[Nuke]

i dont think you could password lock the working components. only the control computer needs one, and that can be replaced or bypassed. its like hotwiring a car, it might be trickey but it can be done. if we can rebuild our own gate you can rest assured the shivans can too.

[karajorma]

Or they could have taken an entire working component out leaving the shivans no way to open the knossos since they probably didn't bring a replacement.

Besides this religious to subspace argument tends to fall flat given the fact that while in FS1 they didn't use the node in FS2 they brought 80 juggernauts through the damn thing.

Besides who says the shivans even knew where the damn thing was? They might have known the location when they wiped out the ancients but 8000 years is a long time to forget or lose the information. For that matter who says that they knew where the portal was 8000 years ago? The shivans could easily have wiped out the ancients via Ross 128 and have no idea where the knossos was.

[Charismatic]

Yeah, like the universe sorta eventually in orbit, slides togeather, out of place so to speak, thus you cannot always pinpoint a location. You have to adjust for variances.






why does no one read my posts

[Alpha_Monkey]

galactic drift, you mean?

[karajorma]

I was refering to the fact that it's quite possible that when the Ancients fled through the Knossos and sealed it behind them the Shivans were left with no clue where the jump node in the nebula actually went to.

In FS2 when the Aquitaine jumped into the nebula it seemed like command wasn't certain where they were. The name of the Nebula was never mention even in the Colossus cutscene. That seems to indicate 1 of 2 things

1) When you detect a new jump node you can not tell where it goes.
2) You can usually tell but the Knossos prevented the GTVA from doing it this time.

Either way it's quite possible that the shivans would have had the same problem. They would then have had to search for the ancients  (probably by entering via Ross 128) in order to find them and kill them.

The end result would be the ancients dead but them still having no idea where the Knossos was.

[aldo_14]

Or maybe 3) they detect the location of jump nodes / systems by examining the constellation / star patterns visible within the system.  Which you couldn't do in that nebula.

[karajorma]

I thought of that. In fact either that or analysing the spectra of the star is almost certainly what I feel they do.

That's something you do at the other end after you've jumped though. With the knossos closed the shivans wouldn't have been able to do it which is why I didn't mention it You'll notice that your explaination still depends on 1 or 2 being true

It's obvious that there is a way to identify which star system a node leads to at some point or how on Earth could anyone be certain that Capella really was the star in the sky that we call Capella. All the systems in the game would have had non RL names.

(On the other hand that does explain why Capella is a single yellow giant in the game but a quaternary system in RL )

[aldo_14]

I wasn't thinking of the Shivans, really, to be honest.  I kind of wonder if any Knossos gate was operational until the Trinity activated the GD one.  Albeit an interesting thing, IMO, is that GD was discovered just prior to the Great War.  

(I also wonder if there is any meaning in the GTSC Erikson being the last ship to visit the system... best I can think of is Lief Erikson, the Viking credited with discovering the 'New World' and establishing a Viking settlement in Canada)

[karajorma]

Actually that does raise an interesting possible history.

1) The GTI discover the subspace portal in GD shortly beofre the start of the Great War.

2) They open the portal which wasn't at that point locked, mearly off.

3) They encounter the shivans, realise that they've bitten off more than they can chew and hastily close and lock the knossos.

4) The act of locking the knossos also locks the ones in the nebula and beyond.

5) The shivans come through Ross 128 looking for the knossos so that they can reopen it but end up getting destroyed instead.

Doesn't explain why they waited 32 years before bothering the Terrans again though. Unless the lucifer fleet was all of the shivans that weren't trapped by the knossos going offline.

[aldo_14]

Who knows how far the Knossos network extends.......

[Nuke]

i think i siad that. but you can tell by on which side of the jump node the portal is built on, the direction the ainchents progressed through space. it is a logical assumption that the ancients encountered the shivans at the far end of the network.

[Scuddie]

It was said by many that the Lucifer fleet was a scouting party.  It is not unlikely that is so, because everything seems to point in that direction.  The Knossos serial network also makes sense.  It is a possibility that both are true, and the Lucifer fleet was simply a scout party sent out to investigate the opening of the Knossos, only to be trapped once the Knossos was disabled.  After that, the re-activation of the Knossos portal by Bosch got their attention.

As for the weapons technology, the "Into the Lion's Den" mission showed us that the shivans had massive arrays of massive sensor units.  That may be very well how they had the same technology the GTVA had.  For all we know, they could have recorded the development, testing, and deployment of said technology.  After analyzing, the shivans basicly used their own technology against them.  Their shields were better, they had more developed Flak guns, and larger, more focused beam cannons.  They had all of GTVA's recent technology, except refined.  That's basicly the only way I can see it happening.

