[aldo_14]

It's worth remembering that the GTVA only won the Great War by standing on the shoulders of the Ancients, though.  For all their adaptation, the TV fleet was still completely unable to stop the Lucifer.... they stumbled onto the solution.

The ancients could have developed shields & more advanced laser technology... but it meant naught because they found out the Lucifers weakness and how to track it too late (presumably all their fighters and bombers capable of performing the op were destroyed... IIRC the Ancients monologue states that the Ancients eventually had to retreat to their home system, so maybe they only realised the answer as the Lucifer was bearing down on their homeworld*)

*which begs the question as to how the info got to Altair, admittedly.

[Yogert]

From what I understood from the monologues, the Ancients had conquered this galaxy atleast and was probably expanding into other galaxies. This would also explain their higher understanding of Subspace. There was probably a node that connected this galaxy to another near the super large blackhole at the center of the Milky Way. The Knossos could have been specifically built to permanently stabilize the node so they could send their armada through it. Or possibly it was just adapted for this most likely very large node.
Now, such a large empire would take a very sizable navy just for police action, let alone conquering countless other species. With such a fleet you would most likely rely on cheap, mass-producable ships, right? So you have ships that most likely have less armor and fewer weapons than your average Terran or Vasudan vessel. Who needs very large very powerful ships when you have an armada that could block out the sun?
The Ancients probably encountered the Shivans in the beginnings of their campaign to conquer another galaxy. They send in tens of thousands of ships to secure the system in which the node lies to set up an initial staging point and are met by the Lucifer fleet. Superior weapons, armor, shield technology, stealth systems, and the Lucifer itself - how could any race hope to stand up against that? The Ancients go in guns blazing believing that they will win no matter how superior their foe is. Arrogance is their downfall and they are slaughtered. 'Never before had we been defeated. We could forego one system.' You don't become the dominant race in the galaxy by being completely stupid, right? Shut down the gate and hope the node destabilizes. It doesn't. We all know what happens next;)
Sol at the time was probably as backwater as you could get in their empire. They could have built the pyramids for all we know. The Shivans probably took note of Sol, left it alone after seeing it was a dead end system.


My 2 cents.... Be my guest to poke as many holes in it as you can;)

[Akalabeth Angel]

From the monologues, I had thought that the Ancients first conquered all of the nearby stars using some form of spacetravel other than subspace. So they may have been using non-FTL drives to get to the nearby stars over a great many years as Earth might to get to Alpha Centauri.

But after a while, all of the nearby systems were conquered. Then they discovered subspace and could go all over the galaxy busting heads.

That was my interpretation anyway.

[Solatar]

Yeah, I seem to remember something about "...then we discovered subspace", which implies they might not have know about it.

[Yogert]

"It gave us our galaxy and it gave us the universe." and "With subspace, our empire would surely know no boundaries." makes me think they were atleast looking to expand into another galaxy. The Knossos, to me, is the brainchild of that endeavor.

edit - also, from Ancients 5 (im going off Sandwich's pics in the gallery) "When we conquered and colonized in galaxies where we had no place"

I'll go back to lurking now....

[Hellbender]

The Alliance was aware that fighter sheilds did not work in subspace, but until the nudge in thinking from the Ancients records, no-one apparently associated the phenomenon with the Lucifer. The Allies were also aware that vessels could be tracked in subspace, but again either did not put the ideas together or simply did not have the know how to make it reality. That is the major assistance that the Ancients really gave.

The real issue I can see of dealing with a Lucifer class capitol ship within the story as it exists is the very narrow focus of the Allies' attempts to deal with the thing.  

No one tried ramming it with an Orion or a Typhon or three for example. I'm fairly certain that much metal in motion would cause the Shivans some headaches. Heck, you could hedge your bets by loading up the sacrificial ships with some really nasty antimatter bombs.  Fill the forward sections with sand or junk or cement or whatever so it could take a hit or two from the beams and fighter escort the hell out of them until impact. Lucifer was not the most spry lass at the ball, so ramming should be feasable.

Just some thoughts. Seemed to me like the GTA and PVN were trying to think in terms of equalling the Lucifer, rather than playing dirty.

