Author Topic: Campaign is not very smart.  (Read 20431 times)

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Offline karajorma

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
Hell even if you accept that the Sathanas can't hide in Capella what's to stop it buggering back off to the nebula and coming back 3 weeks later with fully repaired cannons?

It's not like there's much of the blockade left.
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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
THey don't mind... Just call in Alpha 1 again ;)

 

Offline Mehrpack

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
I never denied that they would. But space is big and civilian traffic will do point to point jumps and will also have much crappier sensors than military craft. Unless the Sathanas jumps within visual range of a civilian ship they aren't going to see a thing.

Furthermore these ships are all going to be clustered around the planets anyway. They wouldn't be evenly spaced out. All the Sathanas has to do in order to hide is simply jump to an area of space where there are no planets for 100 million kilometres in any direction. Who the hell would be anywhere near there to detect them?

hi,
i know that the traffic isnt overall in the system but the traffic help, its the sathanas not here you can kick it of the list.
if the sathanas jump in this area, some one see it.
and again i know it, that a solar system is a great place, but i think isnt impossible to find a sathanas in a good time i a very populatet system.

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Based on what? The Aquitaine was last mentioned as being in the Nebula during Speaking in Tongues. After that we don't hear from it again until long after the Sathanas is destroyed.

the aquitaine is the flagship of the capella fleet, if they not to much damage, then is she in the system.
but yes we doesnt have any save informations that they is really in the system.
but the logical say, if they not in repair, then she is there to start their fighters.

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Again, based on what? Sending the Colossus against the Sathanas was an act of desperation. Yet no other capships were present in that mission to help the Colossus so where where they?

ok question: you have many civilian targets, a big thread that can start a lot of fighter, bombers and maybe corvetts.
do you give the civilian targets guards or not?

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Search patterns which I deny the validity of in the first place since space is so big that it could take years to search the entire system.

based on what?
do you really know how good and how fast is the GTVA ability do scan a lot of space?
today we need years, yes, but freespace isnt today.

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Okay first lets challenge this assumption that a large ship has bigger emissions. Yes the Sathanas will have systems that use more power than a smaller ship but it also has much thicker armour which is going to cut the strength of those emissions down. Remember that a nuclear strike with an antimatter weapon doesn't wipe out the entire crew of a capship so we already know that whatever the Sathanas is built out of is largely impervious to EM radiation.

You haven't even proved that the Sathanas actually has higher emissions than a smaller ship.

armor didnt reduce all of emissions.
gamma radiation for example.
but yes i dont know what the sathanas do emit, its only the thinking about a big ship with a strong weapons and engine.
maybe my thinking is wrong.
and yes i cant proved that the sathanas emit more than a smaller ship, but you can it didnt too, that they emit with the same strong as a smaller ship.
in the tables are no informations about this, and a sahtanas didnt exist in real.
so we can only think about it, and based on logical thinking we can discuss about it.

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They don't sit still for 5 minutes and allow a weaker ship to blow the crap out of them with BGreens either. So whatever the Sathanas' response would have been was atypical anyway. And onslaught race or not let me point out that the Lucifer had a habit of wondering all over the place rather than simply staying where it was and taking on all comers. So there is canon proof of the Shivans not simply charging in at the enemy even when they had a vastly superior ship.

the simples answer is: they have no fear and they convinced win.
but yes thats speculation.

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The nebula may have caused problems but that doesn't mean you can assume you can instantly find a needle in a haystack the second you are out of it.

i doesnt say instantly.
all what i say that is possible to find the sathanas and that can be hunted down.

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Offline ssmit132

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
That juggernaught ain't gonna sit there forever doing nothing......  and what makes you think the Shivans wouldn't send reinforcements if it was in genuine trouble?

Even if they were going to send in reinforcments, The Sathanas would still be screwed, since they would have to come out of the nebula, through Gamma Draconis, and into Capella. The only other support ship that could be in the area would be the Beleth, and that should be destroyed anyway.

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
I wouldn't say an act of desperation.
It was planned. Command didn't want to loose the collie - they wanted to give him every possible advantage and thus the bombing run on sath's beams.

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The Satahanas entered the Capella system and obliterated the line of defense we had established to intercept it. We now have no choice but to send in the Colossus. With its beam cannons still operational, the Sathanas has sufficient firepower to win this engagement.

Do you even bother to look at the missions before coming out with those comments? The only way you don't get that intro is if you managed to take out all 4 beam cannons.

I usually get 3 beams, so I saw that. All this confirms is that the Collie was plan B if the line of defence should fail...


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More important, a state-of-the-art ship like the Collie would have superb sensors. If the sath were to jump out the Collie would certanly be able to track it.


Prove it. Don't just assert it. Prove it.

We have no idea what the recharge time is on the Sathanas' jump engines. Even if I believe you that the Colossus can track the Sathanas there might be nothing but empty space there by the time Command can send a capship to its location.

The GTVA tracked other ship before, including shivan ones. It kinda makes sense that the mightiest ship in the GTVA fleet would have good sensory equipment. The NTF behaviour during blockade runs (jump to a random position and then to the rally point) proves that ships can be tracked easily.

Oh, let's not forget that the Sath just jumped in Capella and engaged the Collie immediately, while hte Collie was there for a long time - meaning, the collies jump drives were charged allready, while the Sath's needed to charge. This also means that the collei can immediately persue the Sath (at least for the first jump).
Just how much damage it could do a Sath before it jumps again is unknown tough.

