Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Odd Writings on December 14, 2005, 06:53:42 am
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...other than that they have a spiffy name ( A cat I know for over 7 years is called Shiva), I am wondering a bit.
They have never taken a planet; just nodes. Now what I wonder about is...what if they are a nomadic race? What would their mothership(s) look like? I mean...if it is a ship in which Sathanases can dock, how big would it be?
Could we even damage it? Even if we let the Colossus ram into the thing, would it not just make a small dent?
Next thing: The size of the fleet.
They have thrown away several Sathanas class vessels. What I worry about now is this:
If they can ditch these ships as if they are worth not much, then how many of these things are there?
Would we ever have a chance? Why did they not eliminate the GTVA? They have the firepower; the Sathanas Fleet appeared out of nowhere, and disappeared without a trace. Other than those that have been annihilated by the shockwave and what little we know from the scans we have made.
...any thoughts on this?
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Why would a mothership have to be big, rather than just lots of, say, 5km long ships?
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Exactly. Which is why I put the "(s)" thingy in there. >>; they could be mere berths for the ships, and have colony ships about too.
But the image of a fleet of humongous ships that make a Sathanas look puny plays more to the imagination, right? however insane and silly the idea is.
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I'd like to share few thoughts too...
First, does anyone have any idea, what is behind the third knossos portal, and what was the system in the "DIVE, DIVE, DIVE" mission ?
It could be reasonable to assume, that like the first portal, the second and third were also contructed by the ancients, but for what purpose ?
How many of those devices exists in total ?
Some thoughts about the Shivan fighters, are they actually piloted by the shivans or are they merely "extensions" or drones...
Their fighters look very crampy from the outside, frankly I don't get how the shivans can fit in there..
Why did the first portal led to the nebula ? I could be mistaken here, but didn't it lead to the place where the ancients first encountered with the shivans. So, why is there nebula now ? Nebula, that is remant of the supernova....Was that Nova caused by the shivans too, who knows ?
If that is correct, why the Shivans are intentionally creating supernovas, you have seen the Sathanas do their true job. Command speculated that the Shivans were powering up a new kind of weapon, if so, was the system beyond the first portal another example of Shivan handiwork.
Then at the end of FS2, it was said that the destruction of the star could be the bridge between our universe and theirs. If they are originating from other universe, they must have fleet and power beyond description...
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I'd like to share few thoughts too...
First, does anyone have any idea, what is behind the third knossos portal, and what was the system in the "DIVE, DIVE, DIVE" mission ?
It could be reasonable to assume, that like the first portal, the second and third were also contructed by the ancients, but for what purpose ?
How many of those devices exists in total ?
Maybe the fact that Knossos close jump nodes instead of creating them. Possibly the ancients used it to lock away certain systems, maybe a last ditch effort to save their butts, or hiding something where the shivans couldn't find it.
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I'd like to share few thoughts too...
First, does anyone have any idea, what is behind the third knossos portal, and what was the system in the "DIVE, DIVE, DIVE" mission ?
We don't have any clues. The literature says that GTVA archeologists are hoping to find an Ancient map of jump nodes that would tell us.
It could be reasonable to assume, that like the first portal, the second and third were also contructed by the ancients, but for what purpose ?
How many of those devices exists in total ?
It's theorized that Knossos portals are used to stabilize unstable jump nodes. The Ancients may have been more sensitive to jump node irregularities than the GTVA, or they may have wanted to expand their network artificially after exploring all the stable jump nodes they had. We have no idea how many more portals there are, though The Scroll of Atankharzim (http://scroll.hard-light.net/index.html) is about the discovery of another.
Some thoughts about the Shivan fighters, are they actually piloted by the shivans or are they merely "extensions" or drones...
Their fighters look very crampy from the outside, frankly I don't get how the shivans can fit in there..
Shivan fighters have been modified to accept Terran pilots, so there must be some sort of cockpit for a living being with instrumentation. It's possible--and this is entirely conjecture--that the Shivans we saw in the Hall Fight were warriors, and there's a seperate 'class' of Shivans with less bulky armor and weaponry for pilots.
Why did the first portal led to the nebula ? I could be mistaken here, but didn't it lead to the place where the ancients first encountered with the shivans. So, why is there nebula now ? Nebula, that is remant of the supernova....Was that Nova caused by the shivans too, who knows ?
That's what's implied. You can read the entry on the Lupus Nebula in the Wiki (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Lupus_Nebula) for more information about the supernova that caused the nebula.
If that is correct, why the Shivans are intentionally creating supernovas, you have seen the Sathanas do their true job. Command speculated that the Shivans were powering up a new kind of weapon, if so, was the system beyond the first portal another example of Shivan handiwork.
Then at the end of FS2, it was said that the destruction of the star could be the bridge between our universe and theirs. If they are originating from other universe, they must have fleet and power beyond description...
The ending cutscene is a subject of much speculation, but we only know as much as we can glean from Petrarch's comments. The MindGames campaign (http://www.3dactionplanet.com/hlp/hosted/mindgames/) has an interesting, if unconventional, take on it.
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What if the Shivans AND their ships are "with technics enhanced Organisms"?
What if those ships are liveforms? And the Shivans are some sort of "micro-organism" for them?
Well... At least the Sathanas looks like a huge BUG...
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I think the nebula beyond the first knossos was the way in which the shivans entered our dimension. Since it is theorized that there are countless different dimensions maybe certain stars have some kind of connection with the ones in other dimensions. This way they can use the stars as "nodes" to other dimensions. The only catch is that they destroy the connected stars when they travel between dimensions.
Possibly the lucifer fleet was a scout looking for stars they could use?
Of course my theory leaves alot of holes but it's an idea.
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Or possibly blowing stars up rips new holes in Subspace, thus allowing the Shivans to move on toward some unknown goal.
Terrans and Ancients could have done nothing more terrible than been in the way ;)
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Double post, I know...
Another thought occured to me and I wanted to check something. In the final video, we see lots of Saths clustered around the Star. Some of them jump out. However, they are NOT in a jump node. Now, as far as I can remember, that means it was an in-system jump? If so, where did they go in-system that would be safe from a Supernova? I know Shivans had more control over Subspace the the GTVA did, but even they had to travel through known arrival and exit points?
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Of course, that's the mystery. I'm convinced that what they did to the star somehow enabled them to jump, well, somewhere. Somewhere not in the system, that's for sure. The games state that the ability to cross into Subspace is highly influenced by gravity, and obviously a star has an awful lot of that, so it makes sense to me that the Shivans could manipulate Subspace in some manner by messing with the star the way they did.
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http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,22279.0.html
This might awnser most your questions.
WARNING: VERY LONG!!!
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I think they must have jumped somewhere else; they might have created an entirely new node. Look how their warp portals are green instead of blue like normal, or teal like the Knossos.
The Shivans origins and motives are best explained in the first game's Ancients monologues. They exist to wipe out species that have grown too powerful and jeapordize the existance of other, more primitive species, to give all forms of life an equal chance. The Ancients and the Terrans (and probably the Vasudans) were all xenocidal, either intentionally or unintentionally, during their colonizations.
Their original origins are totally unknown, but they've been around so long (tens of thousands of years) there's probably nothing but myth and legend left--if the Shivans ever did have a creator or a home planet it's long been forgotten even by them. They became what they are so long ago that it's like they've never known anything else.
