[General Battuta]

It's only solid, detailed, proven and accepted in the context of BP. You don't have to give it any thought at all in the context of general post-Capella speculation, and it'd be a little dull if everyone did. There are lots of other fun ways to go.

[General Battuta]

expanded thought:

I think it's awesome that people get really into the fluff for BP, but it would be tragic if the takeaway from that would be 'just talk about BP'. I think I speak for everyone on the team when I say that the ideal outcome would be 'look at all the interesting social/tactical/strategic/economic/political details that can be worked into a campaign, let's talk about all the different ways these factors could evolve'.

BP makes certain assumptions which don't (and shouldn't) hold universally.

[CT27]

Inferno?

[MatthTheGeek]

OldINF wasn't solid and in some parts not consistent enough. I have great hopes for nuINF to bring us another viable and consistent post-Capella universe to serve as another point of comparison.

[NGTM-1R]

The problem is that the only solid, detailed, proven and accepted post-Capella technobabble is BP's. We seriously lack comparison materials here.

Half a dozen other people have detailed Post-Capella visions at various points. I'm probably underestimating considerably, at that. Perhaps not all in one place, but they're out there. (I've dropped dozens of possible alternative views down the years, in bits and pieces.) It reflects your poverty of memory and reading, not a lack of other possibilities.

I mean ****, did everyone forget when Inferno R1 was king? Is everyone so unwilling to think they can't come up with their own?

[MatthTheGeek]

The problem of most of those campaigns is that's they're that, campaigns. Gameplay-oriented storytelling with little to no context and lore. That is most unsufficient for the kind of conversation we're trying to build here.

PI had a good lore. Unfortunately, it was only very detailed about the situation in a few systems, and it was set only a few years after Capella.

[NGTM-1R]

The problem of most of those campaigns is that's they're that, campaigns.

I deliberately did not use the word campaigns.

I said "visions" because lord knows I've released only two campaigns, but I and others have babbled endlessly about the Post Capella possibilities in this very subforum. Again, it reflects poorly on your memory and reading. Not playing.

[MatthTheGeek]

Endless babble is just that, endless babble. I'm just saying that, IMHO, you can hardly have a constructive discussion without anything tangible to base yourself on. And twelve years after release, there's nothing from FS2 that hasn't be overdiscussed to death.

[Flipside]

The problem of most of those campaigns is that's they're that, campaigns.

I deliberately did not use the word campaigns.

I said "visions" because lord knows I've released only two campaigns, but I and others have babbled endlessly about the Post Capella possibilities in this very subforum. Again, it reflects poorly on your memory and reading. Not playing.

Instead of being confrontational, you could always post links to some of those conversations, it might clear up the situation without making unpleasant implications about people?

[Polpolion]

Endless babble is just that, endless babble. I'm just saying that, IMHO, you can hardly have a constructive discussion without anything tangible to base yourself on. And twelve years after release, there's nothing from FS2 that hasn't be overdiscussed to death.

Feel free to stop posting in this thread then, because there is stuff that we would like to discuss. Go make a new thread in the BP forum if you want to talk about time warps and dimensional rifts that bring the Colossus into BP.

[NGTM-1R]

Instead of being confrontational, you could always post links to some of those conversations, it might clear up the situation without making unpleasant implications about people?

Sure I have a couple free days to collect all that stuff into...ahahaha.

No seriously, that's what you're suggesting. And the odds are I'd only be able to find my own stuff anyways, and the great Trashman vs. The World pure carrier/pure battleship threads. A lot of the basic stuff is scattered into general discussions that don't necessarily deal in Post-Capella realities so much as generalized FreeSpace realities.

I mean, starting in May of 2010, going back to...frak it I don't even know, I found all this. There's probably stuff that I missed. Most of it deals with basic considerations rather than directly post-Capella, but still, this is the sort of groundwork stuff people are saying makes BP good.

Capship deployment talk mixed in with campaign design
Defending against the shivans
Started on Lucy shields, wandered around Shivan ship design for awhile, other things, eventually reached my rant on people crapping on GTVA command for not predicting the unpredictable, reminding people that there's some kind of Shivan force beyond Ross 128 that just went dark partway through Silent Threat
Talking about limited resources leads to discussion of the NTF leads to useful information about anyone who wants to create a campaign regarding Terran or Vasudan breakaways, destroyer fighter group availability.
Demographics, related stuff, Goober being shockingly misogynistic too sadly.
The return of Terran Command! Or is he dead?

I think that's only like three months. There's years of stuff around. I know I missed a thread I started but I've already wasted something like thirty minutes to an hour on this post. The only reason to keep using BP exclusively honestly seems to be intellectual laziness or being new. One of those can be fixed.

[General Battuta]

I would hope there are reasons to talk about BP other than intellectual laziness. We just want to avoid talking about BP exclusively. Though it does have the advantage of presenting a clear, coherent vision with all its material in a few easily accessible and cited venues - more people should do that!

