GTC Aeolus

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The GTC Aeolus is an Allied Terran-designed cruiser. It boasts more turrets in total than any other canon cruiser in the GTVA arsenal. Both the GTVA and the Neo-Terran Front use several of these vessels in FreeSpace 2, and the FreeSpace 2 Demo places another in the hands of the GTVA. The FreeSpace 2 tech description states that production was discontinued two years prior to the Second Shivan Incursion, and only 24 were produced. However, the tech description was never made available to the player in the game, making its reliability debatable. In-game references warn of this ship's formidable anti-fighter weaponry.

Description:

The GTC Aeolus

FS2 Demo Tech Room Description

The biggest, baddest, and meanest cruiser EVER. The Aeolus will smack you up.

FS2 Tech Room Description

The GTC Aeolus is the first cruiser class ever produced by the RNI shipyards orbiting Laramis II. Only two dozen of these cruisers were put into service in GTVA fleets, with production ending in 2365. Allied Command assigns Aeolus-class ships primarily to guard slow-moving convoys against fighter and bomber wings, as these cruisers are severely out-gunned by most capital ships in service today. Their flak and AAA turrets serve as marvelous deterrents to smaller craft, however.

Developer Notes

None

Name Origin

In Greek mythology, Aeolus was the ruler of the nation of Aeolia, and had the power to control the winds. He was supposed to live in an island in Southern Italy, now called Lipari.

Canon Ships

22 of the 24 Aeolus cruisers are named. Over half of them are destroyed over the course of the FreeSpace 2 campaign, many on the side of the Neo-Terran Front. Named cruisers are:

• GTC Adamant (destroyed)
• GTC Agrippa
• NTC Alexandria (destroyed)
• GTC Ascendant (simulated)
• GTC Ashaton (simulated)
• NTC Camisard (destroyed)
• NTC Epigoni (destroyed)
• GTC Ertanax (destroyed)
• NTC Hellespont (destroyed)
• NTC Liberty (destroyed)
• NTC Loyola (destroyed)
• GTC Malta (destroyed)
• NTC Mylae (destroyed)
• NTC Retribution
• NTC Righteous (destroyed)
• NTC Saharan (destroyed)
• GTC Sparta (destroyed)
• GTC Stalwart
• GTC Templar (destroyed)
• GTC Vigilant (destroyed)
• NTC Vindication
• GTC Warwick
• GTC Zanthar (simulated)

Performance:

Statistics

Type	Cruiser
Manufacturer	RNI Shipyards
Maneuverability	N/A
Yaw, Pitch, Roll	100.0, 100.0, 80.0 s
Max Velocity	30.0 ms-1
Max Afterburner Velocity	N/A ms-1
Armor	N/A
Hitpoints	38 000
Shields	N/A
Length	272 m

Armaments

• Turrets

FreeSpace 2
Turret Type	Amount
Terran Huge Turret	2
Standard Flak	6
Anti-Fighter Beam	2
Small Green Beam	2

Modding Resources

The GTC Aeolus in the latest MVPs

Retail:

$POF File: cruiser2t-01.pof

Textures: ctile1( /c), ctile2( /c), ctile3( c/), ctile4(a/b/c), ctile5( /c), tbody(2/A), carmA, damage

MediaVPs:

$POF File: Aeolus.pof

Credits: Nyctaeus

Gallery

• 

  The GTC Vigilant on patrol.

Veteran Comments

Please read the Veteran Comments policy before editing this section.

Look upon its armament, ye fighter pilots, and despair. The Aeolus is the second most effective cruiser in the game, thanks to its array of flak guns and AAA beams that make attacking it a daunting prospect. The Aeolus will make mincemeat out of an unprepared fighter wing, and going one-on-one with it at short range is a very effective method of committing suicide. Its anti-capital capability is good for a cruiser with two SGreens; however, the mounting scheme, and the SGreen being the woefully inefficient piece of junk that it is, the Aeolus will make most warship kills by bathing them in flak fire. This is actually surprisingly effective.

