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Topic: Precursor Battleship wisdom by Valaggar Redux (Read 18873 times)
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Shiver
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furthermore,
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C. Bob
Zebranky food
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Posts: 43
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You *do* realize that this was four years ago, and half of the people who posted on it then probably aren't around anymore, right?
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Valaggar
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You *do* realize that this was four years ago, and half of the people who posted on it then probably aren't around anymore, right?
Then the new ones reply. Makes no point to have two threads on the same subject.
furthermore,
Furthermore what?
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Death 999
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Enlightened
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Gender: 
Posts: 3874
We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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You know what, I figured it out. The shields aren't to protect the Sa-Matra from the fleet, they're to protect the fleet from the Sa-Matra!
The Sa-Matra does not only have weapons of tremendous power, it also has weapons of great subtlety. Unless encased in this shell, whoever is at the helm could invisibly turn the tide of the battle.
Or at least, the Kohr-Ah think so. So into the shield it goes, and the shield generators go on the outside.
How does that sound?
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Defender
Enlightened
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Posts: 817
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Holy resurrected ancient "it's all been said" threads Batman...
Wow, What the hell was I thinking. And Look how crappy I wrote. What the hell! I tried to come across with a worth while point but I seemed to have been distracted by my own thought process...OUHH LOOK...SHINY THINGS.
....UMM...What was the point again?
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« Last Edit: August 23, 2007, 05:59:37 am by DEFIANT »
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Dakkus
Zebranky food
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Posts: 17
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Samatra and the Preccie vessel haven't necessarily originally been developed as battle platforms. The game hints every now and then that the shaggy ones used the ships for space mining. Maybe Sa-matra was there for conveniently exploding moons or asteroids of certain size? If the project is very large, then use the Preccie bomb instead - with the cost of a much rougher result. The Flagship is probably just some kind of crew transportation vessel or similar. Maybe it's used for harvesting what Sa-Matra and Preccie bombs have produced? Remember that most of its weapons come from the Mael Num descendants. Why would the Preccies have built such a puny weapon for their ship if it was built for fighting?
Sa-Matra is also not necessarily developed by the Preccies, but it might be a relic from some race that lived hundreds of thousands of years before the Preccies and were a lot larger than the tiny shaggety-shag-shags.
And don't forget Mark II, dudes! That's Preccie too, isn't it?
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Valaggar Redux
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Actually the Sa-Matra was a Precursor Battleship. From the Melnorme:
The civil war between the Green Ur-Quan, the followers of Kzer-Za
and their opponents, the death-dealing Kohr-Ah, lasted for decades.
It is likely that they would have annihilated each other
were it not for a chance discovery by a Kzer-Za -- a Precursor Battleship!
The vessel was huge, many times the size of the Ur-Quan's vessels.
The Precursor ship sliced through the Kohr-Ah forces in days -- the Kohr-Ah were defeated.
However in their victory, the Kzer-Za were humble
they realized that there was a chance that they were wrong, and the Kohr-Ah were right.
Instead of destroying the Kohr-Ah, the Kzer-Za let them go
directing them to make their way through the stars, traveling against the spin of the galaxy.
The Kzer-Za would travel in the opposite direction
and when the two Ur-Quan forces met, they would fight again in a ritual combat
with the Precursor Battleship given to the winner.
The Flagship is a Precursor tug. The Mark II is another Precursor Battleship. From the 1998 IRC chat with TFB:
<_Stilgar> Fwiffo- what WAS the Mark II?
<Fwiffo> The Mark II was a precursor cruiser as opposed to a precursor tug which is what you guys flew.
Possible reasons for which the Sa-Matra didn't use its primary weapons (annihilation toroids and all that):
1. It is part of the ritual of the Doctrinal Conflict (sort of like wrapping a present) to temporarily deactivate the Sa-Matra (the Great Trophy).
2. Its primary weapons need some time to charge (the Flagship took it by surprise). Though you can stay in the Delta Crateris system for how long you wish, and the Talking Pet only tells you "not to leave the star system", not "hurry, before the Sa-Matra fires!". Kinda unlikely, this explanation is.
3. Firing the Sa-Matra requires a lot of energy. Completely unlikely, as, in the final moments of the Battle of the Sa-Matra, the Ur-Quan could have fired it anyway, as it's better to lose some energy than to lose the Sa-Matra. Or maybe the Sa-Matra can't shoot something so close to it? Maybe the Ur-Quan thought, at first, "Our ships can finish this human renegade easily, let's save some enegy!", and then the Flagship got too close for the Sa-Matra to be able to hit it anyway?
No, really, all these apparent inconsistencies/sacrifices for the sake of gameplay can be easily explained.
Why aren't the shield generators on the outside? Possible reasons:
1. Shield generators must be "encrusted" in the shield, which actually runs through the asteroid shell as well (the proposal of creativename, but slightly modified) - not likely. They could've kept the generators encased within the asteroid shell anyway.
2. It is demeaning for the Ur-Quan to use any more force than required to finish one's job (proposed by me) - kinda far-fetched, though it works. After all, the Ur-Quan didn't use the Sa-Matra during the Ur-Quan Slave War until after they knew they had no other way to win in time for the Kohr-Ah's arrival.
3. The generators are there because the Kohr-Ah believe that the Sa-Matra also has weapons of great subtlety, with which it could turn the tide of battle; therefore, the shield actually protects the fleet from the Sa-Matra, not the other way around (proposed by Death 999) - far-fetched again, though it also works. However, it doesn't explain why, after winning the Doctrinal Conflict, the Kohr-Ah don't take the Sa-Matra with them (unlike explanation 2., which does explain this).
4. The generators are there because we wouldn't have been able to win the game otherwise. Heh heh. Everybody knows that this is the correct out-of-universe explanation.
And why the Precursors had three different designs has also been masterfully explained by Lukipela. The Mark II and the Sa-Matra are from different time periods. I might add that the Flagship was just a tug, a maintenance ship (with rudimentary, functional-but-ugly aesthetics); I guess that every species has a warship design and at least one support ship design (as well as civilian ship designs). After all, the Earthlings do have support ships. Hayes:
At the start of the war, here on Earth we were working like crazy
churning out hundreds of heavy Cruisers and smaller support vehicles.
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« Last Edit: December 20, 2007, 10:15:59 am by Valaggar Redux »
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