[Gamma_Draconis]

Maybe the floor is just magnetic? There can be somekind of plasma window to keep the atmosphere in. It may also be artifical gravity that is generated by some unknown means.

[foolfromhell]

Assumption...looking at the mina halls from FS1 and 2 I get the imporession of advanced tech.
First of all you can notice the figherbay doors are open and the ship is not depressurizing..some kind of bluish forcefield is keeping it "sealed".
Second, the whole fighterbay seems to have artificial gravity, yet huge bricks like Ursas land and take off without chrashing.

The Shivans dont have anti-grav as evidenced by that FS1 cutscene.
But Humans seem to have anti-grav. or else, how does the main menu work? The captain is sitting with no visible restraints.
Then again. The marines who boarded the Shivan cruiser had magnetic boots and used them. Why pack magnetic boots if you assume there is anti-grav?
I think the GTVA fleets use magnetic boots and not artificial gravity.
The forcefield on the fighterbay is probably a shield like the kind of fighters. Shielding just the fighterbay cant be that hard!

[Hippo]

The Shivans dont have anti-grav as evidenced by that FS1 cutscene.
But Humans seem to have anti-grav. or else, how does the main menu work? The captain is sitting with no visible restraints.
Then again. The marines who boarded the Shivan cruiser had magnetic boots and used them. Why pack magnetic boots if you assume there is anti-grav?
I think the GTVA fleets use magnetic boots and not artificial gravity.
The forcefield on the fighterbay is probably a shield like the kind of fighters. Shielding just the fighterbay cant be that hard!

1, why would you want an anti gravity device in space?
2. Other than the tech room implying that the shivans were designed to live in zero gravity, there is no proof for or against them having the ability to employ artificial gravity.
3. "Why pack magnetic boots if you assume there is anti-grav?" This line doesnt even make sense. A, why would you have an anti-gravity device in space? and B, the ship was disabled and relatively low on power, else it wouldnt have been able to be captured.
4. If the GTVA fleets dont use artifical gravity, then why is it that the sparks in the FS1 main hall fall downwards?
5. How can the force field on the fighter bay be anything like the shields on fighters? There were no shields in FS1 when you first went aboard the bastion.

[TrashMan]

the plot thickens!

The Terrans and Vasudans both allready had shield tech but Command was too stupid to see it's worth anywhere else except the fighterbay doors!

[StratComm]

Well, I can see how you might be confusing anti-grav for artificial gravity, although in practice while antigrav tech leads to artificial gravity, the same is not true in reverse.  We know the GTVA has artificial gravity, we do not know they have anti-gravity.

And anyone arguing the fighterbay 'shields' as an extension of fighter shield tech is missing the point.  The 'shields' are there to keep (primarily) the bone-dead AI from getting stuck inside.  Trust me, this is absolutely necessary.  The invisible wall should not be translated to shield tech.  As for the Bastion mainhall argument, remember that you don't get onboard the Bastion until shields are already deployed.  That's not to say that shield tech wasn't retrofit to allow the bay to be accessable with hanger doors open after they were deployed on fighters, but you see no evidence for an invisible force field enclosing the hangerbay prior to shields being introduced.

[TrashMan]

A somewhat weak argument...how did they launch fighters before that?

They didn't redesign the whole fighterbay in 5 minutes.
We see lots of doors leading into the fighterbay and other rooms - the briefing room, tech room. We see lots of people working among the craft down there...and no sign of any secondary door (like you have when you want to get out of a space shuttle or a submarine - you got that chamber between two hulls).

The only way they could launch was if EVERYONE leaves the fighterbay, they seal hermeticly all doors and then they open the main fighterbay door..sucking everything out in the process...but that would make a very ineffective fighterbay if no one can be in it untill all fighters/bombers land.

[Gamma_Draconis]

Yea, but maybe thats why it takes so damn long to deploy any fighters. Command really needs to redesign their fighterbays. At least have launch tubes like on BSG. At the rate they launch fighters, by the time every single fighter and bomber is deployed, there would be nothing left to kill. Is anyone curious on how the Vasudans designed their fighterbay? Theres basicly a hole in the hull with no apparent doors and fighters are stored in a lower section of the ship and fighters are delivered one by one though an elevator shaft connecting the fighterbay hole and the actual fighterbay...

[StratComm]

It's a stronger argument than assuming the GTA knew how to hold a field much larger than a fighter in place and not think to strap it on to a fighter (or act suprised at the fact that the shivans had shields, not that they had them on fighters).  The technology is called an airlock.  You close one door, depressurize that area, and open a second door to space.  That, combined with standby wings, is more than sufficient to explain the launch patterns seen in the handful of missions where you see fighters launched prior to shields.  Note that you don't actually see the physical layout of the fighterbay on the Galatea, and there is no way to corroborate the design of the Bastion as seen to that. 

