[aldo_14]

Originally posted by AlphaOne
Well before we go eny further I would just like to remember evryone that the shivans we see today are NOT repeat are NOT theyr natural form. They seem to be enhanced with a powerfull armour and weapon..remember....?  

So that leaves but one question who or what made them this way because I doubt they would of evolved this way if not for somoene elses intervention.  For that matter did the shivans ever evolve during the thousands of years they were out there...???

No they staied the same which at least in mi perspective is very very interesting!

They might be.  :V: stated that the Shivans we see in Hallfight are the actual Shivans - not a robot or spacesuit - so it's not inconceiveable they simply altered themselves.

And humanity has stayed the same for thousands of years too; didn't mean we never evolved.

[Flipside]

I believe we had a discussion a long long time ago about that, something along the lines of Shivans being predators (through body design, not assumption) and that, if the carapace were strong enough, or, more importantly, the right material, it isn't completely outside the scope of reason that the plasma 'gun' is not some kind of mega 'sting', like a scorpions, only using plasma. Though I'd hate to see what they hunted that was still edible after being shot with that!

Edit : Heres a thought, Shivans have heads a little bit like a Spiders head, maybe Subspace is their 'Web' that they use to entrap foes

[KappaWing]

Well before we go eny further I would just like to remember evryone that the shivans we see today are NOT repeat are NOT theyr natural form. They seem to be enhanced with a powerfull armour and weapon..remember....?

So that leaves but one question who or what made them this way because I doubt they would of evolved this way if not for somoene elses intervention. For that matter did the shivans ever evolve during the thousands of years they were out there...???

It is very possible that the Shivans develped technology to enhance themselves. They could have found a way to channel their life energy into their cannon thingie, and could implant their other enhacements into their own bodies.

No they staied the same which at least in mi perspective is very very interesting!

Perhaps they stayed the same because instead of letting nature optimize them over time, they optimized themselves with implantations.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

perhaps they stayed the same from the point of ancients to the point of us, because iot has only been 8000 years, and if you think about it, we look very much the same as we did 8,000 years ago.  In fact, we look enough the same that someone not of our race (human) would probably have trouble discerning the modern man from the 8000 year old one.   Perhaps they haven't evolved since the time of the ancients, Perhaps they did but the evolution was so subtle that we as humans have not picked up on it.

[WMCoolmon]

I don't think the enhancements mean that some sort of intervention caused it...it seems more likely to me that the Shivans did it themselves. It may simply be more suited for the tactics that the Shivans use, which seemed to involve a lot more physical attacks than humans.

The Shivans have pretty extreme strength, after all, and a hard carapace. It may be that for any Shivan-shivan warfare, something like the mounted plasma gun would be required to kill a Shivan at any sort of range. And for other races, rushing them and slicing them up with their glowing pincer-things may have worked. (It certainly did with humans - something like three Shivans took out four, five armed humans by rushing them and took only one casualty).

[Kie99]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
I don't think the enhancements mean that some sort of intervention caused it...it seems more likely to me that the Shivans did it themselves. It may simply be more suited for the tactics that the Shivans use, which seemed to involve a lot more physical attacks than humans.

The Shivans have pretty extreme strength, after all, and a hard carapace. It may be that for any Shivan-shivan warfare, something like the mounted plasma gun would be required to kill a Shivan at any sort of range. And for other races, rushing them and slicing them up with their glowing pincer-things may have worked. (It certainly did with humans - something like three Shivans took out four, five armed humans by rushing them and took only one casualty).

Isn't it true by word of that the Shivans we see are the real Shivans, not shivans in any suit?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by kietotheworld


Isn't it true by word of that the Shivans we see are the real Shivans, not shivans in any suit?

Yes, but that doesn't preclude the Shivans 'augmenting' themselves mechanically; think of it as an extreme version of having a hip replacement or pacemaker.

[Kie99]

I always thought that mabe where the Shivans evolved there was some sort of metal oxide in the air.  Like when Trees "breathe" carbon dioxide and make it into carbon(Wood).  As far as the plasma cannon goes I assumed that was just a part of the Shivans' evolution.  i.e. they can harness their body energy to shoot plasma.

Come to think of it whatever happened to the Shivans from Hallfight?  Also what happened to any survivors.  (One was knocked out against a wall.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by kietotheworld
I always thought that mabe where the Shivans evolved there was some sort of metal oxide in the air.  Like when Trees "breathe" carbon dioxide and make it into carbon(Wood).  As far as the plasma cannon goes I assumed that was just a part of the Shivans' evolution.  i.e. they can harness their body energy to shoot plasma.

Possibly.... but I don't think you'd see technology just spontaneously evolving, even in a metal-rich body.

Originally posted by kietotheworld

Come to think of it whatever happened to the Shivans from Hallfight?  Also what happened to any survivors.  (One was knocked out against a wall.

I think some Shivans were captured by the GTI, so possibly a heavier team went in.... I'm pretty positive none of the initial boarding part would have survived, though - I think the guy chucked against the wall would have been pretty much pulverized by the impact, would he not?

[NGTM-1R]

Broken ribs at least, more likely a broken back, possibly internal injuries...if somebody got to him within an hour or two he probably could have survived, though.

