[freespacegundam]

Something always bothered me about FS1, and that's the fac that the Terrans never defeated the Vasudans.  You're sort of thrown in after operation Thresher, which had been a failure.  Now what if it had been a success?  And what if the GTA had defeated the Vasudans before meeting the Shivans?  Would they still be able to fight them off?  It would be twice as hard because the GTA wouldn't have an ally to help, wouldn't have the Ulysses, the interceptor, and probably a host of other technologies the Vasudans helped create.  Or how about the times Vasudan ships saved your hide in the game?  Or the Vasudan refugees at Altair?  Without them, the GTA would never have come up with a way to destroy the lucifer.

Obvious problem with this campaign is coming up with substitutes for the Ulysses, the a new weapon to replace the interceptor, and the problem of how rework the original campaign of FS1.  I have no modeling programs, I understand nothing about tables, and wouldn't have a clue on how to create new ships or weapons to rework the campaign.  So anyone who thinks this idea is a good one can have it.

[Black Wolf]

It's beeen attempted, sorta. Alternate Paths.

[Assassin]

I don't believe only Terrans, or only Vasudans, would have beaten back the Shivans. Think Gondor/Rohan/Mordor...

[an0n]

The Terrans woulda looted the **** outta all Vasudan planets for tech and resources and scarpered to form a unified defensive line in Delta Serpentis. They'd've picked off the Lucifers support-ships while it went about levelling all the Vasudan worlds, capturing many lesser Shivan ships and destroying all their caps.

So when the Lucifer finally got around to moving in on Delta Serpentis they'd be met by every ship in the Terran fleet, armed to the teeth with all kinds of Shivan-Terran hybrid weapons.

No matter how all-powerful you think the Lucifer was there's no way it'd stand up to the combined firepower of 40 Orions and a few hundred Leviathans and several thousand fighters, bomber and suicide transports armed with Shivan-enhanced weaponry, armour and shields.

Hell, if the Terrans had consolidated all their assets into a single, focused assault on an undefended Lucifer they'd probably have been able to flood it with troops and capture it.

[Knight Templar]

Well remember, they'd have to do it in subspace. Tis the only place the shields would go down.

[an0n]

Not really. It was never established wether the Lucifers shields were actually impenetrable or just obscenely powerful.

And besides, a few hundred Harbingers into its fighter-bays would be ample to knock at least 3 shades of crap out of it.

[Hellbender]

*shrug*  Or for that matter fill up the forward parts of some Fenris cruisers with scrap and concrete, soup up the engines to pile on the speed (just need to be able to manouver faster than the SD really) and wire them up as guides bombs, maybe toss in some really dirty nukes just for fun and energy.  Ram the Lucifer with a few of those and... Oh well, maybe a little elaborate but hey why not?

Thing is, any of those solutions might cause problems for, or defeat the Lucifer.  All of them have easily exploited holes and "what ifs" also.  

Heck, if you are going to remove the Vasudans from the equation as a viable part of the game, the Shivans need not have a single ultimate weapon like the Lucifer to contend with - could be any number of plausible reasons they presented such a threat.  

From what I can tell, Freespace was designed as a game to put the player into the hotseat of a space fighter and to have game-play based on that idea.  The story had to be written to accommodate that, not the other way around.  There are almost always going to have to be compromises that leave the story less than satisfying depending on the direction the writers and programmers decide to take.

My two pennies anyway.

[Knight Templar]

Lucifer vs. Hades.