[Droid803]

Aside from what they're FREDded to do.

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, Shivans tend to have superior AI grades by a step or two. (Though I doubt this is meant to represent an in-universe distinction so much as a balancing decision to compensate for their poor-quality weapons.)

[Luis Dias]

With FS2 however I don't think that's the case, because people are creating theories to apply to the entire game. It's an overarching idea, not over stating specific details. But rather presenting a theory and comparing to a multitude of case examples and seeing whether it explains the behaviour or fails to.

And I'm fine with that. What I've been telling you now for days on end is that you have failed to established that particular interpretations of the "shivan nature" are absolutely incongruent with what we see ingame. This certainty you espouse is far beyond the reach or the scope of what we are allowed to see, witness, etc. As I've told you, saying that the shivans are "hive-minded" does not prevent certain behaviors (or force others), but rather have those observations sharpen up any hypothesis of all these different theories. It's not that I have "no opinion on the matter", but rather that I accept a multitude of theories and interpretations as valid, just as long as these respect the core tenets of the Shivan theme around the two games, to wit, the Lovecraftian "unintelligibility" of them, their "deep space" "deep time" nature, the concept of "true alien" (don't design shivans that suddenly start speaking to you good english and as a friend or whatever), the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever.

This kind of horror is really old in human history, going back to the Book of Genesis (where such gods are still intelligible, but are already "shock and awe" inducing) or to the book of Job, where the unintelligibility is first laid out almost in perfect "Lovecraftian" sense.

This is the core to which I care. If you are going to porsue a theory on how the Shivans are not hive-minded, but instead "robot oriented" with certain heurisitics in their mind, or whatever other variation, that's absolutely ok with me, just as long as this core is maintained. The only issue I see with all these theories is when people start to design shivans as something that is understood, demystified. There should always remain a "core" of unintelligibility to them, even if you understand something more of them.

[Akalabeth Angel]

It's not that I have "no opinion on the matter", but rather that I accept a multitude of theories and interpretations as valid, just as long as these respect the core tenets of the Shivan theme around the two games, to wit, the Lovecraftian "unintelligibility" of them, their "deep space" "deep time" nature, the concept of "true alien" (don't design shivans that suddenly start speaking to you good english and as a friend or whatever), the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever . . .

This is the core to which I care.

If your core concept of the Shivan is as some unintelligble lovecraftian horror then how do you explain Bosch talking and dealing with them?
Your core concept of what they are doesn't fit the facts. And not the minor facts, but some of the major plot points of the story. The fact that the player doesn't understand the outcome of the Bosch's encounter with the shivans doesn't mean that Bosch himself isn't in some sort of basic dialogue with them. He approached them and they spirited him away, alive.

The shivans are old, they have motives we don't understand but that doesn't mean they cannot be understood. Personally I believe that an author to a story should have some concept of what an antagonistic force is doing, even if their true motives are never revealed in the story.


People say that the Shivans or other aliens are only truely alien if they think in ways that humans do not. Otherwise people would call them "rubber suit" aliens like Romulans and Klingons, human motives with alien faces. But in all cases, the author to these stories is human. How can a human create a idea for an intelligence that cannot be understood by humans?

Either:
A - The author is just making up a bunch of bull**** and calling it "mysterious and other-worldly"

or

B - They're mimicking things in nature which are not truly understood. But if someone models the Shivans after say an ant colony or something in nature which is not truly understood, then they're not really depicting an alien intelligence, they're simply applying human understanding of an unexplained phenomena to an empty creation in an attempt to impart that same instinct or intelligence.


Either way, the author doesn't create something truly alien, because they can't. A human can't create something that cannot be understood by a human. The best they can do is try to attribute unexplained concepts or ideas to a character or force and by doing so try to imply some grand design behind those concepts which would explain all if only we poor humans had the capacity to. But such an antagonist isn't real. It's an illusion. It's like a fake hollywood western town, all facade with no substance. It's shallow or  hollow. Its actions are like a shadow cast from a figure which doesn't exist. The problem is that once you realize the shadow has no subject to cast it, then the shadow itself fades and disappears. And the threat and the mystery that you crave vanishes because you see the craft behind the creation, you see the strings behind the puppet, and thus it loses believability and falls apart.