[foolfromhell]

Well, I can see how you might be confusing anti-grav for artificial gravity,

1, why would you want an anti gravity device in space?

Sorry. I know the difference. They both are A. Grav, so i just got the names confused

[Bob-san]

I'd assume that each destroyer of the same class has basically the same fighter-bay design, as well as internal design. I think the fighter-bay "shields" are force-fields... contain the gases inside the ship. Flying towards them, I think it's possible that your ship is negatively charged so a "bubble" can form--letting you leave the bay.

There is artificial-gravity on Terran ships at least and the reason it takes so long to launch support fighters is that they need to have the pilots wake up/be contacted, report to their correct area for suiting, suit-up, get briefed quickly, choose a ship, customize ordinance, and do the same for the wingmen (if applicable), have all ships properly set-up, get into the ship, strap in, do a system diagnosis (to make sure everything works), power up life-support, power up secondary systems, warm-up engines, receive launch clearance, launch, and possibly receive coordinates to jump to!

That entire task takes a long while when you are allowed to customize your ship to the extent allowed... if you had every pilot suited-up and ever ship powered up and ready, it would probably take 2 minutes. In the above example, more likely 10-15 minutes. If Command expects the need for support, they'll have other pilots and their respective ships ready. Remember that we've flown back-up occasionally... we jump in after the real mission has started, meaning we were the reinforcements.

[Gamma_Draconis]

They should at least keep 2-3 extra wings on stand-by. I mean, they can spare 12 fighters right? And wow, have we gone off topic.

[foolfromhell]

The Bastion most definitely has shiedl technology to shield its fighter bays.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Foolfromhell/fs2_open_3_6_92007-07-2621-14-26-16.jpg

Leave it to command to have shield technology, but not use it.
The hangar bay has loose objects like cargo containers etc.
De-pressuring the bay would send all that flying into space.
The shield exists since its the blueish hue and they cant stick advanced technology like that AND reconfigure the fighterbay in such short notice....

[Batman]

If they sealed off the fighter bay and then gradually vented the atmosphere through a means other than opening the main hangar door, they wouldn't have to worry about all the heavier equipment flying around. Lighter things like boxes and tools could be strapped down or held to the deck with magnets (similar to the soldiers boots).

[Flipside]

Thing is, the entrance to a shield bay is not that large an area, and may well use a different type of shielding from weapon shielding. I suspect that shields drain power exponentially over area, so protecting a capital ship with shield technology in its current form would take far more power than a capship can produce, hence why the Bastion needed to be loaded with Meson bombs to make it's destruction equal to the Lucifers' reactors blowing.

If those shields are capable of acting as barriers to the effects of space as that picture shows, then the best idea would simply be two shields, one at the entrance to the 'launch area' and one at the exit (the one that is on in the picture). That way you could simply raise one, therefore isolating the ships that are going to launch, and then lower the other, kind of how a lock works on a river.

[foolfromhell]

Wait a second.
Why are those marines in pressurized suits?
Maybe there IS no forcefield and its a vacuum all the time?
It would be a LOT easier to just have workers and marines in pressurized suits instead of using an airlock or pressurizing and de pressurizing... You cant create a perfect vacuum manually and would lose some air each time fighters are deployed and received... and a destroyer cant drop into a planet to pick up more atmosphere. I think its a vacuum 24/7. No forcefield.

[Gamma_Draconis]

The marines are the ones in combat gear. There are also regular crewmen without the armor who wear a tannish shirt and GTVA insignia on their chest. No gas mask or anything.

I dunno about having a subspace network on top of another subspace network. Wouldn't that mean there has to be stars that are in the same network that the GTVA can't reach? Hell, how do jump nodes exist in the first place?

[foolfromhell]

The marines are the ones in combat gear. There are also regular crewmen without the armor who wear a tannish shirt and GTVA insignia on their chest. No gas mask or anything.

I dunno about having a subspace network on top of another subspace network. Wouldn't that mean there has to be stars that are in the same network that the GTVA can't reach? Hell, how do jump nodes exist in the first place?

Yeah. You are right.
Plus. the smoke from the Medusa rises upwards instead of diffusing.
There is definitely Artificial Gravity.

[Harbinger of DOOM]

LOL, you guys are reading WAY too much into this.

Its Science Fiction for a reason.

[Flipside]

And it's no less fun to discuss than it is to create

After all, the entire game is science fiction, doesn't mean we don't enjoy getting lost in the story

[Stormkeeper]

That's actually the first time i noticed the smoke rising from the medusa. I doubt its shield technology blocking the fighter bay, however. Its most likely some form of plasma/laser manipulated into a wall with opposing magnetic fields.

That's true flipside, its so true.