[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by Su-tehp:
True.

Noooo.... possibly true.        


------------------
America, stand assured that Israel truly understands what you are going through.

"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Su-tehp]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:

Originally posted by Su-tehp:
True.

Noooo.... possibly true.         [/B]

LOL!

------------------
FRED Zone's Grammar editor/ FS history moderator
Former member of TCA
Member in good standing of 99th Skulls
Honorary member of TCS and UGC

"I created your civilization...now I will destroy it!"
--Ra, the Sun God

[YodaSean]

Who cares about FS3?  I want to see FRED4!!!  

[joek]

 

Originally posted by venom2506:
yes, that's what's wrotten, but don't assume it's true. remember, it's a possiblilty thought off by the GTVA scientists, and not a proof.

Yeah. And I (as some others I'm sure) am not very fond of the "hive mind" theory for the Shivans, as it would then group them in with the Borg, and we really hope that Volition would have been able to come up with a better alien speices then just another Borg-remake.

1) I think you can associate the disorganization after the Lucifer died to a couple of things, one of which is the "holy &%#$" mentality:

The Shivans are overconfident. They defeated the vast Ancients empire. Surely they figured mowing over these Terrans and Vasudans would be a piece of cake (it was for pounding the Vasudan homeworld). So, when we actually managed to destroy the Lucifer, all of the remaining Shivans (in our space) were stunned screaming such things as "holy *$@#", "wtf!", etc. They were stunned, they did lose their command (and you can probably find many instances in our non-hive mind, human military history where armies became disorganized when they were in enemy land and they lost their command and the remaining forces argued with each other over what to do next).

So I don't think that you exactly need a "hive mind" theory to explain the disorganization after the Lucifer died.

2) You could consider them telepathic, or mentally linked via technology. Where as thinking this would make them "hive mind" as the Borg, it could also not. In "The Light of Other Days" (by Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter) and the "Forever..." series by Joe Haldeman ("Forever War", "Forever Peace", and "Forever Free"), the authors deal with the idea of people linking their minds together through technology. In both "The Light of Other Days" and "Forever Peace" people retain their individuality, but the mental link can provide them with like an Internet built into their minds. They can talk and discuss ideas with other people in fractions of a second. They can share memories and feelings of other people, while still having their own and their own individuality. In "Forever War" and "Forever Free", the linking of minds got rid of individuality, but it created a single mind, a single "Man" instead of a hive mind consisting of a queen and drones. In this scenario each "Man" is a single consciousness which shares many individual bodies. Either of these two scenarios use mind-links without being the typical Borg "hive mind".

3) As stated, what's in the techroom is just what the GTVA thinks about the Shivans. Where as the GTVA sees something like a hive mind, the true nature of how Shivans communicate with each other could be way beyond our understanding. Maybe they communicate via subspace the same way we communicate via sound. It's been stated that the Shivans have a sensitivity to subspace. Maybe they hear ships passing through subspace the way we hear planes passing through the air (or cars on the street, etc). Or maybe they communicate via subspace not like we do via sound, but like dolphins and whales do as sonar. Maybe they communicate like this, but they need a devise to pull their communications out of subspace into our space (freespace). Maybe that is what the Shivan Comm Nodes are, transmitting communications from subspace into freespace so all the Shivan ships can coordinate. And maybe the Lucifer carried such equipment aboard it, so that when it was destroyed, all the Shivans in GTA & PVA space lost communication with the rest of their species and became lost and disorganized. I know that they techroom says that "Shivan communication seems to occur in the electromagnetic spectrum" but that may just be them using the em spectrum like we use it: radio, TV, cellphones, etc.

But, as you can see from my rambling thinking  , there are lots of ideas you can get about the Shivans based on what we know and do not know.

Joe.

------------------

[Su-tehp]

Damn, Joe, you certainly put a lot of thought into this. Your ideas have great merit.

------------------
FRED Zone's Grammar editor/ FS history moderator
Former member of TCA
Member in good standing of 99th Skulls
Honorary member of TCS and UGC

"I created your civilization...now I will destroy it!"
--Ra, the Sun God

[Star-Epock]

Joe is spot on methinks.

