[Akalabeth Angel]

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.

       Why is the Lilith rare? Even in Freespace 1 it was exceedingly rare, why is that when it's the same size as a cain but with much more firepower? I don't remember the FS1 description but I think it mentioned that the Lilith was able to stand up to GTA destroyers. Well the FS2 Lilith can do that as well. Hold it's own against much superior opponents.

       The Lilith is rare because it's expensive, maybe not in terms of "Shivan Dollars" but in terms of manufacturing and deploying. It's got super-dense armour, heavy beam cannons and an obviously powerful reactor.

       The Lilith is balanced by its rarity and only the false perception that each unit will be deployed in equal numbers makes people think it's unbalanced. I mean, yes, it's an anomaly. Its power out-performs is brethren, but at the same time we see all of ONE Lilith in the entirety of the FS2 campaign.  If the Lilith was equal to the Cain in deployment then people can cry foul, but when it's barely ever seen I don't see why people have cause to complain.


      And some people (ie AlphaOne?) have said "well, I don't care if we just see one, obviously there's going to be more than one" but that honestly doesn't matter. If we only ever see 1 Lilith for every 9-12 Cains it's balanced; and I imagine the ratio for the FS2 campaign is much higher than that.

[Jeff Vader]

Occasionally it is amusing to see people complaining that, for example, the Lilith is poorly balanced. Concidering that the Shivans are a race that has annihliated possibly countless other species over several millennia, I really don't think they give a rat's ass about balance.

[Ghostavo]

Occasionally it is amusing to see people complaining that, for example, the Lilith is poorly balanced. Concidering that the Shivans are a race that has annihliated possibly countless other species over several millennia, I really don't think they give a rat's ass about balance.

 

If it's shivan, it's meant to be overpowered.

[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....

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.

And thats the point...the disparity in power is obvious because its supposed to be obvious for reasons already previously outlined.

I can also make comparisons to naval units, ground units, and other forms of warfare as they are the only other points of comparison that can be made outside of the game environment.  They serve as excellent examples and while yes hitpoints don't exist in real life the relative levels of power do.

In a RTS balance is important for competitive play but in a space sim balance is less necessary because the objective is to challenge the player.  So its hardly a poor balance job.

[TrashMan]

Why is the Lilith rare? Even in Freespace 1 it was exceedingly rare, why is that when it's the same size as a cain but with much more firepower? I don't remember the FS1 description but I think it mentioned that the Lilith was able to stand up to GTA destroyers. Well the FS2 Lilith can do that as well. Hold it's own against much superior opponents.

Rare? The player itself didn't fight many Liliths, but that doesn't mean they are rare in the shivan armada. There are countless of fights the player never saw, so judging the rarity of a ship based soley on Alpha 1 missions is just flat out wrong.
And IIRC, there were quite a few Liliths out there.

The Lilith is balanced by its rarity and only the false perception that each unit will be deployed in equal numbers makes people think it's unbalanced. I mean, yes, it's an anomaly. Its power out-performs is brethren, but at the same time we see all of ONE Lilith in the entirety of the FS2 campaign.  If the Lilith was equal to the Cain in deployment then people can cry foul, but when it's barely ever seen I don't see why people have cause to complain.

And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC^(TM)..

[colecampbell666]

Why is the Lilith rare? Even in Freespace 1 it was exceedingly rare, why is that when it's the same size as a cain but with much more firepower? I don't remember the FS1 description but I think it mentioned that the Lilith was able to stand up to GTA destroyers. Well the FS2 Lilith can do that as well. Hold it's own against much superior opponents.

Rare? The player itself didn't fight many Liliths, but that doesn't mean they are rare in the shivan armada. There are countless of fights the player never saw, so judging the rarity of a ship based soley on Alpha 1 missions is just flat out wrong.
And IIRC, there were quite a few Liliths out there.

Generally, the number of ships you see correlates to a general estimate of the number of those ships total.

[Droid803]

Plus, the FS1 tech room description explicitly states Liliths are exceedingly rare. The fact that only one appears in the entire FS2 campiagn contributes to this belief.

[IceFire]

They certainly aren't turning up every time the player encounters the Shivans.  In neither game was this true.  So one can assume that they are not in use in large quantities but as a force mix.

BTW: More than one appears in the campaign to my knowledge.

[blowfish]

The wiki says only one, and everyone else remembers only one.  I remember only one.  It seems likely that there was only one.  (it appeared in "Their Finest Hour")

There were at least 4 in FS1 though (I only remember 4 off the top of my head).

[General Battuta]

And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC^(TM)..

Or maybe it's a fractal stressed-space subspace topology system, or a remote reactor transmitting energy through a subspace portal, or...heck, who knows?

Shivans are not intended for balance!

[Akalabeth Angel]

And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC^(TM)..

