[blowfish]

You don't need the and.  I agree that they can probably go for long periods of time without supplies (especially when hibernating).

[Colonol Dekker]

So i didn't "add_operator" sue me

[BengalTiger]

2. Modified from your idea: the Lucy fleet was the fleet that killed the Ancients and got trapped as the Knossos portal closed. During 8K years even the dumb Shivans can shrink beam weapons and mount them on smaller ships. Apparently they can't do the same with Lucy shields. It's quite impressive to keep a fleet functioning for that long though.

Are you suggesting that the Shivan civilization collapsed some time after building the Lucy and before building the Sath?
It gives me an idea:
'After pwning the Ancients with a fleet of Lucy's, the Shivan civ. fell apart. As the remains were decaying, more and more tech was lost. Thousands of years later, as the new Shivan civ. was researching beams, the sacred ships (Lucy class) were found to be equiped with 'normal' weapons, not some 'lightning of Zeus', who's secret was known only by the misterious monks living on them. Shivan scientists figured out how to reverse engineer the Lucy's beams, creating the infamous LRed and BFRed.
They have yet to find a way of making shields for capships, but they already know it will require mounting additional reactors on the external shell, due to power demands.'

[IceFire]

The even if the Lilith was just meant to offensive strikes, and the Cain was supposed to be a scout... the Leviathan is designed as a "mobile defense battleship"

In my view means that it's supposed to be a kind of mobile heavy sentry gun... and yet all it packs is a Fusion Mortar and a SGreen.

This might have more to do it's age, but does that mean, that if the GTVA created a new defensive cruiser it would pack a BGreen? Most definitely not.

A BGreen is vastly inferior to a BRed, but cruisers just don't mount that kind of fire power.

Except the Lilith

Terran and Vasudan cruisers don't mount that firepower.  The Leviathan is also a Great War design.

[TrashMan]

The firepower ratio between ship classes remains roughly the same for all races....except for the Lilith.
It stands out so bad it's making my eyes bleed.

[IceFire]

Ok so...

The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races.  There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do.  The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities.  The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities.  The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily.  Hrrmm....

[blowfish]

Are you kidding?  The Moloch's anti-fighter defenses are much weaker than the Deimos's (as long as you avoid the flak gunz ... )

[Droid803]

The Moloch deserves at least one SAAA...but sadly, it doesn't have one.

[Mars]

Ok so...

The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races.  There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do.  The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities.  The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities.  The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily.  Hrrmm....

This discussion was not what I intended

My argument is not "all cruisers should be exactly the same" it's that "the Lilith can happily take out a destroyer... is that odd to anyone else?" It's not like I want to change the original game... I just find the Lilith to be unusual.

I wanted to know if Volition really intended the Lilith to be a a roving Juggernaught of destruction, or just a cruiser with a bigger bite than usual.

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

On the other hand:
Although I disagree with Trashman that there is a consistant ratio between races, I would agree that in general the firepower of classes tends to be in the same ballpark.

An Aeolus may be better than any other T/V cruiser, but will nearly always loose to any corvette. as will Fenris, Leviathan, Mentu, Aten, Cain, and Rakshasa. It's really really hard for a Corvette to be taken out by a cruiser alone.

A Lilith however handily beats the Corvettes and severly damages destroyers

A Moloch may not be as powerful as a Deimos, but it can still damage one. I would compare them to an Aeolus and a Leviathan.

The Ravana 1:) was supposed to seem like a second Lucifer and 2:) Had a tendency to loose subsystems alarmingly quickly when faced with a corvette.

You definitely have a point about the Vasudan cruisers lacking big guns. The Aten was stated to be weak, but the Tech Room suggested the Mentu had considerable firepower. I suspect it might have had to do with balance in Rebels and Renegades... but it would have been easier (I would think) to just not beam free the cruiser in that mission.

[blowfish]

Or reassign the turrets to non-beam weapons (they do that for a lot of missions).

[IceFire]

Yeah I'm not sure about the Mentu.  It was one of the first FS2 cruisers to be implemented...it was available way back in the Beta when the beams were just a rare thing that a few ships had.  But the Volition was so happy with the effect that nearly every ship got beams.  So I think the Mentu ended up not being changed and just added some extra AAAf instead of flak.  Lots of decisions like that probably affected the outcome.

Its unusual for a smaller type to beat up on a larger type yes, but in real life I can think of many scenarios where you'll have a smaller/lower class type such as some tank destroyers in use which emphasize being smaller but able to pack a massive hit and surprise a MBT.  Or a torpedo boat which is meant to damage or sink larger vessels while being too small to hit with dreadnought guns.  Warfare has many examples of such kinds of weapons.  In air combat there was a long period where it was felt that the bomber would fly too high, be too fast, and be too well defended for a much smaller fighter to defeat the bomber effectively.

