[Dark RevenantX]

Why does the colossus have 13 actual beam cannons even though it is supposed to have 12?  It has six bgreens and seven terslashs.

The REAL command leader of the godly command was in a constant vegitative state, so the brains of the terrans went below pidgeon level.

[Cobra]

you know, speaking of this whole engine thing, why didn't the mission designer just put a "Stay Still" order in the initial order editor? that would have been a lot better.

[Taristin]

because those commands don't seem to do squat.

[StratComm]

The Colossus was a nightmare to script around, I'm sure.  If it is not on a specific waypoint path the whole time, then it's flinging itself around every-which-way and acting like the 3 mile long baseball bat from hell.  That ship wouldn't have had nearly as many problems had its centerpoint actually been its center.

[Taristin]

I don't see why it isn't. What's the point of the offset center on all of these ships? I can see it on the triton, but the Colossus?

[StratComm]

Actually I've been thinking about that since working on the Sobek.  From what I can tell, each pof has as many as 3 centers (not counting the eye).  The physical center of the model, the point defined by (0,0,0), appears to be the point about which the model turns as the ship manuvers in-game.  The second is the offset (techroom) center, and that one defines where the model rotates when its being displayed elsewhere (the techroom, the lab, ship-select, the target box, etc).  The third is the center of mass, and it appears to be used for the point about which the ship spins if hit by sufficient force.  The offset centers, as with the Colossus, are the physical centers, and my guess is that they are where they are either because of modeling fluke or (more likely) because for larger ships it allows them to turn without swinging their aft sections way around and instead only turning their nose to point toward the target.  The hatshepsut suffers from this terribly, and from the minicap model it would appear that the same was intended to apply to the Sath as well.  It got changed at some point if that was the case, quite possibly because the Sath may have to turn in-mission at some point and it's baseball-bat swinging probably became apparent.  Though thinking about it, large ships almost never turn in the retail campaign.

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by karajorma

Taken that way he's every bit the hero that the mission debrief makes him out to be.

But that misses the point: the Shivans were never seriously interested in stopping the Bastion. Though heroic, the Colossus' sacrifice, the whole mission, was never really necessary. And the GTVA by that point in time had more then enough dead heros.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Dark RevenantX
Why does the colossus have 13 actual beam cannons even though it is supposed to have 12?  It has six bgreens and seven terslashs.
 

There were a lot of turrets cut (look at the tbl description and all the commented out entries) - possibly for performance or balancing; either they found all those turrets increased the polycount and code load (for weapons fire checking etc), or they simply decided the Colossus was grossly overpowered for its intended purpose..

[Kie99]

Originally posted by Raa
The colossus be damned, the ship I admire most is the GTCv Lemnos.

Lemnos here. We are going down. Repeat. We are going down. All units stand clear of the shockwave!

That right there is honor. They're all about to die, and all they can think to do is tell the remaining vessels to watch out for the blast. Selflessness to the very end. [/B]

Thirded, But why didn't they send out any escape pods?

[StratComm]

Originally posted by aldo_14


There were a lot of turrets cut (look at the tbl description and all the commented out entries) - possibly for performance or balancing; either they found all those turrets increased the polycount and code load (for weapons fire checking etc), or they simply decided the Colossus was grossly overpowered for its intended purpose..

It almost has to be performance-related.  Of all of the turrets that were cut, most, if not all, are the ones described in the colossus video as "laser turrets".  The main cannons all remained, so effectively the strength of the Colossus remained unchanged from the high turret version.  That does bring up an interesting point; the colossus has commented-out table entries to indicate that its turret count was reduced from what it was originally, but it is not alone.  The Sobek and Hecate were also definitely changed (refering to videos and cbani's) and quite probably most of the other FS2-era ships were originally overgunned to start with as well.

[aldo_14]

There's a substantial number of AAAf turrets removed though, isn't there?

[Blitzerland]

Thirded, But why didn't they send out any escape pods?  

Not enough time, I suppose. It only takes eight seconds for a corvette to blow, and that isn't enough time to get to an escape pod. Escape pods are only used when a ship thinks it's gonna go down, like when the Aquataine was disabled in the nebula.

[StratComm]

I'm just going by the briefing, which makes no reference to AAAf.  The old comments also include commented out primary guns though, yet all of those are where they should be.  My guess there is that the turrets were renumbered after the extras were cut, and that the majority of the missing turrets were just of the terran turret variety.  Turns out the colossus has almost no standard turrets, despite the briefing referencing 45.

