[Klaustrophobia]

i wrote my strategy based on the in-game demonstration that shivans will happily sit there and let you kill them without withdrawing.  but you could disable the sath also with your supar bomber strike (i'm thinking hundreds here, not a few wings.  like, the entire fleet's supply.)

[headdie]

i wrote my strategy based on the in-game demonstration that shivans will happily sit there and let you kill them without withdrawing.  but you could disable the sath also with your supar bomber strike (i'm thinking hundreds here, not a few wings.  like, the entire fleet's supply.)

[edit]removed[/edit]

do you know how many ships that is?   I feel sorry for everyone who needs to be involved to co-ordinate that. 

Also remember we are talking about an engagement occupying 180 cubic kilometres if you give a 1 kilometre buffer surrounding the ship,

of which about 30 is taken up by the sath
giving about 150 cubic kilometres.

The average destroyer has between 90 and 150 fighters on board so between 1 and 1.3 kilometers available per fighter (remember bombers need escorts.

a fleet has several destroyers.  the friendly fire potential alone is crazy, not to mention the chance of collision and the fact that humans dont cope with environments with many quickly changing variables

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sorry Klaustrophobia, the lol was out of order

[Mikes]

a fleet has several destroyers.  the friendly fire potential alone is crazy, not to mention the chance of collision and the fact that humans dont cope with environments with many quickly changing variables

This is a problem in the "future"?

[headdie]

a fleet has several destroyers.  the friendly fire potential alone is crazy, not to mention the chance of collision and the fact that humans dont cope with environments with many quickly changing variables

This is a problem in the "future"?

unless you find a way to augment the human brain yes because it comes down to the human brain only being able to concentrate on a small number of things at once

[Rodo]

unless you find a way to augment the human brain yes because it comes down to the human brain only being able to concentrate on a small number of things at once

We build a fire control tower upgrade on every destroyer

[headdie]

unless you find a way to augment the human brain yes because it comes down to the human brain only being able to concentrate on a small number of things at once

We build a fire control tower upgrade on every destroyer

* headdie facepalms

[Klaustrophobia]

i really don't know what you're getting at with all the cubic kilometers and whatnot, but sheer number of fighters is not a big deal at all for the pilots.  if they can't focus on their run through the swarm, then they probably shouldn't be a pilot.  especially the bombers.  all they need to do is volley fire.  make their run, release ordinance, and warp out immediately.  if there is enough fighter cover for 1:1 coverage or better, the fighters need only worry about their own bomber.  just punch a hole for it until it warps out. 

[headdie]

About the kilometres I am talking about the size of your area of operations and the fact that everything that effects the Sath has to be inside that area to be able to do so, and in the case of fighter/bombers have room to be able to out manoeuvre defensive fire effectively.  also remember the shivans are occupying the same space, if the colly can house 240 fighter/bombers I think it would be safe to assume the sath has a comparable number onboard and even with one destroyer's full complement deployed you will rapidly start running out of space

[BengalTiger]

Since the topic shifted from the Colossus to how to stop the Shivans...

Meson bombs with subspace drives and a system that guides them to TAGged targets would do a good job. The TC Meson bomb has an inner blast radius of over 2 km, and does 50 000 damage. That's 20 successful bombings per Sathanas, or 1600 bombs for the Capella fleet.
I'm also pretty sure the juggernauts would be smoking and useless wrecks with destroyed subsystems after just a few bombs, so stopping the Shivan armada would require a bit less effort.

Only freighters, retired science cruisers converted carriers (the GTSC has a hangar already, so rebuilding the interior to make the hangar bigger at the cost of losing research labs should do the trick) and stealth fighters needed to support the whole operation, a very non symmetric, but also low cost method.

Whatever was left of the regular fleet could be used to keep the smaller Shivan ships from destroying the Meson bombs before they're launched.

[Polpolion]

Considering the whole gtva only had four or five meson bombs at peak I don't think it's a cost-effective way of killing the sathanas. I'd sooner put money into mass producing the Helios, or even Cyclops and launching en-masse bomber strikes. also note that the harbinger from FS1 does about 10 times as much subsystem damage as the Helios so that could be readily used to disable the sathanas if any such torpedoes still exist; if not, those could possibly be manufactured too.

