[wardog300k]

Maybe it would be possible to place sentries in  the actual subspace tunnels.

That is a good idea,few Alastors would be great way of keeping enemies out.However the question is,can they stay in Subspace?

[Phantom Hoover]

"oh no guys, they've put an alastor in the tunnel"

"what are we going to do!"

"idk maybe fly around it using all the unbounded space on every side"

[FrikgFeek]

So don't put in 1, put in like 500. Or make some kind of system that turns them off until a fighter flies nearby, I'm sure it can't be too difficult. And even if you force enemy fighters to take a detour, you'll still know they're coming if you have some kind of remote sensor feed(we know from FS1 that it's possible to communicate with fighters inside subspace so it shouldn't be too difficult to set it up.

[Phantom Hoover]

500 sentry guns is an absolutely massive investment for something which won't even tickle warships and will mostly just inconvenience fighters.

[FrikgFeek]

It's a floating box with a subach on it. How expensive can it be anyway? I'm sure they had more than a thousand Amazon Drones since pretty much every pilot in the GTA got to blow up around 10 of them during basic training. And they'll be much more effective in subspace since shields don't work there, they could rip through fighters that get in range.

[Phantom Hoover]

Well the cost of deploying an Alastor's clearly hefty enough that you never encounter more than a dozen of them at any one time in canon.

[AdmiralRalwood]

And then there's also the fact that the GTVA moved to simulators for pilot training, so maybe those Amazon Drones are more expensive than you might think.

[FrikgFeek]

Eh, are we really deducing Alastor costs a lot just because the retail engine was too weak to render a ton of them simultaneously? By that logic a Belial(the Shivan sentry) is more expensive than a Sathanas because we never see more than 15ish of them but we see 80 Saths in Capella.

[wardog300k]

I don't really think that Shivans would care to go round,they would probably attack,and if they don't send anything heavier than Basilisk or Astaroth,Alastors would be efficient.I mean,as FrikgFeek said it is a box with two cannons,they could put like 20,that should provide great anti-fighter cover,and they could probably blow up a Cain as well.Or GTVA could make some special box that's supposed to hang around in subspace.

EDIT:I just tested 6 Gungnirs vs 6 Serpents and 1 Raguel,Gungnirs won with all of them surviving at round 80% hull integrity.If we take that single Gungnir is as strong as three Alastors,20 Alastors would prove as excellent defense.

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[NGTM-1R]

Maybe it would be possible to place sentries in  the actual subspace tunnels. Obviously you can't put mjolnirs in there as capships exploding would collapse the node(or maybe you could configure them to only cripple enemy warships without destroying them), but the subach-armed sentries would be pretty good at picking off recon wings going through the node.

We have no evidence it's possible to jump into a tunnel from the opposite end. Part of what makes Good Luck work is that you saw the Lucifer jump, you know what it did exactly, so you can follow it into the tunnel. There's a "layering" or something going on here where ships normally end up in different tunnels, or you wouldn't need the Ancients tech to follow.

[Trivial Psychic]

Maybe it would be possible to place sentries in  the actual subspace tunnels. Obviously you can't put mjolnirs in there as capships exploding would collapse the node(or maybe you could configure them to only cripple enemy warships without destroying them), but the subach-armed sentries would be pretty good at picking off recon wings going through the node.

Screw the Subachs; arm them with Maxims!  That way you can pick off enemy fighters FAR outside the range of most primaries and secondaries, and shred through their hulls with ease.  Enough of 'em and you'd also be able to knock out cruisers rapidly.  Granted, that would go for engagements in normal space as well.

Important fact, simply taking out a ship in a subspace corridor wouldn't collapse a node... despite "Homesick".  It took a Lucifer's five reactors going up at the same time to do it, and its a fair bet that most ships, with the possible exception of a Sathanas, would have the death-yield enough to take down a node.  If it was that easy, then they wouldn't have needed to load down the Bastion and Nereid with Meson bombs to get the same result.

[niffiwan]

If it was that easy, then they wouldn't have needed to load down the Bastion and Nereid with Meson bombs to get the same result.

That could be deliberate overkill, the GTVA didn't have time for a 2nd attempt at collapsing the nodes if the 1st attempt failed.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, that was probably a matter of covering their bases, but I also agree that there's no evidence stating that a normal destroyer explosion within subspace would torpedo a node.  Hell, the only canonical times we've seen a successful node collapse is when a ship is actively entering/exiting a node, so a large explosion in the middle of the tunnel may not do anything at all.

I also agree with NGTM-1R that the node corridors most likely don't act like a traditional tunnel, and thus there's no way to actively park something in there so that every other ship entering the node would encounter it.

[FrikgFeek]

I'm obviously not going to take Homesick on anything subspace related seriously, what with the ~6km distance between all nodes making the journey across known space take 20ish minutes and a small fighter group randomly finding a node by flying around for 20 seconds.

Though in FS2 they collapse nodes with Orions blowing up. Or maybe the meson bombs are just that damn powerful and Allied Command were 100% sure that a meson would be enough to bang the notes and not 100% sure an Orion would.

[Mars]

IIRC they packed the Bastion with ~ 8 of those bombs.

[wardog300k]

I think its more than 8...

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[Mars]

  Apparently I never looked too closely. My point is, the GTVA clearly felt that an exploding Orion wouldn't be nearly enough.

[wardog300k]

Well if they decided to use about 30 or so  Meson bombs,than they knew a single exploding Orion won't be anywhere near the amount of force necessary to collapse the node.

Another thing:if they can afford detonate destroyers with over 60 experimental bombs,they must be either cheap or the GTVA is really rich.

[FrikgFeek]

Or the situation escalated past the Godzilla Threshold and the military was given a blank check to stop the shivans in any way possible.

[wardog300k]

Another thing that was bothering me is why have they sealed Capella?Sathanas fleet was first saw in binary system,until they crossed two systems,GTVA could've tried to seal off Gamma Draconis,they would lose one destroyer and lock down useless system,and everyone would be happy.