Also I don't think it's really necessary to introduce personal attacks on the level of 'intellectual laziness' into a discussion of speculative future history about a video game

[NGTM-1R]

I would hope there are reasons to talk about BP other than intellectual laziness. We just want to avoid talking about BP exclusively. Though it does have the advantage of presenting a clear, coherent vision with all its material in a few easily accessible and cited venues - more people should do that!

Also I don't think it's really necessary to introduce personal attacks on the level of 'intellectual laziness' into a discussion of speculative future history about a video game

I did mean exclusively. Forgive my poor wording; like I said I was reaching the end of my patience for working on that post.

EDIT: fixed it. I'm not going to take back the intellectual laziness remark, though, because I honestly think turning to a single source for all your answers smacks of just that.

[headdie]

The problem with taking a Colossus class beyond Capella is that we need a framework of rules with which to discuss it as a big part of a ship's sustainability and combat effectiveness comes from the ships opponents.  BP gives a recently released setting which provides fairly cohesive rules which means we have ready points of comparison which are clearly defined, thus minimizing the room for ego and "if i made this situation then this would happen so your scenario is BS" which knowing HLP GD this would descend into very quickly and the discussion would become meaningless.

Is using just BP lazy, possibly, but without something to equal or even get close to it in scope and cohesive background we have scant little to work with and maintain meaningful discussion.

[Polpolion]

Let's play a game of pretend.

The year is 2367 and we are the command staff of the Galactic Terran Vasudan Navy, reporting only to the GTVA general assembly and security council. All the jump nodes going to Capella have been sealed, and the system's star has gone supernova. Luckily, most vessels in system managed to escape, including the Colossus. The Colossus, however, sustained heavy damage and will be undergoing repairs for the month. During the repairs, the vessel will essentially be stripped down bare, so if there is ever a time to do modifications to its armament, armor, reactors, heat management systems, sensor, etc, now will be the best time to do so for the next few years. Or not, we could decide to scrap it.

Unfortunately, the GTVA Security Council having funded the Colossus program wants to check in on what we're doing, and ultimately they may choose to override your choices. Remember: you're responsible for the military and report to the government, they're responsible for you and report to the people. We need to prepare a report briefly summarizing our findings on the following subjects:


0) What kind of fleet remains from the second shivan incursion? What is the current status of our Navy?
1) What kinds of threats should the Colossus refit be expected to handle?
2) What kinds of missions will the Colossus undertake?
3) What kind of service life should to Colossus refit be expected to have before decommissioning/another refit?
4) What kinds of vessels will be in the Colossus's battlegroup?
5) What kind of armament are you putting on the vessel?
and so on and so forth

Bear in mind that the Security Council is busy dealing with the refugees from Capella and the fallout from the NTF Rebellion, not to mention that almost none of them are particularly well versed in the more finer aspects of space warfare and spacecraft development, so it should suffice to keep our report general and non-technical.

[Sciguy]

Considering that the Colossus successfully faced down a (slightly defanged) Sathanas and lived to tell the tale, it seems premature to scrap it.  An Orion likely could not have done that.  The refit should at the very least update the power grid so that it can overload the beams without starting fires everywhere, melting their wiring, or whatever nasty things happened when they did it in game.

Ideally it would be expected to do exactly what it was designed for, namely engage multiple Shivan targets of destroyer size or smaller and act as a fleet carrier.  The fact that it would also have enough firepower to seriously damage a Sathanas before exploding is just an added bonus.  Killing Sathani is a job best left to specialists (Like the Bellepheron, Chimera, up-gunned Deimos, Orions with all 6 beams in the front, etc.)

[Flipside]

My take has always been that the GTVA's best bet would be to aim more for numerous vessels with single powerful guns and some point defences, rather than large vessels with several powerful guns and some point defences.

The problem with ships like the Colossus or even the Orion is that (a) they are big targets and (b) they can only approach an enemy from one direction. If you split that firepower up into several ships and come from multiple directions, dealing with the assault becomes a lot more difficult.

Obviously, though, that makes a lot of assumptions about the manufacturing capabilities of the GTVA, but wherever we go, we are going to end up in the land of conjecture.

[BlasterNT]

But scrapping the Colossus if it did survive would also be negative psychologically for the GTVA.  The Colossus had taken 14 years to construct, and was a powerful symbol for the unity of the Terran and Vasudan governments.  If it survived Capella, I'm sure the GTVA would parade it around as the "ship that saved us from the Shivans". 

[Beskargam]

Perhaps not. It could go the way of BP with the GTVA prioritizing survival above all. Thus less about parading, and more other alternatives that work better. or it could go in another direction completely. Say they could simply retire it as a memorial or something.

[qwadtep]

But scrapping the Colossus if it did survive would also be negative psychologically for the GTVA.  The Colossus had taken 14 years to construct, and was a powerful symbol for the unity of the Terran and Vasudan governments.  If it survived Capella, I'm sure the GTVA would parade it around as the "ship that saved us from the Shivans".

Or it might have the opposite effect. The Colossus was supposed to be the expensive but absolute solution to the Shivans; Capella turned it into expensive cannon fodder. There's a good chance the public would rather not spend a ton of resources continuing to maintain it over traditional warships, especially with the economic fallout of a flood of refugees from a lost system.