Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Kiloku on April 04, 2013, 01:25:51 am
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In the Universal Truth mission, (and some others? Don't remember for sure), we get some things that are apparently Shivan communications. Although they are in english, the vocabulary and the structure of the sentences is very very complex (Which I understand was intentional). Can anyone try and explain a little better what they are communicating?
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Existem vários threads e posts sobre o assunto...
You could open the mission in VPviewer (and m!m's version!) and then in notepad, copy paste the dialogues and I think a good discussion could come about!
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We kind of already did, but I forget what thread it was in. But yeah, there are a lot of fun words in there, both real and made up.
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Somebody (I believe TheDemon) dug it all up somewhere.
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With the speed of thread death around here, we'd probably do well to start a new one.
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With the speed of thread death around here, we'd probably do well to start a new one.
I'm not totally clear on how to read this - I assume you're referring to the fact that BP forum threads tend to go a lot longer than in other forums, but I'm not sure how that translates into the need to start a new one.
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But I can't even find the big effortpost myself
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Sorry for the poor formating but there you go. The numeral is just the name of the event trigger in fred. Only put it there to see questions & answers easily but anyone can easily replace it if they feel like it. This is only the node conversations and something might be missing depending on how neat the mission writer was when adding the events.
###################################################: s3 ken insects
("The Shivans are not xenocidal insects, Miss Laporte. Neither are they minds as you would recognize. They surpass humanity as humanity surpasses a protein chain."
###################################################: s3 ken many things
("They are many things. But above all, they are predators. And their methods do not limit themselves to the crude application of physical force. Watch -"
###################################################: s3 ken hunting sense
("They opened this pilot's mind and saw his last minutes through his own eyes. What we call Nagari is a Shivan hunting sense. It is not telepathy, not mystical communion: it is electronic warfare visited upon the neuron. "
###################################################: s3 laporte hunting sense
("I've heard the theories about Lieutenant Ash, the Lucifer hero, and the Hammer of Light. But if the Shivans can get into our brains, why haven't they buried us? That's an insurmountable advantage."
###################################################: s3 ken great question
("The great question of our time, Miss Laporte: if the Shivans have the ability to annihilate us, why have they not?"
###################################################: s3 ken the answer
("Here - these nodes will answer some of your questions. Uncover them now, or bring the data with you for later perusal. Haste is critical. When you are ready to move on, find and signal me."
###################################################: s3n1: laporte shivan origin
("Where do the Shivans come from? Who made them?"
###################################################: s3n1: response 1
("incursion event and worldline intersect logged at present minus 5 x 10 ^ 9 years"
###################################################: s3n1: response 2
("panreal exostosis and enmeshment IMMEDIATE across volumes and layers$semicolon perimeter HOT$semicolon contextualization PARTIAL"
###################################################: s3n1: response 3
("totipotent threat response agency prioritized, goal hierarchy heuristic partial slave$semicolon cognition HARDENED"
###################################################: s3n1: ken
("The Shivans are eternal. They were not made. They were calculated."
###################################################: s3n1: laporte
("Five times ten to the ninth...that's five billion years. Half the age of the Milky Way..."
###################################################: s3 nodes: deeper?
("Fire to probe further"
###################################################: s3n1b: laporte why
("Why did the Shivans come into being? What are they for?"
###################################################: s3n1b: ontovore
("secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function. secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies."
###################################################: s3n1b: ontovore_
("PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event! subversion of noosphere un - TERMINATE"
###################################################: s3n2: laporte great war
("Why did the Shivans attack us fifty years ago?"
###################################################: s3n2 response 1
("reactivate dormant cull component. force binary outcome: xenocultural integration or extermination. terminal protocol assessment underway."
###################################################: s3n2 response 2
("regional diversity minimized by pangalactic defect-strategy hegemon culled at present minus eight eight zero zero"
###################################################: s3n2 response 3
("bipolar defect-strategy conflict underway: anticipated xenocide and defect-hegemon outbreak (protocol failure). retrajectorize for mass upload to safe strata or exterminate incipients."
###################################################: s3n2 laporte huh
("Am I understanding this right? The Ancients were right all along - our crime was...sin? The Shivans were drawn to exterminate us because we couldn't coexist with the Vasudans? Are they really some kind of...judgment? A great filter?"
###################################################: s3n2b laporte why
("Why didn't the Lucifer abandon its attack once we allied with the Vasudans?"
###################################################: s3n2b ken no mercy
("There is no consideration for good intentions in the Shivan protocol. Strength earns survival. We defeated the Lucifer through cooperation, and so the Lucifer achieved its mission."
###################################################: s3n2b answer 1
("external heuristic injection: mandate node severance fallback. force binary isolation/extinction outcome"
###################################################: s3n2b laporte external?
("External heuristic injection...? What's external to the Shivans?"
###################################################: s3n3 laporte tech
("Tell me about Shivan technology and tactics. Why aren't all their ships shielded like the Lucifer? Why are their fighter guns so weak?"
###################################################: s3n3 answer 1
("totipotent threat response agency prioritized. basal state neutral. tactical and strategic heuristics neutral. capabilities neutral."
###################################################: s3n3 answer 2
("accept strategic input. propagate shocks through least-vulnerable-cognition network: generate noise output: optimize: recurse"
###################################################: s3n3 ken secret
("Do you see? Do you understand why they seem so alien?"
###################################################: s3n3 laporte formless
("At first they're formless...it's the nature of their opponent that shapes them. Everything done to hurt them simply hones their response. They act at random, then select the most effective tactics..."
###################################################: s3n3 laporte wasteful
("But that's mad. Wasteful. They should use their biggest guns and their most effective tactics right from the start."