Oh, and hte shivans don't have a tendancy to run. The Sath just stood there as the Collie obliderated it.


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the saths beams were destroyed seconds before it jumped to Capella.

Only on one particular outcome. You're cherry-picking data again. [/quote]

And the Collie would be well informed of the Saths status by the time it arrives given that node-travel takes time and would adjust it's strategy accordingly. Aslo, it had bombers allready in the air ready to take out the remaining beams (if any).
Let's not forget that no beams destroyed = failed outcome. But even that is no big problem given the bombers. Hell, I can take out a beam cannon just with trebs before the fighters the sath launches get half way to me...

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Offline karajorma

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
i know that the traffic isnt overall in the system but the traffic help, its the sathanas not here you can kick it of the list.
if the sathanas jump in this area, some one see it.
and again i know it, that a solar system is a great place, but i think isnt impossible to find a sathanas in a good time i a very populatet system.

I never said that the Sathanas was impossible to find. I said Command weren't willing to take the risk that they couldn't find it if it did try to hide. Completely different matter. Say the chance of the Sathanas hiding successfully was only 10%, but if it did succeed millions of people would die if it decided to attack a planet. You're Command. What would you do?

Maybe the Sathanas wouldn't have jumped out. Maybe the Colossus could easily have killed it using the weapons it had without needed to overcharge the beams but what most people are forgetting is that Command didn't know that!

You have to judge actions on what was the most sensible thing to do at the time. Not what is the most sensible thing to have done in hindsight. Both yourself and Trashman are missing this point. 

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Based on what? The Aquitaine was last mentioned as being in the Nebula during Speaking in Tongues. After that we don't hear from it again until long after the Sathanas is destroyed.

the aquitaine is the flagship of the capella fleet, if they not to much damage, then is she in the system.
but yes we doesnt have any save informations that they is really in the system.
but the logical say, if they not in repair, then she is there to start their fighters.


That's a pretty big assumption given that we know that there were other Shivan forces still in the nebula. What if the Aquitaine remained behind to engage these forces and prevent them from following the Sathanas into Gamma Draconis and beginning the second Shivan invasion? What if its ships were involved in the rescue efforts for the ships involved in the Gamma Draconis blockade? I can think of a few very important things the Aquitaine could have been doing that whole time (In fact there's a nice mini-campaign in that actually). You can't simply assume that the GTVA pulled every single ship all the way back to Capella and left the door open for the Shivans to just march into GTVA systems.

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ok question: you have many civilian targets, a big thread that can start a lot of fighter, bombers and maybe corvetts.
do you give the civilian targets guards or not?

Given that you can defend those targets by pumping up the blockade it's quite possible that Command did that instead of assigning them as guards for civilian tagets. How could Command possibly guard all this civilian traffic? And if they couldn't maybe it would be more sensible to stop the Sathanas before it could enter Capella and threaten the civilians in the first place?

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Search patterns which I deny the validity of in the first place since space is so big that it could take years to search the entire system.

based on what?
do you really know how good and how fast is the GTVA ability do scan a lot of space?
today we need years, yes, but freespace isnt today.

Yes I know the GTVA has greater technology but how much greater? If you can show me that they can scan the entire system quickly when a ship is actively trying to hide I might buy it. If not it could take years to scan a whole system as I said.

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armor didnt reduce all of emissions.
gamma radiation for example.


We know for an absolute fact that capship armour does block gamma rays simply because when you hit a ship with an antimatter weapon everyone doesn't immediately suffer a lethal does of radiation. So armour is definitely having an effect on gamma rays

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but yes i dont know what the sathanas do emit, its only the thinking about a big ship with a strong weapons and engine.
maybe my thinking is wrong.
and yes i cant proved that the sathanas emit more than a smaller ship, but you can it didnt too, that they emit with the same strong as a smaller ship.
in the tables are no informations about this, and a sahtanas didnt exist in real.
so we can only think about it, and based on logical thinking we can discuss about it.


And logic says that you can't answer the question in either direction. We already have canon proof that capship armour can block certain forms of EM. Larger ships have more armour so it's a reasonable assumption that they can also block more EM. What then matters is whether the increase in armour is enough to compensate for the larger emissions and we have no data on that.

So your argument that the Sathanas is bigger and therefore must have larger emissions is a fallacy. We simply don't know. Which is exactly what I said in the first place.

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They don't sit still for 5 minutes and allow a weaker ship to blow the crap out of them with BGreens either. So whatever the Sathanas' response would have been was atypical anyway. And onslaught race or not let me point out that the Lucifer had a habit of wondering all over the place rather than simply staying where it was and taking on all comers. So there is canon proof of the Shivans not simply charging in at the enemy even when they had a vastly superior ship.

the simples answer is: they have no fear and they convinced win.
but yes thats speculation.

It's also a pretty strange assumption. What were they planning to use to win? Harsh language? The Shivans might be xenophobes but the one thing they aren't is stupid.
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Offline Mehrpack

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
I never said that the Sathanas was impossible to find. I said Command weren't willing to take the risk that they couldn't find it if it did try to hide. Completely different matter. Say the chance of the Sathanas hiding successfully was only 10%, but if it did succeed millions of people would die if it decided to attack a planet. You're Command. What would you do?

Maybe the Sathanas wouldn't have jumped out. Maybe the Colossus could easily have killed it using the weapons it had without needed to overcharge the beams but what most people are forgetting is that Command didn't know that!

