Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Black Wolf on June 08, 2005, 12:00:37 pm
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OK. So the Shivans have been around 8000 years. As far as we know (and I _strongly_ believe this was [V]'s intention) they have been using at least 1 ship class for that entire time (The Lucifer). Now, that ship class has (presumably) had beams (or extremely beam like structures that are rendered exactly as beams in the intro cutscene for FS2) for all of those 8000 years. So the question is - why didn't the Shivan ships have beams in the great war?
The way I see it, there are two possible reasons:
1) They had beam equipped ships but, for whatever reason, chose not to use them in the Great War.
2) They developed/fit them to their ships, much as the GTVA did, in the 32 years between FS1 and FS2
Now, the problem is, there are logical problems wth both those ideas. For the first part, it's ridiculous to go to war with anyone using less than your best weapons, no matter what your aim is (ie. whether you're a cosmic destroyer, a galactic immune system, or just an angry, xenophobic alien bug). Beam equipped cruisers would have ripped through GTA/PVN capital ships of any stripe (Hell, Liliths can still rip through GTVA caps, if you get them in the right spots). So that doesn't seem logical.
The other possibility, that they developed (from original yellow Lucy planet killing specs down to standard red anti cap beams)and equipped them in 32 years faces the same problems as the first one (ie. they've had them for 8000 years (on the lucy) but only felt the need to equip them now?) as well as a few of its own. The cain, for example, is vastly more powerful than before, and thus is presumably generating much more power. Why was it generating all this power before beams? Or did the Shivans replace the reactor (the heart of any ship) as well, rather than just building a new, beam optimised ship (which would probably have been easier, given the amount of rewiring (or whatever) you'd probably need to do to to convert plasma turrets to beams.
Put simply, I can't think up a good, solid reason, as to why, in the GTVAs mind, there were no beam equipped Shivan ships (other than the Lucifer) in the Great War. I realize, of course, why there were in a real world sense (That FS1's engine couldn't support them, and FS2s could (probably at least partially as little more than a slightly gimmicky, but still cool, selling point)). For the record, I'm doing up some campaign backstory and I always like to write that sort of stuff from the GTVA's perspective, mistakes and misconceptions included. But this one has me stumped.
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My theory is that the Shivans were testing us as they destroyed us. They went into battle on approximately equal footing, save for their shields and stronger weaponry and our inability to target them, and when we still proved enough of a match to adapt and destroy their ships... they brought in the Lucifer to put an end to that foolishness.
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hmm, you have a very good point there...
i would say something along the lines of...the shivens had that technology, but it was only still in a kind of "test phase"...this can also fit with a fact of previouse descutions of the lucifer on its way home from destroying some other race..and had not actualy had any contact with the main shivan "worlds" or whatever they call home. thus meaning thier out dated weapon systems were still old and they didnt know any better...being shivans and all..
but also, the whole..not using them cause they dont want to..mightfall into the xenophobic side of things.....why send one sathanas at us when they could have sent like a million first off....saves some problems there...we would have no hope...
why does it always seem they are only testing us...they send something small..but considerable...we step up..and take em down..so they go..ok...take this then...
the same could have been like this before...in the great war...just pushing us to our limits making us struggle but know we can do nothing to stop them..perhaps it was a kind of sadistic way of xeno-tourture...hee hee
if you were going to anihilate something for all time..wouldnt you want to have soem fun? and maybe even they have some other "programming" put into thier being...as to only push the races to thier limits as to try and make it fair...or something..u can go off with that if you like..
or even a kind of...they are trying to find an allie worthy of being a fellow destroyer...they push a speicies to its breaking point..if it can then step up and show the shivens what they got....they might leave them alone..
after a while, they will come back and push them even further...throwing new challenges at them...then when they either are destroyed or step up to the challenge again....they leave them alone..and the process continues....maybe even the possability of a replacment "destroyer" speicies..but in this case..they may have bitten off more than they could chew...catching 2 races fuse together and thus changing circumstances for the shivens....
anyway..u people can take out whatever you like from that...thats just my couple of bucks...
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Maybe it's a plot hole? :p I was going to say that it was experimental tech, but the Ancients (which lived thousands of years ago) said that they encountered the shield system and found it's weakness, which rules out that theory.
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Originally posted by Ghost
My theory is that the Shivans were testing us as they destroyed us. They went into battle on approximately equal footing, save for their shields and stronger weaponry and our inability to target them, and when we still proved enough of a match to adapt and destroy their ships... they brought in the Lucifer to put an end to that foolishness.
oh damn..i knew someone would jump the thread before i finnished writting..hee hee...great minds think alike ghost ;)
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Maybe comps back in 1998 simply couldn't handle big fancy beam weapons firing every-which-way :p [/cynical]
But in all seriousness, the Shivan fleet in FS1 could have simply been a branch fleet, and only the Lucifer was beam-equipped. The Cains, Lliths, and Demons could have been defunct by Shivan standards, for all we know, and they still punched holes in GTA and PVN lines. When the GTA and PVN destroyed the Lucifer, that could have been a signal to the Shivans that they needed to get serious, and then they send in beam-equipped cruisers/caps/Saths.
However, I still stand by my first answer. :p
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Or maybe it was some kind of evil plan, for us to beat them in FS1, and then in FS2, as they tricked us into finding out things like the Knossos to rebuild it somewhere else.:devil:
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or maybe they are really like our mothers and when were being bad like in a fight with the vasudans...or other humans(NTF) they come and spank us a bit :P
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game-development-wise, fs1 didn't have the rendering capabilities needed to make proper beams. :p
game-wise, i'm thinking that the Shivans found us so inferior that they decided not to use their beams on us. (aside from using them on planets)
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Amazing how after all these years people still debate the big FS1->FS2 plot holes.....
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hey, who can blame us...perhaps if the damn people made a FS3 maybe they could fix these plot holes for us....save us the trouble..but thats not gonna happen..so we just have to descuss this stuff
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he said the magic letters! run for your lives!! :eek:
(better not say that again, fergo, else you piss off more people than you will ever know)
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Originally posted by Cobra
game-development-wise, fs1 didn't have the rendering capabilities needed to make proper beams. :p
I don't buy that argument. :v: gave the Lucifer pseudo-beams in FS1. They could as easily have given all the other shivan caps the same weapons if they had wanted to.
I don't have too much of a problem with beams. Maybe the Lucifer was only recently fitted with beams and sent on a shakedown genocide in FS1.
There is no evidence that the shivans had beams when they killed the ancients. Beams could be as new to the shivans as they are to the terrans.
What bugs me is why the lucifers shielding system was never seen again and even that can be explained away if we assume that beams can penetrate it and that beams are new.
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maybe it took the Shivans 20 years to make the shield system? :D
but yeah you present a good point there.
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The thing is, if they didn't have beams in FS1, why wasn't either command or your wingmates surprised when they had them when they first appeared in 2?
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probably because we had beams too.
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Exactly! There was even a chat about it mentioning that the Terrans had no Flak cannon and no Beams during the great war. So why, when the Shivans reappeared, also armed with Beam weapons, didn't one single person go 'Huh? Where'd they get Beam weapons from?'
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ask the developers then. :p
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My opinion, is that the shivans 'knew' (I use this term lightly because of the anthropromorphic fallacy) that their enemies would discover some part of their technology, ie; shields. They may have 'chosen' to not uotfit beams on every ship at the time bar the lucifer, even though they were probably certian they would win, because that technology could still be uncovered by their enemy, and unearthed many millenia later (ie; the records on altair) and used against them. however, the Shivans 'felt' safe using them on the Lucifer, as it was 'indestructable' as far as they knew. But lo and behold, we got close scans of the lucifer, destroyed it, and learned at least something from the technology (even though we didn't actually have a chunk of the lucifer). Once the shivans realised that the secret was out, (possibly by monitoring the node in gama drac, and seeing other beams in the GTVA/NTF confrontation) they let loose. Presumeably, witht e exceptions of the Lilith, Cain, and Demon, the other ships are 'new' in FS2, so migh thave been fittet the entire time with beam technology, but kept away from the front lines to prevent this technology from being discovered (again, with the exception of the lucifer).
As for why the GTVA didn't say, "Oh crap, they have beams too", look at hallfight and all the testing the GTI did on shivans AFTER the great war... They could have realised that the shivans had this type of phenomenon in them that makes bright things put holes in stuff, and figure that it was just a part of their species. After all, while many people thought they might (a la FS1 end monologue), noone actually wanted so say, "Hey! Lets see if the Shivans come back and kick our assess even worse with bigger ships!" The end.
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Originally posted by Flipside
Exactly! There was even a chat about it mentioning that the Terrans had no Flak cannon and no Beams during the great war. So why, when the Shivans reappeared, also armed with Beam weapons, didn't one single person go 'Huh? Where'd they get Beam weapons from?'
My thoughts on this come from the 2335 Rebellion (Silent Threat), where the Hades, having been based off of Lucifer and Shivan technology, had beam cannons similar to what the Lucifer would have had.
Whether the Hades had been constructed originally under orders by the GTA in order to fight the Lucifer/prepare for a second Shivan invasion, or whether it was a top-secret GTI project makes no difference. The GTA more than likely acquired it in one way or another (through scans, investigating old GTI files, etc.), and then, with modifications to fit GTA and PVN reactor and power requirements, beam cannons were implemented.
:V: honestly could have put beam weapons on all of the Shivan warships in FS1, but they decided not to. Whether that be for development reasons or for gameplay balance or any other reason, beam weapons simply did not make it onto every ship in the FS1 era. To support it, I still stand by my "defunct Shivan ships" theory in my earlier post.
EDIT: Posted at the same time as Hippo. Good thoughts in that post, too. :nod:
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There are obvious reasons why only the Lucifer had beams, the main one probably being: the Lucifer is an important ship, around which the entire game revolves, and thus deserves special attributes to mark it out - such as invulnerable shields and city-destroying, destroyer-carvin' photon beam cannons.
The in-game reason I like to use is that the Lucifer's accompaniment wasn't obselete, or less advanced than their FS2 counterparts, but what it was - an accompaniment. The ships were designed for the role of escorting the Lucifer and beam weaponry was sacrificed for hull strength and durability or whatever. The FS2 capital ships, however, were designed to function alone or in small groups and thus required the 'punch' a beam cannon would provide (apart from the Sathanas fleet and possibly the Ravana's group in the nebula, there doesn't appear to be much cohesion in the Shivans encountered in FS2).
'Course, it's weak (because it's retrofitting the universe to fit the games, and because we haven't seen any real evidence of such 'specialisation' in the Shivan armada) but what are you going to do?
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i still maintain that the lucefer fleet was in a long term (and i mean by tens of thousands of years) patrol of the galaxy keeping an eye on up and coming speicies and doing away with them as nessisary. and the ships used were of ancient construction. at least by 8000 years according to cannon, assuming that it was the same lucifer. somwhere along those lines the shivans decided to change their combat philosophy from a good defence is the best offense, to a good offence is the best defence.
my other idea is that shivans are on some kind of honor system, like the clans in battletech, and will not engage an enemy with too vastly superior weapon systems. this is consistant with the fact that the shivans didnt do an all system sweep of all gtva systems with its sathanas fleet.
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I don't see much point in a long term patrol when the Shivans could probably reach any place in the galaxy within a week.
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Personally, I kinda figure the FS1 and FS2 shivans weren't the same subgroups. The FS1 shivans were the shivan equivalent of religious nuts, out to purify the galaxy and all that nice stuff. They just didn't have full scale access to the full range of tech like the FS2 shivans, who are the shivan government type, do. They put all their eggs in one big basket, and cut costs elsewhere. When the lucy got blowed up, they were in for it.
The FS2 shivans were the government, and had the money to put beams on everything. Probably explains why they weren't quite so fanatical about blowing us up - sure they did it, but never with the same passion the FS1 shivans did.
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"And they are wondering... what happened to their scouting party!"
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Originally posted by karajorma
I don't see much point in a long term patrol when the Shivans could probably reach any place in the galaxy within a week.
Hey when you were driving to work this morning can you remember the color of the 4th sedan you passed parked on the road? That is a small detail in an otherwise vast sea of details. The Difference in the subspace and gravitational field is likely a subtle detail in the greater scheme of things the ability to sense subspace activity more than likely can't have unlimited range and accuracy. Likely any distortions would be confined to directly affected and nearby gravitational fields. They could be sensing thru the galactic field, but that likely to weak a signal to decode with any precision. That puts them with in say X number of sectors of space cubed. Then they have to narrow it down. Traveling takes time still and the node network sounds very unpredictable over all even for Shivans, who can travel likely weaker nodes than the GTVA, thus more routes possible but there are possible hazards to this.
Hey are all the GTVA systems in the same arm of this galaxy?
If they are, are they all systems that are next to each other?
Or are they just near by each other but with other systems in between the systems on the node network that aren’t on the node network?
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I'd say that the fleet in FS1 with the exception with the lucifer was designed to be "cheap". The shivans knew (or thaught they knew, they werent counting on the discovery of the ancients records) that the small attack team would be enough. The lucifer was only in the fleet for command andd heavy orbital bombardment purposes.
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Anyone reading 'World War; In the Balance"?
Could be that the shivans simply underestimated us when they made initial scans of us.
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Originally posted by Fade Rathnik
Hey when you were driving to work this morning can you remember the color of the 4th sedan you passed parked on the road? That is a small detail in an otherwise vast sea of details. The Difference in the subspace and gravitational field is likely a subtle detail in the greater scheme of things the ability to sense subspace activity more than likely can't have unlimited range and accuracy. Likely any distortions would be confined to directly affected and nearby gravitational fields. They could be sensing thru the galactic field, but that likely to weak a signal to decode with any precision. That puts them with in say X number of sectors of space cubed. Then they have to narrow it down. Traveling takes time still and the node network sounds very unpredictable over all even for Shivans, who can travel likely weaker nodes than the GTVA, thus more routes possible but there are possible hazards to this.
I don't understand what you're getting at. My point is why would the shivans be on an 8000 year long patrol when they could end their tour of duty and retrace their route back home within a week or less. Long deep space patrols make sense when you have an FTL system that takes a while to get somewhere and therefore a long time to get back.
Considering how quickly the shivans could have returned to their homeworld it doesn't make sense that they would deliberately have remain out of contact with the rest of their species for so long.
If the Lucifer had been away from the homeword for 8000 years I can only think of a few reasons that would make sense.
1) They couldn't return due to a broken node
2) They are a seperate group of shivans that aren't allowed near homeworld.
(I use the term homeworld very lightly. I simply mean contact with the other shivans sufficient for upgrades).
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Originally posted by karajorma
I don't see much point in a long term patrol when the Shivans could probably reach any place in the galaxy within a week.
shivans are nomadic in nature, they have no bases, they essentially roam the galaxy. so thats consistant with my theary. the lucifer is known to be 8000 years old. aso it all kinda corelates.
Originally posted by karajorma
I don't understand what you're getting at. My point is why would the shivans be on an 8000 year long patrol when they could end their tour of duty and retrace their route back home within a week or less. Long deep space patrols make sense when you have an FTL system that takes a while to get somewhere and therefore a long time to get back.
Considering how quickly the shivans could have returned to their homeworld it doesn't make sense that they would deliberately have remain out of contact with the rest of their species for so long.
If the Lucifer had been away from the homeword for 8000 years I can only think of a few reasons that would make sense.
1) They couldn't return due to a broken node
2) They are a seperate group of shivans that aren't allowed near homeworld.
(I use the term homeworld very lightly. I simply mean contact with the other shivans sufficient for upgrades).
also remember the shivans didnt really have a way back to the nebula. its possible the ancients broke that node to stop them from pouring in. and then fought the ones that were already in there systems. its probibly the building of those portals that put up the kill me flag for the shivans to see.
with there relationship to subspace, its feasable that the shivans are harmed by the portals, being the reason for commiting genocide against the ancients. so the systems beyond the subspace portals in the system from into the lions den is probibly the origin of the shivans. noone knows how many of those portals they built and how far the artifitially stabilized node network goes. the ancients seem to have invaded alot of worlds according to the monologs, yet we only find ruins belonging to the ancients.
its logical to assume the shivans were encountered beyond the portals because they indicate the direction in wich the ancients explored space. perhaps the ancients encountered sathani, that would explain the nebula beyond gamma draconis :D
so i bet the lucifer fleet was isolated, and was probibly on the search for a path home. freespace doesnt say much about the amount of scanning required to find a node, it mght be something you have to be on top of to actually detect. its probibly a process of jump to a system, spend several years scanning for nodes and move on. the ruins we found could have been a distant outpost and the ancients attempted to flee in this direction deactivated the gamma draconis portal and blasted the node, but not until after a small number of ships got through. of course it was enough t decimate the ancients. the shivans didnt attempt to reactivate the portal, or just didnt care to, and being isolated from the resources the other shivans had, didnt have fully developed beam weapons. only two on a ship full of reactors, seems like they werenew tech at the time of the lucifers design.