Maybe the Shivan Com Nodes are a from of signal booster for the subspace communications.

Could there destuction be linked to the destruction of Capella?

Ahh but its a loop mission, so no....

[This message has been edited by Star-Epock (edited 11-19-2001).]

[Nico]

My time to expose my thoughts  
two things, actually. First, I like to think of shivans like ants. Don't scream joek!!!
People usually misunderstand how they're "working". Ants are not exactlly exemples of a true hive minds, unlike bees. They will surely serve the hive first, but they DO have consciousness of themselves. They communicate, and are actually able to act agaisnt the will of other ants of the same hive if they don't "agree" with the trend(can't find better term, sorry- an good exmple is rebelions in ant hives, things that really happen). I think shivans are millions of creatures whose only purpose is to serve the shivan species as a whole, but I think they have, also individual thoughts in their own way, which is quite different.
for the fact that shivans were disorganized after the lucifer was destroyed... well, I have no proof of that, but I like to think that it's not true. Some kind of GTVA propagnda if you want. I imagine a "shadow war", where the GTVA tries to eliminate shivans that are not disorganized at all (I'm not sure, but I don't remember the shivans in silent threat as a disorganized threat...). Shivans were weakened, harmed, their fleet spread throuhout GTVA space because of the rush of the lucifer toward sol, which left capships to guard nodes. Of course, in a way or another, the shivan "felt" that the outcome of the incursion was disastrous for them, and that weakened them. But I don't think they turned into mindless creatures, not able to survive on their own. I'm pretty sure they fought hard and brought as many GTVA ships as possible in the tomb.
The PVD and the GTA knew they had won the war, but the result was, after all, catastrophic. In a war they never expected, they lost two homeworlds, the largest part of their fleets, and moral was probably very low throught the populations. If you were a leader of some government, and your country just won a very difficult war, will you scream everywhere that there's still a lot of shivans everywhere, when nobody will be able to check? You need to boost the economy, you need people to be happy so they rebuild stuff. If they learn that they are still threatened by the shivans, do you think this will happen? There's no advantage for the PVD or the GTA to tell the truth.
That's what I think.

[Su-tehp]

 

Originally posted by venom2506:
for the fact that shivans were disorganized after the lucifer was destroyed... well, I have no proof of that, but I like to think that it's not true. Some kind of GTVA propagnda if you want. I imagine a "shadow war", where the GTVA tries to eliminate shivans that are not disorganized at all (I'm not sure, but I don't remember the shivans in silent threat as a disorganized threat...). Shivans were weakened, harmed, their fleet spread throuhout GTVA space because of the rush of the lucifer toward sol, which left capships to guard nodes. Of course, in a way or another, the shivan "felt" that the outcome of the incursion was disastrous for them, and that weakened them. But I don't think they turned into mindless creatures, not able to survive on their own. I'm pretty sure they fought hard and brought as many GTVA ships as possible in the tomb.
The PVD and the GTA knew they had won the war, but the result was, after all, catastrophic. In a war they never expected, they lost two homeworlds, the largest part of their fleets, and moral was probably very low throught the populations. If you were a leader of some government, and your country just won a very difficult war, will you scream everywhere that there's still a lot of shivans everywhere, when nobody will be able to check? You need to boost the economy, you need people to be happy so they rebuild stuff. If they learn that they are still threatened by the shivans, do you think this will happen? There's no advantage for the PVD or the GTA to tell the truth.
That's what I think.

Me, I like to think of the end of the Great War as being similar to the war on terrorism today. (Don't flame me, I'm headed somewhere with this.   ) The destruction of the SD Lucifer wasn't the end of the war, it was merely the turning point (I think all of us gathered that). But I've noticed some paralells between the Great War in FS and the war on terrorism today. Before Mazar-i-sharif fell, the war seemed to be going badly. We kept hearing that the Taliban wasn't going to budge and that we would have to hunmer down for a long, bloody ground war if we wanted to dislodge the Taliban and the terrorists. Great War parallel: long hopeless fight against the Shivans, a seemly unstoppable fleet.