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It doesn't ;) As I stated in another thread, that's one persons take on the idea, it's a good piece of writing, but to my mind, it applies too many human characteristics to Shivans ;)
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I'd like to share few thoughts too...
First, does anyone have any idea, what is behind the third knossos portal, and what was the system in the "DIVE, DIVE, DIVE" mission ?
We don't have any clues. The literature says that GTVA archeologists are hoping to find an Ancient map of jump nodes that would tell us.
It could be reasonable to assume, that like the first portal, the second and third were also constructed by the ancients, but for what purpose ?
How many of those devices exists in total ?
It's theorized that Knossos portals are used to stabilize unstable jump nodes. The Ancients may have been more sensitive to jump node irregularities than the GTVA, or they may have wanted to expand their network artificially after exploring all the stable jump nodes they had. We have no idea how many more portals there are, though The Scroll of Atankharzim (http://scroll.hard-light.net/index.html) is about the discovery of another.
*snip*
But maybe they can also block them. FS2 states that the first Knossos leads to a place where the ancients made first contact with the shivans. Maybe they closed the portal to stop the shivans. That's why the Trinity had to activate it, unlike the second one, which seems to be active already (Sathanas entering system, SOC briefing doesn't mention that the 2nd portal had to be activated).
The nebula beyond the portal may as well be a natural nebula, not one caused by the shivans, or one caused by the shivans ages before the ancients, because another race was a threat to them as the GTVA in FS2. Let's accept for a moment that the shivans returned home, possibly to bring reinforcements, by blowing up the Capella star, as proposed in the shivan manifesto (I know, it's not canon, but...). That's quite a desperate move, indicating that the GTVA WAS a threat to them (@ Flipside: they were not afraid, and the shivan manifesto explains this as well). The ancients, on the other hand, were not, the shivans came, they closed a Knossos and left the system. Then the shivans came again, entering normal space somewhere else, circumventing the locked Knossos, and the Ancients retreated etc.. Finally the Shivans got to their homeworld. (this is what the ancient cutscenes suggest)
The point is that if the nebula existed before the ancients, then the gravity of the supernova remnant in the middle wouldn't have been enough to create a stable subspace portal. But the ancients wanted to get there (possibly to mine and expand further), and so they built the first and second Knossos.
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It doesn't ;) As I stated in another thread, that's one persons take on the idea, it's a good piece of writing, but to my mind, it applies too many human characteristics to Shivans ;)
You mentioned fear in the other thread, but the manifesto doesn't apply fear to Shivans.
Firstly, if we accept that the Shivans operate with a hive mentality (something we will accept as true for the purposes of the essay), then we need not necessarily conclude that their reaction at Capella was one of "fear", per se. It would be in error to confuse the notion of "fear" with that of "self-preservation".
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I think they must have jumped somewhere else; they might have created an entirely new node. Look how their warp portals are green instead of blue like normal, or teal like the Knossos.
The Shivans could have jumped to the Gamma Draconis node. Consider this, would the supernova really envelop the whole Capella system in a few minutes?
When the Shivans do jump out in the cutscene, the warp portals are the standard blue.
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Errr... Knn...
To understand the solution, we must observe the problem from the Shivan standpoint. Throughout their incursion, the Shivans gained very little ground against the GTVA. The furthest-encroaching Shivan vessel was the original Sathanas, and it was destroyed in Capella--merely one jump from Gamma Draconis--by the GTVA Colossus. It is likely that the Shivans, in all their destructive fury, had never previously lost a vessel of that magnitude to an enemy. Since they were never able to advance any further than Capella (with the exception of a Shivan force that attacked the Vega-Capella node in the endgame), the Shivans could not know for certain just how many Colossus-class vessels the GTVA had in their ranks. For all they knew, a fleet of the mammoth vessels could have been waiting deep within GTVA territory, waiting to spring a trap on the advancing Shivan fleet. Faced with such uncertain opposition, the Shivans took the only course of action open to them:
They ran away. The Shivans were not attacking the GTVA, but retreating from it.
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I think they must have jumped somewhere else; they might have created an entirely new node. Look how their warp portals are green instead of blue like normal, or teal like the Knossos.
The Shivans could have jumped to the Gamma Draconis node. Consider this, would the supernova really envelop the whole Capella system in a few minutes?
When the Shivans do jump out in the cutscene, the warp portals are the standard blue.
I was just going to say this. Supernova shockwaves travel slower than the speed of light, while subspace jumps are faster than the speed of light. If the Gamma Draconis node is a significant distance (even 1 AU is enough) away from the sun, the Shivans would have sufficient time to jump to the GD node, recharge their drives, and jump out.
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I think they must have jumped somewhere else; they might have created an entirely new node. Look how their warp portals are green instead of blue like normal, or teal like the Knossos.
The Shivans could have jumped to the Gamma Draconis node. Consider this, would the supernova really envelop the whole Capella system in a few minutes?
Of course not, but this is a game. The terrans&vasudans didn't jump out, the rest of the shivan fleet fighting them didn't jump out. In the cutscene, the supernova destroys everything really fast. However, the player does have enough time to jump out, so this is a good point
Errr... Knn...
*snip*
If there is any dominant principle in the animal kingdom, it is to stay alive. This is commonly observed in the "fight or flight" principle, which even humans possess; we either confront an enemy, or run away so that we might live to fight another day. This principle is more complex when applied to a hive society, as generally, there are no individuals; all drones or workers strive for the good of the colony, and may very well be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of that goal. However, this should not lead us to conclude that mass suicide is acceptable by default; if all the drones in a hive society are killed, who will be left to support the hive itself? In Robert Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers, a group of the grotesque "Bugs" (also called Arachnids, the book's main "bad guys") have surrounded a space marine who is shielding himself behind a bulbous "brain bug" which serves as the controlling influence for the hive's workers. The "warrior" Bugs screech in protest and frustration, unable to attack the hiding marine; if they do, they risk killing the brain bug itself, destroying the hive hierarchy and silencing the source of their own commands. In effect, the Bugs would be comitting suicide.
For that reason, you Shivan fans out there should not think of the Shivans as being "afraid" of the GTVA. Rather, you should think of them as regrouping and marshalling their forces instead of risking complete decimation at the hands of a Colossus fleet. They are merely exercising good judgment in the face of the unknown. To paraphrase Heinlein himself, any race that possesses enough skill to construct spacecraft is not stupid.
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Sorry, but that paragraph is inaccurate. The example given is using the effective situation of holding a queen to hostage. No such situation existed at Capella. Ants and Bees, both Hive creatures will perfectly willingly give up their lives in defence of the Hive, and more will just pour into battle, regardless of losses. If you attack the young, then yes, theres a possibility of withdrawal, but even if the Nebula was being created as a nursery for more Shivans, there were no young in-system to our knowledge, and even if there were, why turn the area into a nursery and then retreat?
To suggest that Shivans used anything other than brute force tactics is in contradiction to every encounter with them. Just like bees or ants, they have proved mindlessly devoted to a job once they are doing it, even engaging when massively outnumbered. Take the nebula mission with two corvettes against cruisers, the cruisers didn't stand a chance, yet even then, they were more set on fighting than running away and regrouping with the Ravana to assist the counter-attack.
