[Kosh]

What we can say is no Prometheus S without argon, but it's not entirely clear what the holdup on the argon was, and to what degree it was an infrastructure problem and to what degree a source problem.

You could just state they found a new source in one of the backwater Terran systems. Given the chaos of the terran sector during the reconstruction era it is quite believable that it had been overlooked for so long.

It's not Freespace in my opinion, the Shivans have never been demonstrated to have organic ships.

Neither did the Borg but they could regenerate their ships hulls. Fact is we don't totally know the full extent of Shivan technology.


Here's one of my pet hates:

When in a campaign they transfer your fighter (or your squad) to a Deimos corvette, conveniently leaving out that the Deimos doesn't have a fighterbay.

[Dragon]

I agree with you on this one, people should be using user-made carriers instead of corvettes for this, or find a corvette with fighterbay (not that difficult as it might seem).
Even FS1 did something like that, by establishing Taranis as a main Shivan ship at the beggining of the campaign, though this can also be explained by fighters coming from Lucifer (which obviously was close behind Taranis, just avoiding detection until attack on Tombaugh). Also, there's an indication in table comments that Cain had a fighterbay at some point of FS1 development. The other thing I find annoying are infinite waves of fighters coming from ship's fighterbay, Hecate have 150 combat spacecraft aboard, counting fighters and bombers. This gives about 12 fighters for each class, if a ship carries all classes of GTVA fighter in similar quantity. So there's no way that it could launch 50 superiority fighters of single class. Again, this happens both in user-made campaigns and in canon campaigns.

[Nuclear1]

Here's one of my pet hates:

When in a campaign they transfer your fighter (or your squad) to a Deimos corvette, conveniently leaving out that the Deimos doesn't have a fighterbay.

Yeah, guilty of that one...

[headdie]

i believe at the point of FS alpha cruisers in FS were going to have a small fighter complement and the player was going to be based off the cruiser eventually named the Orff so the Taranis reference could have been a hold over from then

[Paladin327]

just because the game tells us they cant make the prometeus without Sol or the nebula doesnt mean argon is rare. durring reconstruction, argon production could have been strained while most of the argon produced is needed somewhere else for some other use, while cannon productiongoes on the back burner. it is conceivable that some cannons were phased out ecause there was little need for them.

[Scotty]

Out of curiosity, how many dock points does a Deimos have?

[Hades]

Out of curiosity, how many dock points does a Deimos have?

It has two, one on the left, and one on the right.

[Kosh]

i believe at the point of FS alpha cruisers in FS were going to have a small fighter complement and the player was going to be based off the cruiser eventually named the Orff so the Taranis reference could have been a hold over from then

Well perhaps the way around this in the campaign is to make your squadron attatched to a cruiser or corvette. This way they can routinely involve it, even though you aren't actually taking off/landing from/on it. Derelict did this with the GTC Lonewolf, and I think the Lightning Marshal did it with the Actium.

You know come to think of it in FS1 we very seldom encountered any GTA or PVN cruisers. Most of the time if there was a cruiser, it was either HoL or Shivan. I don't remember a single instance where we ever saw a Leviathan, and only during 2 missions did we ever actually see a Fenris. Fact is we saw the Galatea more often than we saw any GTA cruisers. Thankfully FS2 did a much better job of utilizing capital ships.

[Dragon]

But in FS1, the fact that you didn't encouncered much capital ships increased the feeling that every one of them meant something.
If there was an assault on a cruiser, it was a serious business. In FS2 on the other hand, cruisers were going down like flies, without the slightest regard from the command, even though you just killed over 1000 people. FS1 was more realistic about it's capital ship handling and while FS2 had more of them, none of them but two (excluding the unique ones such as Iceni, Sathanas was also unique until very late in the game) felt really important. Even destroyers were threated that way. On a side note, that's another thing I dislike in user-made campaigns, an Orion takes few years to build, so command (both NTF and GTVA, also Shivans shouldn't waste their Demons ad Ravanas) should threat them more carefully. Just compare SD Eva and SD Ravana, how long you were threatened by the former and how quickly GTVA got rid of the latter. And Ravana was more advanced and better armed then Eva. Also, look at the number of Shivan destroyers encouncered during each game, FS1 had 2 (3 if you count Lucifer, but it was in fact much more than a destroyer) and FS2 had 6. That's three times of FS1 compliment of normal destroyers.

[Droid803]

FS2 did involve a whole lot more Shivans, though...I mean, 80 Saths...who knows how many Ravanas and Demons they have just lying around. Maybe they don't even need to conserve their ships, unlike in FS1 where the Shivans did have quite limited numbers (1 Lucifer, 2-4 Demons (depending if you count the multiplayer missions)...