Then the Northern Alliance advanced and took more than half of Afganistan where only a few days before they had only 10% of the land. Great War parallel: the destruction of the Lucifer. This is the turning point of both wars.

Nowadays, the war on terrorism is by no means over, but we have the Taliban and the terrorists on the run. Great War parallel: the Shivans in Silent Threat (incapable of great coordination, but still highly dangerous).

I'm not really convinced of the "shadow war" theory. Considering how many people were displaced (refugees and such in many of the systems the Shivans had entered), waging a secret war on the Shivans seems unlikely. You can't tell a bunch of refugees who have fled their homes that the war was won if they can't go back home. (Refugees from Vasuda Prime would be the exception that proves the rule.) Declaring victory to these people would ring hollow and damage your credibility. If you keep saying "We won, everything's fine" when you so clearly HAVEN'T won, then no one will believe anything you say. With Shivan ships still in control of jump nodes, interstellar commerce would still be disrupted, no goods would travel between systems and the interstellar economy would still be weak despite any propaganda trying to revive the economy.

If you keep saying, "Yeah, we defeated the Shivans, the war is over" and then a Demon-class destroyer shows up and kills a refugee convoy, this would expose the "shadow war" as a complete fraud.

------------------
FRED Zone's Grammar editor/ FS history moderator
Former member of TCA
Member in good standing of 99th Skulls
Honorary member of TCS and UGC

"I created your civilization...now I will destroy it!"
--Ra, the Sun God

[Su-tehp]

Ascraeus and Tim, I think that Alpha 1/the player's personal logs maybe shouldn't refer to a 20-year military career at the start of the game. It should be 6 or 7 years tops, for two reasons. It's simple mathmatics and also something else.

The outline you posted on your website refers to Alpha 1/the player being born during the Great War. Then he would be 32 years old during the events of FS2. (he would have been 30 or 31, if he was drafted into the GTVA military to fight the NTF.)

Six years later, (when FS2.9 occurs), you have Alpha 1/the player refering to being in the GTVA military for 20-odd years. If that is the case, then Alpha 1/the player would have to have joined the military at age 18, in the year 2353. But this seems unlikely because the personal log that you wrote says that Alpha 1/ the player originally wanted to be an artist. It seems unlikely that he would have joined the military unless he was drafted. (In 2353, were there any reasons to impose a draft? The NTF Rebellion wouldn't start for another 13 years.)

BUT if Alpha 1/the player in FS2.9 is the same person in FS2, then the ages would be different, because the Alpha 1/the player in FS2 was only an ensign at the start of FS2 in the year 2367. If he's an ensign, then he would be 22 years old, tops. (I know that Alpha 1/the player in FS2 starts out as an ensign because the first Command briefing starts out with the phrase "Welcome to Vega, Ensign..." The Alpha 1/the player in FS2 does become the squad leader of the 70th Blue Lions at the end of FS2. Your FS2.9 outline has Alpha 1/the player also start out as the squad leader of the 70th Blue Lions.

Reason number Two is if your Alpha 1/the player has been in the GTVA military for 20+ years, then it seems to me far more likely that he'd be driving a desk rather than a starfighter... (But this is a rebuttable presumption.)

My question is this: are Alpha 1/the player in FS2 and FS2.9 the same person? If they are, then the above inconsistencies need to be addressed. If not, then maybe that has to be pointed out somewhere in your story...

Just my two cents.

Let me know whay you think.

------------------
FRED Zone's Grammar editor/ FS history moderator
Former member of TCA
Member in good standing of 99th Skulls
Honorary member of TCS and UGC

"I created your civilization...now I will destroy it!"
--Ra, the Sun God

[This message has been edited by Su-tehp (edited 11-19-2001).]

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by Su-tehp:
Reason number Two is if your Alpha 1/the player has been in the GTVA military for 20+ years, then it seems to me far more likely that he'd be driving a desk rather than a starfighter... (But this is a rebuttable presumption.)

