There's also that hidden text on nuRayana textures which speaks 'bout it IIRC.
I'll quote it:Quote from: Narayana TextureThere is no question that Shivan tactical behaviour is often poorly optimized. The local structure absorbs losses that could otherwise be deflected, applies force to surfaces instead of gaps, and deploys weapons and craft which the perform well below the parameters that their engineering is capable of. Witness the primary weapons on Shivan fighters, which could outstrip the Kayser special issue weapon in every aspect yet consistently do not; or the enhanced performance of the Mara fighters that SOC captured during the second incursion. We raise these points in light of successes of our colleague and respected friend, Admiral Chiwetel Steele in combat with the Federation in Sol. It is our contention that his tactics, often compared to that of the Shivans, are in fact their antithesis and that widespread adpotion of his doctrines could doom any warfighting effort against a notional third incursion.
Shivan behaviour is not locally optimized. We advance the notion that it is instead globally optimized: globally optimized for the task of not winning battles but of destroying entire species, empires far vaster than we, the Alliance, could achieve in the next thousand years. Admiral Steele's success relies on honing a specific set of tactics aimed directly at an enemy's weakness, exploiting superior information and denying the enemy knowledge of his own movements and plans. The Shivans, conversely, are adapted to fight and win a very different scenario: engaging a foe capable of simulating all possible outcomes, with perfect information on Shivan capabilities, and with the Shivans possessing no such advantage. Like a cancer or an immunity plague, the Shivans seek to diversify their strategies, to present as many different vectors of attacks as possible and allow the enemy, through their responses, to select those which they fear the most and those which will do the most harm.
To use a metaphor from an old story - Steele is Batman, with a single linear plan; but the Shivans are the Joker, or an entire Hive of Jokers, enacting madness in every direction - wasteful locally, but globally impossible to counter, for any adaptation to one strategy simply renders the defender vulnerable to the next...
They are godslayers, built as an infinitely broad and deep reactive organism, converting all losses into information and then to ultimate victory. They begin, intentionally, from nothing, free of all exploitable preconceptions; to attack them is to teach them.
How "BP canon" is this? No clue.
Though from the looks of this, the Shivans rely on having vastly superior production to be able to "afford" inefficient strategies to probe the weaknesses of an adversary. I'm intrigued at the concept what would happen if they ran into another race with a similarly large logistics base but had a single highly-optimized strategy how they would fare...
By the time they find it's 'weakness' through trial and error, would they have spent too much for it to matter?
Neither the UEF nor the GTVA have such a production base capable of matching the Shivans.
The Vishnans however...
Quote from: Narayana TextureThere is no question that Shivan tactical behaviour is often poorly optimized. The local structure absorbs losses that could otherwise be deflected, applies force to surfaces instead of gaps, and deploys weapons and craft which the perform well below the parameters that their engineering is capable of. Witness the primary weapons on Shivan fighters, which could outstrip the Kayser special issue weapon in every aspect yet consistently do not; or the enhanced performance of the Mara fighters that SOC captured during the second incursion. We raise these points in light of successes of our colleague and respected friend, Admiral Chiwetel Steele in combat with the Federation in Sol. It is our contention that his tactics, often compared to that of the Shivans, are in fact their antithesis and that widespread adpotion of his doctrines could doom any warfighting effort against a notional third incursion.
Shivan behaviour is not locally optimized. We advance the notion that it is instead globally optimized: globally optimized for the task of not winning battles but of destroying entire species, empires far vaster than we, the Alliance, could achieve in the next thousand years. Admiral Steele's success relies on honing a specific set of tactics aimed directly at an enemy's weakness, exploiting superior information and denying the enemy knowledge of his own movements and plans. The Shivans, conversely, are adapted to fight and win a very different scenario: engaging a foe capable of simulating all possible outcomes, with perfect information on Shivan capabilities, and with the Shivans possessing no such advantage. Like a cancer or an immunity plague, the Shivans seek to diversify their strategies, to present as many different vectors of attacks as possible and allow the enemy, through their responses, to select those which they fear the most and those which will do the most harm.
To use a metaphor from an old story - Steele is Batman, with a single linear plan; but the Shivans are the Joker, or an entire Hive of Jokers, enacting madness in every direction - wasteful locally, but globally impossible to counter, for any adaptation to one strategy simply renders the defender vulnerable to the next...
They are godslayers, built as an infinitely broad and deep reactive organism, converting all losses into information and then to ultimate victory. They begin, intentionally, from nothing, free of all exploitable preconceptions; to attack them is to teach them.
No one seems to have noticed that...Yes, I think Ken's identity is a bit of an open secret by now. :)Spoiler:in the "nebula", the containers spell out BOSCH if you look at them from the "top", using the ShivNode as a period after the H.)This is a super spoiler by the way. ;) ;)
No one seems to have noticed that...Spoiler:in the "nebula", the containers spell out BOSCH if you look at them from the "top", using the ShivNode as a period after the H.)This is a super spoiler by the way. ;) ;)
No one seems to have noticed that...Spoiler:in the "nebula", the containers spell out BOSCH if you look at them from the "top", using the ShivNode as a period after the H.)This is a super spoiler by the way. ;) ;)