[AlphaOne]

WEll there is a valuable point in the whole 10-20 mjolnirs. and cruisers and destroyers but that implies a much more ample movement of troops then what i was aiming for. I wanted an efective deadly blocade force with as few ships men and materials as posible. The RBC's would be great if u could actualy put mjolnirs in them.

I get the point about the Orion beeing old but it is a usefull design notheless. It has the best defensive/offensive capabilities of any GTVA destroyer. It has a decent fighterbay and the most powerfull beam cannons of any GTVA destroyers. So that sais a lot about ship designs and quality in FS2 era.

They just dont make 'em like they used to.

[Mars]

No, the Orion, whether it is good or not, definitely isn't the best-- a single bomber squadron could take it out (if AI worked well).

[AlphaOne]

well sure if you ant to go into details but it sure is better at beam fights then its more modern counterparts. I wasnt refering the its AAAf defenses wich by all mean suck big time theyre crap. I was reefrng to it from a heavy weapons point of view. Sure you will say that a destroyer doesnt get involved in front line action that is why they built the Hecate and the hatshepsuit(sp?) but as we see through out the entire fs2 campaign that is a flawed conception. An more then once destroyers get blown away because they lack the adequate beam fire to deal a way fast with any aproaching capship.

A ship can be ambushed . and if u dont have the beams to deal with the situation then you mi frind are welll lets just say not in a good place.

Must i point out how useless the hecates slashers are? and yet it is rated more powerfull from a beam cannon point of view then the Orion. why because it has more of them or because it has better AAAF defense. Well good for them but i dont think a good aaaf defence will save your behind when you are exchanging cannon fire with an Orion for example. i'm not pitting it against a Ravana cuz..well theres not one destroyer in the GTVA that can withstand the Ravanas beam fire.

[aldo_14]

The Orion may be better at beam fights, but that's contingent upon it getting into one; any sensible enemy would be hitting it with bombers well before it got into a firing range.  The Aquitane or Psamptik may have got into trouble more than a few times, particularly the latter, but consider the amount of damage they did by-proxy thanks to their better fighter and bomber complement.  I would imagine the Orion exists only as a class because the corvettes aren't quite prevelant enough; any co-ordinated effort to take down a destroyer would probably seek to have a pair of those (or more), with bomber and fighter support from a distant capship.

[AlphaOne]

Well yeah you would take it down using bommbers but as we see quite often the shivans arent exactly shy about throwing capships into cap ship battles. Also i believe that corvettes are better suited for aaaf support then for actual beam fire support. Well actualy that is one of the main reasons for them beeing built. But I would much rather have a frigate like the Iceni onli with the aaaf defenses of a corvette on mi side then a couple of corvettes.

I mean this way you have a very good beam cannon support and decent aaaf defenses and a good fighter suport from the destroyer. I believe that the Hecate could do without 2 or 3 slashers in exchange for 2 BG . i mean that would be a much better configuration.

Also there is a lot of room in an Orion so why does it have so few AAAf defensive sistem. I mean its about the same volume as a Hecate. I never understood that. Oh and dont tell me its because of its ancient design cuz i dont buy that. They fitted beam cannons on it didnt they so why not a few more misile launchers and some aaaf beams not many just lets say 4 more missile launchers at least one more aaaf beam and 3 or 4 more flack cannons and that would a much better aaaf defence then what it curently has.

Oh and about taking down a destroyer: just ambush the sucker with and Orion and see wat happens. I mean the hecate gets blown away so fast it makes your head spin.

[TrashMan]

Technicly speaking, since Mljonirs are automated, they come with everything included. They have their OWN power supply and targeting mechanism..

So actually attaching them to a Orion (externally) would really require no drastic changes.

You could park a modified Orion like that behind the node, so when a jug enters it can unleash hell at it's reat and bug out if it gets too hot. Saves you hte Mjlonirs that you might otherwise loose.