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I think the Lucifer Fleet was a bunch of Genocidal Terrorists, who were exiled from the Shivan fleet in weapon free ships. They converted their reactors to make beams on their main ship (Lucifer) and gave it an inpenetrable shield. THey then went on a killing spree, but got beat by the GTA and PVE. When the Rakshasa came through the node the crew of the Vigilanté thought "oh shite! Shivans!" and fired on the Shivans. They Shivans retaliated, but the Carthage and Dashor destroyed the Rakshasa. The Shivans got pissed and decided to teach the GTVA a lesson by sending in the Sathanas, then we destroyed that before it had even razed a planet! They decided to lay the ultimate smackdown by sending in 80 Saths, but then Bosch told them of the great misunderstanding that had occured. The Saths decided to use a slingshot subspace effect to get back home so they sent Capella nova. They considered the deaths of the few refugees a last act of Vengance.
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Originally posted by Nuke
shivans are nomadic in nature, they have no bases, they essentially roam the galaxy. so thats consistant with my theary. the lucifer is known to be 8000 years old. aso it all kinda corelates.
I have no problem with that possibility. Saying that the shutdown of the knossos trapped them is also fine. My problem is with the theory that they would send a bunch of shivan ships away from the main group for 8000 years and let them get horribly out of date even though they could have easily returned to the main shivan collective. .
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They might have been outdated because they were a reserve or possibly even a "Home Guard" type of fleet. They were, after all, dealing with a section of the galaxy the Shivans have already pacified once.
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Another plausable theory to go along with the whole Nomad angle, and that of the different design and technological aspects of the two Shivan armadas encountered, is that the Shivans are simply extremely Tribal in nature...
...Basically, they just wander the Galaxy/Universe in totally seperate tribes, raiding Space-Faring civilisations to aquire resources and/or fuel for their respective Fleets, almost the exact opposite of the GTVA. This fits nicely with the different looking design and technology of the two armadas. The Lucifer Fleet could have simply been a smaller Nomad Fleet that happened upon the GTA & PVN, an inveritable plethora of resources to feed their fledgling fleet. How this Fleet survived for so long, good ol' Luci of course. This also explains the colour of Luci's Beams being different from that of the Nebular Armada's, and of course her Shileds; which could both be a product of a technological progression that was once unified, but at one time became seperated...
...Keeping that in mind, the Second Shivan Fleet encountered in the Nebula would have been simply a different, considerably more powerful and advanced Tribe, likely the dominant one in the Galaxy/Universe, hence the slightly different designs of their ships and the widespread use of Beam Technology. Sure, they didn't have those funky Cap-Shields so they couldn't really call themselves basically 'Invincible', but with a Fleet like that, who's gonna argue? No one, that's who...
...Yeah, so basically, i'm going with the old arguement that, while the two fleets were of the same Species, they were of two different groups/tribes, thus explaining why the technology wielded by them was in essence the same, and yet at the same time, vastly different...
Edit; ...Lupus Nebula...uh...what's...what's that? :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Mefustae
the Second Shivan Fleet encountered in the Lupus Nebula
There's absolutely no canon info on which nebula the Shivans were encountered in. Be careful about taking stuff from the Shivan Manifesto as canon.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I don't buy that argument. :v: gave the Lucifer pseudo-beams in FS1. They could as easily have given all the other shivan caps the same weapons if they had wanted to.
I don't have too much of a problem with beams. Maybe the Lucifer was only recently fitted with beams and sent on a shakedown genocide in FS1.
There is no evidence that the shivans had beams when they killed the ancients. Beams could be as new to the shivans as they are to the terrans.
What bugs me is why the lucifers shielding system was never seen again and even that can be explained away if we assume that beams can penetrate it and that beams are new.
I do belive one of hte BC ani's said that it was evident that the planet of hte ancients was allso destroyed by the Lucifer...
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In FS1. The Vasudan dudes who got stranded and found the ruins also said that the planet was most certainly destroyed by Shivan weapons. Now they had seen only one planet destroyed by the Shivans, and that was Vasuda prime. Hence we can assume that Lucifer destroyed both planets.
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Originally posted by Ghostavo
"And they are wondering... what happened to their scouting party!"
In the FreeSpace 2's box, there's a sentence similar to this.
[speculation]If this can be interpreted as canon, this would mean the Lucifer fleet's role is scouting the galaxy in search of "hostile" lifeforms.
With reinforcements a long way, the LF may have decided to wage war by itself against the GTA and the PVE, seeing they were weak foes and they had the "ultimate" weapon on their side, the Lucifer.[/speculation]
Surprise, the shivans were defeated after Alpha 1 single handedly destroyed the Lucifer as well as several other warships.
[heavy speculation]The reasons for the fleet not having beam weapons may have been, ironically, for story telling reasons than gameplay, engine or otherwise.
How did they set the SD Lucifer apart from every other capital ship in the game? By giving it invincible shields, by being the only one of it's class encountered, etc, etc, etc, AND by giving it a weapon of unprecedented power, unmatched (I assume) in the entire game, a weapon of it's own. Would the Lucifer be feared in the same way if every other Shivan capital ship had a weaker, yet similar weapon? They had to make the ship unique, and so they did, at the cost of continuity.[/heavy speculation]
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hmm, this has been said on a few so i wont quote directly..
it has been said that the shivans have no "homeworld" and such...but you have yet to prove how the hell they got enough recources for the jugernought fleet...let alone anything else they have built...i dont think mining asteroids quite cuts it and i wouldnt think nebular gas would quite give you the raw elements needed for this kind of production.
i know that it is something hard to believe but there has to be some feisable (im a shocking speller) reason for this. unless you follow some kind of derelict path and say that the ships are living kinda and they are made in subspace like babies..hee...
also the fact that it says something about the shivens beaing created from another race....this may explain the ships and technology and stuff.....since this race might build everything for them..and could be this.."hive mind". it could symply be the built army of another race that wants to kick everyone elses buts in the universe...when thier shiven buddys clear out a system..and move on and are asured of not being pushed back, thier "masters" might expand into that system for recources and such.
also after watching the acient monologs...they said somthing about expending all of thier usable recources and stuff....if this is true..then they would have had masive fleets and so on...thinking they would focus alot on military to wipe aways the little other races...this means that the shiven empire must be wither totally HUGE to have the amount of recources it has..or it couold support the subspace theory....
and as a last crazy thought...what if subspace is like a tree...with lots of roots....and it give birth to the shivens whenever annoying pests desterb its roots..(these being the intrasystem jump nodes)
[/end of idiots views]
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Shivans don't need a homeworld for building ships; just a world (or several). It's not beyond the Shivans capabilities to destroy a planet, IMO, if they have a fleet able to destroy a star.
There's also a hell of a lot more asteroids in the galaxy than you maybe imagine; tens of thousands along in the Solar Systems (not very dense) belt, including 220-odd that are larger than 100km across (the largest known is 1000km).
Ultimately, the Shivan fleet can be built under the old high technology=magic adage. There might not be currently a conceivable or physically possible way to build a fleet by harvesting nebular gas, but that doesn't preclude it from science fiction.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
I do belive one of hte BC ani's said that it was evident that the planet of hte ancients was allso destroyed by the Lucifer...
Yeah but who says that those were actually Lucifer beams? For all we know the shivans dragged in a 30km long planet killer to do the work because they hadn't yet figured out how to make beams into something they could mount on something the Lucifers size.
There is nothing except for circumstancial evidence that the Lucifer was involved in the destruction of the Ancients homeworld.
Hell, to be honest there's very little evidence that the shivans were even involved themself. For all we know they could have simply killed off the Great Destroyers and nicked their ships. :D Or they could have stumbled across the deralicts of the original fleet and takne them over themselves. I don't believe that but there's no evidence that it's wrong.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Hell, to be honest there's very little evidence that the shivans were even involved themself. For all we know they could have simply killed off the Great Destroyers and nicked their ships. :D Or they could have stumbled across the deralicts of the original fleet and takne them over themselves. I don't believe that but there's no evidence that it's wrong.
Interesting.
So when the Shivans nuked Capella, they really could be running from someone. :nervous: The Real Great Destroyers...
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hahah...intersting theory...
i probably would like to run into anything the shivens are running from....that could be a little.....lets just say...ALPHA 1...destroy as many things as you can...but command, there is too many deathstars here...i cant possibly.....do what you have to pilot...*turns on cheats* MWUHAHAHAHAHA*dies*
get what i mean....
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Originally posted by karajorma
Yeah but who says that those were actually Lucifer beams? For all we know the shivans dragged in a 30km long planet killer to do the work because they hadn't yet figured out how to make beams into something they could mount on something the Lucifers size.
There is nothing except for circumstancial evidence that the Lucifer was involved in the destruction of the Ancients homeworld.
Hell, to be honest there's very little evidence that the shivans were even involved themself. For all we know they could have simply killed off the Great Destroyers and nicked their ships. :D Or they could have stumbled across the deralicts of the original fleet and takne them over themselves. I don't believe that but there's no evidence that it's wrong.
Well, the only other world destroyed by Shivans was Vasuda Prime (destroyed by Lucifer's beams), and the scientists on Altair were Vasudans.
When tehy saw the destruction Altar what did they compare it to? Vasuda of course...
Now, Shivans could have used another ship with same beam weaponry as Lucifer, but that is less likely..
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Hmm, this thread just spurred upon me a possibility for the shivans destroying capella.
Possibly they got the star to superonava in such a way that the valuble materials would all be fairly concentrated in a spot?
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Well, the only other world destroyed by Shivans was Vasuda Prime (destroyed by Lucifer's beams), and the scientists on Altair were Vasudans.
When tehy saw the destruction Altar what did they compare it to? Vasuda of course...
Now, Shivans could have used another ship with same beam weaponry as Lucifer, but that is less likely..
Not when you take things as a whole. If you say that the Shivans definately used the Lucifer to bombard the ancients then you have to explain why only the lucifer had beams in FS1.
Personally I like the planet killer theory. It doesn't demystify the Shivans anywhere near as much as any of the others.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Hell, to be honest there's very little evidence that the shivans were even involved themself. For all we know they could have simply killed off the Great Destroyers and nicked their ships. :D Or they could have stumbled across the deralicts of the original fleet and takne them over themselves. I don't believe that but there's no evidence that it's wrong.
Hmm...perhaps the Shivans are not even a single species.
Borrowing Bosch's analogy, the nine cities of Troy have been destroyed by nine different groups, using the same ships. Each time, they have destroyed all there is to destroy, conquered all there is to conquer, and then dissolved under the weight of their own weaponry; with no one else left they have turned on each other, or they have been on the offensive so long, become so dependant on acquiring new resources and territory, that when the conquests run out they collapse within a few generations.
Then one of the next species to evolve to sentience finds the remains of the last batch of Shivans, and sees that they can conquer the galaxy. And they go off to do so. Shivan technology would seem to be at the least easier to reverse-engineer then the norm, and given their vast numbers the Shivans' ships and weaponry might well also be easily mass-produced. Whoever gets to their tech and weapons first has a decisive advantage.
At least until they run into the GTA/PVE.
Following that logic, it would seem possible that the Shivans who wiped out the Ancients, the Lucifer fleet, and the Sathanas fleet may not even be the same people.
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I don't think a new Shivan race could evolve in 8000 years but apart from that it is a possibilty.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I don't think a new Shivan race could evolve in 8000 years but apart from that it is a possibilty.
It might not have to; perhaps the mechanical component of Shivans (as individuals) is unchanging, and the organic part can vary.
NB: the fs reference bible implies that the Shivans had multiple shielded capital ships; " In the last months of their species’ existence, they were perfecting a device to allow ships to be tracked in subspace. The Ancient’s planned on using this to attack the Shivans’ key ships in subspace while their shields were down. ".
Worth noting that this little bit of the text (below the quoted) implied a few missions were cut from FS1; namely to retrieve technology from the Shivans and HoL to build the tracking device.
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This raises the thought in me that we think so much about where subspace nodes arrive, but don't think much about when they arrive. Theres always the possibility that the Lucifer could be 8000 years old and still a brand new ship in the Shivan armada ;)
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Time travel is a really ****ty way to resolve problems, IMO. Too lazy; it means you've come up with a storyline without thnking of a good way to end it. So I'd hope that wasn't a factor in the FS1/2 storyline.
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the lucifer seems to be to be a prototype ship. new advancements with new advances in beams and shields, the shivans probibly tried to implement them into a destroyer. then the shivans learn that the ship is a bad idea. and thus stop making them.
i come to the conclusion that its a prototype because first, it only has 2 beam cannons. which means because they were new, they were total power whores and not the super effietiend bfreds we all know and love. also cannon suggest beams are not powered by the ships main reactor. "commence plasma core insertion." i take it this means that beam cannons use there own energy source, theese plasma cores and do not rely on reactors, none the less lucifer's set would have still been a power drain..
secondly the reactors being so close to the ship exterior, as if they were just bolted on to help power the shield. sathani and deamons are big hulking beasts with plenty of interior space to house reactors, the lucifer is a long and slender ship, which means it was never designed to have reactors strung along the hull like christmas lights.
the references to "key ships" could mean there was a second lucy. its feasable that this lucifer was destroyed by the ancients in the nebula->gamma draconis node, which would explain the node being inactive. a second lucifer, which had already made the crossing delt the final blow to the ancients.
the lucifer can be tracked in subspace, it has big whopping reactors that dont take much to destroy. when they die its usually in subspace and will do severe damage to subspace. the loss of a subspace node would be a devistating loss for the shivans (more so if they have a religious obseesion with subspace and its protection). so if the lucifer was a prototype or new model, and turned out to be a failure in the shivans eyes. much as early russian nuclear subs were prone to catastrophic failure. the shivans backed off and decided huge strapped on reactors were a bad idea, and rethought the integration of the new technology.
the lucifer fleet = how the shivans were 8000 years ago
the sathanas fleet = how the shivans are now
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my theory has always been they didn't want us to get the technology, so they only put it on the one invincable super ship
I've also had some other interesting Shivan theories, one was similar to the Shivan technological grabbag theory.
that the anchent destroyers did not actualy destroy the anchents, but that the anchents won, and 8,000 years later now they are the destroyers, untill they get into a fight with us, and after we take them on we will eventualy become the next Shivans.
I don't follow that theory, and never realy did, but I always thought it was a fun one.
current theory of the Shivans, they are simply infinite as far as we are able to see, controleing vast swaths of the universe (note I didn't say galixy, and oh, yes I know what I'm saying) lets say something like 2% of all mater in the universe is Shivan technolody, dyson sphere like power suplys built around induced black holes. we are insects to them, the ships we've been fighting are construction equipment, designed not to destroy, but to fine tune the galixie's naturaly caotic gravity/subspace feild and enableing them to make stableized contact with the real Shivan armada. think about it, what if the Sathanus is the shivan eqivilent of a garden rake? they arived in the milkyway sevral hundred thousand years ago and have been reshapeing it into something a little more conducive to inter galactic subspace travle.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
my theory has always been they didn't want us to get the technology, so they only put it on the one invincable super ship
:rolleyes: did anyone read my post? :sigh:
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I skimmed
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I barely skimmed.
If the lucy wa 8000 years old, and the Sathys are the now shivans, that would be a majior insult.
They would have a shield on the sathy by then.
They had one lucy, with beams that would kill off home worlds and defeat all enemy force. They didnt have a need for many beammed ships. With the invincible lucy the destroyed many a worlds. Tho the other ships were older classes, because they did not really need the newer oens to defeat enemies.
The ancients are the only 'super big and great' species we know of to date. The shivans took them out without a prob. Killed not just their homeworld but all of their worlds. We, through the knoloage of the Ancients, took out the Lucy, and their fleet.
