[Mars]

A single bomber isn't supposed to be able to take out a destroyer.

[Gamma_Draconis]

What's the difference between a bomber taking down a destroyer and a Lilith taking down a destroyer? It makes more sense to me that a cruiser is able to take down a destroyer than a bomber. It is a capital ship, after all. In RL a (lone) bomber can take down a large capital ship in a few shots if it's lucky, but the capital ship is more likely to be taken down by another ship (be it with guns, missiles or torpedoes).

As an aside, just because something's small doesn't mean it has to be weaker. Nuclear bombs seem to stay the same size and they get more and more powerful.

And the bigger ship is more likely to take out the smaller ship. The bomber on the other hand, has a pretty decent chance of taking out the destroyer but has an even lower chance of escaping but they're more expendable than cruisers.

[Vip]

Well, several bombers with a couple of fighters for escort would be perfectly capable of taking out a destroyer, while:
a) being possibly cheaper than a badass cruiser like a Lilith
b) having possibly less crew = less casualties
c) it's harder for big ships to take out several smaller targets than one big

Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?

Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Beams probably have some kind of protection for that kind of accidents. It would just be dumb not to.

However, I think the Lilith is dangerous for the Shivans, which makes it rare (yelling about the price doesn't make sense when we're talking about the Shivans). It could be the reactor. It might be a high-output reactor, which isn't stable and explodes sometimes. Or so.

[Mawhrin]

yelling about the price doesn't make sense when we're talking about the Shivans

"Price" is a convenient shorthand for expendable resources, such as materials and manhours (some of which may be more valuable than others due to differing skill sets), and including resources used for the tools to make it, and indeed materials used for the tools to make the tools. Real world prices aren't arbitrary, you know.

The Lilith could be using technologies and techniques radically different from the Cain for energy generation and armour, that for whatever reason are harder to implement.

The above discussion of naval cannon is IMO a poor analogy. It is all basically the same technology, and we know that size is directly related to the firepower produced. The use of LReds could be limited by energy generation, and different power technologies could have radically different power to volume to cost ratios.

Edit: better analogies. Cannon firing base-bleed shells for a massive range increase. Same size as conventional cannon, but much greater range for a higher cost per projectile. Or compare conventional cannon to rail guns, which the DD(X) class destroyers were reportedly going to use. Rail guns are more expensive partly because the rails need to be replaced frequently.

[Droid803]

Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?

Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.

Ever hear of circuit breakers? The beam goes down or overheats, the circuit breaks, no power from the reactor.
The excess energy is probably then bled off though radiators or whatnot into space.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

yelling about the price doesn't make sense when we're talking about the Shivans

"Price" is a convenient shorthand for expendable resources, such as materials and manhours (some of which may be more valuable than others due to differing skill sets), and including resources used for the tools to make it, and indeed materials used for the tools to make the tools. Real world prices aren't arbitrary, you know.

The Lilith could be using technologies and techniques radically different from the Cain for energy generation and armour, that for whatever reason are harder to implement.

You're still talking about the Shivans.

Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?

Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.

Ever hear of circuit breakers? The beam goes down or overheats, the circuit breaks, no power from the reactor.
The excess energy is probably then bled off though radiators or whatnot into space.

[Vip]

Hmmm, Mars' post got me wonder... As we know, most of the FS ships are covered with lots of armour, essentially eliminating most soft spots. If you look at an Orion, the only reasonable place that could serve to one-hit-cripple it would be the hangar. Fly into it and fire off a Helios - KABOOM. Besides, I started thinking - what would happen if a beam emitter was destroyed while, well, "loading up" before the shot ? In game, we know that nuffin really happens, but one could expect that the huge amounts of power cumulating just before the shot would be kind of unstable. If a lucky shot would destroy the turret in this exact moment, shouldn't this energy just release, effectively unleashing the most of the power of the beam on the ship's hull ?

Although it wouldn't do much bad to a Sathanas, because its beams are on the spines, but I believe that for example a Lilith should loose most of it's hull in the subsequent explosion. If that was the case, then Lilith would be a really dangerous ship not only to the enemy, but also to itself.

Ever hear of circuit breakers? The beam goes down or overheats, the circuit breaks, no power from the reactor.
The excess energy is probably then bled off though radiators or whatnot into space.

