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.