[Dilmah G]

Yeah well in FS1

- Beam Cannons were not in common usage, therefore Caps on both sides were on equal terms
- Fighters and their armament became progressively better, until the two were on par (you could say)
- They didn't win the war by defeating the Shivan Fleet in a massive BoE, they defeated the Shivans by destroying the Lucifer, a single ship, by exploiting the Shivans

In FS2, the GTVA weren't presented with such a "shortcut", therefore their only course of action was to go fleet to fleet against the Shivans, avoiding the Sathanas whenever they could. The GTVA found a stop-gap measure in place of a Insta-Win action, they blocked the node. The only "shortcut" the GTVA had was the Colossus, in which you're right in saying how bloody outclassed they were. 

[Mongoose]

Where are you getting "billions dead" from FS2?  Capella had only 250 million or so inhabitants, and we're led to believe that the vast majority of them managed to evacuate safely before the supernova.  And the entirety of the NTF rebellion and Shivan incursion couldn't have generated more than one or two million casualties at the very worst.  Compared to what happened in FS1, the GTVA got off scot free all things considered.

Yet in FS1 they actually defeated the Shivan fleet (at great loss) while in Freespace 2 it was made painfully clear just how outclassed the GTVA military really is.

Yes, but in FS2, the Shivans weren't trying to completely annihilate Terran and Vasudan civilization, which I for one would view as a very marked improvement.

[Dilmah G]

Well... they would've been pretty pissed when they saw us and might've seeked to revive that ambition.

[NGTM-1R]

Yes, but in FS2, the Shivans weren't trying to completely annihilate Terran and Vasudan civilization, which I for one would view as a very marked improvement.

We don't actually know that for a fact, either. They could have been planning a systematic supernovaing of every star in Terran-Vasudan space since obviously mere orbital bombardment didn't cut it with the Lucy. Only the GTVA collapsed the nodes and they couldn't.

[Snail]

Well, it seems a pretty silly thing to do if every time you nova a star, you lose a few juggernauts...

[NGTM-1R]

A Sathanas won't even sneeze when hit with a matter/antimatter reaction weapon. A supernova is probably survivable.

[Snail]

Um. The shockwave destroys planets.

[GTSVA]

The Shivans MIGHT have  sophisticated Sathanas factory in some unexplored region deep inside a nebula for all we know. So a few Sathanas might only be a minuscule loss to them.

[Snail]

The Shivans MIGHT have  sophisticated Sathanas factory in some unexplored region deep inside a nebula for all we know. So a few Sathanas might only be a minuscule loss to them.

They MIGHT actually be blue, and it's just that EVERYONE is colorblind (except Command from JAD).

Well, seriously, when people start talking about really improbable things I kind of get a bit skeptical.

[NGTM-1R]

Um. The shockwave destroys planets.

This is true. However, the shockwave also failed to outright destroy a Deimos and a Moloch. They were (apparently) not in very good shape, but they survived it. A Sathanas is considerably more durable.

[Spoon]

Um. The shockwave destroys planets.

This is true. However, the shockwave also failed to outright destroy a Deimos and a Moloch. They were (apparently) not in very good shape, but they survived it. A Sathanas is considerably more durable.

Eh? The initial shockwave toasted them. Then the second shockwave left absolutely nothing left of their smoking hulks.
A Sathanas is not going to survive it.

[NGTM-1R]

Eh? The initial shockwave toasted them. Then the second shockwave left absolutely nothing left of their smoking hulks.
A Sathanas is not going to survive it.

Problem: Supernovas are not two-stage events (which opens up a whole other can of worms).

So assuming that the first shockwave is, in fact, the supernova, they survived it. Damaged badly, but survived. They weren't even facing into it like the Sathanaseseses were, either, to minimize their surface area.

[General Battuta]

It's possible that the first shockwave is the star blowing off its outer layers (which isn't part of the usual supernova sequence, but seems plausible) and the second is the supernova blast itself.

[Spoon]

Well i'm no expert on how supernova's work (and I doubt anyone on earth can really claim to be) so i'll leave that point alone.

So assuming that the first shockwave is, in fact, the supernova, they survived it. Damaged badly, but survived.

This however.
I'm pretty sure that after being hit by the first wave absolutely nothing inside those ships could have been alive and the equipment on both the inside and outside are completely wasted. I mean just look at em. That doesn't look like anything you could salvage...

[NGTM-1R]

You have to blow a ship to pieces to stop it in FS. That's a given. We've speculated at length on the nature of their construction such that this is true, but even when the Phoencia got whacked by multiple BFReds in Bear Baiting, and ended up at ridiculously low integrity remaining, it took only a quarter crew casualities. If there is a ship left at all, there are crew left alive.