We were the first ones to give them a challenge, a scare, if you will. We kept adapting and defeathing (while getting our Areses kicked). Colossus came, we defeated their greatest warship to Their date. The Sathanis. They had a fleet of them. I beleive they ran.
And with the running theory: The 'shivans_dont_think_like_we_do, and we_never_realised_their_stratagy_or_movemets' statement. Well they could either just be going somewhere, or doing what they want for no good reason, or, they could be running. Knowing we dont now how they think could support both theories.
Anyone have a fix on how big or far this supernova was? How big did it get? What was its reach?
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the fact that the shivans were aware of the portal technology and didnt use it to get reinforcements to the lucifer fleet seems to confirm that shivans have a religious attachment to subspace. it seems that they consider it sacrilidge to tamper with subspace. it would also explain why we did not encounter a lucifer in fs3. they are just too harmfull to the subspace domain or whatever.
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Or that they didn't know how to turn the portal on.
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Surely they could have figured it out...they've had a long time to stare at the thing and wonder, you know...
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Depends if Bosch was digging in Deneb for a password rather than an on switch then there would have been no way to turn it on.
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i dont think you could password lock the working components. only the control computer needs one, and that can be replaced or bypassed. its like hotwiring a car, it might be trickey but it can be done. if we can rebuild our own gate you can rest assured the shivans can too.
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Or they could have taken an entire working component out leaving the shivans no way to open the knossos since they probably didn't bring a replacement.
Besides this religious to subspace argument tends to fall flat given the fact that while in FS1 they didn't use the node in FS2 they brought 80 juggernauts through the damn thing.
Besides who says the shivans even knew where the damn thing was? They might have known the location when they wiped out the ancients but 8000 years is a long time to forget or lose the information. For that matter who says that they knew where the portal was 8000 years ago? The shivans could easily have wiped out the ancients via Ross 128 and have no idea where the knossos was.
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Yeah, like the universe sorta eventually in orbit, slides togeather, out of place so to speak, thus you cannot always pinpoint a location. You have to adjust for variances.
why does no one read my posts :confused:
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galactic drift, you mean?
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I was refering to the fact that it's quite possible that when the Ancients fled through the Knossos and sealed it behind them the Shivans were left with no clue where the jump node in the nebula actually went to.
In FS2 when the Aquitaine jumped into the nebula it seemed like command wasn't certain where they were. The name of the Nebula was never mention even in the Colossus cutscene. That seems to indicate 1 of 2 things
1) When you detect a new jump node you can not tell where it goes.
2) You can usually tell but the Knossos prevented the GTVA from doing it this time.
Either way it's quite possible that the shivans would have had the same problem. They would then have had to search for the ancients (probably by entering via Ross 128) in order to find them and kill them.
The end result would be the ancients dead but them still having no idea where the Knossos was.
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Or maybe 3) they detect the location of jump nodes / systems by examining the constellation / star patterns visible within the system. Which you couldn't do in that nebula.
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I thought of that. In fact either that or analysing the spectra of the star is almost certainly what I feel they do.
That's something you do at the other end after you've jumped though. With the knossos closed the shivans wouldn't have been able to do it which is why I didn't mention it :) You'll notice that your explaination still depends on 1 or 2 being true :D
It's obvious that there is a way to identify which star system a node leads to at some point or how on Earth could anyone be certain that Capella really was the star in the sky that we call Capella. All the systems in the game would have had non RL names.
(On the other hand that does explain why Capella is a single yellow giant in the game but a quaternary system in RL :D )
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I wasn't thinking of the Shivans, really, to be honest. I kind of wonder if any Knossos gate was operational until the Trinity activated the GD one. Albeit an interesting thing, IMO, is that GD was discovered just prior to the Great War.
(I also wonder if there is any meaning in the GTSC Erikson being the last ship to visit the system... best I can think of is Lief Erikson, the Viking credited with discovering the 'New World' and establishing a Viking settlement in Canada)
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Actually that does raise an interesting possible history.
1) The GTI discover the subspace portal in GD shortly beofre the start of the Great War.
2) They open the portal which wasn't at that point locked, mearly off.
3) They encounter the shivans, realise that they've bitten off more than they can chew and hastily close and lock the knossos.
4) The act of locking the knossos also locks the ones in the nebula and beyond.
5) The shivans come through Ross 128 looking for the knossos so that they can reopen it but end up getting destroyed instead.
Doesn't explain why they waited 32 years before bothering the Terrans again though. Unless the lucifer fleet was all of the shivans that weren't trapped by the knossos going offline.
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Who knows how far the Knossos network extends.......
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i think i siad that. but you can tell by on which side of the jump node the portal is built on, the direction the ainchents progressed through space. it is a logical assumption that the ancients encountered the shivans at the far end of the network.
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It was said by many that the Lucifer fleet was a scouting party. It is not unlikely that is so, because everything seems to point in that direction. The Knossos serial network also makes sense. It is a possibility that both are true, and the Lucifer fleet was simply a scout party sent out to investigate the opening of the Knossos, only to be trapped once the Knossos was disabled. After that, the re-activation of the Knossos portal by Bosch got their attention.
As for the weapons technology, the "Into the Lion's Den" mission showed us that the shivans had massive arrays of massive sensor units. That may be very well how they had the same technology the GTVA had. For all we know, they could have recorded the development, testing, and deployment of said technology. After analyzing, the shivans basicly used their own technology against them. Their shields were better, they had more developed Flak guns, and larger, more focused beam cannons. They had all of GTVA's recent technology, except refined. That's basicly the only way I can see it happening.
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That makes me wonder, if the whole shivan mystery lies around one word: Knossos. Il think about this tonight.
If the shivans came to investigate the reactivation of the scouting party, why would they bring a planet glasser as light infantry?
I will get a map soon of the FS2 planet\node network hopefully; but it makes me think. If the Vasudans were around longer, why did they not discover the Ancient planet before, Antares i beleive. If they did and kept it secert, how much did they know about the Ancients, as they had time to explore and gather data and tehcnology.
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Originally posted by Charismatic
I will get a map soon of the FS2 planet\node network hopefully; but it makes me think. If the Vasudans were around longer, why did they not discover the Ancient planet before, Antares i beleive. If they did and kept it secert, how much did they know about the Ancients, as they had time to explore and gather data and tehcnology.
That, too, makes me wonder. I wonder if the Vasudans and the ancients are somewhat related. Perhaps Vasuda Prime was uninhabited 8000 years before, and the last of the ancients called that their new home, but never to speak of their past. And by the time of the great war, the Vasudans were finally ignorant of their heritage. There had to be a reason, after all, as to why Lucifer went after Vasuda Prime.
Hmmm...
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Originally posted by Scuddie
There had to be a reason, after all, as to why Lucifer went after Vasuda Prime.
Hmmm...
Same for Earth: Homeworld of enemy forces. Level it.
Really, the Lucifer doesn't seem like a scout ship at all. Invunerable one-of-a-kind shielding, orbital bombardment capablity (also one-of-a-kind at the time) heavy fighter complement and a decidedly ship-of-the-line usage in actual combat.
Originally posted by Scuddie
As for the weapons technology, the "Into the Lion's Den" mission showed us that the shivans had massive arrays of massive sensor units.
Come again? The name of the device is "Shivan Comm Node"...
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I'm not sure that 3 counts as a massive Array, either.
Oh, and the Ancients / Vasudans do have some form of unspecified connection; FS1 has a lot more references than FS2, for example a note in a command brieifing that Vasudan and Ancient language is very similar (as well as a hint that the ancients - or their legacy - may have helped the Vasudans rapidly develop space technology).
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So if we kept up with the Vasudans who had Ancient techonlogy and help from them, the very ones who had a big *** galatic empire, maby we are almost in technology, = with the Ancients, mostly (Knossos). So maby if we ever had time to grow without the shivans killing us off, we would spand to be a great galatic empire. Thus Freespace 6: Star Wars (tm) Begins!
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or maybe not :rolleyes:
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i think of the lucifer as the front line of tanks in the german blitzkrieg. its fast, its well armed, and well protected. also as a scout it is required to survive, thus its shield. i do not consider the lucifer as high tech as a sathanas. nor do i consider it fully invulnerable, only to gta/pvn technology of the day. it could be entirely possible that the shivan's considered the shield technology obsolete by the time of the second invasion. after all we knew how to defeat it.
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But the act of defeating it would have limited us to fighting an entire war in subspace had all shivan ships been fitted with it.
I personally got the impression that shielding an entire ship was a very difficult and 'expensive' thing to do, even for the Shivans, most of the Lucifers massive power went into that shield, hence the limited (compared to FS2) weaponary on it.
I cannot help but think that the Shivans would not go to the trouble of creating a ship like that unless it was something considerably more significant than a scout. It's not as if losses have ever really counted to Shivans at any other time, so why shield this one particular ship? Why, when we destroy this ship, at the next chance they get, do the Shivans send 80 Juggernauts against us, those Juggernauts must have been moving towards the system since, at best, the original Sathy first encountered the Colossus, but possibly even longer in my reckoning, I have a suspicion they were moving from the moment the Shivans first re-encountered the GTVA.
If these ships serve simply as warships, despite being very effective as one, then why are they in particular treated to added protection, especially since the shield on the Lucifer in FS1 was really the icing on the cake, and was mainly to prevent the player from doing something obvious like taking out the Beam Cannon ;) It's not as if the entire Terran fleet could have taken it down, shields or not. You would have thought that, if these are 'Blitzkreig' type vessels or even if they act like a Mobile Comm-node array, you would have seen some with the second Shivan fleet as well?
I can live with being a pawn when the game makes sense! :nervous:
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The Lucifer could simply be special ops; destroy the enemies key bases (i.e. home planets, installations such as Tombaugh and Ross 128), harass the fleet (or destroy it outright), and wait for 80 Sathani to come in complete the sweep (perhaps by nuking a few stars). It's shielding could be simply for survivability as the C&C of an elite squad (albeit this doesn't tally with the weaker weaponry of the rest of the Shivan force), or perhaps to allow it to travel quickly through unstable nodes the Sathanas can't use (perhaps the FS1 fleet was weak because they needed to save weapons energy for such travel?)
For the Shivans, 30-odd years could be a rapid attack.
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We are talking about an alien species. Perhaps they just think differently than us.
Lucy did most of the job in the great war. Like killing Vasuda, Ross 128, Tombaugh (sp?) and just going around killing stuff. It was constantly on the move. What did the other Shivans do? Every time another capship was encoutered it usually got badly damaged, sometimes even destroyed... Without the Lucy GTA/PVN would have defeated the Shivans. Or at least it would have been one helluva fight. So it would have been wiser to send a bigger fleet after us than what Lucy had with it...
Unless the Shivans sent a shielded superdestroyer to the dirty job and to crush the brunt of the opposition. The rest of the "fleet" was just support. Cleaning up the mess and helping support the offensive.
What I mean is, that it was a Scout/Special ops/whaterwer small fleet and Lucy was just there to draw attention.
Sleek design, shields and two biiig guns (even if the rest of the armament is just poor), what an eye catcher. What chance would you have against that? So what if the other ships are perfectly killable when you are under the shadow of the Lucifer. Ancients fell for it. They had no way to harm Shivans so they lost their fighting spirit. Perhaps Shivans figured why would GTA/PVN be any different? They did not expect us to keep fighting, to overcome and adapt.
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Originally posted by Prophet
We are talking about an alien species. Perhaps they just think differently than us.
Lucy did most of the job in the great war. Like killing Vasuda, Ross 128, Tombaugh (sp?) and just going around killing stuff. It was constantly on the move. What did the other Shivans do? Every time another capship was encoutered it usually got badly damaged, sometimes even destroyed... Without the Lucy GTA/PVN would have defeated the Shivans. Or at least it would have been one helluva fight. So it would have been wiser to send a bigger fleet after us than what Lucy had with it...
Unless the Shivans sent a shielded superdestroyer to the dirty job and to crush the brunt of the opposition. The rest of the "fleet" was just support. Cleaning up the mess and helping support the offensive.
That makes sense, albeit it's worth (IMO) noting that the Shivans were depicted as constantly advancing and crushing opposition outside of what's seen in missions.
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hmm, i just though of something about the "shiven comm nodes". what if they were used to probe through mutliple subspace portals....kid of like a ship jumping...but instead its a signal...to probe other systems....they could even go through the really unstable ones.....for instance..if the GD node to the nebula was only really really unstable...then they could still send these signals through and perhaps even bosch had perfected the ETAK project after encountering this signal.and somehow knew it was shiven...so decided to talk to them...they told him to open the portal...but this kinda conficts with the cut scene of bosch saying...thier first contact was rudementry and crude....but perhaps he just tracked the signal to the point in space where this weak node was..and encountered the knossos...then identified it as the ancients technology...so decided to activate it...at the same time developing the ETAK just so he can try and allie with the shivens :)
i dunno....i think that is a viable explanation..
now for the lucy and saths...i think the whole danger of destroying subspace with it was a big problem for the shivens...because they knew that if we saw one comeing..we would take it out in the closes portal to them...thuse cutting off thier advance...and second, is that (i know its been said before) that our beams go right through the lucy's shiled like a hot knife through butter....thus making this very undergunned ship almost useless. it would be ripped to shreds by even a simple leviathin.
also..about the knossos protals being active in the other systems...perhaps the trinity went further than just the nebula.. and just didnt tell us about it....perhaps they got cought the shivens by suprise in the "in to the lions den" system....then on the way back...dodged the force that come through the node that wee see in the breifing thingo....the trinity probably just lost them in the nebula and reduced sensore ranges and stuff...but a small scouting party got them...and then we came accross them...and also.that would explain why there were only a few rahu miners in the nebula too..perhaps this was a previously un accessable area for the shivens...since it seems that everything came from the knossos probably beyond the other system that we didnt get to go to..the one the saths were comin through at...(trinity probl activated..then saw shivens...then ran like hell)
now cut that to peices for me :)
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Originally posted by psycho_fergo
second, is that (i know its been said before) that our beams go right through the lucy's shiled like a hot knife through butter....thus making this very undergunned ship almost useless. it would be ripped to shreds by even a simple leviathin.
Umm, I don't know where you got that idea from. One, there is no proof that beams will go through the Lucy's shields. They are supposed to, but the opportunity to test them has never arisen. I personally don't think they would, but that's irrelevant. We don't know...
Secondly, a Lucy wouldn't even break it's stride for a Leviathan. You're talking about a 3km-long supership with 800, 000 hitpoints - that's 80% of a Sath's armour - against a tiny cruiser with a few tens of thousands of hitpoints and one useless beam cannon. There is no Terran or Vasudan ship that could take on a Lucy and win in a straight fight (with the possible exception of the Colossus). As for being undergunned, all the FS1-era capships are hugely under-gunned. The Orion has (IIRC) 16 turrets. The Typhon has about the same, as does the Lucy. By contrast, FS2 corvettes have around 25 turrets, and destroyers have 30 or so. This is because of the advancements in computer technology between the two games - higher-poly models, better effects, more turrets etc. There is in fact a high-poly version of the Lucy, that has something like 45 turrets (I think someone from INF made it) - this is a more sensible number. Likewise, the Orion and Typhon should have around 30 turrets, to bring them in line with FS2 destroyers.
Anyway, with regards to the Lucifer fleet and the FS2 Shivans - I think it's safe to say they are different somehow. The ship architecture is different, as are the weapons and tactics. Why this is I don't know, but the Lucifer fleet undoubtedly served a different purpose to that of the Sathanas' and their attendant ships. Beyond that, who knows?
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Let's not forget the Lucifers 'proper' weapon, the Flux cannon.........
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hmm, well iff you too into acount that if that one beam turret ripped into one of its reactors...i think it would have a big impact...i know this is a very critical place in all shiven ships...and i think if you put i hole in one or 2 of them...it would be all over...but perhaps i understated with a laviathin...perhaps 5 leviathins then...that ok?
i do agree with the whole..different design thing...i noticed that too. also...do you think that the beam cannons on the big cap ships are alot of the time on pointed bits are for a reason..like perhaps just a wider "aim" coverage or for some kind of focussing chamber implemented...as these are usually more powerful than any other cannon.
thanks for rippin me to peices pyro :)
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My pleasure. :D I still don't think the Lucy is even remotely vulnerable to cruisers. Maybe if you had a group of corvettes you might stand a chance, but cruiser beams are really too weak to inflict enough damage before the cruiser gets destroyed, either by direct fire from the Lucy, or from the swarm of fighters and bombers it will inevitably launch.
