[StargateSpankyHam]

First of all, I have resumed working on my mod.

Anyway, I'm curious as to what the community reaction might be to some HUGE changes in the Shivan arsenal.

In Freespace 1 and 2, the Shivans were (supposedly) extremely advanced, and the GTVA pretty much got their butts handed to them. In FS1, they did it largely with the invincible, planet-burning, beam-wielding Lucifer. In FS2, they did it with a seemingly infinite army of juggernauts, with arbitrarily awesome forward firepower.

The best player-equippable dogfighting weapon in retail FS2 is the Kayser - which is the result of an ongoing study of Shivan weaponry. Now, with this in mind, why do their weapons suck? A Mara or a Scorpion on one's tail is not that big of a problem. I'd almost buy that it was just so that the player does not get stomped into the ground on every mission - except that in FS2, the NTF ships (equipped with nothing more than Subachs) are much deadlier than the Shivan ships.

Why do Shivan weapons suck?

Seriously, if their weapons rocked as much the storyline lets on, I wouldn't mind ten GTVA fighters trying to repel a wing of four Maras. Why does the player fight a technologically superior enemy that inexplicably sucks, and as such, has to rely on numerical superiority?

This is something I want to fix in my mod. In a straight firefight, the Shivans should have the advantage, and the GTVA needs to be the one using swarm tactics against them. Plus, in a character-driven campaign, I imagine that there is a lot of mileage to be had when your friends are the ones that end up as cannon fodder to a seemingly invincible enemy (as in Blue Planet War in Heaven).

As far as Shivan fighter armaments go, I've configured their missiles to be somewhat faster, have greater range, track a bit faster, and take up slightly less room in secondary banks than their GTVA counterparts. Primaries are much more powerful than GTVA analogs, and are much more energy-dependent. Weapon energy is something which Shivan fighters must manage carefully, even at higher output.

For warship weapons, I am working on homing plasma flaks, better anti-fighter beams (probably slash-beams), upgraded anti-warship beam cannons (with even better special effects), and swarm-type torpedoes. A Shivan warship will always have the advantage in a straight firefight.

[Droid803]

I like BP's explanation for why Shivan weapons suck.

They're incredibly advanced, but not refined or optimized, because they're not really directed. (That's basically the gist of it, something like an immune system - incredibly advanced, but not optimized)

[General Battuta]

That is indeed part of the BP explanation, and something that may or may not be examined more fully. However it's an explanation for why Shivan weapons in FS1 and FS2 sucked; it doesn't preclude future badassery or development of the kind KinkyHams is proposing.

Not sure why slash AAAs would be any better at all, though; the current ones are impossible to evade or defeat in any way except not being in their FOV or blowing them up.

[Nuke]

ive used something similar in nukemod cannon, shivan weapons are intrinsically general purpose, they dont tune them to fight terrans and vasudans. terrans and vasudans on the other hand have gone to great lengths to develop weapons to fight the shivans. it was also the same set of ideas behind the af charlatan,  the ancients before getting extinctified by the shivans, managed to create weapons for fighting the shivans (much as the terrans did with the avenger, prometheus and banshee), so the charlatan came with weapons that were good anti-shield weapons, and afterburners that could lock onto subspace without entering subspace to give the ship great but infrequent bursts of speed. none of these ideas really worked with the engine back when i created the ship, so the ship's weapons were lameified, and the afterburner still dont work right. i think there have been enough changes to the engine since then to fix these issues and make the ship as it was intended.

[NGTM-1R]

Shivans have no pressure, if you will, to improve their weapons. They worked well enough on everyone (at least when ships came back alive so they'd know) that there's no need to improve. The first invading group of Shivans was wiped out, which precludes them offering their opinions. The second accomplished its objective despite superior GTVA weaponry, so they may or may not care.

[General Battuta]

Shivans have no pressure, if you will, to improve their weapons. They worked well enough on everyone (at least when ships came back alive so they'd know) that there's no need to improve. The first invading group of Shivans was wiped out, which precludes them offering their opinions. The second accomplished its objective despite superior GTVA weaponry, so they may or may not care.

these are true facts 

[StargateSpankyHam]

Not to mention that us stealing their stuff and turning it into a rofl-awesome weapon (the Kayser) might have pissed them off a bit?

