I just read the entire thread.
*dies*
But seriously, I'll say something meaningful. I'd appreciate it if you'd not begin to reply to it before you've read it all.
The "How I would have made it if I were making it" credo:
shouldn't have made it as powerful as it is. But they did.
The "It's just a game" argument: a casual player (one who doesn't check the stats and is just playing it to enjoy it) can still enjoy a fight with a Lilith. It
works in the main FreeSpace 2 campaign, because the player can disable its main gun, and it works in FreeSpace 1 just fine.
In response to the "realism/economic factors" debate: although other ships in FreeSpace 2 of similar size have nowhere near the firepower of the Lilith, that doesn't mean that it's impossible or even hard to do so. The question you have to ask, though, is under what conditions to do so. While we don't know what sort of economy, if any, the Shivans had, it still takes energy and time to do work. There may be no monetary cost, but there is still an energy/time/material cost. If HP costs some amount of these things, and firepower per unit time does as well, (and probably some other things), then it should cost more energy/time/material to build it. The Shivans have already decided to build a fleet with many distinct types of ship. The Lilith would have to have a specific role.
Musings, you may stop reading if you wish:Possible roles for the Lilith: Since it's so high a priority for fighter pilots and so easy to disarm, the Lilith doesn't have long to get in and do its job. It probably would be most useful in large-scale battles, where they are smaller and (maybe?) less deadly than the destroyers, and have better survivability than Cains or Rakshasas. Even so, if the force engaging the Shivans has any sensible commander or wing leaders, its main turret would get taken out quickly, and it would sit powerlessly while the rest of the fleet engaged the Shivans' destroyers, corvettes, and whatnot. The trick, then, is to do the damage without being singled out. Once the pilots make the distinction, the Lilith loses its value.
In that sense, it would have been better just to make the Lilith a more heavily armored cruiser than the Cain, but with Aeolus-like anti-fighter defenses. That way, if used in combination with a Cain, its opponents would have to devote fighters to the potentially suicidal role of taking out the "Lilith"'s turrets, or sortie one or more additional warships to engage the Cain. If they choose to spend their time attacking the Lilith first, the Lilith might go down, but the Cain could still finish its work and depart. If they send in another warship, the Cain and/or Lilith might be destroyed, but the area that warship left from would have less protection.
/musings
