cutscene).

Obviously they'd know - and brief - that shields didn't work in subspace if they were attacking the Lucifer in there.  But I'm not aware of any other implication of in-subspace fighting, or even the possibility of it (didn't they need a special tracking device to get into the same corridor as the Lucifer?)

Originally posted by Eishtmo
From FS2, we're given an indication that there needs to be a great deal of force necessary to destroy the node (cramming an Orion full with Mesons would be a touch excessive otherwise).  Battles in the nodes likely doesn't threaten the node a great deal, only when a truly massive (Lucifer scale) explosion takes place does the node collapse.

This may be what I was thinking of;
Act 3 Misc 2A
SNIP
Furthermore, the Ancients speculate that subspace nodes were quite fragile, and that combat during a jump would surely cause the collapse of the surrounding nodes.

It may[/i] be a case of several things making this a unique circumstance;
- The GTVA could simply not have known the force needed to collapse a node and played it safe
- Some nodes are more 'fragile' than others
- The size of the blast was needed to counteract the Shivan subspace field for some reason, or in an attempt to destabilise even uncharted nodes in Capella

Originally posted by Eishtmo
And I've had to admit that Talinia was never a star system, so we can stop talking about it like it was.  In any case, it's much better and easier to simply say the nodes collapsed naturally rather than were forced closed.

Well, we don't know, at the end of the day.  Chalk one up to the plot holes......... same for, um, Gulnara or something.  There is an Interplay story floating around somewhere which suggests a node being pre-emptively collapsed to save Sol from the Lucifer; I'm not sure if you could consider that canon, though.

[Moonsword]

Chalk one up to bad tech room listings and plot holes.