[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Charismatic
Well from what iv read into the Shivan Manifesto, IIRC it says we basically won the FS2 war, 2nd great war, for the most part.

The 'no fighter shields' was based on, oh. they did have shields in fs1. Hmm. Well from the shield strength, it seems it was recently developed, thus they didnt have it back then.

You are right about the ancients, sorry for my mis calculation.

The Shivan manifesto is one members best guess at what the Shivans are.  It's about as valid as factual evidence in this arguement as the Capellan BBQ theory.

In terms of 'winning' FS2, I look at it this way - who retreated, and who completed their primary aim?  And insofar as I can see it, the GTVA retreated (abandoned a key system), and the Shivans achieved their aim of doing something to the Capella star.  Any presumption of the Shivans winning is based on presuming their intent and reasons for destroying that star; but it's only a presumption.

Shield strength in Shivan FS1 fighters isn't really a valid point, because it relies on a assumption of how fast Shivans develop their technology*.  They may simply be very slow at it (lack of threats), they may have only sent a weak force (or scouting force), or they simply may not care about fighters enough to shield them.

 If GTVA shielding was directly developed from shield tech recovered from the Shivans, it's not unlikely it would be of similar strength; so a direct vis-a-vis comparison between the GTVA technology and Shivan shields isn't particularly useful in determining the relative rates of development.

*The Shivans don't seem to be very keen on technological advancement atall, really.  Perhaps they simply don't need to - if they've been destroying 'young' races for centuries, they may have never encountered anything enough to force an advancement.  It's possible they've not even advanced since the time of the Ancients war, and the presence of beams, etc, on the FS2 ships is simply because they're a different force with a different purpose to the FS1 fleet.

[Kie99]

The Shivan Manifesto

The Complete and Revised Shivan Manifesto

[Nuclear1]

I'm completely confused by 5/6 of the posts in this thread. Aldo, Kara, and WM are making some sense, but not anything else.

For one:

I think Kie is signaling about the religion and tech thing.
I think the [A] are someplace. Always thought it'd be neat to see them again.

If the [A] were inplace of the shivans, we (depending on their size) probably would kick their ass. Why? Look:

1)Ancients got WIPED without a fight, by Shivans.
Eh? The monologues clearly indicate that the Ancients fought until the end - why do you think they were working on subspace tracking? (the had no ships left to use it by then)
As I remember "They were like the others, but they were not like the others. They were the same: hideous, resisting, fighting. But these were not like the others. These did not die.

They also imply a larger Shivan force with multiple shielded destroyers, IIRC.

2)Shivans had no shield tech on fighters.
Absolutely no evidence to support that - for eithe the Shivans or Anicents.
Especially after how the Ancients said the Shivans had them. "In subspace they cannot use their shields, and into subspace they can be tracked."
3)We kicked shivan ass in Great W.2. We actually pushed them back.
]Um.... the Shivans captured 2 GTVa systems, 'decimated' the fleet (according to end cutscene), destroyed the Colossus, and supernova-ed a GTVA system star, killing millions+

Scarcely got their ass kicked, then.
Agreed with aldo. We had a Phyrric victory at best. The biggest we ever won was destroying the first Sath (but even that with moderate damage to the Colossus) and the destruction of the first Ravana.

4)Acients must not be as powerfull as they seem.
Their system spanned an area far larger than the GTVA, developed subspace tracking technology, and also node-stabilising tech. The former implies great strength of numbers at the least, and the latter 2 imply higher technology levels than the GTVA
The Ancients were a whole lot more powerful than anyone in Freespace could have imagined. Like aldo said, huge empire, expanding all the way into Altair and Delta Serpentis. They could've killed the Shivans; they just figured it out too late.
5)So that concludes we would beat ancients or atleast hold them off.
Um, no it doesn't, because 1-4 are either completely wrong or simply unfounded.
Exactly what he said.

Why hold them off\beat them?

1)Acients did not posess any great wonderfull technology that was so good it stopped the shivans, so they had no trick up their sleev that would beat Terrans but not Shivans.
Neither did the GTVA... until they found the Ancients legacy - the information how to track and destroy the Lucifer. In other words, 'we' built on what the Ancients had done - it was Anceint tech, not GTVA, that allowed the Lucifer to be destroyed
Exactly. The Ancients, by contrast, were exactly what saved Earth from the Shivans. And had the Ancients survived up until 2335, they certainly would have extremely advanced technology by then. The last Ancients were killed off 8000 years before the times of Freespace. Effectively, they could have conquered the human race easily while we were still, as kara said, using sticks and stones. It's obvious that the Ancients had ventured into the Galaxy; Altair, Delta Serpentis, in addition to the contact they had with the Vasudans during their early years.

[/b]

[Ghostavo]

If the Shivans didn't exist in FreeSpace, the Ancients would have been wiped out like countless other races...

*insert nine cities of Troy, and the stretch back to infinity speech thingy by Admiral Bosch*

[TopAce]

Sorry everyone, I forgot about the Ancients while making this thread.
People are right that then, we would face the Ancients instead of Shivans.
A strange theory, that we might name the Ancients as Destroyers, and eventually as Shivans.

