Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Kie99 on November 07, 2004, 02:32:38 pm
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Here is a new theory on the Shivans for the purposes of this theory SA means main Shivan Armada and LF means Lucifer fleet, Here goes:
The LF was a group of exiles sent out into the galaxy by SA because they were murderers. The SA didn’t know there were other species in the galaxy so they gave them 2 destroyers, The Eva & Lucifer. The LF enjoyed killing which is why they slaughtered the ancients. The LF had modified their supplies, which would last for 20,000 Years to form Shivan Super Laser, an Impervious Shield system and other weapons, which they mounted on their destroyers After the Ancients were destroyed the LF were bored for 8000 years and decided to launch all their weapons at the GTA and PVN, but the LF was destroyed and eventually eliminated completely.
32 years later a Racsh… Racshas… Shivan cruiser entered GTVA space and was immediately fired upon by the Terran cruiser. (I know the Command Briefing video contradicts this and shows the Shivan cruiser firing first, but it was unlikely to be actual footage of the battle because a massacre was implied) The SA wasn’t happy about the unprovoked murder of 5000 Shivans and immediately thought of the GTVA as an enemy. A few months later the SA captured Aken Bosch but, for the purposes of this discussion their communication was extremely crude. The SA didn’t understand Bosch but their ships were still being destroyed so they sent in a Sathanas to stop the attacks on their ships. Unfortunately it was destroyed, the Shivans were extremely angry at the Murder of 30,000 Shivans so they decided to send in a small portion of their fleet (80 Sathanes) to eliminate the GTVA entirely. At this time they managed to speak to and understand Bosch , Bosch told them about the LF and why we attacked them. The Shivans held an emergency meeting and decided that instead of wasting valuable resources going through all of their systems back to their homeworld where their fleet was they would use the Capella star as a Slingshot to get back to their Homeworld, in the process creating a nebula for the GTVA to take energy from as a peace offering.
Q. Why were the GTVA ships attacked as they were evacuating Capella?
A. The attackers were rebels and relatives of Shivans killed during the war
Q. Why was the Bastion attacked?
A. The attackers were rebels and relatives of Shivans killed during the war
Q. What happened to Bosch
A. He was on one of the Cain class cruisers on the way to Vega, but was destroyed.
Q. Why did the SA have weapons
A. They wanted to be prepared in case they were ever attacked by an alien race.
Q. Anything Else
A. They're aliens :D
Flames welcome :)
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A nice theory, but blatantly contradicted many, many times by the game itself.
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Please Explain
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Why am I getting Deja Vu?
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Because i posted it on Sectorgame?
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Let's work this part-by-part, ok?
1st. The thought that Shivans didn't know of any other sentient species is contradicted by Ancient's Monolouges. They blown up a whole lot of other stuff before.
2nd. Ancient empire spanned multiple galaxies. Good luck destroying that with two capships. It would take you tens of thousands of years, most likely more. Ancients would literally breed and expand faster than you could kill them.
3rd. Invincible Shivan destroyers "blackened the sky" of Ancient planets. That, once again, suggests much higher fleet numbers. More than one Lucifer, that is.
4th. I belive that two Demons were seen in FS1. It's a minor complaint, and I'm not sure about it, though. [it was a loooong time since I played it]
5th. Blasting a system with civilians still in it. Jolly good peace offering, I say. But I forgot! The whole damn task force rebelled or had it's relatives killed! Either the Shivan race is a whole big family, or Shivans have some MAJOR discipline problems. As in, worse than modern armies. Far better "peace offering" would be simply leaving the Capella intact, not robbing GTVA of a heavily developed system. The only thing that it did was anger GTVA even more.
6th. Basically, the entire content of Ancient monolouges and what it contains. Alpha 1 monolouge, too.
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The Monologues were personal Opinions.
Most of the Shivans were on the Sathanes, the rebels weren't. The Shivans (bar the rebels) stopped attacking the GTVA as soon as Bosch told them about the LF.
There were hardly any Terrans left in Capella and it was mostly Military personel attacking Shivans.
The "ancient Empires" could have just been tiny colonies in Galaxy, which could be destroyed by a few Bombers,
The References to "Invincible Destroyers" probably referred to Shivan fighter, who's shields they could not penetrate
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Well, regardless of how many problems there are with this theory (and there are many), I don't like the idea anyway. It just makes the Shivans far too human, and basically the whole theory is a massive anticlimax. They're aliens. This theory makes them, well, uninteresting and takes away most of the appeal of Shivans.
