Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Liberator on April 28, 2002, 01:34:30 am
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:devilidea Here's a strange thought.
What if the first two Great Wars were tests by the Shivans to see if we have developed enough to aid them against an even greater foe?
For instance, in FS1 after the Vasudan homeworld was rendered uninhabitable(it was not destroyed, as in 'boom') the Shivans more or less ignored the umpteen Vasudan colonies and went on to find Earth. Perhaps if their inital fleet is able to decimate a species homeworld they write them off as not being powerful enough and move on. They came back because we destroyed they're expeditonary force and they're giving us a second look?
The destruction of Capella could be a diversion to give us time to build our forces in anticipation of their third visit, when they will communicate with us for the first time and explain everything.
Of course they could have taken Bosch to see if Humans make good burgers too.
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I doubt it, you don't cripple a potentional ally like that
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we don't want to be your ally. we just want to kill you.
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You do if you want to force them to develop faster.
"That which doe not kill me makes me stronger."
The main reason the Shivan were not as scary in FS2 as they were in FS is because we were stronger, more able to hold our own. Beam weapons:mad2: , Anti-Matter Torpedoes;7 , Meson Bombs :headz: and all the rest of it developed out of the perceived need for better weapons to defend agains the Shivans. The Lucifer fleet served to strengthen the Terrans and Vasudans, allowing them to build ships and weapons almost equivalent to the Shivans.
The Shivans therefore destroyed a star to sheild us from the Great Enemy until our technology is equal to or superior to theirs.
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"noooo..... peeaaacce....."
Oh, wait, wrong aliens... :D
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actually, V implied that the shivans are at war with someone else, and they attacked us to keep us out of it.
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Plus why would the Shivans want to ally themselves with us? They own us.
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Originally posted by Liberator
You do if you want to force them to develop faster.
"That which doe not kill me makes me stronger."
The main reason the Shivan were not as scary in FS2 as they were in FS is because we were stronger, more able to hold our own................. The Lucifer fleet served to strengthen the Terrans and Vasudans, allowing them to build ships and weapons almost equivalent to the Shivans.
They are NOT Shadows.
Why don't we just ask Dave about FS3 story concepts?
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Originally posted by Carl
we don't want to be your ally. we just want to kill you.
Sweeeeeet :D
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Shivans are probably fighting wars with dozens of other species, but I doubt that they need any help annihilating random species.
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Lol! Is that you in disguise, Infested_Larvae?:D
Anyways, yes, the Shivans are fighting someone else, but not who you think...
Wait and see...
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:wakka: The Shivans! Ally with us?! :wakka:
:jaw: Noticed the new smilies :D :yes: :yes2:
:eek2: The old jaw smily...
:yes: :yes2: Thumb war, anyone?
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Originally posted by an0n
Why don't we just ask Dave about FS3 story concepts?
You think he would actually tell us? :jaw: ;7 :lol: :wakka:
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
Lol! Is that you in disguise, Infested_Larvae?:D
Anyways, yes, the Shivans are fighting someone else, but not who you think...
Wait and see...
Don`t have to :D I already know. :)
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Originally posted by Corsair
You think he would actually tell us? :jaw: ;7 :lol: :wakka:
Hey, he gave us the source code.
In other words, not a chance.:(
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They came back because Bosch sent the NTC Trinity into the nebula.
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We shouldn't talk about the Shivans motives. We need to keep them as mysterious and frightening as possible.
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Originally posted by Carl the Love Doll
actually, :V: implied that the shivans are at war with someone else, and they attacked us to keep us out of it.
I presume you're talking about when they said "The Shivan invasion was a symptom of a bigger problem?" I really doubt that. The bigger problem, I believe, was the Terran and Vasudan invasion into subspace and annihilating all less developed life. The Ancients, remember the legacy of the Ancients! The Shivans came and destroyed us to give other life a chance to survive. Okaaaaay? (we need a frown smiley between :mad2: and :blah: )
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
I presume you're talking about when they said "The Shivan invasion was a symptom of a bigger problem?" I really doubt that. The bigger problem, I believe, was the Terran and Vasudan invasion into subspace and annihilating all less developed life. The Ancients, remember the legacy of the Ancients! The Shivans came and destroyed us to give other life a chance to survive. Okaaaaay? (we need a frown smiley between :mad2: and :blah: )
but we're not (as far as I'm aware) destroying lesser lifeforms... Do you think that the GTVA would allow that? Do you really believe the GTVA would allow xenocide/genocide?