You have to judge actions on what was the most sensible thing to do at the time. Not what is the most sensible thing to have done in hindsight. Both yourself and Trashman are missing this point. 

hi,
ok, i wrong understood this, sorry.

mhh yeah you right under this point of view, i said yes.


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That's a pretty big assumption given that we know that there were other Shivan forces still in the nebula. What if the Aquitaine remained behind to engage these forces and prevent them from following the Sathanas into Gamma Draconis and beginning the second Shivan invasion? What if its ships were involved in the rescue efforts for the ships involved in the Gamma Draconis blockade? I can think of a few very important things the Aquitaine could have been doing that whole time (In fact there's a nice mini-campaign in that actually). You can't simply assume that the GTVA pulled every single ship all the way back to Capella and left the door open for the Shivans to just march into GTVA systems.

all units was on the fallback.
because they try to close the node, i think theres not many time between the arvial of the sathanas in gamma dragonics and the fight with the colossus.
and i think to run in a trap with low unit and no reinformence.
and capella is a GTVA system, they allready there.
but if units not in capella, then its more likly in gamma dragonics.
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ok question: you have many civilian targets, a big thread that can start a lot of fighter, bombers and maybe corvetts.
do you give the civilian targets guards or not?

Given that you can defend those targets by pumping up the blockade it's quite possible that Command did that instead of assigning them as guards for civilian tagets. How could Command possibly guard all this civilian traffic? And if they couldn't maybe it would be more sensible to stop the Sathanas before it could enter Capella and threaten the civilians in the first place?

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Yes I know the GTVA has greater technology but how much greater? If you can show me that they can scan the entire system quickly when a ship is actively trying to hide I might buy it. If not it could take years to scan a whole system as I said.

you so often say, that i write it, but yes your right, we dont know how fast the GTVA can scan a system.

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We know for an absolute fact that capship armour does block gamma rays simply because when you hit a ship with an antimatter weapon everyone doesn't immediately suffer a lethal does of radiation. So armour is definitely having an effect on gamma rays

yes i know was a bad example.
i note it, after i shuting down my pc, but i hadnt time to chance it.
but i think they dosent block radition thats do damage.
tachyons maybe, but we didnt know if they generate so a radition and if it really blocked.


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And logic says that you can't answer the question in either direction. We already have canon proof that capship armour can block certain forms of EM. Larger ships have more armour so it's a reasonable assumption that they can also block more EM. What then matters is whether the increase in armour is enough to compensate for the larger emissions and we have no data on that.

So your argument that the Sathanas is bigger and therefore must have larger emissions is a fallacy. We simply don't know. Which is exactly what I said in the first place.

i think its stand 50:50, and yes we cant it say really.
but i think thats impossible to block all radition, i believe that only radition is blocked was is dangerous for shivans.
but theres the next questions, what for radition is dangerous.
and then the open question of a creepy mode, where so radition are limited.

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It's also a pretty strange assumption. What were they planning to use to win? Harsh language? The Shivans might be xenophobes but the one thing they aren't is stupid.

i think its similary to the borg, a single borg fight to the death for the hive.
its for him irrelevant if he die or not, he protect the hive of all cost.
or like bees.
a bee die if she pang a enemy.
i think theres some parralles between the actions.
thats doesnt mean that shivans are stupid, but maybe its more instinct as we think.

a last word: i enjoy that discussion *g* its make me fun and its a nice training for me :) because i think you understand the most of my crap that i do write :D

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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
If I were Command, I wouldn't risk the Collie.
Even if the Sath would to jump out all the advantages are on the GTVA side - the Sath is in hostile territory, some GTVA ships were in-systems, other were on theri way, not to mention the sheer number of fighters/bombers the GTVA prolly has on the planets.

The Sath surely lost some of it's fighter complement (a lot actually) and can't re-supply in Capella, not to mention that there aren't any shivan shipyards where tehy could repair the thing.

But realisticly, the Collie would have launched all the bombers it had (i'd guess around 30 wings or so) and swarmed the sath as it entered Capella, then come close and finish it off...
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Offline karajorma

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
all units was on the fallback.
because they try to close the node, i think theres not many time between the arvial of the sathanas in gamma dragonics and the fight with the colossus.
and i think to run in a trap with low unit and no reinformence.
and capella is a GTVA system, they allready there.
but if units not in capella, then its more likly in gamma dragonics.


Probably but once the the Sathanas proved that the node hadn't collapsed something needed to stay and guard that node wouldn't you agree?

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but i think they dosent block radition thats do damage.
tachyons maybe, but we didnt know if they generate so a radition and if it really blocked.


Gamma rays are damaging though. An antimatter weapon puts out only gamma rays. Any other form of energy/damage you see would be through  interactions with the vaporised ships hull etc. So there's going to be a very large gamma ray source right next to the hull when a bomb hits. When it comes to bombs, with the exception of the meson bomb the GTVA uses pretty scientifically accurate weapons (i.e either stuff we could build now or stuff we can actually predict quite well). Again apart from the meson bomb :v: never invented any bombs using anything which would have largely unknown properties. So it doesn't matter if the hull can block tachyons. We have no proof that any weapons use them.

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i think its stand 50:50, and yes we cant it say really.
but i think thats impossible to block all radition, i believe that only radition is blocked was is dangerous for shivans.


