[Narvi]

Remember that smaller shieldless ships can't survive the detonation of shield-era bombs. That's going to be a major limiting factor right there.

I'm sure the GTA had bombs before the Shivans arrived, just like they had bombers since before then. They don't have to appear ingame for them to have had them. The Angel scout never appeared ingame in canon. You think they would fight a 14 year war with the Vasudans without bombs or bombers? They just didn't have ones as powerful as the Tsunami and Harbinger. Maybe before the Great War, they used bombs about as powerful as the rebel bombs in FS2.

The rebel bombs are tsunamis. They share the same model.

Technically, the Shivans use the same models too, but that doesn't mean that they're using Terran Tsunamis.

Don't be silly. Shivans use Terran Cyclops.

[Eishtmo]

Perhaps just weaker bombs than the Tsunami and no shields on the bombers. No shields on the bombers could have been a major factor on why not many destroyers were destroyed during the TV War.

Then you send more fighters to cover your bombers.  Or you build bombers with more armor.  It seems to me the firepower simply wasn't there, and so bombers weren't used in such a way.

The evidence for this comes from the destroyers themselves:  Little to no point defense.  In fact, point defense weapons weren't invested in until AFTER the Great War, when bombs and bombers became a threat.  If they had been a reasonable threat before the Great War, we should have seen such defenses, even early versions, in action.  We don't, meaning the GTA and PVN felt confident enough that bombers were not a threat to not even bother investing in such technologies.

Of course, the Shivans changed all that.

BTW, I do know a lot of this is the result of coding issues and such for the game, just trying to make it make sense.

[William Wolfen]

BTW, I do know a lot of this is the result of coding issues and such for the game, just trying to make it make sense.

I'm glad I read your whole post, cuz I was gonna toss that one up.

However, on topic, I cant believe that bombs of significant payload didnt exist during the V-T war, as we have nukes today that could be fitting to an FS style "bomb" and used to melt/vaporise a hole in a ship's hull.  While it might not stucturally destroy the ship, venting the atmosphere would be just as effective, if not better because the ship could then be salvaged/inspected/etc.

Which then makes me wonder why they didnt use drones with big thrusters and drill bits on them to just vent the atmostphere...

[Killer Whale]

Cause you blow them up.

[NGTM-1R]

However, on topic, I cant believe that bombs of significant payload didnt exist during the V-T war, as we have nukes today that could be fitting to an FS style "bomb" and used to melt/vaporise a hole in a ship's hull.  While it might not stucturally destroy the ship, venting the atmosphere would be just as effective, if not better because the ship could then be salvaged/inspected/etc.

The Tsar Bomba is a firecracker compared to a Harbinger.

More to the point, doing so compartment by compartment is impractical and time consuming. An Orion is massive; no current construction by humans is remotely comparable. The sheer amount of compartmentalization that a ship that size is capable of is not to be underestimated. A modern Nimitz-class supercarrier has something like two thousand seperate watertight compartments. It's not even 1/20th of an Orion's size. An Orion must have tens of thousands of compartments, each of them capable of being individually isolated from the rest of the ship. Any concieveable path to critical ship systems like CIC or main engineering would probably have to go through a hundred or more, and that's just so you can start knocking out the ship. Even a Fenris must have several thousand compartments.

[eliex]

Some proportions in the FS Universe seem a little extreme IMO. But since it's canon, hey.

[Narvi]

Perhaps just weaker bombs than the Tsunami and no shields on the bombers. No shields on the bombers could have been a major factor on why not many destroyers were destroyed during the TV War.

Then you send more fighters to cover your bombers.  Or you build bombers with more armor.  It seems to me the firepower simply wasn't there, and so bombers weren't used in such a way.

