[Kopachris]

Techroom entry:

Subspace

Of the many spatial dimensions which we are aware, our creators have been long confined to three. The rest are smaller in scale and were impossible to move through until the development of drive technology that could propel a ship in those directions. A ship may be propelled into subspace along a ballistic trajectory influenced by the gravitational pull of stars and planets, and intersecting with normal space at the entry and exit points. The scale difference means the travel time is vastly reduced, making travel across star systems practical.

However, care must be taken as trajectories that have no exit point in normal space, such as those plotted when either the ship or the intended exit point are too far from a strong gravitational field, will result in the ship entering subspace, never to return. This means that ships may only travel safely through subspace within the bounds of a star system.

Travel between star systems is achieved through the use of subspace nodes. These nodes occur when normal space folds in on itself in subspace enough for two distant star systems to be near each other in subspace. The shape of normal space in relation to subspace and gravitational fields of the two stars will create two points in normal space where entering subspace with enough energy will result in a trajectory that intersects normal space at those two points, thus ensuring safe travel between the two star systems.

The closer the two systems are in subspace the more stable the node. Nodes may be destroyed by releasing large amounts of energy into subspace, forcing the points in normal space apart. Some races, including ours, have technology that can stabilise existing nodes by using energy to keep the two star systems close together. While our ships are capable of temporarily stabilising nodes prior to using them, other races have constructed large devices to permanently stabilise nodes as long as the devices are active.

The height of subspace technology is the Jump Gate. Using subspace telemetry from itself and a Communications Relay in the target system, a subspace node is created between the Jump Gate and a point in the target system as normal space is folded within subspace until both the system containing the gate and the target system are brought into close proximity. This unnatural folding of space requires large amounts of energy to perform and maintain, snapping back when power is shut off and collapsing the node.

T
Seems like a fairly logical explanation of what those Shivan Comm Nodes were doing in the binary star system in the SOC mission.  They were guiding the Knossos portal(s)!  You're good at making things sound plausible.  I'll have to download this mod one of these days...

[Mobius]

Or better, they were guiding the Shivan fleet to the portal...

[Kopachris]

Or better, they were guiding the Shivan fleet to the portal...

Or both.  Imagine if Bosch got his hands on one of those nodes...

[Colonol Dekker]

That sounds good to me. Has no-one suggested that before? I like the tech babble too. From a Shivans pov, original.

[Flaming_Sword]

I've been trying to make the crazy random stuff had the shivans do seem plausible, yes. Actually, if you check the comm node techroom entry:

Three of the devices awaiting deployment were destroyed by the Terrans flying captured fighters, deeply embarrassing all involved.

That, and in the entry you're all looking at:

other races have constructed large devices to permanently stabilise nodes as long as the devices are active.

Sound familiar?

I'm actually quite tempted to write a separate set of tech entries from the GTVA point of view too, especially for their ships, since I have to consider their point of view anyway if I'm actually going to make a campaign based on all this.

That sounds good to me. Has no-one suggested that before? I like the tech babble too. From a Shivans pov, original.

Alas, all I've used my science degree for so far is to write shivan technobabble that would make sense to a physicist (though selectively ignoring a couple of things, 'cause it's scifi ).

[Colonol Dekker]

You sir, made more sense in this thread than all the flamewars of the last decade. *salutes

[Kopachris]

You know what'd be kinda cool?  Reproduce the original FS1 and FS2 campaigns, except play as the Shivans instead of the Terran and Vasudans.  It would require a little modification to the missions, but not too much.  I'd kind of like to do that; instead of the Terrans/Vasudans always emerging victorious, the Shivans win and the Terran homeworld is decimated. 

[Flaming_Sword]

Ah, but then FS2 would never have happened

You would only be able to play through FS1 missions with shivans in them. Also, missions where shivans jump in after the start will need major changes. A bit of a pita, but doable if anyone feels like doing it. Unfortunately, that is outside the scope of this mod, though it could be achieved by basic changes in the fsport tables (this mod started off as a simple changes in the FS2 tables, after all).

[ShadowGorrath]

Well, FS2 wouldn't happen. But we'd have BluePlanet from a shivan POV.

[Colonol Dekker]

In FS1 you could play as part of the Lucy escort, attack on tombaugh, assault on V prime etc. Just don't kill alpha 1 or my mind will implode.