In the entire conflict, the Shivans only showed a slight tech edge in real terms. The major battles they won were mostly due to the presence of their unkillable gunboat.

It seems to me that the Lucifer was probably more of a one-off ride to the Shivans: it was the only one of their vessels armed with beam weaponry at the time of the Great War. At that it carried only two of them. Unlike their other ships it required five dedicated reactors to power its shields and guns, unlike the other or even the later ships in the Shivan Fleet.

I'm thinking that maybe when the Lucifer was broken the baddies decided they needed a new kind of hammer - thus the Ravana and other beam armed ships.

The Sathanas has me thinking more on the lines of Shivan colony transports than as being intended for fleet action. Yup, they're huge and massively armed, but rather unweildy as a dedicated military unit. They were rarely committed to battle, and then usually to fufill a set goal. The story does show them jumping out as Capella novas, while the smaller units are engaged in tying up the GTVA forces to prevent interference. We have no way of even knowing if this was the same branch of Shivans that participated in the Great War: this group came from beyond Gamma Draconis; the earlier invasion came presumably through Ross 128. Just to throw a bit more on the thought fires, it could also explain no Lucifer class ship(s), and the difference in choice of armanents.

[FireCrack]

^good thinking in rthe last few paragraphs


I doubt that the GTVA would sacrifice a destroyer to kill the lucifer, especialy when alll the weapons focused on it thusfar didnt even scrach the paint, much less cause neglible damage

[galonrever]

Thats a mighty fine point. They could be a different group of Shivans.... Remember how :V: said the Shivans were a product of a greater problem? What if they are in the process of a huge Civil War? That would explain why they didnt destroy the GTVA. They needed their ships on another front. They couldnt, however, ignore the GTVA, and decided to cut them out. Prehaps they had been gathering in the Nebula in preporation of a strike against one of the other Shivan "nations" as it were....a bit like a Shivan Galaxy War, a little like our World Wars..........

[Taristin]

Shivans were created by Terran-Vasudan hybrids called Terudans (Once mating was allowed between the species). The Terudans created the shivans in the year 8673, and sent them backwards in time through a wormhole caused by a tin can, a string and a bananna peel rotating very quickly.
So you see, Ancients are really Terudans. And we made our own problem.  Joy!

[Kosh]

[karajorma]

Originally posted by MatthewPapa
I would agree (with what someone said above) that the ancients couldnt win because they couldnt adapt fast enough. The GTA (and PVE I think too) was able to at least put shields and avenger weapons on all of its ships within the first week or so of the war before the GTA could take enough major inner system losses that could have made a difference in the outcome. Remember that the war still looked somewhat hopeful of winning for a while until the attack at Tombaugh station. The GTVA also had the smart to know that there had to be an answer somewhere when those vasudan scientists found the civilization on Altair to have been destroyed.

I  think this is the kind of arrogant thinking that caused the GTVA to think that they could beat the shivans in FS2

There is nothing in the monologues to say that the ancients didn't get shield tech of their own or make weapons that could kill the shivans. The fact that they said that the Shivans wouldn't die or were unstoppable is being taken too literally.

[kode]

yes, it could just as well mean they were in much greater numbers.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Hellbender
The Alliance was aware that fighter sheilds did not work in subspace, but until the nudge in thinking from the Ancients records, no-one apparently associated the phenomenon with the Lucifer. The Allies were also aware that vessels could be tracked in subspace, but again either did not put the ideas together or simply did not have the know how to make it reality. That is the major assistance that the Ancients really gave.

The real issue I can see of dealing with a Lucifer class capitol ship within the story as it exists is the very narrow focus of the Allies' attempts to deal with the thing.  

No one tried ramming it with an Orion or a Typhon or three for example. I'm fairly certain that much metal in motion would cause the Shivans some headaches. Heck, you could hedge your bets by loading up the sacrificial ships with some really nasty antimatter bombs.  Fill the forward sections with sand or junk or cement or whatever so it could take a hit or two from the beams and fighter escort the hell out of them until impact. Lucifer was not the most spry lass at the ball, so ramming should be feasable.