It doesn't have to block it all. Just enough to make it hard to tell from the background.

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i think its similary to the borg, a single borg fight to the death for the hive.
its for him irrelevant if he die or not, he protect the hive of all cost.
or like bees.
a bee die if she pang a enemy.
i think theres some parralles between the actions.
thats doesnt mean that shivans are stupid, but maybe its more instinct as we think.

The point though is that the Shivans had no weapons that could hurt the Colossus (Well maybe the LRed if it's not destroyed but we don't even see them turn to use it!).  If the Shivans really are that desperate to kill the Colossus surely they would have swarmed out of the Sathanas and tried using their personal beam cannons against it?

Hell even if you buy the whole "The Shivans stayed because they wanted to kill their enemy" argument if I were in command I would have told the Colossus too kill the Sathanas quickly to stop that possibility. The idea of Shivans boarding the Colossus is pretty horrific.

I usually get 3 beams, so I saw that. All this confirms is that the Collie was plan B if the line of defence should fail...


And that there was no plan C. Surely you understand what "We have no choice" means?

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The GTVA tracked other ship before, including shivan ones. It kinda makes sense that the mightiest ship in the GTVA fleet would have good sensory equipment. The NTF behaviour during blockade runs (jump to a random position and then to the rally point) proves that ships can be tracked easily.


Actually it doesn't. The As I pointed out before those rally points were found by recon. Not subspace tracking.

IIRC the Belisarius is the only ship that is definitely subspace tracked in FS2.

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Oh, let's not forget that the Sath just jumped in Capella and engaged the Collie immediately, while hte Collie was there for a long time - meaning, the collies jump drives were charged allready, while the Sath's needed to charge. This also means that the collei can immediately persue the Sath (at least for the first jump).

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The Satahanas entered the Capella system and obliterated the line of defense we had established to intercept it. We now have no choice but to send in the Colossus.

Run the mission. What do you see? The Sathanas. The Gamma Draconis node behind it and the Colossus. It's pretty obvious that the either the Colossus arrived after the Sathanas did or for some reason Command let it hang back and just sit there while the Sathanas chewed its way through the rest of the fleet.

So I'd say it's pretty reasonable to say that the Sathanas will be able to jump before the Colossus can.

(Actually the positioning of the Sathanas does rather beg the question of how the hell the Psamtik managed to get into the system to launch it's fighters without begin attacked by the Sathanas. :D )

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Oh, and hte shivans don't have a tendancy to run. The Sath just stood there as the Collie obliderated it.

That's not proof of anything. My whole point was that maybe the Shivans were trying to recharge/repair their jump drives to get the hell out. The fact that they sat there indicates absolutely nothing if that was what they were trying to do.

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And the Collie would be well informed of the Saths status by the time it arrives given that node-travel takes time and would adjust it's strategy accordingly. Aslo, it had bombers allready in the air ready to take out the remaining beams (if any).


What bombers? What mission are you playing?! The only bombers in the mission are Alpha wing and they're vasudan bombers from the Psamtik!

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Let's not forget that no beams destroyed = failed outcome. But even that is no big problem given the bombers. Hell, I can take out a beam cannon just with trebs before the fighters the sath launches get half way to me...

Again. What bombers?

If I were Command, I wouldn't risk the Collie.
Even if the Sath would to jump out all the advantages are on the GTVA side - the Sath is in hostile territory, some GTVA ships were in-systems, other were on theri way, not to mention the sheer number of fighters/bombers the GTVA prolly has on the planets.

To to mention I've given you about a dozen arguments why that might not be true. You can restate your argument all you wish but that doesn't make you right.

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The Sath surely lost some of it's fighter complement (a lot actually) and can't re-supply in Capella, not to mention that there aren't any shivan shipyards where tehy could repair the thing.

And who say the Colossus had a full complement? The Colossus had just finished destroying the NTF when the Sathanas was first spotted. Surely it too lost some of its fighters.

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But realisticly, the Collie would have launched all the bombers it had (i'd guess around 30 wings or so) and swarmed the sath as it entered Capella, then come close and finish it off...

Which surely indicates that it didn't have them then?
« Last Edit: March 11, 2007, 03:28:50 am by karajorma »
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Offline Snail

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
But realisticly, the Collie would have launched all the bombers it had (i'd guess around 30 wings or so) and swarmed the sath as it entered Capella, then come close and finish it off...

I agree with Kara on that count, the the Colossus prolly had deployed all its bombers elsewhere at the aforementioned blockade.

 

Offline wtf_cl0vvn

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
On the subject of the Aquitaine, since all ships were withdrawn from the nebula after the decision was made to destroy the portal, it was probably somewhere deeper within the system, or in another system, to be the half-assed Plan C.

The GTVA still has some sort of navy at that point, its just nowhere near what it used to be.

Remember, they still have enough strength to go dicking about in the nebula AFTER the Sathanas is destroyed, hunting for the Adm. Bosch, and when Knossos II is discovered, they send in the Psamtik to spearhead an expedition almost immediately.

It's not like the ENTIRE GTVA was reduced to nothing by the Sathanas. Remember, we still have to clean up after the NTF mess. Polaris and Sirius, though green on a star chart, are probably nowhere near stable. You'll have remnants of the NTF still raising hell, pro-NTF civilians raising hell, and general disorder after a huge rebellion. same with Polaris. Regulus would probably be even worse.

