[Iron Wolf]

I've heard many people state the Aeolus Crusier is expensive. Where is the evidence of this?

[CP5670]

The tech description says that "only two dozen of these cruisers were manufactured." Since it's pretty effective in the game (better than any other GTVA cruiser), the best explanation for its production ending early is that it was too expensive for what it was.

[Mars]

However IIRC the tech description didn't actually appear in game in Retail, making it quasicanon though I might well be wrong.

[CP5670]

I'm not sure if that is the case, and it shouldn't matter anyway. It is in the official ships.tbl and certainly fully canon.

[Iron Wolf]

Actually, I always thought it was less the fact the Aeolus was expensive then the fact RNI systems sucked at keeping thier heads above water in the ship building industry.

[NGTM-1R]

It's never actually stated the Aeolus is too expensive; that's just what people seem to want. IMO it was more probably the victim of political manuvering or plain stupidity.

[Depth_Charge]

How many of the aeolus were destroyed?  since most of them went to the NTF.     were there more when derlict, warzone during that time or those campaign don't count??

[fsi.scsi]

The Aeolus was too efficient for GTVA Command.  Those ships lasted way too long - and hey, a high rate of turnover guarantees industrial jobs for millions of disillusioned citizens!*

*Kind of like the auto industry today.  Nobody makes cars that last anymore

[AlphaOne]

Well more likely they were cut short because of the new corvette class being introduced which has significantly more powerfull puch both in ac firepower and aaaf firepower.


However i do believe an aeoulous is very usefull ship much more then is generaly thought of. Sure most of them got destroyed but that is because they were involved in some very heavy fighting and they were the main target of everyone from cap ship comanders to bommber/fighter pilots.

[Snail]

How many of the aeolus were destroyed?  since most of them went to the NTF.     were there more when derlict, warzone during that time or those campaign don't count??

They don't count, they're not canon. 24 Aeolus were constructed. Out of that, 10 defected to the NTF, all of which are destroyed. Out the remaining 14, 5 were destroyed. This means that 15 Aeolus cruisers were destroyed, leaving only 9 still in service. It is also likely that some of those are destroyed as well. (info from Wiki)

[Mad Bomber]

The NTF controlled Freedom Shipyards in Polaris, which could probably have made a few Aeoli there along with the Iceni.

Note that the tech description only states

Only two dozen of these cruisers were put into service in GTVA fleets

meaning there's weasel room there for the NTF to have produced a few of their own.

[Snail]

Ferk the NTF.

[Goober5000]

You could also weasel by saying that the production run ending in 2365 was only the first run, with more runs after the war began in 2366.

Or you could say that only 24 were produced in Laramis.

After all, it's a little odd for 15 of those 24 cruisers to migrate all the way from Laramis to up near Capella, isn't it?

[Snail]

Well they needed to be deployed where they were needed when there's a war, I guess.

[Iron Wolf]

So there isn't any real conclusive evidence that the aeolus was expensive to create?

[IceFire]

So there isn't any real conclusive evidence that the aeolus was expensive to create?

That would be true.  As usual there are some bits and pieces of leftover community debates that have somehow taken on their own meaning and attempted to be canon. There's a bunch of things about Shivans, Capella, and subspace that some folks assume to be actually what happened and then when you go back in the game fiction there's nothing of the sort.  Its ok...its just natural communication...I'm sure we can now better appreciate how folk stories grew from pretty mundane to fantastical in past centuries.

The tech room always said that there were a limited number of Aeolus produced but I've always assumed that they revived production as the war with the NTF continued.  Corvettes are all well and good but if you're trying to cover ground or protect convoys then you want smaller more flexible ships to fill the gaps.  The Aeolous packs a serious punch against just about everything.

[Sarafan]

Hooray for the Aelous!!!

[FUBAR-BDHR]

If you extend it beyond the campaign to multi then Blockade Run may hold the answer.  An Aelous overloads while firing it's primaries.  Maybe they were all defective in this manner and could blow up just by drawing too much power to weapons systems.

[Qwer]

IMHO Aeolus wasn't mass-produced because of:
- cost
- wrong desing (like 75% of GTVA warships )
- unnesseserity.
During IIGW Command wanted to replace all cruisers with corvettes. It was pointless to keep Aeolus with smaller survivability in GTVA philosophy of war. After Capella everything changed, GTVA left with no fleet and learnt that classical iron fist strategy simply won't work with Shivans. There would be probably also lots of pirates over there. With no decent fleet GTVA must change strategy. I bet Aeolus would be redesinged and put back to duty as full-AF and less expensive ship which would be effective against pirates.

[CP5670]

If you extend it beyond the campaign to multi then Blockade Run may hold the answer.  An Aelous overloads while firing it's primaries.  Maybe they were all defective in this manner and could blow up just by drawing too much power to weapons systems.

I always assumed that was just idiocy on the Retribution commander's part. Or maybe he knew they would die but did it anyway in order to take down the Hakiki. (or the Murakami, can't remember which one gets hit by the beams)

But it's as good an explanation as any.