Just some thoughts. Seemed to me like the GTA and PVN were trying to think in terms of equalling the Lucifer, rather than playing dirty.

In the entire conflict, the Shivans only showed a slight tech edge in real terms. The major battles they won were mostly due to the presence of their unkillable gunboat.

It seems to me that the Lucifer was probably more of a one-off ride to the Shivans: it was the only one of their vessels armed with beam weaponry at the time of the Great War. At that it carried only two of them. Unlike their other ships it required five dedicated reactors to power its shields and guns, unlike the other or even the later ships in the Shivan Fleet.

I'm thinking that maybe when the Lucifer was broken the baddies decided they needed a new kind of hammer - thus the Ravana and other beam armed ships.

The Sathanas has me thinking more on the lines of Shivan colony transports than as being intended for fleet action. Yup, they're huge and massively armed, but rather unweildy as a dedicated military unit. They were rarely committed to battle, and then usually to fufill a set goal. The story does show them jumping out as Capella novas, while the smaller units are engaged in tying up the GTVA forces to prevent interference. We have no way of even knowing if this was the same branch of Shivans that participated in the Great War: this group came from beyond Gamma Draconis; the earlier invasion came presumably through Ross 128. Just to throw a bit more on the thought fires, it could also explain no Lucifer class ship(s), and the difference in choice of armanents.

Of course, we never saw the Sath until the Knossos was activated.....plus they came from a single point, rather than cropping up in a myriad of places (IIRC in FS1, they pop up in Ikeya, in particular).

Can someone remind me, which system did 'High Noon' take place in?

[Fergus]

I dont think Shivan ship design is principally designed for utility.  Take the Nahema (I think thats the weird shaped FS1 bomber) that certainly doesnt appear right.  I think the Sath' is more designed to scare you and  then shoot you (lets be honest we dont exactly get to shoot the back of a Sath' very often) while your busy changing.

[aldo_14]

Alien aesthetics

[Hellbender]

As far as the alien aesthetics go, psychology could come into their thinking there - humanity has done similar things through history - just an example consider the stylized samurai armour and masks of medival Japan. They are hardly the only ones to think in terms of psychological design.

The Shivan designs (and I'm also trying to think in terms of the V dev team's perspective) seem to be designed for shock value first, then wrap the thing around their high tech systems. According to clues in the story info, it is hinted that the Shivans themselves were possibly engineered into their current bodies - an even closer tie in to the Samurai idea.

All that is really known for certain about the Ancients:

*The Ancients were much more extensive in their holdings than the GTVA.

*The Ancients were a technologically advanced race, with a greater understanding of the science and utilization of subspace.

*Though powerful conquistadores of any species they came accross, they had been unable to come up with a way of beating the Shivans decisively (specifically the shielded cap ships, but the point could be taken that any shielded craft may have posed them a problem) until their armed forces were too badly depleted to successfully act on the information they finally discovered.

V seems to have kept the info about the Ancients deliberately vague - good plot device there - to increase the player's interest in the story. Few people can turn down curiosity of the unknown. Surely after 32 years, and access to the race's records the GTVA could at least figured out the Ancient's name for themseves?

The one thing that most of us overlook is the details of a game story need to be sharp enough to make it plausible and interesting,  but mysterious enough to hook the player into wanting to continue the experience to see how it unfolds.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Can someone remind me, which system did 'High Noon' take place in?

Capella.

Bearbaiting took place in GD and ended with the Sath jumping through the Capella node.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma


Capella.

Bearbaiting took place in GD and ended with the Sath jumping through the Capella node.

Thought so. Wonder if the first Sath was a scout...........

[magatsu1]

that's what I always assumed.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Thought so. Wonder if the first Sath was a scout...........

Let's put it this way.

Mission 1 : Sath spotted
Mission 2 : Sath spotted heading for Gamma Draconis
Mission 3 :  Sath jumps into Gamma Draconis
Mission 4 : Sath Jumps out of GD into Capella
Mission 5 : Sath is killed. Sath isn't heading for the Epsilon Pegasi or Vega Nodes, Sath isn't heading towards any planets or stations held by the GTVA. It's just sitting there in space.


hmmmmmm.