It also suggests that the Shivans ran away from the Ancients, after all, it's already been more or less taken for granted that the Nebula on the other side of the Knossos portal was created by Shivans. Seems like a bit too much 'regrouping' to be feasible for the destroyers.
Edit : Oh, and one other important fact is that the Ancients never mention the Sathanas. You would have thought they would have mentioned it if they'd encountered ships that destroyed stars. That strongly suggests the Lupus nebula was made after the Ancients left, so there'd be no point to destroying the star if it was simply as a regrouping tactic.
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Sorry, but that paragraph is inaccurate. The example given is using the effective situation of holding a queen to hostage. No such situation existed at Capella. Ants and Bees, both Hive creatures will perfectly willingly give up their lives in defence of the Hive, and more will just pour into battle, regardless of losses. If you attack the young, then yes, theres a possibility of withdrawal, but even if the Nebula was being created as a nursery for more Shivans, there were no young in-system to our knowledge, and even if there were, why turn the area into a nursery and then retreat?
Should've snipped that example, it's not accurate, yes.
My main problem with Capella is that the shivans go after homeworlds (at least in FS1). They probably know that Capella is not the terran homeworld, even though it is an important colony. Then why in the name of Lucifer do they annihilate an entire system, losing several valuable juggernaughts AND destroying the jump points to GTVA space as a side effect (we don't know much about subspace, but IMO destroying a star destroys the system's jump points as well)?? Terran losses because of the supernova were not that great. The refugees were mostly already out, and the fleet was mostly already destroyed.
To suggest that Shivans used anything other than brute force tactics is in contradiction to every encounter with them. Just like bees or ants, they have proved mindlessly devoted to a job once they are doing it, even engaging when massively outnumbered. Take the nebula mission with two corvettes against cruisers, the cruisers didn't stand a chance, yet even then, they were more set on fighting than running away and regrouping with the Ravana to assist the counter-attack.
Taranis retreating. Lucifer tracking it to prevent terrans from acquiring technology. Shivans attempting to destroy captured shield generator tech. Lucifer jumping in to stop terran transport from taking ancient technology back to Earth. Shivans destroying homeworlds first to weaken the enemy.
I don't call that brute force. Sure, the Sathanas sitting in Capella waiting to be slaughtered is stupid, but that mission is stupid. Even the debriefing assumes that the Sath had at least one working beam when it entered the battle
That nebula mission was a bit more than two shivan cruisers slaughtered by two terran corvettes. IIRC there were bombers too.
It also suggests that the Shivans ran away from the Ancients, after all, it's already been more or less taken for granted that the Nebula on the other side of the Knossos portal was created by Shivans. Seems like a bit too much 'regrouping' to be feasible for the destroyers.
*snip*
The nebula beyond the portal may as well be a natural nebula, not one caused by the shivans, or one caused by the shivans ages before the ancients, because another race was a threat to them as the GTVA in FS2. Let's accept for a moment that the shivans returned home, possibly to bring reinforcements, by blowing up the Capella star, as proposed in the shivan manifesto (I know, it's not canon, but...). That's quite a desperate move, indicating that the GTVA WAS a threat to them (@ Flipside: they were not afraid, and the shivan manifesto explains this as well). The ancients, on the other hand, were not, the shivans came, they closed a Knossos and left the system. Then the shivans came again, entering normal space somewhere else, circumventing the locked Knossos, and the Ancients retreated etc.. Finally the Shivans got to their homeworld. (this is what the ancient cutscenes suggest)
*snip*
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Indeed, but that's the whole thing isn't it, both descriptions of the Nebula are valid without hard fact.
Taranis retreating was because, iirc (I haven't played FS1 for years) the Terrans were trying to capture it. The Lucifer tracking it is neither running away nor regrouping, I don't think the Lucifer had any trouble finding the Taranis. I also seem to recall the Taranis had nothing to attack with by that stage.
The Lucifer stopping the ancient technology is still an 'attack' theorum, as is the destroying of homeworlds. Regardless of the motivation or thought, the answer to most problems for the Shivans is offence. Destroy the Taranis, Destroy Vasuda prime etc etc. The entire Lucifer fleet act in a different way to the later Shivans, indeed, far more of what would be called 'tactics' are used by the Lucifer, which, I think led to the brain-bug attributes assigned to it :) However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.
With the nebula encounter with the Lysander etc, yes there were other fighters and bombers involved on both sides, but the outcome of the combat was not in doubt from the moment the mission started, admittedly, partly that is plot device, since the Ravanna appearing is the whole purpose of that mission. But then, even the Ravanna, despite being damaged and low on fighters still continues to fight. Even the Sathanas, having lost at least 3 out of 4 of it's beam cannon, and thus reduced to 1/4 to no main firepower still continues on it's mission rather than head back for repairs or any kind of regrouping. It could be argued that the Sathy still thought that nothing could touch it, but what damage could one Sath without main weapons have done? It would have been a war of attrition, and the GTVA would have won in the end, but still it continued,
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:V: implies that the nebula was destroyed by the Shivans, which is bad, the Shivans had no reason to do that if they indeed exterminated the ancients as implied in FS1.
Taranis retreating was because, iirc (I haven't played FS1 for years) the Terrans were trying to capture it.
It was low on supplies and escorts. It was retreating to resupply.
Regardless of the motivation or thought, the answer to most problems for the Shivans is offence.
Well... they did destroy a star system...
However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.
Maybe they couldn't retreat? It takes 80 Saths to do that, as far as we know. The Shivans who come to our space can't return, so they might as well die fighting. OTOH, the fleet in FS2 could return.
One other option is that the Shivans decided to jump to Earth with their entire juggernaught fleet using Capella. This is consistent with the FS1 tactics of going after the homeworld. Maybe they think other species are like them, they have a central mind, and if it's cut off, they become disorganized and easy to defeat. If this is the case, they don't know about the collapse of the Sol node(s), and there's a big surprise awaiting us in Sol. :shaking: :)
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Heh, now that would've be nasty of :v: ;)
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To paraphrase Heinlein himself, any race that possesses enough skill to construct spacecraft is not stupid.
Well... Except of the terrans/vasudans (Command IS stupid after all! VERY stupid...)
SCNR
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Odd thought I just had.
The Shivans do have limited resources, and we have indirect proof.
Consider: they have 80+ Sathanas juggernauts. Yet one for one, Shivan fightercraft tend to be inferior in terms of performance and armament when compared to GTVA. As I have observed before, in the race to build the better gun, the better reactor to power it, the better frame to mount them on, and the better engine to get that frame moving, the GTVA appears to be winning at the fighter level. Also when one considers Shivan destroyers in the main campaign...the same names keep popping up. It's like they don't have too many of them. There is evidence that larger ships were slighted somewhat too. The Ravana isn't a vastly superior design compared to the Demon; the Rakshasa is in the end less effective then the Lilth; the Moloch has trouble with a Deimos or Sobek.
Which leads to the possiblity that those 80+ Sathanas juggernauts may represent the major investment of time, resources, and technology by the Shivans, to the point where developmental work on and production of other ships suffered.
However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.
