[neo_hermes]

yes, that's kappa 3 from the same kappa wing. it was nearly obliterated by Shivans.

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by ngtm1r


I'm with Setekh on this one. Command seems to hold back too much information that would be highly useful to people in the field.

What do you expect? Our militiaries do that kind of crap too.

[Flipside]

Kappa Wing, from the way I understand it, were the first Terrans to run across the Sathanas. Command was over-confident in the abilities of the Colossus and, for some unknown reason, thought that no other race would build a ship as powerful.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by ngtm1r


I'm with Setekh on this one. Command seems to hold back too much information that would be highly useful to people in the field.

Actually, the purpose of the need-to-know-basis is to cover all the silly plot-holes.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Flipside
Kappa Wing, from the way I understand it, were the first Terrans to run across the Sathanas. Command was over-confident in the abilities of the Colossus and, for some unknown reason, thought that no other race would build a ship as powerful.

I think Command thought Kappa wing was talking about the Ravanna or something to begin with - they didn;t seem to care an awful lot for what K3 had to say.

[Mr_Maniac]

Command did not MAKE mistakes, command IS a mistake...

[FireCrack]

Who sais kK3 was even talking about the sathanas...



*Capmaign idea brews*

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by EtherShock

What do you expect? Our militiaries do that kind of crap too.

Our military has never classified all information on a hostile fighter so highly that the pilots who would face it in combat did not have access to that data.

GTVA stupidity uber alles.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Andreas
Mongoose, you're forgetting that the Sathanas itself most likely has a fighter/bomber complement at least equal to the Colossus. That would be, what 240?

The GTVA could have never taken down 80+ SJs, and just for the record, even just 80x240 would make 19200 fighters and bombers. You think those pathetical Mjolnir RBCs could handle that? Let alone the Colossus?

And who says they would come out one by one from the Gamma Draconis node? Even if they would, eventually (if the GTVA could even muster a battlegroup strong enough to counter Juggernauts head on at that point) GTVA's forces would be depleted.

Their biggest mistake? Command should have saved the Knossos, I guess.

Mongoose does have a point.
A subspace node isn't really big, so not all 80 Saths can jump in a time.

If they were to jump in one-by-one, the GTVA could hold the line (providing it gatherws everything available at the node)...

[Dark RevenantX]

When I get a windows I might make one of my capship missions like "The Battle of the Line"

[aldo_14]

I don't think the GTVA possesses the concentration of weaponry to take down each Sathani in time before the next arrive; and even if they did, it's probably be possible for the Shivans to attrite the defenses enough to eventually cripple the defenses.

 I think the Shivans would probably be smart enough to use their 'support' fleet - Ravanas, Demons, Cains, etc - to create a defensive shield around the priority Sathani, along with sending in numerous fighter & bomber wings to strategically target enemy beam turrets and bombers.

  It'd be a hell of a gamble to place pretty much your entire fleet directly in the firing line of an oncoming armada of vastly superior firepower and numbers; especially as if any got through, you'd be looking at a massive gap in defenses behind your blockade line.

To me command should have destroyed the Capella-GD node; quite why they didn't is a mystery (or, more likely, idiocy).

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Goober5000
They should have had a Meson-equipped Orion standing by to collapse the Capella-Gamma Draconis node during the operation to destroy the Knossos.  It's called covering all your bases.  After all, they weren't entirely sure the Knossos could be destroyed in the first place.
 

Considering that the Meson bomb was experimental who says that they actually had any meson bombs left to collapse the C-GD node in the first place?

It could very easily be true that three bombs was all they had.

The explaination for why they didn't destroy the capella-GD node could be similar. Although this time they had enough bombs and and fitted them into an Orion in time to blow both nodes out of Capella maybe they weren't quick enough to blow C-GD node and had to settle for evacuating Capella as their back up plan.

[Mongoose]

The decision to pre-emptively evacuate Capella, and to continue evacuations even when it seemed that the Shivans had been beaten back, might have been one of Command's brightest moments.  They managed to save a lot of lives that way; from reading the mission briefings, it seems as though few people died outside of those in the last few transports who couldn't escape the supernova.  It's a little reassuring to know that even Command can get something right.

