[aldo_14]

Bear in mind that just because we've not seen a Shivan scientist race/interest/community doesn't mean they don't have one; after all, the GTVA tries to avoid sending Faustus' into combat....

Incidentally, I think the presence of Shivan tech such as fighter parts in cargo crates (as well as the repair 'station' where the Playing Judas fighter is captured from)  in several missions of FS1 indicates they can at the very least repair their own ships.

[Black Wolf]

Trashman, think about this logically.

The crux of your argument is that the shivans fingers are too big and complex to make the complex machines we see them use. But think about it - name me one primitive human tool that the shivans couldn't make by scaling it up to Shivan specifications if they needed to. Before we had the delicate machines capable of designing the even more delicate machines they made, we made everything at the scale our fingers allowed - shivans could do the same thing.