The evidence for this comes from the destroyers themselves:  Little to no point defense.  In fact, point defense weapons weren't invested in until AFTER the Great War, when bombs and bombers became a threat.  If they had been a reasonable threat before the Great War, we should have seen such defenses, even early versions, in action.  We don't, meaning the GTA and PVN felt confident enough that bombers were not a threat to not even bother investing in such technologies.

Of course, the Shivans changed all that.

BTW, I do know a lot of this is the result of coding issues and such for the game, just trying to make it make sense.

You're underestimating how effective shields are in dissipating bombardment. The only reason larger ships can take so much bombardment is because of sheer mass; try firing a cyclops into an cargo depot or a bunch of unshielded fighters packed together. They go down like flies.

[Snail]

Some proportions in the FS Universe seem a little extreme IMO. But since it's canon, hey.

Not as extreme as Star Wars. A standard turbolaser blast apparently releases several teratons worth of TNT.

[Killer Whale]

Some proportions in the FS Universe seem a little extreme IMO. But since it's canon, hey.

Where's the other's that go with it? Y'know, the ursa sitting on the carrier's deck and that?

[darkdaej]

LOL, you know, this pic kinda gives better perspective as to how BIG the Lucy actually is.  I wouldn't like seeing that thing float in the sky above my town, LOL

Then again it'd be a pretty painless death XD

[High Max]

;-)

[Snail]

Some proportions in the FS Universe seem a little extreme IMO. But since it's canon, hey.

Where's the other's that go with it? Y'know, the ursa sitting on the carrier's deck and that?

We need one with the Colossus or Sathanas.

[Eishtmo]

You're underestimating how effective shields are in dissipating bombardment. The only reason larger ships can take so much bombardment is because of sheer mass; try firing a cyclops into an cargo depot or a bunch of unshielded fighters packed together. They go down like flies.

Actually, that was kind of my point:  HOW bombers are used pre-Shivans is very different than post-Shivans.  Bombers were NOT sent after destroyers during the 14 Year War, because their weapons wouldn't have done much to it.  So bombers had other roles, from disabling enemy destroyers to taking out cargo depots and such.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Where's the other's that go with it? Y'know, the ursa sitting on the carrier's deck and that?

Here you are.

[Woolie Wool]

I'm sure the GTA had bombs before the Shivans arrived, just like they had bombers since before then. They don't have to appear ingame for them to have had them. The Angel scout never appeared ingame in canon. You think they would fight a 14 year war with the Vasudans without bombs or bombers? They just didn't have ones as powerful as the Tsunami and Harbinger. Maybe before the Great War, they used bombs about as powerful as the rebel bombs in FS2.

It could be argued that the role of bombers during the 14 Year War was very different than in the Great War.  Stilletos were apparently pretty common, and used frequently, so they may have been more about disabling enemy ships than actually destroying them.

On top of that, is the low number of destroyers destroyed over the length of the war.  Only a "handful" of Orions were lost, and only 3 Typhons.  That seems to indicate that the firepower to take out a destroyer was based more on planning, luck and overwhelming numbers rather than sheer firepower.

The Harbinger, also, was designed as a planetary bombardment weapon, so any bombers built were probably less about taking out other ships, and more about blowing planetary targets.

It should also be pointed out that the Vasudans had at least two bombers at the start of FS1, and given that they were behind the ball destroyer-wise for most of the war, they probably did invest in bombs more than the GTA did.  Still, those bombs probably were NOT that powerful, but Vasudans do seem to have a knack for numbers.

I reject the whole idea that a massive tech revolution on every imaginable front happened during a few months in the Great War. It is preposterous. Even with the shield technology, the MX-50 tech description mentions a "deflector array" at Ross 128, indicating that the Terrans knew about shield technology but their version was still in testing/prototype form. In that case it would be a much simpler matter to incorporate the Shivans' refinements into their own shield technology, creating a combat-ready hybrid shield.

