Originally posted by Liberator
So what you're say Lightspeed is that the Shivan are defending their territory just like the GTVA is defending it's territory? That's too easy and makes the Shivans into less of a threat. They attacked us remember?
If you read closely, that's not what I'm saying
They are not "defending their territory".
The Shivans could be a race of Von Neuman(self replicating) type machines who were tasked with protecting their creator's area of space. But in their diligence, they either killed their masters accidentally or they were wiped out by a plague of some kind and the Shivans are now unknowingliy guarding a bunch of tomb worlds.
Has been suggested a lot of times, doesn't get better with time, though. Just because this is a very popular sci-fi theme, it doesn't really apply to Freespace.
Charismatic:
The only possible thing that I can think of would be a possible creator of the Shivans. I like to think of the Shivans as a secondary species that has been programmed by a creator to defend the creator. Kind of like a species in which its sole purpose is to prevent any other species from growing out of hand and expanding to to the point that these species could threaten the peace and existence of the Shivans' creators. Lightspeed, you claim that there is proof that I'm wrong but you don't know for sure (no one knows, not even me). However, some evidence is that in FS2, the GTVA know enough about the Shivans to hypothesize that they were likely constructed by another entity. Volition wouldn't put that tidbit of info in the tech database for nothing. FS2's description of the Shivans would have to be more the truth than FS1's descrption because the Alliance now knows more about the Shivans. Even Admiral Petrach said, "Even though we know our enemy better than we did 32 years ago, their motives remain a mystery". He admits that they now know more about the Shivans than they did in the Great War.
Read back, the GTVA knows LESS, MUCH less than the people did in the FS1 era about the Shivans. They speculate a lot of... wrong things. They (
) put it in there to emphasize how mislead the GTVA is, contrasted by Bosch's knowledge and assumptions. Let me quote:
As a young pilot I battled against the rebels of the great war, the Galactic Terran Intelligence whose research of shivan technology and biology would form the cornerstone of my project. The Terran-Vasudan alliance buried this knowledge but I resurrected it. All the GTVA could have known and knew was either lost in the Hades rebellion and by repression in the newly formed GTVA. The techroom entry is there from the beginning, so technically the GTVA
cannot know more than 32 years ago, because there were no Shivans to start with. If you check back with FS1, no such claim is made, and even in FS2 it's a "speculation". It is a fair assumption to say the GTVA is clueless about the Shivans.
The Ancients expanded for hundreds of years without subspace at first, hence why they were able to avoid the shivans for so long, as soon as they discovered subspace then the shivans became sensetive to it and sent a fleet to destroy them (i believe there is a camapign hosted here to do with the Nyarlathotep?) since this fleet may have started out on the other side of the universe then it cud hav taken 100's more years to reach the ancients space, then the ancients were wiped out becus they were able to use subspace and to the shivans perhaps subspace is sacred ground and forbidden to others,
The part in italics makes sense. The rest drifts off. MOD content, especially MOD content dealing with the Shivans, needs not represent the truth in any way. While Derelict stays on the neutral side, it still makes hidden asumptions. Taking hundreds of years to reach the Ancient's space is very, very unlikely, given the Shivans can simply travel through subspace.
and yes i believe some 1 said sumthin about shivans knowing where vasudan homeworld and sol was, of course they would know, if many species had been in GTVA space thousands of years before and the shivans wiped them all out then while humans/vasudans were still in their infancy, still cavemen so to speak, the shivans may have noted this on a passive scan of our planet during a battle with another race and simply stored it until the time it was needed. has anyone ever wondered by the way what weapon the lucifer used to thrape vasuda prime with? because (correct me if im worng) but the video sequence shows a big blue beam taking out a city on the surface....but the lucifer doesnt have any weapon tht is blue? unless it is some kind of advanced subspace weapon?
Unlikely. But it's not that difficult to track down the homeworld of a species. As for the blue beam, it's used for planetary bombardment obviously. And just because it's not "ingame" is no reason for it not to exist. It's much more likely that it's specifically one-purpose.
As for shivan numbers, who knows, they have theoretically been around since 'the beggining' of time itself, meaning theyve had unlimeted time to do whatever they want, and also someone said somthing about shivans not building a large planet sized ship because it owuld take to much time?well when you have millenia to spare im sure you could build such a structure, true a shivan structure of such magnitude has ever been seen to say it but its possible, and yes i believe shivan subspace drives are advanced enough to stabilize or traverse unstable nodes as well as create temporary artificial one when the time calls for it (possibly using 
of energy hence why it rarely used) i also like the theory about the sathii fleet were creating a new node above the capella star, this would tie in with my 'show of strength' thing and also the using lots of energy thing (hence why 80+ sathii's were needed to genrate the enrgy)
I shall say it again, time is irrelevant when talking about the Shivans. Per se, they did have all the time they wanted, and at the same time, no time at all. The high amount of Sathanii was necessary to make the sun go supernova (try it yourself, it takes quite a bit). Oh, and it's not like they created a node. Rather, they CLOSED a "node".
