GTD Orion

Description
This is a [i]Orion[/i] Class Destroyer of the Galactic Terran Alliance.

Having played one heck of a lot of games from the original pac man to the first wonderful space sims like Wing Commander to the original Tie Fighter and up to the somewhat disappointing game play in todays games I have seen a lot of different ships come and go, but this is my all time favorite.

Stationed on the GTD Galatea in the Great War I was somewhat taken aback when my flight requested reinforcements the Galatea turned up and engaged in capital ship vs capital ship combat. Oh, it was puny plasma cannons compared to FS2 but it fought! It did what no other capital ship in a flight sim before or since had done (excluding FS2). [i]It fought[/i] The GTA obviously didn\'t build their capital ships for the sole reason of having them be used as targets by little fighter squads.

And occasionally they died. The Galatea was disabled and met the SD Lucifer. A few beam cannon shots and the Galatea was no more. :( More than anything else in FreeSpace that made me worry about taking the Lucifer on!

The survivors were transfered to the GTD Bastion, another Orion class Destroyer. The Bastion did survive the great war.

In FS2 the Orion returned. Having had a few refits in the previous 32 years the Orions were still being phased out in favor of the newer GTD Hecate design. I just looked at the Hecate, looked at the Orion and wondered what had happened to the Hecate\'s design.

I [i]liked[/i] the Orion, especially in dark lighting the ship looks good. The Hecate really didn\'t ever measure up. Of course, There were still plenty of Orions around to play their part in FS2 sporting their new Flak guns and beam cannons. While they might have been useful before they were now downright dangerous.

Oh, apart from the Bastion. My old command ship, and head of its fleet was converted to be a 2KM long collection of the largest bombs ever devised in the history of explosives in one of the last missions. The plan was to shove it down a jump node and then blow it up, taking the jump node with it. Oh, it worked but I have very rarely actually been regretful at losing a ship while playing a game. Especially when my mission objective was to make sure it made it to the node to blow up!

In fact, due to youtube you can even watch it :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CkjNhXn770