[SaltyWaffles]

Firstly, I greatly appreciate any answers/responses.
I'll start with the main question, and then present a few others after it:

No Shivan Beam Cannons in FS1?
Even their otherwise identical FS2 counterparts had plenty of beam cannons; the Lilith in FS1 had none, but has several in FS2, and so on.

Yes, I know, the Lucifer is the one exception. But it's irrelevant; why was it the only one?

Is there some kind of explanation beyond just the limitations of story-telling and game design (i.e., Volition had no idea that there'd even be a FS2, let alone that beam cannons would be prominent and standard)?


Subspace node confusion
The tech room in FS1 states that only ships outfitted with the most powerful of reactors could open an intersystem subspace portal (like an Orion destroyer). By "opening the portal", does it mean that the Orion-like ship is needed to open a new intersystem node for general use (as a one-time activation), or that only a ship with an Orion's power output could actually make an intersystem jump?

And did any of that change, and if so, when? Sorry for the complexity here; I'm just really confused on this one.

Why did the GTA and PVN adapt/advance so little during the 14-year war?
Even in the war's final days, both sides only employed a single laser weapon, which was very weak (its power draw was so low that you could shunt 90% of your reactor output into your engines and still fire indefinitely) even against the cheap hulls of Anubis fighters (and vice-versa for the PVN). Aside from basic dumbfire rockets, only basic, very low-yield heat-seaking missiles existed on either side.

Perhaps most jarring, however, and hardest to explain away, is how neither Terran nor Vasudan ships wielded weaponry more powerful than a blob turret. No mass drivers or gauss cannons, no nuclear torpedoes, just 1-3 dozen blob turrets. While pretty decent against unshielded fighters (wielding ML-16 lasers that were like peashooters, no less), they didn't do much against capital ships. As soon as fighters gain shield technology, capital ships become liabilities in most cases, not assets.

It's odd, really; it's a 14-year interstellar war. In all of the rest of FS canon, Terrans and Vasudans alike adapt and advance rapidly; in the T-V war, things were relatively static.

Why did the T-V war last so long in the first place?

Given that it was started by mistranslation/communication errors, that neither side committed heinous acts against the other (no orbital bombardment of cities, no massacring of civilians, no brutal crackdowns/oppression of conquered territory, at least as far as I'm aware), and that the war was often stalemated and costly, why didn't they reach some kind of peace settlement? They had adequate translation technology, better cultural understanding, and there was a distinct lack of hatred or vitriol on either side (Terrans and Vasudans also work together quite well, on an interpersonal level, almost immediately after the Great War starts).

Yeah, I get the whole Scary Dogmatic Aliens concept--but the Vasudans aren't like that, in practice or in culture. The only real danger is the threat of future conflict due almost entirely to mistrust and irrational fear that the other side's intentions are hostile. FS1 seemed to avert the notion that that was how each side felt about the other--it was not a war for survival, and victory meant ending the threat the other side posed so that you could build up a coexisting/cooperative relationship (ala the Allied occupation of Japan after WW2).

It's not like there was any meaningful territory dispute, either; there was plenty of room as it was, abundant resources all over the place, and then there's the fact that more populated colonies are more productive, efficient, and faster-growing than a bunch of tiny settlements.

[NGTM-1R]

Even in the war's final days, both sides only employed a single laser weapon, which was very weak (its power draw was so low that you could shunt 90% of your reactor output into your engines and still fire indefinitely) even against the cheap hulls of Anubis fighters (and vice-versa for the PVN). Aside from basic dumbfire rockets, only basic, very low-yield heat-seaking missiles existed on either side.

Only such weapons are issued to the player. We have no idea what is actually available, only what is available to us. The Athena makes specific mention of the player being cleared to use it. Also, this entire line of thought suggests that you don't read the tech room or think Amuns took down Orions (or the mythical other destroyers and ship types which hinted at) with the sort of weapons available to the player, neither of which reflects well on the argument.

It's not like there was any meaningful territory dispute, either; there was plenty of room as it was, abundant resources all over the place, and then there's the fact that more populated colonies are more productive, efficient, and faster-growing than a bunch of tiny settlements.

Assumes facts not in evidence. No seriously, it does. Why does any of this need to be true? Where is the evidence?

[BlasterNT]

As far as the advancements deal, keep in mind that the ML-16 and associated starting weapons in FS1 are only weak relative to the advancements made during FS1/FS2.  We're still talking about ridiculously powerful weapons-the GTM Fury, the starter dumbfire, is equivalent to 3 Kt TNT, which is about .2 the energy yield of the Little Boy nuclear bomb.  That means that every 5 Furies you fire (and you can fire quite a few), is equivalent to a mini-nuke.  Similarly, using the Fury as a reference, each Terran Turret is equivalent to .25 Little Boys, and a Terran Huge Turret is one Little Boy.  We don't know what was present before the start of FS1, so it may very well be that there was a steady level of technological advancement up to that point. 

