[Marcov]

Recently, I've been wondering on why the GTVA needed to spend 20 years of effort to make some biga*s ship; if they were scared of another Shivan invasion, why didn't they just mass produce Orion destroyers, which, in my opinion, is more sensible; what if the Shivans attacked 2 years before the Colossus was finished? By that time, if they had done the alternative plan, they could've built (let's say) 5, out of 7, Orions, instead of having to wait for the Colossus to be complete.

[The E]

*Ahem*

The Colossus project was not, as it were, a project that was designed primarily to produce a giant warship.

Basically, it represented the GTVA's equivalent of the Manhattan project and the Apollo program all in one, in other words, a massive government effort into jumpstarting the economy through massive public funding. While it had the side effect of producing a bigass warship, it also served (and this is the critical bit) to get GTVA R&D and shipbuilding infrastructure to a level where it was more than self-sustaining again, after the loss of Earth.
It also gave the population something positive to look forward to. It gave them the feeling that, while there ARE massively powerful (but beatable*) aliens out there, Humanity and Vasudanity are not defeated but instead thriving.

Oh, and take a close look at the Deimos Corvettes and Hecate Destroyers next time. The design legacy from the Hades to the Collie to those two is rather clear, meaning that those, and the weapons they mount, are offshoots of the Colossus project.

Now, you asked

why didn't they just mass produce Orion destroyers

Counterquestion: Did the GT(V)A actually have the capability to mass-produce Orions and Typhoons? AFTER they lost the two most-developed systems they had?


*beatable, because the Shivans seemingly stopped all attacks after the Lucy went down in flames. A reasonable assumption that got thoroughly thrashed in FS2.

[cloneof]

Now that is one nice answer 

Thanks!

[Droid803]

From a tactical standpoint, sometimes having a single more powerful warship is favourable.

Think about it this way, using the critical existence failure model, where a warship retains roughly 100% of its firepower so long as it has 1 hitpoint remaining*. Also take into consideration a single opposing warship which is capable of destroying an Orion in a few volleys. In this case, having one ship with 10 times the firepower and 10 times the armor is better than having 10 separate ships, as when your ships are separate, every several volleys, you would be losing 10% of your firepower, whereas if you lumped them together, you would have 100% of your firepower until the moment it is destroyed.

Obviously, this takes into account quite specific circumstances, but from what the GTVA know of the Shivans, this is fairly relevant, especially in the context of the Colossus, which was designed to prospectively hunt SD Lucifers. Orions do get destroyed by Lucifer-class destroyers fairly quickly, resulting in a quicker dropoff of damage output. The GTVA had no way of knowing about multiple Sathanas-class warships, and could only really operate from knowledge during the great war, where the Shivans fielded a single flagship that served as the hub of control, not multiple targets that needed to be engaged simultaneously. As such, concentrating your own defense is worthwhile.


* This is not quite true in FS-verse due to fighter strikes on critical subsystems, but is close enough an approximation as the Shivans do not appear to do subsystem strikes with much frequency. Also, the turrets on the Colossus are well-armored enough to make this a non-factor in most circumstances - it takes a lot to take down one of the Colly's beam turrets, not so much for an Orion's.

[The E]

Exactly. In a classic display of military planning, the GTVA concentrated on building something that would win the last war they fought. The Colossus was built to kill another Lucifer all on its own; arguably, it succeeds there.

[ChronoReverse]

In a universe where Stilleto II's exist, something like the Colly with much tougher turrets is certainly a more viable threat.

[0rph3u5]

Most of all, you have to consider that the GTVA though the Shivans would still be on the level of the Great War when they return; they might even have through that Shivans would return with a fleet just like the fleet of the Great War (-> Collie vs Lucifer comparison)... and still feared the day they shivans would ever come back...
when the Shivans did not they deployed a destroyer AND a corvette in response to an incursion by a single cruiser (a bit overkill is it not? - but consider how freightend the GTVA must be as the shivans returned in a fashion they did not anticipate

Secondly, after the Great War there must have been a need for a project that would both unify the remnants of the GTA (there are 3 cannon successor factions!) and strenghten the Terrans' bonds to the Vasudans... and Project Coloussus was among the first projects to be approved by the GTVA General Assemby
What better move then to use the common fear of another Shivan incursion to create a massive joint project like the Colossus...