As for the "beams on pointy bits" thing, I think it's purely aesthetic. The Shivan ships are insectoid in design, giving them lots of sticky-out-bits (technical term ;)). These are good places to put weapons for the coolness factor (look at the Sath firing a full salvo). On GTVA ships, the designs are far more conventional, so the weapons are mounted on the main hulls.
It could suggest something about ship architecture, however. GTVA beams seem to be modular in design, with the emitter lens, power cores and other gubbins contained in one unit (see the Colossus command briefing ani for this), so they are mounted in the main hull. The Shivan beams tend to be mounted (at least on FS2 ships) at the ends of the spiky bits, so perhaps they are fed from a central power source (maybe the ship's main reactor?), with only the emitters being near the ship's surface. This would imply that GTVA beams (and other weapons for that matter) can be easily removed, replaced or retrofitted, whereas Shivan weapons are less likely to vary between ships of the same class. Something to think about...
Aldo: I thought about updating the flux cannon for the SCP actually, with better effects and sounds and so on, but I have little experience, so it'd probably turn out horrendously ugly. It's a great weapon, though - someone should take a look at it.
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I have an idea. I think the FS1 era shivan capital ships were not fitted with beam cannons (except the Lucifer) because they required a lot of energy. Based on what the FS2 box said, I think that fleet was just a scouting force. They were armed with pulse cannons of various sorts because of the relativly low power consumption. With a much lower normal energy drain, this increases the operating lifetime of the ship by a bunch. A scouting force needs to be able to wonder around for long periods of time. The Lucifer was armed and outfitted with all these extra gizmos simply because it was the flagship (and because when it goes down, it cripples the rest of the fleet).
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That's actually a fair point depending on how long the Shivans are meant to be away from the main fleet for. Personally I don't believe Shivan space can be that far away though.
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But then again, maybe the Lucifer fleet was a scout fleet that was looking for something SPECIFIC? If they didn't know where it was, the scouting fleet would need to be able to roam around for a rreeaaaaaalllllyyyyyy long time.
Then they appearently found it and sent their main fleet into Capella.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Let's not forget the Lucifers 'proper' weapon, the Flux cannon.........
you have a good point here, its called "Shivan Super Laser" in the tables, but i remember it being called a flux cannon somewhere in the game. but i still consider the flux cannon a precurser to the current beam cannon. it fits with the theory of the 8000 year old seporated fleet theory.
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Originally posted by pyro-manic
Aldo: I thought about updating the flux cannon for the SCP actually, with better effects and sounds and so on, but I have little experience, so it'd probably turn out horrendously ugly. It's a great weapon, though - someone should take a look at it.
Bear in mind the FS1 conversion bods made a kick-arse flux beam for the Lucifer, IIRC, though.
Um.. the idea of the Lucifer as a scout ship is interesting; the only issue has always been rationalising the obvious tactical moves it made, like the planetary bombardment and the attacks on key installations.
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perhaps the shivans consider planetary bombardment something a scout ship should be able to do, so as not to bother the sathani sun blowing up parties.
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Yeah, there's always the general 'xenophobic murdering space aliens' bit on top of their more complicated machinations to consider, anyways.
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personally I like Singh's idea - that the Shivans were there to stop Humans from destroying themselves.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Bear in mind the FS1 conversion bods made a kick-arse flux beam for the Lucifer, IIRC, though.
I had something like the plasmacaster from Predator in mind - rather than firing a continuous beam, it fires a pulse with a trail - like in FS1. So you'd have in effect the same weapon, but rather than just using a trail, you'd have a pulse as well. The conversion beam is nice (kind of orange-ish colour rather than red), but I think it reduces the Lucy to just another destroyer, rather than something unique...
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you could use a glowpointed weapons model and create some freakish effects that way, i did something like that for ssj dante's primary weapon. just use a good model, some fancy texturing and alot of alpha.
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This is how I've always seen the freespace story line.
The Ancients were the original destroyers, in the first Ancient cutscene they talk about destroying and subjugating everything in their path.
The Vasudans are somewhat related to the Ancients, I am guessing that they were actually one of those subjugated, and forced to adapt the Ancient language.
The Ancients explore all the space they can, and own all of the known galaxy.
The Ancients create the knosses portal and create a great expanse of them and then they run into the Shivans, somewhere far beyond the nebula.
These portals are huge and in the game they say that it would take the Terrans years to make even one. So the network of portals setup beyond the nebula wouldn't have been done during a war. So the furthest portal is generally the last one they got up before they ran into the Shivans.
The Shivans send a massive fleet to destroy the Ancients.
This fleet includes more then 1 lucifer. Their worlds beyond GD are destroyed.
The Ancients taking heavy losses against the lucifer fleet disable the knosses portal going into GD.
However the node has stabalised as had happend with the GTVA. And so where they thought they would have stopped, a lucifer actually made it threw.
The home systems the Ancients talk about is everything on this side of GD that they owned.
During the fighting with the multiple lucifers they find out that it's shields don't work in subspace.
As the 2nd lucifer goes into the GD node the Ancients destroy it, and the node collapses. Cutting off the first lucifer fleet from the home systems.
However one lucifer is still on the GD side and has made its way to the ancients homeworld, the lucifer destroys it, and the ancients powerbase is destroyed. The lucifer has no opposition from that point on and destroys all the ancients systems.
The Vasudans have been freed and the Shivans are seen as their saviors, and that begins the legends of the comming of an all powerful race. (As a good thing not as a bad thing)
With all the ancients destroyed, which still takes the Shivan fleet ages because they don't know the systems on this side of GD and have to explore.
The Shivan fleet goes beyond Ross 128 looking for a way back, unfortunately there is none, there is only one jump node. So they head back to GD, unfortunately they run into the Terran and Vasudans and thus the great war begins.
The original Shivan fleet is out of date due to it's cut off from the main Shivan systems. At the time as the war with the Ancients shields on capital ships were thought as a good idea and beam weapons were new being tested on the newly designed lucifer class ships.
When the Ancients destroyed Lucifer 2 in the nebula-GD jump node, they collapsed the node. With this weakness of shields not working in subspace, any race knowing this weakness would engage the lucifers in subspace. Not willing to loose anymore nodes because of this, the Shivans stop putting shields on their capital ships hoping to reduce the amount of battles in subspace. Remember there is no portal on the nebula side of the node so the Shivans can't get it back up and running from their end.
They create a new design based on massive armour and weapons.
As for GTA technology advancing so fast, is only because of what they picked up off the Shivans during the Great War, if the Great War hadn't happend, the Terran-Vasudan fleets would have been only slightly more advanced then what they had in the great war, when the 2nd Shivan fleet would have attacked. Probably destroying all of the GTVA forces without them even knowing how to collapse a node.
I believe the Shivans unwilling to let any race exist ever again destroy the entire capella system instead of just the planets and would have continued on to do such at every system.
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Sounds pretty comprehensive The Spac, I like it. :yes: Welcome to HLP. :)
:welcome:
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Well done indeed. All reasonable theories in a form that makes perfect sense. :yes:
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i think somone read my posts :D
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That just might be the best first post in history. :D
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I was working on a Freespace 1 campaign this weekend so I descided to come online to see if anyone still played it lol. And to my surprise yes lol.
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I hate to be the voice of dissention but I have a few problems with your explaination The Spac (Although I do agree that generally it's pretty good).
1) The Ancients homeworld was most likely destroyed before the second Luci was killed. If they knew how to kill the Lucifer before that it's likely that they would have done so with the bigger threat to them first.
2) I don't buy that the Shivans spent 8000 years wondering around past Ross 128 and only just happened to come back to get to GD. Especially as the Lucifer doesn't appear to have been heading in the direction of GD (In fact it appears to have been heading the other way at several points in the campaign).
3) I doubt that the Shivans blew up Capella because they wanted to wipe out the Terran and Vasudan races. They had enough to have wiped both out easily yet instead they blew up Capella (at the loss of several saths!) and gave both races insights into even more powerful subspace technologies than they already possessed.
Whatever happened at Capella it wasn't an attempt to wipe out the GTVA. The shivans could have done that with much smaller losses.
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Originally posted by karajorma
3) I doubt that the Shivans blew up Capella because they wanted to wipe out the Terran and Vasudan races. They had enough to have wiped both out easily yet instead they blew up Capella (at the loss of several saths!) and gave both races insights into even more powerful subspace technologies than they already possessed.
Whatever happened at Capella it wasn't an attempt to wipe out the GTVA. The shivans could have done that with much smaller losses.
They could have been being really systematic, though; if (and it's a pretty big...bloody huge if),for example, the Vasudans were descended from the Ancients, then the Shivans might have went for the scorched earth policy of nuking every star in the GTVa and wiping out all life.
IMO it's not a particularly novel or good storyline, but it's still possible, I think; the Shivans were moving to attack the nodes out of Capella according to the briefings IIRC (although this could be just as likely an attempt at a diversionary 'feint' to avoid any disruptions to the plans of the Sathanas fleet - or even forcing the GTVA to evacuate Capella).
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Originally posted by aldo_14
They could have been being really systematic, though; if (and it's a pretty big...bloody huge if),for example, the Vasudans were descended from the Ancients, then the Shivans might have went for the scorched earth policy of nuking every star in the GTVa and wiping out all life.
Pretty stupid of them to have started with Capella though. They managed to blockade one of their major routes into GTVA space.
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We still don't know how big the ancients space is on the GD side exactly. Were not sure if it even joins up with Shivan space by normal routes, otherwise why would the shivans wait for us to open GD, why not send another fleet.
The lucifers movements after they ran into the terrans again was not to get back to GD, but was to wipe them out. They did head straight to the Vasudan homeworld as if they already knew where to strike.
They were just heading back that way initially until they ran into em.
Yeah it seems abit weird that the first lucifer wasn't killed but something had to disable that node so I'm assuming that was it. Maybe the first lucifer had already penetrated too far into their space, and the attack on the 2nd one was just an attack of oppertunity, like payback lol?
If the Ancients could have continued to explore space through normal subspace nodes I believe they wouldn't have bothered with Knosses devices cause there would have been no need.
Yup all this is just theory and stuff, plus I havn't played FS2 in 5 years so I need to "catch up" on it's story line but I remember most of it heh.
In FS1 the Ancients talk about how they have exploited all their reachable systems which I believe is every system they managed to get to before they created knosses. They created knosses cause they had no where else to go.
Maybe the lucifer was just patroling that side of space and has gone past terra and vasudan tones of times in the past 8000 years, but they hadn't been a threat until they trespased into space.
The shivans only care about Space, they consider it theirs, they don't care what happens on the planets until those planets harbour life that has trespased.
As for capella, yeah I have to play FS2 again but that was a theory as I remember and probably my crappiest theory.
When the 2nd Shivan fleet attacked they could have assumed that their original fleet failed, and that the ancients still existed. Probably why they went to such an extreme in capella, and I believe 80 sanths are nothing to the shivans ;)
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Originally posted by karajorma
Pretty stupid of them to have started with Capella though. They managed to blockade one of their major routes into GTVA space.
We don't know a) if the nova would have destroyed the nodes (without the GTVA intervention on that front) or b) if the jumping out Sathani could have made the next system, though.
It's not my theory, of course, but I think it can be made to make sense.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Pretty stupid of them to have started with Capella though. They managed to blockade one of their major routes into GTVA space.
no, the GTVA blockaded teh path by blowing the nodes. There is no way the Shivans could have known what the GTVA was planing to do...
But I do agree that nuking capella was a wierd move. It cost them several Sathanases...but then again, shivans never showed much interest in their own safety or losses.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
no, the GTVA blockaded teh path by blowing the nodes. There is no way the Shivans could have known what the GTVA was planing to do...
But I do agree that nuking capella was a wierd move. It cost them several Sathanases...but then again, shivans never showed much interest in their own safety or losses.
Don't know what the cost of the Sathanas is (relative) to the Shivans, though.
Albeit.... the Shivans could have anticipated the GTVA would destroy (or try to) the nodes; either Bosch knew, or they simply guessed it from basic tactical knowledge (and observation of the GTVA trying to close the GD-nebula node). The Shivans did launch a 'massive attack' on the Vega node in the 2nd last mission, after all; perhaps they wanted to secure it and scupper the GTVAs plan.
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remember how the bosh monolog placed the supernova that created the nebula at about 8000 years before? it makes me think that the ancients faced a sathanas fleet as well. there were 2 lucys sent past to scout out the ancients' worlds and destroy them. perhaps they entered subspace as a pair, the anciets attacked but only had time to destroy one. the other lucy makes it out and the node is sealed. the lucy blows the remanants of the ancients to oblivion. because she and her fleet cannot return home, they exit the ancients system and lie dormant in another system, unil once again they feel the tearing of subspace created by the t-v war and come back to do something about it.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
We don't know a) if the nova would have destroyed the nodes (without the GTVA intervention on that front) or b) if the jumping out Sathani could have made the next system, though.
It's not my theory, of course, but I think it can be made to make sense.
Their inaction after the Epsilon Pegasi node was destroyed however is another matter. They didn't make any serious attempt to grab the Vega node even though it must have been pretty obvious that the GTVA were going to close that next and if we're going by The Spac's theory that was in fact the only remaining way for the Shivans to get into GTVA space.
Besides immediately after a supernova the nebula would be at thosands of degrees for quite a while. Even if the nodes aren't closed it's doubtful that even Shivan ships could survive that for long enough to jump from Gamma Draconis to anywhere else.
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Originally posted by karajorma
2) I don't buy that the Shivans spent 8000 years wondering around past Ross 128 and only just happened to come back to get to GD. Especially as the Lucifer doesn't appear to have been heading in the direction of GD (In fact it appears to have been heading the other way at several points in the campaign).
I agree that that's somewhat tenuous, but what about a modification whereby they were sort of hibernating in Ross 128 (given that there was no way back), and were woken up by GTI experimentation (which I believe was happening prior to the Great War) and then started attacking these "new" species that had appeared in what was uspposed to be secured Shivan space? Kind of like the Wraith in Atlantis.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Their inaction after the Epsilon Pegasi node was destroyed however is another matter. They didn't make any serious attempt to grab the Vega node even though it must have been pretty obvious that the GTVA were going to close that next and if we're going by The Spac's theory that was in fact the only remaining way for the Shivans to get into GTVA space.
Besides immediately after a supernova the nebula would be at thosands of degrees for quite a while. Even if the nodes aren't closed it's doubtful that even Shivan ships could survive that for long enough to jump from Gamma Draconis to anywhere else.
They did make a serious attempt to attack GTVA forces around that node to Vega, though; hence the whole 'massive attack' line in the briefings.
I don't know about the supernova heat issue, although it could be solved if the Shivans can point-jump into the subspace node and rapdily jump through it. If they had a tactic of that sort of 'nuke-star, move on' warfare, I'd imagine they'd have a solution to that end, though.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
They did make a serious attempt to attack GTVA forces around that node to Vega, though; hence the whole 'massive attack' line in the briefings.
There were no destroyers, though. If they wanted to hold the node, surely they would have had a destroyer blockading it.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
There were no destroyers, though. If they wanted to hold the node, surely they would have had a destroyer blockading it.
Maybe they didn't win their attack?
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Since most of my missions will be prequal or following on from freespace 1 and 2 and the time in between, I am trying to create a time line which is as acurate and plausable as I can get it. With these forums I hope to mold my original timeline which I have alreayd posted into something a bit more plausable so I will be adjusting it as I see good ideas from everyone. :) Then I will repost the updated version.
Appreciate any help. Especially with things that have to do with the ancients vasudans and shivans.
