[Petrarch of the VBB]

Is there any point in cruisers in FS1? I mean, they can't carry fighters, they can't do any significant damage to destroyers, they're crap at taking down fighters, they're slow and unwieldy, they can be taken down in no time by a wing of fighters...  I could go on. So why are they there? I can only think they were put in as a plug, for the gap betwixt fighter and capship, but they fill no role.

Could someone enlighten me?

[quadinhonic_II]

"they can't do any significant damage to destroyers"

A GROUP of cruisers CAN do damage to a destroyer.

"they're crap at taking down fighters"

With the weapons cruisers carry, they can do significant damage to fighters.

"they're slow and unwieldy"

Some are slow (Leviathon) but some have a fair speed (Fenris Aeolus, Rakshasa)

"they can be taken down in no time by a wing of fighters"
 
"With the weapons cruisers carry, they can do significant damage to fighters."


Cruisers are mainly used for escort and guard duty [at least for Terrans and Vasudans] (Fenris and Levi both only have one anti-cap and its a Green beam! Aeolus has flak and AAA and I think only one anti-cap also.) Now for the Shivans, well they use them for everything. Escort, guard duty, attack, defense.

If you where in a convoy would you rather have two Fenris\Aeolus\Mentu as your escort or two or three fighter wings as escort. Remember those fighters can get destroyed fast by hostile fighters\cruisers. Crusiers have armor and the weapons to protect themselves and others. Think of crusiers as support ships. They can easily pick off damaged fighters while you move to safty (you most likly being damaged yourself)

Now I may be wrong on some points but crusiers definely have a place in a fleet.

[TheCelestialOne]

Originally posted by quadinhonic_II
Cruisers are mainly used for escort and guard duty [at least for Terrans and Vasudans] (Fenris and Levi both only have one anti-cap and its a Green beam! Aeolus has flak and AAA and I think only one anti-cap also.) Now for the Shivans, well they use them for everything. Escort, guard duty, attack, defense.

If you where in a convoy would you rather have two Fenris\Aeolus\Mentu as your escort or two or three fighter wings as escort. Remember those fighters can get destroyed fast by hostile fighters\cruisers. Crusiers have armor and the weapons to protect themselves and others. Think of crusiers as support ships. They can easily pick off damaged fighters while you move to safty (you most likly being damaged yourself)

Now I may be wrong on some points but crusiers definely have a place in a fleet.

He was talking about FS1. No beams in FS1.

[quadinhonic_II]

yes I know. I was giving references from FS2

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
Is there any point in cruisers in FS1? I mean, they can't carry fighters, they can't do any significant damage to destroyers, they're crap at taking down fighters, they're slow and unwieldy, they can be taken down in no time by a wing of fighters...  I could go on. So why are they there? I can only think they were put in as a plug, for the gap betwixt fighter and capship, but they fill no role.

Could someone enlighten me?

They are very effective agianst fighters in the beginning, IIRC - before shields were available.  I think that's partly why beams penetrate shields - lest the same effect happen in FS2.

[Liberator]

Cruisers are there to give the player a rush from blowing up a big ship.

Quite frankly in FS1 all the caps short of the Lucifer sucked.  I remember in the early days with FRED1 would just throw together a mission with a couple of destroyers trying to kill each other.  It would take hours.  Cruisers packed almost as much wallop as destroyers in FS1.  A couple of cruisers could significantly damage a destroyer. But they are primarily to boost the players kill score.

[Black Wolf]

Almost all capships in FS1 were prety much useless, but they had to go in there. I think made a fairly significant slip up with FS1 capship weapons, as they were, to put it bluntly, crap. Compare SW capships to FS1 capships. Both had similar weapons (but no ion or tractor beams in FS), but the SW ships had dozens of turrets, (I think the ISD had over 200) while the compareably sized FS1 ships had a pathetically small number (a mere 16 on the Orion). It's better balanced with flak and beams in FS2 though.

[Hippo]

The fenris and leviathon were to supplement the aten, because the aten came before the typhoon, so there could be a deul between a fenris and aten, and an orion jumps in while the fenris is holding off the aten... no more aten...

[Mad Bomber]

In FS1 there was no time to refit the ships once shields were added to fighters. They had to make do with their existing weaponry. So the cruisers were basically little more than cannon fodder, and the destroyers were relegated to shuttling fighters around.

The reason I say there was no time, is because the entire campaign took place within the scope of maybe 2 or 3 months total.

[Hippo]

They would have plenty of time to refit with shields during reconstruction...

[karajorma]

Even if the GTA would have had time to make retrofits to their ships it wouldn`t have made much of a difference. Beams hadn`t been researched so they had nothing better to put on them anyway.

[Kitsune]

For a little more fun in FS1 go into the weapons table and increase the speed, damage and mass of all the turret weaponry.

For more fun, decrease the fire wait by half for them too.

Add 250speed, no damage and no change to mass on weak turrets.  

Add 175speed, 40 damage, and a 50% increase in mass to standard turrets.

Add 125 speed, double damage, and double mass to huge/megafunk turrets.

Granted, it won't give you the lightshow we get when we run the opening scene in FS2 (where the turrets all seem to fire in 3-shot bursts rather rapidly).  But it becomes a hell of a ***** to play FS1 when you don't have any shields.

Anyone recall the mission with 3 or 4 vasudan freighters you have to take out early on?  Ouch.


Doing this though makes capships a lot more interesting to play around with.

[quadinhonic_II]

One combination I played around with was changing the Leviathon's and Fenris's turrets to;

turret 1
 Terran Turret
turret 2
 Terran huge turret
turret 3
 Terran Turret
turret 4
 Terran huge turret

and so on.

This combination worked quite well for my old, old, not very good Fs1 campaign.

[phreak]

Cruisers in FS1 would have been better off as missile platforms

[Hippo]

2 fenri or levi. will outgun an orion, and nly use a fraction of the crew, ant they are faster and more meneuverable...

[Galemp]

Cruisers were, in FS1, a sort of all-purpose platform. Remember the Orff jumped in to stand guard over the cargo depot? Wouldn't you rather be in a cruiser in some semblance of comfort instead of patrolling the area for hours in a fighter?

[Stealth]

Try taking on a Lilith in a fighter on at least 'Medium' difficulty...

That's what the 'difficulty' is for... any cruiser is easy on 'very easy'

[quadinhonic_II]

Originally posted by Stealth
any cruiser is easy on 'very easy'

Or AI is on captian or lower...or higher. I found that the AI truly makes a difference.

[Killfrenzy]

Level of difficulty controls AI levels and weapon damage rates don't they?

[vyper]

The crusiers in FS1 were quite lethal to fighers in the beginning, and somewhat later too.
Head to head, cruisers weren't meant to cause massive damage to each other! Cruisers were supposed to be part of a larger task group - such as the Orff as part of Operation Thresher (see fs1 mission 1).  Like Hippo said, cruisers have immense manueverability compared to a Destroyer and in pairs could be deadly to an orion.

Even by the time of fs2, two cruisers can stand up to each other's beam fire pretty well, except perhaps the Leviathan (lets pretend the Fenris doesn't exist ) but she's a great war relic.