Or driving a Destroyer.  If the GTVA is anything like modern navies, you can't reach CO of a carrier unless you've been a pilot.  The Marine assault ships are the largest ships you can captain if you weren't a pilot.

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by Su-tehp:
Me, I like to think of the end of the Great War as being similar to the war on terrorism today. (Don't flame me, I'm headed somewhere with this.   ) The destruction of the SD Lucifer wasn't the end of the war, it was merely the turning point (I think all of us gathered that). But I've noticed some paralells between the Great War in FS and the war on terrorism today. Before Mazar-i-sharif fell, the war seemed to be going badly. We kept hearing that the Taliban wasn't going to budge and that we would have to hunmer down for a long, bloody ground war if we wanted to dislodge the Taliban and the terrorists. Great War parallel: long hopeless fight against the Shivans, a seemly unstoppable fleet.

Then the Northern Alliance advanced and took more than half of Afganistan where only a few days before they had only 10% of the land. Great War parallel: the destruction of the Lucifer. This is the turning point of both wars.

Nowadays, the war on terrorism is by no means over, but we have the Taliban and the terrorists on the run. Great War parallel: the Shivans in Silent Threat (incapable of great coordination, but still highly dangerous).

I'm not really convinced of the "shadow war" theory. Considering how many people were displaced (refugees and such in many of the systems the Shivans had entered), waging a secret war on the Shivans seems unlikely. You can't tell a bunch of refugees who have fled their homes that the war was won if they can't go back home. (Refugees from Vasuda Prime would be the exception that proves the rule.) Declaring victory to these people would ring hollow and damage your credibility. If you keep saying "We won, everything's fine" when you so clearly HAVEN'T won, then no one will believe anything you say. With Shivan ships still in control of jump nodes, interstellar commerce would still be disrupted, no goods would travel between systems and the interstellar economy would still be weak despite any propaganda trying to revive the economy.

If you keep saying, "Yeah, we defeated the Shivans, the war is over" and then a Demon-class destroyer shows up and kills a refugee convoy, this would expose the "shadow war" as a complete fraud.

The only flaw in your answer is that it probably happened (demons showing etc). There's a lot of shivan ships everywhere, that was sure. And they probably attacked everything they could. I highly doubt they just diappeared, gather in one shadow corner of the galaxy and waited for the GTA fleets to finish them. So the "disorganized shivan" story. The GTA won't hide the fact that shivans are still there, coz it's obvious they are, and rtefugees probably saw them.
But the GTA will say that they're disoragnized, so people will think "ok, there's still many shivans around, but they'll be easily crushed". That's my idea, the GTA hiding the fact that shivans were not that easy to "clean", and that they were in no means disorganized.

[TDM/JM]

 

Originally posted by Su-tehp:
Ascraeus and Tim, I think that Alpha 1/the player's personal logs maybe shouldn't refer to a 20-year military career at the start of the game. It should be 6 or 7 years tops, for two reasons. It's simple mathmatics and also something else.

Etc.

The material on the site consists of different (and the most complete) versions from the opening of the BEL campaign. E.g., there's a version of the second mission (Sathanas defection) in which a Shivan juggernaut actually did not defect - "something" else did. You're correct in pointing out some of the inconsistencies, but that's simply because you're looking at the early alpha version.

Let's get a bit looser -- the idea is to have the PLAYER's character be a veteran of the Gamma Draconis campaign and some of the civil actions since then. He/she is early-to-mid thirties, a squadron commander, with an excellent record and a great deal of respect. Promotion is coming, obviously, but until the reflexes fade, the best place for this person is in the field. Part of the drama comes from this person questioning whether humans/Vasudans can actually survive a galactic sector dominated by Shivans, which is another way of asking "Is my life worthwhile?" You do get to the point where you ask those questions, sometime in your thirties or forties, at least.

The other point of having this character be a decorated vet with command responsibilities is to give him/her the opportunity to be "inside" the senior command briefings for the task force. What I'd envisioned was not only playing the game, but solving the mystery.