Well, yeah, I thought about that, but those radiators must be helluva efficient if they are to vent all this energy into space. And as we know from the Colossus, the GTVA isn't that good with heat sinks and all that beam installations (although this could be the case of Collie's age). Perhaps this would explain why smaller ships, like Fenrises and Leviathans or even Aeoluses (sp?) get those crappy SGreens with ridiculous recharge time - their heat sinks just couldn't manage anything bigger or faster. Now, what kind of heat sinks do Sathani and Liliths have if they are able to fire those uberbeams so often...

[Droid803]

How did the GTVA manage to put enough heat sinks into a Mjolnir to make it fire once every 7 seconds (as opposed to 10 for a LRED)?

[Mars]

The reason the beams do so much damage is because chances are the target won't be in their FOF for long.

[Droid803]

The Mjolnir#home beam has the same recharge (albiet a lower damage rating)

[AlphaOne]

Basicly less power output or damage output for a shorter recharge time. Whichever way you slice it the GTVA seems to be gaining ground in this area and catching up to the shivans . Crude and not very practical for the moment but then again they are brand new tech . It still has time to mature and develop into something far more deadlier.

[Topgun]

How did the GTVA manage to put enough heat sinks into a Mjolnir to make it fire once every 7 seconds (as opposed to 10 for a LRED)?

since nobody is ever aboard a mjolnir, it can use more effective (albeit dangerous) methods of cooling.

[Vip]

How did the GTVA manage to put enough heat sinks into a Mjolnir to make it fire once every 7 seconds (as opposed to 10 for a LRED)?

since nobody is ever aboard a mjolnir, it can use more effective (albeit dangerous) methods of cooling.

Possibly. I think that all those spires have something to do with cooling systems - maybe gigantic radiators ? I guess that it won't take the GTVA really that long to miniaturize this technology and incorporate it in the bigger ships. No more than 5 years if I were to guess.

[ShadowGorrath]

Look at it this way- Mjolnirs are newer than modern GTVA capital ships, and we only seen them in 1 mission. Their beam cannons/heat sinks should be newer than on other ships. Unless I'm mistaking on the tech age, due to the time . . .

[AlphaOne]

We do get some indications about the Mjolnir being brand new tech for the GTVA and are treated almost like prototipes. Nevertheless they are much more new that the BGreen beam canons. ANd are more new then the Hecate or the Deimos or even the Erynies since the Erynies had to have been developed for at least a few years to get to op eval with the SOC and since the Mjolnir never got a field test untill the whole blow 'em up fast thing.........


No more then a few years to miniaturize the tech and implement it into cruiser corvettes and destroyers but IMHO it will be a brand new very powerfull and expensive ship that will use them first.

[Mars]

The Mjollnir#Home beam does almost the same sustained damage / second as the BGreen, whereas the Mjollnir is a truely powerful beam.

[Excalibur]

Do you reckon they'll ever stop flickering so much? Surely this would increase damage to focus the beam better - or has this allready been taken care of in FS2_Open?

btw, I never thought the mjollnirs were that powerful - I only really looked at their damage per second in the table files, which isn't much, but I didn't notice the recgarge time...

On a side note, once I had a Colossus with all 64 turrets or whatever it has on BFReds, recharge time 1 second. Then I sent in a Sathanas and watched it go down like a Sath vs Leviathan - well, almost. And then the Collie went into subspace, and watched beams coming out of nowhere moving at 867 ms^-1 .

EDIT: now that is what I call balance. 

[Droid803]

Flickering? The MVP adveffects beams do not have this issue. They're all smooth.
However, the GTVA beams are like a hazy line, while the Shivan ones, you can see the energy flowing inside the beam in a very evil way.

[Iranon]

The Lilith crams awesome firepower into a tiny package, but the Shivans don't seem to have many of them. This suggest either exorbitant cost or limited capabilities.

I don't really know anything about standard cruiser architecture/crew sizes etc, but how does this sound: The Lilith is fully automated and carries only a tiny crew; this frees up space for additional armour plating, larger weapons and an enormous power plant to support them. However, it doesn't even have enough crew to remain combat-ready around the clock, let alone the manpower to do any maintenance in-flight... it's great for a quick assault or reinforcement during a battle but can't perform typical cruiser duties, making the demand for the ship quite limited.

Terrans and Vasudans have no interest building an equivalent since it wouldn't be cost effective; a few wings of fighters/bombers armed with Maxim Cannons would have the same stand-off anti-capital capability (and also risk being thwarted by a few volleys of Trebuchets).