[Asteroth]

For warship weapons, I am working on homing plasma flaks, better anti-fighter beams (probably slash-beams), upgraded anti-warship beam cannons (with even better special effects), and swarm-type torpedoes. A Shivan warship will always have the advantage in a straight firefight.

I have to stop you here, I can understand your view on shivan fighter weaponry, but shivan warships already have an advantage over GTVA ones. Seriously, their anti-cap beams are significantly better. They aren't wasteful slashers and they have very good refire times. If you notice all the best anti-shivan strategies always invlove you making sure you aren't in a straight fight, because shivans always win in that regard. A single destroyer-sized Lred can easily do the same damage as 2 BGreens or BVas'. And let's not even talk about BFReds, which no other beams comes anywhere near.

[Rampage]

The Shivans are neither men nor gods; they are a force of nature, like the wind or the rain.  A little raindrop might be a tickle on your skin, but a torrent of them can spell doom to thousands of people.

-Inferno Mythos

[PeterX]

The magical spell for the Shivans is they are excellent in accuracy.  They are accurate as machines,they become orders and follow them without any "when and but".
Peter

[Nuke]

Shivans have no pressure, if you will, to improve their weapons. They worked well enough on everyone (at least when ships came back alive so they'd know) that there's no need to improve. The first invading group of Shivans was wiped out, which precludes them offering their opinions. The second accomplished its objective despite superior GTVA weaponry, so they may or may not care.

these are true facts 

its a lot like stepping on a bee hive. there are so many of them they dont really care if 50 or so bees die in kamikaze attacks, there are many more where those came from. look at how many saths blew up when the sun went nova, tens of thousands of shivans onboard each. to the shivans this is "acceptable losses".

[Qent]

I think their weapons suck because they need to be cheap. They churn out fighters for next to nothing and expect to lose a lot. They're still better than anything the Terrans or Vasudans had at the beginning of FS1.

I'm all for bombers having better primaries though.

I don't like having the GTVA use swarm tactics as a storytelling device because it's fun to blow stuff up and the player character shouldn't have to die in every mission. Sure, friends die and stuff, but Alpha 1 has to survive.

[StargateSpankyHam]

The storyline is still a work in progress, but I've got a pretty good reason for the Shivans to upgrade their ships and fleets. The Lucifer went missing - and they've already encountered Terran interlopers from the future, with the capability to wipe out even their 'advanced', shielded versions of warships. Capella was just a mechanism they needed to retreat to their core systems.

The one thing that is bugging me is how much I should reveal about the Shivans - obviously, they're genocidal space monsters, but aside from that, one of the central themes of the Shivans was always "What the f*** are they doing?". On one hand, if the GTVA discovers a lot about them, that mystery goes away, but they'll be revealed as the truly evil and destructive beings they are, possibly leading the way for a character-driven campaign with Shivan characters involved too. On the other hand, if the Shivans remain a destructive enigma, that preserves the mystery and oddity of what they do, and why they do it.

I should start a poll for this...

Anyway though, it's official - Shivan fighter tech was supposed to be kind of substandard in FS2, even from a canon perspective, not just in gameplay. Their only weaponry advantage in FS1 was because GTA/GTVA weapons sucked worse than theirs.

Oh, speaking of which...the improved LReds, inspired from Blue Planet, Age of Aquarius, now fire almost continuously. The warmup/warmdown glow never actually subsides. SReds have a similarly improved recharge rate, though it is not quite as awesome as the LReds. I ran a test with a Hatsetshut versus a Ravana (2 LReds, 3 SReds). The Ravana tore up the Hattie in 32 seconds.

BFReds have undergone similar upgrades too. In fact, because of the massive firepower of LReds, I may switch the Sathanas to quad LReds up front, and leave the BFReds instead on the Dante. I have not decided what to do with the one forward-facing, offset turret on the Kismat yet - it will either get a BFRed, or perhaps a huge railgun, or something.

[General Battuta]

LReds will actually fire continuously even in their retail-tabled form if you remove the random turret refire delay.

[Nuke]

so youre using the dante. gonna use its megalithic, kill a collie in one shot, weapon?