[Snail]

well they indeed have more powerfull weapons that can fire faster but then again the GTVA started on a trend that also gives them and advantage and that is range! GTVA BEAM CANNONS CAN BE MADE TO FIRE AT LONGER DISTANCES AND IF SUCH AN ADVANTAGE WERE TO BE IMPROVED THEN THE SHIVANS WOULD find themselfs with a far smaller advantage then before also blowing up a star required over 80 juggs so in my book that equal to massive resources beeing tied down for very long periods of time!

What makes you think the Shivans can't do that to their beams themselves? Even if long-range sniping does succeed in taking out a few Saths the Shivans would still be able to win through brute force. Snipe off 10 Saths, the last 70 will still kick your ass.

[Mobius]

You will never be able to do something like that, the Shivans will most likely storm you with spacecraft and even destroyers.

[AlphaOne]

Well if the shivans would of been able to make theyr beam cannons fire at longer ranges with increased dammega potential im sure they would of done so!

I mean its not like they somehow feel embarased about blowing up enemies faster.

Well they can send in all the fighters they want they will just get cut down to pieces by Deimos and Aeoulus warships. Also lets not forget that while the shivans can indeed send in warships to bust you to pieces unless they jump in at some distance from weapons range they risk the chance of overjumping and ending up besides you or even worse over jumping you completely. And that equal one more dead shivan warship. Also besides the Ravana which is the main threat and most deadly one to GTVA warships (exlueding the Sath) all other shivan warships get owned by theyr GTVA counterparts. Hell even a Deimos or a Sobek has an overall relative easy time killing off a Ravana once its taken out its main beam cannons !

GTVA long range weaponry is already improving one example would be the MJolnir which is currently not in use on any GTVA design. but you can bet that another improved and more flexible variant is already in the work for putting them on GTVA warships.

If that is the case then by all means you can call the shivans and tell them that they uber beams of doom have just gotten a lot less scary.

[TrashMan]

Shivans are scary on offense. On defense not so much.
But it would be extreemly foolish to underestimate them. the GTVA did that and nearly paid the ultimate price

[Mobius]

Please keep in mind that beams are much more terrible in the FreeSpace Universe than in the FreeSpace game. I'd like to mention the Lucifer, the Behemoth(cb ani, when it ambushes the Vigilant), the cb ani showing Mjolnirs taking down a Deimos and several pictures of beams penetrating the hull of Deimos corvettes and an Orion so easily.

[TrashMan]

Maby...or maby all those ships were already damaged when the shooting started

[AlphaOne]

Well the basic line here is dont underestimate the shivans ! Or rather do not underestimate theyr numbers! Find a dammned way to keep them tied down to one small area where you can concentrate firepower outside of theyr weapons range and with enough time you can chop them all to pieces!

[TrashMan]

A LOT of time.....unless you have really huge AOE weapons...supernova style

[AlphaOne]

tahts not such a bad idea but why waste an entire solar sistem full of resources when you can chopt them up with Mjolnirs and RBC's and a few dozen Friggates orions and deimos calss corvettes! The shivans withh all theyr fighter numbers mean nothing agains the might of the Deimos class corvettes! And if they cant get to you fast enough to start shooting theyr beams of doom then you have won the battle!

[Admiral_Stones]

Yes. Of course.

What about all these bomber wings? The Shivans have probably multiple thousand bomber wings. If you invent repeating ULTRA-Anti fighter beams, it's a different story, but not even whole battle groups of Aeolous class cruisers would be able to do much there.

Plus, viewn from a not pure gameplay side, the shivans are meant to be technologically superior in MANY aspects. Expect your 'but we could defense the RBC's with fighters'-argument to be crushed under the foot of a few Mara's.

I bet a true invasion of shivans, where everything would be mobilized, you'd have to expect thousands of bomber and fighter wings.

[TrashMan]

With a whole battlegroup of Aeoluses the possibilities are immense. Those things shred bombers for breakfest. Even wit hsuperior shivan fighters, aeoluses level the playing field when it comes to fighter power.

That still leaves the shivan capship superiority tough.

[Kie99]

With a whole battlegroup of Aeoluses the possibilities are immense. Those things shred bombers for breakfest. Even wit hsuperior shivan fighters, aeoluses level the playing field when it comes to fighter power.

That still leaves the shivan capship superiority tough.

And the fact there are only about 10 Aelouses left by the end of FS2, and they are extremely expensive to produce.

[TrashMan]

IIRC, there is no mention that they are extreemely expensive, just that a batch of them was produced and then the production run ended.