Another analogy might be a box. The mystery is what's in the box, what's the enemy thinking. How does it think, what does it want. You can wrap the box up in different ways and each piece of information is a layer to unravel the mystery but if the author doesn't understand what the enemy is and how it thinks or what its goals are then the box is empty. There is no real mystery because there is no secret. There's just an illusion of mystery, an illusion which is paper thin.


Mystery is not created by non-existent enemies. An enemy which cannot be understood has no substance, no form, because to truly create such an enemy is impossible by a human author.


Mystery is created by the telling of the story.
It's about engaging the player, surprising them at every turn and leaving them satisfied but still guessing at the end.

[cahdoge]

There are a lot of things that aren't understood by humans so it's possible to imagine things we don't understand.

And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.

I think of a alien race which is stealing stars, so taking stars away and transporting them elsewhere.

We won't understand them at the moment but when they would take the sun accidentally they would possible tare sol apart.
So for us they would be enemies but we wouldn't understand them.

Additionally it gets harder to understand the movements of a civilisation more advanced than us, the grater the difference between us and them gets (good exemplified on the Kasimov scale).

[Luis Dias]

If your core concept of the Shivan is as some unintelligble lovecraftian horror then how do you explain Bosch talking and dealing with them?
Your core concept of what they are doesn't fit the facts. And not the minor facts, but some of the major plot points of the story. The fact that the player doesn't understand the outcome of the Bosch's encounter with the shivans doesn't mean that Bosch himself isn't in some sort of basic dialogue with them. He approached them and they spirited him away, alive.

So what? What has this anything to do with unintelligibility? The mere fact the Shivans were able to communicate with Bosch is not indicative we can understand them. In the interview of the writer of FS2 he said clearly that what happened with Bosch was a mystery, and he could have well been "eaten alive" by them. Perhaps they were interested in the fact humans had devised the ETAK tech, and wanted to scan Bosch's personal brain... after dissecting it.

Who knows? Some mods tried to deal with this, and came up with different answers. This bears nothing on what I said, and your statement that my core "doesn't fit the facts" is just your usual kind of righteous dismissal that is frankly getting up my nerves.

The shivans are old, they have motives we don't understand but that doesn't mean they cannot be understood. Personally I believe that an author to a story should have some concept of what an antagonistic force is doing, even if their true motives are never revealed in the story.

This is a different problem, and I think the only issue I see here is one of holding the suspension of disbelief. If the writer has no idea what the shivans are up to, he may well find himself doing inconsistent things and this becomes visible to the player / reader. However, a true Lovecraftian horror is one where not even the writer himself is able to understand the tenets of his antagonist truly well. How to maintain believability in this setting? Well, the trick is to always keep to oneself an upper "order of magnitude" level of strategy on the part of the antagonist that one is willing to share with their readers to guess, so to keep consistency and mystery at the same time.

People say that the Shivans or other aliens are only truely alien if they think in ways that humans do not. Otherwise people would call them "rubber suit" aliens like Romulans and Klingons, human motives with alien faces. But in all cases, the author to these stories is human. How can a human create a idea for an intelligence that cannot be understood by humans?

Either:
A - The author is just making up a bunch of bull**** and calling it "mysterious and other-worldly"

or

B - They're mimicking things in nature which are not truly understood. But if someone models the Shivans after say an ant colony or something in nature which is not truly understood, then they're not really depicting an alien intelligence, they're simply applying human understanding of an unexplained phenomena to an empty creation in an attempt to impart that same instinct or intelligence.


Either way, the author doesn't create something truly alien, because they can't.

And they don't need to. They only need imply it. Truth is, a "truly unintelligibility" thing would be apparent to us as random noise shenanigans. Of course. But that fails as a story about unintelligibility because it is indistinguishable from writers' lazyness or dumbness. So the trick is to have apparently "random" things happen some times, apparent contradictions in character traits in other times, on top of a somewhat predictable silent trait (shivans are muted killers, except that one time where they contacted Bosch; shivans are a military race of extermination except that one time where they apparently just ignored the GTVA and went to blow up a star out of nowhere; etc.), in order to convey the uneasiness of this horror without it becoming ludicrous or ridiculous.

he problem is that once you realize the shadow has no subject to cast it, then the shadow itself fades and disappears. And the threat and the mystery that you crave vanishes because you see the craft behind the creation, you see the strings behind the puppet, and thus it loses believability and falls apart.