Also note that the Tempest, the FS2 starter dumbfire, has 10 points more damage than the Fury.  So an advance of around 1 kt damage in 20 years for weapons with identical roles. 

[Mongoose]

Woo, c-c-c-combo questions!  Let's see how many of these I can take a crack at.  Also, screw you people who beat me to it!

Firstly, I greatly appreciate any answers/responses.
I'll start with the main question, and then present a few others after it:

No Shivan Beam Cannons in FS1?
Even their otherwise identical FS2 counterparts had plenty of beam cannons; the Lilith in FS1 had none, but has several in FS2, and so on.

Yes, I know, the Lucifer is the one exception. But it's irrelevant; why was it the only one?

Is there some kind of explanation beyond just the limitations of story-telling and game design (i.e., Volition had no idea that there'd even be a FS2, let alone that beam cannons would be prominent and standard)?

The general idea in the community has been that the Lucifer fleet and the Shivans of FS2 represented two distinct groups, separated technologically (if not otherwise).  Maybe the Shivans in FS1 were cut off from the rest of their kind, maybe the Shivans felt that that level of technology was all that was needed to destroy the Terrans and Vasudans...you pretty much have to use your imagination there.  The Lucifer was definitely a unique design that served a specific purpose, which seemed to be leading invasion forces like that.  Beyond that, I don't think anyone knows for sure.

Subspace node confusion
The tech room in FS1 states that only ships outfitted with the most powerful of reactors could open an intersystem subspace portal (like an Orion destroyer). By "opening the portal", does it mean that the Orion-like ship is needed to open a new intersystem node for general use (as a one-time activation), or that only a ship with an Orion's power output could actually make an intersystem jump?

And did any of that change, and if so, when? Sorry for the complexity here; I'm just really confused on this one.

This one I can answer definitively.  Your latter assumption is correct: larger ships didn't need to perform any "activation" of nodes, but they were the only ships whose subspace drives were powerful enough to make intersystem jumps.  It wasn't until near the end of FS1 that the GTA figured out the technology necessary for fighters to make intersystem jumps as well.  These drives were also available in FS2, but they were apparently prohibitively expensive to make, so they were only mounted on a few fighters for special missions.

Why did the GTA and PVN adapt/advance so little during the 14-year war?
Even in the war's final days, both sides only employed a single laser weapon, which was very weak (its power draw was so low that you could shunt 90% of your reactor output into your engines and still fire indefinitely) even against the cheap hulls of Anubis fighters (and vice-versa for the PVN). Aside from basic dumbfire rockets, only basic, very low-yield heat-seaking missiles existed on either side.

Perhaps most jarring, however, and hardest to explain away, is how neither Terran nor Vasudan ships wielded weaponry more powerful than a blob turret. No mass drivers or gauss cannons, no nuclear torpedoes, just 1-3 dozen blob turrets. While pretty decent against unshielded fighters (wielding ML-16 lasers that were like peashooters, no less), they didn't do much against capital ships. As soon as fighters gain shield technology, capital ships become liabilities in most cases, not assets.

It's odd, really; it's a 14-year interstellar war. In all of the rest of FS canon, Terrans and Vasudans alike adapt and advance rapidly; in the T-V war, things were relatively static.

As previous posters implied, beyond the real-world gameplay reasons, the ships and weapons the player has access to near the start of FS1 aren't necessarily the only things out there.  The tech room and other material allude to a few other ship and weapon types; we know that Terrans and Vasudans definitely had some sort of bombers prior to FS1, for one.  It does seem like the player starts their service during some sort of transition period for the GTA, when several new ship and weapon types are being introduced in short order; obviously, when the Shivans showed up, the GTA threw everything they had at them, so some of the later fighters that are introduced presumably would have been fast-tracked into production.

As for the weapons themselves, Blaster noted the given yields for even the puniest FS weapons, though how much stock you choose to put into those hard numbers is up to you.  Either way, the descriptions we have of the Terran-Vasudan War seem to suggest that the loss of larger capital ships was a very rare and devastating occurrence.  You're right that capital ships only deal damage to each other relatively slowly, which would imply that most exchanges between them took much longer than those we see in FS1 and FS2.  As you noted, blob turrets are actually pretty darn effective against unshielded fighters, so fighter/bomber strikes would have had less of a chance of success.  At that time, I think capital ships would have been more about force projection and fighter denial than toe-to-toe exchanges.