[aldo_14]

Well, I checked the tbl;
; 42, 43, 45, 34, 35, 73, 72, 71, 66, 69, 68, 77, 76, - AAAf
; 67, 70, 86 - BFGreen
; 73, 72, 71, 66, 69, 68, - AAAf
; 83, 82, 81, 80  79, 78  - Medium Slasher

There are 7 AAAf; by the looks of it they went from 14 to 6 to 7.  There aren't any turrets > 63, but I'm not sure if the beams on those turrets weren't moved; there are more beams now than then, but they're weaker I think; TerSlashes and Green beams, no BFGs atall.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Cobra
you know, speaking of this whole engine thing, why didn't the mission designer just put a "Stay Still" order in the initial order editor? that would have been a lot better.

Wouldn't have worked unless they'd ripped out all the other Events where they gave AI-goals to the Colossus. Otherwise the first one's clear-goals would have cancelled it.

Disabling the colossus was no doubt a quick way to fix the problem of it moving around.

Originally posted by ngtm1r
But that misses the point: the Shivans were never seriously interested in stopping the Bastion. Though heroic, the Colossus' sacrifice, the whole mission, was never really necessary. And the GTVA by that point in time had more then enough dead heros.

Command didn't know how serious the Shivans were about stopping the Bastion. If they'd tried to pull the Colossus out though as soon as the Sath had killed it the sath would have started on everything else in the area. That includes the Bastion as well as all the civilian ships that try to escape in the final mission.

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Like I said, he could've jumped elsewhere in the system, maybe attacked the Shivan juggernaughts around the Capellan sun.

I don't see what jumping elsewhere in the system would have done. The Sath would have simply followed it there and killed it. It would be the same thing in a different place.

As for attacking the Sath fleet that might have actually made the shivans wonder why on Earth the GTVA would do something so stupid. Remember we don't actually know if the shivans knew what the GTVA planned to do to the node.

The GTVA almost certainly thought that it was something that the shivans might try to stop.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by karajorma


Command didn't know how serious the Shivans were about stopping the Bastion. If they'd tried to pull the Colossus out though as soon as the Sath had killed it the sath would have started on everything else in the area. That includes the Bastion as well as all the civilian ships that try to escape in the final mission.

/// the Bastion was far away and there were no civy ships in the vicinity. Just how much time did the colossus buy with it's sacrifice? 10 seconds?

I don't see what jumping elsewhere in the system would have done. The Sath would have simply followed it there and killed it. It would be the same thing in a different place.

As for attacking the Sath fleet that might have actually made the shivans wonder why on Earth the GTVA would do something so stupid. Remember we don't actually know if the shivans knew what the GTVA planned to do to the node.

The GTVA almost certainly thought that it was something that the shivans might try to stop.

If the Collie jumped out and the Sath folowed, it would have bought more time that if it stayed. Especially if it jumped as far away from the Bastion as possible.

[WMCoolmon]

Exactly...there was no guarantee the Sathanas wouldn't just wipe everything else out by the node, while it was convenient to do so.

And I'm sure Command would've liked to get a closer look at what the Sathanii were doing.

And (depending on how long intrasystem subspace travel takes) crewmembers could've gotten to the escape pods and launched as the Colossus emerged from subspace - assuming they couldn't launch while in subspace, which would've been even better.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
the Bastion was far away and there were no civy ships in the vicinity. Just how much time did the colossus buy with it's sacrifice? 10 seconds?

Excellent job you've done there in completely missing my point. The Colossus wasn't buying time. It was sacrificing itself because they knew that the shivans would follow it and everyone else in the vicinity of where it dies would also be dead.

Originally posted by TrashMan
If the Collie jumped out and the Sath folowed, it would have bought more time that if it stayed. Especially if it jumped as far away from the Bastion as possible.

Who says that they would have sent the same Sath? They had 80 of the buggers you know.

I doubt jumping the Colossus out would have made the blindest bit of difference to how dead it would be 1 minute later.

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Exactly...there was no guarantee the Sathanas wouldn't just wipe everything else out by the node, while it was convenient to do so.

Which is what makes the Colossus' sacrifice so noble. They had no guarentee that wahat they were about to do would have any effect whatsoever on the eventual fate of the GTVA ships near the node. They only knew that they could make it worse if they did try to escape.

[WMCoolmon]

Excellent job you've done there in completely missing my point. The Colossus wasn't buying time. It was sacrificing itself because they knew that the shivans would follow it and everyone else in the vicinity of where it dies would also be dead.

So why not go someplace else in the system where nobody else was?

[Luigi30]

Because then they wouldn't be able to make a quick escape through a node if they had to.