Right, we agree. It becomes "Lost".

Another analogy might be a box. The mystery is what's in the box, what's the enemy thinking. How does it think, what does it want. You can wrap the box up in different ways and each piece of information is a layer to unravel the mystery but if the author doesn't understand what the enemy is and how it thinks or what its goals are then the box is empty. There is no real mystery because there is no secret. There's just an illusion of mystery, an illusion which is paper thin.

Well, the work of art is always "greater" than the author himself. Lovecraft was, I believe, successful in writing such stories, so I would say that this kind of implied writing is not only possible, but several people did so brilliantly. There are many tricks to pull it off, and I think some of the tricks used in FS2 were quite good indeed.

Mystery is not created by non-existent enemies. An enemy which cannot be understood has no substance, no form, because to truly create such an enemy is impossible by a human author.

Again, you are being too dogmatic here. The point is the vertigo. You will still have a vertigo even if there's no bottom ground to fall to. The point is not the total unintelligibility of the shivans, but the horror implied by the vertigo of that possibility.

It's about engaging the player, surprising them at every turn and leaving them satisfied but still guessing at the end.

Yes, but that's just too little material.

[NGTM-1R]

And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.

The problem Luis is having is that he thinks having an understanding of how the Shivans work at the meta level by the author means that having an understanding of how the Shivans work must exist at the game level. (So stop theorizing assholes.)

This is, of course, not true.

Or he's somehow decided that our explaining the Shivans here taints the games, which is also not true.

Or he thinks something else is going to be accomplished by his recent postings. Which is probably also not true.

Realistically the act of writing suspense and confusion is about the presentation to the reader, not the knowledge of the author; and it is in many ways easier if you know more than you are telling, because you know what you should not say. In many ways FS2's mystery elements are bassackwards from a standpoint of good writing practices. They work regardless, but that is a testament to the writer rather than to their internal construction.

[Luis Dias]

And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.

The problem Luis is having is that he thinks having an understanding of how the Shivans work at the meta level by the author means that having an understanding of how the Shivans work must exist at the game level. (So stop theorizing assholes.)

Perfect clearcut example of misreading me. Almost every single thought here is just wrong. First, I stated the exact opposite of your first sentence here, when I stated that these things should not be read "that rigorously". I said that many times. It's obvious that the writer(s) were tentative and experimental in their design of the shivans, always managing their hedges with intelligence texts that only refer to "theories" and other clever tricks, so they can always get "out of jail free cards", so to speak, and if so needed. It was also very clever to have them not speak with us (I do like Mass Effect's conversation with Sovereign, but once that happened, a lot was sacrificed).

I also never said "Stop theorizing assholes". It's always assholery to put words into other's mouths though, I'd like to say (you know, JFYI). I even said the exact opposite when I commended Akalabeth Angel's own theory. Rather, I was challenging his ortodoxical dogmatism in which only his version has any sway in any correct interpretation of FreeSpace 2. My vision on this is quite similar to others I have seen in HLP, which has been summed up as "Heterodoxy" or something to that effect, that is, I enjoy the multitudes of ideas that have been shared throughout the years.

Or he's somehow decided that our explaining the Shivans here taints the games, which is also not true.

Here's an advice. If you want to know what I have "decided", perhaps ask me directly.

Or he thinks something else is going to be accomplished by his recent postings. Which is probably also not true.

I have enough of your ****ty passive aggressive shenanigans.

[Akalabeth Angel]

So what? What has this anything to do with unintelligibility? The mere fact the Shivans were able to communicate with Bosch is not indicative we can understand them. In the interview of the writer of FS2 he said clearly that what happened with Bosch was a mystery, and he could have well been "eaten alive" by them. Perhaps they were interested in the fact humans had devised the ETAK tech, and wanted to scan Bosch's personal brain... after dissecting it.