Insufficent evidence to support that theory. Also counterexamples: ref. the Silent Threat mission Hellfire. The main Shivan fleet was cut off by combined T-V forces in Deneb as they tried to regroup. Your task was to sortie from Deneb to another system, via subspace node, and stop a Shivan cruiser group from getting to Deneb. Presumably a combined assault from both the other system and within Deneb was feared, probably for the purpose of breaking out of Deneb...probably to escape, since there were no notable GTA/PVN targets in the system beyond (otherwise the forces insystem could have dealt with it rather then you).
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They have never taken a planet; just nodes.
We did see the Shivans, what I believe, trying to establish a base in the first 107th Ravens mission when you first meet the Shivans in FS2. You saw a cruiser and tons of cargo units with more cargo ships jumping in. So we know that they at least have rally points
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They have never taken a planet; just nodes.
We did see the Shivans, what I believe, trying to establish a base in the first 107th Ravens mission when you first meet the Shivans in FS2. You saw a cruiser and tons of cargo units with more cargo ships jumping in. So we know that they at least have rally points
Yes, and in FS1, in the mission where you capture the Dragon, it's located at something that seems to be a repair base, altough I might be confusing this mission with one from X-Wing
Odd thought I just had.
The Shivans do have limited resources, and we have indirect proof.
Consider: they have 80+ Sathanas juggernauts. Yet one for one, Shivan fightercraft tend to be inferior in terms of performance and armament when compared to GTVA. As I have observed before, in the race to build the better gun, the better reactor to power it, the better frame to mount them on, and the better engine to get that frame moving, the GTVA appears to be winning at the fighter level. Also when one considers Shivan destroyers in the main campaign...the same names keep popping up. It's like they don't have too many of them. There is evidence that larger ships were slighted somewhat too. The Ravana isn't a vastly superior design compared to the Demon; the Rakshasa is in the end less effective then the Lilth; the Moloch has trouble with a Deimos or Sobek.
Which leads to the possiblity that those 80+ Sathanas juggernauts may represent the major investment of time, resources, and technology by the Shivans, to the point where developmental work on and production of other ships suffered.
However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.
Insufficent evidence to support that theory. Also counterexamples: ref. the Silent Threat mission Hellfire. The main Shivan fleet was cut off by combined T-V forces in Deneb as they tried to regroup. Your task was to sortie from Deneb to another system, via subspace node, and stop a Shivan cruiser group from getting to Deneb. Presumably a combined assault from both the other system and within Deneb was feared, probably for the purpose of breaking out of Deneb...probably to escape, since there were no notable GTA/PVN targets in the system beyond (otherwise the forces insystem could have dealt with it rather then you).
You know I have an idea: what if the shivans are not so good at research? They come from subspace, normal space and everything in it is quite different for them. In FS1 they're quite a bit more advanced than the T-V, but by FS2 the difference diminishes. The BFRed is still better than anything we have, but the best fighter in the game is the terran Mara, modified by GTVA scientists to be better than the original shivan ship!
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Though, to play the devils advocate again, you could easily ask why should the Shivans build one hi-tech ship for one drone when they can build 2 medium tech ships for the same price. If Shivans relied on numbers, that could be an option too.
As for the Silent Threat mission, admittedly, I've never played Silent Threat, but from what I remember, there was a great deal of it that didn't make much sense when compared with the rest of the series?
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Another thought occured to me and I wanted to check something. In the final video, we see lots of Saths clustered around the Star. Some of them jump out. However, they are NOT in a jump node. Now, as far as I can remember, that means it was an in-system jump? If so, where did they go in-system that would be safe from a Supernova? I know Shivans had more control over Subspace the the GTVA did, but even they had to travel through known arrival and exit points?
Okay, I want to take this chance to point out something that may explain this answer that V left for us...
Remember in FS1, how just before Vasuda was destroyed by the Lucifer, that we had two jump points blockaded? Well, if you can remember one of the Command Briefings, it was said that the Lucifer "somehow circumvented then blockade". This suggests that the Lucifer created or found a jump node previously unknown and was able to dodge the blockade. This also may explain how those Sathani escaped during the Capella incident before the Capella star went supernova.
To answer the question about whatever pilots the Shivan fighters, I am almost certain that they are piloted by Shivans. This is for a number of reasons. The only example of craft without Shivan control is the turrets from both FS1 and FS2, as well as the Shivan Communications Units. Notice that these craft are all stationary. The clues from "Hall Fight" and general Shivan information suggests that they can fit into their ships. We can be sure that they are regularly in their ships because of when Admiral Bosch boarded the Shivan transport and the Shivans began to kill the NTF forces on the Iceni. In order to organize a crew of real Shivans from a long distance only a short time after receiving word from "ETAK" would take a longer time to do. Also, as in from "Hall Fight", the ship they are all boarding is Shivan freighter. In game, it looks somewhat small, but it was very large in reality. Don't forget that your own ships are large, too. It would not be hard to squeeze a Shivan into a ship.
I have another theory myself, and I would like some clarification or input about it. Because of the fact that the Shivans have a goal on the galactic, perhaps universal level and duty to destroy races too powerful, then they would have to constantly moving and/or positioned around the galaxy and/or Universe(?). Because of this, is it possible that the Shivans were from different "groups". The Lucifer fleet was a group that had already been damaged of years of fighting, and was carrying out its orders, nonetheless. Because they are in different groups, they perhaps have different technology. This may explain why in FS2, we saw a fleet of Sathani, not a fleet of invulnerable Lucifers.
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Good point, long knight.
To that effect: A thought that just came up.
If the lucy was big and had inpenetratable shields, why then, did the even bigger Sathy not have shields even more impenetratable?
The colossus was deisgned to kill a lucy and its shields, not a sathy. Then why do some people say the sahtys ran from a colossus or for preservation, when a sathy clearly pwnes a colossus?
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I'm personally of the opinion that the collapse of Capella wasn't actually the Shivans fault, and that they were actually just trying to stop the universe from breaking. Capella went boom, but lord only knows what would've happened if the Shivans hadn't used it like that to stabilize the fabric of the universe that the humans and vasudans had been breaking with their primitive jump drives.
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This also may explain how those Sathani escaped during the Capella incident before the Capella star went supernova.
And that they just buggered off through the Gamma Draconis node isn't a good enough explaination why exactly? :p
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And that they just buggered off through the Gamma Draconis node isn't a good enough explaination why exactly?
No, you didn't get the point of my post. We are trying to determine how they did that. We know they esaceped to their other systems like Gamma Draconis. That's a given. We want to know how they did it.
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Through the Gamma Draconis node! I see no reason we need to say they had to use anything other than the same GD node that they and the GTVA had been using.
Earth for instance is 8.3 minutes from the sun at lightspeed. If the GD node was a similar distance from Capella then that gives the Shivans ample time to get the Saths to the node and exit the system. The only hiccup might be if the lead sath in the queue broke down and they all had to go round it at the Saths rather poor top speed :D
Hell if you're feeling really geeky you can do some calculations based on the size of Capalla and its size in Their Finest Hour. No one would take you remotely seriously if you did but it would be canon evidence :D
I'd be willing to bet though that given the large size of Capella and it's rather small appearance in the mission that the GD node appears in that the node is actually further away than that.
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If the lucy was big and had inpenetratable shields, why then, did the even bigger Sathy not have shields even more impenetratable?