[WMCoolmon]

The Ancients were a whole lot more powerful than anyone in Freespace could have imagined. Like aldo said, huge empire, expanding all the way into Altair and Delta Serpentis. They could've killed the Shivans; they just figured it out too late.

"When the Destroyers came for us we attacked. Never had we been defeated. They were like the others - strange, hideous, resisting, fighting. But these were not like the others - they did not die."

To me it sounds like that the Ancients began expanding from lack of resources. "..and before long, we could see the day when our reachable systems would have been exploited." They continued expanding out of this necessity. Along the way they found other life, and either wiped it out or forced it into slavery - "And we saw other advanced life, and we subued it -- or we crushed it."

Finally, one day, the Shivans just attacked one of the Ancients' colony worlds, near the fringe. Because it wasn't a big deal - they had others - the Ancients retreated and assumed that, like them, the Shivans would be sated with that system for a time before moving on. But they weren't, and so began the great Shivan-Ancient war.

However, the Shivans were only interested in the Ancients. They didn't wipe out the Vasudans, who I suspect were part of the 'subdued'.

The Ancients were a greedy race, but their story is meant to parallel that of the GTA/PVN in FS1. "We made our first retreat - we could forego one system." is very similar to the Shivans' attack on R128 and the subsequent denial by Adm. Wolfe. They discovered where the Vasudans' planet was and wiped it out - "And our world was gone", "There will be little legacy left...".. FS2 takes off on an interesting note, that the humans only really bought themselves some time - which in a sense they did. They just used the Ancients' data to save themselves, they didn't actually achieve anything themselves.

There are a lot of undertones in the cutscenes that aren't carried over into the FS2 missions, come to think of it...perhaps this is why everyone says FS1 has 'better atmosphere'.

Edit: and the guy who wrote the Manifesto probably went on to become a politician. No, an activist judge. *Dodges thrown object from Kazan*

[karajorma]

Having had to listen to all of the cutscenes over and over again in order to transcribe them for the FAQ I'd say that there are tonnes of undertones in FS2 as well. They're just different ones

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by aldo_14
the Vasudan Typhon apparently was far superior to the Orion, and doubtless they would have produced their own advancements - we just don't see the full picture of Vasudan tech in FS1.

Erm...no..No where was it mentioned that the Typhon was superior.
It is mentioned that when it first appeared in battle, the GTD Eisenhower and it's batttle group were destroyed. However, this doesn't mean by a lone Typhon, but by a vasudan battlegroup with tons of fighters...and prolly in an ambush..

By pure stats, the Orion would win (more Terran Heavy Turrets)

[karajorma]

Where the Aten cruiser failed, the Typhon succeeded well past expectations.  The Typhon is an incredible work of engineering and the model of Vasudan technology.  When the first one was sighted at the Vega Engagement, it was laughed at by our technicians as a foolish display of non utilitarian design.  The subsequent destruction of the GTD Eisenhower and the total decimation of the 4th fleet changed their minds very quickly.  The Typhon should never be underestimated.  It wields massive weaponry, and has more armor plating than any Terran Destroyer.  Its only known weakness is its turret armor, which is significant, but lower than expected.  In the two years since this ship first appeared, we have only managed to destroy two of them.
The Typhon is considered a Class A threat to any ships within the same system.  Do not engage without backup.

Seems to support Aldo's conclusion. Especially when you consider that IIRC both ships carry exactly the same number of fighters and everyone is saying that the Terrans have the edge there.

[Ghost]

Yeah, Trash.. Typhon is way more awesome, and more powerful... that's just how it is.

[pyro-manic]

Without the Shivans, the Ancients would most likely have subverted the Vasudans (IIRC it is hinted that they had some influence in the pre-historic stage of Vasudan development) and humans as well - Sol isn't that far away from Vasuda after all. However, this has been talked about already, so I'll suggest some other possibilities.

Even without the Shivans, it's possible that the Ancients would not have survived to the FS time period (24th century). They may have been destroyed or reduced to insignificance by another race, further afield than is known about (we don't even know the extent of the Ancients' own empire, let alone the Shivan sphere of influence and beyond), or they may have wiped themselves out in a civil war or fallen victim to a disease encountered on an alien planet. Or they may have "perfected" their technology and Sublimed (read some Iain M Banks books ), or simply have dwindled away over the millenia. This would leave the situation for a Terran-Vasudan conflict to occur.

Without the Shivans, there could be other advanced, space-capable species around. Whether these would be peaceful or aggressive is, of course, unknown (we know nothing of the races suppressed by the Ancients, or destroyed by the Shivans), but they may well have made themselves known to the Terran and Vasudan empires at some point. Venom's Unx seems to be an example of one of these old races, though he's kept rather quiet about it up till now, so I doubt he'll ever tell us what it was for...