That the NTF is no threat is not necessarily true: remember that the NTF withdraws their assault on the portal after the Iceni crosses the node. There will be remnants of the organized NTF navy, and whatever militia they will have raised in desperation in the final days of the rebellion.

Plus the Alliance has to repair its fleets after the rebellion. They DID sustain huge casualties in the war: the 6th fleet lost over 75% of its men, the 3rd fleet and 13th Vas. Battlegroup lost however many pilots and capships in the retaliatory strikes in Deneb. That doesnt say anything about the other fleets/Vas. Battlegroups in A. Centauri, and the casualties sustained in the earlier year and a half of the war. The rebellion started in Polaris, and the GTVA ended up losing three more systems throughout the course of the entire war. E. Pegasi wasnt even as lost as Sirius and Regulus were, and think of how many casualties were sustained there by one fleet alone.

Lets also consider that until late in the game, the GTVA constantly underestimates the Shivan threat. Whenever Koth launches his attack on Epsilon Pegasi, the entire operation in the nebula is suspended. The portal is constantly left open, despite the several warnings to the contrary. Also, the GTVA believes they can take out the Sathanas with, IIRC, three destroyers (Psamtik, Aquitaine, and Toeris). Three destroyers, even if they attack from the rear, are utterly destroyed, and the Sathy suffers about 15% hull damage.

The Sathy suffering incredibly little damage to itself after wiping out the blockade is not as unbelievable as it seems: Attacking from the front, the Sathanas can take out about 10 destroyers (orions and hatshepsuts and hecates and typhons) and remain above 90% hull integrity.

And lets not forget the rest of the Shivan armada going through Gamma Drac. as well. Beleth anyone?

My guess is that the reason that no other capships were in system when the Sathanas was engaged was that they were: In the former NTF systems pacifying, in deeper systems getting repaired, escorting civilians and others out of Capella, or at least to safer systems farther away from entry points, or waiting to engage whatever other Shivan ships come out of G. Draconis. For them to engage the Sathanas would probably be counter-productive, and would most likely add only to the already huge casualty list. I think that GTVA command was pretty much robbed of their illusions of the ability of destroyers to stand up to the Sathanas after the blockade was torn asunder and the Phoenicia obliterated when attempting to challenge the juggernaut.

As to the beam overloading? Probably for the same reason. Beams or no beams, you cant ignore the Sathanas. After all of Command's assumptions regarding the shivans were ripped to shreds (tactical superiority-where was THAT when the fleet engaged the Ravana?), im pretty sure they would be little more careful in assuming what the ships weaknesses were. Not like that cautious attitude remained after the colossus's victory, but enough to order the colossus to possibly inflict damage to its own systems if need be.


btw, i think it was in this thread that someone pointed out that a gtva fighter pilot claims two freighters in that shivan depot raid mission. IIRC there is a transport and and a freighter. Inaccuracies like that arent surprising, especially when Cmdr. Beckett refers to a Deimos class as an AWACS ship (GTA Monitor).
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Offline karajorma

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
My guess is that the reason that no other capships were in system when the Sathanas was engaged was that they were: In the former NTF systems pacifying, in deeper systems getting repaired, escorting civilians and others out of Capella, or at least to safer systems farther away from entry points, or waiting to engage whatever other Shivan ships come out of G. Draconis.

While I don't disagree with you completely I think you've only got a part of the answer. I'll tell you what the majority of the GTVA fleet were doing. They were heading to Capella!

What most people seem to be forgetting is the sheer speed of the Sathanas' assault. In Speaking in Tongues the Sathanas is spotted heading to the GD jump node. In A Flaming Sword the plan to stop the Sathanas fails and fighting it moves from contingency plan to a necessity. From that moment on try working out how long actually elapses till the end of High Noon!

t=0, Sathanas arrives in Gamma Draconis
t=x (where x = time taken for the sath to recharge for an intrasystem jump), Sathanas arrives at the Capella node.
t=x+y (Where y= time required to recharge for an intersystem jump - I'm assuming it took less time than this to wipe out the fleet! :D )
t=x+y+~10 minutes Sathanas arrives in Capella and starts wiping out the fleet
t=x+y+~15 minutes Sathanas has wiped out the fleet, The Psamtick has arrived and then departed, Colossus has arrived.

So it's not like the GTVA could have gotten ships into position apart from those in Vega and EP and we already know the EP fleet was largely destroyed by the NTF already. Hell I suspect the second fleet the Sathanas decimated was partly or even mostly comprised of the Colossus' battlegroup (with the Capella fleet being the ones wiped out in GD).
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Offline Mobius

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
We know that High Noon wasn't FREDded that well and whoever designed it forgot to take in consideration the fact that many ships could survive the Sathanas first attack(when the number of beams remained is 1 or 0, many ships can arrive safely to the Juggernaut's port and starboard flanks, making even the LRed useless).

The point is that the might have escaped...but Command wouldn't let some warships escape if the Colossus is risking a lot. There should have been at least a cruiser attacking the Sathanas, at least when all the BFReds are down. Most part of the fleet was decimated(not a single ship if all te BFReds are down) but I don't think Command has sortied all the ships available in that moment against the Sathanas.

There are millions of civilians there, a consistent part of the fleet should have been cruising near colonized planets or civilian and military outposts. These forces should have been available in case the Colossus was getting pwned.

