[IronBeer]

Seems like a rather mundane topic, right? If I'm correct about this, though, it would mean that there is a huge plothole in the FS1 story.
Please forgive the rather unorthodox manner in which I present this argument- it needs to be spelled out step-by step to make sense. Please read everything in order to follow the train of thought and see where I'm coming from.
Givens:
*The shields in use on Terran and Vasudan strike craft (fighters and bombers- I'll use "strike craft" for brevity) were reverse-engineered from Shivan shields.
*Shields of any type or size do not work in subspace.
*Terran and Vasudan archaeologists, scientists, and tacticians ostensibly learned the preceding after excavating the Ancient ruins in Altair.
*This knowledge was used to stop the Lucifer at the last possible moments in the mission "Good Luck".
*The Ancients' "Legacy" reads as follows: "In subspace they cannot use their shields. And into subspace they can be tracked." (From Reference Bible) Note that this does not specifically mention the Lucifer SuperDestroyer.

Presumptions:
*Terran and Vasudan strike craft pilots most likely would have noticed that their shields were non-functional in subspace.
*This knowledge could be extrapolated to include the Shivan fighters from which the shields were reverse-engineered.
*Because the Ancient's "Legacy" did not specifically mention the Lucifer, Terran command was most likely operating on a (well-educated) hunch when they launched the final strike mission... Assuming that all the preceding presumptions either did not come to pass or were ignored.

Implications:
*Unless Terran and Vasudan scientists, pilots, and tacticians were completely out to lunch, they had to have known well before the Altair campaign that strike craft shields (and, by likely logical extension) the Lucifer's shields would be non-functional.
*I believe that the further implications of that fact should not need to be explicitly spelled out, but to simply name a few: a) A slim chance exists that Vasuda Prime could have been saved, b) The Altair campaign was an unnecessary and risky diversion, and most importantly, c) The Great War could have been ended months early, saving countless lives and colossal amounts of resources.

Do actually I have a point, or am I simply over-analyzing a little nagging feeling?

[Jeff Vader]

There are a couple of things you didn't take into concideration.

1. When Tombaugh was destroyed, it was stated that the shielding on the Lucifer was impervious, not only resilient, against Terran weaponary. That might have given the GTA and PVN reason to assume for the time being that the shield around the Lucifer was different from the shields used in strike craft.

2. The Ancients' legacy didn't just tell them that the shields do not work in subspace. It also provided information on how to track vessels into and inside subspace. That was also a key component in the operation against the Lucifer.

[IronBeer]

1. When Tombaugh was destroyed, it was stated that the shielding on the Lucifer was impervious, not only resilient, against Terran weaponary. That might have given the GTA and PVN reason to assume for the time being that the shield around the Lucifer was different from the shields used in strike craft.

You know, that's a really good point. However, the GTA and PVN were operating on an assumption both when the Lucifer wan in real space and in subspace. Your point about the shields on the Lucifer being different is not without merit, not at all. Hm... I know that the Superdestroyer was simply set to be invulnerable through the use of SEXPs, but what if in actuality (in in-game terms) the Lucifer simply had a capital-ship sized shielding system, and the only reason it was "impervious" was the simple fact that the neither the GTA or PVN could develop something along the lines of a capital-sized Banshee cannon? Besides, Alpha 1's scans of the Lucy in "Playing Judas" were enough to reveal the Achilles' heel of the 5 reactors, but insufficient to provide detailed information on the shielding system other than "can't hurt it at all"? The command briefing detailing the results of your recon a few missions later provided detailed schematics for the ship's reactors, even going so far as to label them as "Particle reactors". I'm not saying "Gimme a break", but I do find it strange that the GTA and PVN would neglect to scour the ship for every bit of information about its most depressing asset.

The point about subspace tracking, yeah- I yield on that. The subspace tracking ability was key, and that alone makes the Altair campaign worth it. Though I'd wager  that if the GTA had caught up with the Lucifer before Delta Serpentis sans subspace tracking, but armed with the knowledge that Lucy's shields were non-functional in subspace, they could have launched a blind strike with a debatable amount of success.

