GTVA Colossus

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The largest space-faring warship ever constructed by the Terrans or Vasudans, the GTVA Colossus was the result of twenty years of joint effort from dozens of contractors from across the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance. Logging in with a length of six kilometers, this behemoth was equipped with over eighty weapon turrets, in addition to over 240 combat spacecraft.

With the offensive power that exceeded most GTVA battle groups, the Colossus was designed to combat the Shivans upon their return to Allied territory. The prospective target was one or more Lucifer-class super-destroyers, and it was deemed that the Colossus would not only have the firepower not only to destroy such a foe, but also to survive multiple hits from a Lucifer's primary weapon system.

Although the Colossus was a joint endeavor of both the Terrans and Vasudans, it is apparent that the ship itself exhibits more Terran design traits than Vasudan. It can be assumed that some of the Vasudan elements manifest themselves in less immediately overt ways.

History

GTVA Colossus
Class:	GTVA Colossus
First Appearance:	The Sixth Wonder
In Service:	NTF Rebellion Second Shivan Incursion
Faction:	Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance
Fate:	Destroyed by SJ Sathanas 17

The first combat deployment of the Colossus was against the Neo-Terran Front. It can be truthfully said that it was the Colossus that was the ultimate factor in the NTF's collapse. NTF forces proved to be no match for the Colossus and her battle group, and the rebels made every effort to avoid direct combat with the warship. With his fleet shattered, and the remnants being actively pursued and destroyed by the Colossus, Admiral Aken Bosch gave the order to flee GTVA space to the relative safety of the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis.

With the NTF defeated, the Colossus was finally to fulfill the role her designers had envisioned for her: the defeat of a second Shivan incursion. However, as it turned out, the challenge was not to be SD Lucifer-class superdestroyers, but rather the even more massive SJ Sathanas-class juggernaut. Twenty years of constant struggle finally culminated with the Colossus's destruction of the Sathanas, all at the cost of moderate damage to the Colossus.

All would have been well was it not for the Shivans possessing multiple juggernauts. In the closing stages of the Battle of Capella, the Colossus was deployed to interdict Shivan traffic at the Gamma Draconis jump node in Capella to divert enemy forces and attention away from the Bastion, which was en route to collapse the jump corridor to Epsilon Pegasi. The ploy succeeded, as the Shivans first deployed a SD Ravana, then a SJ Sathanas to engage the Colossus. In her weakened state, it was obvious that the Colossus would not survive an engagement with another Sathanas-class juggernaut, and Allied Command ordered the Colossus to withdraw.

However, with the success of the Bastion's critical mission in doubt, the Colossus disobeyed the direct order from Allied Command, and refused to disengage. Subsequently, the Colossus was destroyed with the loss of all hands. The thirty-thousand officers and crew of the Colossus willingly sacrificed themselves to ensure the continued survival of the billions of individuals making up the Terran and Vasudan species, and ultimately, the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance.

Confirmed kills

• NTCv Hawkwood (Destroyed at Enif Station)
• NTD Repulse (Admiral Koth's flagship. Kamikaze attacked the Colossus)
• NTD Andronicus (Reported destroyed in Command Briefing)
• NTC Camisard (Reported destroyed in Command Briefing)
• NTC Vanguard (Reported destroyed in Endgame)
• NTCv Congreve (Implied destroyed in Endgame)
• NTCv Danton (Endgame)
• SJ Sathanas (First, High Noon mission)
• SD Beast (Destroyed shortly before Sathanas 17 destroyed the Colossus)

Quotes

"This is the GTVA Colossus. Fighters, stand clear of hostile warships. All batteries, fire at will!"

"This is the GTVA Colossus. Admiral Koth, you are ordered to power down your engines immediately and surrender. The Polaris jump node is blockaded, there is no escape."

"You are sacrificing thousands of lives for nothing!"

"If only Koth had surrendered rather than playing Martyr, his crew would still be alive"

"A Shivan juggernaut has jumped within range. What's the status of the Bastion?"

"We'll hold them back here. Just get the Bastion through!"

Colossus cutscene

Narrator: The following is classified level Rho. Unauthorized access is punishable under the GTVA security act, Deneb convention, section 21.3.5. We vanquished the Shivans in the Great War but the hard questions remained. How would we confront the threat of future invasion? The Shivans might return at any time, any place, without warning. How would we fight the next threat to the very existence of our species? In 2345, on the tenth anniversary of the Shivan attack on Ross 128, the Vasudan emperor Khonsu II addressed the newly-formed GTVA General Assembly. The emperor inaugurated an ambitious and unprecedented joint endeavor: The GTVA Colossus.

Khonsu II: Together we built a civilization on the ruins of the Great War, and now we stand on the threshold of a new era of prosperity and harmony. With Project Colossus, the Vasudan people celebrate our shared covenant of peaceful co-existence and mutual defense of our Terran allies.