The Deimos and Moloch went dark, suggesting they were very badly damaged, and systemically rather than point damage in a way that's not common on FS ships, but their hulls were still intact and hence major systems still probably repairable.

[General Battuta]

I don't think I'd call those hulls intact. They looked fused, melted, and utterly unrecoverable. In fact, they looked destroyed past the point of being blown apart. At least when you blow up some chunks might come out fairly intact. These guys were uniformly cooked.

[Rhymes]

You have to blow a ship to pieces to stop it in FS. That's a given. We've speculated at length on the nature of their construction such that this is true, but even when the Phoencia got whacked by multiple BFReds in Bear Baiting, and ended up at ridiculously low integrity remaining, it took only a quarter crew casualities. If there is a ship left at all, there are crew left alive.

You don't necessarily have to blow a ship to pieces; you have to render it unsuitable for life.  Usually you can do that in one of two ways, A: like you said, blow it to pieces, or B: Destroy the life-support.  After all, a ship is only as good as the one (or ones) flying it, so if they're dead, the ship is dead, and the crippling nature of the shockwave probably killed them just by the loss of life-support.

The Deimos and Moloch went dark, suggesting they were very badly damaged, and systemically rather than point damage in a way that's not common on FS ships, but their hulls were still intact and hence major systems still probably repairable.

Maybe, but you forget one thing.  The secondary blast that followed the initial shockwave didn't give them any time to repair themselves.  You saw it yourself: when the second blast went off, the PLANETS were destroyed, and it came a matter of moments after the initial wave.

What are the chances of the crew of a ship, Sathanas or otherwise, repairing a systematically crippled ship and jumping out, with only seconds before a blast capable of destroying planets blows them into a zillion pieces?

[NGTM-1R]

Maybe, but you forget one thing.  The secondary blast that followed the initial shockwave didn't give them any time to repair themselves.  You saw it yourself: when the second blast went off, the PLANETS were destroyed, and it came a matter of moments after the initial wave.

They survived the planet-killer wave, that was the first wave. (This is my whole point, they lived through a blast that was capable of cracking planets.) The second is something we've got no clue as to what it is or what it did.

I don't think I'd call those hulls intact. They looked fused, melted, and utterly unrecoverable. In fact, they looked destroyed past the point of being blown apart. At least when you blow up some chunks might come out fairly intact. These guys were uniformly cooked.

They were still perfectly recognizeable as what they had been. That makes them pretty much intact by any standards. The shots we saw suggested the color patterns on the hulls were still the same. The weren't melted or charred. The turrets were probably a lost cause, but the hulls were intact. They were damaged, certainly, shock and spalling and their structural members probably have a dozen fractures each, but they're not fused and melted. That doesn't hold up.

You don't necessarily have to blow a ship to pieces; you have to render it unsuitable for life.  Usually you can do that in one of two ways, A: like you said, blow it to pieces, or B: Destroy the life-support.  After all, a ship is only as good as the one (or ones) flying it, so if they're dead, the ship is dead, and the crippling nature of the shockwave probably killed them just by the loss of life-support.

Killing the life-support systems aboard a ship will not render it unliveable in a combat-effective amount of time. A modern submarine that loses its air recyclers can keep going for hours. FS ships, with their huge internal volume and comparatively small crew, might last for weeks. You have to put holes in the hull to kill crew quickly. Available evidence suggests that (being very very generous of it, you could also say available evidence suggest no crew losses at all aboard the Deimos) any crew from the side hit with the shockwave to amidships aboard those ships was dead. That still leaves slightly less than half (counting compartments which have open space on the midships dividing line).

[General Battuta]

You're confusing things, NGTM-1R. The second blast was the planet-cracker. The first blast didn't crack the planets any more than it did the ships - just cooked them. All the actual disintegrating and exploding that happened, happened in the second blast.

And I'm still pretty sure the first blast can be read as the star blowing off its outer layers and the second blast as the actual supernova event, since real supernovae do not pass nearly as rapidly as the first blast did. They persist for a considerable period.

The second blast is kinda weird, though. It could definitely be read as some kind of subspace event.

As for the ships, they look to be venting from multiple hull breaches. But I hadn't caught the bit about the hull coloring being intact, which I see now.

[NGTM-1R]

You're confusing things, NGTM-1R. The second blast was the planet-cracker. The first blast didn't crack the planets any more than it did the ships - just cooked them.

Fair enough (sadly my memory is getting the rings blasted off confused, perhaps; I tracked it down on youtube).

Also amusingly, closely watching the end shows the Deimos having its lower "handle" engines come flying off, along with something from the top, but it doesn't actually distengrate into pieces like the Moloch does before the whiteout.