[Androgeos Exeunt]

Simply put, it's the age-old question of "Why do they always jump in so far from the node?"

Well, if it were a Knossos, the answer has already been provided by the Psamtik.

If it were a normal node, however, it's probably done for safety reasons. Canon has established that jump drives need to recharge, so if a warship jumped out of subspace and directly into a node, it has to wait for quite a while in order for its jump drives to recharge, during which it would be slightly more vulnerable to being disabled or whatever, because any warheads aimed at its subsystems or turrets will hit home if the warship's point defences are inadequate. If it moves, however, the chances of a warhead knocking out a subsystem or turret is slightly lower, because most warheads take a lag-based approach rather than a lead-based one.

There's also the matter of a jump node being used often. If you have a warship sitting inside a jump node waiting for its drives to recharge, and a Hippocrates jumps in, it can't use the node because the warship has parked itself in it.

And then there are traffic issues as well. Imagine if a ship is waiting for its jump drives to recharge at a node, and you have twenty other ships waiting for it to recharge, with a few more ships jumping in near the node every minute. The jump node will experience a bottleneck.

[Killer Whale]

Personally I think probably the Capella-Epsilon Pegasi node is more stable than the Sol-Delta Serpentis node. And yes, the Lucy has a lot more explosive power than an orion, who knows, maybe those reactors release more energy than the meson bombs.

[Narvi]

I find it more likely that the GTVA simply didn't want to risk the node staying stable enough for the Shivans to get through. The Orion by itself might have destabilized the node enough for GTVA traffic to be unable to transit it, but the Shivans can go through nodes that are too unstable for the GTVA.

[eliex]

Well, if it were a Knossos, the answer has already been provided by the Psamtik.

If it were a normal node, however, it's probably done for safety reasons. Canon has established that jump drives need to recharge, so if a warship jumped out of subspace and directly into a node, it has to wait for quite a while in order for its jump drives to recharge, during which it would be slightly more vulnerable to being disabled or whatever, because any warheads aimed at its subsystems or turrets will hit home if the warship's point defences are inadequate. If it moves, however, the chances of a warhead knocking out a subsystem or turret is slightly lower, because most warheads take a lag-based approach rather than a lead-based one.

There's also the matter of a jump node being used often. If you have a warship sitting inside a jump node waiting for its drives to recharge, and a Hippocrates jumps in, it can't use the node because the warship has parked itself in it.

And then there are traffic issues as well. Imagine if a ship is waiting for its jump drives to recharge at a node, and you have twenty other ships waiting for it to recharge, with a few more ships jumping in near the node every minute. The jump node will experience a bottleneck.

 

[Pred the Penguin]

Or risk being rammed be ships coming out of the node.

[Commander Zane]

That makes me think of the JAD mission with the GTCv Pork (?) literally blockading a node and the NTC LOL jumps into its broadside.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

That makes me think of the JAD mission with the GTCv Pork (?) literally blockading a node and the GTC LOL jumps into its broadside.

You got the Pork correct.

However, the Lol was an NTF cruiser.

[Commander Zane]

Doh, damn two factions having the same type of ship.

[Mobius]

Because an Orion is just a little bit harder to kill than an Argo?

Would the Shivans care about 3 Argos moving alone towards Capella?

They care about everything and attack whatever's not Shivan (or speaking Shivan).

To be honest I believe they'd be more interested on taking down Argo transports rather than engaging an Orion. Also, there are two things we might consider:

1) The Shivans might have been able to detect the presence of Meson bombs within the Bastion's hull, so they had at least one reason to get suspicious. Also, the Orion entered Capella and moved straight to the other jump node...this may be considered a weird movement;

2) Argo or Orion, whatever carried the Meson bombs must have had an escort. A complement of spacecraft and warships escorting an Orion is not weird at all while a similar deployment of forces all around a very limited number of Argo transports may seem a bit weird, giving the fact that even larger civilian convoys have much weaker escort complements;

[Lucika]

Because an Orion is just a little bit harder to kill than an Argo?

Would the Shivans care about 3 Argos moving alone towards Capella?

They care about everything and attack whatever's not Shivan (or speaking Shivan).

To be honest I believe they'd be more interested on taking down Argo transports rather than engaging an Orion. Also, there are two things we might consider:

1) The Shivans might have been able to detect the presence of Meson bombs within the Bastion's hull, so they had at least one reason to get suspicious. Also, the Orion entered Capella and moved straight to the other jump node...this may be considered a weird movement;

2) Argo or Orion, whatever carried the Meson bombs must have had an escort. A complement of spacecraft and warships escorting an Orion is not weird at all while a similar deployment of forces all around a very limited number of Argo transports may seem a bit weird, giving the fact that even larger civilian convoys have much weaker escort complements;

What if they send the Orion with full escort (what would have been destroyed without the Holy Alpha 1) as a decoy and THEN they'd send the 3 Argos?

[Droid803]

Uhm...the three Aeolus cruisers are pretty capable of defending the Bastion, with or without Alpha 1...

And even if you did send the Orion, then three argos, the Shivans would still go after the three argos.
It's not like the Shivans have only a limited number of forces, no. They VASTLY outnumber the GTVA, which means that decoys are pretty worthless. Especially since you don't know if the Shivans can detect Meson bombs or not. If they can, your entire plan is worthless. That's pretty stupid if you ask me. Just shove them onto something survivable, and give it good escort. Why bother with tricks that might not even work? Seems like you're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist, by making a bigger problem.

[peterv]

What about this explanation: emotional effect (since the Bastion is a well known destroyer from FS1).

[eliex]

What about this explanation: emotional effect (since the Bastion is a well known destroyer from FS1).

Didn't feel much about the Bastion dying, to be honest, but that's a possibility.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I thought the Bastion was the destroyer version of the Oberon. Both are antique, decommissioned warships.

[Pred the Penguin]

If you played FS1 first, you'll know the moment you see it that the Bastion is an old warhorse with 40+ years on it. It deserved to go out with a big bang.

[Jake2447]

Would a meson bomb fit in an Argo?

[Mobius]

From what we have seen, kind of.

[killadonuts]

They probably wanted to put the bombs into a destroyer to accurately mimic what happened with the Lucifer and the Sol jump node.  There really was no margin for error.  The exact sciences behind the Sol jump node collapse probably wasn't completely understood but they DID know that it was a destroyer class ship exploding with 5 reactors that most likely caused the collapse.

[Droid803]

They probably went for overkill, because it's all or nothing. If it's one bomb short of collapsing the node, all the meson bombs used, all the effort getting it to the node, etc. were wasted.

Might as well stuff in a few more, make sure it works.

They GTVA is probably unsure as to what exactly caused the node to collapse (was it the explosion energy, or was it the mass, or was it both?) Best way to get around that is to duplicate the situation as best as possible for what was known to work. Since they didn't have a spare Lucifer on hand (nor a Hades), they used an Orion.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

They did have a Colossus, but that took twenty years to make and they can't bring themselves to blow it up. This is more so given that it had only seen a few months' worth of operations at most.