As for bombers and bombs, I think both sides had multiple classes of bombers and bombs. Their bombs would have been weaker than the Tsunami (the Demolisher bomb in my alternate-history campaign Twist of Fate does 1000 damage to the Tsunami's 1500). The problem with knocking out an Orion or a Typhon is that it takes so many of these crude, slow bombs to eliminate one that, even if you add in the railguns I ret-conned into pre-beam ships for Twist of Fate, it would take several minutes at least to take down another destroyer, by which point the enemy destroyer would have jumped away to safety. Keep in mind that destroyers are not big bricks hanging in space. They have turrets (which do a good 20% damage to unshielded fighters), perhaps several escort vessels with their own railguns and turrets, and over 100 of their own fighters that will be actively trying to prevent your bombers from destroying their mothership. So many of your bombers will be lost, and many of your bombs will fail to reach their targets, further prolonging the engagement while the enemy deploy their own heavy fighters, bombers, and cruisers against you. An operation to neutralize a destroyer in my vision of the Terran-Vasudan War would be challenging, costly in both men and resources, and require a superior disposition of forces, but it would not require a miracle. By this point, the Terran-Vasudan War may have slowed down considerably from the beginning due to the combatants' exhaustion, so you might only have a couple of significant battles a year, the rest being dust-ups between opposing fighter patrols and picket ships.

Also, ML-16 the only available primary weapon before the Great War? I don't believe that either. I think there were weapons considerably more powerful than the ML-16, maybe closer to the Avenger's power (but without optimization to pierce shields). Just because Ensign Disposable doesn't get to use them doesn't mean they don't exist. I think the Shivan lasers and Prometheus R are more powerful than they are portrayed in the game (the Prom R more comparable to the Avenger, the Shivan lasers to the Banshee or Prometheus S), but are nerfed in gameplay mechanics to give Alpha 1 an advantage (as if he needed any more already).

[Eishtmo]

I reject the whole idea that a massive tech revolution on every imaginable front happened during a few months in the Great War. It is preposterous. Even with the shield technology, the MX-50 tech description mentions a "deflector array" at Ross 128, indicating that the Terrans knew about shield technology but their version was still in testing/prototype form. In that case it would be a much simpler matter to incorporate the Shivans' refinements into their own shield technology, creating a combat-ready hybrid shield.

I don't disagree with you.  The basics of shield tech were known to the GTA, that is obvious.  They had been working on inter-system jump drives for fighters LONG before the Shivans arrived, and the Avenger cannon was brand new, so they must have had something before that.  We have no idea when the Tsunami and the Medusa started development, but they seemed to be in the works for at least a little while.

But there WAS a tech revolution caused by the Shivans, not because of the tech they had, but because they existed PERIOD.  Before this, neither the GTA or PVN could claim the power to utterly destroy the other (despite the planetary bombarment weapons like the Harbinger).  Without such a threat, each side could settle for throwing inferior, and CHEAP, technologies at each other for years without any problems.  Once the Shivans show up, things change and they have to bust their humps to catch up.

And seriously, they WERE fast.  Let us put aside the shields for a moment and focus on something more insane:  The Ulysses fighter.

The GTA and PVN basically ended their war 1/18/2335.  The Ulysses is in full production AND deployment by 2/19/2335.  Less than a MONTH to design and build an entire class of fighters.  The Ursa is in the same boat being designed SPECIFICALLY to take out the Lucifer (confirmed appearence 2/11/35, ignoring Ross 128 since it didn't have a name at that point) and deployed by 3/2/35.

Necessity is the mother of invention, the old saying goes, and desperation will get anyone out of a spat of procrastination, and I think this is what happened to the GTA and PVN.  They didn't NEED to rush anything until the Shivans showed up, and once they did, they went nuts.  Weird, yes, but it's the only way to make the canon of FS1 make a lick of sense.