   No, it's crammed into there by the power of MONEY^(TM). Maybe for example, the Lilith uses more automation than the average cruiser. You know how much extra room you can get by stripping out some living quarters and other irrelevant things. Look at hitpoints alone, it has much higher level of hitpoints compared to the Cain but that doesnt seem to be an issue. We know that they can layer the same ship hull with much, much tougher armour (since no one complains about the FS1 Lilith). .. so why can't they throw much better power systems in there as well?

   And yeah, it's entirely possible that there was more than one Lilith . . . but is it the case that the majority of the Liliths fought where the player didn't? That's a stretch I think. .. rather I think it's fairer to say that the combination of enemies fought by the player was in general a good indication of the fleet ratio as a whole.

[Gamma_Draconis]

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.

So that's the real reason why all the old Shivan ships are equipped with beams. If beams were available to only a few ships, then canon would make more sense.

[blowfish]

If the Cain had no beams it would be conquered by cargo containers in FS2 though.

[Droid803]

If the Cain had no beams it would be conquered by cargo containers in FS2 though.

Yea, at least the Fenris would still have a Fusion mortar, which does more damage than an SGreen. The Cain would have NOTHING! (ok, blobs, but who cares about blobs. you can bathe in blobs).

[blowfish]

Well, actually the Cain has $hivan Light Laz0rz, which are better anti-fighter defense than the Lilith's $hivan Turret Laz0rz.  They both pretty much suck though, and fighter killers/shivan clusters don't help that much.

[Droid803]

Replace the ShivanCluster/Fighterkiller with flak, and Cain's/Lilith's become that much more deadly. However, that would probably make the Lilith (more) overpowered.

And I always though the Shivan Turret Lasers were better. One fit hit from one of them apparently depletes an entire shield quadrant of a Serapis (on easy, no less)

[blowfish]

Well, the Shivan Turret Laser does do more damage, but the slow blobs are easy to avoid (even for something big and slow).  They are better at shooting down bombs though.

[Droid803]

Yea, its not like I can expect to live very long if I'm moving slow enough to be hit by blobs in a Serapis.

[TrashMan]

And I'm sure all that is crammed into that tiny hull by the power of MAGIC^(TM)..

   No, it's crammed into there by the power of MONEY^(TM). Maybe for example, the Lilith uses more automation than the average cruiser. You know how much extra room you can get by stripping out some living quarters and other irrelevant things. Look at hitpoints alone, it has much higher level of hitpoints compared to the Cain but that doesnt seem to be an issue. We know that they can layer the same ship hull with much, much tougher armour (since no one complains about the FS1 Lilith). .. so why can't they throw much better power systems in there as well?

   And yeah, it's entirely possible that there was more than one Lilith . . . but is it the case that the majority of the Liliths fought where the player didn't? That's a stretch I think. .. rather I think it's fairer to say that the combination of enemies fought by the player was in general a good indication of the fleet ratio as a whole.

Yeah, and we humans can find or make up alternate explanations for everything, no matter how weak those explanations actually are or how little sense they make.

If the shivans are able to make a super-cruiser version of the Cain, why don't we see a super-version of a Destroyer, or a corvette, or even a super-version of a Sathanas?
If FS1 the Lilith was tough, but it wasn't that big of a deal compared to a Levi. In FS2 it turns into a super-duper capship killer.

If it's automation, they why doesn't the GTVA have it's own ship like that? It's not like automation and such technology are known only by shivans. And it still doesn't explain half hte other stuff, but what the heck...

[AlphaOne]

What TMan said.

Simply throwing out such shameless explanations should be an outrage .

Automation lol. Look noone is stating that shivans dont have more advanced tech in some areas. However what we are debating is the fact that the Lilith for a cruiser that we see in FS1 for the love of god has gotten a LOT stronger much more stronger then a damned corvette . I mean hell a Deimos or a Sobek is toast if a Lilith can get the jump on it (and shivans do have this nasty habit you know of pinpointing the jumps they make to a very precise area) .

I mean gooing one on one most of the GTVA warships can not stand theyr ground against the shivan counterparts on a 1v1 battle. There is the Deimos and Sobek corvette ckasses wich actualy stand a chance and are in fact somehwat superior to the shivan counterpart.

However when you have a cruiser that, is not suposed to be a match for corvettes let alone anithing bigger , can take out with a bit of luck a state of the art destroyer like the Hecate well that is just plain stupid.

I can see why having such a cruiser would serve the campaign story along but then again anithing else would be absolute ridiculous.


And simply because by some miracle of life the shivans managed to survive till today does not mean they have to be the ubertechfreacks of the universe all knowing and all powerfull. This arguement i find to be the most iritating of them all when defending a shivan atribute that does not fit with the rest of the pack.