Using a ship like the Lilith is a gamble.  Its small enough so as not to get hit by all of a destroyers beams at once...or at least its not as likely depending on the angle.  It won't last long against a destroyer but if its gun is not disabled in the fight either by the destroyer its attacking, an escorting ship, or fighter/bomber screen then it has a chance to win.  But its a gamble.  As soon as the beam is gone or if the Lilith is out of position then its no match for a larger ship. A FreeSpace destroyer is much more than just a bunch of beam cannons...a destroyer class vessel leverages a fighter and bomber complement as well...so any serious battle is against not just one ship but its escorting compliment...and this is where the Lilith looses.  So if we look specifically at the Lilith ship to ship...yes very impressive...but from a wider viewpoint the situation is different.

I do have to say that I'm not sure if it was a conscious decision to gun the Lilith up all the way or not.  The way that beam cannons changed during FreeSpace 2's development means that it may not have had the beam until much later and they decided to differentiate the Cain from the Lilith in a larger way than before.  So they upped the beam to the larger size and didn't want to add another table entry for a medium beam.  It works quite well for mission designers if the intent is to force the player to disable a capital ship before it gets into range and obliterates a convoy or a similar or slightly larger sized vessel.  And of course when this proved to be an issue in certain missions you'll note that the Lilith either has a SRed or beams aren't freed.

No idea how that all came about...but perhaps involved large amounts of coffee beans, pizza, and other creative elements present at the Volition offices

[blowfish]

Yeah, but who actually disables beam turrets besides Alpha 1?

[Droid803]

The AI is too retarded. Even if you explicitly add-goal to take out that beam, they'll still fail.

[blowfish]

Though if you get eight or so of them all on the same subsystem, they will usually take it out.

[Droid803]

Given a good amount of time.
They can take out Ravana turrets alright though, which is nice. Telling them to disarm a sath's main beams is futile, however.
Not sure how well they can shoot at the Liliths chin-mounted gun. They might just end up hitting the "nose".

[Mars]

I always tell Alpha to take out the LRed in the SathanAss while I deal with the main beam cannons and beta deals with the Flak... and the AI seems to preform remarkably well with those tasks.

It's when you tell them to take out a smaller subsystem or turret that it's a problem.

[AlphaOne]

So the AI is not completely retarted but its not that far from such a designation is that correct? Well wopiidoodaa who cares if they can take out a beam turret the size of a cruiser  when you need them to take out something a lot smaller and of more importance.

[TrashMan]

Ok so...

The ratio doesn't even stay the same between all races.  There are a number of standouts. The Mentu has no offensive beam capabilities while the Fenris, Leviathan, and Aeolus do.  The Aeolus puts all other Terran and Vasudan cruisers to shame on nearly all counts for both offensive and defensive capabilities.  The Moloch is drastically under powered for offensive weaponry compared to the Deimos and basically equals it for anti-fighter capabilities.  The Ravana in a 1 v 1 direct combat match will beat all other destroyer types quite handily.  Hrrmm....

Heh..The Mentu is indeed a dissapointment. The TechRoom mentiones a beam cannon yet it doesn't have one. A [V] mixup?

As far as other ships go - a Moloch doubles as a light carrier so it makes sense it carries less firepower.

A Orion vs. Ravana will either end up with both ships dead or the Ravana victorious, but HEAVILY damaged.. sometimes the Orion can even win.

Aeolus is a much more modern design than the Levi or Fenris, and while great, it's not THAT superior to the others. It has a bit more HP and it's slightly faster. It exchanged one Fusion Mortar for a SGreen - DPS wise, a bad tradeoff. The Levi has 4 AAAf's, while the Aeolus has more flak.

In any shivans vs. GTVA ship engagement of same class the GTVA ship will be able to return the favor, maybe even destroy the shivan if lucky. With the Lilith vs. any GTVA cruiser - it the Lilith scores a hit with it's beam it's all over, the GTVA cruisers won't be able to return much damage or nothing overall. So the disparity is obvious.

[TrashMan]

Its unusual for a smaller type to beat up on a larger type yes, but in real life I can think of many scenarios where you'll have a smaller/lower class type such as some tank destroyers in use which emphasize being smaller but able to pack a massive hit and surprise a MBT.  Or a torpedo boat which is meant to damage or sink larger vessels while being too small to hit with dreadnought guns.  Warfare has many examples of such kinds of weapons.  In air combat there was a long period where it was felt that the bomber would fly too high, be too fast, and be too well defended for a much smaller fighter to defeat the bomber effectively.

I don't think comparing naval vessels to FS vessels is a good analogy. Not to mention that the way damage and HP work in games has nothing to do with RL at all. Lilith was just a poor balance job.

[FreeSpaceFreak]