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The "hibernating Shivans" idea is pretty good. After all, the state of Terran, and presumably Vasudan, society/technology 8000 years ago was at such a low level that it's plausible that the Shivans just completely ignored them. If the deactivation of the Knossos portals did strand them in current GTVA space, there wouldn't be much point in flying around aimlessly for who knows how long. Inducing some sort of hibernation would make sense in terms of saving resources. Thanks to Silent Threat, we know the GTI was up to something strange in Ross 128; as it said, it's possible that they knew of the existence of Shivans before the incident at the Riviera installation. Maybe GTI snooped around the Shivan fleet a little too much and mistakenly hit the big red button. :p
Regarding the comment about the nebula being formed around 8000 years ago, I've honestly never thought of that. That opens up a whole new area of speculation...who says talking about this game is getting old? :)
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I'm honestly not sure where the 8000 figure came from, but between the implied age of the Ancient ruins on Altair in FS1 and Bosch's comments about some ancient Pharaoh watching the supernova from Earth lead credance to several thousand years being appropriate. Though we really don't know what system the nebula is supposed to be, and thus how long it would have taken earth to see the light from its nova.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
I don't know about the supernova heat issue, although it could be solved if the Shivans can point-jump into the subspace node and rapdily jump through it. If they had a tactic of that sort of 'nuke-star, move on' warfare, I'd imagine they'd have a solution to that end, though.
Couldn't the opposite have been Bosch's idea as well? Perhaps the Shivans never used to nuke stars--perhaps the juggernaut's subspace weapon is used as a planet-killer or something worse, but then Bosch used to his advantage. It's possible that the Shivans in Capella could not have survived the supernova; hence Bosch's aim in the first place.
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FADE IN
A SHIVAN juggernaut line activates a mysterious subspace weapon aimed directly at the Capella star. The star begins to destabilize as the SHIVAN CAPTAINS begin speaking.
Shivan Captain 1: The star is now reaching collapse point. All crew, lock onto target in closest proximity and prepare the engines.
Shivan Captain 2: Nearest target is several lightyears away. Prepare the warp core.
Shivan Captain 3: Have we ever destroyed targets such as this before?
SHIVAN CAPTAINS look at each other in disbelief. CAPTAIN 1 presses a button on the controls.
SC1: I'm outta here!
SC3: Me too!
SHIVAN CAPTAIN 2 looks around confusedly.
SC2: What are you running from? This is just a routine--
The star goes supernova in a bright orange shockwave. Several kilometers away, a massive battle rages between Alliance and Shivan forces. CARL is seen commanding a Moloch-class corvette currently in battle versus a Terran Deimos.
CARL: Ah, yes. Mission complete. The primary target has been destroyed and--awwwwww, shhhhhiiiii-
The Moloch and Deimos are engulfed in the shockwave.
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:nervous:
Sorry about that. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the Shivans that were around during the final battle were destroyed when the secondary shockwave reached them--the Moloch was history, at least, and I have little reason to believe that the other ships were utterly eradicated (seeing as how the jugs that stayed behind looked like they were turned to roast Shivan as well).
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It says the Shivans fought the Ancients 8000 years ago in the freespace 2 database in the race information area.
The Shivans have robotic components so they could hibernate or go into a form of statis I believe.
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Originally posted by StratComm
I'm honestly not sure where the 8000 figure came from, but between the implied age of the Ancient ruins on Altair in FS1 and Bosch's comments about some ancient Pharaoh watching the supernova from Earth lead credance to several thousand years being appropriate. Though we really don't know what system the nebula is supposed to be, and thus how long it would have taken earth to see the light from its nova.
I think the general consensus was that the Lupus nebula was the best 'fit', although it's not exactly consensus (IIRC its formation would have been visible around that time).
(aside)
Albiet it's worth noting the nebula was most likely formed before the Ancients-Shivan war, given the presence of the Knossos gates (you;re not going to build jumpgates during a retreat, after all). Doesn't preclude the Shivans forming it of course; just during that particular war.
Maybe the Shivans way of marking territory is with novas, like a lion pissing on tree? :D
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In the first mission into the nebula they speculate that it could be the remains if a super nova.
Probably the same thing happend to the ancients, but instead of a massive fleet of saths it was amassive fleet of lucifers. The shielding technology could have protected them from the explosion?
Why does the lucifer not do this in freespace 1? because theres only 1 of em. Seems the sanths need more then one as well.
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Shivans don't give a hoot about planets, so maybe converting all that space into a nebula where they coudl get some resorces is a shivan haven? lol
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Originally posted by The Spac
In the first mission into the nebula they speculate that it could be the remains if a super nova.
Probably the same thing happend to the ancients, but instead of a massive fleet of saths it was amassive fleet of lucifers. The shielding technology could have protected them from the explosion?
Why does the lucifer not do this in freespace 1? because theres only 1 of em. Seems the sanths need more then one as well.
:sigh:
Why would the Ancients build a knossos gate - nay, a whole series of them - back through a system which an enemy fleet has supernova-ed?
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maybe the super nova didn't destroy the gate?
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star. blowing up. big. boom.
nothing survives a supernova, not even planets.
it's simple, the Shivans have been killing stuff for a hell of a lot longer than 8,000 years, and this nebula is an example of such an event.
the Shivans wouldn't have been trapped by a colaped node, there the freaking gods of subspace.
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The Capella 'supernova' was also one of those scifi freaky supernovas: it may well have propagated at faster than the speed of light (since it hit the fleets in a few dozen seconds). Then there's the freaky green Sathanas-exit, and the ending monologue implying the Shivan ships left for parts unknown.
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It's possible that the "supernova" the Shivans can induce is considerably less impressive then the real thing; which would make sense, as the star doesn't have the mass for a serious explosion.
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true true cause it's premature. Plus those knosses devices are damn strong.
Maybe the fleet can't survive, the initial explosion I definately believe would have taken out ships but I think the hulls of the shivan ships at least would survive flying threw the aftermath if they came in later.
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I think at a scientific level the ancients knew more about it. Just the shivans are from subspace. What the shivans are good at is killing heehee.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
They did make a serious attempt to attack GTVA forces around that node to Vega, though; hence the whole 'massive attack' line in the briefings.
Nope. That was at the Epsilon Pegasi node. The Shivans sent nothing but a few fighters after the Bastion was destroyed even though they must have known that the GTVA would be trying to block the Vega node too.
Had they wanted to get into GTVA territory after blowing up Capella they would have had to have made some attempt to save the node, probably by capturing the Nereid and disarming the meson bombs.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Nope. That was at the Epsilon Pegasi node. The Shivans sent nothing but a few fighters after the Bastion was destroyed even though they must have known that the GTVA would be trying to block the Vega node too.
Had they wanted to get into GTVA territory after blowing up Capella they would have had to have made some attempt to save the node, probably by capturing the Nereid and disarming the meson bombs.
Nope.
[q]
Start sm3-09.fsm
=========================================================================
MISSION BRIEFING 1
The GTD Bastion, loaded with Meson warheads, is now en route to the Epsilon Pegasi jump node. ?The Bastion will be detonated inside the node to create a subspace cataclysm that will seal off the Capella system. If the Bastion fails to achieve this objective, the Shivans will swarm into our adjacent systems.
MISSION BRIEFING 2
The task force defending the Bastion has been decimated. Three ships remain: the Templar, the Malta, and the Ertanax. All are Aeolus-class cruisers. The Shivans continue to send wave after wave of fighters and bombers. Only a handful of the Bastion's original fighter complement have survived the onslaught.
MISSION BRIEFNG 3
Alpha, Delta, and Beta wings will fly heavy intercept. Your mission is to take out enemy bombers before they close within targeting distance. You'll be armed with the Trebuchet missile, which has an effective range of four kilometers. Gamma wing will fly the Perseus. Their role will be to engage enemy fighters.
MISSION BRIEFING 4
The majority of the fleet is fending off a massive attack at the Vega node. Thousands of civilians await evacuation and the enemy continues to flood in from Gamma Draconis. We will not get a second chance to pull this off. If we fail here, we unleash the Second Shivan War. We must get the Bastion through at any cost.
[/q]
:p
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it occured to me that the knossos gate at dc was dated in excess of 10,000, so that was there 2000 years before the ancients were destroyed. so that gate network has got to be pretty vast.
taking the philisophical view, the shivans are the destroyers but they are also the preservers. creating nebulas is essentially a way to renew the universe. also stars are only capable of producing elements up to carbon, heavyer elements have to be "baked" in hot nebulas. so through the destruction of stars the shivans may bring new life to the universe.
the relationship between subspace and gravity is cannon, what do you suppose the effect of a ship in subspace during the nove would be? the sathani entered an intra system jump as the sun went nova, most would assume that this was to escape the blast, but to where. as far as they could get would be the edge of the system, but they would have to linger there for centurys before it could cool enough to navigate to the nodes out. perhaps the shivans have the ability to pull an inter system jump from anywhere in the system, but how do you get that many sathani in line for the jump in the few seconds before the wave hit? it would explain why a few remained. i have the feeling that subspace would expand during the nova, and the sathani were riding that expanding wave of subspace for reasons unknown.
the lucifer's mission was genocide , so thats why it attacked so visously. perhaps considering us the ancients' legacy. it is my belief that the increase in subspace usage caused by the t-v war is what awakened the shivans. the sathanas fleet's mission was to blow up capella, shivans made no attempt to enter gtva space. they focused their resources on covering the systems they were to do their dirty work in.
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AFAIK the Knossos was never dated in the mission briefings or species tbl
?
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exactly, how would the main shivan force know that the ancients have even been completely destroyed when they came threw GD. They could have just assumed we are the remains of the ancient empire thats built itself back up. anyways.
and yup since the shivans care nothing for planets the nebula could be a paradise for them with everything they need.
In a campaign I am writing the ancients after they had invented knosses and had totally explored the whole galaxy or as much as they could, tried to make another mode of transport, which they opened up a subspace portal into a pure subspace dimention, and there they ran into the shivans and released them into our galaxy.
nuke your theory about them doing an intra system jump makes me think they they could be just getting back to their dimention. (but then why couldn't htey do that in any system lol) :) SO that stuffs up my theory.
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yeah admiral petrach mentioned it's age at least once
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Originally posted by The Spac
yeah admiral petrach mentioned it's age at least once
Where? All I can find is an oblique reference to 'thousands of years old', not a specific number.
(Incidentally, Khonsu II was 'Heir of the Dynasty of Ten Thousand Years', which is interesting)
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Petrarch didn't say it. It was Doc Hargrove's voice clip, and it said "on the order off".
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But where? (seriously, I want to listen to it now)
Was it in an in-mission message?
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Nope.
:p
Sorry but yes. Look at the mission Apocolypse. You see nothing but fighters, bombers and cruisers. Certainly nothing attempting to access the node and prevent the Nereid from exploding.
The earlier attack may simply have been the Shivans taking the chance to slaughter the civilians. There's no proof whatsoever that it was about securing the node to prevent the GTVA closing it.
It's only after the Bastion is destroyed that we can be certain that the Shivans know what the GTVA is up to and lets face it they did bugger all.
Oddly enough both the Vega and Epsilon Pegasi nodes are actually visible from each other and there is no activity whatsover going on at the Vega node during the penultimate mission. That's probably just due to the ships limit but make of it what you will.
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She said it in a commbrief shortly after the portal was found.
I think it was commbrief of the first nebula mission?
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Aldo's correct on the age of the Knossos.
"Dr. Hargrove, Task Force Preliminary Findings (Excerpt)
The subspace portal is unlike any Shivan construction we have yet encountered. Though Shivans demonstrate considerable diversity as a species, all Shivan technology possesses certain distinctive properties. None is present in the subspace device, which means we must look elsewhere for the portal's origin. We do know that the device is very, very old, on the order of several thousand years."
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Originally posted by karajorma
Sorry but yes. Look at the mission Apocolypse. You see nothing but fighters, bombers and cruisers. Certainly nothing attempting to access the node and prevent the Nereid from exploding.
The earlier attack may simply have been the Shivans taking the chance to slaughter the civilians. There's no proof whatsoever that it was about securing the node to prevent the GTVA closing it.
It's only after the Bastion is destroyed that we can be certain that the Shivans know what the GTVA is up to and lets face it they did bugger all.
Oddly enough both the Vega and Epsilon Pegasi nodes are actually visible from each other and there is no activity whatsover going on at the Vega node during the penultimate mission. That's probably just due to the ships limit but make of it what you will.
No implication they weren't trying to break through with that attack, either. It's entirely subjective; they made a 'massive attack' upon the Vega node, but for whatever reason - repriotization, GTVA victory, diversionary attacks, the Shivans not having a clue of the GTVA plan or caring - it had apparently ended or moved by the time of the nova.
Or command could just have been sensible and launched counter-attacks to clear the way for the refugee convoys; the end cutscene does show continuing heavy fighting (which admittedly raises the question over why the Shivans don't give a **** about their 'small' ships as well as the dead Saths).
I certainly don't see a conclusive arguement against the Shivans wanting to capture Vega; they could even have expected the Nereid (or a destroyer fulfilling its role) to come from the Capella side, as the Bastion did. I wouldn't say it's the best reason - it's pretty derivative and still a bit flaky because of the points you've made - but I still think it's a useable one.
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EDIT; what kara said about yon knossos.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Aldo's correct on the age of the Knossos.
i couldnt find prooof of the dateing of the portal either, it may have been mentioned in the vasudan com chatter when we hadto blow it up, otherwise i just pulled a number oyt of my ass. however one of the fs1 anchients monologs hinted that their node network may have been inter galactic, or it was just poetry. if the former is the case then it corelates with my theory to a degree. i get the hint that the ancients-shivan war was a lengthy battle as well. the shivans had alot of hostle ground to cover.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
star. blowing up. big. boom.
nothing survives a supernova, not even planets.
it's simple, the Shivans have been killing stuff for a hell of a lot longer than 8,000 years, and this nebula is an example of such an event.
the Shivans wouldn't have been trapped by a colaped node, there the freaking gods of subspace.
Shivans are dependant on jump nodes just as we are, remeber?
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Originally posted by karajorma
Nope. That was at the Epsilon Pegasi node. The Shivans sent nothing but a few fighters after the Bastion was destroyed even though they must have known that the GTVA would be trying to block the Vega node too.
Had they wanted to get into GTVA territory after blowing up Capella they would have had to have made some attempt to save the node, probably by capturing the Nereid and disarming the meson bombs.
Nope... The Nierd was deployed the second Bastion went trough.
It takes some time to react, and I kinda doubt that the shivans could get organized and stop the Nierd in one minute...especially since it entered the node from the other side!!
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Originally posted by aldo_14
No implication they weren't trying to break through with that attack, either. It's entirely subjective; they made a 'massive attack' upon the Vega node, but for whatever reason - repriotization, GTVA victory, diversionary attacks, the Shivans not having a clue of the GTVA plan or caring - it had apparently ended or moved by the time of the nova.
Which gets us back to my original point that if the shivans were trying to wipe out the entire GTVA they had a stupid strategy for it.
In FS1 the shivans concentrated on capturing and holding nodes and only then bothered trying to wipe out the GTVA. If the shivans wanted to capture the nodes it might have been somewhat smarter to use the saths to do so and blow up Capella a day or two later.
As I said before if you believe that the knossos was the only way into Shivan space then Capella was not simply about xenocide.
Originally posted by TrashMan
Nope... The Nierd was deployed the second Bastion went trough.
It takes some time to react, and I kinda doubt that the shivans could get organized and stop the Nierd in one minute...especially since it entered the node from the other side!!
And yet with 80 Saths in system they didn't manage to swarm the node with bombers and fighters?
Sorry don't buy it. The shivans weren't seriously trying to kill everyone evacuating from Capella. The Vega node was nothing more than an interstellar skeet shoot most likely.
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Maybe destroying everything in the system doesn't matter as much as destroying the system itself, if they planned to continue to the next system where they could have done the same thing until everyone had no where to go.
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THE NIERD ENTERED THE NODE FROM THE OTHER SIDE (that means, from another system).
The Shivans couldn't have stopped it from Vaga even if they knew it was coming!
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Originally posted by karajorma
Which gets us back to my original point that if the shivans were trying to wipe out the entire GTVA they had a stupid strategy for it.
In FS1 the shivans concentrated on capturing and holding nodes and only then bothered trying to wipe out the GTVA. If the shivans wanted to capture the nodes it might have been somewhat smarter to use the saths to do so and blow up Capella a day or two later.
As I said before if you believe that the knossos was the only way into Shivan space then Capella was not simply about xenocide.
And yet with 80 Saths in system they didn't manage to swarm the node with bombers and fighters?
Sorry don't buy it. The shivans weren't seriously trying to kill everyone evacuating from Capella. The Vega node was nothing more than an interstellar skeet shoot most likely.
