[aldo_14]

I'd bet the 'blades' on the Mjolnir are part of a heat dispersal mechanism, BTW.

[Nuclear1]

for cryng out loud man then what about the mjolnir. It has been proven that you can make a beam more powerfull. I for one believe that the mjolnir is just a rough diamond right now. With a little more polishing you count envisage a future where you have them mounted on ships.

The Mjolnir has a powerful cannon, but for a massive tradeoff. The cannon is essentially the only system that the Mjolnir's power source is working for, unlike on, say, a Deimos, that must power life support, engines, subspace drives, communications, and countless other allocations in addition to its four anticapital ship beam cannons. The Mjolnir is powerful, but at the cost of mobility and defense.

The GTVA did make a more powerful beam--and it took twenty years to make. The Colossus, like aldo said, was the best that the GTVA had to offer in terms of firepower, and even it was strained when firing its more powerful weapons.

Take it in context - the advantage of the Colossus sharing turret types and hence possibly parts with other classes.

Exactly. Interchangeable parts FTW.

[Mars]

Now I hate to inturrupt Aldo's and Trashman's holy war, and I feel weird saying it, but I agree with Trashman on the RBCs. Maybe not the Mjolnir, but an RBC with the ability to turn around is much more effective than a normal RBC, I've tested it. I don't know how much more it could cost, but I'd say it's worth at least as much as Fenris, and is probably cheaper.

[S-99]

Mjolnir, rbc, same thing, until a different rbc gets developed. Yeah, sentry guns don't have engines, but they do rotate in a couple of dimensions.

[NGTM-1R]

Militaries have never been particularly parts-sharing concious when they have high funding. (as presumably the GTVA's does...after all, they are the ones who end up standing on the bridge if the Shivans come back.) Navies in particular are apt to use a bewildering array of guns and mountings if you let them. The logistical strain of the Colossus was already quite large; it seems doubtful that having two or three more Tritons following it around would have made a substantial difference. At the very least it would have been well-served by some kind of large spinal beam mount; it might not have mattered for Their Finest Hour, but it would have been useful for High Noon.

On the other hand, one should also consider the philosophy behind the Colossus' design before making that assumption. It was designed with destroyer targets in mind...and the Colossus eats destroyers for breakfast already. For its design purpose, the ship is superb. It didn't need anything more.

[aldo_14]

Militaries have never been particularly parts-sharing concious when they have high funding. (as presumably the GTVA's does...after all, they are the ones who end up standing on the bridge if the Shivans come back.) Navies in particular are apt to use a bewildering array of guns and mountings if you let them. The logistical strain of the Colossus was already quite large; it seems doubtful that having two or three more Tritons following it around would have made a substantial difference. At the very least it would have been well-served by some kind of large spinal beam mount; it might not have mattered for Their Finest Hour, but it would have been useful for High Noon.

On the other hand, one should also consider the philosophy behind the Colossus' design before making that assumption. It was designed with destroyer targets in mind...and the Colossus eats destroyers for breakfast already. For its design purpose, the ship is superb. It didn't need anything more.

On the subject of supplies, look at the consequences of the 'lose' debrief in the mission where you escort a fuel convoy to the Colossus; logistics do matter.  Also, it's worth bearing in mind the Colossus is a single, standalone ship, which IMO is rather different than where you have (a distinction I should have made, and made far clearer in my initial suggestion of it) a class of ship.  It's fair enough to presume there are more than a few factories and supply dumps spread about carrying Orion or Deimos parts (etc), because those are pretty standard fleet vessels and there's a few of them.  But for a single, unique vessel which covers the entire GTVA, there are issues as to how you best provide it with parts (including manufacture and transport from the place of manufacture) and keep that logistics chain intact.  Intersystem travel, for example could be potentially quite long if not realspace length; I think the only exact canon time give is for the Lucifer in FS1 travelling to Sol, which is something like 24-48 hours IIRC.

Albiet I'd point out this was just a thought.  I'm not suggesting it as a literal advantage, i.e. that we can assume is inherently there, but one which is worth positing as a side benefit.

[Colonol Dekker]

The Royal navy has a fleet dedicated to supply alone,

http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/nav.2714

With regards to parts and storage, we've all played missions where you must "Guard the transport carrying parts" IE Aquitaine repair, PVD Pinnacle repair.  Collossus is huge enough that i'd imagine it carries a wide range of logistical resourrces. But Its a big ships, the scale of components would be larger than most destroyer standard parts.
I reckon that most major repairs/refits could only take place in a Ganymede anyway to be honest.
But thats my opinion, I'm sure there could be a huge range of other possibilities.

