[Qent]

Both canonically and non-canonically, are they really all worse than Subachs? Why/according to what sources?

Edit: To clarify, I know what their stats are. I want to know whether they are canonically that bad or the numbers are open to interpretation. If the latter, then also what people's interpretations are.

[Mobius]

Quick consultation:

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/

[General Battuta]

Their stats suck. Probably for balance reasons. Same reason most NTF ships use the Prom R.

[Kolgena]

Heh. I remember a wiki entry that talked about balance...

Supposedly the Kayser is based off of Shivan lasers, which means that Shivan primaries should be of comparable power to the Kayser.

Obviously, if you replaced everything the Shivans used with Kayser stats, you'd be failing on Very Easy.

[Uchuujinsan]

I think I want to try this

[azile0]

Gomg. I suddenly want to place AAA's on Dragons. 

[TrashMan]

Obviously, if you replaced everything the Shivans used with Kayser stats, you'd be failing on Very Easy.

No you wouldn't. I tweaked all ship and weapon stats to feel more..."real".
Yes, it does make the fights more challenging and evading shots is far more important. You can't keep after an enemy counting on your shield to protect you anymore. But it's not that hard either.

[Kolgena]

True, I guess. I just means you have to use FS1-style dogfighting. Not sure how that would work in missions like Lion at the Door... Prom R and Subachs vs Kaysers can't be fun

[darkdaej]

True, I guess. I just means you have to use FS1-style dogfighting. Not sure how that would work in missions like Lion at the Door... Prom R and Subachs vs Kaysers can't be fun

Not as bad as ML-16 vs Kayser in Out of the Dark, Into the Night, with the Plato's escape pod's invulnerable flag removed  

Spamming those Unknowns with furies and ml16 blasts for about a minute just to kill one of them while they'd 2-shot you with your shieldless apollo (or, EGADS, maybe one-shotted by a full-force shot in a valk?)

Quoting the FS1 intro:


Comm:   Sir, you have to calm down.  You were attacked by Vasudans, is that true?
Pilot:   No, no… we were in a skirmish with a Vasudan patrol, and they just came out of nowhere and killed everyone…
Comm:   Who came out of nowhere, pilot?
Pilot:   I don’t know, they weren’t Vasudan and they weren’t Terran… oh, god, they had these death-black ships, and they flew like… and their weapons were
                too much, they wasted everyone!  
Comm:   Sit tight, pilot, we’re sending a recovery craft right now.
 
Pilot:   Send fighters!  I know they’re following me, send everything you have now!

[NGTM-1R]

Supposedly the Kayser is based off of Shivan lasers, which means that Shivan primaries should be of comparable power to the Kayser.

Not necessarily. The Alliance has been studying Shivan weaponry since the Great War, and it seems unlikely that it took them that long to produce a simple knockoff. If instead we assume that Shivan weapons in theory work on very powerful principles but are poorly designed, it starts to sound more plausible.

[Mobius]

What leads to believe that Shivan weapons are poorly designed?

[General Battuta]

I like NGTM-1R's direction here. And it's one reason I tend to favor the Shiva-as-an-organism theory. If the individual ships are akin to leukocytes in a body, then that explains their poorly optimized weapons. We, after all, are neither aware of nor capable of refining our immune processes on the cellular level, but we maintain excellent higher-order function. Similarly, the weapons of individual Shivan ships are basically beneath attention, since they're the product of autonomic behaviors. (This adds a certain chilling depth to the Shivan history, too: it means that the Shivans possess such incredible ability to manufacture new vessels and such overwhelming strategic power that no evolutionary force has ever driven their weapons towards a more optimized state.)

Keeps the Shivans menacing while explaining their tactical failings (not that their tactics are by any means uniformly bad; even on the battlefield level they're excellent combatants.)

[Kolgena]

I dunno. A lot of the story-telling about how Shivan technology is WAAY better than Terran or Vasudan technology kind of falls apart when the trainee Subach baseline laser is better than anything the Shivans have on their fighters :/

[NGTM-1R]

I dunno. A lot of the story-telling about how Shivan technology is WAAY better than Terran or Vasudan technology kind of falls apart when the trainee Subach baseline laser is better than anything the Shivans have on their fighters :/

Of course, no such thing is ever said in FS2; in FS1 this was primarily about Shivan subspace transit technology and shields. Weapons don't really factor into it, unless you want to note the Shivans had bombs before we did.

[High Max]

;-)

[NGTM-1R]

Also, the cutscene at the very beginning says that their weapons are too much (just like that Lieutenant in that cutscene flying that bomber said). I would think that their primaries are supposed to be powerful on the smaller ships but are not so ingame for balance purposes. We all know that any weapon except probably the flak guns (flak probably being equal) on Shivan warships out-classes its Terran and Vasudan counterparts.

Frame of reference issue. Compared to the ML-16, which is the only gun in service at the time of the cutscene, Shivan primaries are in fact powerful; the cutscene is therefore irrevelant. Also Shivan warships are much more given to using useless and pointless missile weapons then Terran or Vasudan ones, their AAA beam is weak, their antifighter defenses are typically much weaker than those of Terran or Vasudan craft, and GTVA ships are also frequently much less limited in their design.

[Narvi]

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.

Also, the cutscene at the very beginning says that their weapons are too much (just like that Lieutenant in that cutscene flying that bomber said). I would think that their primaries are supposed to be powerful on the smaller ships but are not so ingame for balance purposes. We all know that any weapon except probably the flak guns (flak probably being equal) on Shivan warships out-classes its Terran and Vasudan counterparts.

Frame of reference issue. Compared to the ML-16, which is the only gun in service at the time of the cutscene, Shivan primaries are in fact powerful; the cutscene is therefore irrevelant. Also Shivan warships are much more given to using useless and pointless missile weapons then Terran or Vasudan ones, their AAA beam is weak, their antifighter defenses are typically much weaker than those of Terran or Vasudan craft, and GTVA ships are also frequently much less limited in their design.

I have the vague feeling that game mechanics don't really apply. I rather doubt, for instance, that all the fighters actually have a top speed outside gameplay. Or, say, that allied AAA beams hurt your fighter less than they hurt enemy fighters.

[Mongoose]

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.

[Eishtmo]

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.

[High Max]

;-)