Still, I very much appreciate the suggestions, and any opinions/comments on the above would be very helpful. Thanks!

Ascraeus

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
The other point of having this character be a decorated vet with command responsibilities is to give him/her the opportunity to be "inside" the senior command briefings for the task force. What I'd envisioned was not only playing the game, but solving the mystery.

Towards the end of FS2, when the player is (I think) given command of the 70th, the command briefs noticably change to a more strategic tone, ie. ship and squadron movements, etc.


------------------
America, stand assured that Israel truly understands what you are going through.

"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[joek]

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
...the idea is to have the PLAYER's character be a veteran of the Gamma Draconis campaign and some of the civil actions since then...

I like this idea as it works so well for a fan-based campaign. When you finish the main FS2 campaign, you load this one, and play with your same pilot, carrying over the same rank and medals, etc (although then there would be no room for new medals).

But also, maybe for people who (heaven forbid) didn't finish the FS2 campaign, or they've uninstalled the game and recently reinstalled... are you thinking of, or would it work?, to have, along with all the .tbls and missions to be installed for the campaign, to have a pre-set pilot data. So that if someone doesn't have a pilot who's finished FS2, they won't start this campaign as an ensign while the story is saying that their an Admiral or something.

Joe.

------------------

[Su-tehp]

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
You're correct in pointing out some of the inconsistencies, but that's simply because you're looking at the early alpha version.

This makes sense, but, hey, I gotta start somewhere!  

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
Let's get a bit looser -- the idea is to have the PLAYER's character be a veteran of the Gamma Draconis campaign and some of the civil actions since then. He/she is early-to-mid thirties, a squadron commander, with an excellent record and a great deal of respect. Promotion is coming, obviously, but until the reflexes fade, the best place for this person is in the field.

Kinda like Wing Commander, or the final missions of FS2. Yah, this would make sense and would give the players of the FS games a new perspective. This is good.

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
Part of the drama comes from this person questioning whether humans/Vasudans can actually survive a galactic sector dominated by Shivans, which is another way of asking "Is my life worthwhile?"

With this story happening only 6 years after the NTF Rebellion, this is a good question to explore.

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
You do get to the point where you ask those questions, sometime in your thirties or forties, at least.

I wouldn't know. I'm only 29!  

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
The other point of having this character be a decorated vet with command responsibilities is to give him/her the opportunity to be "inside" the senior command briefings for the task force. What I'd envisioned was not only playing the game, but solving the mystery.

Still, I very much appreciate the suggestions, and any opinions/comments on the above would be very helpful. Thanks!

Ascraeus

Yeah, people have played the role of the young, out-of-the-loop pilot long enough. Being a squad commander in an FS game would be a nice change of pace.

As for providing comments and suggestions, I'll be happy to continue doing so.  

------------------
FRED Zone's Grammar editor/ FS history moderator
Former member of TCA
Member in good standing of 99th Skulls
Honorary member of TCS and UGC

"I created your civilization...now I will destroy it!"
--Ra, the Sun God

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by TDM/JM:
Part of the drama comes from this person questioning whether humans/Vasudans can actually survive a galactic sector dominated by Shivans, which is another way of asking "Is my life worthwhile?"

Of course, because if you're having those thoughts, you'd better turn in your wings ASAP, because there are a lot of people back home depending on your to keep them safe.  Either fight or get out of the way of those who'll fight.

[LAW ENFORCER]

IDEAS!???!!!
shut up and get back to work, drones!
 

[TDM/JM]

Everybody in war asks questions like that, especially senior and mid-level combat officers. They're not much good if they don't -- it shows they don't have the personal depth to lead people into harm's way. Trust me on that one. I know whereof I speak.

Ascraeus

[Shrike]

If you're a fighter pilot, you'd definately keep that to the bunk though.  Because you are, like it or not, in harms way for a reason, and you had better be able to hack it.

[jonskowitz]

Hey Shrike,  

I think most people who have gone into harm's way (for good reason or not) have similar thoughts.  But you're mostly right, they try to keep it to themselves (or at least among their peers).