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*blinks*
To start with, the monolouges are the best source that we have that goes into any detail. The same comes from both Alpha 1 and Ancients.
It is more of an issue of blowing the system when there are still GTVA assets there. Not a friendly act by any means.
Riiight. They destroyed countless species and "colonised in galaxies that they had no place in" [that quote is a little messed up, but you get the idea]. The nature of FS FTL means that you usually advance at slower pace, as nearby systems are usually connected with each other and there is no reason to make such gargantuan leaps without VERY good reason.
The very idea of Ancients begin utterly unable to harm Shivan fighters makes me giggle. GTA could do it with one Apollo with base loadout, and soon after that they had weapons to do it far more easily. In fact, they had xasers during FS1 era, IIRC, they were just not cost-effective. Ancients controlled a huge area of space, easily FAR bigger than GTA, and gained that through conquer and destruction, unlike GTA, that never fought an alien species before T-V War. Considering that what we see of Ancient tech is superior to GTVA, to not even mention GTA, it is extremely unlikely that their weapon technology was lagging so far behind as to be completly useless against Shivan fighters. And that's completly ignoring the context of the quotes, that clearly refer to Lucifers.
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So the possible ending where Alpha 1 dies, and the fact that the shivans continue to attack before, while, and would probably continue to after the supernova means nothing? The civies trying to escape capella that may die because of all of that? The fact that the shivans had been preparing for the supernova for days... all of that counts as nothing?
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Shivans are without emotion.
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Im too tired to contradict any of that except to say its nice and imaginative but mostly pants.
Its applies human motives to the shivans which is the main mistake I think.
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Especially when we cannot even apply the same logic to our own species. Western thinking is in contrast to eastern/middle eastern thinking. What are the odds that Shivan thinking matches western terran thinking? :doubt:
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Originally posted by Hollewanderer
*blinks*
To start with, the monolouges are the best source that we have that goes into any detail. The same comes from both Alpha 1 and Ancients.
It is more of an issue of blowing the system when there are still GTVA assets there. Not a friendly act by any means.
Riiight. They destroyed countless species and "colonised in galaxies that they had no place in" [that quote is a little messed up, but you get the idea]. The nature of FS FTL means that you usually advance at slower pace, as nearby systems are usually connected with each other and there is no reason to make such gargantuan leaps without VERY good reason.
The very idea of Ancients begin utterly unable to harm Shivan fighters makes me giggle. GTA could do it with one Apollo with base loadout, and soon after that they had weapons to do it far more easily. In fact, they had xasers during FS1 era, IIRC, they were just not cost-effective. Ancients controlled a huge area of space, easily FAR bigger than GTA, and gained that through conquer and destruction, unlike GTA, that never fought an alien species before T-V War. Considering that what we see of Ancient tech is superior to GTVA, to not even mention GTA, it is extremely unlikely that their weapon technology was lagging so far behind as to be completly useless against Shivan fighters. And that's completly ignoring the context of the quotes, that clearly refer to Lucifers.
1/ The Monologues are opinions only, don't make them out to be something which they are not
2/ The fact that they're alien explains your second point, they may value energy more than life, or they may not have had enough energy to get home without using the SuperNova Effect.
3/The ancients had never faced any difficult resistance before and had just annihilated any onther races they'd come across, these races were probably cavemen, so the Ancients saw no need to advance their weapon technology, then the LF comes out of nowhere and starts kicking their asses, they have never needed to attack anyone of any power so they don't have any weapons of any power. If the GTA had never met the PVN they would have been slaughtered along with the Vasudans.
Alpha 1's OPINION[/I][/u] at the end of FS1
In the war with the Vasudans we learned to adapt....
If we hadn't fought the Vasudans or only fought cavemen we would have had no weapons at all.
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Then explain why do they continue to attack while in preparation for the supernova...
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*blinks even more*
Yes, monolouges are opinions of the Ancients. Your point is? They are a part of the FS universe, made by Volition. Do you want to throw away canon material just because you feel like it? Hint: you can't do that and expect to be taken seriously.
And in the second point you contradict yourself. They exiled the murderers and basically condemned them, and yet do not value lives at all now. Bad planning, I say.
As for the third one... seriously, do you think that a civilisation that expands by conquering stuff would not invest in a large military? Or R&D? Or maybe you seriously think that GTA had no standing military and no weapons before we met Vasudans, and pulled all of our stuff out of thin air? The multi-megaton pulse cannons were made on the spot? We had Fenris cruisers either before the war or just after it's start, at least.