And on another note, the Project Colossus was not just building the Colossus but also to build the infrastructure and to develop the technology to build this ship...  which most likely laid the fundations for other post-Great War ship classes and system infrastructure, esspecially on Terran side

[-Norbert-]

It also gave the population something positive to look forward to.

Not really considering that the Colossus was highly classified.

[The E]

The Colly itself, yes. But the second-order effects definitely were not.

Besides, how secret can the Colly be?

[MatthTheGeek]

I think the technical specifications, and probably information about the progress of its construction, were classified, but not its existence. This way, you have the moral-boosting effect without suffering too much about security leaks.

[headdie]

I think the technical specifications, and probably information about the progress of its construction, were classified, but not its existence. This way, you have the moral-boosting effect without suffering too much about security leaks.

though this is all true from what we would expect in the real world,  the pilots that are with you when the colly is first deployed act in utter surprise suggesting that somehow total/near total secrecy had been maintained

[MatthTheGeek]

Point. The most likely is that people knew the GTVA was working on a big project, maybe they knew it was a one-of-a-kind über-warship or something, but nothing else was known. And especially, they didn't know when/how it was supposed to be deployed.

[NGTM-1R]

Besides, how secret can the Colly be?

Secret enough that the NTF wasn't aware they were up a creek.


From a purely military point of view the Colossus is a linebreaker. Beam cannon mean that it is entirely possible, indeed even easy, to construct a node blockade that is nearly ironclad against destroyer-sized vessels and kill them before they have a chance to orient themselves and engage the blockade or do significant damage. Fightercraft are also vunerable if you can simply throw a wall of beams through the area of the node.

The Colossus is the answer. By sheer size and ability to absorb damage it can sweep aside any reasonable number of destroyers and establish a beachead in a hostile system. The relatively small increase in number of fightercraft it carries compared to a destroyer and its emphasis on direct-fire beam weaponry spread around the hull to engage at multiple angles are both adaptions to this role that don't make much sense if it was meant for a general combat or system control purpose.

[sigtau]

Well that answers the question about Alpha 1's priority as a pilot on the Aquitaine (Level Rho, apparently).

[headdie]

the thing about the colossus project it would take thousands of people directly working on the project and indirectly in support industrys, with that number of ppl involved you would reasonably expect there to be leaks so he have hit one of the typical canon meats reality conflicts here

[The E]

Well..... I figure it's somewhat like the B2 or F22 (Or the F117). Meaning that people are aware of the existence of the project, and the general outline, but not the specific implementation, or general readiness state.

As Headdie said, the Colossus project took twenty years to completion, and there were hundreds of thousands of people directly or indirectly involved in it. You can't hide something like that, not completely.

[S-99]

Too bad the colossus didn't get a chance to go through the knossos. It was busy cleaning up ntf while A1 and much smaller ships were in there. Colossus would have been able to hold it's own for a good long while in there and explore further.

[Droid803]

Does the colly even fit through?
IIRC the Sath doesn't actually fit (but you never find out since it gets destroyed before the first sath makes it through).

[el_magnifico]

Too bad the colossus didn't get a chance to go through the knossos. It was busy cleaning up ntf while A1 and much smaller ships were in there. Colossus would have been able to hold it's own for a good long while in there and explore further.

I disagree. The Colossus, with its enormous size, its logistical requirements, and its lack of subspace manoeuvrability (as evidenced by its inability to jump out to avoid Koth's ram), would have been a rather vulnerable target in the nebula.

I guess that's one of the reasons why the GTVA mostly deployed the more advanced and "flexible" classes of warships through the portal, leaving some of the old but still useful ones behind.

Hey, look! I'm posting meaningful content!

[Kie99]

Does the colly even fit through?
IIRC the Sath doesn't actually fit (but you never find out since it gets destroyed before the first sath makes it through).

They both do quite comfortably.