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Originally posted by Penguin
Meson: If you're testing experimental weaponry, it would probably help not to test it on the enemy. If it works all well and good. But as you're pointing out, if it doesn't work then you've just told the enemy we've got a big gun that doesn't work. Also for an experiment they sure allowed those capships to get close to the Midway, and in a situation where the Midway's all we got, that's intolerable.

Wha? 'Testing it' on the enemy involved a situation where they felt the plasma gun was needed...

From the 'Painting the Target' Briefing
The size of the battle group which has gathered around the Kilrah jump point necessitates that the Midway employ its new weapon.

Secondly, the capships weren't allowed to get close to the Midway. Hrissith 5 : Plasma Gun Defense, the previous mission, was about keeping the bugs away... The Midway needed to get to the Kilrah system, so it needed to go through the jump point. The Nephilim were at the jump point. The Midway, therefore, needed to go near the Nephilim. You don't have a huge choice. The Midway stayed rather far away, actually, for a ship using it's offensive weapons. It would have plenty of time to scramble bombers and fighters if something went wrong. I will also point out that the Midway was not all Confed had. They were just the closest. It would have been more difficult if the Midway was lost, it wouldn't be the end by a long shot.

Wedge009: The bugs may have had a solid concentration of capships but by this time the player has ceased to fear overwhelming odds. Those capships really aren't hard to get rid of and its got nothing to do with computer capacity or AI limitations. They're designed poorly. The engines are big bull's eyes and seeing as how we have to kill engines to kill capships - well it just means the player has to take advantage of that. Plus the bug turrets aren't particularly fearsome, meaning that the bridge is vulnerable.

To be honest if that fleet had been composed of 5 Kilrathi corvettes I'd be running scared :eek: :( [/B]

The fact that there was a Triton, and Orca, a Leviathon and a Hydra would have made it, as far as I can recalll, the most difficult bombing in the game...
 
Originally posted by TC
Wha? 'Testing it' on the enemy involved a situation where they felt the plasma gun was needed...

The Midway, therefore, needed to go near the Nephilim...The Midway stayed rather far away, actually, for a ship using it's offensive weapons. It would have plenty of time to scramble bombers and fighters if something went wrong. I will also point out that the Midway was not all Confed had. They were just the closest. It would have been more difficult if the Midway was lost, it wouldn't be the end by a long shot.

The fact that there was a Triton, and Orca, a Leviathon and a Hydra would have made it, as far as I can recalll, the most difficult bombing in the game...

First Paragraph: Fair enough.

Second Paragraph: The Midway got pretty close to those bug capships. Wait a little bit and they'll get close enough to strafe the Midway with their turrets. Also the Midway could've fired capship missiles. We know she has them, there was that mission where dummy missiles were fired as a distraction. It couldn't be all that difficult to rig up real warheads, in view of everything Midway's engineers achieved during the game. Also that mission with the decoy capship missiles and the mission where the dreadnought fires capship missiles at the Midway prove that capship missiles have much greater range than the Fleet Plasma. In other words Midway got closer then she needed to.

You've pointed out the bugs had a formidable force. Compared to other missions you're right, yet IIRC Casey was the only bomber pilot up. If the Fleet Plasma failed, and there's a good chance seeing as how Casey had to place the disk on the Triton in a Devastator, there wouldn't have been a lot of time to scramble fighters. If we disregard computer limitations the Leviathan would also have been scrambling fighters, and we would've seen the Hydra and the Orca using their anti-capship weapons. The whole situation would have been a lot less riskier if they'd relied on a conventional space strike to sweep away the bug capships. Relying on the untested Fleet Plasma before exhausting other options, meant taking a bigger risk than was necessary.

Also the losing cut scenes make it clear that if the Midway is lost, then so is Earth.

Third Paragraph: IMHO Once the fighters have been cleared away, its no more difficult than any other anti-capship mission.
 
Originally posted by Penguin
Also the Midway could've fired capship missiles. We know she has them, there was that mission where dummy missiles were fired as a distraction. It couldn't be all that difficult to rig up real warheads, in view of everything Midway's engineers achieved during the game.
Well, we don't know enough to be certain of that. On the contrary, the fact that the Midway never used capship missiles seems to indicate the exact opposite. So, there is no reason to assume the Midway could have eliminated the fleet from such a long range.

You've pointed out the bugs had a formidable force. Compared to other missions you're right, yet IIRC Casey was the only bomber pilot up. If the Fleet Plasma failed, and there's a good chance seeing as how Casey had to place the disk on the Triton in a Devastator, there wouldn't have been a lot of time to scramble fighters.
I disagree. For once, the Midway's launchers had been working just fine, and there were probably Wasps and Devastators lined up for launch.
Note, by the way, that getting in at such a close range allowed the Midway to also use the Wasps if the other fighters proved insufficient. From CS missile range, Wasps would have been useless.

If we disregard computer limitations the Leviathan would also have been scrambling fighters, and we would've seen the Hydra and the Orca using their anti-capship weapons. The whole situation would have been a lot less riskier if they'd relied on a conventional space strike to sweep away the bug capships. Relying on the untested Fleet Plasma before exhausting other options, meant taking a bigger risk than was necessary.
In this case, not using the Fleet Plasma was a much bigger risk than using it. The Midway simply didn't have the time for a more conventional battle at the jump point - they needed to punch through and destroy the wormhole gate before it went fully online.

Third Paragraph: IMHO Once the fighters have been cleared away, its no more difficult than any other anti-capship mission.
Irrelevant, because it's an AI limitation - such limitations have to be ignored as far as the plot goes. Otherwise, you'd have to come to the conclusion that a single CVE with a full compliment of Caseys could have done the job quicker than the Midway had.
 
Originally posted by TC

The Midway stayed rather far away, actually, for a ship using it's offensive weapons. It would have plenty of time to scramble bombers and fighters if something went wrong.

I'm not so sure about that. While we don't know what the range on the plasma cannon is (so the range may be due to the plasma weapon itself), the Midway does get close enough that the explosion from the detonation washes over the Midway herself, and causes her shields to flare briefly.
That seems awfully close.
 
Originally posted by junior


I'm not so sure about that. While we don't know what the range on the plasma cannon is (so the range may be due to the plasma weapon itself), the Midway does get close enough that the explosion from the detonation washes over the Midway herself, and causes her shields to flare briefly.
That seems awfully close.

It's just a really big explosion :)
 
While we're talking about people being back and stuff, I just got back from Air Force Basic Training so I'll be on here a lot more often, and uh, probably no one cares, and uh, yeah... I'm back.
 
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