Why did the T-V war last so long in the first place?

Given that it was started by mistranslation/communication errors, that neither side committed heinous acts against the other (no orbital bombardment of cities, no massacring of civilians, no brutal crackdowns/oppression of conquered territory, at least as far as I'm aware), and that the war was often stalemated and costly, why didn't they reach some kind of peace settlement? They had adequate translation technology, better cultural understanding, and there was a distinct lack of hatred or vitriol on either side (Terrans and Vasudans also work together quite well, on an interpersonal level, almost immediately after the Great War starts).

Yeah, I get the whole Scary Dogmatic Aliens concept--but the Vasudans aren't like that, in practice or in culture. The only real danger is the threat of future conflict due almost entirely to mistrust and irrational fear that the other side's intentions are hostile. FS1 seemed to avert the notion that that was how each side felt about the other--it was not a war for survival, and victory meant ending the threat the other side posed so that you could build up a coexisting/cooperative relationship (ala the Allied occupation of Japan after WW2).

It's not like there was any meaningful territory dispute, either; there was plenty of room as it was, abundant resources all over the place, and then there's the fact that more populated colonies are more productive, efficient, and faster-growing than a bunch of tiny settlements.

This one's probably the hardest to answer definitively.  My own personal take on it would be that both sides presumably felt like the war would be short-lived in the early going; they would have pushed hard to defeat "those lousy aliens who are infringing on our precious colonies."  However, things would have bogged down pretty quickly after that, given the nature of node-based combat.  A few people around here have theorized, and I mostly agree, that the war was very stop-start as opposed to 14 years of continuous combat.  You'd see some sporadic flare-ups during certain operations, and a few systems would change hands back-and-forth, but I think both sides figured out that they probably weren't going to be able to make a big sustained push.

As to why they never threw in the towel...well, who can say?  I think that territory may have actually been a part of it: both civilizations wanted to expand outward, and having another species taking away potential prime real estate would be a decent incentive to keep fighting.  More than that, though, I think it was a matter of momentum.  When you get to a certain point, both sides know they're not going to beat the other, but no one wants to be the one to surrender, so the fighting continues until both economies are pushed to the brink of collapse.  Hell, it's easy to draw a real-world parallel...think about how horrible World War I's trench warfare was, and then consider that most of the fighting accomplished next to nothing strategically.  And yet both sides kept going for years, in what were presumably far bloodier battles than the FS universe ever saw.

[MatthTheGeek]

No Shivan Beam Cannons in FS1?
Even their otherwise identical FS2 counterparts had plenty of beam cannons; the Lilith in FS1 had none, but has several in FS2, and so on.

Yes, I know, the Lucifer is the one exception. But it's irrelevant; why was it the only one?

Is there some kind of explanation beyond just the limitations of story-telling and game design (i.e., Volition had no idea that there'd even be a FS2, let alone that beam cannons would be prominent and standard)?

That is subject to controversy. just didn't have implemented beam cannons in the engine yet, aside from the SSL's "tiny missile with huge trail" hack. Some say that since they did use that hack for the Lucy, nothing prevented them to use it for other ships. In term of gameplay, it is obvious that FS1 capships were intended to be significantly weak in order to emphasis the importance of the player, something that was averted in FS2 with beam cannons, flak and AAA. From there, one can guess that only the Lucy was given beam cannons because of its plot importance as the big mean ubership.

Subspace node confusion
The tech room in FS1 states that only ships outfitted with the most powerful of reactors could open an intersystem subspace portal (like an Orion destroyer). By "opening the portal", does it mean that the Orion-like ship is needed to open a new intersystem node for general use (as a one-time activation), or that only a ship with an Orion's power output could actually make an intersystem jump?

And did any of that change, and if so, when? Sorry for the complexity here; I'm just really confused on this one.

Nah, "opening the portal" here just means opening the subspace rift required to engage a jump. There is nothing related to "activating" nodes in the FS universe, aside maybe from Knossos technology, which is more about stabilizing an existing unstable node than activating anything really.

As for the "did any of that change part",

For years the GTA has tried to give a fighter the ability to do intersystem jumps.  After monitoring the Beta Aquilae engagements, the GTA science colony at Sol has finally been able to solve the puzzle.  All GTA fighters are currently being equipped with intersystem subspace drives.

From FS1's Reaching the Zenith briefing.

