Today's topic is our favorite supership, the GTVA Colossus.
The general sentiment is that the Colossus was a big waste of time, energy and money. Now, was it really? Note that this discussion is not about the tactis of the GTVA or their competence, and also assumes the Colossus is fully operational at the time of it's deployment.
Firstly, we'll look at the cost of the Colossus and compare it to other GTVA ships. As an example, the cost of constructing an Orion 'far outweighs the cost of paying its crew for 3 years.' This was during the T-V war, so obviously advances such as beam cannons haven't been factored in. However, there's no mention of how big the crew of an Orion is. For arguments sake, I am going to assume that the newer Hecate, with it's crew complement of 10,000 is roughly of the same cost relative to it's crew.
So for some low/medium/high values with wages arbitrarily set at 25k per person, we come out with:
3.5 years worth - 0.875 billion credits
5 years worth - 1.25 billion credits
10 years worth - 2.5 billion credits
For the purposes of this debate I am going to use the median value of 1.25 billion credits
Now, if we go and look at the Colossus we get a couple different values that we can use to attempt to get a rough cost.
- HP = 10x Hecate
- Hull volume > 12 Lucifer destroyers
- Firepower > 5 Orions
- General FRED 'impression' of size relative to the Hecate.
So after looking at this, I'm going to provide three possible values, knowing that generally speaking, weaponry and electronics contribute a greater proportion of the final cost than does structure. However, the Colossus, due to it's sheer size, likely has a bit of a 'cost multiplier' if you will.
Low: 8x cost = 10 billion credits
Medium: 12x cost = 15 billion credits
High: 15x cost = 18.75 billion credits
Now, it must be remembered that this is just cost to construct a Colossus class ship. It does not cover R&D, something which is even harder to pin down, and is also rarely for just one specific purpose. In all likelyhood, R&D done for the Colossus was later applied in the Hecates as well. So for these purposes it will be ignored.
Now, even 10 billion may seem like a lot, however, simply as a fighter carrier the Colossus carries 4x the fighter complement of a Hecate.
Therefore, it starts to look like this:
4 Hecates = 5 billion credits
1 Colossus = 15 billion credits
Still 3x the cost but not so bad. Then we can start to factor crew in.
4 Hecates = 4x 10,000 crew -> 1 billion per year
1 Colossus = 30,000 crew -> 0.75 billion per year
At 20 years, it looks like this:
4 Hecates = 25 billion credits
1 Colossus = 30 billion credits
Much closer, in fact. Obviously, if the cost of a Hecate is higher/lower compared to a Colossus and also relative to their crew salaries, it'd grossly throw this out.
Now, you might be saying "well 4 Hecates are still cheaper."
A Colossus in a fleet engagement is 2.5 times as survivable as all 4 Hecates put together, and is effectively invulnerable to fighter strikes, and nearly immune to all but the largest fleets. It can also increase it's firepower to incredibly high level (High Noon) at the cost of significant component damage. However, even at default the Colossus design can more than fend for itself even against an entire enemy fleet. Tactically, the Colossus is more efficient, but is also less flexible on a strategic level, due to it's size. It can also only be present in one system, while 4 Hecates can cover 4 seperate systems. Thus Colossus deployment necessitates a different set of tactical and strategic conditions than one/several Hecates.
So there you have it. Over the short term, constructing a Colossus is very expensive, however, that can also be spread out over at least 10 fiscal years. When in actual service, it is essentially unkillable except due to extenuating circumstances.