Shields become somewhat useless when beams come into play. Also the tactical advantage may have been viewed as lost, with the destruction of the Lucifer in subspace. Or even perhaps the shields weren't primarily design to have that invulnerability effect, and it was a nice side effect. Or the Sath could have had other power requirements ahead of shielding. Like blowing up stars with its freaky-deaky powers.
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Thing is Kara, I don't see, even in 8-10 minutes, anywhere near 80 Saths getting through that Node. Ships seem to arrive a good few K from a Jump node, and the Sathy isn't exactly a speed demon, to get 80 through there in that sort of time is either impossible, or a recipe for the biggest fender-bender in the history of deep-space navigation.
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I gave some thought to that actually. What if the reason why ships arrive that distance is simply to give them time to recharge their engines while not being a moving target?
We already know that fighters can arrive pretty much where ever they want to
"Command, we're five clicks from that corvette! Those coordinates you gave us were bogus! We don't stand a chance of catching that ship!"
You're making the assumption that ships can't warp in where ever they want to. I don't buy that. There's too much evidence that they can (The Iceni for instance jumped in perfectly to get past the Colossus in Endgame and the Colossus itself arrived in a great position to control the node). I reckon the distance from the node is more to do with not being a sitting duck while engines recharge than it ever had to do with an inability to warp in close to the node.
So there is no reason I can see to think that the Shivans couldn't engineer their warp out to allow as many ships to exit as possible. They had all day to prepare and it would also explain why some ships got left behind (Why warp out ships that would just get in the way if they couldn't evacuate all 80 in time).
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I gave some thought to that actually. What if the reason why ships arrive that distance is simply to give them time to recharge their engines while not being a moving target?
Plus, if you don't have control of the jump node, you can't ensure that someone hasn't moved a large asteroid or bomb right next to the jump node, which I imagine could cause problems if you jumped in right next to it.
Also, I think the Ravana in Into the Lion's Den made an intrasystem jump to cut you off from the node (appearing right next to the node). However I'm not 100% sure it wasn't an intersystem jump (the Manifesto seems to imply this).
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Well, the shivans, if they took a minute to think about it, would know that we would not put a mesa bomb in the GD node. We know if detonated inside a node, it will collapse, and we dont like to do that. It only happened twice, and the second time was intentional. Were pussys. We had lots of ppl in the GD system, we would not cut them off from us.
Thinking about it.. i think what would be a great improvement would be, the creation of a "Node Friendly" meson bomb- one allowing us to mine our nodes and detonate them w\o them colapsing. Command would use these all the time (cowards..)
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Plus, if you don't have control of the jump node, you can't ensure that someone hasn't moved a large asteroid or bomb right next to the jump node, which I imagine could cause problems if you jumped in right next to it.
That's a good point. I'll bet Bosch only jumped in that close to the node because he had spies aboard the Colossus (the ones that jammed its weapons) and might have been able to rely on them to give him coordinates that wouldn't result in him slamming into the Colossus or anything else upon arrival. I doubt they jump in close to nodes normally because you can't tell who else is close to one.
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Well, the shivans, if they took a minute to think about it, would know that we would not put a mesa bomb in the GD node. We know if detonated inside a node, it will collapse, and we dont like to do that. It only happened twice, and the second time was intentional. Were pussys. We had lots of ppl in the GD system, we would not cut them off from us.
Thinking about it.. i think what would be a great improvement would be, the creation of a "Node Friendly" meson bomb- one allowing us to mine our nodes and detonate them w\o them colapsing. Command would use these all the time (cowards..)
There's no evidence that a meson bomb detonation in normalspace has any effect on subspace. Except for the destruction of the Knossos, which didn't work all that well, so... :p
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Through the Gamma Draconis node! I see no reason we need to say they had to use anything other than the same GD node that they and the GTVA had been using.
Earth for instance is 8.3 minutes from the sun at lightspeed. If the GD node was a similar distance from Capella then that gives the Shivans ample time to get the Saths to the node and exit the system. The only hiccup might be if the lead sath in the queue broke down and they all had to go round it at the Saths rather poor top speed :D
Hell if you're feeling really geeky you can do some calculations based on the size of Capalla and its size in Their Finest Hour. No one would take you remotely seriously if you did but it would be canon evidence :D
I'd be willing to bet though that given the large size of Capella and it's rather small appearance in the mission that the GD node appears in that the node is actually further away than that.
I'll never buy the argument that the Shivans merely jumped to the GD node and then jumped to the nebula immediately afterwards. It just kills all the mysticism in the final cutscene. :p I'll always stand by the suspicion that Admiral Petrarch stated in his final monologue, that the collapse of the Capella star somehow enabled the Shivans to bridge a connection of much greater magnitude than a normal intersystem jump node. I think that it fits, given the behavior of the Sathanes after they journeyed into Capella. I don't by any means buy the Manifesto's argument that the GTVA was somehow able to scare the Shivans into retreat; not only does that not fit with any of their previous actions, it completely destroys the character that :v: managed to create over two games. The Sathanes that entered Capella never showed even a passing interest in the GTVA forces in-system; only one was deployed elsewhere, to finish off the Colossus, and that took all of 30 seconds or so. The fact that all of them immediately set course toward Capella means to me that that's all they wanted in the first place. The Shivans had to know that we were going to collapse the nodes leading into Capella; as aldo said in another thread, they put up only token resistance, just a few wings of bombers, toward the Bastion, meaning that they didn't particularly care about it.
In my mind, the Shivans needed Capella to accomplish something; they didn't even particularly care that we were in the system. The way in which they jumped out is also somewhat suggestive. A few of the ships appear to continue whatever subspace disturbance they started, while the rest jump out, all of them pointed in the direction of the star. Those few remaining Sathanes then appear to power down, to "die." I've always liked the idea that those Sathanes were holding the portal open long enough for the rest to get through. Who's to say that they hadn't been mostly evacuated beforehand, or that their inhabitants weren't important to the rest of the Shivan fleet? In that case, their loss would be seen as inconsequential when compared with whatever potential gain the rest of the fleet obtained. We know that the gravity wells created by stars are inherently important to the structure of subspace; intrasystem jumps can only take place within them, and intersystem jumps are only made possible at certain points (presumably) dictated by them. Given that fact, and knowing that the Sathanes were sending out some sort of subspace disturbance, I think it's pretty safe to assume that they were trying to use Capella to do something pretty major related to subspace. Just before it went supernova, the star fundamentally changed, not only in its color but seemingly somehow in its overall structure. From what we know about subspace, I don't think it's a stretch to assume that a change like that would have some pretty crazy effects. Maybe the Shivans originated from another galaxy; hell, maybe they're from some sort of realm that we can't even perceive. I don't know. But I do think that, whatever the Shivans did with Capella, it was far more complex than simply using it as a systemwide nuke.
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Who said they ran? I'm just saying that assuming that they had to take some other route out of Capella other than the GD node is rather silly. Maybe they did, maybe they made a new node maybe they used multiple routes out.
I'm increasing the mystery by saying they left via the GD node because the question obviously becomes "What the **** were they doing in Capella then?" Why not blow up GD instead. Why try to prevent the terrans from leaving the system?
Saying that they were doing it to make a gate somewhere kills much more mystery. You've answered the biggest question in FS2 and left behind a much less interesting one.
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Odd thought I just had.
The Shivans do have limited resources, and we have indirect proof.
