[Mars]

I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me before, but does anyone else wonder why there's a cruiser with three quarter the hitpoints of an Orion and a beam that's better than the BFGreen?

It doesn't even seem to be used to further the story, as the Lilith occurs only once in the main FS2 campaign

[blowfish]

It is generally agreed that the Lilith is overly powerful.  It had the same amount of HP in fs1, so clearly there was a reason did that (probably superior shivan tech), but the LRed makes it capable of taking a corvette on most days and some destroyers.  And it's a frakking cruiser (a relatively small cruiser at that).

[Killer Whale]

Very rare. Very powerfull. I wonder what would happen if a leviathon mistaked it for a cain?

[MT]

Very rare. Very powerfull. I wonder what would happen if a leviathon mistaked it for a cain?

The Leviathan just gets pwned badly.

[Jeff Vader]

Very rare. Very powerfull. I wonder what would happen if a leviathon mistaked it for a cain?

Depends. Either the Leviathan is like "Oh ****! A Lilith!" and jumps away or the Leviathan is like "Oh ****! A---" and blows up.

[BlueFlames]

Since the model and (in retail FS1/FS2) the skin are identical between the Lilith and the Cain, I've got a feeling that the Lilith is just around for when Volition wanted a mission centered around a Cain that wasn't supposed to be piss-easy to kill/disable.  In FS2, they most likely added the LRed, so that they could **** up a friendly warship, even if they couldn't rationalize the shivans deploying a destroyer.

Hmmm....  Now, given community opinion of the Colossus, I've just pictured Their Finest Hour with the Beast replaced by a whole gaggle of Liliths....

[AlphaOne]

The Lilith with that uber beam of doom sort of like looks out of place when compared to ANY other FS2 cruiser. Hell it looks out of place when compared to almost anithing even some destroyers. Cuz corvettes really have no chance against it unless they can dissable the blasted thing. In fact the only ship i see as standing a chance against the Lilith would be the Iceni with its 3 BG and 90k Hp.

[colecampbell666]

A Lilith will kill a Hecate 80% of the time, every time.

(who gets the reference?)

[Droid803]

A Lilith will kill an Orion if it can't get two BGreens focused on it... (Only four sides out of six - front, back, top, bottom)
In firepower and armor, the Lilith is closer to a corvette (or even a frigate - like the Iceni) than a cruiser. The only thing preventing it from being classified so (it seems) is its diminutive size.

[Killer Whale]

Hey, we've got a cain jumping in. Power up beams and take it down. *lilth fires beam*  BOOM!!
What was that?! It just took out that deimos!! All fighters and bombers, take out that cain!! Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
Somethings wrong, no cain is that indestructable and destructive.
Hecate goes boom!!

I think it might be a new sort of cruiser!!

BOOM!! No one survives to tell anyone it's better than a cruiser.

[IceFire]

I think it just goes to show how the Shivans have superior technology and when they really want to kill a ship quickly they send a well armed cruiser or a couple of well armed cruisers and the Lilith has the power to do it.  Its specialized and superior.  Consider the Sathanas versus the Colossus and the firepower difference there.  Now when you scale it down to an Aeolus versus a Lilith its not all that incredible.

To be honest I think with the Shivans Volition wanted to do the opposite of the Terrans and Vasudans.  The Cruiser helps kill ships while the Vasudans and Terrans have decided that Cruisers are good escorts (AAA beams and flak) while Corvette class ships are ship killers.  Corvettes for the Shivans are light carriers.  The Moloch is a support vessel in comparison to the Lilith or Rakshasa.

[Cobra]

I think that the Lilith was meant as some sort of pocket destroyer.

[Killer Whale]

Whoever has it must have an awefully tough pocket to hold that sucker in!!

[IceFire]

I think that the Lilith was meant as some sort of pocket destroyer.

Thats actually a very good analogy for the Lilith.

[Droid803]

I think that the Lilith was meant as some sort of pocket destroyer.

Thats actually a very good analogy for the Lilith.

Yep.

[BengalTiger]

Rearm the Aeolus's main beams with Maxims or Helios launchers and the 2 ships will be more less even in terms of firepower (Flak guns do the real damage on the GTC, and the standard beams suck).
Also- since the Lilith is rarely seen in both games, it's possible that it is some really expensive ship, something like the King Tiger was among tanks (especially on the Western Front, and before the M26 Pershing was available).

[Akalabeth Angel]

Since the model and (in retail FS1/FS2) the skin are identical between the Lilith and the Cain, I've got a feeling that the Lilith is just around for when Volition wanted a mission centered around a Cain that wasn't supposed to be piss-easy to kill/disable.  In FS2, they most likely added the LRed, so that they could **** up a friendly warship, even if they couldn't rationalize the shivans deploying a destroyer.

    Eh, did you play FS1? The Taranis wasn't piss-easy to kill or disable . . . Cruisers were actually a threat in FS1, rather than target practice. The Lilith is just an up-armoured cruiser.

[MP-Ryan]

Liliths only kick the crap out of capships so long as their beams are left around.  All it takes is two volleys of Trebuchets and suddenly that Lilith is toothless.  I think it was designed that way on purpose - fighter/bomber cover is absolutely a requirement for a capship when a Lilith is involved.

Look at it this way:

-Cain's are the lightest of the capships, good for scouting and not much else.  Any half-assed competent fighter can take down a Cain with relative ease.
-Lilith's are heavily armoured, designed to get in, beat the crap out of capships while taking a punding from fighters, and survive until the enemy target is gone.
-Moloch's are a light carrier / anti-fighter/bomber vessel.  Their armament is specialized for taking down smaller craft.  They do not fare well against a fully armed Deimos, but they'll chew through fighters rapidly.  The Deimos is actually similar in this regard.
-Demon's are generally outdated and taken down with relative ease.  Their beams mean trouble for corvettes and anything smaller, but they're easily dispatched by bombers.
-The almighty Ravanna takes the Lilith's anti-warship capability and combines it with the Demon's carrier capacity.  They're all-round nasty.

The Shivan vessels are more role-specialized than GTVA vessels.  Look at the Sobek/Deimos.  Rather than doing one thing especially well, they try to be multi-role.  They succeed somewhat in that regard, but sacrifice some of their capship fighting ability.  The most specialized vessel in the GTVA arsenal is undoubtably the Aeolus.  It is designed for basically nothing but escort (with fighter/bomber defense being paramount) and it does that exceptionally well.

The thing about the intense role specialization of the Shivans is that every single vessel is vulnerable to at least one type of basic attack.  Hell, the only two Shivan ships that adequately fight off bombers are the Moloch and the Sathanas, and even then they aren't that great.

[Droid803]

I also believe designed the Shivan ships this way so that the player stands a chance against them, but still must need to know what to do, or will get creamed fast.

ie. take out the Ravana's beam cannons quickly or watch your escort list disappear.

[ShadowGorrath]

Liliths are good for intense missions ( like the ones in BluePlanet ).

Liliths might be local command ships. You know- no destroyer or something is around, so a Lilith takes the lead in command of Shivan operations in the system.