[NGTM-1R]

Because we don't know how the Shivans organize and coordinate their fleets?

Signals intelligence is effectively peering into the future; that's the thing that makes it useful. The enemy announces what he will do next. Tactical signals intelligence, while still useful, has less lead time to react in and isn't as valuable as strategic signals intelligence.

At the ultimate tactical level, ship to ship and fighter to fighter, it's more useful to keep the peons from talking to each other and their commanders than it is to hear what they're saying. Face to face, jamming is king. Fleet to fleet, reading the other guy's mail is.

[el_magnifico]

with an additional bomber wing targeting the navigation subsystem the Sath would have been pinned in place for a short while while the shivs repaired the sath's jump capability.

Wait... destroying the nav subsystem prevents a ship from jumping out? Are you telling me I've played heaven knows how many FS campaigns over more than a decade without ever noticing this...?
Right now I feel like an idiot.

Well, back on topic, the Sath has more than decent anti-fighter weaponry, so don't underestimate how many pilots you would lose in such an attack. Remember we're not talking about a single Juggernaut, but about more than 80 of them.

Because we don't know how the Shivans organize and coordinate their fleets?

Signals intelligence is effectively peering into the future; that's the thing that makes it useful. The enemy announces what he will do next. Tactical signals intelligence, while still useful, has less lead time to react in and isn't as valuable as strategic signals intelligence.

At the ultimate tactical level, ship to ship and fighter to fighter, it's more useful to keep the peons from talking to each other and their commanders than it is to hear what they're saying. Face to face, jamming is king. Fleet to fleet, reading the other guy's mail is.

Ooooooh! Now me understands el castellano...
Seriously though, thanks for the answer. But I still think ETAK could be used for both purposes.

Regarding the Meson Bombs, the freespace wiki states that only 17 of them have been produced so far.
Besides, objections about my plan said even a Mjolnir with reinforced hull would be too fragile to be tactically useful. Well, if I remember correctly, Meson Bombs were even more fragile. And if only one of them blows up too early without reaching its target, you lose everything you have near it, including the escort and other Meson Bombs.

also note that the harbinger from FS1 does about 10 times as much subsystem damage as the Helios so that could be readily used to disable the sathanas if any such torpedoes still exist; if not, those could possibly be manufactured too.

I know. The Harbinger is right below the Apollo in my list of "Things the Alliance phased out with absolutely no good reason".

[General Battuta]

Wait... destroying the nav subsystem prevents a ship from jumping out? Are you telling me I've played heaven knows how many FS campaigns over more than a decade without ever noticing this...?

Only if scripted or with an AI Profiles flag enabled.

[SypheDMar]

Regarding the Meson Bombs, the freespace wiki states that only 17 of them have been produced so far.

Before I go do something I may regret, where in canon is this stated?

[el_magnifico]

Regarding the Meson Bombs, the freespace wiki states that only 17 of them have been produced so far.

Before I go do something I may regret, where in canon is this stated?

Don't know. As I said, that's what the wiki states. I just assumed whoever wrote that had a way to prove it, and it was reliable information.

[General Battuta]

Going to guess from memory that it's because they claimed all the remaining meson bombs were being used in the Bastion and Nereid and that you can count the number of bombs packed into these ships in the CB

[Klaustrophobia]

plus three for the portal.

[crizza]

Mjolnir with engines: An Argo can do the job pretty well...
Or any other ship with a dockpoint.

[Klaustrophobia]

a mobile mjolnir is cannon fodder, no matter what is providing the engines.  it would require so much cover to be effective that you'd be better off sending a warship.

[MatthTheGeek]

I know. The Harbinger is right below the Apollo in my list of "Things the Alliance phased out with absolutely no good reason".

You need to get another look at your tables. The Perseus is essentially an Apollo MkII in regard of every single entry of the ships.tbl, aside maybe for the pitch and roll time, which are better by 0.1 sec for the old Ap', but this is compensated by, well, everything else.

The GTVA decommissioned the Ap just a little early, but we've got a more than excellent replacement for it right there.