Why would they make powerful weapons, you ask? Because they can. They certainly weren't jolly and happy fellows who just wanted to hug people - it's obvious that they would seek ways to make things go boom even better, even if it was not needed. [note that you once again contradict yourself on that one, as Shivans have those weapons because they "wanted to be prepared", but Ancients can't have that for some utterly obscure reason]
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War breeds innovation, however. Weapons advance at a slower pace when there is no need for for them to advance, just like everything else. In a war, however, the pressure is on, so to speak.
Consider the advancements made during World War 2: in 1939, all the major combatants still had biplanes in their arsenal; in some cases those biplanes composed a major part of their fighter force. (The Gloster Gladiator and its Italian equivalent.)
By 1945, two of them had jet fighters in operational service, and two more would have had jet fighters in operational service by 1946.
Conversely, though, when your weapons are demonstrably superior to those of everyone else, you don't feel the need to advance them. Germany's armored forces had much the same equipment from the blitzkrieg in Poland until El Alamein. It wasn't until German Panzer IIIs and IVs ran into Russian KV-1 tanks that work on the Tiger began, because until then the III/IV had been sufficent to deal with enemy tanks. The KV-1, however, was impervious to their 50mm and snub-nosed 75mm cannon, and clearly something better was needed. The Panther was a direct response to the Russian T-34.
And getting new weapons into service takes time. The weapon that first put you in a posistion to really make a fight of it with the Shivans in FS1, the Avenger, was already nearing the completion of its development before the Shivans came. The same goes for shields (the MX-50's tech description describes one shields experiment, and seems to imply others). The same must hold true for the Medusa bomber and Tsunami bomb. I would guess that all the ships and weapons you use in FS1 were either pre-exsisting or already in development, with the exceptions of the Ulysses, the Ursa, and the Banshee.
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Maybe the Shivans were created by humanity at some point in the future to fight the Shivans.... and they were set loose, and evolved to a state where they became independent of the constraints of time and space.... spreading across existence like a virus.
Why not?
EDIT; or, for example, on cut-off sol they are developing robots for use in experiments to try and send a ship to the rest of the GTVA... and error occurs, said ship travels millions of years into the past and the robots / AI onboard use the Shivans as a model to rebuild / expand and survive.
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Originally posted by Hollewanderer
*blinks even more*
Yes, monolouges are opinions of the Ancients. Your point is? They are a part of the FS universe, made by Volition. Do you want to throw away canon material just because you feel like it? Hint: you can't do that and expect to be taken seriously.
And in the second point you contradict yourself. They exiled the murderers and basically condemned them, and yet do not value lives at all now. Bad planning, I say.
As for the third one... seriously, do you think that a civilisation that expands by conquering stuff would not invest in a large military? Or R&D? Or maybe you seriously think that GTA had no standing military and no weapons before we met Vasudans, and pulled all of our stuff out of thin air? The multi-megaton pulse cannons were made on the spot? We had Fenris cruisers either before the war or just after it's start, at least.
Why would they make powerful weapons, you ask? Because they can. They certainly weren't jolly and happy fellows who just wanted to hug people - it's obvious that they would seek ways to make things go boom even better, even if it was not needed. [note that you once again contradict yourself on that one, as Shivans have those weapons because they "wanted to be prepared", but Ancients can't have that for some utterly obscure reason]
The monlogues are OPINIONS for Christ's sake, I know they are created by :V: but that is just to make you feel scared of the Shivans and add a sense of mystery.
THe second point, there was over 8000 years between the Exile and Capella
The 1st bit of your second point was explained by ngtm1r
But as for this:
[note that you once again contradict yourself on that one, as Shivans have those weapons because they "wanted to be prepared", but Ancients can't have that for some utterly obscure reason] [/B]
SHIVANS ARE A DIFFERENT SPECIES TO ANCIENTS AS WELL AS HUMANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111Eleventy
Oh yeah the reason the Shivans kept attacking was because they hadn't managed to Communicate with Bosch yet
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Shivans are a life-form, not robots :)
I agree the theory doesn't really work. It doesn't match 'ze truth either. :D
Terrans always make assumptions based on their own thinking.
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Shivans just blow stuff and GTVA is so small that most shivan fleet ingores them
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Originally posted by kietotheworld
The monlogues are OPINIONS for Christ's sake, I know they are created by :V: but that is just to make you feel scared of the Shivans and add a sense of mystery.