There's just one thing we should talk about: the fact that High Noon is too simple.
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Offline Mehrpack

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
Probably but once the the Sathanas proved that the node hadn't collapsed something needed to stay and guard that node wouldn't you agree?

hi,
mhh i think to this time the GTVA see the most of gamma dragonic as lost.
but is a good question.
but in this situation, i think the better way is, to give up gamma dragonics, blockade the gamma dragonic / cappella jump node on the capella size.
need some ship in the sektor help, you can send your forces easier and faster, as they have to travel to a jump node.

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Gamma rays are damaging though. An antimatter weapon puts out only gamma rays. Any other form of energy/damage you see would be through  interactions with the vaporised ships hull etc. So there's going to be a very large gamma ray source right next to the hull when a bomb hits. When it comes to bombs, with the exception of the meson bomb the GTVA uses pretty scientifically accurate weapons (i.e either stuff we could build now or stuff we can actually predict quite well). Again apart from the meson bomb :v: never invented any bombs using anything which would have largely unknown properties. So it doesn't matter if the hull can block tachyons. We have no proof that any weapons use them.

i doesnt mean gamma ray itsself, i mean that more generally.
and i would say that, if shivan generate a tachyon radition, then this radtion doesnt block by the armour and so its eaiser to detection.

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It doesn't have to block it all. Just enough to make it hard to tell from the background.

yeah, thats true.
but imho have the background radition its on muster, if i remember me correctly.

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The point though is that the Shivans had no weapons that could hurt the Colossus (Well maybe the LRed if it's not destroyed but we don't even see them turn to use it!).  If the Shivans really are that desperate to kill the Colossus surely they would have swarmed out of the Sathanas and tried using their personal beam cannons against it?

Hell even if you buy the whole "The Shivans stayed because they wanted to kill their enemy" argument if I were in command I would have told the Colossus too kill the Sathanas quickly to stop that possibility. The idea of Shivans boarding the Colossus is pretty horrific.

yeah boarding shivans are horror, but imho is there not really accident where shivans board a enemy ship.
but i think a ship can do damage to another ship too.
mhh yes, is a argument to destroy the sathanas so quickly as possible, to prevent that they rampage to drive against the collossus.

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Offline karajorma

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
hi,
mhh i think to this time the GTVA see the most of gamma dragonic as lost.
but is a good question.
but in this situation, i think the better way is, to give up gamma dragonics, blockade the gamma dragonic / cappella jump node on the capella size.
need some ship in the sektor help, you can send your forces easier and faster, as they have to travel to a jump node.


There's a small problem with that theory. High Noon is set just in front of the GD node in Capella. And sometime between Bearbaiting and High Noon the Sathanas wipes out the entire fleet guarding that end of the node.

So maybe that was a good idea but it simply didn't work.

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i doesnt mean gamma ray itsself, i mean that more generally.
and i would say that, if shivan generate a tachyon radition, then this radtion doesnt block by the armour and so its eaiser to detection.


I'm not saying that the Sathanas is easier or harder to detect. Similarly I'm not saying the Sathanas puts out Tachyons or that the armour would block them. We simply don't know about any of this stuff.
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
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The GTVA tracked other ship before, including shivan ones. It kinda makes sense that the mightiest ship in the GTVA fleet would have good sensory equipment. The NTF behaviour during blockade runs (jump to a random position and then to the rally point) proves that ships can be tracked easily.


Actually it doesn't. The As I pointed out before those rally points were found by recon. Not subspace tracking.

IIRC the Belisarius is the only ship that is definitely subspace tracked in FS2.

Ahem..that's becoause the ships didn't jump directly to the really point. Ships breaking trough the blockade jump to point A, B, C, D, E (or whatever) where they can be tracked. As soon as their jump-drives are cherged tehy jump again - if there's no GTVA around ship they jump to the rally point, if there is one they jump to another random location to shake off the persuit.

The the Collie would easily follow the Sath for the FIRST jump at leat...


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Run the mission. What do you see? The Sathanas. The Gamma Draconis node behind it and the Colossus. It's pretty obvious that the either the Colossus arrived after the Sathanas did or for some reason Command let it hang back and just sit there while the Sathanas chewed its way through the rest of the fleet.

So I'd say it's pretty reasonable to say that the Sathanas will be able to jump before the Colossus can.

(Actually the positioning of the Sathanas does rather beg the question of how the hell the Psamtik managed to get into the system to launch it's fighters without begin attacked by the Sathanas. :D )

The positioning in the mission is quite strange, especially since we know that the Colossus was in GD before the incursion, and moved to Capela later. If it was in GD at the time the Sath was there, surely it would bolster the blockade.


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And the Collie would be well informed of the Saths status by the time it arrives given that node-travel takes time and would adjust it's strategy accordingly. Aslo, it had bombers allready in the air ready to take out the remaining beams (if any).


What bombers? What mission are you playing?! The only bombers in the mission are Alpha wing and they're vasudan bombers from the Psamtik!

again another logical hole. The Collie has 60 fighter & bomber wings. It's fighterbay was operational in High Noon. Why the hell send bombers from the Psamtik and not launch a single craft from the Collie itself?

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Let's not forget that no beams destroyed = failed outcome. But even that is no big problem given the bombers. Hell, I can take out a beam cannon just with trebs before the fighters the sath launches get half way to me...

Again. What bombers?

You realise you do fly a wing of bombers in High Noon, don't you? The Sath launches only fighters...