I don't particularly buy it either. But I could see it being a viable explanation, because it's not explicitly contradicted by the game. Regardless of how stupid the strategy might look; after all, it's not as if Command was the most intelligent bunch in the FS series.
The differences in Shivan tactics in FS1 and FS2 are as much explained by the difference in forces as anything else; the Lucifers rapid dash to destroy the GTVA homeworlds could be a symptom of its isolation (lacking the supporting fleet to move slowly - or destroy stars).
I simply don't think you can rule it out wholesale if, for example, someone chooses that as a basis of their campaign. It's the least convincing alternative, but it's not disproven IMHO.
Albeit you can't really do the whole 'swarm the node' thing, because it wasn't really possible with both the engine constraints, and those of gameplay. I believe there are briefing references to the Shivans 'flooding the system' with bombers, though.
Originally posted by TrashMan
THE NIERD ENTERED THE NODE FROM THE OTHER SIDE (that means, from another system).
The Shivans couldn't have stopped it from Vaga even if they knew it was coming!
The Shivans could have taken the Vega node, and thus stopped the Nereid from that other side. If they wanted to do a 'bunny-hop' style of xenocide, they could have attacked Vega directly and captured the Vega-Capella node.
They did launch a 'massive attack' on the forces around the Vega node sometime after the 3rd last mission, according to the briefing for the 2nd last mission. It's not stated if this was to capture said node, or just attack the GTVA forces. It's also not stated who won; the node is pretty much devoid of both GTVA and Shivan capships in the last mission IIRC.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
THE NIERD ENTERED THE NODE FROM THE OTHER SIDE (that means, from another system).
The Shivans couldn't have stopped it from Vaga even if they knew it was coming!
Did you completely miss my point about boarding and disarming it? :rolleyes: We have no idea how advanced Shivan subspace tracking is but they managed to figure out what both Vasuda and Earth were without entering either system so it must be pretty advanced.
Hell any sensible general would have captured the next star system before blowing up the one he was in. Blowing up Capella when they did makes about as much sense as pirates setting fire to their own ship THEN trying to capture a new one.
And don't shout. It makes you look like an idiot. :p
Originally posted by aldo_14
I don't particularly buy it either. But I could see it being a viable explanation, because it's not explicitly contradicted by the game. Regardless of how stupid the strategy might look; after all, it's not as if Command was the most intelligent bunch in the FS series.
I never said it wasn't possible. Just that it was stupid :) Very stupid. And the Shivans aren't.
Originally posted by aldo_14
The Shivans could have taken the Vega node, and thus stopped the Nereid from that other side. If they wanted to do a 'bunny-hop' style of xenocide, they could have attacked Vega directly and captured the Vega-Capella node.
That's the point I was trying to get across. Wouldn't it be more sensible to capture the Vega node first and then blow up Capella on the way out?
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Originally posted by karajorma
I never said it wasn't possible. Just that it was stupid :) Very stupid. And the Shivans aren't.
That's the point I was trying to get across. Wouldn't it be more sensible to capture the Vega node first and then blow up Capella on the way out?
Maybe their communications were ****ed up?
EDIT; incidentally, blowing up the star system kind of makes sense if you want to avoid the effort of clearing out opposition using regular ship-to-ship tactics.
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I agree. But as I mentioned in the pirate analogy you need to have somewhere else to go first
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Actually, no, they couldn't have stopped hte Nierd.
Think about it.
Time it takes for the news of nodel collapse to reach the shivan armada and the one making decisions, time for the orders to get recived, time for fighters to launch, jump to vega node, charge jump drives and jump in the node, time to travel the node (about 10 minutes or so) + time to aactualyl destroy the Nierd (it's an Orion..lot's of HP)
Even if we assume the sghivans are far more efficeince in the organizaion and order giving, the jumping/traveling time is still much... 15 minutes is more than enough for the nierd (which is waiting on the other side of the node) to enter an explode.
Hell, one minute is enough to jump out and press the red bottun.
Secondly, even if they could track it in subspace it has no use. Once the Nierd is in subspace, destroying it means all mesons blow = node colapse.
If htey try to disable it, remote detonate = node collapse.
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Well with Pirates their probably fighting equal or stronger forces, where the shivans can just go to the next system and will probably have no worthy opposistion
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Originally posted by TrashMan
Actually, no, they couldn't have stopped hte Nierd.
Think about it.
Time it takes for the news of nodel collapse to reach the shivan armada and the one making decisions, time for the orders to get recived, time for fighters to launch, jump to vega node, charge jump drives and jump in the node, time to travel the node (about 10 minutes or so) + time to aactualyl destroy the Nierd (it's an Orion..lot's of HP)
Even if we assume the sghivans are far more efficeince in the organizaion and order giving, the jumping/traveling time is still much... 15 minutes is more than enough for the nierd (which is waiting on the other side of the node) to enter an explode.
Hell, one minute is enough to jump out and press the red bottun.
Secondly, even if they could track it in subspace it has no use. Once the Nierd is in subspace, destroying it means all mesons blow = node colapse.
If htey try to disable it, remote detonate = node collapse.
Wow, that's a whole lot of assumptions.
Firstly, it's highly unlikely destroying the Nereid would detonate the meson bombs; they'd probably need a timed detonation sequence, just like when a sub or plane is carrying nuclear weapons.
Secondly, we don't know any of the times you give; first thing is that the Shivan command structure could give near simultaneous decisions (particularly in a hivemind or neural net type organisation; or also if they're hypersensitive to subspace as has been speculated). Second, we don't have jump times for Shivan bombers, etc, to work with - nor do we have their travel times, or know if they even need to recharge. If you remove or reduce recharge times, then a sizeable force could very plausibly have nigh-instantaneously travelled to the Capella-Vega node, and very quickly thereafter. Third, the Shivans already had ships engaged, or in the conflict zone, very close to the node - they'd just launched a major attack.
Thirdly, it's not 100% clear they didn't know the GTVA plan prior to the EP node being destroyed, anyways. Firstly, they had Bosch and his command crew - all with knowledge of GTVA tactics. Secondly, they would likely be able to anticipate GTVA tactics with regard to the attempt to seal the GD-nebula node by destroying the knossos, and by observing the evacuations. Finally, they did send a fairly large number of fighters and bombers against the Bastion and her escort taskforce.
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I still stand by my theory that the Shivans obvious (or maybe not-so-obvious) screw-up in blowing a lot of themselves up in a heated inferno of star matter and flame was all of because of Bosch's influence in the matter... ETAK, communication with the Shivans, Bosch messes with Shivan communications to screw up the Shivan attack on GTVA space, yadda yadda yadda...
It could have simply been that Bosch wasn't as evil as everyone thought--he may have saved humanity by having the Shivans nuke Capella, but by that same move, divert 80+ Shivan juggernauts from the attack on the Vega or Epsilon Pegasi node, which surely would have:
[list=1]
- Utterly destroyed the GTVA fleet
- Opened the GTVA core systems to invasion
So Bosch did a lot of good--stopped the Shivans, deepfried dozens of Shivan juggernauts, and gave us a pretty little end cutscene for FS2.
So, therefore, the Shivans' usual tactics, as elaborated on by Kara above, of blasting through fleets and then destroying star systems was stopped by one madman with communications tech. Bosch wasn't bad, eh? ;)
Actually, now that I think about it, couldn't destroying a star simply be the Shivan method of making their own victory really clear to their enemies? Maybe when they destroyed the Ancients in one sector of the galaxy, they pulled a Capella on one of the Ancients' more important star systems in that region, and then moved on to destroy the Ancients in another area, simply as a way to show their enemies that "You've gone too far, and now we're going to make you really pay for it"? Bosch might have simply told the Shivans that the GTVA had "learned its lesson", and therefore told them to give to give their final word on the matter--thereby nuking Capella.
I guess it would somewhat make sense that the majority of the Shivan fleet would get obliterated here--maybe when the Shivan were finished with the GTVA, they would finally put an end to the bloodshed by simply killing everyone in the system, including themselves? This still doesn't explain the juggernauts warping out at the end, however; although, they could have simply been going off to punish a less powerful trespasser...
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Those aren't the only assumptions either Aldo. :)
1) We have no proof whatssoever that an explosion inside subspace of any magnitude would be more than a pretty firework show. Every single explosion has been while a ship was entering or exiting a node.
2) In order for the Saths to return after wiping out the GTVA we're assuming that they are able to instantly jump into and out of a system with no engine recharge time (or they'd get roasted by the Capellan nebula on the way back). So why not divert on of the Saths from Capella to take out the Nereid? Don't tell me that they couldn't spare one. They spared one to take out the Colossus. Called it up with very little notice too.
Originally posted by nuclear1
I still stand by my theory that the Shivans obvious (or maybe not-so-obvious) screw-up in blowing a lot of themselves up in a heated inferno of star matter and flame was all of because of Bosch's influence in the matter... ETAK, communication with the Shivans, Bosch messes with Shivan communications to screw up the Shivan attack on GTVA space, yadda yadda yadda...
It could have simply been that Bosch wasn't as evil as everyone thought--he may have saved humanity by having the Shivans nuke Capella, but by that same move, divert 80+ Shivan juggernauts from the attack on the Vega or Epsilon Pegasi node, which surely would have:
[list=1]
- Utterly destroyed the GTVA fleet
- Opened the GTVA core systems to invasion
So Bosch did a lot of good--stopped the Shivans, deepfried dozens of Shivan juggernauts, and gave us a pretty little end cutscene for FS2.
Don't buy it. For that to have been Bosch's plan there are two important things you haven't addressed.
1) Bosch would have to have known about the Shivan Sathanas fleet before he started his rebellion. That's possible but it seems odd that the GTVA would know of it, bury it and then look surprised when they appeared.
2) More importantly Bosch's monologues consitantly speak of his desire to form an alliance with the Shivans and abandon the Vasudans because humans have no future with them. The only way I can reconcile that with your theory is if Bosch was writing fake entries for when the Shivans boarded the Iceni and quite frankly that's a little too far out for me to accept without good cause.
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Maybe the shivans just wanted to distract us?
Now this requires the assumption that we aren't the Shivan's main target but think about it: What better way is there to tell those annoying little ants that keep biting at inopportune moments to stop than by nuking an anthill?
Too bad they missed Command...
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Originally posted by karajorma
Don't buy it. For that to have been Bosch's plan there are two important things you haven't addressed.
1) Bosch would have to have known about the Shivan Sathanas fleet before he started his rebellion. That's possible but it seems odd that the GTVA would know of it, bury it and then look surprised when they appeared.
2) More importantly Bosch's monologues consitantly speak of his desire to form an alliance with the Shivans and abandon the Vasudans because humans have no future with them. The only way I can reconcile that with your theory is if Bosch was writing fake entries for when the Shivans boarded the Iceni and quite frankly that's a little too far out for me to accept without good cause.
I suppose I didn't elaborate enough in my first post. I've got a couple of answers to this:
1) Judging by his monologues (especially the first), it seems obvious that Bosch was judging off of the history or the destruction of the Ancients when he was forming theories about the Shivans. He apparently had drawn up the idea in his head that the Shivans had come for the Ancients and that they were determined to completely destroy them.
Now, based on this, he could have looked at the Great War and assumed that the Terran-Vasudan victory was shallow and didn't mean anything; if the Shivans were truly determined to destroy the Terrans and Vasudans, then the loss of the Lucifer fleet would have only forced them to play something a little stronger; say, the Sathanas juggernauts. When the first Sathanas arrived in Capella, the Shivans might not have expected the Colossus, and therefore, when they saw that their one juggernaut had been destroyed, they took it up another notch: this time with several dozen of such ships.
Bosch, seeing as how the Shivans would relentlessly hunt the Terrans and Vasudans until they were completely destroyed (as they did with the Ancients, if you remember the Ancient monologues from FS1), found a way that he believed would stop the Shivans; the old GTI communication technology from the 2335 rebellion served him good in this case, as he improved upon it and created ETAK. With this technology, and with the conception of a full Shivan assault on the GTVA, he prepared the Iceni to use the communication technology, while at the same time using Neo-Terra to distract the GTVA from his true intentions.
Now how he knew about the Knossos in Gamma Draconis is beyond me; it could very well have been from the GTI research as well, or someone could simply have stumbled onto it and he managed to get to the information first. He activated the Knossos, thereby giving the Shivans an open door into Terran-Vasudan space. At full charge, he brought the NTF to bear on the Knossos, and he slipped into the nebula. With both the nebula and the Shivans holding off the GTVA, he activates ETAK and communicates with the Shivans. The actual Shivan reaction to the message is unknown; however, a rendezvous is scheduled between the Iceni and two Shivan cruisers, and Bosch is taken by a Shivan boarding party after a firefight on the Iceni.
Here it depends on whether Bosch actually did anything to gain Shivan trust and have them listen to his ETAK transmissions. If the Shivans had taken what they could have believed to be an order from one of their higher-ups, then Bosch could have simply stopped the Shivans from continuing any further than Capella, and then, if he had stowed away the ETAK tech on the transport, he could have ordered the Shivans to do something completely out of the ordinary.
Remember how in one of the monologues that Bosch was watching the new star forming? And then the other one in the nebula where he was ruminating over the nebula? He may have assumed that the Shivans, knowing much more about subspace than the Terrans or Vasudans, could have caused the supernova that created the Lupus nebula. With that in mind, he could have ordered the Shivans to create a new one in Capella.
While I doubt that he would have seen the GTVA being able to close the nodes, he might have seen the Shivans' attempt at creating a supernova as a diversion, allowing the GTVA to evacuate Capella and hold off the Shivan fleet.
2) I can try to refer to part of my above answer for this one, too. You are right in referring to what Bosch said about there being no future with the Vasudans, and that an alliance with the Shivans would have been necessary for survival, but how about we pick that apart a bit? Into two parts:
Part 1: Bosch acknowledged that the Vasudans would not be the hope for survival of the human race; however, he later says that his rebellion is about 'his love for humanity, not his hatred of the Vasudans'. By this, we can assume that he didn't necessarily look down on the Vasudans as a weaker race or had some prejudice against them, but that he did see the Vasudans as being mankind's hope for survival in the galaxy against the Shivans.
By this logic, he assumed that the Vasudans would simply be an extra race for the Shivans to destroy once they inevitably returned to GTVA space; as I said above, the attack would be much stronger than the fleet faced in the Great War, and, while the GTVA was stronger by the time the Second Great War came around, the Shivans would simply be much stronger than the Terrans and Vasudans. Therefore, no alliance with the Vasudans would have saved humanity from the Shivans; they simply would be lined up to die with humans once the Shivans returned.
Part 2: When he spoke about the alliance with the Shivans, he meant this to be as humanity's hope for survival; having the Shivans on the side of the humans would have had the Shivans not trying to kill Terrans and Vasudans, but instead breaking them off to attack someone else.
Right? Partially. While he saw an alliance with the Shivans as possible, I doubt that he could have seen a mutual alliance with shared resources or partnership with the Shivans. What Bosch possibly saw more of was something along the lines of "You do what we tell you to do"; he accomplished this through ETAK, as he ordered the Shivans to break off a full attack on GTVA space and simply nuke Capella. The Shivans may have demanded something in return, or they might not have, as they might have confused the ETAK technology as an order of one their higher-ups, and therefore would not have demanded anything back from Bosch.
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Bosch finds out the location of knosses from ruins in deneb, along with how to activate it :)
Interesting theory anyway, it does seem like all hell broke loose after they got him but I think it happend a little too soon for him to be responsible for that event.
As for the people being killed on the Iceni when they came for him, his own men probably hadn't even been informed about ETAK since it was classified to their highest branch, 2 other admirals were taken with bosch too.
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Wow, i got about halfway through that post (some good points you raise there) before i just plum gave up...honestly, somethings are just beyond understanding; God, Women, Whether or not its right to Double Dip a Chip, and of course...Shivans...
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the big question is, would the shivans have attacked if the vasudans and the terrans never had their war? or are the shivans tyrants and would have crushed the gtva regaurdless.
its a good theory but i dont see the shivans as taking orders from a mere human. bosh had a unique understanding of the shivans, but understanding does not equil control.
