[Bishop Gantry]

Nah, I'll stick with the idea that lucy was a scout.

About 10-20 fenrises went down in the tests i did...

And no 30 AI controlled Myrmidions cant take down an Sathana on their own... with standard weapon configs...

[Zeronet]

Originally posted by LtNarol
you can do the same with 30 myrmidons, whats your point?  and 30 myrmidons have a lot less crew than 30 fenris, lot less than even one fenris.

True.

[Ace]

Alright, on the ZPE comment in the thread.

Shivan weapons use ZPE, but I have it on good authority that the Lucifer and Shivan fighters and bombers are powered by fusion (thus the gas miners) and other capital ships use a different type of power source that interferres with shield systems.

On the Lucifer's beams, even in FS1 Volition could have replicated the FS2 beam effect save for the chargeup glows. The Lucifer's two forward "flux cannons" being as slow as they are I believe was supposed to be a sign of just how powerful and alien the technology is.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Zeronet


 No you cant. The Sathanas has a huge tag, therefore you can only get it down to 10% by shootin it.

mirmydon can carry helios

[LtNarol]

Originally posted by venom2506


mirmydon can carry helios

heehee, someone obviously did their homework.  Myrmidons are the best strike craft, they're fast, agile, and can back quite a blow.  Sathanas take about 200 helios to kill, 30 myrmidons can carry 120 bombs, that means that if the player knows how to command a fighter group, the Sathanas probably wont get past 8 runs, by 10 it'll be dead for sure.  This is figuring fighter losses, but as i said, a good fighter group commander can do this, you wont succeed if you let the sathanas kill your wingmen.

[Zeronet]

Havent played FS2 in ages, played all of the campaigns currently out over and over again. Anyhow, i bet the sath could jump out before it died to the strike craft.

[Nico]

bah, then it can for any kind of attack

[LtNarol]

fine then, how many crew for one Fenris? 500? 1000?  Get that many Myrmidons, same number of fighters as the crew of 1 Fenris.  Then will the Sathanas have time to run?  It only takes 200 myrmidons to kill the blasted monstrosity in one run, two runs with 100, and  i can guarentee you that a Fenris has more than 100 crew members, and almost certainly more than 200.

[Zeronet]

A Gaia could take it out, they're fast so they can go behind it and pound it from behind.

[LtNarol]

Originally posted by Zeronet
A Gaia could take it out, they're fast so they can go behind it and pound it from behind.

But a Gaia would still carry more crew than the combined number of pilots in 18 squadrons, therefore you're risking more than you need, and if the sath has any substancial fighter/bomber support or capital ship support you're in trouble.  Not the case with a bunch of Myrmidons, you can soak up a few losses but continue on to your target, then go after the Sathanas's support vessels and vehicles.  200 Myrmidons can also kill a Sathanas faster than a Gaia.

[Nico]

anyway, the gaia isn't really powerfull enough to kill a sathanas. it's bigger than your regular orion, but it's still just a destroyer. wouldn't do much harm on it's own. But try Uriels any day

[Anaz]

why get humans in on it at all? Why not just have drone control freighters that launch 100s of drones with 1 helios each. Go out, boom, come back, re arm. No more humans required than the ones that program drones and grow food.

[Ace]

Drones screw up, also in FS it just seems that AI tech never adapted quickly enough for drones to properly work beyond basic training and warhead targeting with quasi-AI technology. (ala Tsunamis)

Heck, they ditched even training drones for the TSM series...

[Anaz]

then that must be some pretty sad AI dude....it doesn't fit that they wouldn't have enough complexity of the AI to control a ship....I really don't think that they control every aspect of the cap ships, I'm sure that over 50% of ship functions are automated on the Destroyers, 'Vettes, and Cruisers. I really don't think that they have some guy sitting at a desk with a flipbook of known designs identifying ships as they come into radar range...

Also, a perspective from real life, we could probably make something like an auton- aton- (ah, ****, I can't spell) drone today. We have cameras that check faces against catalogs, modern day games, etc... We have massive amounts of AI all around us...

[Bishop Gantry]

Mmm saw on discovery some show about students making autonomonous robots basiclly they where choppers that could move into an area of hazardous waste locate radiactive drums and victims report it to a rescue crew  and fly out by itself... pretty primitive but we are getting there...

[StratComm]

What's scary about arming drones is that target recognition is still worse than shaky on the AI systems we have (and will probably remain so for some time).  After all, you don't want to send a drone out with a missile unless you are sure that the missile will not hit a friendly ship.  It will always be easier to blame human error for friendly fire than technological failure.

And, for good measure, !

[Liberator]

For the purposes of this thread the launch vehicle could jump in behind the sath and just fire off the drones and jump out, then a control vehicle could guide the drones in.  You could even dumbfire 'em in most situations, the Sath is a huge target.

[TrashMan]

Why just not ram the sucker with 2-3 AI controled fenris cruisers with meson warheads onboard. Tested it in a mission - takes 3 of them to take it out.
Ever thought of making a meson-missile launcher: a massive cap-ship weapon that fires fighter size, shielded meson  missiles!

[Galemp]

Have a Triton carrying a Meson bomb, kamikaze. Looks better.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Analazon
then that must be some pretty sad AI dude....it doesn't fit that they wouldn't have enough complexity of the AI to control a ship....I really don't think that they control every aspect of the cap ships, I'm sure that over 50% of ship functions are automated on the Destroyers, 'Vettes, and Cruisers. I really don't think that they have some guy sitting at a desk with a flipbook of known designs identifying ships as they come into radar range...

Also, a perspective from real life, we could probably make something like an auton- aton- (ah, ****, I can't spell) drone today. We have cameras that check faces against catalogs, modern day games, etc... We have massive amounts of AI all around us...

Yeah, but as Ace said, AI doesn't seem to be very prevalent in Freespace.  Automation is simply stuff to reduce manpower requirements for rote tasks, whereas true AI for military purposes would be sentient or nearly so.