###################################################: s3n3 ken sheaf
("The Shivans span eternity and infinity. Their challengers are unimaginably diverse, armed with weapons that shatter stars and tactics devised by galaxy-spanning minds. To be optimal is to be predictable."
###################################################: s3n3 ken optimal
("And so, like the cells of a tumor, the Shivans are infinitely mutable. They contain all weapons and all strategems, waiting in the dark. To attack them is to teach them your strengths and failings. Each blow turns back upon you."
###################################################: s3n3 ken short term
("It is a weak tactic in the short run, in a given year, a given system. But they have time to spare."
###################################################: s3n3 laporte my god
("So in the long run...what could stop them?"
###################################################: s3n3 ken godslayers
"They are godslayers."
###################################################: s3n3b laporte think
("But I don't understand. Can't the Shivans plan ahead? Why don't they evolve faster? How do we ever manage to beat them?"
###################################################: s3n3b ken assume
("You assume that thinking quickly and planning well is not itself a fatal weakness."
###################################################: s3n3b ken dwell
("This is a topic we cannot dwell on. The risks are catastrophic."
###################################################: s3n4 laporte capella
("Why did the Shivans destroy Capella? Why didn't they move on to the rest of the GTVA?"
###################################################: s3n4 answer 1
("local autonomous strategic response underway. no additional cull triggered: threshold inflamed but external heuristic injection HOLD."
###################################################: s3n4 answer 2
("strategic impulse: orion arm arteria threatened: coagulate, coordinate, repel"
###################################################: s3n4 ken conflict
("The NTF alone was not enough to trigger a cull. Shivan aggression in the Second Incursion was an autonomic response, at first...until their priorities changed."
###################################################: s3n4 laporte show of force
("Why did they destroy Capella? Was it just a show of force? A warning to back down?"
###################################################: s3n4 ken truth and untruth
("Part of the truth...but not all the truth of it.."
###################################################: s3n4b laporte truth capella
("Why the Capella star? Why a supernova? What really happened there?"
###################################################: s3n4b answer
("apatic anima disseminate: engineer transabyssal gate. strategic transitional event imminent. notify exostotic elements. cognicide contingency to active."
###################################################: s3n4 answer 3
("apatic anima supervisory issues covert resolution: execute roadblock. generate transabyssal connection. stand by."
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Here are the messages I would assume he is referring to with associated messages:
###################################################:
"Why did the Shivans destroy Capella? Why didn't they move on to the rest of the GTVA?"
"local autonomous strategic response underway. no additional cull triggered: threshold inflamed but external heuristic injection HOLD."
"strategic impulse: orion arm arteria threatened: coagulate, coordinate, repel"
###################################################:
"The NTF alone was not enough to trigger a cull. Shivan aggression in the Second Incursion was an autonomic response, at first...until their priorities changed."
###################################################:
"Why did they destroy Capella? Was it just a show of force? A warning to back down?"
"Part of the truth...but not all the truth of it.."
"Why the Capella star? Why a supernova? What really happened there?"
"apatic anima disseminate: engineer transabyssal gate. strategic transitional event imminent. notify exostotic elements. cognicide contingency to active."
"apatic anima supervisory issues covert resolution: execute roadblock. generate transabyssal connection. stand by."
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The converstions depend on concepts tied to the words. Transposing the discourse has greater chances of retrogressing understanding, it's impracticable to "metamorphose" the dialogue without loss of meaning.
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I have not played WiH yet, but this dialog reminds me of the Hybrid in the Cylon basestars. I got this excerpt from Wikipedia:
Two protons expelled at each coupling site creates the mode of force the embryo becomes a fish that we don't enter until A-plate we're here to experience evolve the little toe atrophy don't ask me how I'll be dead in a thousand light years thank you thank you Genesis turns to its source reduction occurs stepwise though the essence is all one end of line. FTL system check diagnostic functions within parameters repeats the harlequin the agony exquisite the colors run the path of ashes fifty-two percent of heat exchanger cross-collateralized with hyper-dimensional matrix upper senses repair ordered relay to zero, zero, zero, zero.
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The Hybrid talks in a meaningfully different way, though - it's all metaphor and stream of consciousness. The Shivan material here is perfectly direct, closer to telemetry than consciousness.
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All the stuff about animas is referring to the Shivan system of organisation and tactical command, which I don't think has ever actually been publicly discussed except on IRC. The gist of it is that the Shivans have little to no global organisation (just how little is unclear based on what I've heard); when they need to do things, they create centralised, specialised nodes of computation called animas, custom-built for whatever goal they're meant to achieve. The two known types are apatic and holocide: holocide is for culling undesirable species (the Ancients were wiped out by one, and the Lucifer fleet was controlled by another); apatic is for 'black ops' (the name comes from the Greek for 'deception'), and Ken is incorporated into one in some unclear sense. Beyond that I'm not really sure, although I have a fair bit of extra speculation I might type up tomorrow at a less ungodly hour.
There are also shadowy rumours of a third 'metagenesis' anima, so secret that even Battuta doesn't know what it is.
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The holocide anima on the Lucifer was the same one that culled the Ancients.
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BUT I DON'T WANT THAT TO BE TRUE :(
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Accept the truth and you may learn the meanings of the cosmos. I am begging you. Make the right choice, Mister Hoover.
Do Animae get "dismissed" once their work is complete? Or are they put on a dormant state? (Was the AncAnima an exception?)
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I'd imagine they don't really have a standard operating procedure, as you would expect of essentially the physical embodiment of unpredictability.
If for whatever reason their heuristic says to hold onto an anima then they keep it intact. Otherwise I'd imagine it would be discarded. It could even be random, if their normal approach to problems is what they apply to the long term as well.
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BUT I DON'T WANT THAT TO BE TRUE :(
Why not?
The holocide anima on the Lucifer was the same one that culled the Ancients.
Thought so.
Do they bother upgrading individual ships? The Lucifer Fleet's armament suggests they don't, but that might just be a result of how old and relatively weak they were.
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I don't know if the following ideas have been discussed much elsewhere (they seem pretty obvious from the posted dialogue), but they're interesting to me at least.
This dialogue leads me to suspect that the Capella star was supernova'd as a way to prevent further incursion of humans/vasudans into the FS2 nebula without actually xenociding the offending parties. The cull threshold potential was approached (or perhaps reached), but was ignored due to the "external heuristic injection" (from the Vishnans, Brahmans, Great Darkness, or whatever). So instead we observe a sort of "coagulate" response where the "orion arm arteria" is sealed off from humans and vasudans via the destruction of the entire star system.
Interesting implication of this interpretation: the FS2 nebula is in the Orion arm (I had no clue if it was even in the Milky Way prior).
It's also pretty clear from the dialogue that the Shivans value diversity, and that the Ancients hindered this diversity, resulting in their cull: "pangalactic defect-strategy hegemon culled at present minus eight eight zero zero". Due to the Terran-Vasudan War, the Shivans anticipated a similar, xenocidal, diversity-reducing hegemony would be asserted by the victors (be they Terrans or Vasudans); rather than simply exterminating Terrans and Vasudans, the Shivan response gave us an opportunity to "retrajectorize" our development, or face a cull if we did not. With the destruction of the Lucifer, this retrajectorization was, apparently, successful.
As far as why the shivans exist, this is harder to parse from the dialogue, and probably deserves its own post, so I will stop here.
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As far as why the shivans exist, this is harder to parse from the dialogue, and probably deserves its own post, so I will stop here.
"secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function. secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies."
"PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event! subversion of noosphere un - TERMINATE"
I would guess that their reason for existing is to help other species live, to preserve diversity. Primarily, to reverse a species' self-destructive lethargic tendencies, and secondarily to stop tendencies of a species to destroy other species.
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cmap makes me feel stupid. Of course the Orion arm thing is about stopping Terrudans from spreading its civilization towards the Orion nebula. How the hell did I miss such a simple interpretation?
Mostly because I was sidetracked by the "generate transabyssal gate" as being the core motive. But no, the core motive might have been to "roadblock" the "imminent" "transition" of the Terrudans to dangerous places. They ought to be contained and so they were. So I think two different things happened in Capella. One, they made sure the GTVA culled their connection to the Capella system and made sure no GTVA remnant was left alive in it (and thus the unrelenting massacre against anyone in the system); Two, they created a transabyssal gate connecting Capella to another system beyond an "abyss". I speculate that this connection is towards a more central shivan "system", from where they can investigate, monitor and deploy faster towards this problematic part of the galaxy. By "system" I do not mean that it is in "RealSpace". It can be, but it can also be in "Subspace".
Further speculation has too many variables. For instance, the Vishnans were already influencing the UEF, but were they in contact with the GTVA previous to the Capella incident? The Jester is known to have been in communication with the Shivans, he foretold Capella. We also know the Vishnans were eavesdropping the GTVA after Capella (adm. Steele's dream shenanigans and so on). Is it reasonable to suspect the transabyssal gate created was done so both the Shivans and the Vishnans could improve their monitoring and influencing of the GTVA?
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"secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function. secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies."
"PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event! subversion of noosphere un - TERMINATE"
I would guess that their reason for existing is to help other species live, to preserve diversity. Primarily, to reverse a species' self-destructive lethargic tendencies, and secondarily to stop tendencies of a species to destroy other species.
Gotta stop that metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event, man. It even says it's imperative! Noosphere's going to get subverted otherwise!
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Subverted into what, is also the question.
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TVTropes (yeah, I know) has an interesting interpretation of the PRIMARY: the download stops because learning the full purpose of the Shivans would destroy your mind.
PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastasis) onto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontic)-voric (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-vore) acatalepsis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acatalepsy) event! subversion of noosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere) un - TERMINATE
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Or conversely the shivans are in complete control of the nagri network and are feeding false information to manipulate the Fedayeen :nervous:
Sun Tzu said if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
Both Lapore and the Federation do not understand any of their enemies motives (the GTVA, The Shivans or the Vishnans) and as such are facing defeat. Perhaps it is in the interests of the shivans to maintain this state of affairs in order to bring about the victory of their cause.
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Some more random musings...
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Laporte: "Tell me about Shivan technology and tactics. Why aren't all their ships shielded like the Lucifer? Why are their fighter guns so weak?"
Shivans: "totipotent threat response agency prioritized. basal state neutral. tactical and strategic heuristics neutral. capabilities neutral...
...accept strategic input. propagate shocks through least-vulnerable-cognition network: generate noise output: optimize: recurse"
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Totipotency is the ability of a single cell to divide and produce all the differentiated cells in an organism. A fertilized human egg cell is an example of a totipotent cell.
So here we have that immune system analogy again. Before differentiation the Shivans are in a neutral state; later adaptation/differentiation is based on accepted "strategic input" (basically observation of the enemy's combat abilities) that eventually results in an optimized tactical/strategic response. This strikes me as quite similar to the aliens in Peter Watts' Blindsight (I know this book has been mentioned in other threads).
This would seem to indicate that future engagements with the Shivans might involve Shivan "cells" that are more optimized for combat with Terrans/Vasudans than what we've seen in Freespace so far. But, since we don't really know the timescale at which this adaptation takes place, it's up in the air when we might encounter these more optimized Shivans, either tactically or technologically.
One last thought: does it count for anything that Terrans and Vasudans seem to be adapting to Shivans faster than Shivans are adapting to them? Consider all the knowledge the GTVA and UEF have acquired thanks to the Shivans: beam tech, stealth tech, shields, future-predicting supercomputers, Nagari communication, changes in war doctrine, etc.
Aren't the most successful bacteria/viruses often those that repurpose immune system mechanisms against the interests of the host organism? (such as AIDS, herpes, leprosy, tuberculosis, etc). These pathogens themselves have developed their own adaptive response to immune systems, and because of their shorter evolutionary timescales they are able to adapt faster than the organisms they invade. If Shivans are analogous to an immune system, might there be an equivalent analogy here between Terrans/Vasudans and pathogens (which are, actually, oftentimes successful)?
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PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastasis) onto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontic)-voric (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-vore) acatalepsis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acatalepsy) event! subversion of noosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere) un - TERMINATE
'Metastatic ontovoric acatalepsy event' might imply a rampant mind-annihilation(consumption) that spreads through the noosphere and drives everything insane.
If the Shivans are so concerned about a compromised noosphere ("subversion of noosphere un-[acceptable?]"), would it indicate that compromising the noosphere would put themselves at risk of being destroyed?
Just a thought. I'm a big fan of Orion's-Arm-level dismissal of the "plucky baseline" phenomenon, but a Nagari sensitive like Laporte being exploited by a greater power as a conduit past the firewalls protecting Shivan and Vishnan 'consciousness' might be a possibility.
EDIT: The fact that Ken suggests that dwelling on the matter of the great darkness is a bad idea leads me to believe that if the Shivans and Vishnans play their game to prevent such a catastrophe from happening, than even thinking about something like the great darkness will pop a unpluggable hole in the firewall.
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Something to think about: In Hindu Myth, Brahma is both a god and the universe, everything is part of Brahma, he/it is Panontic. If the Shivans are interpreted as Brahma's "Immune system", what are the Vishnans? His nervous system? And perhaps more importantly, if the Brahman died... where do "we" live in?
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If the Shivans are so concerned about a compromised noosphere ("subversion of noosphere un-[acceptable?]"), would it indicate that compromising the noosphere would put themselves at risk of being destroyed?
you're assuming the shivans care about their own long-term survival
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Gotta stop that metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event, man. It even says it's imperative! Noosphere's going to get subverted otherwise!
I don't think it says that it's imperative. I think it says their primary purpose is to imperate. That is, to command (or perhaps to effect). What are they commanding?
"Metastatic" = "involving displacement"
"ontovoric" = "existence-consuming", specifically the meaning of "consume" as in "to utilize through destruction," as one would consume food or fuel
"acatalepsis" = "a-" negates, "-cata-" refers to body (or, considering the nature of the Shivans, perhaps similar to what we think of as "existence"), and "-lepsy" referring to a seizure (that is, to seize up, to stop, to become rigid)
So their primary job is bring species out of self-destructive catalepsy and get them moving and spreading?
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Acatalepsis could also refer to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acatalepsy
Fits in with the idea of the Great Darkness, for example.
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Couldn't that "Imperate!" line also indicate that the Shivans are being *given* a command?
I actually find this interpretation to be more gut-satisfying, considering what we've figured out about the Shivans so far. It gels with the whole "calculated into existence thing," as well as the "symptom of a larger problem thing." But who would give them this command?
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I took the un- to mean underway. The Shivans are throwing an error message and hitting CTRL+ALT+DELETE before it becomes a serious problem.
Further speculation has too many variables. For instance, the Vishnans were already influencing the UEF, but were they in contact with the GTVA previous to the Capella incident? The Jester is known to have been in communication with the Shivans, he foretold Capella. We also know the Vishnans were eavesdropping the GTVA after Capella (adm. Steele's dream shenanigans and so on). Is it reasonable to suspect the transabyssal gate created was done so both the Shivans and the Vishnans could improve their monitoring and influencing of the GTVA?
The pilot in Vassago's Dirge, as well.
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I noticed there was no straight-up attempt at a full translation, given what has been established so far. Here's my go at one:
"secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function. secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies."
"PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event! subversion of noosphere un - TERMINATE"
Secondary Objective 1: Pressure certain (systems? factions?) in a way that allows the Shivans to operate everywhere (as in the whole universe)
Reason: If the Shivans are the universe's immune system, they need to be able to reach every part of it in order to ensure everything keeps running the way it's supposed to. Because of the UEF-GTVA War, the Vishnans' flawed (as the Shivans see it) plan to protect the humans and Vasudans, and their bad reputation with almost everyone in existence, they can't, so they have to correct that.
Secondary Objective 2: Stop the Vishnan plan to "wall off" everyone within the Great Psyche once they are able to generally utilize Nagari because the results will lead to everything being destroyed.
Reason: We've known about their distrust of Vishnu's plan since the end of AoA. We also know about what they fear will lead to an apocalyptic event: the Great Darkness. So, they have to prevent that event from happening by breaking the cause-and-effect chain as soon as possible.
Primary Objective: Still working on it. Trying to come up with a full translation of this one is doing this to my brain: :beamz:. Sorry, guys. I'll edit it in once I have a chance to reboot...
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Reason: We've known about their distrust of Vishnu's plan since the end of AoA. We also know about what they fear will lead to an apocalyptic event: the Great Darkness. So, they have to prevent that event from happening by breaking the cause-and-effect chain as soon as possible.
What is the Vishnans ARE the Great Darkness? What if that's what happens when the original plan succeeds? From what we know Nagari takes place in subspace, which is outside of the universe.
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The holocide anima on the Lucifer was the same one that culled the Ancients.
OK this part is seriously bugging me. Why would the Shivans keep animas hanging around after their function is complete? They're evolved to deal with a single species or scenario; they have no particular advantage over a fresh anima when something new needs done. It just doesn't seem to fit at all with the rest of the information we've been given.
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What if that Anima never finished its task? :nervous: :shaking:
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The holocide anima on the Lucifer was the same one that culled the Ancients.
OK this part is seriously bugging me. Why would the Shivans keep animas hanging around after their function is complete? They're evolved to deal with a single species or scenario; they have no particular advantage over a fresh anima when something new needs done. It just doesn't seem to fit at all with the rest of the information we've been given.
How do you know they do? The Ancient cull was completed barely an eyeblink ago.
Anthropocentric thinking.
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We know that the Ancient cull began 8 millennia ago, and the (admittedly mostly circumstantial) evidence points to it ending within a timescale of at most a couple of centuries, so it was clearly sticking around for a lot longer than its usable lifetime. And even if it /was/ just a matter of there happening to be a mothballed anima nearby, what actual benefit is there from using it on the Terrans and Vasudans? The Shivans are apparently completely homogeneous computationally, a structure well-suited to quickly reorganising themselves; so why bother repurposing an old anima, when so much of their basic structure seems to be built to fastidiously avoid consistency and predictability?
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In the time HLP was down we had some very good conversation about this!
[22:39] <authortuttaway> basically i think that in attempting to criticize what seems like an unusually structured and teleological bit of shivan behavior
[22:39] <authortuttaway> you're unintentionally attributing too much structure and teleology to the shivans
[22:40] <authortuttaway> so what if the anima sticks around and does stuff and leads to misadaptation and gets defeated
[22:40] <authortuttaway> there are more shivans out there
[22:40] <SpardaSon21> infinite Shivans!
[22:42] <Phantom_Hoover> authortuttaway, ooooooh, right
[22:42] <Phantom_Hoover> that is... better
[22:42] <authortuttaway> yeah
[22:42] <authortuttaway> i mean i won't pretend you're not making a good point!
[22:42] <authortuttaway> but i think it's a point that ultimately points (har) back towards the robustness of the shivan design
[22:43] <authortuttaway> now what WOULD be a problem
[22:43] <authortuttaway> and hrm, this is very interesting
[22:43] <Phantom_Hoover> is there some kind of anima lifetime, though?
[22:43] <authortuttaway> is if you got an anima that could, like...recruit shivans out of the basal state to some disproportionate extent
[22:43] <authortuttaway> that was badly put
[22:43] <Phantom_Hoover> yeah, this was discussed earlier
[22:44] <Phantom_Hoover> analogous to a tumour, right?
[22:44] <authortuttaway> right, exactly
[22:44] <Phantom_Hoover> and having a forced shutdown on animas is analogous to apoptosis
[22:44] <authortuttaway> an anima that would cause issues by locking everybody into a fixed state that might be locally optimal
[22:44] <authortuttaway> yeah
[22:45] <authortuttaway> but the solution might lie in the fact that the animae are fundamentally pretty ad hoc, built out of smaller units; their traits may not be able to feed back down the way you'd think of with DNA mutations
[22:45] <authortuttaway> you can't have a tumor without changes in the individual cells
[22:46] <authortuttaway> also, shivan cognition is very - i'm not sure this is apparent from the existing stuff - but extremely ruthless and elimination-driven; it's a mode of thought that is fundamentally hostile to organization
[22:46] <authortuttaway> it's constantly trying to kill itself
[22:46] <Doko> So they are basically teenagers
[22:47] <Phantom_Hoover> so how did the ancient anima survive a few millennia of doing not very much
[22:47] <Doko> (except for the whole killing themselves part)
[22:47] <Phantom_Hoover> (insert tasteless joke about emos)
[22:47] <authortuttaway> well, you might have answered your own question - it wasn't doing very much!
[22:47] <authortuttaway> but also, i'm not convinced a few millennia is necessarily that long for them, structurally
[22:47] <Doko> emos are always fair game in my book
[22:47] <authortuttaway> also i think there's the hint in there that the local threshold is a bit inflamed
[22:48] <authortuttaway> there was trouble recently in the form of the ancients; the anima may have been left online to deal with any flare-ups
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so why bother repurposing an old anima, when so much of their basic structure seems to be built to fastidiously avoid consistency and predictability?
Because the Shivans fastidiously avoiding consistency and predictability is itself predictable. A repurposed anima is only a weakness to itself, following a logical algorithm for creating and disbanding new anima would endanger the Shivans as a whole.
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so why bother repurposing an old anima, when so much of their basic structure seems to be built to fastidiously avoid consistency and predictability?
Because the Shivans fastidiously avoiding consistency and predictability is itself predictable. A repurposed anima is only a weakness to itself, following a logical algorithm for creating and disbanding new anima would endanger the Shivans as a whole.
Yeah - it seems like a system which you can depend on to reliably kill off well-adapted components would itself be fundamentally flawed. A sufficiently intelligent (and highly resourced) enemy could show the Shivans just enough to force an adaptation, then bait-and-switch in something which they already know can obliterate that tactic.
For the Shivans, the only way to fight it is to have a lot of resources (which they do - where they get them seems like a big unanswered question) - and a decent chance that an adapted animus element can be deployed to respond efficiently. Which would let them win by attrition, as they are wont to do - over time, your clever strategy still equips the Shivans with all the technology to beat it.
The thing which really bothers me is the resources question. Nothing the Shivans do makes sense unless they have a lot of resources at their disposal - and it's what fundamentally limits the GTVA and UEF in any engagement. It feels, very much, like we'd probably win if we had access to resources the same way the Shivans do since our rate of adaptation is staggeringly fast compared to them.
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It certainly seems that way.
One of the big differences between shivan and human behavior seems to be that the humans start out with a guess as to the right way to do things, then adapt accordingly.
The shivans just do random **** until they hit upon the correct solution, unless I misunderstood.
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I wouldn't quite say random, the Shivans showed up during the T-V war with similar weaponry to the Terrans and VAsudans. Albeit with shields and beam cannons
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The Great War wasn't a full-blown cull though. The Lucifer fleet was sent to force the Terrans and Zods to get along or die. It was likely equipped according to simulations of what a united GTVA could overcome. Remember what the BP techroom says about Shivan weapons: the Shivans have only ever used them at a fraction of their theoretical power.
Those Dragons have been packing Kaysers since Ross 128. They've just been holding back.
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"secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function. secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies."
"PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event! subversion of noosphere un - TERMINATE"
There was a hypothesis proposed somewhere else about these lines. The first is the "probe further" Laporte gets when she asks why the Shivans exist. The hypothesis about the second is that it's NOT information being given to Laporte, but rather it's Laporte's line of inquiry being interrupted in real time because she gets too close to a truth she isn't supposed to know. The un- is probably 'underway'.
The proof isn't just in the line. This is the ONLY line of inquiry that results in INTERRUPTED on the Downlink indicator. So in my view, it's almost certain that Laporte probed too deep and her connection to whatever info she accessed had to be cut off.
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[22:48] <authortuttaway> there was trouble recently in the form of the ancients; the anima may have been left online to deal with any flare-ups
Somewhat too "teleological" or "rational" for me. I'd rather prefer a line of fiction whereas this anima has either (1) a fixed half-life by "adn design" that just happened to be slightly superior to what was needed to solve the Ancient's problem, (2) still not provoked a reaction from the shivan network for its cull. Being left online to deal with "flare ups" smells of too much forward thinking.
As a counter you could say that from timeless experience, it has been common for anima to have a larger life than required, and this has proven more efficient in dealing with flare-ups. But even then, it exposes a feedback, reasoning and deploying type of thinking... Not entirely incoherent with shivan, but perhaps less positioned to my taste.
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[22:48] <authortuttaway> there was trouble recently in the form of the ancients; the anima may have been left online to deal with any flare-ups
Somewhat too "teleological" or "rational" for me. I'd rather prefer a line of fiction whereas this anima has either (1) a fixed half-life by "adn design" that just happened to be slightly superior to what was needed to solve the Ancient's problem, (2) still not provoked a reaction from the shivan network for its cull. Being left online to deal with "flare ups" smells of too much forward thinking.
As a counter you could say that from timeless experience, it has been common for anima to have a larger life than required, and this has proven more efficient in dealing with flare-ups. But even then, it exposes a feedback, reasoning and deploying type of thinking... Not entirely incoherent with shivan, but perhaps less positioned to my taste.
Being evolutionarily driven is itself a form of organization though - its behavior you can rely upon the Shivans exhibiting. At some level they still have to obey logic. The Shivans just seem to be subvert the expectations of most intelligent species - most being the operative term, because they're clearly afraid of something.
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For the Shivans, the only way to fight it is to have a lot of resources (which they do - where they get them seems like a big unanswered question)...
The thing which really bothers me is the resources question. Nothing the Shivans do makes sense unless they have a lot of resources at their disposal...
They..... they.... they just warp stuff in from other universes. Those trans-abyssal gates, man.... :eek: :nervous:
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Seeing how in AoA jumping 'verse merely required a standard jump node with some extra engine power and comparing it to a transabyssal gate... I'd say it leads to some unglimpsable form of existence.
EDIT: I can't believe how no one else seems to have noticed that the Trans-gate looks like the GTVA logo.
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yeah because the trans-universal jump in aoa clearly couldn't have had any outside interference
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What I mean was: In AoA the Vishnans only needed a "standard" node and overcharged meson reactors to make their shenanigans happen. Since the Shivans are implied to be on their sameesque level, why would they need a gigantic super portal for the same thing? It clearly goes to Shivantown!
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Throughput? I'd imagine that sending a dozen or so ships of destroyer-class or less is much simpler than storming a hundred juggs through Capella. One's a small dirt road, the other's a highway.
As an aside, I had a random thought earlier. We know that time is of no consequence to the Shivans, and that they only invaded Capella because their "priorities changed"--what if the Sathanas fleet in Universal Truth is the same one from FS2, scrambled through a star to engage the Vishnans years later?
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there was a better theory in an old random thread. it involved the cappella sun being a time jump from the shivans to warn the humans in the past about the shivans, who in turn are humans from the future, just to speed **** up I guess.
Seriously though, the Shivans are way superior to a 80 Sathanas fleet, and so are the Vishnans. We know this since AoA: UT.
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Well yeah, obviously. But the Second Incursion node tells a story of its own.
strategic impulse: orion arm arteria threatened: coagulate, coordinate, repel
So the Second Incursion is the Shivans responding to defend what's apparently a significant strategic/logistical route. Straightforward enough. We can also conclude that if the Shivans need to move a fleet around, it's only natural that they'd pass through here.
The NTF alone was not enough to trigger a cull. Shivan aggression in the Second Incursion was an autonomic response, at first...until their priorities changed.
Why did their priorities change? There's obviously something going on here.
apatic anima disseminate: engineer transabyssal gate. strategic transitional event imminent. notify exostotic elements. cognicide contingency to active.
And now we can confirm that the juggernaut fleet destroyed Capella as a means of deploying elsewhere. Assuming that transdimensional travel is normal for the Shivans, it might be simpler to hop between the same region in two universes than it is to travel vast distances within the same universe. In this regard, the Capella system might have been a convenient route between the GTVA's universe and AoA's universe, which the Shivans were previously unable to exploit due to the node being closed by the Ancients.
apatic anima supervisory issues covert resolution: execute roadblock. generate transabyssal connection. stand by.
The use of "covert" here is what really bugs me. Why covert? From whom? There's no need to be covert around the little fleshy pink things and less-little but equally fleshy yellow things, they don't get it anyway. From the other Shivans? That doesn't make any sense. From the Vishnans? Now there's an interesting thought--the Shivans using the premise of a roadblock to make strategic movements without drawing the Vishnans' attention. And the only reason I can think of for them to do so is AoA:UT, in which the Destroyers finally clash with their Preserver counterparts.
We know that the Shivans and Vishnans both possess a capacity for simulation that borders on prescience. If the Fedayeen can project ahead 30 years using a single Shivan corpse, how far ahead must the Shivans themselves see? 20 years would be nothing--the equivalent of an ambush in a war that had yet to begin.
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Yeah but what about "exostotic elements" and "cognicide contingency?" We've got bone-growing Shivans with plans to deal with thought killing. O_o
I guess if there's talk of arteries being travel routes or something, then exostosis here would be building some kind of foundational structure in the galaxy, but... wth would that be? Cognicide sounds a lot to me like what the GD would do to you. Just outright destroys minds or consciousness. :shaking:
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My take on "exostotic elements" is that exostosis refers to budding of new bone growth from existing bone. In the context of the Shivans, I've got two possible thoughts.
1) This could be budding new elements off of existing ones (existing ships growing new ones, or budding off new ones that will grow on their own?)
2) This one's a bit more radical. The idea has been proposed that the Shivans are a naturally arising property of the universe itself. Could this be a command for the universe itself (or whatever computational strata the Shivans naturally reside in) to make more of them?
Either way, I'm thinking that they are creating additional elements that can be deployed in the larger conflict ahead.
"Cognicide contingency" strikes me a little funny as well, since that was also my impression of the threat the Great Darkness represented. Maybe the Shivans are worried that the GD is about to break loose and are preparing a contingency to deal with that? Engineering a transabyssal gate certainly does not seem to require the death of a star in AoA. Given the "covert" bit, now I'm wondering if the destruction of Capella was to mask their movements from the Vishnans?
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"secondary: selective pressure for resumption of panontic function. secondary: suppression of destructive firewall strategies."
"PRIMARY: imperate! metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event! subversion of noosphere un - TERMINATE"
There was a hypothesis proposed somewhere else about these lines. The first is the "probe further" Laporte gets when she asks why the Shivans exist. The hypothesis about the second is that it's NOT information being given to Laporte, but rather it's Laporte's line of inquiry being interrupted in real time because she gets too close to a truth she isn't supposed to know. The un- is probably 'underway'.
The proof isn't just in the line. This is the ONLY line of inquiry that results in INTERRUPTED on the Downlink indicator. So in my view, it's almost certain that Laporte probed too deep and her connection to whatever info she accessed had to be cut off.
Previously, Ken told Laporte she had to "think of something else. Now." because whatever was in the nagari network was tracking her (and it almost got to her- it does if you turn around). This leads to a conclusion that this thing (the "deepness" as it's called in the only BP lore that refers to it - the "Great Darkness" as HLP has started calling it) can detect whenever it's referenced over nagari.
This probably includes communications/thoughts transmitted through the Shivan nodes. In that second line, it's likely that either the GD itself detected and shut down this signal, or the Shivans shut it down to hide it from the GD.
The NTF alone was not enough to trigger a cull. Shivan aggression in the Second Incursion was an autonomic response, at first...until their priorities changed.
Why did their priorities change? There's obviously something going on here.
There are a couple mentions of "External heuristic injections", the first during the Great War and the second during FS2. I think this second one, and the change in priorities, is Bosch trying to communicate (is there any data on how many other civilizations have successfully communicated with the nagari network?)
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press ctrl+shift+s in the techroom, the name 'great darkness' is canon
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It's a canonical techroom name!
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It's only as canon as The GRID, Point and VirtualPath.
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but it even has its own description!
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Yes, but the description is not the name.
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I guess I'll contribute a bit beyond extracting stuff from the mission file :D
("Where do the Shivans come from? Who made them?"
("incursion event and worldline intersect logged at present minus 5 x 10 ^ 9 years"
Pretty simple, but too vague to tell if this is a date for when the dawn war happened, when GD was unleashed or simply as a means to control the races living at the time to make sure diversity was preserved.
("panreal exostosis and enmeshment IMMEDIATE across volumes and layers$semicolon perimeter HOT$semicolon contextualization PARTIAL"
The vishnans refer to the 13th battlegroup as returning to their home layer, so im going to asume that layers = paralel universe. Volume could refer to the physical universe itself.
Perimeter hot? as in this universe just recently (in astronomical terms) appeard and its very hot and chaotic or most likely they appeared in the middle of a warzone basically.
Contextualization partial.. not sure on this one beyond maybe assesing the races currently alive or in conflict, the state of the universe itself, its galaxies, jump node configuration etc.
("totipotent threat response agency prioritized, goal hierarchy heuristic partial slave$semicolon cognition HARDENED"
This one is what i based my above argument of being dropped in a warzone on.
Threat response is prioritized, why do this if there is no threat? although it is arguable this is in the very nature of the shivans as some sort of default setting.
Goal hierarchy herustic partial slave, really unsure what the hell this means, mostly because all we really know about the shivans is they are predators and at some point (supposedly later than when they first interescted our reality) they started utilizing the terminal protocol as a sort rulebook. So what was their purpose before that? under the description of predator they would have wiped out the entire universe, and maybe that is exactly what they did. Still I'm not sure on it.
cognition HARDENED: I guess this could imply that they went in some sort of mode that increases their combat readiness over what is later on described as a basal state. Or maybe the opposite, keeping things simple and clear to deal with what we normally accept GD as... some sort of cognition virus that makes you go mad and contemplate the odds of seeing a large amount of armless and legless corpses on a hangar deck.
("The Shivans are eternal. They were not made. They were calculated."
I think this basically means the shivans didn't "enter" our universe from a subspace node or some sort of gate. They simply appeared as a calculated response to something by the greater organism, reality itself.
If the vishnan are said to utilize the universe to perform calculation why could reality itself not be a living thing that has the same perspective we do of our our own cells and immune system.
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I'll continue at some point I guess
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I suppose "goal hierarchy heuristic partial slave" could refer to them taking orders from the Vishnans or Brahmans, but only partially of course.
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To bring in a new viewpoint
now let's work against this from another angle - instead of trying to directly interpret the lines as they are given - because some of them are probably adaptations - considering everything said to be literally true will need a mess of an explanation to describe it. so to see these lines from another perspective
Even when I played Freespace 2 retail in my infancy I saw the link between the hindu god shiva and "the shivans" so from this I started thinking about the shivans to be an astral "will of shiva" - when AoA introduces the vishnans to the mix it may seem as the storyline is going with this assertion.
now if you'd read about the hindu trinity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimurti) you can also understand some lines in the techbase (vasudan mysticism) about the broken trinity - which probably occurred when the brahmans design died. now since these three gods were supposed to exist in balance, the creator preserver and destroyer. with the creator gone from this trinity (possibly replaced by the GD) the vishnans and shivans struggle to uphold their role and at the same time not rid the universe of life.
immagine if the case would be that new life siezed to spring when the brahmans design died the preservers role would get conflicting with the shivan. if the shivans cull because an entity has failed the specifications they will continue to rid the universe of intelligent life until their fear of one race controlling the galaxy would happen again. the vishnan on the other hand wouldn't let shiva deem entities as failed as it would counter any diversity. one race gone without a new crated to take its place.
this is what I believe is the shivan/vishnan struggle at its heart. trying to find a new balance for the universe without a brahman creator.
I think the phrase broken trinity is the centerpiece of their conflict. I think SHiva being eternal want to continue with the protocols established where the vishnan wants to create a supplement for the brahman. the brahman was after all a god creator. I believe the vishnans envision humanity and the vasudans as potential seeds to repair this trinity
still. I'm not nearly beread enough to make everything here fit into this, but I can't come up with anything in BP that would be in direct conflict.
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I'm not even convinced the Vishnans are a structural dual to the Shivans in the first place. My personal favourite theory is that they're basically the result of civilisations evolving with the selection pressure imposed by the Shivans, which have merged and integrated themselves into the Summed Psyche and are now actively working to bring younger civilisations into their collective.
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The Vishnan/Shivan dynamic is really interesting to me. In WiH the Vishnans are not put in a very good light compared to AoA. Something deeper than Vishnans = angels / Shivans = demons is going on. Personally, I think they're both playing us (well, the characters). This story reminds me a lot of Babylon 5...
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Now get the hell out of our universe(s)?
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I'm not even convinced the Vishnans are a structural dual to the Shivans in the first place. My personal favourite theory is that they're basically the result of civilisations evolving with the selection pressure imposed by the Shivans, which have merged and integrated themselves into the Summed Psyche and are now actively working to bring younger civilisations into their collective.
I too think this might be the case. Consider that maybe a species preservation by the Vishnans and destruction by the Shivans are not mutually exlusive outcomes. Perhaps when the Shivans "cull" a spacefaring civilization part of it is integrated into the Vishnans nagari collective and thus "preserved". This would be what usually happens and the Vishnans current plan for humanity.
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I'm not even convinced the Vishnans are a structural dual to the Shivans in the first place. My personal favourite theory is that they're basically the result of civilisations evolving with the selection pressure imposed by the Shivans, which have merged and integrated themselves into the Summed Psyche and are now actively working to bring younger civilisations into their collective.
I too think this might be the case. Consider that maybe a species preservation by the Vishnans and destruction by the Shivans are not mutually exlusive outcomes. Perhaps when the Shivans "cull" a spacefaring civilization part of it is integrated into the Vishnans nagari collective and thus "preserved". This would be what usually happens and the Vishnans current plan for humanity.
Which still isn't really good for us. Who are they to make decisions for billions of sentiments, when they themselves judge us for doing the same with each other (i.e. destroying species which engage in destructive conflicts)?
The punchline certainly seems like it would be far better for everyone if we could get rid of both those forces. To that end the question is: wouldn't unleashing the Great Darkness into the Shivan's psyche be a good final solution to them, if we could avoid being consumed by it ourselves.
Of course within that context, something in AoA comes to mind: then the Vishnan capital ship shows up and says "a great darkness is coming" we see a Sathanas jump in and waste it. But it doesn't seem like it - necessarily - had to be a Shiven-controlled Sathanas.