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Part 1: Bosch acknowledged that the Vasudans would not be the hope for survival of the human race; however, he later says that his rebellion is about 'his love for humanity, not his hatred of the Vasudans'. By this, we can assume that he didn't necessarily look down on the Vasudans as a weaker race or had some prejudice against them, but that he did see the Vasudans as being mankind's hope for survival in the galaxy against the Shivans.
By this logic, he assumed that the Vasudans would simply be an extra race for the Shivans to destroy once they inevitably returned to GTVA space; as I said above, the attack would be much stronger than the fleet faced in the Great War, and, while the GTVA was stronger by the time the Second Great War came around, the Shivans would simply be much stronger than the Terrans and Vasudans. Therefore, no alliance with the Vasudans would have saved humanity from the Shivans; they simply would be lined up to die with humans once the Shivans returned.
This is a very good point. :nod:
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Still not buying it.
Listen to this bit again.
As a young pilot I battled against the rebels of the great war, the Galactic Terran Intelligence whose research of Shivan technology and biology would form the cornerstone of my project. The Terran-Vasudan alliance buried this knowledge but I resurrected it. I alone realised our species had no future with the Vasudans. If we are to survive, our destiny must lie elsewhere.
Bosch may not hate the Vasudans but he clearly blames them for burying the information. Listen to his voice and you can quite clearly hear that the emphasis is on the word Vasudan.
Bosch wanted to break up the alliance because he believed that the GTVA were hiding something that was good for the Vasudans (at least in the short term) but could possibly spell destruction for humanity.
Bosch could have achieved his goal without breaking up the alliance but it seems to me that although he doesn't hate the Vasudans he feels that they are holding humanity back somehow.
Besides I don't agree with your interpretation of the word alliance. He doesn't sound like a man celebrating the fact that he's got one over on the enemy.
We embark on a miraculous journey towards a new horizon. This tragic era of hatred and misunderstanding between our races is over. On this day, for the first time in my life, I am filled with joy.
Bosch honestly believes that his actions can somehow end the fighting between Shivans and Terrans (He doesn't seem to care much what happens to the Vasudans) permanently and amicably. It doesn't sound to me like he's found a way to simply trick them into leaving us alone. .
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Originally posted by karajorma
Bosch may not hate the Vasudans but he clearly blames them for burying the information. Listen to his voice and you can quite clearly hear that the emphasis is on the word Vasudan.
Bosch wanted to break up the alliance because he believed that the GTVA were hiding something that was good for the Vasudans (at least in the short term) but could possibly spell destruction for humanity.
Here I think you just went a little deeper into what I said in the section of my post quoted by Goober, especially this line:
By this, we can assume that he didn't necessarily look down on the Vasudans as a weaker race or had some prejudice against them, but that he did see the Vasudans as being mankind's hope for survival in the galaxy against the Shivans.
He does blame the Alliance (Vasudans in particular) for burying the GTI research from the 2335 Rebellion, which opens another topic: why was the information kept under wraps by the GTVA? The Alliance simply might not have understood what the GTI background on ETAK was all about, and therefore saw it as something that should never be completed due to long-reaching negative consequences for the Terrans and Vasudans. It might also be that the GTI and its research, having been seen as renegade and hostile to the GTA and the PVN, was simply seen as a threat to the Alliance, and therefore left untouched until Bosch came around.
To see if we can further understand the Allied hatred toward the GTI and its research, let's took a look at the Great War. During the war, the Vasudans had their homeworld blasted by the Lucifer and billions of their people killed in the attack. The Terrans just narrowly avoided having Earth destroyed by the Lucifer, but at the cost of losing contact with Earth due to the collapse of the Delta Serpentis node. Because of this, the Terrans and Vasudans have an understandable hatred toward the Shivans.
At about this time, the GTI, as obviously refusing to give up their research on the Shivans, are announced to be renegades. Whether they were actually maliciously intending to overthrow the GTA and PVN violently with Shivan cohorts, or if they simply believed the way Bosch did in terms of humanity's survival not resting with the Vasudans is up to debate. However, it is obvious that the GTI and Shivans had some cooperation at one point, or that the GTI simply were able to control Shivan technology in such a way that the GTA and PVN saw as unnerving.
At this point, you have the Hades superdestroyer emerge. This is one huge problem for the GTA and PVN: a vessel under the control of renegades giving off Shivan electronic signatures and launching Shivan vessels (if you don't believe me, take a look at the last ST mission again: the bomber wing which launches from the Hades is designated as "Indra", which typically denotes a Shivan wing, while GTI ships use names from Norse mythology) aimed at obviously destroying the GTA and PVN. Big threat? Yes. The power of the Lucifer in the hands of the rebels? Huge threat.
Seeing as how the GTA and PVN managed to destroy the Hades before it truly came online, the Terrans and Vasudans found themselves lucky, and therefore buried the technology in the event that another rebellion would try to do the same thing that the GTI did. In this case, the Vasudans could have simply ordered the information highly-classified under the guise of "in the interest of galactic security". By this they accomplished several goals:
[list=1]
- The Vasudans and Terrans managed to bury important research on the Shivans.
- The Alliance destroyed one aspect of Shivan research that could have been of greater assistance than the Colossus ever would have been.
- The GTVA ended the GTI Rebellion, blindly seeing the GTI as traitors and criminals for attempting an alliance with the Shivans, and then made the same mistake again with Bosch.
Effectively, the GTVA ended Shivan research which they believed to have more risks than bonuses: the GTI apparently had the ability to control Shivan technology and vessels, but the GTVA saw the same technology as being too dangerous, especially if it should fall into the 'wrong hands', as they saw it did during the GTI Rebellion.
Bosch, having realized the second point above, resurrected the GTI research and completed ETAK, through which he saw attempted communication and cooperation with the Shivans as a much more effective method of halting them than any amount of firepower or new warships, as the GTVA had gone (Colossus, beam cannons, etc.).
Bosch could have achieved his goal without breaking up the alliance but it seems to me that although he doesn't hate the Vasudans he feels that they are holding humanity back somehow.
Summarized earlier in my post. The Vasudans are simply so prejudiced against the Shivans that they saw the only research that could possibly save both races as traitorous and inherently evil, as it dealt with technology belonging to the race that destroyed their homeworld and caused them so much suffering. The Vasudans were holding the Terrans back; not intentionally or maliciously, but through their own blindness and personal beliefs.
Therefore, Bosch saw this as dangerous, and saw separating from the Vasudans as the best way to resurrect old GTI technology and use the benefits to their fullest potential in an alliance with the Shivans.
Besides I don't agree with your interpretation of the word alliance. He doesn't sound like a man celebrating the fact that he's got one over on the enemy.
You may be right here. I think I worded my "alliance" paragraph oddly and poorly in the first place. I know that Bosch doesn't seem to be one to boast that he has the advantage over the Shivans, but, if you look at it in the same way, he may also realize that the way he opens communication with the Shivans is the only way to obtain an alliance. Perhaps he understands the Shivans better than anyone else does; it might just be that the Shivans respond more to determined leadership and one who steps up better than to communications attempted by the GTA during the Great War, which were more along the lines of the peaceful diplomatic talks.
Bosch honestly believes that his actions can somehow end the fighting between Shivans and Terrans (He doesn't seem to care much what happens to the Vasudans) permanently and amicably. It doesn't sound to me like he's found a way to simply trick them into leaving us alone.
Again, you may be right here. However, I still stand by my argument that Bosch does use this to get the Shivans' attention. When Bosch opened communication with the Shivans, it may have surprised the Shivans enough that they were willing to listen to what he said.
The "hatred and misunderstanding" between the Terrans and Shivans could very well be just because of the lack of the technology for the Terrans to communicate with the Shivans. Honestly, it may have impressed the Shivans that the Terrans had finally taken the research to learn how to communicate with their race and then saw the Terrans in a new light--that may have been the first step in the alliance that Bosch sought, having the Shivans look on the Terrans and think that this race is different, not just blind, hating, and fighting like all of the others that the Shivans had destroyed before.
It might have been that, with Bosch having been able to communicate with the Shivans, the Shivans would have been more open to listen to Bosch, especially regarding the fate of the Terrans.
Feel free to tear this up, if you like. I'm getting a lot of great ideas and thought-provoking arguments from this thread. ;)
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Honestly, it may have impressed the Shivans that the Terrans had finally taken the research to learn how to communicate with their race and then saw the Terrans in a new light--that may have been the first step in the alliance that Bosch sought, having the Shivans look on the Terrans and think that this race is different, not just blind, hating, and fighting like all of the others that the Shivans had destroyed before.
Given that the Shivans have consistantly fired first, from Ross 128 onwards, this seems unlikely. They have never demonstrably made an attempt to communicate.
Given that standard GTA/GTVA comm systems are capable of picking up Shivan transmissions (reference the Tech Room, Return to Babel), it seems reasonable that GTA/GTVA communications are also interceptable by the Shivans. The GTA attempted to communicate with them, through various means ("All attempts at communication have ended in violence."), and in each case was met with weapons fire.
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That's the point I was trying to make. While the Shivans may have been able to interpret the GTA transmissions, it may have meant nothing to them--after all, what's more impressive: Having someone speak to you in a foreign language and then having it translated for you, or having the person speak directly to you in your language?
While it may be arguable that ETAK would have been an intermediary when it came to communication with the Shivans, that's the same as arguing that a French-English dictionary is an intermediary when it comes to a Frenchman speaking English with an American.
Given that the Shivans have consistantly fired first, from Ross 128 onwards, this seems unlikely. They have never demonstrably made an attempt to communicate.
This is possibly because they have seen this happen so many other times before. Maybe the Terrans aren't the first race to try to communicate with the Shivans normally, and therefore the Shivans would have simply gone on with their usual pattern. However, when Bosch used ETAK and communicated with the Shivans in their own language, then the Shivans might have been more impressed, as this may have been the first time ever that one of the races that they have been trying to destroy has actually attempted to reach a peaceful solution in their own language, rather than continuing to fight, as the GTVA did.
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Again, you may be right here. However, I still stand by my argument that Bosch does use this to get the Shivans' attention. When Bosch opened communication with the Shivans, it may have surprised the Shivans enough that they were willing to listen to what he said.
I don't dispute that. Command tried repeatedly to communicate with the Shivans. and got nowhere. Bosch tries and succeeds. It's obvious that either Bosch's message or the fact that he was speaking in a Shivan language was what impressed them. However it's worth remembering that we have no proof whatsoever that the GTI didn't have their own ETAK device and that Bosch's project was merely an attempt to recreate it after the plans were destroyed in the last mission of Silent Threat.
Originally posted by nuclear1
The "hatred and misunderstanding" between the Terrans and Shivans could very well be just because of the lack of the technology for the Terrans to communicate with the Shivans. Honestly, it may have impressed the Shivans that the Terrans had finally taken the research to learn how to communicate with their race and then saw the Terrans in a new light--that may have been the first step in the alliance that Bosch sought, having the Shivans look on the Terrans and think that this race is different, not just blind, hating, and fighting like all of the others that the Shivans had destroyed before.
It might have been that, with Bosch having been able to communicate with the Shivans, the Shivans would have been more open to listen to Bosch, especially regarding the fate of the Terrans. ;)
The problem I have with that is that if Bosch thinks he's brought peace between the Terrans and Shivans then it seems unlikely that he'd be involved in some plot to trick them into losing at least 4 saths and blocking off Capella. Unless you're saying that this was a backup plan when he didn't get the peace he thought he would get.
It's also worth noting that I still don't see much of a reason why the Shivans would listen to Bosch and blow up Capella on his orders.
Anyway. It's still a plausable theory. But it's one amongst many. The background of MindGames has another theory which fits the facts just as well and I'm sure it's not the only one.
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Has anyone thought that Bosch making contact in the Shivans own language might have pissed them off? Given we don't know how the Shivans think, but what if they thought they were getting a signal from a captured Shivan? That would explain the big firefight on the Iceni. The Shivans come aboard looking for one of their own who doesn't exist, they don't find him and assume he was killed, take Bosch and other people as vengeance.
I realize that the Shivans don't seem to hold that much value for their own people, but it is a possibility.
It would also explain why they stepped up their attacks. They see the "true barbarianism" of the Terrans. They didn't just kill a Shivan, they killed a Prisoner of War. This might have been a personal blow to the Shivans?
Now of course this is all theory... Have at it with your sporks!
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Right, they call that 'barbarianism' after they indiscriminately wipeout the homeworld of an entire race just for the hell of it.
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I doubt the Shivans would misunderstand a message that Bosch thinks means 'this tragic era of hatred and misunderstanding between our races is over' severely enough to not only think it was from a Shivan, but that it was an SOS.
Not to mention 'rudimentary and crude' isn't what they'd expect from a native speacker.
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I think they could misunderstand it though. The message Bosch thinks he sent and the message the Shivans understood could be two completely different things.
Bosch would be putting the best spin on any communications he recieved but for all he knows the Shivans might have sent the transports over because they though Bosch was inviting them over for chip, dip and pay-per-view Vasudan porn.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I think they could misunderstand it though. The message Bosch thinks he sent and the message the Shivans understood could be two completely different things.
Bosch would be putting the best spin on any communications he recieved but for all he knows the Shivans might have sent the transports over because they though Bosch was inviting them over for chip, dip and pay-per-view Vasudan porn.
The implication is that there was 2-way communication between the two, though. For that sort of fundamental misunderstanding, you'd really need a consistant translation error focusing on meaning across multiple messages which IMO is pretty damn unlikely.
It's possible one message may be interpreted wrongly by the translator, but I don;t think you could get the same consistant problem if you're replying to messages.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
The implication is that there was 2-way communication between the two, though. For that sort of fundamental misunderstanding, you'd really need a consistant translation error focusing on meaning across multiple messages which IMO is pretty damn unlikely.
It's possible one message may be interpreted wrongly by the translator, but I don;t think you could get the same consistant problem if you're replying to messages.
Remember though that
a) Communication was crude and therefore open to mistakes/interpretation of what was said
b) We have no idea how long the converation between the two was
c) Bosch would probably put the best spin on any ambiguous answer.
This latter one is the most dangerous of the lot
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Originally posted by karajorma
Remember though that
a) Communication was crude and therefore open to mistakes/interpretation of what was said
b) We have no idea how long the converation between the two was
c) Bosch would probably put the best spin on any ambiguous answer.
This latter one is the most dangerous of the lot
Well, from the game we know that:
a) The communication technology was prototype and therefore quite crude, though the "crude" that Bosch was referring to might be because the fact that their first meeting was interrupted by a Vasudan attack wing.
b) The conversation was at least back-and-forth once--both the Iceni and the Rakshasa in the mission sent messages, and they may have very well done more before that. How much more is up to debate.
c) Apparently Bosch did something right, as he got the Shivans to listen and schedule a rendezvous elsewhere. Then again, he might have screwed up and the Shivans boarded, took him and a bunch of others, and killed everyone else.
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I think Bosch must have been key to the destruction of Capella, becasue his Character is so heavily featured in the plotline, and if the Shivans simply took him and lobotomised him it would be a waste of 4 cutscenes.
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It's possible one message may be interpreted wrongly by the translator, but I don;t think you could get the same consistant problem if you're replying to messages.
Just because Bosch could imitate the sounds of the language with ETAK, that doesn't mean he had the language down. All that they could have gotten down was the number system. What Bosch actually could have said was "Meet stupid sink Vasudans Wuv Fishies in toilet at coordinates 01.459.589"
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Originally posted by karajorma
Bosch would be putting the best spin on any communications he recieved but for all he knows the Shivans might have sent the transports over because they though Bosch was inviting them over for chip, dip and pay-per-view Vasudan porn.
Based on that piccy in the highlights, no wonder they massacred the crew. :D
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Has anyone ever considered why the Lucifer pacified Vasuda Prime and attempted to do so with Earth? Could they and the destruction of the Capella star been similar? This goes back to the old theory of Shivans protecting subspace.
We know the Shivans didn't care about planets or resources; only the nodes. Maybe the reason the Lucifer destroyed Vasuda Prime because of the enormous amount of subspace traffic coming from it. The Lucifer pacified the system and glassed V-Prime to alleviate the nodes of primitve subspace traffic. Even though the Lucifer was destryoed, it still may have accomplished it's goal: eliminate the major subspace traffic of the two population centers.