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From the Ancients readings:
We encountered other advanced life, and we subdued it, or we crushed it.
The Ancients monologues tell a parallel story to that of the Terrans and Vasudans. Need I say more?
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More like just the Vasudans.
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
The Ancients monologues tell a parallel story to that of the Terrans and Vasudans. Need I say more?
They tell a parallel story allright... but it deals with the struggle of the Terrans and the Vasudans against each other... not against lesser lifeforms.
The T-V war was a struggle between two evenly matched species to determine wich one was 'lesser'. The amount of subspace activity this generated is what attracted the shivans.
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Originally posted by Crazy_Ivan80
but we're not (as far as I'm aware) destroying lesser lifeforms... Do you think that the GTVA would allow that? Do you really believe the GTVA would allow xenocide/genocide?
The GTVA might not, but the GTI would. And besides, remember what happened with the Iceni, when the GTVA pulled the blockade. They don't really have the best intrests of the lesser individuals (pilots in this case) in there minds.
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Originally posted by X-Files Addict
The GTVA might not, but the GTI would. And besides, remember what happened with the Iceni, when the GTVA pulled the blockade. They don't really have the best intrests of the lesser individuals (pilots in this case) in there minds.
That's different, those are FIGHTER pilots. They get paid to put themselves into harm's way. The GTVA would frown greatly upon the wholesale destruction of entire races. Besides I get the feeling from the cutscenes and the tech room that the Vasudans were the only Intelligent species the Terrans had encountered until the Shivan Assault of the first Great War.
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I doubt it, but I am paranoid of any government, just look at my username.
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Why would the shivans, with all there big bad technology, travel like 750 light years just to destroy a bunch of tyrant races?
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"they are the great destroyers, but they are also the great preservers"
think intergalactic police
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Maybe, but such an old, powerful race must realize that destroying all tyranys makes them a tyrant.
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They're only tyrannical if they hang around and hold the local populace under there thumb.
The Shivans only seem interested in destroying a given races main infrastructure. The rebuilding process results in stronger races overall as the obliterated develop methods for resisting the obliterators.
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Seems to me the Shivans would be MUCH better off just putting all their resources into fighting their one enemy, rather than splitting up their resources making more enemies that later they'll come up to and say, "Gee, we're sorry we killed all those people - but now you're SO much stronger and you have us to thank for it. So thank us, get your butts out there, and die for us."
I just don't see them doing that. (-:
--TurboNed
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well, if you look at it this way: the shivans may have far more ships than the GTVA can even imagine but are only a small taskforce is attacking the GTVA. A similar taskforce could be doing the same to another species elsewhere, and another one to yet another group.
Consider the Sathanas fleet for example, there were some 87 sathanas, 88 if you include the first one destroyed by the Colossus. Those things may have been huge, but how many do you think the shivans have? i'd be willing to say they have plenty big ships that they see as small ships.
As for their enemy, they could be like the shivans: big, numerous, and highly advanced. They can be the two titans clashing at the center of the galaxy that are now looking for new allies to tip the balance.
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That's a good point. They could be evenly matched with the Great Enemy and are seeking to find, or create, allies capable of aiding them.
As far as the Ancient Monologues are concerned, history is most often told by the victor, but we've only seen the Ancients POV. What if The Ancients were the Great Destroyers for thousands of years, then the Shivans came, and the Ancients lost their war. The Shivan would then have assumed their(the Ancients) place as the Great Destroyers, and now after thousands of years, the Shivans are now facing their final conflict.
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Originally posted by TurboNed
Seems to me the Shivans would be MUCH better off just putting all their resources into fighting their one enemy, rather than splitting up their resources making more enemies that later they'll come up to and say, "Gee, we're sorry we killed all those people - but now you're SO much stronger and you have us to thank for it. So thank us, get your butts out there, and die for us."
I just don't see them doing that. (-:
--TurboNed
Not to mention, that it's in the Human Nature, not to do such things. (going out and dying for a race that just blew up a couple of million people)
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Terrans are destroyers. They are parallel to the Ancients.
Just look at us today: because of us, many species are becoming extinct.
Shivans don't like hostility. If you start fighting with someone, the Shivans will come in and start wiping your arse out. They are not tyrants. They are preservers. They kill the strong to help the weak.
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Originally posted by FSW
Terrans are destroyers. They are parallel to the Ancients.
Just look at us today: because of us, many species are becoming extinct.