Consider: they have 80+ Sathanas juggernauts. Yet one for one, Shivan fightercraft tend to be inferior in terms of performance and armament when compared to GTVA. As I have observed before, in the race to build the better gun, the better reactor to power it, the better frame to mount them on, and the better engine to get that frame moving, the GTVA appears to be winning at the fighter level. Also when one considers Shivan destroyers in the main campaign...the same names keep popping up. It's like they don't have too many of them. There is evidence that larger ships were slighted somewhat too. The Ravana isn't a vastly superior design compared to the Demon; the Rakshasa is in the end less effective then the Lilth; the Moloch has trouble with a Deimos or Sobek.
Which leads to the possiblity that those 80+ Sathanas juggernauts may represent the major investment of time, resources, and technology by the Shivans, to the point where developmental work on and production of other ships suffered.
Thoughts; we don't know the exact purpose of the Sathanas, so we can't compare it to any GTVA vessel in 'real' terms. We can't even assume that the tbl entries are a reliable guide in that sense; after all, there's no 'bendy-arms subspace weapon' entry. In terms of fighters, IIRC the very first mission the Mara is encountered, your wingman makes a statement along the lines of 'I've never seen anything so fast'. The problem is it'd be impossible to give Shivans the technological edge in fighters that they are (possibly, probably?) suppossed to have, as it would make the game a pain in the arse to play. Even then, a vis-a-vis comparison would have to assume both fleets place the same importance and emphasis upon fighter & bomber development and deployment. The Rakshasa IIRC has a fighterbay, which places it in a different league to a Fenris or Cain; even 4 fighters is a significant tactical advantage and probably drain upon (ship level) resources. The Ravana, although it doesn't show it so much in mission, is described as tearing the **** out of a dedicated GTVA taskforce before the player arrives to take it down. Albeit, again, we don't know Shivan tactics and it may be that the Ravanas weakness in terms of anti-capship weapons is counteracted by greater fighter capacity, or it may take an escort type role to protect other ships from attack.
Of course, there's always the possibility that 'real' Shivan tech is of the same relationship to the FS2 fleet as the FS2 tech was to the Shivan FS1 tech.....nor do we know the age of those FS1/FS2 fleets. Plus it's a given there would be other Shivan ships; there'd have to be for any FS3 as part of the rule of thumb for sequels.
But it's not proof of resource demands, I'd say. Supporting evidence for that possibility, maybe.
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I'm going to plop some arugments down for the "Shivans don't run" camp:
-Fact is, 1 Sathanas was kicking all allied ass. It busted through the entire expeditionary force the GTVA had set up in the nebula tore through the gamma draconis system, and entered Capella. The Colossus was only able to destroy the ship after its beam weaponry was disabled (the Sathanas destroys the Colossus even with only 2 of its primary weapons intact).
Alright, The Alliance didn't know about the Juggernaught, all is fair. Now why didn't they spearhead their second campaign in the Nebula with the Colossus if they supposedly had a fleet of them? Because they only had one and they weren't about to send it out looking for Shivans. It becomes pretty obvious that the shivans know this too when the second Sathanis vaporizes the Psamtek and starts chugging it to the Capella system (would you run into enemy territory if they had a fleet of colossi?).
This is further supported by the Shivans dedicating a whole 1 Juggernaut to waste the Colossus in about 30 seconds and leave. If anything I would say the Shivans were practically SPITTING on the GTVA (you got a big ship? SO WHAT!) although I'm sure it was more in line with their "destroy everything" ethos than it was meant as a personal insult.
Although the Alliance is much more advanced than it was in the great war, its capital ships are still severely lacking in terms of reactor output, offensive and defenseive capability, and the shivans seem to know this, too. When a Moloch class corvette is beating up the flagship of the Capellan fleet, you know you still have some catching up to do.
To comment on the limited resources:
All resources are limited, it just depends on the scale at which to judge. I do, however, believe that Shivan forces outnumber Alliance forces by some Obscene ratio. They have been fighting interstellar battles since before the Anceint's empire, and only the Lucifer has proven to be invulnerable. Therefore it is safe to assume that even if the Shivans started with a fleet so massive that even their inability to reproduce ships leaves them with a number dwarfing the GTVA fleet.
If their numbers to tend toward the extreme, then the lack of incredibly sophisticated fighters might be a by prodcut of their numbers. Fighters are much more finicky than their larger space fareing counterparts and require a disproportionate amount of maintanence for their size. It might make sense that the Shivans opted to have a lower grade of fighters for something that was much more sturdy, something they didn't have to waste an innordinate ammount of time repairing and maintaining.
If the Shivans really are a hive mind, then efficiency, not pilot safety, would probably be their top priority.
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Through the Gamma Draconis node! I see no reason we need to say they had to use anything other than the same GD node that they and the GTVA had been using.
I would point out that nodes are, apparently, not large enough to allow more then one Sathanas to enter at a time, and there was apparently not enough time between warping away from the star and the supernova to allow many to actually get out via that node, even if they arrived right on top of it. Maybe 10 at most could have escaped by that route, but that's being very generous.
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The Shivans' behavior seems pretty consistent with having a job to do, and not really caring much about the GTVA except to keep them away from the Sathanii. Although the Shivans could've attacked in one fell swoop, they attack in staggered amounts...granted you could just say that this is to make the missions playable and last longer, but even until the end, Shivan forces are keeping the GTVA forces occupied. The only ship that this doesn't seem to be true for is the Colossus - the Shivans seem to have sent their second-largest ship insystem to take it out, but since that failed, sent one of the vital Sathanas vessels to finish it off.
Basically, the Shivans forced the GTVA to spread their forces out at three places in the system for as long as possible, when they could've combined the forces seen in the second-to-last and last levels to wipe out the Bastion, and then wipe out the convoy. Even the way that the shivans lure you away from the node in the last mission fits with the theory of them stalling you (and mischievous game designers, yes).
Anyway, I'll put forth the theory that the Shivans attempt to preserve the galaxy by shaping it gravitationally. Destroying Capella would've converted a lot of mass into energy, as well as spreading it out. Alone, it might not be much, but combined with precise detonations of other stars, possibly even the formation of a black hole, maybe they could extend the life of the Galaxy.
Or essentially - the Shivans seed the galaxy with small combat groups, ie the Lucifer. These groups are tasked with eliminating any kind of threat to the 'Constructor' fleet, ie the Sathanases.
Obviously, the Lucifer failed.
Then Bosch activated the portals, unwittingly giving the Shivans a method to get to Capella. Bosch is also able to communicate with the Shivans, and probably mentions the destruction of the Lucifer. Altogether, very interesting to the Shivans, so they take him. Because the Lucifer fleet has been destroyed, the Shivans send in a single Sathanas and some escorts. Since these are part of the main fleet, they're better armed (with fancy new beams) than the Lucifer, but are mostly meant for defending the Sathanas and do not have the high-tech shielding systems of the Lucifer.
Lacking the same kind of tactical and strategical forte of the Lucifer fleet, the Sathanas is quickly destroyed. But the Shivans have figured that the original Sathanas would've mopped up the GTVA by now, so the rest of the Constructor fleet is on the way.
From then on, they basically fight off the GTVA fleet while the Capella sun is destroyed. Interesting about the intro is that the Sathanii seem to deal with the explosion at close range VERY well. I wouldn't be surprised if they could survive by jumping to the very edge of the system.