Why did the GTA and PVN adapt/advance so little during the 14-year war?
Even in the war's final days, both sides only employed a single laser weapon, which was very weak (its power draw was so low that you could shunt 90% of your reactor output into your engines and still fire indefinitely) even against the cheap hulls of Anubis fighters (and vice-versa for the PVN). Aside from basic dumbfire rockets, only basic, very low-yield heat-seaking missiles existed on either side.

Perhaps most jarring, however, and hardest to explain away, is how neither Terran nor Vasudan ships wielded weaponry more powerful than a blob turret. No mass drivers or gauss cannons, no nuclear torpedoes, just 1-3 dozen blob turrets. While pretty decent against unshielded fighters (wielding ML-16 lasers that were like peashooters, no less), they didn't do much against capital ships. As soon as fighters gain shield technology, capital ships become liabilities in most cases, not assets.

It's odd, really; it's a 14-year interstellar war. In all of the rest of FS canon, Terrans and Vasudans alike adapt and advance rapidly; in the T-V war, things were relatively static.

Static ? Compared to what ? We don't have any info related to the tech level of both Tevs and Zods at the beginning of the war, how can you tell they didn't advance ?

As for the "so little weaponry" part, it's a mix of :V: not wanting to give many, powerful weapons to the player in the very few first missions of the game, wanting to show the advances required to fight the Shivans, and a "capships should be weak" factor, cf the "No Shivan Beam Cannons in FS1" part.

Why did the T-V war last so long in the first place?

Given that it was started by mistranslation/communication errors, that neither side committed heinous acts against the other (no orbital bombardment of cities, no massacring of civilians, no brutal crackdowns/oppression of conquered territory, at least as far as I'm aware), and that the war was often stalemated and costly, why didn't they reach some kind of peace settlement? They had adequate translation technology, better cultural understanding, and there was a distinct lack of hatred or vitriol on either side (Terrans and Vasudans also work together quite well, on an interpersonal level, almost immediately after the Great War starts).

Yeah, I get the whole Scary Dogmatic Aliens concept--but the Vasudans aren't like that, in practice or in culture. The only real danger is the threat of future conflict due almost entirely to mistrust and irrational fear that the other side's intentions are hostile. FS1 seemed to avert the notion that that was how each side felt about the other--it was not a war for survival, and victory meant ending the threat the other side posed so that you could build up a coexisting/cooperative relationship (ala the Allied occupation of Japan after WW2).

It's not like there was any meaningful territory dispute, either; there was plenty of room as it was, abundant resources all over the place, and then there's the fact that more populated colonies are more productive, efficient, and faster-growing than a bunch of tiny settlements.

It's pretty much assumed that what you call "heinous" acts did happen throughout the 14-year war. When the translation tech had reached a point where new peace talks became possible, I'm pretty sure it was already too late, as the war had been going for years already and there was already enough hatred on both sides.

[Ace]

It's pretty clear from the tech description of the Harbinger that the GTA was willing to use salted nuclear weapons (weapons designed for maximum fallout) on colonies. So things got rather ugly for the contested systems...

[QuantumDelta]

'cept that the other missiles in the game are all about as powerful as todays nukes anyway

I would suggest you imagine there to be a line of prior weapons and ships and missiles.
Since what NGTM said is true about FS2, not FS1.
In FS1, almost every new weapon and fighter/bomber you're given is billed as 'hot off the design board'.

[NGTM-1R]

'cept that the other missiles in the game are all about as powerful as todays nukes anyway

I would suggest you imagine there to be a line of prior weapons and ships and missiles.
Since what NGTM said is true about FS2, not FS1.
In FS1, almost every new weapon and fighter/bomber you're given is billed as 'hot off the design board'.

You might want to go back and read that again; I argued for the existence of weapons that we were never issued before their replacement, not that the weapons we got weren't new. (Mostly. The Athena is the exception, although the Harbinger apparently existed in some form as well, just not the one we got use.)

[headdie]

Here is my take on things, I am just going to touch on questions i think have been answered fully.

Firstly, I greatly appreciate any answers/responses.
I'll start with the main question, and then present a few others after it:

No Shivan Beam Cannons in FS1?
Even their otherwise identical FS2 counterparts had plenty of beam cannons; the Lilith in FS1 had none, but has several in FS2, and so on.

Yes, I know, the Lucifer is the one exception. But it's irrelevant; why was it the only one?

Is there some kind of explanation beyond just the limitations of story-telling and game design (i.e., Volition had no idea that there'd even be a FS2, let alone that beam cannons would be prominent and standard)?