Regarding the Sathanes, I really wasn't considering their fighter complements, which is kind of a big oversight. You would need either a large amount of cruisers, a lot of pilots with skill levels similar to your own, or some sort of other anti-fighter defense to deal with them, presuming that the Sathanes dispatched their full complements.  (Just out of curiosity, I know the Sathanes could theoretically carry a massive amount of fighters/bombers, but did the game ever give an actual value?)  Regarding backup for the Sathanes, we don't really seem to know how many other ships the Shivans had.  Even if it was a moderate amount, the setup I mentioned above could take care of anything cruiser-sized or below relatively easily.  The real problem I could see would be with Ravanas, due to those forward-facing turrets, but they would be easily stopped with the Bearbaiting treatment.  I could see how multiple capital ships coming through at once could be a problem, but as far as we know, there really isn't enough room in a subspace node for that to happen.  It might be an interesting exercise to set up a test mission to try this out on a smaller scale.

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by Mongoose
Regarding the Sathanes, I really wasn't considering their fighter complements, which is kind of a big oversight. You would need either a large amount of cruisers, a lot of pilots with skill levels similar to your own, or some sort of other anti-fighter defense to deal with them, presuming that the Sathanes dispatched their full complements.

Oh yeah, like the GTVA is going to have more than one Alpha 1 in their back pocket. In my opinion, you'd need all of those resources, not just a few, maybe have a them on standby until needed possibly.

If only one ship could come through the portal at a time, those RBCs might stand a chance with fighter cover, a couple cruisers or corvettes flanking the node/covering the RBCs, and lots of gun emplacements. With so much fire spraying everywhere, it would be a lot more difficult to punch through but most definitely still possible for the Shivans due to their sheer numbers. The node is a choke point and should've been taken advantage of, especially since the consequence was essentially total anihilation.

The fun part is like Mongoose said, we could create missions to demonstrate most of these theories, if you're that into it.

[Kie99]

Someone's  been playing TTR.

[AlphaOne]

Well I remember reading somewhere that the GTVA had some 20000-30000 fighters and bommbers protecting Vasuda or was I mistaken!

Anyway AFAIK the GTVA had some 20+ destroyers not to mention cruisers, corvettes....and so on and so on.

The whole RBC theory is quite posible.....just put at leats 12 of those things neard a jump node post 2 or 3 fleets just behind the exiting point of the shivan ships and the rest in defensive positions around the node and no matter how many fighters the shivans send you can take them out quite easely.

and just for the fun of it remember the Aeoleus cruisers the most deadly antifighter weaponry ever created...???

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Mr_Maniac
Well... But what if the JumpNode was already stable at this time?

Then the situation would be the same - except they'd know it a lot sooner.  They would have had more time to come up with a new plan.

Originally posted by Mongoose
The decision to pre-emptively evacuate Capella, and to continue evacuations even when it seemed that the Shivans had been beaten back, might have been one of Command's brightest moments.  They managed to save a lot of lives that way; from reading the mission briefings, it seems as though few people died outside of those in the last few transports who couldn't escape the supernova.  It's a little reassuring to know that even Command can get something right.

This is very true.

Originally posted by AlphaOne
The whole RBC theory is quite posible.....just put at leats 12 of those things neard a jump node post 2 or 3 fleets just behind the exiting point of the shivan ships and the rest in defensive positions around the node and no matter how many fighters the shivans send you can take them out quite easely.

Not true.  If the Shivans deploy all their fighters from all their Sathanes, they would be able to overwhelm the GTVA's fighters and take down the Mjolnirs.  Then the GTVA would be out of luck.

[Kie99]

I don't think that the Sathanas can carry many fighters, it deployed 8 fighters for its battle against the Colossus, and I doubt that every Sathanas will have a full complement.

[Goober5000]

You could say that the Colossus can't carry any fighters either since it deployed none against the Sathanas.  Yet the cutscene says it can carry 240 fighters.

I'd say the Sathanas can carry at least that many fighters too.

[AlphaOne]

Well the idea was to take 2 or 3 thousand fighters from planetary defense and get them to the node...! Besides I dont think the shivans can send all of theyr fighters at once even with the whole "masters of subspace" thing going for them.

Besides consider how many flacks and AAAF beams and missile launchers you would have over there.....I doubt that a fighter can survive for more then a few seconds!

As far as I can remember the average destoyer complement per fleet was 1 maibe 2 depending on god knows what.

Add to that at leats 3 or 4 corvettes per destroyer and 2 or 3 cruisers per corvette and the numbers keep ading up.

And there you have it a **** load of AAAF beams ,flack turrets,missile launcers beam cannons and why not fighters. Remember that both the Hecate and the Hathepsuit class destroyers can cary some 150 spacecraft! still that does not compare to the number of ships the shivans could gather but the GTVA just have to wait for the shivans to come out of the jump node one at a time and take them out!

Even if the shivans could send in 50 fighters/bommbers at once they would be toasted before they even got a lock on enything.