[Deepstar]

If the Ancients would not be able to kill even fighters, this war could never take very long... and you forget, that all ships bigger than fighters/bombers do not have any shields. So they were at least able to destroy transports.

Only these were not like the others. They did not die.

You can also refer this to the vast unnumberable numbers of shivans. "Every shivan you kill is replaced by three others." has the same meaning in my opinion. Because it seems that the shivans are infinite -> so they did not die.

Also all the races the Ancients encountered before "died", because they were extinguished. But this was also not possible this time and so the shivans were not like the others and did not die in this meaning, too. .

[Megawolf492]

We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed.

I believe this states here that the fleet that was used to kill the Ancients was much, much more vast. Shivans bombarded Vasuda, but in the cutscene showing the destruction, there is no massive fleet "darkening" the skies. I believe the Shivans likely had to dispatch a much larger fleet to kill a much larger enemy, causing this. Also, as stated above, if fighters never were killed, the numbers would become severely one sided very quickly.

If there was a massive fleet attacking the Ancients, then the "no shields in subspace" information would do them little good and wouldn't have valued it as they did, trying to pass it on to future civilizations.  Sure, they knew how to destroy the Lucifer(s), but what about the rest of the fleet? However, if you can't even kill the fighters, then find a way to kill them, that is information that you would hold dear and try to preserve, even if you die.

If the Ancients would not be able to kill even fighters, this war could never take very long... and you forget, that all ships bigger than fighters/bombers do not have any shields. So they were at least able to destroy transports.

I do believe that the war was over pretty quickly, only lasting longer than the Great War because of the size of the Ancients' empire. And I did not forget that non-fighters/bombers don't have shields:

Sure you could destroy the unshielded capital ships, but not when you have fighters you cant kill firing up your butt all the time.

All in all, it seems like the main reason why the Ancients were defeated was they learned too late how to bypass SOME type of shield. If it was only the Lucifer(s) shields, then the Ancients would have defeated the rest of the fleet and you would have only the Lucifer(s) going from system to system. Even though the Shivans could have destroyed all the Ancients' worlds, you probably could outrun a few destroyers and hide somewhere. If it was all shields, then you still have a full fleet that you can't outrun for long.

[Akalabeth Angel]

From a story perspective, I think there's different ways to approach it:

#1 The nebula foreshadows Capella. However one thing to bear in mind is that at Capella the Sathanas fleet made a special jump somewhere else. So if the Shivans likewise destroyed the nebula star, why are they still around? Would they not have jumped somewhere else?

#2 The fact the Knossos was difficult to destroy suggests that it could survive a supernova.

#3 Another possibility is that the ancients were not the first race. And that the supernova is not from the Ancient shivan war but from a shivan-someone else war before that.



But for my money, I would say that the Ancients turned off the Gamma-Draconis node to stop the Shivan advance. The shivans destroyed the nebula's star, the knossos survived because it's been shown to be resilient, but some remnant of the Shivan fleet containing the lucifer was still on this side of the node and finished off the ancients. Then being too far from home it went and lurked in space until Terran Vasudans caught their attention years later.

[qwadtep]

So if the Shivans likewise destroyed the nebula star, why are they still around? Would they not have jumped somewhere else?

By waiting in adjacent systems until the nebula was safe to travel again. Knossos 2 leads to a small communications hub, remember, and there's no telling what else might have been left undiscovered when the GTVA was forced to withdraw.

[Goober5000]

I collected a bunch of links on ambient supernova temperature, but I haven't found time in the last few weeks to go through them and formulate a case.  So I'm dumping them here in case anyone else feels like trawling through them:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112891395/supernova-remnant-lower-temperatures-070513/
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/temperatures-10000-times-hotter-suns-surface-still-imprinted-supernova-remnant
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/supernova_remnants.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_remnant
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/multimedia/photos/2004/photos04-115.html
http://www.cmso.info/tychosup
http://freestarcharts.com/index.php/messier-catalogue/20-guides/messier/96-messier-1-m1-crab-nebula-supernova-remnant
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/supernovae/remnants.html
http://www.astro.uu.se/~hoefner/astro/teach/apd_files/apd_SNR_dyn.pdf
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast825/ch5-6.pdf
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/574485/supernova-remnant

A sketch of the idea is that supernovas cooling is a function of expansion as well as time.  Temperature and pressure can vary substantially according to distance, especially in young supernovas (< 10,000 years).  This fits well with different areas of the nebula being at different activity levels, like we saw in the FS2 campaign.

"10 or 20 light-years in diameter" fits with an age on the order of 8,000 years.  More practically, based on these links it appears possible for the supernova to cool down enough in 8,000 years that ships of the GTVA could fly around in it, especially at distances of several parsecs.

