Originally posted by ZmaN
I have a couple questions about the lucy's shields...
1. Why weren't the lucifers shields unpenetrable? the terrans and the vasudans have weapons that penetrate Shivan fighter shields, but why can't they penetrate the lucifers shields?
2. Why didn't the Shivans use the shields on more ship other than the Lucifer?
3. Why didnt those types of shields have any mention in Freespace 2?
4. I was reading in the wiki that the lucifer had "what we call to 'beam turrets'... " I never saw any beam turrets in Freepsace 1... the only thing i recall of even being CLOSE to beam turrets is when the lucifer destroys one of the arcadia stations, and it shoots these missile lookin thingys out of its two front arms... are those them?
5. why wasnt there even a Lucifer CLASS destroyer in FS2?
6. Is there anything else I should know about the Lucifer's Shields?
1/Unknown. Probably power output; I'm sure one of the Volition staff has mentioned that the Lucifers shields were only impenetrable to FS1 era weaponry (I think Icefire said this).
2/Unknown. Best guess would probably be power issues; the Lucifer had multiple reactors.
3/Unknown. I'd guess they were simply outdated, as TV weaponry was now powerful enough to breach them. It's unknown how or when the Shivans developed beam tech. It's possible the FS1 fleet was a very old, or very primitive one compared to the rest of the Shivans at that time.
4/The Lucifers' 'beams' are, indeed, the missiles (flux cannon) it uses. I think, again, the devs mentioned they wanted a better effect but couldn't make one. The support for proper beams being on the Lucy is threefold - the beams in the FS2 table entry, the beam depicted in the vprime.ani (Destroying the city), and the beam seen in the FS2 intro.
5/ See 3. No way to know; the Shivans could have had a fleet of them in reserve for all we can tell. It's possible, too, that the FS1 Lucifer was the only existing one when destroyed - or that they had been retired and replaced by the Sathani (although the Saths seem to have at least some other purpose vis-a-vis the FS2 ending).
My preferred guess is that the Lucifer was a special purpose type of ship used for obliterating civillisations, and it simply wasn't the right weapon for the Shivans to use in FS2 (as we - well, the NTF - came to them). Essentially - and this chimes with galemp - that it was designed to use exceptional subspace abilities to infiltrate enemy lines, jumping behind blockades, etc, and destroying fleets lacking the technology to counter or defend against such an attack.
6/Lucifer shields were, apparently 'sheath shields'.