And hte shivans never used a meson-liek warhead trough the node tactic. Even if they do have something liek that they would first have to know that ablockade liek that exist before sending anything trough.
And their standard tactic seems to be  - send in big warships. If hte defense obliderates them would Shivans know about it? After all that ship is in a nother system...how does communication between systems work anyway?

[AlphaOne]

Well i would suspect they have some sort of subspace comunication relays inside the jumpnodes. Or they actualy use the existing jumpnode network to send subspace transmision the same way you send a ship thtough a node open the node. Well not actualy opening the node but rathera micro opening.

[Ghostavo]

I wouldn't exactly call the Hatshepsut weak. IIRC it is more powerful than the Orion, and prettier to boot. (seriously, who doesn't like the "old" vacuum cleaner? )

Anyway, there is no prof that you can actually attach ships/sentry guns onto another ship without compromising structural integrity. Think of it like bolting a tank's turret to the side of a battleship. Also, remember that the Orion is a FS1 design, it was never intended to wield beam cannons, flak guns and such weaponry. I find it amazing that it managed to be so sucessful when compared to the Typhoon.

Blockading Shivans is somewhat difficult (useless? impossible?), due to their ability/practice to use nodes the GTVA can't use, and IIRC uncharted nodes as well, and their seemingless infinite ammount of ships (not to mention the Sathanas).

[Mars]

Hatshepsut is overbalanced if you ask me.

[AlphaOne]

No army is infinite no weapon is infinite they just look that way till u destroy the last one.

Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.

[AlphaOne]

huh hows that overbalanced. i dont exactly know the weaponry of the vacuum cleaneer as you pointed out!

[S-99]

OK, lets like drop the idea of turning an orion into a hecate (giving an orion less power and more fighters) and the turning a hecate into an orion (more power less fighters). The simple logic of this is pointless in the fact that you'd end up with what you started with
Anyway, the orion is an old design, it is still powerful though. The orion was developed during the tv war, so it was a war machine pretty much, later it was refitted with additional beam cannons.
The hecate was a new ship developed during a time of peace. It's not as powerful, but it does have a **** load of fighters, and it's weaponry is not an additional refit for itself like it was for the orion. The hecate was built around the idea of having beam cannons and flaks on there. The orion wasn't. My theory for possibly why the orion is more powerful, is quite simply when flak, AAAbeams, and big beams came out, you are putting a ton more turrets on a ship that already has an armada of laser turrets. The fact that the hecate is less powerful is sort of practical, and not just for the fact that it was developed during peace time for less weapons. The hecate was developed during a time of peace, has a lot of fighters, built around the idea of using the new flak and beam weaponry. The hecate is also a ship that currently fills a similar but different role compared to the orion. The hecate will operate like a destroyer, but differently, as it will offer support and everything else differently, because that's what you do when you have a different ship. Also, while the hecate is cheaper, i bet it's more flexible of a design than the orion is, meaning that perhaps the hecate was designed with ease of refit in mind for the future. I mean, command is researching new stuff like meson weaponry, and you know they're researching shivan weaponry as well. Perhaps they plan to add more power to the hecate when the need arises, and they can still do that anyway with the existing weaponry they already have. Why doesn't anybody create keyser turrets for capships?

Also, if anyone knows this, but the weaponry of a vacuum cleaner sucks

[Ghostavo]

No army is infinite no weapon is infinite they just look that way till u destroy the last one.

Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.

And all those blockades sure were successful... even with the much more limited ammount of ships belonging to the Lucifer Fleet.

[Mars]

Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.

Yeah, the Shivans have to use jumpnodes, we already knew that, it says so in a command breifing.

The Lucifer fleet BTW, bypassed the allied blockade at Antares at some point.