[Mongoose]

Hm... I know that the Superdestroyer was simply set to be invulnerable through the use of SEXPs, but what if in actuality (in in-game terms) the Lucifer simply had a capital-ship sized shielding system, and the only reason it was "impervious" was the simple fact that the neither the GTA or PVN could develop something along the lines of a capital-sized Banshee cannon?

That's exactly right, actually.  The Colossus was specifically designed to be able to take down Lucifer-class superdestroyers, so they had to be at least reasonably certain that its beam cannons would be able to penetrate a Lucifer's shields.  Whether or not this would be due to some inherent property of beam weapons or due to the intense energies being focused on a relatively small area is debatable, but the fact remains that the anti-fighter beams we encounter in the game do go right through a fighter's shields and inflict damage straight to the hull.  The GTA and PVE obviously didn't have access to such technology at the time of the Great War, and what weapons they did possess presumably didn't have nearly enough energy to punch through the Lucifer's shields (if weapons such as bombs or turret fire were even capable of doing so in any case, no matter how powerful.)

Besides, Alpha 1's scans of the Lucy in "Playing Judas" were enough to reveal the Achilles' heel of the 5 reactors, but insufficient to provide detailed information on the shielding system other than "can't hurt it at all"? The command briefing detailing the results of your recon a few missions later provided detailed schematics for the ship's reactors, even going so far as to label them as "Particle reactors". I'm not saying "Gimme a break", but I do find it strange that the GTA and PVN would neglect to scour the ship for every bit of information about its most depressing asset.

One can assume that something like reactors would give off very large power signatures, particularly if they were located close to the hull as the Lucifer's seemed to be, and so would show up easily on scans.  The "particle" designation may have just been a bit of technobabble, or else a recognition that the reactors were essentially the same as those that Terrans and Vasudans used.  In contrast, I doubt running one cursory scan would be enough to comprehend a piece of technology that was apparently completely out of the knowledge base of Terran or Vasudan scientists.  If they had actually managed to get their hands on a copy and started to reverse-engineer it, maybe they could have come up with some more information, but one fighter running a quick shipwide scan probably wasn't nearly enough to do the job.

In general, I think that the Ancient monologues weren't really intended as any sort of canonical technical document, but instead as the somewhat-spiritual memories of a long-dead race.  One can easily assume that the information uncovered at Altair was of a far more technical nature and specifically mentioned the Lucifer's shields as being inoperable in subspace.  One can also assume that the Ancients managed to destroy at least one Shivan fighter during their battles, much as the player could in the first mission where Shivans were encountered; in that case, the comment in the monologue probably specifically referred to the Lucifer and her ilk.  I do agree with Lobo's point that the GTA and PVE most likely viewed the Lucifer's shield system as being completely different than those employed on their fighters and bombers, and they would have had no empirical evidence that it suffered the same subspace flaw as those other systems did.

[Lucika]

My only statement is that since the Lucifer had a different kind of shield than the ones the fighters had (it was on a capship, we weren't able to hit it /as we could the fighter ones/ and if I recall it correctly, the shield was yellowish on impact but not sure) and the whole ship was so different... It would've been a risky assumption that the Lucy's shields are exactly the same... tho it wouldn't have been such a big deal to send in a kamikaze Fenris to the Shivan fleet to check it out...

[Droid803]

Though I'd wager  that if the GTA had caught up with the Lucifer before Delta Serpentis sans subspace tracking, but armed with the knowledge that Lucy's shields were non-functional in subspace, they could have launched a blind strike with a debatable amount of success.

Without subspace tracking, the GTA, even if they did catch up to the Lucifer, wouldn't be able to get into the same 'tunnel' it was in, making any sort of attack, blind or not, impossible. They may have guessed that its shields did not work, but they did not have a way to actually affect anything in subspace until tracking became a reality.

[Ace]

Yep, it's the lack of subspace tracking which is why they weren't able to take advantage of it earlier.

[Galemp]

Ditto.

[Pred the Penguin]

Wasn't it the lack of subspace capable fighters?

Sorry if that's been mentioned before, don't have time to shift through everything. o_o

[Dilmah G]

Wasn't it the lack of subspace capable fighters?