[Titan]

then kill 4LPHA 1!

[Colonol Dekker]

:[

[Kopachris]

Ah, but then FS2 would never have happened

You would only be able to play through FS1 missions with shivans in them. Also, missions where shivans jump in after the start will need major changes. A bit of a pita, but doable if anyone feels like doing it. Unfortunately, that is outside the scope of this mod, though it could be achieved by basic changes in the fsport tables (this mod started off as a simple changes in the FS2 tables, after all).

It'd be like an alternate timeline kinda thing.  One timeline where the Shivans won FS1, one timeline where Shivans won FS2.  Or, we could even mod the storyline so the Lucifer somehow destroyed the Sol jump node.  Then Earth would be destroyed, but we'd still be trapped on the other side like in FS2.

Actually, FS2_open has a function to have the player jump in x seconds after the mission starts.  I haven't used it, so I don't know whether or not it works, but it's there.

Maybe we could make a couple missions that weren't anywhere in the original campaigns, but could spice up the plot a little, explain the Shivans, how they work, why they do what they do, where they came from.  I don't know anything about "the blue planet", but the Shivans remind me of Species 8472 from Star Trek: Voyager.  They live in space, they look weird, and they got in a huge war.  Could be that the Ancients figured out how to go into some extradimensional space by modifying their subspace drive, and that was where the Shivans lived, and they destroyed the Ancients, and now they're trapped, but other Shivans can still get here.  Maybe something like that.  If anyone has any Ancients ships, I might be able to put them in Anim8or and try to make a beginning cutscene to explain all that to the player.  Similar to the Endgame cutscene in FS1, except with a different plot.

[Titan]

Blue Planet

[Kopachris]

Blue Planet

Thank you, I'll have to try that out after I play the FS2 campaign (just finished the FS1 campaign for the 3rd or 4th time).

[Flaming_Sword]

Actually, FS2_open has a function to have the player jump in x seconds after the mission starts.  I haven't used it, so I don't know whether or not it works, but it's there.

That's the easy part. You also have to mess with alpha wing and change the default wing names, etc. For missions where the shivans only jump in fairly late, you have to adjust missions to make sure certain events have occurred.

Blue Planet

It's an awesome mod and I've already taken some ships and effects from it.

[Kopachris]

Or you could simply get rid of most of what happens before hand and leave the mission in a certain state for the Shivans.  Like, maybe the HOL was supposed to get there first, the Terrans beat the HOL, you could get rid of the HOL entirely and default the Terrans in a damaged state.

I was thinking about the wing names, too.  Perhaps have the Shivans (us) call themselves (ourselves) the Greek letters and call the Terran wings names of Greek gods.  A possible techroom entry could mention that when we first met the Terrans, our sensors were able to hack into their ship-board databases and decipher their language, and found out that they name their ships after Greek gods, and so we name their wings after Greek gods, while we name our wings the rough English translation (so the Terrans playing the game can read it) of an ancient Shivan alphabet.  Because I don't think the Shivans call themselves Shivans or name their wings after Terran constellations.  Just throwing ideas around...

[blowfish]

That just doesn't seem very likely.  How can you instantly hack technology that is significantly different from your own without any knowledge of how it works?  And do the Shivans even have an alphabet?  Or a written language for that matter?

[Flaming_Sword]

Just another of the many fun details I have to make up and get to make sense in FS1/2

[Kopachris]

You see, that's the thing.  The Shivans' electronics are so much more efficient than ours, it seems they were able to target us right away, while it took us a while to get to be able to target them.  They could have easily scanned our vessels for anything that looked like a data storage device and could have been able to retrieve the pattern on it (in whatever format that may be, magnetic, flash memory, holographic).  Them with they're complex EM language, highly evolved minds, and supercomputers could probably decode it and translate it fairly quickly.  Especially if they scanned what was connected to the data storage device.  They scan the rest of the computers on the ship to see how they work with the dsd, they build their own module to connect to their own computers, they get strange text, it's only a matter of time before they find an alphabet chart and a dictionary somewhere within.  And anyone can read a dictionary, even if they don't speak that language.  They find that this means that, they look up that, and find it means something else, and so on.  They probably have supercomputers to do it for them.  Just like a universal translator from Star Trek, pick out patterns and find out what words are equal to what other words.