I'm sorry, but no. That's like writing a book and then in the last paragraph saying 'Everything before this paragraph is wrong and nothing to do with the truth.' If you were speculating on a real species, then sure. But you don't throw scraps of information about a species like Volition has if the scraps are completely irrelevant and useless; they're clues.
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
I'm sorry, but no. That's like writing a book and then in the last paragraph saying 'Everything before this paragraph is wrong and nothing to do with the truth.' If you were speculating on a real species, then sure. But you don't throw scraps of information about a species like Volition has if the scraps are completely irrelevant and useless; they're clues.
Read the monologs again. Every line of it is by an Ancient trying to come to grips with what happened, with why it happened. Basically, it's a eulogy, written with the perspective of time and the inevitable death that was soon to come to the writer. There are facts there, yes, but it tells us nothing of the Shivan's motives, only their actions. They attached a motive to it, that the Ancients had sinned, and the Shivans came to punish them, but it is never stated that Shivans themselves told them that. The author decided, in the last few moments of life, that it was a divine punishment for the sins of an entire race, but it is not a record of what the Shivans thought about the event, or why they did what they did.
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Originally posted by Eishtmo
Read the monologs again. Every line of it is by an Ancient trying to come to grips with what happened, with why it happened. Basically, it's a eulogy, written with the perspective of time and the inevitable death that was soon to come to the writer. There are facts there, yes, but it tells us nothing of the Shivan's motives, only their actions. They attached a motive to it, that the Ancients had sinned, and the Shivans came to punish them, but it is never stated that Shivans themselves told them that. The author decided, in the last few moments of life, that it was a divine punishment for the sins of an entire race, but it is not a record of what the Shivans thought about the event, or why they did what they did.
I know they're not a record - that's not what I meant. My point was I don't think they're simply meaningless either, whether metaphorically or otherwise I believe they are clues.
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Ooh... Deja Vu...
[q]Hippo on SG:
We keep allpying the Anthropromprphic Fallacy to shivans. ie: the fact that they would think just like we do. They don't. Or at least we can't assume they do. Therefore anything tahs is supposed to be correct because it seems logical, immediately makes it flawed.[/q]
I stand by that... Though i still like Stryke9's random one from a while back...
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I never, ever want to get the mystery behind the Shivans. Fs2 was great in that it never actually told you anything about them (Trust me, you may think it did-but it didnt). Our expectations of what they are, are wrong. We can only be disapointed by what they really are (a handy foe for Alpha 1 to kill inbetween Vasudans and Terrans).
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I believe this topic is the perfect reason why FS3 should never be made.. at least no the FS3 that many people want to see. It has probably been stated but if that FS3 comes and the Shivans are explained... what is left. This community is kept alive by, whether you admit it or not, the mystery of the Shivans. That mystery inspires people to make campaigns and those campaigns inspire new ships, weapons and on the grander scale the art that is SCP. Though I go on spurs of being around the community and not being here, I still love the fact that with every development, every theory, every campaign that is created, we do 2 things.
1) we come closer to realizing the end of the story of Freespace
but...
2) as we come close we distance ourselves from that same end so that it never comes.
Is summary, this theory may be way off, but it shows that people are still inspired by the same story we all first played back in 98-99 (whatever year it came out).
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Meh. The theory bores me too.
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Well i believe that the shivans dont realy destroy for the fun of it but rather to make way for new more powerfull civilizations in order to battle the bigger problem more efectiveli..just think how much the GTVA evolved durin a 3 decade period!
Thats mi opinion!
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Question what brought the Shivans into the first Freespace to begin with?
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;7 the Terran Vasudan war...???Well it makes sense maibe they detected the larg subspac activiti and decided to find out who was dooing all the travel remember that most of the GTVA sistems were one Ancient sistems....so...when they saw that it was a war they decided that it was time to act one again to make way for a new specie..i think!
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Originally posted by Falcon
Question what brought the Shivans into the first Freespace to begin with?
If this is to do with my theory then the LF detected the subspace activity and decided to kill the Subspace travellers.
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Or the Shivan thought, that the Ancients have survived :D
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I don't know why but I keep thinking that the Vasudans were in a previous war with the Shivans before the Terran-Vasudan war......
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No. The shivans are a new threat to the Vasudans as well, only do they have a bit of "prophetic knowledge" from the ancients.