Who knows? Some mods tried to deal with this, and came up with different answers. This bears nothing on what I said, and your statement that my core "doesn't fit the facts" is just your usual kind of righteous dismissal that is frankly getting up my nerves.

That's categorically false.
Bosch COMMUNICATED with the shivans. He communicated enough to know that the shivans would be coming to his ship with transports and they would be leaving the Iceni. (If you watch the monologue, he mentions the transports before they actually arrive from subspace). He talked with and dealt with them. Two things which you said could not be done.

Fact is, you've formed an idea of what you want the Shivans to be in your head, and you ignore evidence to the contrary. Well, not even ignore, rather you re-write your definition to exclude evidence.

The shivans are old, they have motives we don't understand but that doesn't mean they cannot be understood. Personally I believe that an author to a story should have some concept of what an antagonistic force is doing, even if their true motives are never revealed in the story.

This is a different problem, and I think the only issue I see here is one of holding the suspension of disbelief. If the writer has no idea what the shivans are up to, he may well find himself doing inconsistent things and this becomes visible to the player / reader. However, a true Lovecraftian horror is one where not even the writer himself is able to understand the tenets of his antagonist truly well. How to maintain believability in this setting? Well, the trick is to always keep to oneself an upper "order of magnitude" level of strategy on the part of the antagonist that one is willing to share with their readers to guess, so to keep consistency and mystery at the same time.

Last I played it, Freespace 2 wasn't a horror game.

And they don't need to. They only need imply it. Truth is, a "truly unintelligibility" thing would be apparent to us as random noise shenanigans. Of course. But that fails as a story about unintelligibility because it is indistinguishable from writers' lazyness or dumbness. So the trick is to have apparently "random" things happen some times, apparent contradictions in character traits in other times, on top of a somewhat predictable silent trait (shivans are muted killers, except that one time where they contacted Bosch; shivans are a military race of extermination except that one time where they apparently just ignored the GTVA and went to blow up a star out of nowhere; etc.), in order to convey the uneasiness of this horror without it becoming ludicrous or ridiculous.

80 Sathanas randomnly converged to destroy Capella?
I'm sorry but in my opinion, what the Shivans are, is more complicated than what you perceive.

In Freespace 1 the shivans were 1 dimensional aliens. In FS2 they evolved to something deeper.

Another analogy might be a box. The mystery is what's in the box, what's the enemy thinking. How does it think, what does it want. You can wrap the box up in different ways and each piece of information is a layer to unravel the mystery but if the author doesn't understand what the enemy is and how it thinks or what its goals are then the box is empty. There is no real mystery because there is no secret. There's just an illusion of mystery, an illusion which is paper thin.

Well, the work of art is always "greater" than the author himself. Lovecraft was, I believe, successful in writing such stories, so I would say that this kind of implied writing is not only possible, but several people did so brilliantly. There are many tricks to pull it off, and I think some of the tricks used in FS2 were quite good indeed.

None of this precludes the fact that Lovecraft knows what the ancient ones or whatever he writes about are.
This whole discussion is the question of whether the Shivans can be understood or if they cannot be. And are they understood by the writer of the story. Reading a good story isn't the same as writing one.

There are a lot of things that aren't understood by humans so it's possible to imagine things we don't understand.

Yes but that imagining is still based on our understanding of how things work. Even if in the imagining we knowingly disregard things that are already known.
In the ancient past, people saw birds flying so they imagined that they too could fly, hence the story of Icarus or pegasus.

And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.

In the context of a story no, but in terms of writing or creating a story I would say yes they do need to be understood.

[Luis Dias]

That's categorically false.
Bosch COMMUNICATED with the shivans. He communicated enough to know that the shivans would be coming to his ship with transports and they would be leaving the Iceni. (If you watch the monologue, he mentions the transports before they actually arrive from subspace). He talked with and dealt with them. Two things which you said could not be done.

Fact is, you've formed an idea of what you want the Shivans to be in your head, and you ignore evidence to the contrary. Well, not even ignore, rather you re-write your definition to exclude evidence.

Before you tell me what I have done and what not, please wait up? I didn't say that the shivans didn't communicate with Bosch and that Bosch didn't understand the message they sent, I said it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans.