Narrator: The Colossus is the most powerful space faring warship ever constructed. Spanning six kilometers from bow to stern, the Colossus has taken over twenty years to complete. Twelve Lucifer-class destroyers can fit within its massive hull. Its state-of-the-art weaponry includes forty-five laser turrets, fifteen flak guns, twelve missile batteries, and twelve beam cannons. The Colossus wields more firepower than five Orion-class destroyers combined. Sixty fighter and bomber wings are housed in its vast hangar and its crew numbers over thirty thousand. Among its major contractors are industry giants Triton Dynamics, Subach-Innes, and the Akheton Corporation. The alliance now wages war on multiple fronts: in Deneb, Alpha Centuri, Epsilon Pegasi, and the mysterious nebula beyond Gamma Draconis. Once deployed the Colossus will end these conflicts swiftly and decisively. If ever the Shivans return to threaten our worlds we will be ready to face the challenge, securing peace for today and for generations to come.

Description:

The GTVA Colossus

FS2 Tech Room Description

The GTVA Colossus resulted from an endeavor unprecedented in Terran or Vasudan history. This 6-kilometer-long behemoth is the result of 20 years of joint effort from dozens of contractors of both races. The Colossus is the most powerful space-faring warship ever made, bristling with over 80 weapon turrets. It also houses 60 fighter and bomber wings and requires a crew of over 30,000. The firepower of the Colossus is greater than that of most GTVA battle groups.

Developer Notes

None

Name Origin

Used in Latin to refer to large statues, the term is used in English (in lower case, being a common noun) to refer to anything of large size.

The sixth of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was the Colossus of Rhodes, a giant bronze statue representing the god Helios that was constructed following a very important military victory. This is why the first mission featuring the Colossus is named "The Sixth Wonder."

Performance:

Statistics

Name	GTVA Colossus
Type	See GTVA Colossus ship type debate
Manufacturer	All canon corporations
Yaw, Pitch, Roll	200.0, 200.0, 200.0 s
Max Velocity	25.0 ms-1
Hitpoints	1 000 000 pts
Length	6166 m
Turrets	63 turrets
Fighter Complement	240

Armaments

• Turrets

FreeSpace 2
Turret Type	Amount
Terran Turret	8
Terran Huge Turret	10
Standard Flak	12
MX-52	8
Piranha	2
AAAf	10
TerSlash	7
BGreen	6

Modding Resources

The GTVA Colossus in FS2_Open with the mediavps enabled

Retail:

$POF File: Colossus.pof

Textures: ???

MediaVP 2014:

$POF File: Colossus.pof

Textures: ???

History
Proposed by: ??? on ???
First WIP Post: ??? on ???
First In-Game Model: ??? on ???
Completed In-Game Model: ??? on ???
Final Corrections: ??? on ???

Gallery

• 

  Admiral Koth engages the GTVA Colossus.

• 

  Demonstrating the meaning of superior firepower.

• 

  The GTVA Colossus.

• 

  The Colossus meets its end at the hands of the Shivans.

Veteran Comments

Please read the Veteran Comments policy before editing this section.

The 6 BGreen beams of the Colossus are powerful and allow it to have no trouble taking on multiple destroyers at once while taking minimal damage in return. The Colossus is an all-round good ship — it has plenty of armor, a large number of turrets, and it's surprisingly fast for a ship of its size, matching the speed of the Sathanas and outpacing all destroyers.

The GTVA Colossus is not that great at killing ships of equal size to it. The placement of its main beam turrets are all over the ship, meaning that maximum firepower cannot be directed against heavier ships. However, this does also have its advantages. It means that no capital ship can be in a safe spot from it. It is also loaded with massive amounts of anti-fighter and bomber weaponry, making it a nightmare to attack. These anti-fighter weapons are also located around the main beams of the warship, making it more difficult to disable.

The Colossus has a blind spot above its upper-rear section, which is outside the firing arc of all the Colossus' anti-capship beams. This space is large enough for two Fenris cruisers to camp at and beam it to death over the course of an hour, as the Majestic and Refute will do in Feint! Parry! Riposte! if they survive long enough to finish travelling most of their waypoints.

The Colossus model is infamous for its low moment-of-inertia value, which causes it to swing around like a baseball bat during tight turns. This is also partly because its pivot point is located at the very back, where the huge engines are. Most other ships in contrast, including the Sathanas, have their pivot point located near the centre of the ship, so their turns look more normal even if their moment-of-inertia value is similar to the Colossus'.

Keep in mind that the firepower demonstrated by the Colossus in High Noon was due to pushing the beams and fire control to their limit, resulting in considerable damage to the ship and weapons even if the Sathanas never fired a shot. Replacing the Colossus' default beams with more powerful beams without even mentioning overloads is not good at all.

Strangely enough, the Colossus is never mentioned as either a destroyer, superdestroyer or a juggernaut in the game, instead being ambiguously called a warship. This sparked a debate, as every other canon ship was given a ship type excluding the Colossus. Further details on this debate may be found here.

The most likely reason for the Colossus' lack of a "ship type" is simply because the GTVA intended to build only one. It would be unnecessary to give it a designation since they were never planning to mass-produce such a huge and costly warship.

Although many tend to praise the Colossus for its well-distributed anticapital firepower, this tactic, sadly, may usually prove ineffective. For example, if an attack operation against the Colossus were planned, the attacker's warships would have to be placed in one spot, so that the Colossus could only fire a fraction of its beam count. In short, the Colossus rarely is able to demonstrate its full firepower, since the enemy would not dare engage it from all sides anyway.