Originally posted by karajorma
The 80 saths surrounded the star for quite a while before they fired. Most likely the weapon requires careful calibration. Either that or it's completely useless against capships because it does something specific to the star.
Well, in the cutscene it doesn´t look like it took much time. The arms of the Sathanas moved and joined, and in a few seconds of charging, they fired. Wich means the weapon can be activated in a matter of minutes, not weeks. They probably took longer to get in position, or wait a certain phase of the star.
As for being more economic to use regular beam weapons, that seems a bit off. Why would they care about energy economy, if they are dead?? Had they used the uber weapon, they would have taken out the Colossus, and not the other way around. Besides, the Sathanas had no beams left, Alpha 1 took them out in the previous mission. So, if they had the weapon, why didn´t they use it and save their shivan behinds?
That weapon could be specific for disrupting stars, but i like to think that anything that does that to a star has more than enough power to shred 100 Colossus.
It could be that because Alpha 1 took out the tip of the Sathana´s arms, the weapon was destroyed. But that doesn´t explain why they didn´t use it in previous ocasions, or during the last battle with the Colossus.
This answer goes to Carl aswell, who said it took them weeks to charge up the weapons.
Of course, this is all academical. It could be that they just didn´t pay their light bill, and had their power cut off by the Power Company!
