The second Shivan incursion though is another matter. The NTF rebellion (apart from being an internal matter) was something the GTVA was capable of handling themselfs, even though they needed a long time for it. After all they were able to crush the rebels even while they were also busy exploring the nebula and battling the Shivans on a second front.
The differences between the two incursions are actually utterly fascinating. Powerful as Sathanas are, they do not actually seem to be dedicated battlewagons (see capellan star). The Lucifer, with its utterly unique shield and ample planetary bombardment capability does. During Capella the shivan advance... wasn't really; they seemed to have been content with securing the ever loving
hell out of capella to use as a Thingy when they blew it up. The amount of incidental carnage inflicted upon the GTVA was immense but it was relatively contained. The Sathanas fleet didn't really deathmarch throughout the GTVA space though they were more than capable of it. It likely wasn't a premeditated attack - more like the Shivans were busy moving their excessively well armed and large passenger ships through the area.
In the context of the Shivans' job of smashing people who need smashing, they weren't really doing it at the time. Instead they were pretty much buggering off. If any balance should have been restored to the FS1/FS2 verse, it would be somebody bringing the Shivans back in order to perpetrate some neon red harshness on uppity fools. I doubt there was any opposition from the vishnans in the original plan for the shivan Lucifer to take humanity and the vasudans out, but perhaps once they downloaded Samuel's brain decided they'd misjudged humans and were trying to maximize their survival across all universes in order to get more Creatin' in. I guess it depends on exactly what the vishnans are to preserve. A balance between creation and destruction could go either way; either you destroy all humans in one universe and spare as many in the other, or you seek to maximize the survival of humans in general after already destroying them.
Darius didn't make the Ancient/Vishnan models, he just re-used them. As far as I gathered he didn't know how to model back then (though he learned it since then - there was some comment about one of his ships being in WiH if I remember correctly, though I don't know anything more).
Since you didn't play through the original release till the end you wouldn't know it, but they did that. The line about the GTVA believing the UEF to be "religious pacifists incapable of selfdefence" or somesuch was only addad with the directors cut. Also Renjians lines were a bit extended ("Desperata Ferro" for one thing wasn't in the original).
In the original Admiral Bei just says that the GTVA send them as an invasion force, but never goes into the reasons why command decided that.
Yeah, I know about the models... it was more thoughts for the far distant future when modeling and texturing talent flows like rivers.
I think adding in that dialogue then was a good decision, and support bulking it out further. I think the briefing/after action reports contain a bit too much of the character development and setting details all told, and more could stand to be relayed in mission dialogue. Hell, having a few minutes of Renjian datadumping what the Lost Generation missed after BG14 assumed escort formation and was moving on to Neptune for refueling and repairs or something would have been interesting, especially with a slowly ratcheting sense of tension as both sides express mutual bewilderment and unease. The crew and captain of the Renjian would express horror at the casual brutality with which the GTVA cracked down on the NTF separatists, and the GTVA would express shock at how little the UEF seems worried about the Shivan presence. Even a few red herring lines like the captain of the Renjian and Admiral Bei sharing the images of burnt earth and saying "We swear to work together in a new future to preserve Earth from such a grim fate" or something would have been neat to make the shock of the oncoming war a bit more intense.
Though that would make
certain things require rewriting and ... probably in the long run, in light of the inevitable Full Blue Planet Experience isn't necessary. I deeply respect and enjoy the thoughtfulness of that piece and find that the presentation of the final mission in AoA doesn't hint at the depths. A few throwaway lines earlier where Admiral Bei in one of his many private communiques expresses his unease about the crew's morale in the face of longterm exposure to the Shivans would set up Morian's collapse a bit better. Maybe a line from Orestes or Temeraire, or even a wingman saying that they'd picked up a burst of coded transmissions from Renjian, something about clearing up conflicting orders.
