[General Battuta]

- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

They probably just started harvesting it from somewhere else. Argon isn't exactly rare.

[Kosh]

Then why couldn't they do that during the Reconstruction period?

[General Battuta]

They lost all their periodic tables back in Sol, of course.

[Akalabeth Angel]

- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

They probably just started harvesting it from somewhere else. Argon isn't exactly rare.

Yeah I call bull**** on that. They shouldn't have Prometheus-S without the nebula. Unless the campaign explicitly lists a new source of the necessary materials.

- Escape pods. We nearly never see of those in campaigns. Is it credible for a capital ship battle that all ships get destroyed and none of their crew survive ? Cruiser and above are supposed to have escape pods, and destroyers should have transports and emergency fighters too.

- Flail-like and EMP weapons. They are very rarely used and cleverly building missions around those would be very interesting and original. I thank STR and the Hellfire mission for this one, which made me realize that the disruptor missile actually exists . I also remember a mission where you had to push sentries away with a flail without destroying them in order to steal a cargo depot without triggering the alarm, and that was quite clever too.

Escape pods are only ever used in a story-based capacity (ie protect the escape pods). Most people don't bother for some reason. In fact it's pretty rare that I see any "guard the escaping transport" missions.

If you like the Disruptor missile you might want to try out Trashman's coming of the Storm campaign. I used those missiles a few times in one or two of the missions he's got in there. They're pretty cool.

[General Battuta]

- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

They probably just started harvesting it from somewhere else. Argon isn't exactly rare.

Yeah I call bull**** on that. They shouldn't have Prometheus-S without the nebula. Unless the campaign explicitly lists a new source of the necessary materials.

Erm, they did have the Prometheus without the nebula, back in FS1.

Argon's everywhere; it's one of the most abundant gases in the universe. I can list you a few sources of the necessary materials right now if, you want.

[Black Wolf]

This, like pirates, is a situation where canon>Real Life. We are explicitly told that in FS, Argon is rare, and the only places they've found it so far are Sol and the Nebula.

[General Battuta]

Then how do they figure out how old dinosaur bones are? 

[Black Wolf]

They use Zircons for U-Pb

[Akalabeth Angel]

Erm, they did have the Prometheus without the nebula, back in FS1.

Argon's everywhere; it's one of the most abundant gases in the universe. I can list you a few sources of the necessary materials right now if, you want.

You can say whatever you want about the sources but the canon reality in Freespace is that the Prometheus S is not possible without access to either the nebula or to Earth.

The original GTW-5 Prometheus S was removed from service when the link to Earth was lost and the GTVA was unable to obtain sufficient quantities of argon (a required element in the Prometheus's power-generation module). Recent deployment of Anuket and Zephyrus gas miners has enabled us to resume production of the GTW-5 Prometheus S. The S-type is a minor variant of the original Prometheus laser cannon. The S-type's faster recharge cycle and lower energy drain cause many pilots to prefer it over the R variant.

And no it doesn't mention anything about the Nebula but by deployment of the Gas Miners it means deployment to the nebula not deployment to the fleet.

[General Battuta]

Huh, I was actually going to concede to you guys, but looking at that, there's actually no reason to.

Nothing about that tech entry suggests that the GTVA has to get argon from Earth or the nebula. It's just as possible (and slightly less dumb!) that they simply didn't have the infrastructure to do so en masse; it was lost with Sol. They can probably harvest argon wherever they damn well please using the Zephyrus and Anuket.

So I'll modify your statement:

You can say whatever you want about the sources but the canon reality in Freespace is that the Prometheus S was not possible without access to the new gas miners or Earth.

That's all we can say canonically.

[MatthTheGeek]

The Artemis will be armed with the new Prometheus cannon. Our nebula gas miners have gathered sufficient resources to resume production of the GTW-5 Prometheus S. The S-type is based on the original design of the Prometheus cannon. With high marks for shield and hull damage, the Prometheus was our weapon of choice in the Great War.

From : The King's Gambit Command briefing

So it's explicitly said that they gathered the gas in the nebula. Given than they wouldn't be stupid enough to gather gas in a combat zone if they could do it somewhere else, it means that they don't have any sufficient argon source (we're talking canonical here, argon may be abundant in the real universe, it's not what's interesting us here) to produce Promy S in sufficient quantity to supply combat units. But I agree that they probably can produce a handful of those for SOC or other elite units without the nebula or Sol.

[Black Wolf]

Doh - I had almost that exact same post all ready to go, but I got red-texted .

Anyway, yeah. Granted, there're potential loopholes you could wiggle through if you really wanted to, but I think the intention was always that the Prometheus S needs either the nebula or Sol.

[CP5670]

Even if the GTVA can't procure any more argon, you would expect them to still have an existing stockpile of it and of the Prometheus cannons, built during the FS2 period. The weapon may need a supply of argon to actually operate or it could only be used in the manufacturing process, but that doesn't really matter.