Notice how 32 years later the Shivans destroy the Capella star. They did not make any major pushes towards either node leading to outlying GTVA systems. Capella being the largest population center with millions of refugees from the Great War. Subspace traffic, once merely a colony, became the largest area of subspace traffic in any system. The Shivans merely stepped in to destroy the Capella star and, in effect, collapse all nodes leading out of it (no gravitational field to hold the nodes in normal space).
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Originally posted by nuclear1
a) The communication technology was prototype and therefore quite crude, though the "crude" that Bosch was referring to might be because the fact that their first meeting was interrupted by a Vasudan attack wing.
I doubt it.
Although our first contact was rudimentary and crude
It's pretty clear he was on about the technology.
Originally posted by kietotheworld
I think Bosch must have been key to the destruction of Capella, becasue his Character is so heavily featured in the plotline, and if the Shivans simply took him and lobotomised him it would be a waste of 4 cutscenes.
The MindGames plotline has Bosch being taken away and cut up but due to the way he was set up by the StarBorn it's not a waste.
To be honest Bosch's fate whatever it was doesn't make those cutscenes a waste. What is important there is why Bosch was doing what he did. If the cutscenes had been used for something else we would have had no idea why the NTF were so interested in the Shivans and the plotline would have been much shallower and more confusing.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Remember though that
a) Communication was crude and therefore open to mistakes/interpretation of what was said
b) We have no idea how long the converation between the two was
c) Bosch would probably put the best spin on any ambiguous answer.
This latter one is the most dangerous of the lot
But there'd still have to be multiple stages of communication over several issues; introduction & receipt of message, cessation of hostilities against the Iceni, the 'alliance', and negotiating for transport with the shivans. (at the least). i'm not saying it was 100% accurate or contained a lot of information, but I think it's highly unlikely you'd have the Shivans believing that, for example, Bosch was a Shivan POW asking for help.
I think the Shivans used and dumped Bosch like a 2-bit whore, but I don't think they didn't know what he was talking to them about.
NB; @Boomer - I'm talking about a error across a conversation that somehow manages to mistranslate every message in such a way that both sides have a completely different impression of the meaning of said conversation; that implies an error in translation of meaning and context, something not conveyed by words alone. (identifying this is a classic problem of any form of textual search, incidentally).
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Originally posted by aldo_14
But there'd still have to be multiple stages of communication over several issues; introduction & receipt of message, cessation of hostilities against the Iceni, the 'alliance', and negotiating for transport with the shivans. (at the least). i'm not saying it was 100% accurate or contained a lot of information, but I think it's highly unlikely you'd have the Shivans believing that, for example, Bosch was a Shivan POW asking for help.
I don't think the Shivans believed that either but since the TV war started over a linguistic misunderstanding (With both languages being so close to each other) there's no reason to believe that Bosch couldn't have gone seriously wrong with what he thought was going to happen.
The possibility that he did understand is also valid though. I do believe that Bosch didn't suspect what was going to happen when the Shivans came on board though. Note the difference between
As I make this final entry my crew is preparing to scuttle the Iconic and board the Shivan transports.
and
As I make this final entry the crew are preparing to be slaughtered while I fly off in a Shivan transport laughing manicallly as I watch the Shivans blow chunks off of the Iceni.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I don't think the Shivans believed that either but since the TV war started over a linguistic misunderstanding (With both languages being so close to each other) there's no reason to believe that Bosch couldn't have gone seriously wrong with what he thought was going to happen.
The possibility that he did understand is also valid though. I do believe that Bosch didn't suspect what was going to happen when the Shivans came on board though.
THat's a fair point, although it's equally possible the Shivans were simply lying to him to get onto the Iceni for some reason. I'm not sure what sort of scenario other than this would lead to the Shivans boarding rather than attacking the Iceni, and in either case they must have had some reason to go take the NTF command crew.
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The command crew are the only ones that knew about ETAK arn't they? Maybe Bosch said screw the rest of my crew lol and when the Shivans came onboard they opened fire lol.
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NB; @Boomer - I'm talking about a error across a conversation that somehow manages to mistranslate every message in such a way that both sides have a completely different impression of the meaning of said conversation; that implies an error in translation of meaning and context, something not conveyed by words alone. (identifying this is a classic problem of any form of textual search, incidentally).
You want a grievous translation error? Try this:
Replace every "E" in your post with a "Q", every A with a P, and every R and T with an M.
Now tell me that that doesn't make things a little complicated?
Now imagine conversing with a non-native speaker who believes that this is the correct way to speak and interprets everything you say correctly to be so. You now have a monstrous language gap with more than enough room for misinterpretation. You might get the gist of the message, i.e. numbers, coordinates, but that's about all.
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Originally posted by karajorma
As I make this final entry my crew is preparing to scuttle the Iconic and board the Shivan transports
[/B]
The Iconic?
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Originally posted by Boomer
You want a grievous translation error? Try this:
Replace every "E" in your post with a "Q", every A with a P, and every R and T with an M.
Now tell me that that doesn't make things a little complicated?
Now imagine conversing with a non-native speaker who believes that this is the correct way to speak and interprets everything you say correctly to be so. You now have a monstrous language gap with more than enough room for misinterpretation. You might get the gist of the message, i.e. numbers, coordinates, but that's about all.
That's missing the point. Misinterpretation is highly unlikely to throw up a consistent 'result' (topic, subject, context) under any form of 2 way communication. The more likely scenario is complete confusion.
Also, you've sort of defeated your argument there; for Bosch to send the 'gist' you describe, he'd have to reach a certain conversational state. To do so, that'd require a - crude and rudimentary - exchange of messages and responses.
In doing so, for an appropriate response to be received in every occurance and still have an error, it would mean both sides would recieve the - mistranslated - message and yet draw a consistent context and meaning from it; because each message draws a context and meaning from the received message, for a 'translation error to occur would entail translation of meaning, not literal translation.
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An example might help. Here's one that appeared in Encyclopedia Brown...
Love letter dictated over the phone:
How I long for a girl who understands what true romance is all about. You are sweet and faithful. Girls who are unlike you kiss the first boy who comes along, Adorabelle. I'd like to praise your beauty forever. I can't stop thinking you are the prettiest girl alive. Thine, Tyrone.
Love letter as transcribed by the little sister:
How I long for a girl who understands what true romance is. All about you are sweet and faithful girls who are unlike you. Kiss the first boy who comes along, Adorabelle. I'd like to praise your beauty forever. I can't. Stop thinking you are the prettiest girl alive. Thine, Tyrone.
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I'm not disputing that Bosch didn't correctly make the rendezvous message, what I'm disputing is what might have been said other wise. I mean, it seems to me that Bosch wouldn't just tell a Shivan ship to meet him and go away. I believe there may have been some foreplay* involved before the Vasudans jumped in.
*Excuse me for the horrible choice of words.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
The Iconic?
F**king Spellchecker.
Now I have to upload the page to my website again as that mistake made it into the FAQ without me spotting it! :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Goober5000
An example might help. Here's one that appeared in Encyclopedia Brown...
But what of the reply to that?
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Originally posted by aldo_14
But what of the reply to that?
Adorabelle took the meaning as it was transcribed and gave the guy a roundhouse punch, much to his astonishment. :p The mystery actually consisted of reconstructing the transcribed message.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
Adorabelle took the meaning as it was transcribed and gave the guy a roundhouse punch, much to his astonishment. :p The mystery actually consisted of reconstructing the transcribed message.
Then the guy knows there's been a problem and both sides have drawn a different meaning from the communications.
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what the Shivans hear:
bosch: "us, stop fireing, frend on bord"
shivans: "you are on that ship?"
bosch: "yes not enemy to us"
shivans: "wait a second, how is this posable, were you captured or something?"
bosch: "yes, taken our technology, useing me, by enemy"
shivans: "wow ****! that explains why your gramer is so fuct up. so you want a resque"
bosch: "yes, I am here /*gives location in ship were he is*/ others too, take us out. now please stop shooting, no more killing me and others"
shivans: "ok, we didn't know about you, sorry about trying to blow you up. look we'll bust you out of there as soon as we can get a boarding squad ready"
/*Vasudan patrole arives*/
bosch: "enemy here, this ship will be here /*gives coords*/ meet with ship to get me out"
shivans: "I see them, look we'll take care of these guys and we've already got a ship going to intercept the ship your on, don't wory, the basturds holding you won't know what hit them"
what bosch hears:
bosch: "shivan vestle, stop fireing, I am not your enimy"
shivans: "on ship?"
bosch: "that is corect I am not an enemy to the shivans"
shivans: "in time, make comunicate now, taken or other?"
bosch: "yes, I am useing shivan technology captured by the GTA"
shivans: "amazeing! this why is dificult talk you. do you wish to be taken with us"
bosch: "yes, I am here /*gives location in ship were he is*/ there are a few of my officers that I would like to bring with me, I would like to come abord one of youre ships. now please lets stop this violence, stop your slaughter of my kind"
shivans: "yes, not know, appologies for slaughter. will send ship for take you, when can soon"
/*Vasudan patrole arives*/
bosch: "a wing of GTVA fighters has arived they'll try to destroy us, the iceni will be at these coodranants /*gives coords*/ please send a ship to meet us there"
shivans: "enemy presence agnolaged, will engage, have vesles to get you from ship take with us, no fear, humans know not the glorius future with us"
I made an assumption that shivans don't have a name for themselves but only us and them. doesn't seem like too big a leap, but any of a thousand other similar screwups could happen.
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What kind of race doesn't have a name for themselves?
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What says they do?
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Well you guys forget to see that the Iceni and the Rakshasa wern't firing so something must have been going right for Bosch.
Normally a Shivan ship fires on sight heehee.
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What if the communication went smoothly, and the Shivans acknowledged Bosch's ceasefire and sent transports to take them...i don't know...to the land of spells and faries. Now, my line of thought is that when the Shivans came aboard, even though the crew knew they were not hostile, someone flipped out (meeting a hoard of insectoid-cybernetic-xenocidal-arachnoid-demon aliens wearing Red out of season would do that to you) and fired on them, a firefight ensues, many die - but Bosch is still taken away...a perfectly logical conclusion but a completely different angle - while there's no outward proof, neither is there any to support Miscommunication between Bosch and the friendly Shivans...
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Well I don't think the normal crew even knew what was going on and so they opened fire. I rekon you could be right, maybe Bosch said to em we are letting Shivans aboard don't fire, but guezz if I was on that crew and had no idea of ETAK I probably woulda gone nuts and fire on em too, like I ain't just letting Shivans walk on board they'll kill us all kinda thinking. Since ETAK was classified to Bosches command crew. Which is why the alliance had so much trouble finding out what it was to begin with and thought it was a WOMD it could explain it.
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Originally posted by Hippo
What says they do?
Um.... common sense?
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Originally posted by DarthWang
Um.... common sense?
So you use common sense assuming their brains work the same as ours. Maybe they don't concern themselves with such things, for religious reasons or because they don't just think that way. You cannot know.
That goes for all of you. This is a alien species. Maybe the fact that Bosch talked to them was something like you seeing a man with six pairs of wings, ten pairs of hands, pig eyes, TV in his mouth, snakes in his ears and major problems with stomach ache.
Maybe something like other race talking to them was so unheard of they got scared ****less.
Maybe hearing some other being talk to them was so shocking that the ones hearing it simply couldn't comprehend it and dropped dead.
Maybe they thought that it means they have to get close and personal before they kill them pesky humies.
Maybe this post has no point at all.
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It's equally as dangerous to assume the Shivans even feel fear, though.
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And it's just as dangerous to assume that they don't.
In fact, evolution to sentience is often driven by fear. That organism that fears the giant predator capable of tearing it to shreds typically will live longer than one that doesn't, and that can be attributed to be fact. What makes the difference is whether the Shivans evolved naturally or not. If they did evolve naturally, then, (if the origin discussed in the Shivan Manifesto is accepted) it wouldn't be unwise to think that the Shivans greatly feared the travelers from normal space and avoided them at all costs. Once the species had lived long enough to achieve sentience, the fear would have spawned other emotions such as anger toward these invaders and a desire to stop the intrusion. When the Shivans finally became capable of communicating their intentions, they would have grown angry at the arrogance of the intruding species and wiped them out. Soon, the Shivans began to see other species enter subspace, and began to treat these new invaders the same way as they did the first species to enter subspace, completely annihilating them.
This is a perfectly logical argument IMO. It has it's flaws and feel free to point them out, but I feel that it is just as plausible as most of the other theories put forth.
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This of course assumes that individual Shivans are sentient. Which I personally doubt. They are capable of fear, collectively, but collectively there's nothing really that scary to them.
Mefustae essentially recreated my own theory about the combat aboard the Iceni.
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Here's my take on it:
The Shivans saw the GTA and PVN and said "Oh look, people to kill!" After seeing how easily they took out the Ross 128 station, they probably figured that we weren't much of a threat, and therefor, found no reason to send in the more advanced ships that were armed with beams (in other words, these ships the GTA/PVN encountered were much older models). However, when the GTA/PVN took out the Lucifer, the Shivans said "Holy ****! I think we need some heavier weapons." Thus, they sent in the Sath in FS2.
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Welcome back InfernoGod!
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Hey, thanks. (Somebody noticed I disappeared.)
Didn't think anybody noticed me here :p - either that or they all hated me, lol. Sorry, OT.
Another thought I had on the Shivans was that maybe the Lucifer fleet had been long detached from the main body of the Shivan fleet. (i.e. Lucifer found the GTA/PVN, notified the main body of the Shivan forces, who were off somewhere). Then, the Lucifer didn't wait for the main forces and decided to engage. Meanwhile, the fleet arrived a few years later, and well, you get the point. Kind of "Lucy=scout" theory. I think my first one is better though.
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I'm pretty sure the Lucifer was in a separate fleet, and that the much-mentioned scouting wave was just a bunch of fighters downed by some NTF pilots.
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Originally posted by Mefustae
while there's no outward proof, neither is there any to support Miscommunication between Bosch and the friendly Shivans...
Miscommunication between species is a theme in Freespace. It started the 14 year war. It would be a neat plot thingy to have it be the reason for the great war also.
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I just read the entire thread. Wow. My eyes hurt. Partly from all the bad grammar. But, Interesting ideas and theories nonetheless.
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Originally posted by Carl
Miscommunication between species is a theme in Freespace. It started the 14 year war. It would be a neat plot thingy to have it be the reason for the great war also.
...What i'm saying is that, while i'll agree Miscommunication has been an ongoing theme in the Freespace-iverse, there's no outward evidence given to support the theory that there was inherrant miscommunication between Bosch and the Shivans...
...Heck, the fact that the Shivans met up with Bosch - meaning that they listened and at least held a rudementary understanding of what Bosch was trying to get across - supports the idea that there was no miscommunication at all...
...The only hostilities between Bosch and the Shivans are seen when you arrive at their rendevous (sp?), which i believe suggests that something went wrong when they met in person - such as someone getting antsy and popping off a few rounds when the Shivans came aboard - and not before that...
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There's no evidence to say that there wasn't though. It's yet another area that is completely open to interpretation.
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For all we know, Bosch could have been saying "I like cheese and cows have cactus-like toes." or some other random gibberish/sentences. They could have just been curious and said "Look- they talk. They don't make sense, but they talk." and took them and ate their headz.
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Perhaps ripping your henchmen to shreds is just the Shivan way of saying 'hello'...
(http://maianfsw.homestead.com/files/bbqz2.gif)
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Originally posted by InfernoGod
For all we know, Bosch could have been saying "I like cheese and cows have cactus-like toes." or some other random gibberish/sentences. They could have just been curious and said "Look- they talk. They don't make sense, but they talk." and took them and ate their headz.
Considering that they managed to accurately communicate about the transports, I doubt that.
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It's generally easier for someone fluent in a language to make themselves understood to someone who isn't than the other way around.
In other words Bosch may have understood what the shivans said almost perfectly while talking nonsense himself.
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So, what could have happened during their conversation was;
Bosch - "G'day lads, what would you say to an Alliance?"
Shivans - "...We have no idea what in the hell you're saying, so we're just going to kill you rather than let you suffer the embarrasment of looking like a Buffoon...just meet us here so we can kill you, toot sweet..."
Bosch - "Okaaay...the good thing is, i'm meeting new people"
So, really, the question i pose to that, is how in the heck could Bosch have understood what the Shivans were saying and yet completely have misunderstood their ulterior motives for meeting them...?