 
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The Sath surely lost some of it's fighter complement (a lot actually) and can't re-supply in Capella, not to mention that there aren't any shivan shipyards where tehy could repair the thing.

And who say the Colossus had a full complement? The Colossus had just finished destroying the NTF when the Sathanas was first spotted. Surely it too lost some of its fighters.

Just? There are 3-4  missions between the NTF destruction and the Sath vs. Collie fight. Capella - a industialized and friendly system was just next door - sending a new complement of fighters and bombers to the Collie would be a peace of cake.
Which also reminds me - did hte collie actually launch a single fighter during the NTF campaign? It just seems to pulverize ships on it's own.

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Offline karajorma

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
Ahem..that's becoause the ships didn't jump directly to the really point. Ships breaking trough the blockade jump to point A, B, C, D, E (or whatever) where they can be tracked. As soon as their jump-drives are cherged tehy jump again - if there's no GTVA around ship they jump to the rally point, if there is one they jump to another random location to shake off the persuit.

The the Collie would easily follow the Sath for the FIRST jump at leat...


My bad. I misread and thought you were saying the rally points were found through subspace tracking. However that still doesn't change the basic point that we have no proof that GTVA ships can subspace track Shivan ships. The GTVA familiarity with the NTF ships is likely to make them a lot easier to track than unknown ships.

And again even if the Sath could be tracked to the location of the first jump what would there have been that could engage it?

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The positioning in the mission is quite strange, especially since we know that the Colossus was in GD before the incursion, and moved to Capela later. If it was in GD at the time the Sath was there, surely it would bolster the blockade.

What the hell are you on about? The Colossus is obviously in Gamma Draconis during Endgame. The next we hear of it is during A Flaming Sword

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Command has begun the process of evacuating the two hundred fifty million civilians inhabiting Capella, the largest exodus since the Great War. The Colossus will remain in that system to engage the Sathanas should we fail.

We have no idea when it moved there but there aren't many missions between the two so my guess would be that immediately after Endgame the Colossus went back to Capella. i.e before the Sathanas was discovered.

Nonetheless I still don't have a clue what point you were trying to make with any of this.  :confused: The positioning doesn't seem that strange to me. The Sathanas jumps in, wipes out the blockade at the node and then the Colossus jumps in to attack it. What's strange about that?

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again another logical hole. The Collie has 60 fighter & bomber wings. It's fighterbay was operational in High Noon. Why the hell send bombers from the Psamtik and not launch a single craft from the Collie itself?


Cause the Colossus didn't have 60  fighter & bomber wings by then. I'll get to why further down.

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You realise you do fly a wing of bombers in High Noon, don't you? The Sath launches only fighters...


Oh so you aren't referring to the same non-existent bombers from the Colossus? My bad. I thought you were on about them again.
 
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Just? There are 3-4  missions between the NTF destruction and the Sath vs. Collie fight. Capella - a industialized and friendly system was just next door - sending a new complement of fighters and bombers to the Collie would be a peace of cake.


Okay. Lets count off the holes in that argument.

  • We know that the Colossus goes back to Capella some time between Endgame and A Flaming Sword. We also know that events move quickly from the time that Speaking In Tongues starts until High Noon. So 3-4 missions is not a huge amount of time when Speaking In Tongues, A Flaming Sword, Bearbaiting and High Noon all take place in a couple of hours.
  • It's only at the end of a A Flaming Swordthat it becomes certain that a second line of defence is needed. Before that the Colossus may have been presumed able to resupply at leisure. So it only really becomes an emergency in the last couple of hours before High Noon.
  • Why would Capella have 60 fighter and bomber wings sitting about doing nothing anyway? 3rd Fleet headquarters not withstanding 60 fighter and bomber wings is a fair chunk of the GTVA's combat power. Why are you assuming that there would have to be that many available?
  • Even if they have the fighters who says that they have the pilots to fly them?
  • Even if the Colossus did resupply who is to say that the complement wasn't wiped out by the Sathanas' fighter and bomber complement? We have no canon numbers on what that was. It could easily be enough to wipe out the blockade and everything the Colossus launched at it before the Colossus jumped in to challenge it personally


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Which also reminds me - did hte collie actually launch a single fighter during the NTF campaign? It just seems to pulverize ships on it's own.

We only see a small fraction of the overall NTF campaign. But in the missions we do see it never launches a single ship. I grepped the entire mission set for $Arrival Anchor: Colossus and the arrival cues for Gamma, Delta, Kappa and Iota wings in Their Finest Hour was the only hit.
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Offline aldo_14

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
That juggernaught ain't gonna sit there forever doing nothing......  and what makes you think the Shivans wouldn't send reinforcements if it was in genuine trouble?

Even if they were going to send in reinforcments, The Sathanas would still be screwed, since they would have to come out of the nebula, through Gamma Draconis, and into Capella. The only other support ship that could be in the area would be the Beleth, and that should be destroyed anyway.

The entire GTVA blockade was decimated by the Sathanas; even if we assume no other Shivan vessels broke through during the time, there's no logical reason for them not doing so in the aftermath given that the GTVA defense was torn to pieces.

If I were Command, I wouldn't risk the Collie.
Even if the Sath would to jump out all the advantages are on the GTVA side - the Sath is in hostile territory, some GTVA ships were in-systems, other were on theri way, not to mention the sheer number of fighters/bombers the GTVA prolly has on the planets.