It's fine to allow the Prometheus in post-Capella campaigns, but there needs to be a good reason given for why it is being made available to the player. The same applies to the Helios, for that matter.

[TopAce]

What's wrong with the Helios?

[CP5670]

From the tech room:

The Helios is prohibitively expensive to produce, thus its deployment is severely restricted.

Despite this, a lot of fanmade campaigns and missions use it freely, like a standard issue weapon. In the main campaign, you only get it during the two Sathanas bombing missions. The GTVA doesn't even use it for the Ravana strike earlier in the campaign, despite that apparently being a major operation.

[terran_emperor]

Mackie clone

Ditto. Never liked the character in the first place. I'd like to shove a duct tape down his throat, then maybe he would finally SHUT UP.

How can anyone hate Mackie?

[TopAce]

The Helios is prohibitively expensive to produce, thus its deployment is severely restricted.

It depends how you read it. To me, it says that you won't get it against anything smaller than a destroyer.  If it's vital that you take down something, you get the Helios. The Ravana wasn't an immediate threat to the GTVA. It threatened the nebula task force, but that's it. The Kings Gambit starts after the introduction of the GTVA Colossus. I wouldn't consider the dated NTF Orions to be such a great threat to justify the Helios. The Sathanas and the other Shivan destroyer (Beleth, right?) were an imminent threat to the GTVA.

Oh and how would a player fell if he had received the Helios for Slaying Ravana? Wouldn't it draw criticism along the lines: "I got some weak bomb named Cyclops, but it's sort of pointless."

I don't know why people forget that FS is a game that needs to adhere to certain gameplay standards. Whoever wrote the Helios's tech description didn't think there would be fans to discuss this issue more than ten years after FS2's release.

[CP5670]

It depends how you read it. To me, it says that you won't get it against anything smaller than a destroyer.  If it's vital that you take down something, you get the Helios. The Ravana wasn't an immediate threat to the GTVA. It threatened the nebula task force, but that's it. The Kings Gambit starts after the introduction of the GTVA Colossus. I wouldn't consider the dated NTF Orions to be such a great threat to justify the Helios. The Sathanas and the other Shivan destroyer (Beleth, right?) were an imminent threat to the GTVA.

The Ravana, at least, is made out to be a big threat in its mission briefing and debriefing. In any case, I've seen campaigns and standalone missions use it for far less urgent situations than any of those things.

I don't know why people forget that FS is a game that needs to adhere to certain gameplay standards. Whoever wrote the Helios's tech description didn't think there would be fans to discuss this issue more than ten years after FS2's release.

Sure, I realize that. But the fact is that this usage of it is canonical, and a campaign set in the FS2 universe should either be consistent with it or offer some explanation of why it's not. It could say something like "improvements in manufacturing have brought down the costs to more manageable levels," and that would make sense.

This is an example of what I said earlier in the thread. A lot of campaigns simply don't bother to elaborate on things like this.

[General Battuta]

The Artemis will be armed with the new Prometheus cannon. Our nebula gas miners have gathered sufficient resources to resume production of the GTW-5 Prometheus S. The S-type is based on the original design of the Prometheus cannon. With high marks for shield and hull damage, the Prometheus was our weapon of choice in the Great War.

From : The King's Gambit Command briefing

So it's explicitly said that they gathered the gas in the nebula. Given than they wouldn't be stupid enough to gather gas in a combat zone if they could do it somewhere else, it means that they don't have any sufficient argon source (we're talking canonical here, argon may be abundant in the real universe, it's not what's interesting us here) to produce Promy S in sufficient quantity to supply combat units.

Given that there are gas miners heading on over to the Colossus very shortly after the nebula itself is opened ('Into the Maelstrom,' which occurs shortly after the destruction of the Ravana), and that the design was clearly not fabricated in the span between the discovery of the Knossos and 'Into the Maelstrom', I'd say we have canonical evidence that the gas miners were intended to work anywhere but the nebula.

I'm not saying 'you're wrong, I'm right' - after all, the gas miners gather stuff other than argon, and argon may be only found in the nebula - but as with many things in FS, I think there's plenty of wiggle room.

So, yes, you could argue that argon only comes from the nebula or from Earth. You could also argue that they didn't have effective gas mining equipment online yet, that the miners were deployed directly to the nebula once available because it was a motherlode, and that - with the nebula gone - they will now just send their newly available miners to other sources.

[Scotty]

That's possible, but exceedingly unlikely, since from the tech room descriptions, the Zephyrus is a deathtrap.  And has apparently been around long enough to have such a strong reputation.  We also see at two gas miners in the first convoy mission (mission after the Colossus shows up), as just ONE of the convoys, which implies a presence of infrastructure that doesn't explain how there weren't Prom Ss around earlier.

And the specific adjective "nebula" attached to nebula miners gives a whole lot a credence to the "Sol, nebula, or bust" theory.