[Woolie Wool]

I like to think that the Thoth had already been in development for months if not years, and that the Vasudans licensed the Thoth design to the Terrans, who made their own modifications, and bam, the Ulysses was born, not as a clean-sheet design but as a Terranized Thoth. The idea that the Thoth was probably already in the works can also be substantiated by its higher hull strength than the Ulysses. The Thoth with its shields shorn away fits right into the pre-Ross 128 Vasudan fighter lineup as an advanced space superiority fighter. The Ursa is somewhat harder to justify, with its relatively low hull strength (no one would want to fly that brick into unshielded combat with 550 hitpoints), but I'm sure Demon- and Lilith-class vessels would have scared the pants off the GTA and provided sufficient justification for building a new bomber class. You could even go so far as to say they were already working on it and sacrificed some armor for extra reactor capacity or payload in their scramble to get it finished and out the door. Remember that the Typhon was of recent development (2333) and considered an extremely serious threat by the GTA (so much so that I think in actuality it had much heavier armament than mere blob turrets) that they would have had incentive to build counters against it immediately. A squadron of  Ursas armed with Harbingers is quite effective at taking down a Typhon. The same unit fielding old Amun-like bombers with bombs worth only 1000 damage or so...not so much.

At any rate, the Ursa is such a quantum leap over the Amun and whatever the Terrans had as an equivalent that I think had the Shivans not showed up, it would have been delayed until 2336 or even later if it were already in development in January 2335. I chose for it not to appear in my Twist of Fate campaign until the second chapter for this reason.

Also, I would disagree with the last bit. I tend to see the 14-year war as a 14-year arms race. Even when they were too exhausted to wage frequent battles, they were probably pouring vast resources into R&D much like the US and Soviets--even after Vietnam when they more or less stopped directly interfering with each other's proxy states, they were still racing each other to build more powerful hardware. To me, the new models must have rolled out so quickly because the Terrans already had most of them in the pipeline and the Shivans picked a really bad time to invade. After all, they did seem to be gaining the upper hand against the Vasudans, what with continually banging on Vasuda's front door in Antares.

[eliex]

Perhaps in the beginning of the 14-year war, both sides thought that it would an easy victory. Only when it became clear that numbers wouldn't make much difference against an equal force then both sides would deploy a vast amount of resources to R-D.
Finally, the ML-16's availability should have been scrapped the moment the Shivans turned up.

[Woolie Wool]

But you see, that was 14 years ago. Even George W. Bush wasn't stupid enough to take years to figure out that America was in for his "War on Terror" for the long haul.

[Eishtmo]

But you see, that was 14 years ago. Even George W. Bush wasn't stupid enough to take years to figure out that America was in for his "War on Terror" for the long haul.

You're assuming they didn't think it would be a "long war" to begin with.  We know almost nothing from before the 14 Year War at all, and very little from the early years.  The only time we get any indication about the progress of the war is when talking about the production of the Levithan, and it was restarted after only a short period.

To divert from canon, my version of the 14 Year War has a slow build up as each side gauges the other, then a burst of warfare that resembles WWII, then things settle back down into a long stalemate that we see in FS1.  It's no less accurate than any other version, I'm afraid, but allows for some of the canon events we see.  If we take into account the newly emerging technology that we see in FS1, we might actually see a renewed burst of conflict after a long lull, but I don't know for sure.

I like to think that the Thoth had already been in development for months if not years, and that the Vasudans licensed the Thoth design to the Terrans, who made their own modifications, and bam, the Ulysses was born, not as a clean-sheet design but as a Terranized Thoth. The idea that the Thoth was probably already in the works can also be substantiated by its higher hull strength than the Ulysses. The Thoth with its shields shorn away fits right into the pre-Ross 128 Vasudan fighter lineup as an advanced space superiority fighter.

This would make sense, but at the same time we are told the development was congruent with the Ulysses, not that it was copied out right.  The designs of the two ships, on the outside, is so radically different that what elements came from the Thoth are sure to be internal (engines, electronics, etc).  So the rest of the ship had to be designed post cease-fire, and then it was deployed very quickly, making its production still a insane.

