SJD Sathanas
The SJD Sathanas was a substitute for the SJ Sathanas that first appears in the FreeSpace 2 mission, Into the Lion's Den.
Up close, the SJD Sathanas is a simple textured tetrahedron (a polyhedron with four faces), but in the target view, it appears to be a Sathanas-class juggernaut. This was done in order to save memory - in Into the Lion's Den, six juggernauts jump in which could potentially cause problems on older machines. Because of the amount of distance between the player and the ships in this mission, and the fact that the player only has 15 minutes to complete the mission, the player never actually gets to see the tetrahedral shape of this ship up close.
The SJD Sathanas also makes several more discreet appearances in the last few missions of the game, starting with Their Finest Hour, where dozens of them are placed far outside the game area, hidden from sensors, and have the "ship-guardian" flag enabled, meaning they cannot be killed by any means (including ` + K) unless the flag is first removed by cheating, then they are targeted by the player under the effects of EMP. This gives the illusion of multiple Sathanas juggernauts around the Capella star, in addition to the Sathanas background bitmaps. Using EMP missiles can have strange effects on these missions, including being able to target the mission props, and wingmen attempting to attack them. Attempting to attack them yourself may result in you going out-of-bounds and your vessel self-destructing. In addition, during the events of Their Finest Hour, one of the SJD Sathanas, designated "Sathanas 17" in the Event Viewer, plays a pivotal role in the story, being the juggernaut that jumped away from the vicinity of the Capella star and into the mission area (as an actual SJ Sathanas) to engage and ultimately destroy the GTVA Colossus.
Although some user-made missions use the SJD Sathanas as target practice for a "missed" beam cannon shot, sensor echo or other discreet purposes, most mods otherwise remove it entirely to save room, since the ship's only uses were fulfilled in the official FreeSpace 2 campaign, and are largely rendered obsolete by modern-day hardware.
Despite being smaller than a real Sathanas, an unmodified SJD Sathanas explodes just as violently.
On a related note, there is a low-polygon Sathanas model found in the retail VP files known as "minicap.pof". It appears to serve no purpose.
Not to be confused with the actual SJ Sathanas.
Contents
Description:
The SJD Sathanas |
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FS2 Tech Room Description
A Sathanas, off in the distance.
Developer Notes
None
Performance:
Statistics
Name | SJD Sathanas | |
Max Velocity | 25 ms-1 | |
Hitpoints | 1 000 000 pts |
Armaments
None