With regard to the T-V War, it is obvious that the war was a stalemate by 2335, with neither side having made any significant territorial gains for some years (Operation Thresher being the most recent major battle, even that resulting in no major gain for either side). I suspect that the economies of both empires were on the verge of collapse, and the people were probably heartily sick of war by that point anyway. One side or the other would eventually have to open negotiations for peace, and a treaty would have been signed at some point.

[Ghost]

Well, this is outside of canon, but I remember seeing somebody's starmap of the entire universe, not just GTVA controlled space... I'm not sure where, though. So if you used that in your conjectures, we would know the Shivan sphere of influence.


What I'd like to know is why don't the Shivans leave a destroyer in each system after they vanquish a species? That way, when some uppity race decides they're going to travel in subspace, and the Shivans wake up, they can just smash them.

[NGTM-1R]

That might not always work. Subspace flight, presumably, predates the formation of the GTA, so there would be multitude of armed factions about in all likelyhood. Weapons tech would not be as advanced, but ironically enough, the first weapon to actually be effective against Shivan fighters that the GTA and PVN deployed was a bit of a step backwards technologically (from chemical lasers to kinetic-impact cannon). And there would be a greater total number of those weapons then if the race were a single united front.

I think that's why the Shivans attacked when they did in FS1. There is a period of vunerablity after the unifying of a race where they are actually not as powerful, militarily, as they were seperate. The Shivans tried to exploit this...but they got it all wrong, because the Terran-Vasudan War was ongoing.

[TopAce]

Because Shivans are like the Predators. They like interfering in the middle of a chaos.

[Kie99]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
That might not always work. Subspace flight, presumably, predates the formation of the GTA, so there would be multitude of armed factions about in all likelyhood.

No there wouldn't, the Shivans would have destroyed them.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
That might not always work. Subspace flight, presumably, predates the formation of the GTA, so there would be multitude of armed factions about in all likelyhood. Weapons tech would not be as advanced, but ironically enough, the first weapon to actually be effective against Shivan fighters that the GTA and PVN deployed was a bit of a step backwards technologically (from chemical lasers to kinetic-impact cannon). And there would be a greater total number of those weapons then if the race were a single united front.

I think that's why the Shivans attacked when they did in FS1. There is a period of vunerablity after the unifying of a race where they are actually not as powerful, militarily, as they were seperate. The Shivans tried to exploit this...but they got it all wrong, because the Terran-Vasudan War was ongoing.

I remember someone from V saying that the Shivans were* attracted to conflict, like locusts to crops.  It's possible the Shivans don't have any logic towards this - perhaps there is simply a certain point that, whenever a species is advanced enough, it will inevitably fight with another.  Perhaps the Shivans are the extreme of that - they fight everyone.  Maybe they even are trying to escape their own nature (perhaps Capella was destroyed in a mass act of suicide - incredibly unlikely & implasuible theory, of course - or to create a gateway to somewhere the Shivans could be alone in).

*or maybe not that explicitly; he at least suggested that was plausible.

Incidentally, RE: the Unx, my understanding was

Spoiler:

The Unx never left their own system; their weaponry, IIRC, did, but the Unx ships simply never travelled via subspace and thus never attracted attention from the Shivans.

Although I have a feeling Venom changed the Unx several times, so that could be bollocks.  His OtT story was interesting, though.

Oh, and I took my view that Ancients kept fighting simply from the existance of a weapon against the Lucifer (the subspace tracker) - even up to the point where all their ships were destroyed, they had been working on ways to try and win the war, or just survive.

An interesting aside, of course, is that the technology was discovered on Altair (IIRC); if that's not the Ancients homeworld (and it seems unlikely), then it raises a question as to why they were still there - after all
And we retreated to our home system.
Abandoned our empire.
We believed at home we would be safe.

So were they left behind?  If so - and they seemingly survived long enough to develop the tech - then were they close to the Ancients homeworld?  (and, I wonder - has Vasuda Prime been devastated twice.....?)

[TopAce]

I remember someone from V saying that the Shivans were* attracted to conflict, like locusts to crops.

Independance Day!
(Thinking of the Movie)

[aldo_14]

I'm not thinking of that movie, if that's what you're saying.  It was written on a post on the FS mailing list (albeit I added the locust analogy).

[karajorma]

Originally posted by aldo_14
An interesting aside, of course, is that the technology was discovered on Altair (IIRC); if that's not the Ancients homeworld (and it seems unlikely), then it raises a question as to why they were still there - after all
And we retreated to our home system.
Abandoned our empire.
We believed at home we would be safe.

So were they left behind?  If so - and they seemingly survived long enough to develop the tech - then were they close to the Ancients homeworld?  (and, I wonder - has Vasuda Prime been devastated twice.....?)

I've always taken it that the Ancients on Altair were the survivors of the Shivan attack. In the same way that Vasuans managed to escape the destruction of their planet.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma


I've always taken it that the Ancients on Altair were the survivors of the Shivan attack. In the same way that Vasuans managed to escape the destruction of their planet.

Ah, but why Altair?  Other thing is that Altair itself we destroyed by Shivan weapons - but the monologues indicate that the Ancients retreated until their homeworld was the last destroyed.

It's a... curiousity, I think.