[Snail]

The shivans withh all theyr fighter numbers mean nothing agains the might of the Deimos class corvettes! And if they cant get to you fast enough to start shooting theyr beams of doom then you have won the battle!

The GTVA with all their Deimos corvettes means nothing against the might of 80 Sathanas class corvettes!

[Mobius]

Maby...or maby all those ships were already damaged when the shooting started

It means nothing. A ship might have sustained damage to its engines. A beam shot hitting the opposite side of the ship would penetrate the hull as if nothing happened.

IIRC, there is no mention that they are extreemely expensive, just that a batch of them was produced and then the production run ended.

They're expensive to maintain and repair, if I remember well.

[Snail]

It means nothing. A ship might have sustained damage to its engines. A beam shot hitting the opposite side of the ship would penetrate the hull as if nothing happened.

It does mean something. A ship may have sustained damage to that part of the ship. A beam shot hitting the correct part of the ship would penetrate the hull and go right through it.

[TrashMan]

It means nothing. A ship might have sustained damage to its engines. A beam shot hitting the opposite side of the ship would penetrate the hull as if nothing happened.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the battle at Deneb was a big furball. It would  be a miracle if the Orion managed to get close to a Lucifer in such a big fight without damage - with all those fighters, bomber and cruisers flying around.

And no beam made it TROUGH the vigilant...look at the ani again.

As far as the Mjolnirs and that Deimos goes, getting hit by 4 Mjolnirs is enough to kill a Deimos (beam goes trough), and the VTF warships were running trough several blockades, thus the chances of them being undamaged are miniscule.

[Snail]

I'll have to agree with the TrashMan here.

[Mobius]

The beams penetrated the Vigilant's hull! Check!

And mine was a reference to the Universe. There's a pic of a SRed penetrating the hull of a Deimos without problems. There also is a LRed penetrating an Orion. Are you aware of the fact that beams are HOT and nothing can resist to them?!?

[Bob-san]

After reading the entire thread (whew that was long)...

The GTVA simply doesn't have the resources to defeat 80+ Sathanas. Even taking on one every 15 minutes, the losses would be immense. Ok here's a blockade scenario for you... you scatter at least three wings of heavy bombers and at least ten wings of fighters. Around a node, everyone scatters so they don't bounce off a Sathanas. So, the Sathanas jumps in and is ambushed--the fighters immediately go for the fighter bay--as you can't fight if you can't escape. the bombers take out the engines as well. After a few minutes, the bombers can basically run out of weapons range and wait for the next Sathanas. If the next one jumps in, it will collide with the first Sathanas--and be in good range of any following Sathanas. When Sath #1 is parked and Sath #2 hits, destroying the front arms. The impact puts it closer to the node--where the bombers can quickly disable the ship. Now you have a problem--you'll have swarms of Shivans attack shortly, though the Sathanas problem is taken care of. So you'll probably be expecting at least one more Sathanas to jump though, right? Wait for it... waiiiit for ittt... *bam* you've solved at least one problem by now--it's most likely that the middle Sath is out for the count and the other two are heavily damaged.


Next, you need something to stop the fighters. We can't simply build a Dyson Sphere around it, so we have to do something else. My personal way to stop this would be to launch Ursa bombers, filled with Rockeyes. Have them constantly circle the node and have the turrets aimed towards the incoming fighters. This would be highly effective in the short-term... not much of a problem. We can assume that the Shivan fighters can't jump from one system to another (why? because... they've never done that before... and after the Ravana was destroyed, we had no more Shivan fighter problems). So we still have a large problem--the Sathanas are all jumping in with fighter-bays intact. We have to solve that, ne? Easier said then done. Our best system would be to disable the rear beams and bring cruisers in to destroy the bay.

Now it's a waiting game--the Sathani are disabled and heavily damaged, and they can't get much more support. The shivans can, however, send in destroyers and other smaller ships. So they do. In comes a few destroyers. Same procedure, right? Right! Only this time, make sure we disable them, take out their fighterbay, and destroy all beams. So now you have probably 2 sitting-duck destroyers as well as 2 sitting-duck juggernaughts clogging up the node. What to do for the Shivans? Suicide, in short.

I hope that demonstrates a way we could actually STOP a Shivan advance. With enough time (probably 1 hour for this battle), we could clog the node. They'd probably send a few Sathanas to destroy the others to clear a path. Rinse and repeat--every time they send in a sath, disable it and wait for another Sath to destroy it. Eventually they'll pull back or we'll kill enough of them that they simply leave.