[Charismatic]

That makes me wonder, if the whole shivan mystery lies around one word: Knossos. Il think about this tonight.

If the shivans came to investigate the reactivation of the scouting party, why would they bring a planet glasser as light infantry?

I will get a map soon of the FS2 planet\node network hopefully; but it makes me think. If the Vasudans were around longer, why did they not discover the Ancient planet before, Antares i beleive. If they did and kept it secert, how much did they know about the Ancients, as they had time to explore and gather data and tehcnology.

[Scuddie]

Originally posted by Charismatic
I will get a map soon of the FS2 planet\node network hopefully; but it makes me think. If the Vasudans were around longer, why did they not discover the Ancient planet before, Antares i beleive. If they did and kept it secert, how much did they know about the Ancients, as they had time to explore and gather data and tehcnology.

That, too, makes me wonder.  I wonder if the Vasudans and the ancients are somewhat related.  Perhaps Vasuda Prime was uninhabited 8000 years before, and the last of the ancients called that their new home, but never to speak of their past.  And by the time of the great war, the Vasudans were finally ignorant of their heritage.  There had to be a reason, after all, as to why Lucifer went after Vasuda Prime.

Hmmm...

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Scuddie
There had to be a reason, after all, as to why Lucifer went after Vasuda Prime.

Hmmm...

Same for Earth: Homeworld of enemy forces. Level it.

Really, the Lucifer doesn't seem like a scout ship at all. Invunerable one-of-a-kind shielding, orbital bombardment capablity (also one-of-a-kind at the time) heavy fighter complement and a decidedly ship-of-the-line usage in actual combat.

Originally posted by Scuddie
As for the weapons technology, the "Into the Lion's Den" mission showed us that the shivans had massive arrays of massive sensor units.

Come again? The name of the device is "Shivan Comm Node"...

[aldo_14]

I'm not sure that 3 counts as a massive Array, either.

Oh, and the Ancients / Vasudans do have some form of unspecified connection; FS1 has a lot more references than FS2, for example a note in a command brieifing that Vasudan and Ancient language is very similar (as well as a hint that the ancients - or their legacy - may have helped the Vasudans rapidly develop space technology).

[Charismatic]

So if we kept up with the Vasudans who had Ancient techonlogy and help from them, the very ones who had a big *** galatic empire, maby we are almost in technology, = with the Ancients, mostly (Knossos). So maby if we ever had time to grow without the shivans killing us off, we would spand to be a great galatic empire. Thus Freespace 6: Star Wars (tm) Begins!

[redsniper]

or maybe not

[Nuke]

i think of the lucifer as the front line of tanks in the german blitzkrieg. its fast, its well armed, and well protected. also as a scout it is required to survive, thus its shield. i do not consider the lucifer as high tech as a sathanas. nor do i consider it fully invulnerable, only to gta/pvn technology of the day. it could be entirely possible that the shivan's considered the shield technology obsolete by the time of the second invasion. after all we knew how to defeat it.

[Flipside]

But the act of defeating it would have limited us to fighting an entire war in subspace had all shivan ships been fitted with it.

I personally got the impression that shielding an entire ship was a very difficult and 'expensive' thing to do, even for the Shivans, most of the Lucifers massive power went into that shield, hence the limited (compared to FS2) weaponary on it.

I cannot help but think that the Shivans would not go to the trouble of creating a ship like that unless it was something considerably more significant than a scout. It's not as if losses have ever really counted to Shivans at any other time, so why shield this one particular ship? Why, when we destroy this ship, at the next chance they get, do the Shivans send 80 Juggernauts against us, those Juggernauts must have been moving towards the system since, at best, the original Sathy first encountered the Colossus, but possibly even longer in my reckoning, I have a suspicion they were moving from the moment the Shivans first re-encountered the GTVA.

If these ships serve simply as warships, despite being very effective as one, then why are they in particular treated to added protection, especially since the shield on the Lucifer in FS1 was really the icing on the cake, and was mainly to prevent the player from doing something obvious like taking out the Beam Cannon It's not as if the entire Terran fleet could have taken it down, shields or not. You would have thought that, if these are 'Blitzkreig' type vessels or even if they act like a Mobile Comm-node array, you would have seen some with the second Shivan fleet as well?

I can live with being a pawn when the game makes sense!