It's pretty hard to overestimate the effectiveness of this cruiser...it has, by far, the best anti-fighter capability of any cruiser in the game, and nearly the best of any ship in the game. As far as I'm concerned only the Deimos really outdoes it in that respect. The Aeolus, however, is no super-warship; like all cruisers, it's really ineffective in an anti-capital respect, though superior to most other cruisers. The missions of FreeSpace 2 are cruel to the Aeolus and do not show its full potential. For example, in Clash of the Titans II all of the cruisers were severely damaged, even though at full strength Aeoli can fight off ~ 12 bomber wings and survive. In Their Finest Hour (which also causes many people to doubt the GTVA Colossus) many allied warships failed to have their beams armed, decreasing both their capital-ship weaponry and their anti-fighter defenses.

While the Aeolus is feared by many as the most powerful anti-fighter cruiser in the game, I must say that it is not. Despite the fact that it has many flak guns (which other Terran cruisers have a complete lack of), the Aeolus has only two anti-fighter beams, while the GTC Leviathan has four. It is not flak that kills people, rather it makes the screen pulse red. This probably gives people the illusion that it is more dangerous than the Leviathan. Beams are what do the damage; the Leviathan is the triumphant anti-fighter cruiser.

The Aeolus is just about the only FS2 ship that can reliably take down a single fighter. That doesn't sound like much, but one competently flown bomber can find and exploit a weak spot in almost every other ship. However, despite the Aeolus' fearsome reputation, it can be overwhelmed by a thought-out attack. If you go into FRED and do some testing, you'll notice that it only takes a wing or two of Medusas to kill this 'badass' ship. The exact number depends on the difficulty level, as the bombers' AI is better on higher difficulty.

The Aeolus's small structure allows just about all flak guns to fire at one target. Despite AAA beams doing the most damage, 6 flak guns on one fighter will wear your shields down very quickly and tear through your hull even faster. Plus the Leviathan can only fire one or two AAA beams at a fighter, depending on its position. The Aeolus is the best cruiser to deal with fighter attacks.

Similar to the Ravana, this ship can fire through its own hull when using its SGreens. This can be observed when the Aeolus engages a target that is off to one side.

Like any vessel using Standard Flak, the Aeolus' combat effectiveness is strongly dependent on the ship's pilot AI class, which determines the refire rate of turret-mounted weapons. As the AI class approaches maximum the fire rate approaches the Standard Flak's tabled rate, which is absurdly high. Using a custom AI profile that removes the random turret refire delay converts the Aeolus into an awe-inspiring anti-fighter death machine.

The later versions of the mediavps Aeolus include a fighterbay with working docking paths. AI-controlled ships can use this fighterbay to arrive in and depart from the mission without issue, but physically, even the tiny GTSh Mercury wouldn't fit within the fighterbay's height clearance.

The claims the Aeolus is typically used for convoy escort are very much justified in practice - with only fighters and bombers to worry about in practice when it comes to guarding freighters and transports, the flak guns and anti-fighter beams of the Aeolus can drastically magnify the otherwise pathetic defensive armament of a Faustus or a Poseidon, either by shredding incoming assault fighters targeting the transports or letting the otherwise meager guns of the civilian ships chip away at attackers while it receives their ire. This effective magnification also works well when reinforcing an outpost or guarding a cargo depot - it's hard to kill a Watchdog when you have flak raining down on you.

Little in the middle but she got much flak

Oh my God, Becky, look at her strut

Compact and deadly, this cruiser’s only real weakness is its anemic SGreen beam cannons. Replacing them with a pair of AAAf beams would fit the vessel’s role better and make it even more of a nightmare for fighters to get close to. Why the GTVA never made this refit is a mystery, as is their decision to only build 24 of them. Maybe they were a testbed or something.