Shivans don't like hostility. If you start fighting with someone, the Shivans will come in and start wiping your arse out. They are not tyrants. They are preservers. They kill the strong to help the weak.
if shivans didn't like hostility than they would've contacted us when we hailed them. And remember some old guys principle (Darwin I think), "Survival of the Fittest"
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Wait, it's making sense. Perhaps in the Shivans vs. Great Enemy fight, the Shivans know they're going to lose. They see us as a potential species that could beat the Great Enemy in the future, so they do the Great War as a test.
We pass the test, of course.
The Shivans come back, and help seal us off from the Greats before the Greats can run us over. Of course in doing so they perform a Capellectomy, but hey, as long as we're more prepared, the Shivans are happy. :D
Hey, it's a possibility. :)
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The only problem with that theory is that the Shivans wouldn't put an entire fleet of ships out just to test a species. The Lucifer would've costed a lot, to have 4 km long shielding. The shivans could've redirected those resources to a half a dozen Sathani.
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If the Great Enemy can take out 87 Sathani, 6 more aren't going to make a difference.
Besides if they've 87 got Juggs, just think how many smaller vessels they've got. I mean our one Jugg was like dozens of destroyers, hundreds of cruisers and corvettes, and umpteen thousand fighters and bombers. So the Shivans probably have millions of ships. The Lucifer fleet probably would have been a drop in the bucket. Don't mention the Luci's sheilds, she is likely one of their more fragile warships, why else put sheilds on it? Also, she was probably only invulnerable to the weapsons of the time. Modern weapons would likely have little problem with her.
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I doubt it. The Luci had some pretty good weapons for it's time. It inspired the beam cannons, and was the main inspiration behind the ancients research. I doubt the Luci, without sheilds, would be an easy target.
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For the GTVA it certainly wouldn't be an easy target (look what one of those did in Derelict, WITHOUT shields). But considering the massive size of the Shivan fleet and their incredible technology, the Lucifer might have been to the Shivans what an old, broken down Aten or Fenris is to the GTVA. Maybe the Lucifer and Sathanas are old, outdated models that serve back-line duty or "minor-species elimination" missions. Didn't someone once post the theory that Sathani are simply gas miners? I'm not so sure about that, but I doubt the Shivans sent an armada of state-of-the-art front-line warships to overwhelm the piddley GTVA.
Who knows what the real Shivan warships could be fighting on the front lines of their own Great War.
I find it hard to believe that the Shivans still employ the Lucifer design on the front lines over 8000 years after its development.
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It would be if stopped to think about it. What made the Luci so formidible? That's easy the Shields. Without the sheilds two wings of bombers and couple of Leviathans could wiped her.
Instead, a seemingly invulnerable warship forces the fledgling GTVA to desperately search for ways to destroy it. They luck out, and find records from the race the Shivans killed to become top dog. But, memories of the Lucifer, a Shielded warship, drove the GTVA to develop weapons powerful enough to penetrate the shields of the Lucifer.
I had another thought about the Shivans, what if they're a Cybernetic species, created by a so old so as to make the ancients seem recent, programmed to do one thing,"Defeat the Great Enemy, at any cost." Such a command would make the Shivans, if they are learning machines, to become nearly unstoppable.
This would also explain the seemingly limitless number of ships available. Just imagine if the GTVA had AI sophisticated enough to not only direct the construction of warships, but pilot them as well(no not the Training Drones), even if the GTVA was destroyed, the AIs , if they were insinuated into the infrastructure, could go on as long as they had resources.
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Sathanas? bah! Shivan trailer homes merely. If you want to see a true state of the art Shivan craft, look at my Cacod****...said to much again....go see the Gargant, now thats a warship.
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I sort of like the great enemy theory...perhaps the Shivans are at a standstill, after destroying the Ancients, and begin to search the areas where they inhabited. They send out the Lucy to scout out where the Ancients were, which ends up in Terran/Vasudan space. It decides to force both species to go into space, rather than live on planets to get them ready for fighting against the Great Enemy (more maneuverability). However, the Lucy is destroyed en route to Earth.
The whole point of the expedition and attack was to get the GTVA ready for the Great Enemy; after all, if the Shivans had just showed up and said "Here, have some shield tech. Oh, and have some beam cannons, too..." the GTVA would have just used them against each other. Instead, the Shivans give the GTVA something to fear and fight against.