[Flipside]

It also depends how tough the armour they are wearing is. A well padded backplate could save his back, however, I doubt the battle ended with the Plasma cannon, no doubt the Shivans finished off any survivors.

Edit : Also, if you remember the Iceni incident, it appears GTVA sidearms have improved somewhat since then, the report from the boarding party suggests that the Shivans took at least fair casualities.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Flipside

Edit : Also, if you remember the Iceni incident, it appears GTVA sidearms have improved somewhat since then, the report from the boarding party suggests that the Shivans took at least fair casualities.

Not necessarily (although you would expect some improvement due to time...); there were probably a lot more armed NTF peeps then, plus whatever automated defenses a ship has inside.  And also human corridoors aren't built for shivans...... I'd imagine it'd be a tighter fit in many cases, compared to the Shivan transport.

[NGTM-1R]

I doubt these ships have automated defenses or large marine complements: we see them get boarded and captured too many times for that.

At a casuality count among the thousands, there must have been a lot of dead Shivans (minimum a hundred? Maybe more?) for them to even get noticed.

Let's arbitrarily assign the Iceni a crew figure of 10,000. This is probably too high, but still. Of that at most five hundred would be marines; marines are essentially dead weight most of the time, so their numbers are normally not high in relation to overall crew. They don't have to be.

Casualities in the thousands would imply that most of those engaged in the fighting were not marines and probably did not have top-of-the line weaponry, probably not much more then sidearms. The Shivan in Hallfight that died (or was just wounded badly enough it fell over?) appeared to be staggering, but neither did it have obvious holes in its carapace, and it did not actually go down until it was directly hit by a grenade. Given a minimum figure of 100 dead Shivans, GTVA handheld weaponry would apparently be much better then the last time around.

[WMCoolmon]

Is there any real evidence that the Shivans tried to exterminate the entire crew, though? From what I gather, Bosch and his top lieutenants were waiting for the Shivans. Then either the Shivans barged in, or they talked with Bosch, but end result was that the marines died, Bosch was taken, and a bunch of Shivans were left behind.

I think there was one transport that was leaving the Iceni that you could destroy...so maybe two, three transports full of Shivans?

Going by Bosch's predisposition towards meeting the Shivans, he might not've had guards with him at the time. However, I'd guess that the airlock would be the most guarded area of the ship, especially with Shivans docking. Past that area, though, they could probably wreak havok pretty much unmolested. When the guy on the bridge said that thousands were dead, Shivans too, he may have been exaggerating a little. But any Shivan deaths would be major events.

So, I don't think handheld weaponry would have to be a lot better - just the tactics. One guywith a grenade launcher can probably take out one Shivan; if marines started stocking up on those, kill ratio of shivans to humans would rapidly get better.

[NGTM-1R]

Recall Bosch's monologue: he seemed to think the crew would be getting out too. The combat aboard the Iceni is difficult to explain in light of that, but it would make sense that the crew would be waiting by the airlock for the Shivans to come aboard.

A Vasudan marine gave the intial casuality estimate shortly after the rescue transport docked...I trust him slightly more then a panicked naval lieutenant, but draw your own conclusions.

[FireCrack]

Plus the shivan in hallfight has no confirmation of dieing, it gets hit then falls off the bottom of the xcreen, for all we know it got back up and skittered across the chamber before delivering death.

[WMCoolmon]

I still don't think killing the crew was the Shivans' purpose, though.

That would be easily accomplished by destroying the ship. Much better from a tactical/strategical viewpoint than fighting in unfamiliar territory in an incompatible(?) environment. This goes back to a previous discussion, but in Hallfight the marines were using their own air. Could be that the Shivans' air supply is different than humans', in which case they'd have to bring their own air along.

Or, they don't breathe, but would that really be biologically possible for something like a Shivan?

[Mongoose]

Well, if you believe the super-secret animation, Shivans can jump around in space and slice open fighters, so who knows?

Seriously, though, the whole situation with Bosch's departure from the Iceni is, in my opinion, just about every bit as incomprehensible as the whole supernova issue.  Obviously, Bosch and his command crew made it out of there, but did they go willingly or as prisoners?  Bosch's final monologue seems to suggest that he was pretty confident of his standing with the Shivans, but the crewmember on the Iceni speaks of Bosch and the officers as being "taken."  He could have been mistaken during the heat of the moment, though.  As for the rest of the crew, was this a simple misunderstanding that led to a firefight, or did Bosch simply not have any regard for the lives of his crewmembers outside of his inner circle?  Remember, he did call the members of the NTF "sheep;" however, it's unclear if he felt differently about the Iceni's rank and file, or how much the crew knew about ETAK.  Makes for some interesting thinking.

[aldo_14]

It's possible that the Shivans simply tricked Bosch to make him come along... and that trouble erupted when he saw they weren't going to take his crew; perhaps he even resisted, and the Shivans grew impatient.

[Flipside]

Possibly, but I don't see thew Shivans really caring too much about the opinion of one man, and I don't see Bosch under any illusion that he would be. If anything he hated his crew as 'sheep' and probably felt they deserved their fate as much as he deserved his, he made it plain that he felt what he was doing was for mankind, not for himself.

As far as weapons are concerned, remember that Hallfight took place when marines carried weapons designed to take down Vasudans and Terrans, 30 years later, no doubt, more anti-shivan weaponary would have been developed.