Several dynamics involved here from the code side aspects MatthTheGeek brought up to story telling aspects and the factions/seperation aspect Mongoose mentioned.  For me a notable one is that the beams on the Lucifer were part of its signature, remember the Lucifer was the story impact equivalent of a nuke in a story set today, it was big, bad and unimaginable when first encountered and those beams able to take down a destroyer in a couple of volleys was a big part of it, even without the shields no FS1 era battlegroup stood a chance against that kind of firepower, could have done it with super powered blobs but the visual impact would have been reduced because we had seen them before but BEAMS!!!!!.

Subspace node confusion
The tech room in FS1 states that only ships outfitted with the most powerful of reactors could open an intersystem subspace portal (like an Orion destroyer). By "opening the portal", does it mean that the Orion-like ship is needed to open a new intersystem node for general use (as a one-time activation), or that only a ship with an Orion's power output could actually make an intersystem jump?

And did any of that change, and if so, when? Sorry for the complexity here; I'm just really confused on this one.

As stated the game uses some confusing terminology with the same word used for different aspects of the same overall idea.  the Key here is a Subspace portal and in a Node which is the big green wire framed sphere, ans a Subspace portal as in the Blue (and occasionally Green) rippling glowing thing you seen when a ship jumps.  The inefficiency in design seen in GTA/PVN drive tech as of the start of FS1 is such that only larger ships are able to initiate the jump between 2 solar systems, fighters just dont have the power they can only go between 2 points in a star system.  During the FS1 Shivan invasion GTA/PVN technical staff poured over sensor data from jumping Shivan craft and from that able to create a fighter sized drive that could go intersystem, problem is the damn thing is expensive to produce, justifiable in the total war setting of the first game but not so in the second game where there seems to only be a partial wartime economy in place.

Why did the GTA and PVN adapt/advance so little during the 14-year war?
Even in the war's final days, both sides only employed a single laser weapon, which was very weak (its power draw was so low that you could shunt 90% of your reactor output into your engines and still fire indefinitely) even against the cheap hulls of Anubis fighters (and vice-versa for the PVN). Aside from basic dumbfire rockets, only basic, very low-yield heat-seaking missiles existed on either side.

As stated before like in the second game you start off only authorized for the basic stuff, then as both the war and your career progresses your authorized kit evolves to suit.  Also by the time we hit FS1 the GTA is having to operate the war in a sustainable manner so only the cheep stuff will be mass produced and issued whiel the top stuff will be held back for the special case stuff which tends to fall into the domain of GTI's SOC from what we see in FS1/ST

Perhaps most jarring, however, and hardest to explain away, is how neither Terran nor Vasudan ships wielded weaponry more powerful than a blob turret. No mass drivers or gauss cannons, no nuclear torpedoes, just 1-3 dozen blob turrets. While pretty decent against unshielded fighters (wielding ML-16 lasers that were like peashooters, no less), they didn't do much against capital ships. As soon as fighters gain shield technology, capital ships become liabilities in most cases, not assets.

the fact that all FS1 missiles are rated in kilo and megaton ranges suggests to me that in story fluff all weapons are atomic or equivalent/greater.  the fact that ship hulls can absorb this kind of energy is the question you should be asking, also shockwaves in space?

It's odd, really; it's a 14-year interstellar war. In all of the rest of FS canon, Terrans and Vasudans alike adapt and advance rapidly; in the T-V war, things were relatively static.

Why did the T-V war last so long in the first place?

As stated before we have little idea what pre FS1 technology was like.  About all we know is that Orion hulls predate the T-V war but no idea what technology was on board, we know there was a scout fighter designated the Angel probably operating during the mid and later phases of the war, the Medusa's techroom suggests it might have been operating for a while before you get it "he Medusa is the standard attack bomber in the GTA", Elysiums have been operating forever, Leviathan has been in operation for a while and Arcadias probably predate the war.  there is little information about weapons or systems technology predating FS1 and virtually nothing on the Vasudans.

Given that it was started by mistranslation/communication errors, that neither side committed heinous acts against the other (no orbital bombardment of cities, no massacring of civilians, no brutal crackdowns/oppression of conquered territory, at least as far as I'm aware), and that the war was often stalemated and costly, why didn't they reach some kind of peace settlement? They had adequate translation technology, better cultural understanding, and there was a distinct lack of hatred or vitriol on either side (Terrans and Vasudans also work together quite well, on an interpersonal level, almost immediately after the Great War starts).

Yeah, I get the whole Scary Dogmatic Aliens concept--but the Vasudans aren't like that, in practice or in culture. The only real danger is the threat of future conflict due almost entirely to mistrust and irrational fear that the other side's intentions are hostile. FS1 seemed to avert the notion that that was how each side felt about the other--it was not a war for survival, and victory meant ending the threat the other side posed so that you could build up a coexisting/cooperative relationship (ala the Allied occupation of Japan after WW2).