It's very likely that the SD Ravana meant little to none to the FS2 Shivans. I mean, even the first SJ Sathanas they lost is pretty insignificant compared to the 80+ they still had.

FS1 takes place during the closing days of a 14-year long war. Resources are thin, noone is willing to lose even a cruiser. In FS2, the NTF Rebellion has only been going for less than a year. At that point, GTVA Command may be more interested in finishing them quickly or whatever (and the NTF not really give them the liberty of conserving their craft - the NTF just attack with everything they got, and their retreats are really sloppy so its easy to pick off their ships).

SO in FS2, you have both enemies who really don't employ the same strategies as the PVN and FS1 Shivans. In FS1, there was much fewer resources available to put to battle, as a result, major engagements were fewer, and smaller, and sides didn't devote as many ships. In FS2, both the NTF and the Shivans (and to an extent, the renegade Vasudans) don't really have much regard for their own ships, so they just throw them at each other and try to overwhelm each other. The GTVA had to react accordingly, or they would have just gotten flattened by en-masse attacks.

[Mongoose]

From what we see in FS2, the Terran and Vasudan fleets seem to have expanded significantly from their levels during FS1.  Couple that with the fact that beam weaponry enables their destruction much more swiftly and easily, and I could see how Command would view the loss of a single asset as being somewhat less crucial.

[Goober5000]

You know come to think of it in FS1 we very seldom encountered any GTA or PVN cruisers. Most of the time if there was a cruiser, it was either HoL or Shivan. I don't remember a single instance where we ever saw a Leviathan, and only during 2 missions did we ever actually see a Fenris.

Grep to the rescue!

These are all the allied cruisers in FS1/ST single player:

FS1:
GTC Neptune (Leviathan) - Training 4
GTC Orff (Fenris) - Eve of Destruction, Small Deadly Space
GTC Ravage (Fenris) - The Big Bang
PVC Mecross - Exodus, Last Hope

ST:
GTC Leto (Fenris) - Cloak and Dagger
GTC Iapetus (Fenris) - ditto, but destroyed before mission
GTC Python (Fenris) - ditto, but destroyed before mission
Iota 1 (Fenris) - Field of Destruction
GTC Orff (Fenris) - Secrets Revealed


These are all the Shivan destroyers in single player:

FS1:
SD Eva
SD Tantalus
SD Lucifer

FS2:
SD Ravana
SD Nebiros
SD Beleth
SD Beast

Dragon, where did you get six from?

[Kosh]

But in FS1, the fact that you didn't encouncered much capital ships increased the feeling that every one of them meant something.

And yet we saw allied destroyers all the time. It seems to me that we should see the smaller ships more often than the big ships, but in FS1 we didn't.

Grep to the rescue!

These are all the allied cruisers in FS1/ST single player:

I didn't count training because it is training, and I didn't count silent threat because the canon version sucked so bad. I will admit I forgot about the Macross. Anyway, that only leaves us with 3 cruisers......we see more DESTROYERS than that.

PVD Pinnacle
PVD Hope
GTD Galatea
GTD Bastion

And not seen in the campaign is the GTD Minnow and the GTD Intrepid. Given that in FS1 cruisers are supposed to be the workhorses of the GTA and PVN fleets, and therefore should greatly outnumber their destroyers.

[TrashMan]

Neither did the Borg but they could regenerate their ships hulls. Fact is we don't totally know the full extent of Shivan technology.

Point is - shivans were never shown or even hinted, at having any sort of hull regeneration.

[Kosh]

In FS1 they didn't show or even hit they could blow up a star.

[NGTM-1R]

The GTVA has a fairly good grasp of Shivan ship design by now, though. Nothing they were presented with in design terms in FS2 surprised them the way the Lucifer's shielding or shielding in general did in FS1. The Shivans didn't present any ships in FS2 that were outside of the GTVA's context. It was the number of ships that was.

A pattern or even repetition in terms of new areas of Shivan capablity weakens the narrative. They're still the masters of shielding; they'll still have overwhelming numbers. But the next new thing they pull's not going to be in the same fields as the other two.

[TrashMan]

In FS1 they didn't show or even hit they could blow up a star.

So you're arguing that they MIGHT have it in the future?
That's not really an argument. Canonicly they don't have it and have never hinted at having it.

If a campaign is set in the future, yes, you can plop pretty much anything in there - even contradictory things. But chances are you're camapign will suck.

[Dragon]

Dragon, where did you get six from?

From the FS2 Shivan ship list.
The two additional destroyers were SD Chemosh and SD Barqu, as I recall those weren't seen in-game, but just mentioned.

[TopAce]

They're in multiplayer missions.

[Nuclear1]

Canonicly they don't have it and have never hinted at having it.

You mean...other than that one time they blew up a star?