The Sath surely lost some of it's fighter complement (a lot actually) and can't re-supply in Capella, not to mention that there aren't any shivan shipyards where tehy could repair the thing.

But realisticly, the Collie would have launched all the bombers it had (i'd guess around 30 wings or so) and swarmed the sath as it entered Capella, then come close and finish it off...

a) hostile territory is only hostile until you capture it.  There's no attrition damage from sitting in formerly-hostile space rebuilding, repairing, or setting up supply depots for the next battlegroup.
b) the Colossus likely had to provide fighter and bomber cover for the entire system (much like a destroyer).  Moreso, what makes you think the Sathanas hadn't used it's own fighter and bomber complement to draw away the Colossus'?
c)you're making a massive - and rather ridiculous - assumption about the fighters and bombers station on-planet.  We have no evidence that atmospheric fighters such as that (if they even exist) are space-capable or combat-effective.  AFAIK the only ship conclusively shown in-atmo was a large Satis (?) freighter escaping Vasuda prime.  A similar assumption is being made about how many fighters and bombers the Sath had left.... in fact, if we want to make assumptions for the sake of argument, why not assume the Sathanas has the capability to manufacture fighters and bombers?
d) why wouldn't the Shivans bring in logistics support for the Sathanas, once it's secure in Capella.  I mean, if the GTVA are too scared to even deploy the Colossus, the Shivans would surely be pretty comfortable in their position.  And why would the Shivans need shipyards?
e) what makes you think the Colossus hadn't sent its bomber complement to assist the blockade at the GD node beforehand?

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
The Sathy suffering incredibly little damage to itself after wiping out the blockade is not as unbelievable as it seems: Attacking from the front, the Sathanas can take out about 10 destroyers (orions and hatshepsuts and hecates and typhons) and remain above 90% hull integrity.

N.F.W.

There's no way a Sathanas can simply waltz trough a blockade consisting of several destroyers (and god knows how many fighters/bombers + smaller warships) and appear 15 minutes later with 100% hull integrity.


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t=0, Sathanas arrives in Gamma Draconis
t=x (where x = time taken for the sath to recharge for an intrasystem jump), Sathanas arrives at the Capella node.
t=x+y (Where y= time required to recharge for an intersystem jump - I'm assuming it took less time than this to wipe out the fleet! Big grin )
t=x+y+~10 minutes Sathanas arrives in Capella and starts wiping out the fleet
t=x+y+~15 minutes Sathanas has wiped out the fleet, The Psamtick has arrived and then departed, Colossus has arrived.

Ahem... Wans't te blockade set at the Gamma-Draconis side of the node? When you jump in the Phoenicia is the only ship left and the sath jumps trought the node to Capella and you follow after it a few minutes later...
I recall no blockade from the Capella side of the node or surely the Collie would be part of it..
« Last Edit: March 12, 2007, 01:41:44 pm by TrashMan »
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Campaign is not very smart.
My bad. I misread and thought you were saying the rally points were found through subspace tracking. However that still doesn't change the basic point that we have no proof that GTVA ships can subspace track Shivan ships. The GTVA familiarity with the NTF ships is likely to make them a lot easier to track than unknown ships.

And again even if the Sath could be tracked to the location of the first jump what would there have been that could engage it?

1. The GTVA tracked the Lucifer, so I fail to see why they couldn't track other shivan ships. After all, they use subspace they same way we do.
 
2. The Collie could persue, and what other ship could join in is unknown, as we don't know all the ships in Capella.


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We have no idea when it moved there but there aren't many missions between the two so my guess would be that immediately after Endgame the Colossus went back to Capella. i.e before the Sathanas was discovered.

Nonetheless I still don't have a clue what point you were trying to make with any of this.  :confused: The positioning doesn't seem that strange to me. The Sathanas jumps in, wipes out the blockade at the node and then the Colossus jumps in to attack it. What's strange about that?

My point? Colossuss waits in Capella with jump dirves charged, Sath jump in and has to re-charge them. Thus, Collie is ready for a persuit and doens't need to wait for drives to charge.


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  • We know that the Colossus goes back to Capella some time between Endgame and A Flaming Sword. We also know that events move quickly from the time that Speaking In Tongues starts until High Noon. So 3-4 missions is not a huge amount of time when Speaking In Tongues, A Flaming Sword, Bearbaiting and High Noon all take place in a couple of hours.
  • It's only at the end of a A Flaming Swordthat it becomes certain that a second line of defence is needed. Before that the Colossus may have been presumed able to resupply at leisure. So it only really becomes an emergency in the last couple of hours before High Noon.
  • Why would Capella have 60 fighter and bomber wings sitting about doing nothing anyway? 3rd Fleet headquarters not withstanding 60 fighter and bomber wings is a fair chunk of the GTVA's combat power. Why are you assuming that there would have to be that many available?
  • Even if they have the fighters who says that they have the pilots to fly them?
  • Even if the Colossus did resupply who is to say that the complement wasn't wiped out by the Sathanas' fighter and bomber complement? We have no canon numbers on what that was. It could easily be enough to wipe out the blockade and everything the Colossus launched at it before the Colossus jumped in to challenge it personally

And just how long would it take to re-ssuply a ships in FS2? If the Sath can traverse 3 systems in a matter of hours, so can a freighter/fighter.
Capella being a pupulated system would surely have some fighters/bombers stationed on the planet.
Just count the number of fighter planes on Earth today - tens of thousands. I'm sure Capella had at least a 100.

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