The Ursa is somewhat harder to justify, with its relatively low hull strength (no one would want to fly that brick into unshielded combat with 550 hitpoints), but I'm sure Demon- and Lilith-class vessels would have scared the pants off the GTA and provided sufficient justification for building a new bomber class. You could even go so far as to say they were already working on it and sacrificed some armor for extra reactor capacity or payload in their scramble to get it finished and out the door. Remember that the Typhon was of recent development (2333) and considered an extremely serious threat by the GTA (so much so that I think in actuality it had much heavier armament than mere blob turrets) that they would have had incentive to build counters against it immediately. A squadron of  Ursas armed with Harbingers is quite effective at taking down a Typhon. The same unit fielding old Amun-like bombers with bombs worth only 1000 damage or so...not so much.

At any rate, the Ursa is such a quantum leap over the Amun and whatever the Terrans had as an equivalent that I think had the Shivans not showed up, it would have been delayed until 2336 or even later if it were already in development in January 2335. I chose for it not to appear in my Twist of Fate campaign until the second chapter for this reason.

If the Ursa had been in development before the Shivans arrived, and then they rushed the design out the door to combat them, shouldn't a proper version have shown up after the war?  Perhaps the advent of shields made the improvements unnecessary, but I would still think they wouldn't have kept a gimped version of their premiere heavy bomber in service for 32+ years.  I think the Ursa was specifically designed for going after the Lucifer with Harbingers (the fact that the project for developing both was called Project Ursa supports this).  With shields already in production at that point, the Ursa was probably developed with these things in mind.

It's unlikely the Ursa was designed to take on a Typhon, because the Tsunami was probably being developed for that.  Harbingers were reserved for planetary bombardment, so the weapon itself existed, but they had to pair it with a decent engine, something that likely came from the Vasudans as indicated from the Interceptor missile introduction:

Our communications with Vasudan technicians have yielded the Interceptor missile. By combining the Vasudan-designed engine with a Terran warhead, we were able to produce the most powerful anti-fighter weapon yet.

I think the Reference Bible says the Vasudans are better engine builders than the Terrans as well (not in a rush to look that up).  The point is if the Terrans could have used the Harbinger as an anti-captial ship weapon, they would have, but they didn't, so it seems they could not, at least not without Vasudan help.

Also, I would disagree with the last bit. I tend to see the 14-year war as a 14-year arms race. Even when they were too exhausted to wage frequent battles, they were probably pouring vast resources into R&D much like the US and Soviets--even after Vietnam when they more or less stopped directly interfering with each other's proxy states, they were still racing each other to build more powerful hardware. To me, the new models must have rolled out so quickly because the Terrans already had most of them in the pipeline and the Shivans picked a really bad time to invade. After all, they did seem to be gaining the upper hand against the Vasudans, what with continually banging on Vasuda's front door in Antares.

Operation Thresher failed to produce the results they wanted, and while the Vasudans were all but driven from Antares when the Shivans showed up, they weren't defeated by any stretch.  It's probably likely that Antares changed hands multiple times during the war, and this was just another phase of that.

While I do see an arms race between the Terrans and Vasudans, such races are better run when you're NOT at war.  WWII saw many amazing developments, but on the front lines, they used what worked and what they could crank out in crazy numbers.  After the inital "feeling out" stages of the 14 Year War, it probably came down to just that, what worked and what they could produce in high numbers.  So you have millions of ML-16s, thousands of Apollos, even more Anubis fighters.  Quantity has a quality all its own.

Which meant crap to the Shivans when they even more, and their scouts were more than a match for the top of the line fighters in the field.  Did they have some of these units in the pipeline?  Probably, but they had to develop specialized weapons, the Ulysses, the Ursa and the Harbinger.  It was a tech revolution, and it changed HOW the Terrans and Vasudans fought wars, something we get to see in FS2 against the NTF.