Sorry if that's been mentioned before, don't have time to shift through everything. o_o

That's a good point actually

[Jeff Vader]

Wasn't it the lack of subspace capable fighters?

As mentioned in the command briefing of Reaching the Zenith, the Terran eggheads finally figured out how to get fighters to make intersystem jumps. And this happened before the grand conclusion about the Lucifer and its properties.

[Pred the Penguin]

k, just making sure you didn't miss something.

[Narvi]

In the FS Reference Bible, there's a mention of how the Terran-Vasudan Alliance knew about the lack of shield functionality in subspace before the Ancient cache was found.

Even so: 1) They didn't know if the Shivans hadn't managed to get around that weakness, and 2) They couldn't have tracked the Lucifer in subspace anyway. That's it.

[Lucika]

In the FS Reference Bible, there's a mention of how the Terran-Vasudan Alliance knew about the lack of shield functionality in subspace before the Ancient cache was found.

Even so: 1) They didn't know if the Shivans hadn't managed to get around that weakness, and 2) They couldn't have tracked the Lucifer in subspace anyway. That's it.

3) They were sure that the Lucy had a different kind of shielding (apparently, it WAS different, tho)

[Woolie Wool]

They did not explicitly say it was different in its technological basis than fighter shields, rather that it was completely impervious to GTA weapons. Several hundred thousand shield hitpoints would be enough to make the Lucifer for all intents and purposes invincible in FS1. For instance, if the Lucifer had 500,000 shield hitpoints, it would have 125,000 in each quadrant, meaning that it would be regenerating each quadrant at the rate at 2,500 hitpoints every second. If it manages its shield quadrants like a fighter, it would be able to achieve up to 10,000 hp/second if the GTA attack were concentrated on one quadrant.

[Narvi]

In the FS Reference Bible, there's a mention of how the Terran-Vasudan Alliance knew about the lack of shield functionality in subspace before the Ancient cache was found.

Even so: 1) They didn't know if the Shivans hadn't managed to get around that weakness, and 2) They couldn't have tracked the Lucifer in subspace anyway. That's it.

3) They were sure that the Lucy had a different kind of shielding (apparently, it WAS different, tho)

They only thought it was different because they couldn't penetrate it. Incidentally, the exact wording in the referernce bible: "Whatever shield system they’re using on their flagship, it must not be an option for the smaller fighters." The difference could simply have been sheer scale.

I shall now provide quotes for my earlier statement, from the reference bible:

We’ve been able to get a prototype shield system working under normal conditions.  However when we simulate jump phenomena there’s no way to keep the power levels high enough. 

Incidentally, interesting stuff on node collapsing in the reference bible:

Furthermore, the Ancients speculate that subspace nodes were quite fragile, and that combat during a jump would surely cause the collapse of the surrounding nodes.

So the idea in FS1 was that collapsing a node has consequences for all other nodes nearby, thus explaining why "All the jump points from Earth have been destroyed."

Mind you, this idea is slightly invalidated by the GTVA requiring each node from Capella to be Meson bombed individually, without feedback collapsing the other nodes. Not completely, of course, as the stability of the Capellan nodes may have been different from the stability of the Earth nodes at the time of collapse.

[Woolie Wool]

Before using the Reference Bible, remember that many of the things in it differ from the actual game, and that the game went through a lot of changes from the Reference Bible.

[Snail]

They did say "As you know" about it.

[Mongoose]

Mind you, this idea is slightly invalidated by the GTVA requiring each node from Capella to be Meson bombed individually, without feedback collapsing the other nodes. Not completely, of course, as the stability of the Capellan nodes may have been different from the stability of the Earth nodes at the time of collapse.

Remember, the nodes in the Capella system were presumably located a great distance from each other, maybe even clear across the system.  By "surrounding nodes," I would envision a situation like that in the FS1 mission "Exodus," where there's a cluster of three nodes within a five-kilometer radius or so.  If that was the situation in Sol, those other nodes could have been taken out when the Delta Serpentis one was.

[Droid803]

Indeed, especially as the Lucifer exploded when it was half-emerged.