It's not like there was any meaningful territory dispute, either; there was plenty of room as it was, abundant resources all over the place, and then there's the fact that more populated colonies are more productive, efficient, and faster-growing than a bunch of tiny settlements.

Have you ever looked up on how a feuds or gang wars start.  It is often something trivial which is then over reacted to.  The reaction to that is equally out of proportion and before you know it bullets are flying, fire with a burning hatred to the other side that wont go away just because someone says hey this is ott guys cool down, because in the mind of the person pulling the trigger they are fully justified in what they do.  Its psychology like this which prevents things like the Israel/Palestine situation from being resolved, the important people either hate the otherside too much or need to be percieced to hate the other side so much that meaningful negotiation cant happen.

Also take into the fact that we have an alien psychology here which while paralleled to humans in many ways has significant differences, most important to this case is the importance of ritual, tradition and intolerance of mistakes in this regard which means that what seems like a small matter to us is a serious slight to the Vasudans.

As for territory, both the GTA and PVN were rapidly expanding colonial powers and the other represented significant competition, why have competition when you can have it all to yourself?

edit

accurecy in my weapons comment

[Alex Heartnet]

As far as the advancements deal, keep in mind that the ML-16 and associated starting weapons in FS1 are only weak relative to the advancements made during FS1/FS2.  We're still talking about ridiculously powerful weapons-the GTM Fury, the starter dumbfire, is equivalent to 3 Kt TNT, which is about .2 the energy yield of the Little Boy nuclear bomb.  That means that every 5 Furies you fire (and you can fire quite a few), is equivalent to a mini-nuke.  Similarly, using the Fury as a reference, each Terran Turret is equivalent to .25 Little Boys, and a Terran Huge Turret is one Little Boy.  We don't know what was present before the start of FS1, so it may very well be that there was a steady level of technological advancement up to that point. 

Also note that the Tempest, the FS2 starter dumbfire, has 10 points more damage than the Fury.  So an advance of around 1 kt damage in 20 years for weapons with identical roles.

The Tempest is actually a major advance over the Fury though in two critical aspects.  First of all, the Tempest has a far easier time punching through shields then the Fury did.  It can take dozens of Furys to punch through a fighter's shielding on its own.  Tempests, however, can quickly take down a fighter's shields, somehow despite shield damage values that might suggest otherwise.
Also, the Tempest is smaller and more compact - you can carry more of them on any given fighter then you could Furys.

The fact that it does 33% more damage against ship hull plating and 50% more subsystem damage should also be considered a substantial improvement, and tells a different story then your '10 more points of damage'.

Don't just look at raw damage values.  Actually test it out ingame.

[BengalTiger]

Subspace node confusion

Nodes are said to spontaneously create, last a certain time (up to thousands of years IIRC) and collapse, this may be part of the reason.

Why did the GTA and PVN adapt/advance so little during the 14-year war?

Well, there's a lot of progress over the T-V war- most obsolete tech is just either not found in game at all, or there's little reference to it in descriptions.

Here are a few examples of earlier tech in FS:

From the Valk's tech description:

Using the old GTF Angel Scout Fighter as a template, the GTA created the Valkyrie Interceptor Fighter. It has two additional engines, as well as an additional set of primary hardpoints.

Scout fighters are presumably among the faster ships available, but with 2 engines less the Angel was probably slower than a GTF Apollo.

This leads to further speculation- how did regular fighters perform in the times the Angel was a brand new scout fighter?
Comparable to the GTF Hercules, minus the armor and large arsenal?
Perhaps they didn't have burners at all and just 2 guns- like the old GVF Anubis?

Then there's the Leviathan.

From description:

Changes to the Fenris led to the GTC Leviathan line of cruisers, produced as mobile defense battleships. Their speed and maneuverability were greatly reduced in tradeoff for more powerful weapons and a stronger hull.

Mobile defense battleships. These ships were originally designed to seriously duke it out with other capital ships, and were originally better armed than the Fenris.
In FS, both cruisers have the same weapons, which suggests the Fenris was upgunned during the T-V war.

The Synaptic is also a good example of obsolete weaponry used in an improvised role, its tech description strongly suggests it was originally designed to be fired at a single large target:

... when distance to target is less than 100 m or when time to impact is less than 2 sec., bomblets direct missile to the most vulnerable part of the ship of those parts of the ship facing the missile - bomblets then separate from missile propulsion unit and form a sphere - inertia continues to carry bomblets in the direction of the target...

