[blowfish]

Well, the actual turret is a small point.  The cannon itself may extend farther into the ship.

[Droid803]

I've always though the turret was the triangle thing with the three red glowy dots, but then I found out it was a puny turret on the bottom farting out that huge ass beam.

[blowfish]

That was always a bit annoying for me too.

[Mawhrin]

i give up as soon as i go by his standards and actualy agree to a tiny bit with him he smashes my head in with "its just theory" The god damn realitavy factor regarding light speed has yet to be proven you ..............garhhhh YOU ! Noone has ever traveled at lightspeed  in ordet to prove the whole time dilation effect as far as i know.

I'm going to have to be pedantic and point out that the colloquial meaning of the word "theory" (a guess, speculation) is very different to the scientific meaning of "theory".

There is strong evidence for time dilation. Even GPS needs to correct for it. There is no evidence for declining technology levels in a technological civilisation, and such speculation is not a well formed scientific theory.

I subscribe to the Shivans-as-artifical-race-that-got-their-tech-from-their-creator theory to explain their lack of progress. AFAIK the wheel was invented by humans around five thousand years ago - which is three thousand years after the Shivans nuked the Ancients.

[BengalTiger]

Speaking of Erynies- aren't those things unbalancing the game?
Just take a look at how one of those compares to an Aeshma for example...

Back to topic- the Lilith is fine the way it is. It could simply be a special forces assault unit, and that's why it's used 1 time in FS 2 and it's also the reason it is so bad@$$.

[TrashMan]

Hey TMan you had some very good designs that ppl kept bashing you about beeing a bit too much did you not? See some ppl actualy believe such ships are and should be considered good and balanced.

What?

My ships are roughly balanced in regards to size and firepower with stock ships.
The Archangel would be the only exception but it has story reasons to be that powerful.

[TrashMan]

Again...Shivan technology is such that they can apparently (going canonically of course) pack a fair bit of power into the size of a cruiser.  There isn't anything that suggests otherwise.  An Aeolus not being able to return the favour doesn't mean anything at all.  And thank you for bringing up the Mjolnir weapons platforms as they are similar in size to a cruiser and carry a pretty big weapon of their own...obviously all of their power is being channeled for the beam rather than any other weapons, life support, serious propulsion and so forth like a cruiser would.  So that gives us another baseline that a relatively small ship/emplacement in FreeSpace CAN carry around that kind of firepower....even at a lower technological level.

Doesn't common logic dictate that available power output will be comparable with ship size? You can put a bigger reactor and more and bigger coolants in a bigger ship, ergo, having more firepower available.

While shivans are somewhat ahead in technology, it's not by that big a margin.. Compare a Demon and a Hecate... Ravana and Orion.. the power disparity is no where as big enough as a Lilith - Leviathan/Aeolus
Terran Destroyers (Orion and Hattie in particular) will bring a whole world of hurt on shivan counterparts. While the GTVA destroyer will most likely loose, it will either HEAVILY damage the enemy or take it with him. This is true for every ship class comparison EXCEPT for Lilith.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

 

[Akalabeth Angel]

I subscribe to the Shivans-as-artifical-race-that-got-their-tech-from-their-creator theory to explain their lack of progress. AFAIK the wheel was invented by humans around five thousand years ago - which is three thousand years after the Shivans nuked the Ancients.

      While not a bad idea it doesn't explain the technological progress the Shivans display between FS1 and FS2.

[General Battuta]

The god damn realitavy factor regarding light speed has yet to be proven you ..............garhhhh YOU ! Noone has ever traveled at lightspeed  in ordet to prove the whole time dilation effect as far as i know.

Wrong. Time dilation has been experimentally tested, observed, and confirmed.

[Ghostavo]

I'd wager that the Shivans are very much like the Vorlons in regards to how much technology they show.

For those who might have not seen Babylon 5, the Vorlons were an extremelly advanced race that had existed for millions of years before any of the younger races of the show (which included the humans). They refused to share and even more surprisingly show their true technological level in order to avoid drawing any more attention to themselves (which failed I guess). They used outdated engines among other things. Of course by the end of the show, it all fell apart and they began stepping up on how much technology they showed.

[DarthWang]

I like to replace the Lred on a Lilith with a BFred in missions I make, also make it untargetable by beams

[blowfish]

As if the Lilith wasn't overkill to begin with...

[colecampbell666]

That was sarcasm.