[aldo_14]

a) Mjolnirs have a slight, teensy, tiny, design feature that is of relevance; they're entirely self contained and sitting in open space.  As soon as you connect them up to a conductive material, then it changes the thermodynamics.   It's pretty obvious, really, that the Mjolnir must have some special feature in order to fit the beam weapon it has, because otherwise you'd be seeing mjolnir-esque beams bolted onto capital ships.

b) There's no evidence that the node exit vector is fixed or predictable.  And the default Mjolnir beam is fixed-fire.

c)  Shivans haven't needed to send a meson warhead through, yes, but they haven't had to because the GTVA doesn't use tactics vulnerable to such a tactic.    They are certainly technically capable of it, which is the whole point.

d) We know there's inter-system communication thanks to the last messages of FS2, amongst others.  It'd be trivial to send a scout fighter through; and AFAIK we've never seen the actual start of a Shivan.

e) What seems to be most relevant is...... the Mjolnir was developed as a remote beam cannon.  Independent of capships.  So what on earth would be the point of taking it and bolting it onto a capship? Clearly, the relative cost, risk, etc of such a weapon would be considered in creating it - which can only imply it's considered cost effective even given the risk of losing it.  If it was going to be prohibitively expensive to lose an RBC, they wouldn't exist.

No army is infinite no weapon is infinite they just look that way till u destroy the last one.

Also i'm pretty sure that these uncharted jump nodes or unstable jumpnodes arent floating aroun everywhere. If they were then the shivans would of bipassed every GTVA atemped blocade and stuff like that. Also the fact that the lucifer used existing jumpnodes other then the one from ross128 means even they are limited in theyr abilaty to travel through subspace. Also thsi is asuming they actualy used a jumnode to get to ross128 and they werent already there in a dormant state sort of like hibernation somewhere on the edge of the sistem.

In FS1, the Shivans were searching for Sol, so couldn't just pick a route but had to attack every system they could.   And, yeah, they did circumvent the Antares blockade.
In FS2.... we don't know what they did, or where they were going.  The Sathanas did blitz its way through the blockades put against it, though, as did the Iceni....

[AlphaOne]

WEll you have good points there aldo. But as stated above the Mjolnir firing vector is fixed while the exit vector of subspace is not. Or at least so everyone says. I mean there is no proof there has to be only one exit vector. The idea was just that: to take the existing Mjolnir and bolt it onto a ships hull so that its firing vector is no longer fixed. That would greatly improve the RBC's eficenci and make it a far deadlyer weapon then the existing version. Also who says you have to have the mjolnir encased in anything. Just expose it to the vacuum of space. I mean surely they can find a way of dooing that and still puting it onto a ship.

Also id didnt say that the shivans wont take advantage of existing unstable jumpnodes its just that i doubght there that many of them the shivans can use. I mean a star sistem can have only so much conections. And you would imagine the GTVA would be focusing on fiding everyone of them. I would suspect that given the recent knossos tech aquired by the GTVA they will be capable of improving theyr detection techniques of the mentioned jumpnodes. Also here is a question i wanted to ask: If the knossos device can act as a jumpnode seeling device then does that mean the gtva could actualy close off jumpnodes that could be used by the shivans to enter GTVA space?

I mean open them when they want and close them when they want? Because that would be great if you ask me. Imagine them opening a jumpnode to the nebula send in a task force colect rawmaterials for a while then retreat back to the safety of the jumpgate!

[Mars]

I think capships exit nodes at the same direction in which they enter.

[AlphaOne]

errr then how the hell can the fighters move around subspace coridors. I mean that sort of beats the logic. If u enter a certain vector then you must maintaind that vector in order to exit the same vector. but then again you are actualy dogfighting in the subspace coriodor. Isn't that sort of..i dont know...ilogical....? I'm no expert i'm just here for the answers.

[Mars]

Well, I don't think an objects oreintation in subspace is really equivalent to its oreintation in realspace... it's like bi girls in high-school.

[AlphaOne]

SAy what?? what do highschool girls have to do with subs....of for.....nevermind that!

That would be interesting but still sort of ilogical. i mean if a ship enteres subspace y axis the it must exit the same axis right? then that would mean it would exit what somewhere on the top of the node????

This is a great way to bypass blocades and stuff...! But then agin we dont actualy see them do that!