Unfortunately, unless the Knossos is made of unobtainum, it could not have been around in the same system pre-supernova.  Just have a look at this what-if from XKCD, where one could get a fatal dose of neutrinos at a distance of 2.3 AU -- one would think that more typical forces of a supernova are sure to obliterate anything there.  So while I like the theory that the Knossos is the sole remnant of an Ancient outpost in the Nebula System, I don't think the physics supports it.

I'm curious to hear what astronomical bodies Battuta claims could survive a supernova though, and where they might be located.

[General Battuta]

Everything in FreeSpace is made of unobtainium. Companion stars can survive supernova detonations.

[Aardwolf]

So maybe the Knossos was in the shadow of the companion star?

[Solaxis-Hunter]

How about this as a theory, Knossos 2 is located in a system which still contains a sun, the Supernova which is said to have occured, happened a number of light years away, the nebula formed out of this remnant, and residual solar winds pushed the nebula to expand outwards till it enveloped the system with the Knossos 2.  In some nebula missions, a bright sun can be seen sometimes, which would account for the reason that we can see anything in the nebula.

[Luis Dias]

So maybe the Knossos was in the shadow of the companion star?

that's unlikely to be a good answer. There's no "shadowing" a supernovae like that.

How about this as a theory, Knossos 2 is located in a system which still contains a sun, the Supernova which is said to have occured, happened a number of light years away, the nebula formed out of this remnant, and residual solar winds pushed the nebula to expand outwards till it enveloped the system with the Knossos 2.  In some nebula missions, a bright sun can be seen sometimes, which would account for the reason that we can see anything in the nebula.

I think something like this could work. Given we do see a star in these levels, it's either a companion star or a star far away. Mind you, even a companion star could work, if it was something like a thousand (more?) AUs away.

[karajorma]

Bear in mind that the data we have is for real supernovae. The Shivans have shown that they can make stars supernova which shouldn't be able to. Which makes all the data we have moot.

Sure we can take an educated guess what that sort of supernova would result from a non-suitable star going supernova, but it's a fair bet it could be much less powerful than a standard one.

[Solaxis-Hunter]

Or one other theory could say that the Knossos gates were not made by the Ancients, but by a precursor race, the Ancients found them and replicated the technology, so Knossos 2 could be an original pre-Ancient gate, and the reason that it survived was that it could have been submerged into subspace (into the point between normal space and the subspace tunnel) when a supernova was detected as a defence mechanism, and then the Shivans found it, pulled it out of Subspace to begin using it.

[Phantom Hoover]

Runs afoul of narrative Occam's law I'm afraid.

[Scotty]

Since when has anything in fiction been bound by Occam's Razor?

[Goober5000]

When you create a story, you want it to be believable, so it's in your interest to minimize the suspensions of disbelief, and the deviations from established canon.

A non-Ancients precursor race that created a new, identical Knossos with a heretofore unknown defense mechanism that's only useful for an extremely rare situation is a veritable potpourri of deviations.

[Luis Dias]

Since when has anything in fiction been bound by Occam's Razor?

Since everything and always. It is said of fiction that it must make sense of itself, unlike reality which usually doesn't. The usual manner to do so is to be simple, efficient, consistent, cohesive, small.

[karajorma]

But why would you need a precursor race for that anyway? It could simply be a defence system the ancients made, never believing it would be used against them.

[Megawolf492]

But why would you need a precursor race for that anyway? It could simply be a defence system the ancients made, never believing it would be used against them.

If we take for a fact that the Shivans are the only ones that know how to blow up stars and the Nebula System star was the first/only star the Shivans blew up vs. the Ancients, then the Ancients had no reason to make a defensive system like that. Besides, having a massive object like that (or any object really) being stuck in between subspace and realspace is a bit silly IMO and has no basis at all in canon. The closest thing to it was what the Bastion did near the end of FS2, but something like that isn't really a defensive mechanism.

[NGTM-1R]

And it all still assumes the Knossos had to survive a supernova, which is questionable in itself. When you have to invent reasons to justify your assumptions to justify the reasons for the other assumptions you made, you have a problem.

[karajorma]

If we take for a fact that the Shivans are the only ones that know how to blow up stars and the Nebula System star was the first/only star the Shivans blew up vs. the Ancients, then the Ancients had no reason to make a defensive system like that.

It could be a general defence system to prevent the knossos being wiped out by asteroids or taking a planet to the face.

Besides, having a massive object like that (or any object really) being stuck in between subspace and realspace is a bit silly IMO and has no basis at all in canon. The closest thing to it was what the Bastion did near the end of FS2, but something like that isn't really a defensive mechanism.

I don't think it's a particularly good argument. I was simply commenting on the lack of necessity to add another race in order to make it work.