Last I played it, Freespace 2 wasn't a horror game.

I always confuse "Horror" with "Terror" and so on. I think it is such a game, but it's a subtle game at that, I agree. Mods like Sync and Trasncend kinda take this aspect of the game into a much more obvious "in-your-face" experience.

80 Sathanas randomnly converged to destroy Capella?
I'm sorry but in my opinion, what the Shivans are, is more complicated than what you perceive.

I think I was clear in what I said. By "random" I don't mean "simple" or "complicated" or "I didn't get it". By random I meant surprising and twisting. It came out of nowhere. Everyone was expecting the shivans to try to eliminate the GTVA as the correct narrative and so on, and then they surprised the "reader" by doing something that didn't have barely any setup for it. And then the game ends. It's like a slap in your face. You think the game is a normal game wherein you get to beat the "final boss" - who has a clear mission outlined at the middle of the game - in the last level like in FS1 but you just... don't. I refer to Battuta's thesis on this:

In the remainder of the story, everything goes off the traditional space opera rails. We were utterly wrong: supremacy isn't decided by a duel of invincible superships. The Sathanas is just one of many, more than we can comprehend. They have more Sathanases than we have corvettes. The GTVA argument for godhood-by-force is rebuked.

And the Shivans take Bosch. That doesn't make any sense! The Shivans never gave a **** about the Hammer of Light - why are they listening to Bosch? It's because he is the single, solitary voice in the story who recognizes that the Shivans cannot be defeated in competition, that we will never match and defeat them. He thinks we must make an alliance with them - like a cultist coming to accomodation with an Elder God, MrL_Jakiri would probably suggest.

But even Bosch seems unable to fully understand the Shivans. He looks forward to his crew boarding the Shivan transports and sailing to a bright future - but when we board the Iceni, we find a charnel house, most of the crew dead, Bosch and his lieutenants gone. Was there a misunderstanding? Or did Bosch fundamentally mistake the nature of the Shivans? Here the Bosch storyline concludes, with a firm declaration: the Shivans are intelligent, and they are not simply, purely hostile. They heard Bosch. But getting their attention is not the same as speaking to them. We learn that the Shivans are beyond our comprehension or communication, just as much as they are beyond our strength.

Bosch, too, is rebuked.

With the Bosch storyline concluded, and the GTVA effort to reclaim godhood in jeopardy, the remainder of the story concerns itself with the GTVA's new understanding. We go into the lion's den and glimpse more Knossos portals, more juggernaughts.

Wow, we think: we never had a chance. Our hubris led us to believe we were ready for anything, but we were terribly wrong. We must abandon our war for divinity and focus on survival.

In the end, we come up with a desperate plan to abandon Capella, hiding from the Shivans by burning jump nodes behind us. It's no accident that we plan to do to ourselves what the Lucifer's detonation did to Earth. Having spent 32 years planning to meet and defeat the Shivans, we must now discard all that effort, and realize that what we thought was a tragedy - isolation - may be the best possible outcome.

There's one last thematic twist, and it comes from the Shivans. With 80+ juggernaughts, they could wipe us out. But they don't. Instead, they destroy the Capella star. Why? What do they gain by this? We have no idea. We can only begin to guess.

By annihilating Capella when they might have annihilated all of humanity (and the Vasudans as well), the Shivans demonstrate their absolute, alien power. Not only can we not defeat them, we cannot understand them. Perhaps we survive for one reason only (thematically, at least): we have abandoned our claim to godhood.

None of this precludes the fact that Lovecraft knows what the ancient ones or whatever he writes about are.
This whole discussion is the question of whether the Shivans can be understood or if they cannot be. And are they understood by the writer of the story. Reading a good story isn't the same as writing one.

Well... isn't this always an open question? The Lovecraftian answer is that it's a resounding "NO", and it so appears to be the same answer given by FS2. Now, if someone makes a mod that "explains it all" for us, then that's fine. If someone writes some fan fiction that furthers the gap between the shivans and humans, makes the vertigo feel even more vomiting inducing, that's also fine.

[GhylTarvoke]

I have a pet theory regarding the Shivans. I've often thought of presenting it in campaign form, but I doubt I'll ever get around to that, so this thread looks like a good place to describe it.