I doubt that's what :V: had in mind, but that's the best uncommon theory I've cooked up.
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Through the Gamma Draconis node! I see no reason we need to say they had to use anything other than the same GD node that they and the GTVA had been using.
I would point out that nodes are, apparently, not large enough to allow more then one Sathanas to enter at a time, and there was apparently not enough time between warping away from the star and the supernova to allow many to actually get out via that node, even if they arrived right on top of it. Maybe 10 at most could have escaped by that route, but that's being very generous.
I would point out that 8.3 minutes is simply an example. If the GD node is the same distance as Saturn the figure is closer to 80 minutes. If the node is as far away from GD as Pluto is from Sol they could have thown a barbecue, had a few drinks and still got everyone through the node.
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A while ago, i posted on this forum with a possible explanation for the actions in Freespace 2 (FS2). In this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,30589.msg656329.html#msg656329) post, i claimed that Bosch is the key to unravelling the story of FS2 and of Shivan nature. I've changed my mind on quite a few things i wrote there (others are constant), so i'll be revising my opinions, and posting them here.
Shivan Nature
During my replay of FS2, i kept an eye out for any story hints left about the Shivans, and after i finished FS2 again, i poked around a bit further (i read the reference bible and transcripts of cutscenes). Suddenly, something clicked, and a huge chunk of the FS story started making a lot more sense. Volition once hinted that the Shivans were a “symptom of a much bigger problem”. Like others, i took this problem as subspace travel somehow damaging space. Story-wise, it makes sense: The Shivans decimated the Ancients, who were extensive users of subspace, and they came for the Terrans and Vasudans during the Terran-Vasudan War, a period in which subspace travel would have been hieghtened. Yet, there was something... dissatisfying with that explanation. For starters, Shivans use subspace extensively (it can be argued that they do it differently, however the GTVA has captured and studied several Shivan vessels, and i don't think there was any mention of any significantly differing subspace technology). They also seem quite happy to use dodgy subspace nodes, and finally, if they were keen on stopping species from racking up those subspace frequent-flier miles, why not just stick a Sathanas in every system to blow any infant subspace-travelling race to hell?
So, if not subspace travel[1], then what? There is a simpler explanation, but before i get to it, consider the following quotes, all taken from FS1/FS2 cutscene transcripts (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/storyline.html) (emphasis mine):
“Now we know our crime was sin.”
“We know our fate. We are being eliminated. When we travelled subspace, the Cosmic Destroyers took note. When we conquered and colonized in galaxies where we had no place, the destruction and the anguish and the loss were the clarion call of our doom.”
“I believe it is only the destroyers who are killed. The Shivans are the Great Destroyers, but they are also the Great Preservers. That is why, when we moved into space, there was no one powerful enough to kill us. Long had we been the destroyer. Our turn had nearly come.”
What if the 'bigger problem' was that of interstellar war? “Only the Destroyers are killed”. Perhaps the Shivans were sensitive towards war-hungry races, and were responsible for sanitising these races before they got out of hand: kinda like a universal immune system, or acting as the 'Great Preservers' of universal balance. However, there is one thing that does not sit well with this theory: the change in Shivan behaviour between the Ancients and the Great War... With the Ancients, the Shivans started at the edge of known space, and systematically wiped the Ancients out, or so the Ancients monologue claims. In the Great War, the Shivans started at Ross 128, seemingly made a beeline for Vasuda , doubled back and headed for Sol. Maybe this was a strategic decision as Vasuda / Sol were the centres of production, but nevertheless... Also, its possible that the game designers intentionally did this due to external considerations (budget, deadlines, etc), as Ancient-style behaviour of the Shivans would have taken many more missions before the Lucifer reached the Sol node.
Also the first Shivan encounters in FS2 are a bit on the iffy side wrt to this theory, but i'll explore them later. For now, I'm interested if anyone agrees / disagrees with my opinion on the Shivans (Galemp already posted something similiar to this). In the coming days, i'll be posting up an examination of the Shivans and a profile of Aken Bosch, and i'll take another stab at uncovering the full story of FS2 in this context.
[1] As far as i can tell, there's only really one quote snippet that supports the subspace theory:
“The Ancients died eight thousand years ago as humanity emerged from its Neolithic infancy. They believed their voyage across the sea of stars woke the dragon that slept beneath the waves: that the Shivans were birthed from the flux of subspace and their destruction was the revenge of an angry cosmos.”
Personally, i believe this quote was simply Bosch speaking figuratively, as he has a tendency of doing. As noted above, in wars, subspace usage increases (thus the 'birthed from the flux of subspace'), and the 'dragon that slept' was the Shivans. More on this quote in a later post.
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This is a fairly standard explaination for the Shivan actions. Nothing particularly new about it. I find it better than the preserving subspace argument but it still strikes me as somewhat unsatisfying because it doesn't explain why the Shivans blew up Capella.
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We've known that an explosion of sufficient magnitude in certain points (jump nodes) has the effect on subspace (sealing of the node).
What if the destruction of the star some other unknown effect the Shivans were after, maybe the Supernova was really the key, unlocking a way home...
As Petrach said:
"Maybe they are exciles like we are, searching for a way back home. Destruction of the star may be bridge between our universe and theirs."
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Well, there is another more obvious motive that I'm a bit surprised not to have seen posted already.
Capella is only about 42 light-years from Earth. Supernovas create essentially two shockwaves. There's the initial front of hard radiation, then there is the physical blast front. That second one won't get terribly far, but the first... that one will keep going. It won't stop at the nodes. It won't stop at the edge of the star system. It will keep on going. It will plow like a scythe right through the entire GTVA.
See, our sun is relatively benign. Most stars seem to have periods of intense solar flares. They kick of huge bursts of X-rays that may not kill all life on a planet outright, but it certainly cannot survive there unprotected for long. A supernova 42 light-years away may as well be in our backyard. The visible light won't be such a big deal, but the hard radiation will almost certainly sterilize every planet in the area. Even if the blast is smaller than usual because it was "forced" to go nova and didn't do so "naturally," even if the resulting blast doesn't do it for systems as far away as Sol, there are an awful lot of star systems right next door.
It may take several years for the hammer to fall, but the Shivans effectively ended the war there and then. They won.
-Peri
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Freespace 3
Fallout shelter party - Based on the award-winning Sims engine
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Think carefully about what you're saying, perihelion. You've contradicted yourself at least once.
You're also making some unreasonable assumptions on the power and size of the Capella supernova. It was not, for the one thing, powerful enough to destroy any planetary bodies in the Capella system. Go watch End Part 1 again.
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It was not, for the one thing, powerful enough to destroy any planetary bodies in the Capella system. Go watch End Part 1 again.
Eh? It really looked like those planets got disintegrated there.
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Actually it goes around them, not having enough force to take them out in a blow, but I'm sure the planets cooked to disintegration after an hour or two.
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The same goes for the Sathanses that got left behind.
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The things about an expanding bubble is that the surface area increases massively. Remember, after 42 years, the amount of material that would reach other stars is going to be about 0.000000001% of the surface of that expanding sphere, you might get radio static etc, and bit more solar activity, but precious little else. The rest of the volume that hasn't been dragged into gravity wells etc will be so massively dispersed it would not be threat.