...the spherical shape of the formation of the bomblets helps to ensure a fairly even level of damage across a sensitive area on the target - the spherical shape also ensures that the target will not be able to effectively maneuver away from the blast, thus "pinning" the target to a specific area in space - can also act as dumbfire - medium payload per bomblet (15 Kt) - very small payload for missile (2 Kt).

Then pilots found out it's useful in breaking fighter formations.

Nicknamed the "Earthshaker" by the bomber pilots who tested this, it is a bombers best defense against fighters. The Synaptic Bomb can do a lot of damage to a lot of ships at one time.

I'd also expect pre FS 1 bombers to... well...:

The Medusa is the standard attack bomber in the GTA. Its strong shielding and large secondary capacity make it the favored attack craft against cruiser class targets. As the first bomber to carry the Tsunami bomb, the Medusa is considered the staple of any bomber pilot's career.

...Suck.

I'd imagine older bombers using cluster bombs (Synaptic) and anti-subsystem weapons (Stiletto or earlier).
Good luck shooting down a Fenris with such weapons, or a Leviathan, with its stronger weapons.

I also have the impression that most of the T-V war consisted of very slow and static shootouts, where Orions with Terran Huge Turrets had a significant range advantage over other blobs, and were among the greatest and most destructive ships in known space.

Then when afterburners are introduced, the balance of power shifts significantly- heavy bombers are able to make faster attack runs than pre-afterburner age fighters (an Amun is faster than an Anubis), so bigger ships are stuck with not enough firepower. Shields also contribute to this in a very significant way.
Once the Tsunami enters service, capital ships are also stuck with having not enough armor.

EDIT: I've also found the GTW Railgun, which has more range but much less firepower than an ML-16. This could be a hint that lasers/plasma/blobs were stronger than railguns and replaced them. Perhaps a turret railgun would have more range than a THT, but became obsolete somewhere during the T-V war due to lack of firepower... Who knows...

[FireSpawn]

In regards to the T-V war

It says in the techroom that the zods had a lot of pride in their overly complicated and confusing language, so I'd assume that either the Terran diplomats crapped all over it by accident, insulted their species and/or emperor in a spectacularly vulgar way, or the vassudans saw the Terran language as something terrible that had to be destroyed.

It's really up to personal interpretation.

[Alex Heartnet]

I thought I read somewhere in the techroom that the war was started over a translator issue?

[NGTM-1R]

I thought I read somewhere in the techroom that the war was started over a translator issue?

Partially, maybe. The techroom mentions that our failing a translation may have contributed but it doesn't really make it exclusive cause.

[yuezhi]

Subspace node confusion
The tech room in FS1 states that only ships outfitted with the most powerful of reactors could open an intersystem subspace portal (like an Orion destroyer). By "opening the portal", does it mean that the Orion-like ship is needed to open a new intersystem node for general use (as a one-time activation), or that only a ship with an Orion's power output could actually make an intersystem jump?

And did any of that change, and if so, when? Sorry for the complexity here; I'm just really confused on this one.

I don't know about the orion or typhon but i think it was stated somewhere that the lucifer has the ability to stabilize nodes temporarily, all at the cost of plot holes.

Why did the GTA and PVN adapt/advance so little during the 14-year war?
Even in the war's final days, both sides only employed a single laser weapon, which was very weak (its power draw was so low that you could shunt 90% of your reactor output into your engines and still fire indefinitely) even against the cheap hulls of Anubis fighters (and vice-versa for the PVN). Aside from basic dumbfire rockets, only basic, very low-yield heat-seaking missiles existed on either side.

Perhaps most jarring, however, and hardest to explain away, is how neither Terran nor Vasudan ships wielded weaponry more powerful than a blob turret. No mass drivers or gauss cannons, no nuclear torpedoes, just 1-3 dozen blob turrets. While pretty decent against unshielded fighters (wielding ML-16 lasers that were like peashooters, no less), they didn't do much against capital ships. As soon as fighters gain shield technology, capital ships become liabilities in most cases, not assets.

It's odd, really; it's a 14-year interstellar war. In all of the rest of FS canon, Terrans and Vasudans alike adapt and advance rapidly; in the T-V war, things were relatively static.

those weapons had some value before shield technology was reverse engineered. they may have considered some kind of shielding but it only took less than a week to capture and put reverse-engineered technology on their fighters.
now if the lucy had been captured as well...

there's also possibilities that the weapons industry skimped on some stuff while they were designing guns. If the the MX-50 was confirmed to be the result of bureaucratic shortcomings then it wouldn't be surprising. profiteering happens all the time, ex. all militaries probably rely on cheaply manufactured parts from china and there's a lot of counterfeits.