"DarthWang"

[IceFire]

Again...Shivan technology is such that they can apparently (going canonically of course) pack a fair bit of power into the size of a cruiser.  There isn't anything that suggests otherwise.  An Aeolus not being able to return the favour doesn't mean anything at all.  And thank you for bringing up the Mjolnir weapons platforms as they are similar in size to a cruiser and carry a pretty big weapon of their own...obviously all of their power is being channeled for the beam rather than any other weapons, life support, serious propulsion and so forth like a cruiser would.  So that gives us another baseline that a relatively small ship/emplacement in FreeSpace CAN carry around that kind of firepower....even at a lower technological level.

Doesn't common logic dictate that available power output will be comparable with ship size? You can put a bigger reactor and more and bigger coolants in a bigger ship, ergo, having more firepower available.

While shivans are somewhat ahead in technology, it's not by that big a margin.. Compare a Demon and a Hecate... Ravana and Orion.. the power disparity is no where as big enough as a Lilith - Leviathan/Aeolus
Terran Destroyers (Orion and Hattie in particular) will bring a whole world of hurt on shivan counterparts. While the GTVA destroyer will most likely loose, it will either HEAVILY damage the enemy or take it with him. This is true for every ship class comparison EXCEPT for Lilith.

Sure I'd agree that size is definitely a factor.  Bigger ship means more space to make power needed to channel through to the beams....but we know that even Terran and Vasudan technology can put a very powerful beam on the same size of platform (namely the Mjolnir).  If you compare the Lilith to the other cruisers in terms of its other capabilities it is weaker so it stands to reason that its focused on ship killing and is sort of like a mobile and defended version of a Mjolnir...and thanks to superior Shivan technology they can go ahead and do just that.

The Lilith, for its LRED beam up front isn't all that great in other attributes.  Armor is very strong but anti-fighter defenses are weak with a single anti-fighter beam and just a few turrets all of which have low protection and can be easily destroyed including the main beam.

[AlphaOne]

ALL SHIVAN WARSHIPS have poor AAAF defences so the Lilith is no exception from this. But then again there is also a sort of ballance between beam firepower and other capabilaties of the warship. The Lilith does not fit that pattern as it is hugely overpowered . That is all.

[nvsblmnc]

Just from a straight comparison, though, the Lilith is 33% slower than the Cain.  That would suggest that the Cain shunts as much as 50% more power to it's engines (not allowing for any scale/efficiency gains).  Assuming that they have identical power output, all of that free power could have been directed straight into the Lilith's beam. 

Personally, I think the Lilith is more likely to have an improved reactor as well, making it a bit more believeable that it can support that beam.  No canon support for this, of course...

The reduced speed also gives it one key weakness - if it arrives outside of beam range, interceptors will almost always kill the beam turret before it can get to killing distance, just because it is so much slower than a lighter cruiser.

[TrashMan]

Sure I'd agree that size is definitely a factor.  Bigger ship means more space to make power needed to channel through to the beams....but we know that even Terran and Vasudan technology can put a very powerful beam on the same size of platform (namely the Mjolnir).  If you compare the Lilith to the other cruisers in terms of its other capabilities it is weaker so it stands to reason that its focused on ship killing and is sort of like a mobile and defended version of a Mjolnir...and thanks to superior Shivan technology they can go ahead and do just that.

The Lilith, for its LRED beam up front isn't all that great in other attributes.  Armor is very strong but anti-fighter defenses are weak with a single anti-fighter beam and just a few turrets all of which have low protection and can be easily destroyed including the main beam.

A Mljonir is a cannon - it's got no engines, no compartments/space for crew (let's not forget shivans are big) and no other weapons...and is somewhat smaller than a Lilith to boot.

If the shivans can put a weapon of that power on a cruiser, why aren't their destroyers packing more power then? According to you a BFRed on a destroyer would be perfectly normal for shivans. What would a Sathanas use then?
I don't mind Shivans having X amount of power, as long as it's CONSISTENT. As it's stands, it isn't.

The Lilith has the greatest armor of all cruisers and excellent speed (compared to GTVA ships). It's anti-fighter defences are somewhat weaker, but it's not easy prey. The fact that the player can take it out sez nothing, since the player can take out most ships.

[AlphaOne]

Then again the Lilith is also bigger then the Cain. And more importantly the shivans have shown an incredibly annoing and dangerous abilaty to jump close enough to an enmywarship so as to be in weapons range fast. Most of the time a shivan warship would exit subspace open fire and get out fast. Needless to say that anithing that comes under attack from a shivan warship of equal size would get pawned to death in one max 2 salvos of fire from its beam cannons.

[Mars]

The Lilith is the same size as the Cain