The Shivans evolved in a rapidly-changing environment that encouraged copying stronger life forms (if you can't beam 'em, join 'em), assimilating weaker ones which were malleable enough (by directing their evolution), and destroying weaker ones which were disruptive or less malleable. These became their core motivations, even after they had eliminated all competition and moved on to other environments, where the strategy was no longer optimal.

The Ancients were not malleable, and they were destroying more malleable species which could otherwise have been assimilated. In contrast, by working together and pooling resources, Terrans and Vasudans demonstrated their ability to merge technologies and adapt. Accordingly, the Shivans began a subtle, very long-term project to direct Terran and Vasudan progress, partly by confronting them with increasingly powerful threats.

For example, the Lucifer gave the GTVA beam technology; in the Second Shivan Incursion, when the GTVA was stronger, the Shivans deployed many more beam-equipped warships. By the end of FS2, the GTVA is using or learning to use Shivan technology (shields, beams, Kayser weaponry) and tactics (adaptation, subspace maneuvers, acceptance of casualties). They are ever-so-slightly closer to being assimilated. "He who fights with monsters..."

The GTVA is one of many societies which are being groomed for assimilation. The Shivans are managing a vast "educational system" for various life forms, some more Shivan than others. The Shivan forces in any given classroom are uniquely suited to their students, and are somewhat different from the "true" Shivans at the center: the ones who pull the strings and maintain the records. After billions of years of adaptation and assimilation, the Shivans have become a great average - sort of an ideal to which all life forms gravitate, willingly or otherwise.

Admiral Bosch surprised the Shivans. His communication with them demonstrated an understanding far beyond what was expected, given the GTVA's primitiveness. He was such an anomaly, in fact, that the local Shivan forces didn't know how to respond, so they sent Bosch on a high-priority flight to their administrators. The destruction of Capella created a temporary connection to the main Shivan systems. It was merely a time-saver, the rough equivalent of taking a shortcut through dense vegetation. The Shivans could have gone a longer (and less spectacular) way around, but they couldn't be bothered.

My theory probably bears many similarities to ones that have already been put forward.

EDIT: Heh. "If you can't beam 'em" was completely unintentional.

[Akalabeth Angel]

That's categorically false.
Bosch COMMUNICATED with the shivans. He communicated enough to know that the shivans would be coming to his ship with transports and they would be leaving the Iceni. (If you watch the monologue, he mentions the transports before they actually arrive from subspace). He talked with and dealt with them. Two things which you said could not be done.

Fact is, you've formed an idea of what you want the Shivans to be in your head, and you ignore evidence to the contrary. Well, not even ignore, rather you re-write your definition to exclude evidence.

Before you tell me what I have done and what not, please wait up? I didn't say that the shivans didn't communicate with Bosch and that Bosch didn't understand the message they sent, I said it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans.

You said, and I quote, that your idea of the Shivans is:
"the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever." (emphasis mine)

That is your "core" idea. So I'm sorry, but you did say we couldn't talk to them. And couldn't deal with them.
But Bosch did TALK to them. He did DEAL with them. He may have even UNDERSTOOD them in time.

And in fact, you did not originally say "it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans." you said that the shivans cannot be understood.
There's a very definitive difference between failing to understand something, and being incapable of understanding.

The absence of understanding Shivan motivation, history or true nature in either game does not preclude the possibility of understanding them in future. Nor does it preclude Bosch from successfully integrating himself into the Shivan force and gaining understanding, mutual respect, personal power, influence, etcetera. An author's musings on a story they've not been tasked to write does not canon make.

Thus the fact that Shivans are not understood is not their nature, it is simply the circumstance. But circumstances change.



Lovecraft monsters from my outsider understanding cannot be understood because to do so invites insanity. If that assessment is true, then there's a very obvious difference between your HP Lovecraft ideal and the Shivans because the former has a literary mechanism to prevent talking, dealing with and understanding the enemy whereas the latter, Freespace 1+2, do not. From a very basic understanding, GTVA and its predecessors have already displayed the ability to understand Shivans by their use of shivan technology. They've reverse-engineered technology, used their own fightercraft against them and made them superior, decoded the ability to communicate with them, deciphered too the secrets of the ancients knowledge and technology (the knossos). Everything within the game points to an ability to understand them at the base level, physiological differences have thus-far prevented a deeper understanding but that may too have changed with the invention of ETAK.