Why did the T-V war last so long in the first place?

Given that it was started by mistranslation/communication errors, that neither side committed heinous acts against the other (no orbital bombardment of cities, no massacring of civilians, no brutal crackdowns/oppression of conquered territory, at least as far as I'm aware), and that the war was often stalemated and costly, why didn't they reach some kind of peace settlement? They had adequate translation technology, better cultural understanding, and there was a distinct lack of hatred or vitriol on either side (Terrans and Vasudans also work together quite well, on an interpersonal level, almost immediately after the Great War starts).

Yeah, I get the whole Scary Dogmatic Aliens concept--but the Vasudans aren't like that, in practice or in culture. The only real danger is the threat of future conflict due almost entirely to mistrust and irrational fear that the other side's intentions are hostile. FS1 seemed to avert the notion that that was how each side felt about the other--it was not a war for survival, and victory meant ending the threat the other side posed so that you could build up a coexisting/cooperative relationship (ala the Allied occupation of Japan after WW2).

It's not like there was any meaningful territory dispute, either; there was plenty of room as it was, abundant resources all over the place, and then there's the fact that more populated colonies are more productive, efficient, and faster-growing than a bunch of tiny settlements.

there's not of background to this made by , but in my interpretation two words still come to mind: militaristic expansion. its a basic sci-fi theme especially in a setting more than 300 years from reality.
aside from the cultural reasons, there's also the need for both races to find more worlds suitable to life. terrans may have become overpopulated; perhaps the only good thing about that is they've got unlimited manpower since apparently there have been no orbital bombardments. Vasudans are in the same situation except they want to find green worlds despite their background.

also, 14 years is not a lot compared to some **** that have already happened and are still happening. Vietnam war: 20 years. Sudanese civil war: 47 years and officialy still going. counter-terror war on afghanistan: ending soon?

[BengalTiger]

there's also possibilities that the weapons industry skimped on some stuff while they were designing guns. If the the MX-50 was confirmed to be the result of bureaucratic shortcomings then it wouldn't be surprising. profiteering happens all the time, ex. all militaries probably rely on cheaply manufactured parts from china and there's a lot of counterfeits.

GTA could have ordered their stuff cheap, even before the industry figured out they could make a few $$$ more per missile- they were fighting a seemingly endless war.

As for the MX-50, if it was introduced back in the day when the unshielded Anubis was among the greatest threats to a GTA fighter, it wasn't really a waste.

The tech descriptions say the Interceptor is the standard missile during FS 1, so the MX is either a cheap filler to make sure everyone gets some sort of guided missile, or it's outdated.

[Alex Heartnet]

-snip-
As for the MX-50, if it was introduced back in the day when the unshielded Anubis was among the greatest threats to a GTA fighter, it wasn't really a waste.

The tech descriptions say the Interceptor is the standard missile during FS 1, so the MX is either a cheap filler to make sure everyone gets some sort of guided missile, or it's outdated.[/color]

From the command briefing for the mission "The Aftermath".

"Our communications with Vasudan technicians have yielded the Interceptor missile.  By combining the Vasudan-designed engine with a Terran warhead, we were able to produce the most powerful anti-fighter weapon yet.  It's an aspect-seeking missile, and requires a few seconds to lock onto the enemy's engine signature, but its speed and accuracy make it lethal.  Use it well."

[BengalTiger]

http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Interceptor

All-aspect seeking - laser tracking senses energy reflected off a target from the primary weapon systems of the target, increasing single-pass kill probability - medium payload (18.5 Kt) - missile is designed to pierce reinforced hull, thus securing itself to the target, prior to detonating (15 ms delay).

This is the standard issue fighter-killer in the GTA. Designed to take out fighters with minimum hassle, a simple lock is all that is needed to grab the enemies attention. Short lock time, good speed, and decent payload makes this the best missile to use against all but the strongest ships. It's effectiveness against large targets, however, is less than a typical laser run, making this primarily a ship to ship missile.

Looks like they got the missile from being something new and experimental to being the standard missile pretty quick. There's about 3 weeks from the T-V cease fire to "The Aftermath".

[MatthTheGeek]

Since it was the only missile they got that could reliably punch through shields, I don't see how it is in any way surprising. The exact same thing happened to the Avenger.

[Alex Heartnet]

Fighter technology really advanced quite rapidly during the Great War.  Check the dates on the command briefings.

The final, desperate assault on the Lucifer took place not even 3 months after the Shivans started showing up with their shielded fighters.