[Mars]

If you look at well recorded naval engagments (e.x. Midway) the combatant ships are always heavily outnumbered to the supply ships

[AlphaOne]

So then the supply ships are not the problem right? That is if i understend corectly what you want to say!

[TrashMan]

It's no arguement you can answer, yes.

So you're basing this on you having a better idea of the rules and restrictions of FS than Volition?  Essentially, your arguement is 'everyone is stupid but me' here, including the people who developed the game and decided what was sensible to put in (I'd wager they thought a beam-cannon-with-an-engine would be effectively a pointless addition of what amounted to a single gun cruiser), and that doesn't fly unless you want to scrap every ship, weapon and piece of tech in Freespace canon and make Trashspace instead..

No, what I'm saying that I have every right to post my oppinions no matter what you or anyone else thinks of them. And just for the record while I love [V] and FS, I don't think that everything is perfect. (alltough it allmost is )

Apparently, you belive that every ship, every eapon is as best as it possibly could be. the GTVA designed everything perfectly..no need for any improvements whatsoever...Good heavens if someone thinks of something that actually might be better than what allready is in the game! It's heresy!!!! :

You see, I don't start with the assumption that [V] thought of everything from every angle, since they didn't have either the time or the will to disect and analyze it like we fanboys do....a lot of their stuff is murky and somewhat strange and unrealistic.

Unless the GTVA deliberately underarmed the Colossus, it has the most powerful and best weaponry the GTVA has to offer, simply because its role dictates that.  So if it's not got more powerful weapons than the Orion, the GTVA simply doesn't have more powerful beams that it could use on the Colossus.  If the Colossus has more powerful beams, then the GTVA does.  If it does not, then the GTVA does not have more powerful (ship-mountable) beam weaponry.  Hell, LRBGreens strain the Colossus' reactors and superstructure, after all.  There's no way you can upgrade the armament of it without upgrading the whole ship, or it'd melt every time it fired rather than just when it pushes itself as in High Noon.

Not ignoring the rather uneconomic & tricky nature of weapons designed for a single ship class, which makes repairs trickier and more expensive as you need to have a prefab parts supply rather than, for example, reusing common component designs across vessels and having a common store in the supply dump/s.

You jsut don't get it do you...if hte GTVA had a specifc beam cannon designed for something as big as the collie then it would be used only on the collie. No other ships would need to be changed.

Yes, the BGreen seems to be the most powerufll beam the GTVA has, but -  remeber that we're talking about story and balance changes here, so what is currently in is irrelevant.

[aldo_14]

No, what I'm saying that I have every right to post my oppinions no matter what you or anyone else thinks of them. And just for the record while I love [V] and FS, I don't think that everything is perfect. (alltough it allmost is Big grin )

Apparently, you belive that every ship, every eapon is as best as it possibly could be. the GTVA designed everything perfectly..no need for any improvements whatsoever...Good heavens if someone thinks of something that actually might be better than what allready is in the game! It's heresy!!!! :

You see, I don't start with the assumption that [V] thought of everything from every angle, since they didn't have either the time or the will to disect and analyze it like we fanboys do....a lot of their stuff is murky and somewhat strange and unrealistic.

Ach, bringing out the strawmans!

All I ever really said was that Volition set the rules about what is realistic and not in FS2s' universe.  If you want to add in new concepts, you need to address the reasons why they don't already exist first.  Because relying on 'we analyze it more' isn't really any more different from 'they're wrong'.  I mean, how can you say it's unrealistic? As soon as you apply new external rules for that 'realism', then there's a lot more that becomes unrealistic - like having fighters.

You jsut don't get it do you...if hte GTVA had a specifc beam cannon designed for something as big as the collie then it would be used only on the collie. No other ships would need to be changed.

Yes, the BGreen seems to be the most powerufll beam the GTVA has, but -  remeber that we're talking about story and balance changes here, so what is currently in is irrelevant.

What is currently in is highly relevant if you want to keep calling it 'Freespace'.  The current beam strength of the Colossus is determined as much by the technology level of the GTVA-as-a-whole as it is by the Colossus as an individual ship.  The Colossus, by standard, cannot have more powerful armament without causing itself damage and energy shortages.  Unless, I guess, if you strip out weaker beams, but in that case you are affecting the suitability of the remaining weapons given that the Colossus was essentially built to duke it out with fleets, not single juggernauts.