What the GTVA has shown is not an inability to understand and adapt, but rather an inability or unwillingness to consider the possible scope of the shivan threat, particularly given the age of the species as demonstrated through the ancient texts.

[cahdoge]

It's possible that we would understand their movements but also not.
(Do we understand how a colony of bees works?)
And it also works the other way around

To the technical stuff: The Shivans are using that advanced technologies, that we won't able to understand how this technologies work.
e.g.: In the early 19th century people had the possibility to build a primitive Gauss-cannon if they would have had a blueprint of it.
 Electricity was known an d could be generated but electromagnetism wasn't.

[Akalabeth Angel]

To the technical stuff: The Shivans are using that advanced technologies, that we won't able to understand how this technologies work.
e.g.: In the early 19th century people had the possibility to build a primitive Gauss-cannon if they would have had a blueprint of it.
 Electricity was known an d could be generated but electromagnetism wasn't.

Yes but in Silent Threat, the expansion to Freespace 1, the GTI built the Hades which was essentially a Lucifer-scale ship with Lucifer beam weapons (albeit ones which are not fired from what I remember).
In freespace 2, GTVA weaponry far outclasses anything the Shivans fielded in Freespace 1 aside from Lucifer's shielding system, a mechanism which may or may have been defeated by the advent of beam weaponry.

[cahdoge]

Yes but the beamcanons  aren't as effective and strong as the shivan equivalents.
And in comparison to the technology they used in Capella this is nearly primitive.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Yes but the beamcanons  aren't as effective and strong as the shivan equivalents.
And in comparison to the technology they used in Capella this is nearly primitive.

Well I think the Hades has the same weapons that the Lucifer was armed with, in terms of beam cannons anyway.

For Freespace 2, the BFRed and BRed are both far superior. However the SRed (the most common) is outmatched by a number of GTVA weaponry. The Shivan AAA beam is inferior as well.

[qwadtep]

If your core concept of the Shivan is as some unintelligble lovecraftian horror then how do you explain Bosch talking and dealing with them?

Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.

[cahdoge]

Well I think the Hades has the same weapons that the Lucifer was armed with, in terms of beam cannons anyway.

For Freespace 2, the BFRed and BRed are both far superior. However the SRed (the most common) is outmatched by a number of GTVA weaponry. The Shivan AAA beam is inferior as well.

That's not quite right. The Sred is only outcasted out by the SVas the other beams are equivalent or superior to it's Vasudan or Terran equivalent.

[Rheyah]

In terms of technology I don't really subscribe to the whole Shivan cruisers/destroyers being weak and ****ty in The Great War thing.  I just assume they were weak and ****ty because of game balance.  Since we now have the ability to prioritize and build entire warships around specialized and non-specialized weaponry complete with AI which makes use of this differentiation, it makes sense that Shivan capital ships were pretty capable even in the Great War.

From my perspective, any FS1 campaign I did with Shivans in it would feature the same differentiated weapon set as features in my modern FS2 mods.  Meaning capable primary weapon systems, capital ship artillery and powerful anti-fighter weaponry.  Just the same way as it makes no sense for FS2's several week period to completely overlap with a sudden development of fifty different technologies, the Prometheus R to have no role in the game, the S to only be produced immediately following nebula missions and for entire lines of fighters only to come online during the period of the second incursion.

Sometimes it's better to stick to canon from a story perspective rather than strictly to what we know.  Events become interesting rather than details.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Just the same way as it makes no sense for FS2's several week period to completely overlap with a sudden development of fifty different technologies, the Prometheus R to have no role in the game, the S to only be produced immediately following nebula missions and for entire lines of fighters only to come online during the period of the second incursion.

It was my understanding that access to new weapons and ships in FS2 was a result of being granted authorization to use them, rather than them being developed brand-new like in FS1, with a couple of exceptions (like the Erinyes, but was that still obviously "in the works" before the campaign started in order for SOC to have access to it as early as they did).