[galonrever]

oh, just thought about this
lets say in Freespace 1, the shivans were the cosmic destroyers. what if they were a bit like the Shadows from B5? They attack with a medioca force, and if you survive, your good enough to live sorta thing. This way, the subjects can only get stronger, or die, and the shivans learn about new speices.

However, when bosch sends the trinity into that nebula, the shivans get all pissed off, and decide to show us that they can destroy stars, "so dont mess with us. We left you alone because you proved that you were strong enough. But if your guna get so damn cocky, we'll have to beat you down. "

That could be why they only destroyed Capella, and only minorly hassled (compared to the Jugganaut Armada) the epsilon peg and vega nodes. If they wanted to, they could have brought all eighty jugga's to the nodes, destroyed the GTVA, and THEN gone around blowing up stars. However, they only blew up capella, and then left well enough alone.....

If they got to Ross 128 once, whats to say they couldn't again? They could have sent another lucifer, or maybe two. but they didnt.

Now im rambling, but you might get my drift

[Corsair]

One interesting theory among many...

[Night Hammer]

Sounds like a reasonable theory, first new one Ive heard in a while.

[galonrever]

Another side point, it could have been that the shivans thought if they left the GTVA alone in the nebula, and the GTVA continued to spread further out and incroched on shivan space, they would eventually become a threat, as basiclly the first thing that happens when a shivan ship turns up is combat.

Therefore, they decided to do something. The first one seems more plausible, and is basiclly my first post, just with a bit more thought.

1) They wanted to give the GTVA a clear warning that they were technoligically superior, and prehaps always would be, therefore the GTVA shouldnt try to fight them, but simply avoid them, and stay in their own corner of the galaxy (currently occupied GTVA systems)

2) They wanted to force the GTVA to believe they were staging a massive invasion. The shivans must have known that a subspace catacysm (even im worried about this streak of nerdish im showing ) would collapse the jump nodes, and the shivans forced the GTVA's hand with the jugganaut invasion. The shivans knew the GTVA would freak, and try to close the nodes, knowing they would be unable to hold the shivans.

3) It could be possible that the shivans are not a super race, but merely one that can easily manipulate another species to do what they want

4) The shivans took heavy casulities. they lost 20+ cruisers, a good 3-6 corvette's, 3 destroyers, a sathanas, and innumerable fighter wings. Maybe they saw this as the quickest way to end the fight, instead of having to eradicate YET ANOTHER race (2 really)

Im guna stop rambling before i hurt myself. I got bored, i guess. Just gives people one more thing to think about...

[Singh]

unless.......perhaps by closing the gate, they weren't trying to keep the GTVA out, but rather pinning something else in?

[Knight Templar]

Unless.... they just wanted Headz and a BBQ.

[JR2000Z]

My theorys:

I think the only reason they destroyed the Capella star is to create another nebula for gas mining operations. Remember fighting gas miners in the nebula? The Shivans fuel their ships the as the GTVA fuels theirs.

That proves why they didn't go to Vega or Epsilon Pegasi. They didn't have the fuel to.

Oh and to clear things up: Knossoss was was the Ancient's gate that was used to close the node between Capella and the Shivan systems. Unfortunatly, the Lucifer fleet made it through before it was closed and eliminated the Ancients. 8,000 years later, they must have noticed the Great War between the GTA and PVN. Why they were hiding this long, I have no clue.

And why they had the Lucifer leading the feet against the Ancients? I'd like to think as the Lucifer as a top command ship. One of it's kind. With a name like 'Lucifer' it must be high up.

[Janos]

Shivans are friends and we don't just understand them.

[Black Wolf]

The Shivans - why do they do what they do...

'Coz they're mean...

[ShadowWolf_IH]

Actually i always figured that as alien as they are, so must be the motivations behind the actions.  If i had to put a human quality and reason to what they do i would have to say that maybe they are learning from us, and maybe that's why they won't simply eradicate us.  Maybe what they are doing is supressing us, and forcing us to adapt.  

The thing is though, they are the most alien being to us in the galaxy....so far.  We can't even begin to understand them or the motivations that the have.  If you don't agree with me on that, talk to Bosch....he found out that they are unpredictable.  As humans we try to find a reason that we can understand, and i don't think we can do this with the Shivans.  

Ultimately why do i think they do what they do?  It's in the script.

[galonrever]

oooo, just thought up another one

What if the Shivans are the remenent of an advanced spieces that were themselves nearly eradicated by some colossal force. The survivors ran, since they knew they didnt have the power to defeat this monstrosity.
They are trying to build us up, knowing that eventually, this thing, or race or whateva, will eventually find us. By attacking us, and showing us were our weaknesses lie (FS1 - lack of Beam Cannons     FS2 - no real defence against a superweapon) they are helping us to be ready to battle, and maybe defeat this thing when it finds us...

This thought sorta came from singh's though of keeping something in. They are simply trying to make us stronger. They dont communicate, because thats not their objective...

[Carl]

Stryke 9 already figured it out a while ago.