(NB: must be careful not to assume, say, the BGreen wasn't on the Colossus before it was any other ships when we're talking about this sort of thing, of course)

[Nuclear1]

Apparently, you belive that every ship, every eapon is as best as it possibly could be. the GTVA designed everything perfectly..no need for any improvements whatsoever...Good heavens if someone thinks of something that actually might be better than what allready is in the game! It's heresy!!!! :

You see, I don't start with the assumption that [V] thought of everything from every angle, since they didn't have either the time or the will to disect and analyze it like we fanboys do....a lot of their stuff is murky and somewhat strange and unrealistic.

For one, nobody claimed that V was perfect when they made the FS series, and we've all seen what can happen when V really does mess up (read: Silent Threat). There are some things in FS2 which don't make any sense to the average player either, particularly the Maxim. Still, it's no grounds for saying that V didn't think through the game thoroughly before they released it.

If V had intended to make FS an actual realistic portrayal of what space combat would be like, then I'm sure we wouldn't have anywhere near the same FS that we have today. FS, like other sci-fi universes like Star Wars and Homeworld, was designed with WWII-era naval battles and dogfights in mind, and the fleet battles in FS seem to reflect that very well. If V had made FS more "realistic", the FS we know and love today would not have existed.

[TrashMan]

Ach, bringing out the strawmans!

All I ever really said was that Volition set the rules about what is realistic and not in FS2s' universe.  If you want to add in new concepts, you need to address the reasons why they don't already exist first.  Because relying on 'we analyze it more' isn't really any more different from 'they're wrong'.  I mean, how can you say it's unrealistic? As soon as you apply new external rules for that 'realism', then there's a lot more that becomes unrealistic - like having fighters.

Ahh - but there's the problem. What is realistic is based on a few lines of text, some numbers and custcenes. Each one of us is trying to piece together the parts into a whole on his own way. We have lot of data - but there is not just one way to interpret all of it. Some areas are murky - and with it some things cannot be immediately proclamied imposible or unrealistic.

What is currently in is highly relevant if you want to keep calling it 'Freespace'.  The current beam strength of the Colossus is determined as much by the technology level of the GTVA-as-a-whole as it is by the Colossus as an individual ship.  The Colossus, by standard, cannot have more powerful armament without causing itself damage and energy shortages.  Unless, I guess, if you strip out weaker beams, but in that case you are affecting the suitability of the remaining weapons given that the Colossus was essentially built to duke it out with fleets, not single juggernauts.

(NB: must be careful not to assume, say, the BGreen wasn't on the Colossus before it was any other ships when we're talking about this sort of thing, of course)

For hte love og god - we were talking about changin the Sath or Collie or both for a more belivable interaction beetween gameplay and story. If you change hte story, then what WAS is irrelevant sine it isn't there anymore.

Assuming [V] changed both the sath and Collie to be twice as powerfull (and thus making the sath breaking of the blocakde more realistic) the "old" stats of both ships would be irrelevant, no?

[TrashMan]

For one, nobody claimed that V was perfect when they made the FS series, and we've all seen what can happen when V really does mess up (read: Silent Threat). There are some things in FS2 which don't make any sense to the average player either, particularly the Maxim. Still, it's no grounds for saying that V didn't think through the game thoroughly before they released it.

If V had intended to make FS an actual realistic portrayal of what space combat would be like, then I'm sure we wouldn't have anywhere near the same FS that we have today. FS, like other sci-fi universes like Star Wars and Homeworld, was designed with WWII-era naval battles and dogfights in mind, and the fleet battles in FS seem to reflect that very well. If V had made FS more "realistic", the FS we know and love today would not have existed.

I didn't say they didn't think it troughly.. FS1 and 2 are some of hte best games I ever played with a load of effort and love put inot it. But like all games, they had deadlines, they made changes and they don't have as much time as we have to check every crack, every nut and bolt.. That was my whole point.

[aldo_14]

For hte love og god - we were talking about changin the Sath or Collie or both for a more belivable interaction beetween gameplay and story. If you change hte story, then what WAS is irrelevant sine it isn't there anymore.

Assuming [V] changed both the sath and Collie to be twice as powerfull (and thus making the sath breaking of the blocakde more realistic) the "old" stats of both ships would be irrelevant, no?

Volition did change the Colossus.  Look at the colussus introduction cutscene and the commented out table lines.

[NGTM-1R]

For that matter both the Hecate and the Deimos had turrets that got nuked between CBani rendering and release.

[Ghostavo]

Wasn't FS2 released ahead of schedule?

[NGTM-1R]

Perhaps, but the turrets still weren't there.

[TrashMan]

Yeah - you can even see a row of rotating turrets on the Hecate (probably flak turrets)

[Mars]

The Deimos turrets were removed because they were side multipart turrets, which out programers are having problems with currently (I think they gave up)