[TrashMan]

Also, evolutionary evidence:

Shivans can survive in empty space.

For a while. Not more than a human in space suit can I suppose. Were they "modified" by someone else, or did they do it to themselves, now that is the question.

I guess the former, since the shivans don't really look like they can make delicate things themselves - they got 5 massive arms with 3 massive finger things - very bad fine manipulators.

[General Battuta]

No, actually. The Shivans are both the Great Destroyers and the Great Preservers.

I'd say they are neither.

What's the point of saving somebody if you are going to kill him a few days later? You're not really saving him, now are you?
Neither are they the great perservers.

They are just...shivans. Strange, mysterious, xenophobic aliens.

Wow, you kind of missed the point of FS1. The theory was that the Shivans destroy fast-expanding races so that other, younger races will get a chance to live. The Ancients wiped out dozens of species they encountered; the Shivans prevent that kind of business.

That's one theory, at least.

[TrashMan]

And once those younger races expand, then they destroy them for the next one..etc, etc.

Like I said - that's not really saving them. More like raising (saving) cattle so you can slaughter them once they are no longer useful.

[NGTM-1R]

Well, they COULD be.

The problem is that the system is grossly flawed then.

[Retsof]

they got 5 massive arms with 3 massive finger things - very bad fine manipulators.

I had a theory that perhaps the Shivans come in castes.  What we saw were warior Shivans.  There could be engineer Shivans for the finer tasks and worker Shivans for the heavy lifting.

[General Battuta]

And once those younger races expand, then they destroy them for the next one..etc, etc.

Like I said - that's not really saving them. More like raising (saving) cattle so you can slaughter them once they are no longer useful.

Unless there are races that don't behave this way.

[NGTM-1R]

While we have a very small sample size, counting the Shivans all answers point to "no such thing".

[General Battuta]

Huh? Of the races we know of, two (Terran and Vasudan) have managed to achieve meaningful coexistence...

[NGTM-1R]

Yes, because the Shivans said "adapt or die, kids". I was more meaning along the lines of the subspace entry = Shivany death point of view. But more to this point, one does not live long enough to become a sentient species without the capacity for violence. It is, I think, a natural extension of evolution: either to defend yourself from the predators, or you were already the apex predator and so came with it anyways. Once developed, it is too useful to throw away. Such is the nature of technological sentience.

The alternative is to unite against an outside force. Now, the Shivans served that role for the Terrans and Vasudans, but they've been around a lot longer than that and there's no evidence that anyone else ever survived them. FreeSpace presents a reality where situations like the T-V War are apparently very uncommon. They thus represent a grossly flawed system for preservation.

[General Battuta]

Well, if they're supposed to be the third party in the Robber's Cave scenario, that'd definitely be an interesting twist.

As for the 'capacity for violence' deal, Larry Niven talked about that a bit in his Known Space story. Arguments have been made that aggression is useful only in moderation.

[Killer Whale]

When you think of all the technology required, chance and innovation. Perhaps many races will never reach space for millions of years and perhaps the vast majority may never reach the technology for sub-space.

[TrashMan]

Unless there are races that don't behave this way.

But they all do.
Expansion and growth are normal for any intelligent species. Sooner or later, space travel will happen. Then comes the shivies and kill you.

[General Battuta]

Respectfully, you have no basis whatsoever for that statement, whether in the Freespace universe or the real world.

[Kolgena]

Haha, this talk about Shivans being preservers till a race gets too big really makes them out to be the universe's lawnmowers

[Mobius]

What's wrong with that statement? FS1's Endgame cutscene was pretty clear on the matter.

The unknown protagonist says that the Shivans are both the Great Destroyers and the Great Preservers, but IMO that's more a poetic view rather than an actual analysis. The Shivans act in a way that may be interpreted as the will to preserve the universe.

I wouldn't say that no advanced species would start colonizing space, either. Wheter or not they do that with the intent to kill and subdue other species is all but unknown to the Shivans: therefore, it's quite impossible to assume that they act as "moderators". How did they know what was behind the Ancient Empire?

[TrashMan]

Respectfully, you have no basis whatsoever for that statement, whether in the Freespace universe or the real world.

Oh no?

Any intelligent species will sooner or later leave it's homeworld and spread among the stars. It HAS to to survive. Even something as big as a planet is rather fragile on a galactic scale.

[Snail]

I wouldn't say that no advanced species would start colonizing space, either. Wheter or not they do that with the intent to kill and subdue other species is all but unknown to the Shivans: therefore, it's quite impossible to assume that they act as "moderators". How did they know what was behind the Ancient Empire?

An extension of the Great Preservers/Great Destroyers duality is Bosch's "Cities of Troy" observation, where there were countless numbers of galactic empires, stretching back to the beginning of time, and each was destroyed by the Shivans only to be replaced by another empire.

Any intelligent species will sooner or later leave it's homeworld and spread among the stars. It HAS to to survive. Even something as big as a planet is rather fragile on a galactic scale.

That's a pretty baseless statement. I sincerely doubt that every species in the universe would chose to leave their homeworld once they had the capacity.

(Oh, and just to nitpick, it's not space travel necessarily. The Ancients had been spreading across the stars long before the Shivans came. They had even been using subspace for a while before the Shivans showed up.)

[General Battuta]

Respectfully, you have no basis whatsoever for that statement, whether in the Freespace universe or the real world.

Oh no?

Any intelligent species will sooner or later leave it's homeworld and spread among the stars. It HAS to to survive. Even something as big as a planet is rather fragile on a galactic scale.

Pure, unsubstantiated fantasy. Evolution is a greedy search algorithm. It finds local optimae, not global optimae.

[Enioch]

Meh...

I think I'm with TM on this one. I'm not saying that every intelligent species will leave its home planet on its own, but that it will be forced to do so. Think about it. What will happen if it doesn't?

A) A big chunk o' meteor is bound to come around sooner or later and blow you to smithereens. That's a certainty. It's just a matter of time. A few million years? That's nothing on an evolutionary time scale. The dinosaurs were around for more than that. (and look what happened  )

B) To avoid (A) you must:

       i) have some way of blowing the rock away before it hits the surface. If that is the case, you've left your planet's surface, even with robotic probes, or missiles, or whatever. The tech to leave your planet is there. QED

             or

       ii) Figure out some way to survive after it hits and causes impact winter and so on and so forth. If that happens:

C) Sooner or later, an expanding stellar empire (like the Ancients or the GTVA) will come knocking on your door. Again, a certainty, just a matter of time. It might be i) friendly (in which case you get to be buddies and share techs) or b) hostile (in which case you need to develop space tech to defend yourself. If you don't, you're gonna get beaten to a pulp from orbit).

D) If you share techs and enter into some kind of alliance, in order to compete with the other species economically and politically, you will need to expand.

So, it's fly-where-no-man-has-gone-before...or die.

I think. 

If you can point out any flaws in the argument, I'd be glad to debate them...

[General Battuta]

Yeah, sure, here's a flaw in the form of an alternative scenario:

The species never gets into space flight and just sits around on its planetary surface until extinction. For all we know, this might be exactly what plenty of species do. It might be what we end up doing.

Both of you are making the assumption that species (driven by their evolutionary imperatives) will make rational choices in order to seek global optimum survival strategies. I don't think there's a strong case for that view.