The Sathani are Shivan trailer homes. See, they really just wanted to make friends with the Terrans this whole time, but due to an unfortunate culture gap and some preliminary spy reports collected durign the Terran-Vasudan war, the Shivans figured our primary method of communication involved focusing high-density plasma charges into each other. Thus, Lucifer scout fleet showed up and transmitted the message "We come in peace", wiping out all nearby. Hurt and confused at the Terrans' and Vasudans' panicked flight, they followed the GTA fleet to Vasuda Prime. Knowing an important populated planet when they saw one, what subsequently ensued was the equivalent of thousands of years of Shivan history, science, and literature broken up into several easy-to-understand blasts... Thirty years later, the Shivans spot Terrans in their nebula. Curious as to what happened to their peace delegation, they accost the first fleet they see and bombard them with questions. The Terrans return fire, and, overjoyed that contact has finally been made, the Shivans mobilize their colony ships, ordering them to set up a permanent base around the nearest Terran star where Shivans and Terrans (and Vasudans, who the Shivans assumed were just more Terrans) could trade, communicate, and live in harmony. Up to the death of the Colossus, the Shivans maintained their good intentions, though they had to admit that maintaining good relations with the Terrans seemed to be getting an awful lot of them killed. It was only when the Terrans sealed off the first Capella jump node that the Shivans guessed that something was amiss. Slowly the idea formed that maybe we WEREN'T friendly, after all. Hurt by this possible breach of trust, the Shivans sent out one last delegate, headed on what they last knew as a route to the Sol system and the capitol of Terran government, housed in a Cain class executive transport. When diplomatic talks opened up prematurely and destroyed the Cain and the diplomat before a meeting, let alone consensus, could be achieved. Shocked and disgusted by the treachery of the Terrans, the Sathanas fleet blew up the Capella star in the universal signal for "farewell", which they hoped would eventually reach the remaining Terrans in other systems, and returned home, never to be seen by Terrans again.

[karajorma]

If that's what they are up to what happened to the Ancients? Unless you're saying that they came up against this thing after wiping them out or that there never were any ancients, just false clues planted by the shivans.

[Cyker]

I've always thought the Shivans were more of a Hive-mind type civilisation. Like Aliens, or a less philosophical Zerg.

I don't even wanna speculate on their origins, but I figure they are, in FS time, a lost species, and have been lost for longer than they can remember.
So they are just wandering round the universe, presumably trying to find... wherever.

My impression overall of the Shivans is that they run mostly on instinct and that the GTVA is just like a little annoying ant hill that they tripped over while on their search for... whatever... and they just slowly plod along mindlessly trying to delete the annoyance.

Or maybe their motivations are just to destroy stuff for the heck of it...

...

Damnit I'm doing it again, theorising on a fictional race!

[aldo_14]

(I actually have a couple of long dev-docs I wrote to try & explain Shivan motivations...but you can't see them )

The Shivans, I think, are a race born of war.  They once were like us, but something happened that forced them into space.  They modified themselves, leading to their cybernetic nature.  They became attuned to subspace, using that medium as a primary form of sensory perception (hence why they don't attack non-subspace using species).

As for FS1 / FS2 and why they took Bosch, read the Reci storyline .

[Hippo]

Stryke's old theory gets my vote... Wasn't that in Greywolf2009's thread about saving Capella?

[Singh]

There are other theories ya know
Perhaps the ancients weren't driven or wiped out as previously suspected?

In Admiral Petrach's speech, he said that the Shivans might be exiles, forever roaming the universe, searching for a way back home. but then, what could be so powerfull to throw them out of it in the first place? From the FS1 cutscenes, we know that  the Ancients fought them to a standstill and eventually lost nearly all the planets to the Shivans as they weren't able to hold them off forever.

But what happened when they lost the homeworld? I would think that if the Ancients were seeing the Shivans advance all the way, they would have something planned - something to deny the adversary total victory over them.

Perhaps, they prepared for the Shivans - when they were coming for them with nearly the entire fleet, a small (or perhaps large) fleet of acient ships abandoned the homeworld - moving instead into subspace; the realm of the Shivans. The final battle would not be on the Ancient's soil, but that of the Shivans. A layer underneath subspace or within in, perhaps controlled by the central nexus/hive mind for the Shivans - someplace which would now come under assault from the entire Ancient armada.

As we all know, if even a single ship collapses in Subspace, it closes it off. Now imagine the potential destruction such a fleet of ships could have caused even at that more stable, more basic layer of subspace.

Perhaps such a destruction is what forced them into the exile; forever to look for a way back home and yet never finding it. With a majority (but limited numbers) of fleets left inside of real space, any species would now become a threat till they could reach back home, something which might only be possible with the energy released from a dying star.

Perhaps this was why the star beyond Gamma Draconis was destroyed, along with many other stars - as an attempt (maybe even a futile one) to get back home. We only have a glimpse of one other system beyond the Nebula, something which we know is a Binary. But what of other systems, with single stars. Were they too destroyed by the Shivans? Maybe so, maybe not.

The Shivans could have just used Capella in the same way they did the star in the nebula - but why didn't they do the same to Gamma Draconis? Was it unsuitabe? Perhaps only bright yellow stars, much like that in Capella (or even Earth) was more suitable for the purpse - hence the Lucifer's run to Earth, in an attempt to wipe out the Terran fleet and pave the way for the Sathani to make a straight go.

That.......and i think im talking nonsense again :/

[Singh]

edit: double post.

[Hippo]

woo! I'm not the only one to do that today!

[aldo_14]

There's no evidence that destroying a ship in subspace actually closes the node, though - the Lucifer was an exceptional case, a superdestroyer with a massively powerful shield and weapon.

The only other ship to close a node was a meson bomb-laden Orion...implying that an explosion many times larger than that of a single ship is required to collapse a node.  

Also, IIRC, the TV war was characteristed by node blockading, so it's possible that many ships were destroyed on the cusp of exiting subspace ,by concerted sentry gun attacks.

I'm not a fan of the idea that Shivans were looking for a way home... I prefer the idea that they are something of a primordial force, and that their objectives are tainted by simply having an evil nature... i.e. they have clear aims and objectives, but also happen to be xenocidal at the same time.

For a similar reason, i'm a big fan of the idea that the Shivans are fighting in a pan-galactic war, and that the Ancients / GTVA are simply minor distractions caught in the crossfire.