Then Bosch makes ETAK and sends the Trinity into the node; the Trinity alerts the Shivans that the GTVA has found a way there; the Shivans, however, are now on the run from another species and retreat to GTVA space via the nebula, hoping to throw the Great Enemy off their trail.
It doesn't work.
In desparation, the Shivans begin to cause the Capella star to go nova, to catch the Great Enemy in the explosion. As the star goes nova, the bulk of the Shivan fleet jumps out, leaving behind a few vessels to keep the GTVA from making contact with the Great Enemy (hiding the GTVA from them) and to make sure Capella goes nova. Thus ends FS2 :nod:
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Good theory. I can't find a single thing wrong with it. But, I guess we will all find out if FS3 ever comes out.
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Since we're on the Lucy/Sathanas topic, here's a little bit of info.
Lucifer-In Latin: "Light Giver". The Evil One, the Prince of Darkness, the Devil, whatever you want to call him.
Sathanas-If you break it down (Sathanas, Sathan), the end result is one word: Satan.
Seems the two biggies were both named after the Devil himself.
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
Lol! Is that you in disguise, Infested_Larvae?:D
Anyways, yes, the Shivans are fighting someone else, but not who you think...
Wait and see...
No, it's not me... But it's what i wanted to do... exept that the great ones are ancients...
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Since we're on the Lucy/Sathanas topic, here's a little bit of info.
Lucifer-In Latin: "Light Giver". The Evil One, the Prince of Darkness, the Devil, whatever you want to call him.
Sathanas-If you break it down (Sathanas, Sathan), the end result is one word: Satan.
Seems the two biggies were both named after the Devil himself.
Plus, in one african language (forgot name) Shiv is the goddess of evil or darkness. Shiv = Shivan
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Originally posted by X-Files Addict
Plus, in one african language (forgot name) Shiv is the goddess of evil or darkness. Shiv = Shivan
Actually, in Hinduism, Shiva was the Destroyer, along with Vishnu (the Preserver), and someone else.... :D can't remember....
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Actually, in Hinduism, Shiva was the Destroyer, along with Vishnu (the Preserver), and someone else.... :D can't remember....
Yeah well it is still the same. And there is actually the goddess Shiv, cause one of my friends used the name.
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Originally posted by LtNarol
"they are the great destroyers, but they are also the great preservers"
Think park ranger and ecological maniac with other planets (the colonies) being the state parks. It seems to me, from what I remember of the monologues, that one of the big things about the Shivans is their knowledge of subspace. What is the biggest thing subspace allows the GTVA to do? Make colonies on other worlds. Now what, do you suppose, would have happened if some alien race set up a colony on Earth before we evolved? The GTVA might frown on killing off sentient species, but what about lower life forms? Life forms that, given time and a planet without any alien influences, might some day evolve into a sentient species. :)
It's just a little theory that popped into my head and I don't really have anything solid to support it, but you never know. It just might be what they were thinking about. :)
Anyone interested in trying to "get inside" an alien race's head might find the book Startide Rising by David Brin an interesting read. It's got some well described alien races who don't think anything like us. (And besides, it's by a Dave B... ;))
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Since we're on the Lucy/Sathanas topic, here's a little bit of info. Lucifer-In Latin: "Light Giver". The Evil One, the Prince of Darkness, the Devil, whatever you want to call him.
Just "light bringer"
Luci=light, fer=bringer. However, IIRC, "Lucifer" was used in the Bible (in Latin, of course :p) and the meaning was slightly changed.
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Didn't Dave B once say that 'the shivans are just a symptom of ta bigger problem'
To me this adds strength to the robot/cyborg theory. Assuming there is a race which is very advanced fighting another race, perhaps to minimize their losses they create the shivans and give them a set of instructions which lead them to fight their great foe.
Now, I'm not saying that the Shivans aren't xenocidal, but it occurs to me that quite potentially rather then creating a new jump node with the Capella explosion they were rather collapsing all other nodes in the area, since we know that gravity seems to have an effect on subspace and a star is a significant mass to suddenly disappear.
Now, this act makes sense if the Shivans are in fact fighting a galactic 'good guy' and are trying to stop them from reaching us and being able to ally and strengthen us. The hell of the whole thing could be then that they believed they could still use all nodes to the GTVA systems if only the star went off, but combined with the meson destroyers they may have inadvertantly sealed them off completely by obliterating the jump nodes beyond even there use.
As such, they haven't won but they didn't lose either as the galactic 'good guys' will have a much more difficult time penetrating into our space to help us.