[blowfish]

But they can't read a dictionary if they don't know the character set it uses.  And look at how much the Terrans and Vasudans knew by the time they were able to target EDIT: Shivan ships.  Besides, the Shivans really don't have much of a reason to gather data like that.  They are only interested in destroying us.

[Kopachris]

But they can't read a dictionary if they don't know the character set it uses.  And look at how much the Terrans and Vasudans knew by the time they were able to target Ships.  Besides, the Shivans really don't have much of a reason to gather data like that.  They are only interested in destroying us.

That's a stereotype.  Just because they try to destroy our home planet, you think that all they care about is destroying us.   They could just be xenophobic to the extreme.

Like I said before, they scan us to figure out how to read the data, they find an alphabet chart with audio/video files to find common "pronunciation".  They know how letters and words are pronounced, they find a dictionary.  Plus, you don't have to be able to read a character set to know that this is equal to that.  They just find a big table of what looks like words and definitions, and cross-reference.  They probably have giant supercomputers to do it for them.  Your Terran/Vasudan analogy brings up a point.  How did the Vasudans learn how to speak English and vice/versa?

[blowfish]

Oh... i meant to say by the time they were able to target Shivan ships.

And what I mean is that the Shivans don't really have a reason to attempt to learn our language.  It seems pretty obvious that they are intent on destroying us, and don't care how many of their own they loose in the process.  The only real reason I could think of why they would want to understand our language and hack our computers would be learn and cheat our tactical deployments etc, in which case they would have PWNED us big time in the Great War.

And I don't think you can really do what you said they could do.  They have NO knowledge whatsoever of how our language even works, if it is characters represent sounds, words, or ideas, the Shivans may not even have a concept of a complete sentence, never mind how we structure them.  Look at how hard it was for us to get the ancient egyptian language before the Rosetta stone.  And that was a human language.  You really can't assume that the Shivans work at all like we do.  That includes how they think, how their computers work (or if they have a unit that can actually be defined as a computer), etc.

And BTW, I don't think they care about pronouncing our language, especially since they communicate in quantum pulses to begin with.  Even if they wanted to learn it in the first place...

[Flaming_Sword]

*wonders how long he should wait before pointing people at the intel techroom entries of his mod*

[Getter Robo G]

 

My take on the Shivan POV... (enjoy!) 


Shivan Commander: "<Screeeee!! Scree Screee...>"

[ops! I forgot to translate for Human players]...

"Listen up pilots! We (The Race) are designating our opponents as Fleshbags! Order of battle to follow..."

"Ok, it looks like they fly various configurations of Boxes. As we know Boxes themselves are relatively harmless, however armed with weaponry they can pose a danger to us!"

"Call me racist, but they all look alike to me so all enemy wings will be called Box Wing 1 - whatever)

Notes on the Hecate:
"One ship of unusual design deviation is the one we call 'Roving Herbavore' and one of the few instances of artistic thought."

Notes on the Colossus:
"This POS, it made us laugh until it fired at us. No sooner as we got a target lock and were ready to blow it the afterlife it DESTORYED ITSELF??? Ironic since the ship itself looks like an over sized weapon, (apparently a flawed one). No doubt the manufacturer was tortured and executed for gross incompetence..."

 

[Kopachris]

My take on the Shivan POV... (enjoy!) 


Shivan Commander: "<Screeeee!! Scree Screee...>"

[ops! I forgot to translate for Human players]...

"Listen up pilots! We (The Race) are designating our opponents as Fleshbags! Order of battle to follow..."

"Ok, it looks like they fly various configurations of Boxes. As we know Boxes themselves are relatively harmless, however armed with weaponry they can pose a danger to us!"

"Call me racist, but they all look alike to me so all enemy wings will be called Box Wing 1 - whatever)

Notes on the Hecate:
"One ship of unusual design deviation is the one we call 'Roving Herbavore' and one of the few instances of artistic thought."

Notes on the Colossus:
"This POS, it made us laugh until it fired at us. No sooner as we got a target lock and were ready to blow it the afterlife it DESTORYED ITSELF??? Ironic since the ship itself looks like an over sized weapon, (apparently a flawed one). No doubt the manufacturer was tortured and executed for gross incompetence..."

 

Yeah, that'll work!  Lol, roving herbivore.  What do they say about Vasudan fighters, which look more like mashed clay?

It actually makes a lot of sense.  They laugh at our pitiful existence and gesticulate their offers to free us from our smallness and misery and send us to their idea of an afterlife.  On the other hand, since we find them terrorizing, we name them after scary stuff, like dragons, manticores, and basilisks.

[Getter Robo G]

Shivan update:
------------------

[Thoughts on ETAK]

"Ok troops, there was a disturbance in a nebula on the edge of what we call 'Fleshbag Space'. A signal was intercepted that at first we thought was the ramblings of an autistic child ("Time for Wapner, Time for Wapner").
 
  Apparently the 'Fleshbags' have cobbled together some sort of primitive communications device and have tried to get our attention. We didn't get more out of them as more Fleshbags open fired on them and our retrieval team sent to investigate. Currently we have them in a holding cell until we figure out what to do with them. Hopefully it won't be long and we can get their smell off the walls..."

[FreeSpaceFreak]

"Ok troops, there was a disturbance in a nebula on the edge of what we call 'Fleshbag Space'. A signal was intercepted that at first we thought was the ramblings of an autistic child ("Time for Wapner, Time for Wapner").

Do they have them?

[Colonol Dekker]

Wapner :huh:

[Flaming_Sword]

Provisional retexture of SCa Shiamak:

[Titan]

isn't that the shivan carrier from inferno? if so, looking good   
too bad it's still, well, a giant worm   

[Droid803]

I think that is the idea of the SCa Shaimak. Giant Worm that spits out seemingly endless hordes of fighters.

[Flaming_Sword]

Feel free to suggest your own retextures if you think they look better. Mine is provisional and could change, after all.

[Droid803]

Looks more like a Volcano/Lava Worm than a Shivan Worm now...Could use more red lights along the sides IMO.
Although...it does look pretty awesome in another way right now, as in, in-line with the jump gate

Btw, did you make that lava-y texture?

[Flaming_Sword]

The texture is in vanilla FS2, as well as the mediavps.

[Flaming_Sword]

Amended Shiamak retexture:

Retextured RBC - PCS2 screenshots: original on right, new on left
(mentioned here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,52937.msg1069707.html)

[Kopachris]

Anyone know of a good Shivan texturing tutorial with Photoshop or GIMP?  I want to try out making a new Shivan fighter.  Got it (mostly) planned out on metric graph paper.  10m about the right size for a Dragon-ish fighter?

[Titan]

ya, i think so. about that's right for a fighter.

[Flaming_Sword]

Dragon is 16m long, most fighters are 20-30m.

[Droid803]

Annihilator looks good. I would have kept the Rakshasa-plating "heat sink" and the Ravan/Demon grey texture though. The cannon points are epic.

btw, PCS2 can render like that O_o...I can't even get it to read the textures in my mod directory >.> I suck.

==
Yea, might want to double the size of that little fighter, or at least 1.5x it.