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The damage the Capellan supernova would do to surrounding star systems is variable. Perihelion is quite correct that a supernova of a nearby star could cause serious damage to surrounding planets. Supernovae much further away are suspected of having caused mass extinctions in the past by stripping the ozone layer away. Wiping out Earth is quite possibly a reason behind the Shivan's actions.
The thing is we don't know how the Shivans made Capella go nova so the damage it can do to Earth can be more or less than that of a regular supernova.
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@ngtm1r
Well, I was a bit tired when I wrote that, but where do you feel I'm "contradicting myself?"
I think Kara's hit the nail on the head. We don't really know how intense the explosion was. However, the explosion doesn't need to be nearly as potent as some of you seem to be supposing. It doesn't have to destroy the planet to trigger an extinction level event. Biological life is ridiculously fragile, really. There would be a burst of neutrinos (that probably wouldn't effect much except to really excite geeks like me). The X and Gamma-Rays would continue for several days. No clue how intense they would be since we're not talking about a naturally occuring event.
Just as a "Hey, this is kinda neat" aside, Capella is a binary star system. The two stars are about 3 and 2.5 solar masses respectively according to current measurments. I haven't checked this in many years, but I'm pretty sure that neither Capella star is massive enough to supernova naturally.
I suspect that you could arrange to shield major population centers. That's not the problem. The problem as Kara pointed out is that the burst would be damaging the atmosphere and surface of the entire planet. Also important, the burst could be a destabilizing influence on the local sun. Not that it is going to cause other suns to supernova or anything silly like that, but it might cause some pretty nasty local flares. The recent spat of solar activity we've witnessed in real life is a walk in the park compared to what a star like Sol is capable of doing if sufficiently pissed off. There's some evidense to indicate that it may have been a lot more "variable" in the past.
A sufficiently advanced civilization could probably engineer a way to protect planets from a supernova throwing their entire economy into it. It is debatable whether or not the GTVA is sufficiently advanced.
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I checked into Capella a while back. Capella isn't large enough to go supernova by natural processes and it's in the wrong part of its life cycle at the moment anyway. Capella A is only 3 times heavier than the sun but would need to be 10 times heavier to undergo a supernova naturally.
If you want to hear something really interesting though at 3 Stellar masses it's just large enough to form a black hole if you can get it to go supernova. Gamma Draconis on the other hand at 1.7 Solar Masses isn't large enough. Make of that what you will.
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Unfortunately for that theory, the formation of a black hole is dependent on the mass of the core after the supernova rather than the total mass.
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I'm well aware of that but we have no idea how much of the stars total mass was actually ejected. The Shivans could have done the damage they did in the cutscene and only used a few percent of the stars total mass.
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Well, you might get a black hole if the way they caused the star to supernova was to turn off the Pauli exclusion principle inside the star.
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You guys think way too much.
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Yeah, well, I really don't want to do my work right now. Boredom can be a profound motivator. ;)
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You guys think way too much.
Bouncing ideas around gives me ideas for my own campaign :) That alone is enough to make it worth it :)
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Trust me, if you don't know it by now, discussion is hardly going to make it work.
Besides, who told you you can make your own campaign? I want you on mine damnit!
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:) I'm already oversubscribed. So many good campaigns, so little time unfortunately.
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When they all finish? Or most of em anyway.
How many have you got currently?
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Apart from the two in my Sig I'm also working solo on TMA and with the BSG team. I'm not looking for any more :)
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Well maybe when you finish those ;)
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Actually it goes around them, not having enough force to take them out in a blow, but I'm sure the planets cooked to disintegration after an hour or two.
The atmosphere (or at least the yellow stuff) goes around the planets. The white shockwave obliterates them. It's suggested by the shockwave effect, and it's confirmed if you look closely at the few frames of the "planet perspective" after the shockwave passes. The planets are nowhere to be found.
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No. There's no visible fragmentation of the planets, but there is of a Moloch and and Deimos? Not buying that one, sorry...
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There is visible fragmentation of the planets, and there is visible fragmentation of the capships. Everything gets disintegrated into little tiny bits and blown around. Watch the movie again - I just did. Everything hit by the white shockwave disintegrates.
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Perhaps the Juggernauts boosted the Supernova beyond "usual"...
Any idea where I could download that "Capella goes boom video"
http://oregonstate.edu/~plankerj/FS1movies/
Here are FS1 movies, but FS2 ones are no longer there...
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Freespacezone has them but I think it might still be out of bandwidth (it was when I checked yesterday).
The link's on the cutscenes page of my FAQ.
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Goober is right, the red shockwave blows off the atmosphere and rings (and more than likely killed every living thing on the planets) but the bluish-white shockwave completely obliterates what was left. It looks to me like you could say that the red shockwave came from the outer layers of the star, and the blue shockwave was the "detonation" of the core. I doubt that is scientifically accurate, but heck we all know that Freespace is not based on real physics. ;)
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I had a theory on exactly how the Shivans destroyed the star.... Subspace causes things to move through space very, very quickly. Making muti-lightyear jumps take place in a matter of 10 to 20 minutes. This supspace vortex always is blue. However, the subspace vortex around Capella is green. A different sort of subspace wave? Perhaps (Im reaching a bit here) they accelerated Capella through subspace... not through space, but rather time. This accelerated the star to the point of its "death", and caused it to go supernova. The only flaw in this explanation is that Capella is not large enough to go through supernova naturally. Although that could be explained by the subspace radiation having a reaction with the star's core...
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I've always thought that they created a subspace field in the core of the star. The photon pressure was diminished and as a result the star collapsed.
The beauty of that theory is that it should work with any star except for the really small ones.
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Shivan Nature
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Right (at the anti-war thing). And if this theory doesn't explain EVERYTHING in Shivan behaviour, that's no problem. This argument doesn't need to explain the reason for the Big Bang (no, I'm not speaking of Capella... :rolleyes: ) and everything else (life, for example) , and so it's perfectly possible that there are other motives the Shivans have IN ADDITION to this one... explaining why they stil were after V Prime and Earth even when Terrans and Vasudans already had allied (although quite possibly this alliance wasn't exactly stable from its first start on...) . Actually I might start FREDding my campaign (which has nested in my head for years already... :( ) about it in a few months... (though it'll surely take horrifying long to get to something noteworthy; and I'd need to make about 50 3D-meshes also to really make it complete - as of yet I only have 1 completed, 1 semi-completed and about 5 in alpha stage... :( )
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[1] As far as i can tell, there's only really one quote snippet that supports the subspace theory:
“The Ancients died eight thousand years ago as humanity emerged from its Neolithic infancy. They believed their voyage across the sea of stars woke the dragon that slept beneath the waves: that the Shivans were birthed from the flux of subspace and their destruction was the revenge of an angry cosmos.”
Personally, i believe this quote was simply Bosch speaking figuratively, as he has a tendency of doing. As noted above, in wars, subspace usage increases (thus the 'birthed from the flux of subspace'), and the 'dragon that slept' was the Shivans. More on this quote in a later post. [/size]
Well, I'd take this not to be a metapher (but also not as truth).
It's rather clearly stated that that's what the Ancients HAD THOUGHT what the Shivans were. Thats mysticism, no proof... :nod: