Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: magatsu1 on September 12, 2004, 04:50:29 pm
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*apologies to the board oldies who've probably had this debate hundreds of times already*
'Ave been watching the FS Movies alot recently and noticed a bit of an oddity. It's generally accepted the Ancients were moe powerful than the GTVA (mostly because of the size of their empire and the Knossos).
However, they couldn't track Shivans in sub-space and they didn't have any weapons which could penertrate shields (which I take means no beams).
So was the knossos built by the ancients ?
So whaddya you chaps reckon.
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Yes they were.
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Originally posted by magatsu1
However, they couldn't track Shivans in sub-space
they could. they just found it out too late.
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I think they were more powerful technologically but they focused more on other things like exploration and what not rather than on their military
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Originally posted by Night Hammer
I think they were more powerful technologically but they focused more on other things like exploration and what not rather than on their military
no, they weren't. the chronicles says they butchered lot's of up and coming civilisations. what brought about their undoing was the inability to quickly adapt to a foe who's kind they had never encountered before.
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Which also means that they didn't have to develop beam weapons or any other means of constantly improving weaponry, they just had to maintain what they had. The species they subdued were all much less advanced than them. It can be argued that the T-V war ultimately saved both races, because it gave them reason to develop weapons technology to a point that could at least challenge the Shivan armada, whereas the Ancients didn't have that kind of competetion.
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That's a good point. :yes:
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yeah, plus it says that terrans took beams from the shivans, thus the shivans could be the only original 'possesors' of beam weaponry.
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The Ancients were about the same size and power as the GTVA, just without beams (and possibly without shields).
The Lucifer came in, kicked their asses, nuked their planets and they couldn't find a way to **** the Lucy up till it was too late.
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The Ancients were far larger than the GTVA - After the Great War, scientists uncovered more sites throughout Terran-Vasudan space. Though only fragments remain, this interstellar society thrived thousands of years ago. Their empire was more expansive than the current boundaries of known space, and archeologists believe they might eventually uncover a map of the Ancient nodes, enabling the Alliance to travel to systems previously uncharted.
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an0n is right about their power level. Remember that the GTVA only managed to beat the shivans because they were told what was the Lucifiers weakness.
Had they had to find it out for themselves they would probably have been too late or never found it at all.
The fact that the GTVA beat the shivans while the ancients lost shouldn't be taken as any sort of reflection on their overall tech level.
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Actually, it should. From what can be assumed from the Ancients' Monologues in FS1, the Ancients apparently never achieved a major victory against the Shivans. For them, the Shivans were unstoppable and invincible.
The GTA and PVE managed to achieve several significant victories, including capturing the Taranis and the destruction of several other Shivan cruisers and even a Demon-class destroyer. The death of a destroyer is a major achievement in anyone's book.
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It's a reflection of military tech level rather than tech level as a whole. It seems likely that Ancients subspace advancements had continued, but without a simultaneous investment into weapons development. The fact that the GTVA could stop the Lucifer was in part due to the legacy of the ancients, but their own resourcefulness in the conflict cannot be ignored.
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Originally posted by ngtm1r
capturing the Taranis
That went well didn't it!
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Originally posted by ngtm1r
Actually, it should. From what can be assumed from the Ancients' Monologues in FS1, the Ancients apparently never achieved a major victory against the Shivans. For them, the Shivans were unstoppable and invincible.
The GTA and PVE managed to achieve several significant victories, including capturing the Taranis and the destruction of several other Shivan cruisers and even a Demon-class destroyer. The death of a destroyer is a major achievement in anyone's book.
I think you may be underestimating the scale of the Ancient - Shivan war. I've always felt that the war spanned a vast area, and tens of billions of Ancients died during the battle. The Shivans were unstoppable to the Ancients, because for every victory they won (and doubtless at great cost), the Shivans would return with more and more ships, relentlessly attacking.
It's not so much that the Ancients couldn't destroy Shivan vessels (excepting the Lucifer), but that whenever they did so they always lost heavy casualties, and that the Shivans could easily replace their losses whilst the Ancients could not.
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the civilisation of the ancients must be far bigger than the GTVA because they build subspace gates to reach remote regions in space.
maybe the Shivans overwelm the Ancient high-tech ships whit Lucifer class ships so the Ancients never really have a chance
i think if you have ten Lucifer class and one Demon class destroyer its not a very major victory if you destroy the Demon
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The Ancients probably didn't have the beam technology required to take out the Lucifer. Also, they could not adapt the concept that they observed quickly enough to make a difference. The Shivans probably didn't even require a Sathanas to take them out. We know that they were far more widespread than the GTVA, we also know that they subjucated other civilizations, but they were probably still in their infancy.
So they were militarily weaker than the GTVA, but more widespread and more knowlegable in certain aspects of subspace physics. They probably has awesome trade and exploration ships... I'd bet they could take on and down the Terrans and the Vasudans FS1-era... But against the GTVA... it would probably come down to numbers, with the GTVA having an incredibly higher battle effectiveness.
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Has anyone made a campaign using the ancient's ships that come with inferno??
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Originally posted by kietotheworld
That went well didn't it!
actualy it probably did, if the taranis had not been captured there'd be no hightened security around the station and thus less chance that some ships would escape to alert the allience of the lucifer. The lucifer could've been first discovered orbiting vasuda prime, and that wou'ld've been bad for both sides.
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I would agree (with what someone said above) that the ancients couldnt win because they couldnt adapt fast enough. The GTA (and PVE I think too) was able to at least put shields and avenger weapons on all of its ships within the first week or so of the war before the GTA could take enough major inner system losses that could have made a difference in the outcome. Remember that the war still looked somewhat hopeful of winning for a while until the attack at Tombaugh station. The GTVA also had the smart to know that there had to be an answer somewhere when those vasudan scientists found the civilization on Altair to have been destroyed.
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It's worth remembering that the GTVA only won the Great War by standing on the shoulders of the Ancients, though. For all their adaptation, the TV fleet was still completely unable to stop the Lucifer.... they stumbled onto the solution.
The ancients could have developed shields & more advanced laser technology... but it meant naught because they found out the Lucifers weakness and how to track it too late (presumably all their fighters and bombers capable of performing the op were destroyed... IIRC the Ancients monologue states that the Ancients eventually had to retreat to their home system, so maybe they only realised the answer as the Lucifer was bearing down on their homeworld*)
*which begs the question as to how the info got to Altair, admittedly.
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From what I understood from the monologues, the Ancients had conquered this galaxy atleast and was probably expanding into other galaxies. This would also explain their higher understanding of Subspace. There was probably a node that connected this galaxy to another near the super large blackhole at the center of the Milky Way. The Knossos could have been specifically built to permanently stabilize the node so they could send their armada through it. Or possibly it was just adapted for this most likely very large node.
Now, such a large empire would take a very sizable navy just for police action, let alone conquering countless other species. With such a fleet you would most likely rely on cheap, mass-producable ships, right? So you have ships that most likely have less armor and fewer weapons than your average Terran or Vasudan vessel. Who needs very large very powerful ships when you have an armada that could block out the sun?
The Ancients probably encountered the Shivans in the beginnings of their campaign to conquer another galaxy. They send in tens of thousands of ships to secure the system in which the node lies to set up an initial staging point and are met by the Lucifer fleet. Superior weapons, armor, shield technology, stealth systems, and the Lucifer itself - how could any race hope to stand up against that? The Ancients go in guns blazing believing that they will win no matter how superior their foe is. Arrogance is their downfall and they are slaughtered. 'Never before had we been defeated. We could forego one system.' You don't become the dominant race in the galaxy by being completely stupid, right? Shut down the gate and hope the node destabilizes. It doesn't. We all know what happens next;)
Sol at the time was probably as backwater as you could get in their empire. They could have built the pyramids for all we know. The Shivans probably took note of Sol, left it alone after seeing it was a dead end system.
My 2 cents.... Be my guest to poke as many holes in it as you can;)
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From the monologues, I had thought that the Ancients first conquered all of the nearby stars using some form of spacetravel other than subspace. So they may have been using non-FTL drives to get to the nearby stars over a great many years as Earth might to get to Alpha Centauri.
But after a while, all of the nearby systems were conquered. Then they discovered subspace and could go all over the galaxy busting heads.
That was my interpretation anyway.
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Yeah, I seem to remember something about "...then we discovered subspace", which implies they might not have know about it.
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"It gave us our galaxy and it gave us the universe." and "With subspace, our empire would surely know no boundaries." makes me think they were atleast looking to expand into another galaxy. The Knossos, to me, is the brainchild of that endeavor.
edit - also, from Ancients 5 (im going off Sandwich's pics in the gallery) "When we conquered and colonized in galaxies where we had no place"
I'll go back to lurking now....
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The Alliance was aware that fighter sheilds did not work in subspace, but until the nudge in thinking from the Ancients records, no-one apparently associated the phenomenon with the Lucifer. The Allies were also aware that vessels could be tracked in subspace, but again either did not put the ideas together or simply did not have the know how to make it reality. That is the major assistance that the Ancients really gave.
The real issue I can see of dealing with a Lucifer class capitol ship within the story as it exists is the very narrow focus of the Allies' attempts to deal with the thing.
No one tried ramming it with an Orion or a Typhon or three for example. I'm fairly certain that much metal in motion would cause the Shivans some headaches. Heck, you could hedge your bets by loading up the sacrificial ships with some really nasty antimatter bombs. Fill the forward sections with sand or junk or cement or whatever so it could take a hit or two from the beams and fighter escort the hell out of them until impact. Lucifer was not the most spry lass at the ball, so ramming should be feasable.
Just some thoughts. Seemed to me like the GTA and PVN were trying to think in terms of equalling the Lucifer, rather than playing dirty.
In the entire conflict, the Shivans only showed a slight tech edge in real terms. The major battles they won were mostly due to the presence of their unkillable gunboat.
It seems to me that the Lucifer was probably more of a one-off ride to the Shivans: it was the only one of their vessels armed with beam weaponry at the time of the Great War. At that it carried only two of them. Unlike their other ships it required five dedicated reactors to power its shields and guns, unlike the other or even the later ships in the Shivan Fleet.
I'm thinking that maybe when the Lucifer was broken the baddies decided they needed a new kind of hammer - thus the Ravana and other beam armed ships.
The Sathanas has me thinking more on the lines of Shivan colony transports than as being intended for fleet action. Yup, they're huge and massively armed, but rather unweildy as a dedicated military unit. They were rarely committed to battle, and then usually to fufill a set goal. The story does show them jumping out as Capella novas, while the smaller units are engaged in tying up the GTVA forces to prevent interference. We have no way of even knowing if this was the same branch of Shivans that participated in the Great War: this group came from beyond Gamma Draconis; the earlier invasion came presumably through Ross 128. Just to throw a bit more on the thought fires, it could also explain no Lucifer class ship(s), and the difference in choice of armanents.
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^good thinking in rthe last few paragraphs
I doubt that the GTVA would sacrifice a destroyer to kill the lucifer, especialy when alll the weapons focused on it thusfar didnt even scrach the paint, much less cause neglible damage
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Thats a mighty fine point. They could be a different group of Shivans.... Remember how :V: said the Shivans were a product of a greater problem? What if they are in the process of a huge Civil War? That would explain why they didnt destroy the GTVA. They needed their ships on another front. They couldnt, however, ignore the GTVA, and decided to cut them out. Prehaps they had been gathering in the Nebula in preporation of a strike against one of the other Shivan "nations" as it were....a bit like a Shivan Galaxy War, a little like our World Wars..........
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Shivans were created by Terran-Vasudan hybrids called Terudans (Once mating was allowed between the species). The Terudans created the shivans in the year 8673, and sent them backwards in time through a wormhole caused by a tin can, a string and a bananna peel rotating very quickly.
So you see, Ancients are really Terudans. And we made our own problem. Joy!
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:wtf: :wtf: :wtf:
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Originally posted by MatthewPapa
I would agree (with what someone said above) that the ancients couldnt win because they couldnt adapt fast enough. The GTA (and PVE I think too) was able to at least put shields and avenger weapons on all of its ships within the first week or so of the war before the GTA could take enough major inner system losses that could have made a difference in the outcome. Remember that the war still looked somewhat hopeful of winning for a while until the attack at Tombaugh station. The GTVA also had the smart to know that there had to be an answer somewhere when those vasudan scientists found the civilization on Altair to have been destroyed.
I think this is the kind of arrogant thinking that caused the GTVA to think that they could beat the shivans in FS2 :D
There is nothing in the monologues to say that the ancients didn't get shield tech of their own or make weapons that could kill the shivans. The fact that they said that the Shivans wouldn't die or were unstoppable is being taken too literally.
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yes, it could just as well mean they were in much greater numbers.
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Originally posted by Hellbender
The Alliance was aware that fighter sheilds did not work in subspace, but until the nudge in thinking from the Ancients records, no-one apparently associated the phenomenon with the Lucifer. The Allies were also aware that vessels could be tracked in subspace, but again either did not put the ideas together or simply did not have the know how to make it reality. That is the major assistance that the Ancients really gave.
The real issue I can see of dealing with a Lucifer class capitol ship within the story as it exists is the very narrow focus of the Allies' attempts to deal with the thing.
No one tried ramming it with an Orion or a Typhon or three for example. I'm fairly certain that much metal in motion would cause the Shivans some headaches. Heck, you could hedge your bets by loading up the sacrificial ships with some really nasty antimatter bombs. Fill the forward sections with sand or junk or cement or whatever so it could take a hit or two from the beams and fighter escort the hell out of them until impact. Lucifer was not the most spry lass at the ball, so ramming should be feasable.
Just some thoughts. Seemed to me like the GTA and PVN were trying to think in terms of equalling the Lucifer, rather than playing dirty.
In the entire conflict, the Shivans only showed a slight tech edge in real terms. The major battles they won were mostly due to the presence of their unkillable gunboat.
It seems to me that the Lucifer was probably more of a one-off ride to the Shivans: it was the only one of their vessels armed with beam weaponry at the time of the Great War. At that it carried only two of them. Unlike their other ships it required five dedicated reactors to power its shields and guns, unlike the other or even the later ships in the Shivan Fleet.
I'm thinking that maybe when the Lucifer was broken the baddies decided they needed a new kind of hammer - thus the Ravana and other beam armed ships.
The Sathanas has me thinking more on the lines of Shivan colony transports than as being intended for fleet action. Yup, they're huge and massively armed, but rather unweildy as a dedicated military unit. They were rarely committed to battle, and then usually to fufill a set goal. The story does show them jumping out as Capella novas, while the smaller units are engaged in tying up the GTVA forces to prevent interference. We have no way of even knowing if this was the same branch of Shivans that participated in the Great War: this group came from beyond Gamma Draconis; the earlier invasion came presumably through Ross 128. Just to throw a bit more on the thought fires, it could also explain no Lucifer class ship(s), and the difference in choice of armanents.
Of course, we never saw the Sath until the Knossos was activated.....plus they came from a single point, rather than cropping up in a myriad of places (IIRC in FS1, they pop up in Ikeya, in particular).
Can someone remind me, which system did 'High Noon' take place in?
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I dont think Shivan ship design is principally designed for utility. Take the Nahema (I think thats the weird shaped FS1 bomber) that certainly doesnt appear right. I think the Sath' is more designed to scare you and then shoot you (lets be honest we dont exactly get to shoot the back of a Sath' very often) while your busy changing.
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Alien aesthetics
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As far as the alien aesthetics go, psychology could come into their thinking there - humanity has done similar things through history - just an example consider the stylized samurai armour and masks of medival Japan. They are hardly the only ones to think in terms of psychological design.
The Shivan designs (and I'm also trying to think in terms of the V dev team's perspective) seem to be designed for shock value first, then wrap the thing around their high tech systems. According to clues in the story info, it is hinted that the Shivans themselves were possibly engineered into their current bodies - an even closer tie in to the Samurai idea.
All that is really known for certain about the Ancients:
*The Ancients were much more extensive in their holdings than the GTVA.
*The Ancients were a technologically advanced race, with a greater understanding of the science and utilization of subspace.
*Though powerful conquistadores of any species they came accross, they had been unable to come up with a way of beating the Shivans decisively (specifically the shielded cap ships, but the point could be taken that any shielded craft may have posed them a problem) until their armed forces were too badly depleted to successfully act on the information they finally discovered.
V seems to have kept the info about the Ancients deliberately vague - good plot device there - to increase the player's interest in the story. Few people can turn down curiosity of the unknown. Surely after 32 years, and access to the race's records the GTVA could at least figured out the Ancient's name for themseves?
The one thing that most of us overlook is the details of a game story need to be sharp enough to make it plausible and interesting, but mysterious enough to hook the player into wanting to continue the experience to see how it unfolds.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Can someone remind me, which system did 'High Noon' take place in?
Capella.
Bearbaiting took place in GD and ended with the Sath jumping through the Capella node.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Capella.
Bearbaiting took place in GD and ended with the Sath jumping through the Capella node.
Thought so. Wonder if the first Sath was a scout...........
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that's what I always assumed.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Thought so. Wonder if the first Sath was a scout...........
Let's put it this way.
Mission 1 : Sath spotted
Mission 2 : Sath spotted heading for Gamma Draconis
Mission 3 : Sath jumps into Gamma Draconis
Mission 4 : Sath Jumps out of GD into Capella
Mission 5 : Sath is killed. Sath isn't heading for the Epsilon Pegasi or Vega Nodes, Sath isn't heading towards any planets or stations held by the GTVA. It's just sitting there in space.
hmmmmmm. ;)
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Actually, I think info about the Ancients is vague because of the Lucifer. It takes a lot of firepower to sterilize a world, more then enough to erase all traces of civilization. So when the Lucifer came along and started rendering worlds uninhabitable, in all likelyhood it erased most of the evidence of the Ancient's exsistance. Time erased even more.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Wonder if the first Sath was a scout...........
I've been thinking the same thing.
In any case, I've been wondering about why we never saw a Lucifer in FS2. Oh sure, there's the standard different group of Shivans or the ever popular out dated tech theories, but I have a new one.
There only ever was ONE Lucifer.
(Be warned, very long)
This now get's back to the Ancients. Okay, we know that the Ancients ran into the Shivans, and they were beaten back. Now, for the moment, let's assume that the Ancient monologs are actually the text found on Altair and other Ancient ruins (it makes sense at least, no reason for it to be otherwise). The sequence of events is pretty clear, and seems similar to what happened in FS1.
The Shivans arrive, start blowing things up and send the Lucifer to the Ancient's homeworld. But the Ancients weren't beaten at that point! They were still alive, scattered amongst various worlds, or else they wouldn't be able to record more information. Then one by one, the rest of the civilization was wiped out. As this was happening, the Ancients discovered their weakness, but lacked the means to move on it. Then they were gone.
From FS1, we know the Shivans do not live on planets, and in the Great War they concentrated on capturing individual nodes, rather than planets. They do have a deep connection to subspace, however. The Ancients also have a connection, they built a device that lets them create subspace nodes, the Knossos.
So here's what I think really happened: The Ancients discovered subspace differently than the Terrans and Vasudans, they only used it, the Ancients actually built all of the stable nodes on the map, one by one, with the Knossos (or several). This is probable because from the tech room states quite clearly that the vast majority of nodes are small and extremely unstable, which might mean the vast number we see on the node map is a serious anomoly. Effectively, there are no naturally stable nodes within GTVA space, they were all created, by the Ancients.
This is what got the Shivan's pissed. At some point, the Ancients used their Knossos' to drill into Shivan space (beyond the third Knossos) and attracted their ire. The Ancients, having their asses beat for the first time, backed off, and left the system. But the damage was done, the Shivan's followed. The first Knossos was probably shut off in an attempt to stop the Shivan advance, but the Shivans were more than ready to use the not completely stable node it left, and they did.
Which may in fact mean that the GTVA is in what was the first inhabited area of the Ancient civilization that the Shivans entered. But Altair survived after the homeworld, so either the homeworld is reasonably nearby (possible, but I don't think so) or that the Shivans did something else. Remember, in FS1 they went for controlling nodes and destroying ships and such. They probably did the same thing to the Ancients, with the Lucifer leading the assualt on the homeworld sometime after this area of the galaxy had been taken by the Shivans. With the homeworld destroyed, the Lucifer started going down the line, destroying each major colony until Altiar (relativily lightly inhabited being on the edge of inhabited space) was near the end, then wiping it out.
Okay, so that works, but why only one Lucifer? Easy, the Shivans built it specifically to go after the Ancient's worlds. Effectivily, it's a planet killer for a species that doesn't live on planets. So why need more than one?
As a dedicated planet killer it also explains why it was the only one to have impossible to cut through shields, it had to stay in orbit for relativily long periods of time while facing attacks from a fairly advanced enemy to do it's dirty work. The five reactors kept the shields in place, and gave the weapons the range to do the work of glassing a planet.
This also explains why none of the other ships, including the jugs, had similar systems. They were designed to fight other ships, not the defenses of an entire planet. The only reason the Lucifer fought alone against the GTA and PVE forces is because they didn't have the tech to need the heavier weapons of the Ravana and Sathanas. That's why they show up in FS2, by then the GTVA is a significant enough threat to require the bigger guns.
Of course, the Sathanas likely has a role we don't know about either. It only has five beam cannons, and while they're powerful, that's about it for offensive weapons. Oh, and a bunch of them blew up a star. In any case, the Sath isn't a dedicated warship either, making what the Shivans were really doing by sending the first one into Capella more interesting. The scout role seems very possible at this point, or maybe it was only the first of the many needed to blow up Capella, it just arrived a little early. Which means the Shivans decided to take out Capella long before the GTVA was even aware of their true size and ablities. Scary thought that.
Anyway, sorry for being so long, but I came up with this last night and figured I might as well get it out somewhere.
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One thing bothers me about the Shivans coming to GTVA space with "more advanced tech" to deal with the "more dangerous" GTVA. There's little evidence that they would have come to Gamma Draconis at all had Bosch not reactivated the Knossos. It was only at that point that they showed up at. They also arrived in a relatively short period of time. A period of time that seems unlikely to have been long enough to upgrade their fleet, to say nothing of doing so on the scale of their war machine.
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Perhaps the first knossos served the purpose of sealing a node rather than stabalizing one. It was "off" when Bosch and his cronies found it, but maybe it was inherently locking down the node. It was only after the knossos was unlocked (turned back on) that the Shivans started to come through it.
The reason I suggest this at all is threefold: it explains the development of technology for what everyone assumes is a technologically superior but stagnant race, for one; the Lucifer and its fleet had been locked out of shivan space rather than coming in from there. Perhaps they were powered down at an outpost or just adrift, after destroying the Ancients' civilization eons ago. At any rate, they didn't get any of the 8000+ years of Shivan tech, such as standard beam cannons. It also explains why they came from all over the edges of T-V space in FS1, but only came in through Gamma Drac in FS2; they were still there awaiting the mustering call from the Lucifer, should the ancients ever rise to threaten shivan space/subspace again.
Secondly, this explains the rapid response of the Shivan armada to the opening of the knossos portal. Since the ancients had already been on the shivan ****-list, the Shivans still had a larger-than-average number of ships available should they ever come bursting back through that portal in the future. So as soon as the Trinity opened the gate, the Shivans flooded in as a response to a (presumably) renewed Ancient threat.
Finally, it addresses the seeming plot hole when the knossos gets destroyed ahead of the Sathanas. If the node was being locked by the knossos when it was off, then its destruction would leave the node in (presumably) whatever state it was last in. Being open when the gate went down, the node remained open, and the Sath jumped on through.
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lets remember one thing here, when makeing these theories, the Anchents were not the first race to be wiped out by the Shivans, I always hate the theories that go something along the lines of 'the Anchents started a war with the Shivans' the Shivans are part of a cycle of destruction, it's been going on a while, and the Shivans are very old.
now I have been mustering my own theory for a while, but I break it down a bit, first off there was nothing specal about the Anchent-Shivan war, it's just the only one we have any good data on.
Lucifer class; not one of a kind, but a relitively rare class, designed to iradiate planets, in terms of our civilisation it's one of those trucks that runs around spraying insectocide into the air to kill off small anoying insects.
subspace; I came to a similar conclusion as Eishtmo, exept, I think the shivans made the nodes, and the reason the Shivans come in and start beating the **** out of anything useing there subspace nodes is becase, well for one thing it's there nodes, secondly our primitive technology is probly damageing there carefully constructed subspace gravity feilds. this ties into what the Shivan motive are, or at least as far as we would be able to understand them, my unsubstansiated speculation is that the Shivans are moveing from galixy to galixy, and as soon as they get into a new galixy they start aligning it so that they can connect it with the rest of there civiliseation, basicly turning the entier galixy into one giant knossos so they can bring there big ships in and move on to the next galixy. in this theory what we've seen so far is little more than construction equipment. the Sathanus, a backhoe, not even a bulldozer, we are pond scum in a swamp they are draining.
Shivan tech; it's my belief that the shivans do not use any technology a race has not developed on it's own to destroy it, why? becase you don't wan't flys with shotguns. to date the shivans have not used any technology on the GTVA that the GT(v)A did not have (in some form or another) before (exept maybe the star killer attack) (***we had sheilds before the atack on Ross128, look at the mx52 (or whatever the hell it was called) tech description from FS1***). if we ever were to truly piss off the Shivans, oh HELL, imagine useing a 50gt nuke against a swarm of insects and you might begin to come to the understanding of what the GTVA is up against.
as you can imagine, I have some campain ideas, think along the lines of we find that roughly 2% of all mater in the universe is actualy shivan hardware.
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The thing is, we really don't know. That's the whole point of a mysterious race that is so totally and overwhelmingly dominant from what we get to see. They may be a universal force, going from one civilization to another and putting them in their place. They might be the creators/protectors of subspace or nature on a greater scale (though nuking systems wouldn't seem to justify that at all, it's still within the realm that :V: left us). Or they might just be the GTVA's cosmic neighbors who really hate having others mess around in their space. The problem with revealing anything about the Shivans is that it will inevitably trivialize them in some way. The way :V: set it out, the Shivans could be a cosmic force; they may have a limitless supply of ships of varying degrees power. Or they may be just another race, and one more jump could take you to their home system, or the next ship to emerge from a node might be the last one they have. You don't know, you can't know, and that's what makes them so scary, but at the same time allows the GTVA to have a founded belief that it can overcome the odds. Hopelessness agaist a superior force certainly brings drama. Hopelessness against a force that you know cannot be stoped is pointless as far as a plot is concerned.
We don't know how many races the Shivans wiped out over the span of their existance; it could be hundreds of thousands, it could be one. Like it or not, the Ancients knew even less of the Shivan's past than the Terrans do, at least from the records presented in canon material, and the farthest back anyone knows about them is when they appeared to the ancients in the first place. There's a lot of speculation based on evidence that was itself presented as speculation in the first place, to say something is right or something is wrong is not valid under those contexts.
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Heh, now you're getting somewhere Strat: We don't know. That's where the fun of exercising our imaginations comes in. Best part about it is nobody is really incorrect unless the V dev team folks drop in and provide more details than we have been able to glean from the bits and pieces they left us. Since that's not tremendously likely, it leaves us a very open ended universe to muck around in.
Getting back to a dev's point of view, as I said before, it's the vague yet compelling details in what has been provided that are what pique the interest. We don't have the complete story, but we do have enough to want to know more.
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I think it was mentioned in game but if it wasn't I know for a fact that the V gods had it set up that they had been responsable for a lot more doom than could be acounted fo by the Anchents.
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I don't recall that...it's mentioned, I think, but in the form of speculation, just like we're speculating now.
The first Sathanas was the Shivan's attempt to commit the minimum necessary force to mop the floor with the GTVA. The Shivans had no clue of the exsistance of the Colossus until the Sathanas popped out of the node into Capella and was suddenly faced with this nasty big ship that's roughly as powerful as itself. I think that accounts for what the Sathanas did, too: it didn't bother engaging the Colossus, it was trying to run. It wasn't fully functional (thanks to Alpha 1's beam-cannon destroying skillz), it was faced with an opponent who could have given it a run for its money even if it was, and so they tried to get away.
The Shivans reacted to the Sathanas' destruction with something akin to shock; they'd probably never lost one before, considering their sheer power. With winning on the cheap out, they decided to go all-out and throw 80+ juggernauts at these upstarts. Considering the ease with which Shivans apparently destroyed the Ancients (and possibly others), they probably couldn't concieve of any force powerful enough to stop 80+ of their juggernauts.
And, they were right. The GTVA couldn't stop 80+ juggernauts. It couldn't even slow them down.
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The Shivans didn't build the node network, the *********** did
:nervous:
EDIT; I'd say the Shivans have almost certainly lost many Sathani before, I'd doubt the GTVA is anywhere near the strongest civliisation the Shivans have encountered.
It's possibly more likely that the Sathani fleet was exactly that - the Shivan fleet/armada, moving into some form of operational position. The Lucifer could have been a simple scout / explorer, sent to cauterize worlds which could pose a potential threat as well as simply map out the correct route to Capella & the surrounding node network.
It's possible the Shivans would eventually have entered DS in order to eventually reach Capella, but the destruction of the node to Sol had a wider destabilising effect (explaing the inconsistency in sol nodes between FS1 & FS2 to a degree).
Infact, it's possibly the Lucifers primary role was to prevent the rise of races with the power to destroy subspace nodes, as the Terrans / Vasudans could potentially do - i.e. to make sure the way was clear for the Sathani.
And that the 60(?) year delay was not so much a long gap, but simple fleet movement time into the nebula beyond GD...which would mean the Lucifer was a long, long way from home (patrol route).
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Originally posted by aldo_14
The Shivans didn't build the node network, the *********** did
You've got too many asterisks there for Starborn :p
Originally posted by aldo_14
It's possible the Shivans would eventually have entered DS in order to eventually reach Capella,
While the image of the shivans entering Derek Smart ranges from horrific to horrifically entertaining depending on what they are doing to him it's not canon. They entered Gamma Draconis not DS :D
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I think he meant Delta Serpentis...
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*Watches as Zarax disappears down the sarchasm*
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*Looks at Karajorma sinking into the lairs of misunderstanding*...
Let's not derail the thread for how humoristic it may be...
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:wtf:
I knew he meant Delta Serpentis. That's pretty obvious from the fact that I corrected it to the star system the shivans did actually enter.
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And i think it's pretty obvious he meant also something else since he was talking about Sol...
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Amusing as the image is, the thought of a certain oxymoronic (alleged) games developer being horribly raped by a glowing plasma-sword never crossed my mind.
I meant Delta Serpentis, but what I should have said was Ross 128, as in the FS1 cutscene.
(i.e. the Shivans would go Ross128->Delta S->Beta Aquilae->Antares->Vasuda->Vega->Deneb->Capella*)
*hmm....bit of a long trip. Maybe they just couldn't be arsed travelling all that way (even if they could stop at Sol for a BBQ), what with 60,000 kids in the back of a Sathanas asking 'can we disembowel yet?'......
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Thanks for claryfing Aldo ;)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
lets remember one thing here, when makeing these theories, the Anchents were not the first race to be wiped out by the Shivans, I always hate the theories that go something along the lines of 'the Anchents started a war with the Shivans' the Shivans are part of a cycle of destruction, it's been going on a while, and the Shivans are very old.
Where did you get this idea? I can't remember reading anything along these lines anywhere within either game. I might be forgetting it (it does soundd very familiar) but I simply don't recall where it might have come from.
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Bobboau probably got the idea from one of Bosch's speculative monologues. He asked something like "What if there had been countless races stretching back into infinity, each built on the ruins of the ones who'd come before, and each anihilated by the Shivans?" - the first one IIRC.
We do know that the Shivans are quite old, at least as long back as the Ancients. The Ancients believed the Shivans were much older, but I don't remember anything set as definite, just the speculation in the Altair records.
I do agree to one thing - the Shivans have encountered even more powerful civilizations than the GTVA. Military might is usually evolved in terms of countering (and overwhelming if possible) the war machine of an opponent. I doubt that the GTVA was much of a spur to development of the Shivan's advanced battle goodies.
There is one thing to be said for the GTVA compared to the Ancients - the Allies are better at adapting.
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The Allies also have the intellect of two species, so that may or may not help (technologically same, but diverse thinking patterns maybe?)
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Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
Has anyone made a campaign using the ancient's ships that come with inferno??
Not that I know of, but I personally would really like to see on (or two). :)
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I was planning on makeing one arounfd the time I started makeing them, it involved the anchents engaged in a war on sevral fronts with sevral weaker races when suddenly the Shivans arive, they don't recognise the threat fast enough continue to fight the other races and they get there asses handed to them. basicly exactly like the great war only bigger and the factions don't ally themselves.
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Originally posted by Eishtmo
Where did you get this idea? I can't remember reading anything along these lines anywhere within either game. I might be forgetting it (it does sound very familiar) but I simply don't recall where it might have come from.
Both the Bosch monologue and the Alpha 1 (FS1 engame) ones have speculative references that the Ancients were simply a layer upon layers of destroyed species, but the ancient monologues themselves never reveal anything.
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it's made prety clear that that's what V had in mind.
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It's amazing how much we have, but how little we know. It's one of the reasons I'm grateful so many people in campaign development have made the effort to bring our various theories to fruition, and those in the SCP Project giving us more toys to play with.
Even in the FS-future world of "Inferno", we still know as much then as we do in the current FS universe - diddly squat. I don't know of any campaigns set further in the future than that (that are at a playable stage. anyone???)
Now, here's something for all you survivors of the subspace node collapse at the Volition Bulletin Boards.
Does anyone remember a time when 'supposedly' the script work for the first mission of FS3 got out onto the net? If I recall correctly, the mission takes place 15 or so years after the ending of FS2. We're opening the newly constructed Sol jump gate for the first time. Something goes wrong and a second subspace node snaps open on the other side of the system. A Sathanas comes out and, rather than attacking, starts transmitting. from what we're able to decipher (ETAK technology)....it's a distress signal.
i don't remember the rest.
I'm also remembering a node map that had sections of Shivan space mapped out on it...including 3 Dyson Spheres...
I'm also remembering a campaign someone was working on that was to introduce a 4th race. I know they flew very blocky purple ships.
If any of this rings a bell.....
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Originally posted by ionia23
Does anyone remember a time when 'supposedly' the script work for the first mission of FS3 got out onto the net? If I recall correctly, the mission takes place 15 or so years after the ending of FS2. We're opening the newly constructed Sol jump gate for the first time. Something goes wrong and a second subspace node snaps open on the other side of the system. A Sathanas comes out and, rather than attacking, starts transmitting. from what we're able to decipher (ETAK technology)....it's a distress signal.
That wasn't a FS3 script. It was a script by someone who had applied for a staff writer job at Volition (but not a script for his application).
Originally posted by ionia23
I'm also remembering a node map that had sections of Shivan space mapped out on it...including 3 Dyson Spheres...
Behind Enemy Lines. Campaign with originally the same script as above.
Originally posted by ionia23
I'm also remembering a campaign someone was working on that was to introduce a 4th race. I know they flew very blocky purple ships.
Hidden Terror, IIRC. New enemy for the Shivans.
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Was Behind Enemy Lines ever completed? When I go to their site, it seems that it was dropped... But it looked like it had some intertesting ideas.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
That wasn't a FS3 script. It was a script by someone who had applied for a staff writer job at Volition (but not a script for his application).
Behind Enemy Lines. Campaign with originally the same script as above.
Hidden Terror, IIRC. New enemy for the Shivans.
Good, at least now I know. Thanks for clearing up my flailing memory :)
btw, your "location" listing is a riot.
:lol:
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Originally posted by Vaelinx
Was Behind Enemy Lines ever completed? When I go to their site, it seems that it was dropped... But it looked like it had some intertesting ideas.
there's still a page for it over at volitionwatch, but nothing new in four years. The system map is up though. Gives some great ideas.
Behind Enemy Lines (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/bel/)
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Originally posted by Vaelinx
Was Behind Enemy Lines ever completed? When I go to their site, it seems that it was dropped... But it looked like it had some intertesting ideas.
Ascraeus (the guy who applied to V and wrote the pseudo-FS3 storyline) left over storyline differences, IIRC. He wasn't happy over the introduction of Sunspot Mining or something, in particular.
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What I myself wonder is - did the V dev's actually fully developed the shivan idea, or are they just as in the dark as we are? I mean, as far as we know, they themselves didn't know what to put in for the Shivans, so the left them mysterious.
I wish I could actually ask a V dev that...
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Originally posted by Bobboau
I was planning on makeing one arounfd the time I started makeing them, it involved the anchents engaged in a war on sevral fronts with sevral weaker races when suddenly the Shivans arive, they don't recognise the threat fast enough continue to fight the other races and they get there asses handed to them. basicly exactly like the great war only bigger and the factions don't ally themselves.
That would be a really cool campaign. Are you still going to do it?
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Anyone else consider the idea that the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis was possibly once a major Ancient system?
I think the Sathanas fleet was the core force that killed the Ancients, with the Lucifers, Demons and Ravanas being second-line ships (much like the Hatshepsuts, Orions and Hecates are the lead GTVA force, with the Deimos and Sobek corvettes doing most of the dirty work around the time of FS2 [For example, when did the Aquatine ever do anything combat-wise, except when it was attacked?]).
We know that, as the Ancients expanded their empire, using Knossos Devices to create new nodes, they run into the Shivans. Someone shoots first, and then the Ancients manage to get the Shivans really upset (or some Shivan admiral said "Oooh. A nice new target. Lets kill them"). Either way, the Shivans now chased the Ancients through space.
It took the GTVA three decades or so to build the Colossus. Even if the Shivans have more advanced construction methods, I still can't see a Sathanas taking less than a decade to build. So, assuming they had 10 Sathanas-capable shipyards, that's a minimum of a century to build the Capellan fleet. And I don't think they would have thrown everything they had into Capella. This means that the Sathanas project was underway before the Terran-Vasudan war began.
Given currently known Shivan ships, we have the choice of Lucifers or Sathanas killing the Shivans. We know from the monologues that the Lucifers were at least a significant threat (as there was the whole shields-don't-work-in-subspace bit). But, I don't see Lucifers alone being the only threat.
We know one Lucifer was created, and destroyed in the node to Sol. (My personal opinion is that the Lucifer fleet was a backwater 'garrison' force, who gathered that there was trouble brewing by detecting the TV war, and decided to gain some glory by killing the upstarts.) Yet given the scale of what we know the Shivan force to be at the end of FS2, it seems improbable that if Lucifers are a main weapon in the Shivan armada, they'd have one stuck out in no-Shivans-land beyond Ross-128.
Yet, the Shivans have demonstrated that they won't commit Sathani to attacks unless it is absolutely necessary. In FS2, they don't make any moves with SJ1 until a Ravana is annihilated, and the upstart Terrans and Vasudans continue to intrude into the nebula.
This is therefore my picture of the Ancient/Shivan war:
An Ancient expeditionary force is travelling through space, setting up Knossos devices, and travelling through them. After opening one device, they discover a strange group of red-black ships (my view is Rakshashas or Cains). Being the greedy Ancients they are, they open fire, damaging or destroying some of the ships. Feeling confident they will win, they call in their Ancient buddies, to slaughter this new race. The Ancient extermination force arrives, and they head through the nodes in this new sector, hunting Shivans,
However, the Shivans are not going to let the Ancients beat them, and thus call in their own reinforcements - a couple of Lucifers and Ravanas, and Demons. The two fleets one system away from the initial encounter. The Demons, and a couple of Ravanas bite the dust, but the Lucifers spearhead a counterattack, driving the Ancients out of the node. Togeather with wings of Dragons and Maras, the Lucifers keep the Ancients running, backtracking them through the Knossos devices, using their ability to travel through unstable/small (See Petrarch's desription of the plan to seal Capella if you have questions about this) nodes to counteract the Knossos shutdowns. The Ancient expeditionary force had called home to let them know trouble is coming, and the Ancient fleet rallies on the entrance to an important system to mount a defense (much as the GTVA fleet rallied to try to stop SJ1.)
When the nearly ruined expeditionary force arrives in the system, the Ancients feel a bit of fear, as they see how badly the force had been mauled. Then the Shivans arrive, and a titanic disaster starts begins. The ancients can eventually wear down the shields, destroying a significant portion of the fighter force, but focusing their weapons on the Lucifers to take down the shields takes too long to do much damage (possibly one or two go down, but at the cost of more than half of the Ancient's fleet). Now, the Shivans pursue the fleeing ancients into their other systems, by following the Knossos trails. But, they also start adding Sathani to the mix - the Lucifers keep the Ancients occupied, while one or two Sathani hang back, blasting ships out of space at a fast rate.
Finally, the Shivans come to the Ancient homeworld. Here, they are frustrated by the futile defense attempts of the Ancients, and decide to nuke them. So, they use their Star-nuker gun, and fry the system. Then they head out to the other systems, to wipe out the leftover ancients the fun way. Leaving a swirling cloud of gas marking the final resting place of a great empire.
With their fleets, shipyards and homeworld gone, the last few ancient bases huddle silently, nervously watching the void of space for the arrival of the destroyers. One by one the bases are destroyed. Until only one remains, in a system later called Altair. Here, flights of Seraphim and Maras cut down out of the skies, killing the ancients in a matter of minutes, and then departing, leaving ruins - and the key to the Shivan's weakness buried beneath rubble.
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Thousands of years later, a shivan commander left as a guardian over the back end of the ancient's systems (also known as GTVA space), has his souts report that two new space-faring races are emerging. He takes matters into his own hands, and prepares his fleet, driving his Lucifer into the GTVA systems, wrecking anything that comes against him, until Vasudan scientists uncover the ruined base on Altair. There, the GTVA find the key to stopping his Lucifer, and ambush it in the Sol node. The rest of his force is hunted down and destroyed.
32 years later, Bosch deploys Roemig and the Trinity to open the Ancient's closed node. The Shivans, wondering what they garrison commander was doing coming home, send over some fighters and a transport to talk to him, only to find a Fenris. They fight, but not expecting hostiles, the Shivans are beaten back. The ambassador goes to Shivan command, and notifies them that a new race has arrived in the Ancient's home system.
What follows is the Second Shivan war, in which the Shivans decide that to destroy this troublesome sector of space they need to go from star to star, annihilating it. However, the Bastion and Neried smash the nodes, sealing off the main route from the Shivan systems and the GTVA ones. Or so it is thought.
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Couple of things;
1/ Knossos gates, as far as we know, only stabilise nodes
2/ The nebula, if that's what you're implying, can't be the ancients home system... otherwise, how could they build a knossos on the outside of the system? (or inside it). It's an interesting possibility that someone else sealed off that nebula by nuking the nodes, and the Ancients reopened it.
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The Colossus took 20 years to build IIRC
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Originally posted by TrashMan
What I myself wonder is - did the V dev's actually fully developed the shivan idea, or are they just as in the dark as we are? I mean, as far as we know, they themselves didn't know what to put in for the Shivans, so the left them mysterious.
In a weird way, I hope they did. That's makes the Shivans the most interesting "mysterious" race ever to exist. NO ONE, not even the creators, know what the Shivan's want or why. Makes them even scarier too.
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Okay, its time to remember that the Ancient records mention the Lucy specifically and thats all. No reason to believe the Sathanas were ever sighted.
How canon is the nature of Lucys beams? Because they come from different places depending on who you ask, the game has them as ****ty little pissant Sreds, etc etc.
Also, it seems pretty obvious that (if we take the monologues as the word of [V]) that the Shivans used the Capella star to do something they like doing (like, go home). Whatever they did destroyed or disabled several of the ships they used, and the considered that a greater objective than killing the Capellans. They also ignored the Gamma Draconis star, even tho they explode stars near the gates other times (like in the Lupus nebula). The common rationalisation, that they did it to kill Capellans, is inadequate; they could have sent a single Sath to each planet and killed everyone much faster and with less casualties. Blockaded the nodes even, or made any attempt to push deeper into GTVA space, none of which they did. The FS2 war was totally different in nature to the FS1 war, since the FS1 war was a simple extermination job but in FS2 the Shivans appeared to have other more complex goals.
I figured that the Lucy fleet was sent back, 8,000 years later, because Lucy killed the Ancients, then the Shivans noticed someone else using their nodes, and sent her back to finish the job. AFAIK there was no prelimiary scouting, no reconnaisance; they just dumped the Lucy in there and started killing everyone. They also had no idea where the strategic planets were; it seems obvious that they weren't really concerned and just considered it finishing an incomplete job.
I don't understand the Ancients=no beams comments. Who says beams can penetrate Lucys shield? There is no reason to assume that the Ancients had no beam weapon technology. Of course, I doubt they were that advanced militarily, since they were far larger than GTVA and were defeated by the Lucy fleet singlehandedly.
Any technological differences between FS1 shivans and FS2 shivans can be put down to alien psychology; they sent back the original fleet, likely the same ships, perhaps even the same individual shivans. Lucy had beams, but no other ships did; its hardly impossible that different versions of Demons, Cains etc exist. Particularly that the shivan vessels *were* suffiencent to destroy the GTVA at that time, so its hardly likely the shivans said 'cripes, we totally need more beams like now cuz' after steamrolling the GTVA and getting pipped at the post by some lucky Terrans tipped off by a long dead empire. I mean, who'd see that coming? :)
I think the rallying of the Saths in... that SOC mission... tells us something of the Shivan empire; they gathered Saths, and only Saths, sending them into GTVA space piecemeal, until they had enough to do whatever it was they did. Saths are obviously not usually kept in large fleets, since they were not coming through in big clumps; its possible they are solitary ships themselves, like Lucy. On that note, the lack of any Lucifer-class ships is probably because it couldn't contribute to the wierd shivan ritual they had planned, since it's essentially a planetkiller.
If the shivans kill everyone, and don't like planets, what does their fleet do? They must maintain their fleet of killing machines on the off chance of detecting another race to crush... unless the Sath isn't primarily a warship.
And whoever said that Colin was a match for Sath is an idiot. From the front, Sath can kill Colin in seconds. From any other side, Colin can't do enough damage to prevent Sath from escaping. Colin, indeed, was the worst designed, poorest mass/combat strength, biggest waste of resources ever. But then she was just a symbol of GTVA paranoia and fear anyway, so y'know.
Well, I'm ranting. Enough!
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Originally posted by Pnakotus
Okay, its time to remember that the Ancient records mention the Lucy specifically and thats all. No reason to believe the Sathanas were ever sighted.
Just to be pedantic the Ancients don't mention the Lucifer. They mention that in subspace the Shivan's shields don't work. That could have refered to the fighter and bomber shields or it could refer to a pre-lucifer shielded capship. (8000 years is a long time to make improvements).
Personally I agree with you that they were talking about the Lucifer but you can't take that for granted.
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The GTVA analyses of Altair, IIRc, indicate surface damage consistent with the Lucifers weapons. However, this doesn't mean it was the Lucifer itself - only a ship with similar weapons characteristics.
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Originally posted by Pnakotus
I don't understand the Ancients=no beams comments. Who says beams can penetrate Lucys shield? There is no reason to assume that the Ancients had no beam weapon technology. Of course, I doubt they were that advanced militarily, since they were far larger than GTVA and were defeated by the Lucy fleet singlehandedly.
Who said that the Ancients were defeated by the Lucy fleet singlehandedly? They might have sent their whole armada...
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In many of your conclusions you assume that the Shivans have been sitting there waiting for the GTVA or Ancients to come along. You know, eight thousand years is a long time to wait. For example, the conclusion that the Lucifer was designed to take out the Ancients and was there on standby, waiting for them. An eight thousand year old ship? Think of a human ship eight HUNDRED years ago. Yeah, we're going to use that to kick the ass of the enemy. I'd love to see it's effectiveness in WWII.
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8000 years is not a long time if your race has existed for millenia.
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If the Ancients were defeated by the Lucifer fleet, that'd explain why the Lucifer fleet was apparently pretty small. The Ancients chewed up a lot of the lesser ships (cruisers etc.).
It's never explictly stated, but one gets the feeling in FS1 that a pair of Shivan cruisers and a few wings of bombers/fighters could waltz into most systems and lay waste the PVN/GTA defenders, and that's exactly what's happening in most cases.
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Originally posted by ngtm1r
It's never explictly stated, but one gets the feeling in FS1 that a pair of Shivan cruisers and a few wings of bombers/fighters could waltz into most systems and lay waste the PVN/GTA defenders, and that's exactly what's happening in most cases.
At the beginning yes, because the PVN and the GTA were caught totally by suprise. I am not so sure later on.
While the Shivan fleet in FS1 WAS much smaller than the one in FS2, it was still larger and more powerful than the GTA and the PVN combined.
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We all know Shivans operate in zero-g and are almost never interested in planets. So it seems logical to me that they evolved in a zero-g environment - maybe a nebula? It should have all the stuff needed for starting life floating around, and lots of lightning to start it all of too - as we've seen in-game :)
So maybe the Sathanas fleet wasn't just cutting of the GTVA by novaing Capella. They were making a home or base for themselves by essentialy 'terraforming' the entire system.
Maybe they didn't evolve by themselves. The idea that shivans are part of a much bigger problem (I'll call it MBP and think of it as an individual race from now on) - maybe the MBP grew or engineered the shivans in a nebula as a way to get a race totally at home in zero-g and naturally evolved for space combat. Then the MBP lose control of their shivan slave warriors who try to escape by subspace... I can't think of an idea on how they got their initimate subspace knowledge though-
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Originally posted by Aspa
We all know Shivans operate in zero-g and are almost never interested in planets. So it seems logical to me that they evolved in a zero-g environment - maybe a nebula? It should have all the stuff needed for starting life floating around, and lots of lightning to start it all of too - as we've seen in-game :)
So maybe the Sathanas fleet wasn't just cutting of the GTVA by novaing Capella. They were making a home or base for themselves by essentialy 'terraforming' the entire system.
Maybe they didn't evolve by themselves. The idea that shivans are part of a much bigger problem (I'll call it MBP and think of it as an individual race from now on) - maybe the MBP grew or engineered the shivans in a nebula as a way to get a race totally at home in zero-g and naturally evolved for space combat. Then the MBP lose control of their shivan slave warriors who try to escape by subspace... I can't think of an idea on how they got their initimate subspace knowledge though-
Or maybe the Shivans just modified themselves. It is, after all, predicted by many people that humanity will modify itself with cybernetics or genetic engineering when space travel and colonisation become common.
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Everything's explained in the FS1 Ancients monologues... the Ancients were a powerful spacefaring species that conquered the galaxy, extinguishing potential life. They 'trespassed' into subspace, which alerted the Shivans (destroyers + preservers) to their presence. The Shivans destroyed the Ancients so that other species in their infancy could be given a chance to live.
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So the Shivans basicly destroy ever race that becomes powerfull enough to threathen "young" races..
so they basicly let us live so they can kill us later..
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Originally posted by Galemp
Everything's explained in the FS1 Ancients monologues... the Ancients were a powerful spacefaring species that conquered the galaxy, extinguishing potential life. They 'trespassed' into subspace, which alerted the Shivans (destroyers + preservers) to their presence. The Shivans destroyed the Ancients so that other species in their infancy could be given a chance to live.
It's explained from the perspective of the ancients.
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And from the player's perspective, in the last monologue (lucy dies.)
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Yeah, that explanation doesn't quite make sense to me...save them now, kill them later...
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How about this. Save them now. Kill them later if they discover subspace. Leave them alone if they find some other way of long distance travel.
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The point is to give every potential intelligent life a chance to live and prosper; if that race discovers and harnesses subspace, and uses it to crush, subdue, enslave and kill other potential life, then it's the Shivans' responsibility to destroy them and therefore preserve other life throughout the galaxy. Humans (and Vasudans, and Ancients) had their chance, and now because of their actions, their time is up.
As far as FS2 goes, perhaps the Shivans have given the Terrans and Vasudans another chance... who knows.
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Maybe it's simply an extension of self-preservation. Kill them before they're strong enough to be your enemies.
Or a holy war to cleanse subspace.
Maybe the Shivans just don't have the resouces to crush the GTVA in FS2.... yes, they have 80 Sathani - but how long can they afford to keep them in GTVA space?
Albeit i've always liked the idea that the Capella nova was simply a form of cautery to seal in the GTVA..... or seal it off.
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...You know, I like that "another chance" idea. Particularly since the Terrans and Vasudans, formerly engaged in killing each other, are now allies.
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Originally posted by ngtm1r
...You know, I like that "another chance" idea. Particularly since the Terrans and Vasudans, formerly engaged in killing each other, are now allies.
The Shivans did return (in a sense) after the NTf rebelled....... of course, the NTF also let them in by activating the Knossos, it would seem.....
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And then went away again shortly after the end of the NTF Rebellion.
They were drawn to the conflict, and when that went away they left.