[Koth]

Or mabe to keep the GTVA from bothering the Sathanas Fleet while they were doing their Subspace stuff.

[Jeff Vader]

Possibly the smaller Shivan ships were merely being a nuisance in order to take as many Terrans and Vasudans with them as they could.

Possible... Or they didn't want any witnesses to survive...

Then they weren't doing too good a job.

[WMCoolmon]

Possibly the smaller Shivan ships were merely being a nuisance in order to take as many Terrans and Vasudans with them as they could.

Possible... Or they didn't want any witnesses to survive...

Now there's an interesting thought. I misread that as being about the supernova rather than the smaller ships. What if the point of the supernova was to simply block access to the GTVA without protracted war, or the risk of spies poking around? The GTVA clearly can't survive very well in the nebula, but the Shivans apparently can. It gives them a decisive 'home field advantage' in enemy-held territory.

It's doubtful whether the Shivans could survive in the supernova remnants either, but they could certainly survive there before the GTVA could, given present levels of tech. Also, it might be a more permanent solution to them than blowing up a node, because they can forsee just how many notes the GTVA could discover in the system if they improved their jump drives to take advantage of more unstable nodes.

[karajorma]

It's doubtful whether the Shivans could survive in the supernova remnants either

I'm not too sure of that to be honest. real nebulae might be hot but the particle density tends to be really, really low (The particle density of a nebula is actually lower than that of the best vacuum we can make). I'd want to hear from an astronomer really but it might be that instead of being so hot ships instantly melt that the Capella nebula doesn't have enough energy to boil a kettle.

[Snail]

I'm not too sure of that to be honest. real nebulae might be hot but the particle density tends to be really, really low (The particle density of a nebula is actually lower than that of the best vacuum we can make).

I've heard the absolute opposite of that sometime ago. But I'll assume that you're right.

[karajorma]

Even if we've made a lot of progress since I first heard that fact I'm not far wrong. At most a couple of orders of magnitude. Which at this scale might not even make the difference between an ultra high vacuum and an extremely high vacuum.