[Flipside]

Sorry, but that paragraph is inaccurate. The example given is using the effective situation of holding a queen to hostage. No such situation existed at Capella. Ants and Bees, both Hive creatures will perfectly willingly give up their lives in defence of the Hive, and more will just pour into battle, regardless of losses. If you attack the young, then yes, theres a possibility of withdrawal, but even if the Nebula was being created as a nursery for more Shivans, there were no young in-system to our knowledge, and even if there were, why turn the area into a nursery and then retreat?

To suggest that Shivans used anything other than brute force tactics is in contradiction to every encounter with them. Just like bees or ants, they have proved mindlessly devoted to a job once they are doing it, even engaging when massively outnumbered. Take the nebula mission with two corvettes against cruisers, the cruisers didn't stand a chance, yet even then, they were more set on fighting than running away and regrouping with the Ravana to assist the counter-attack.

It also suggests that the Shivans ran away from the Ancients, after all, it's already been more or less taken for granted that the Nebula on the other side of the Knossos portal was created by Shivans. Seems like a bit too much 'regrouping' to be feasible for the destroyers.

Edit : Oh, and one other important fact is that the Ancients never mention the Sathanas. You would have thought they would have mentioned it if they'd encountered ships that destroyed stars. That strongly suggests the Lupus nebula was made after the Ancients left, so there'd be no point to destroying the star if it was simply as a regrouping tactic.

[knn]

Sorry, but that paragraph is inaccurate. The example given is using the effective situation of holding a queen to hostage. No such situation existed at Capella. Ants and Bees, both Hive creatures will perfectly willingly give up their lives in defence of the Hive, and more will just pour into battle, regardless of losses. If you attack the young, then yes, theres a possibility of withdrawal, but even if the Nebula was being created as a nursery for more Shivans, there were no young in-system to our knowledge, and even if there were, why turn the area into a nursery and then retreat?

Should've snipped that example, it's not accurate, yes.
My main problem with Capella is that the shivans go after homeworlds (at least in FS1). They probably know that Capella is not the terran homeworld, even though it is an important colony. Then why in the name of Lucifer do they annihilate an entire system, losing several valuable juggernaughts AND destroying the jump points to GTVA space as a side effect (we don't know much about subspace, but IMO destroying a star destroys the system's jump points as well)?? Terran losses because of the supernova were not that great. The refugees were mostly already out, and the fleet was mostly already destroyed.

To suggest that Shivans used anything other than brute force tactics is in contradiction to every encounter with them. Just like bees or ants, they have proved mindlessly devoted to a job once they are doing it, even engaging when massively outnumbered. Take the nebula mission with two corvettes against cruisers, the cruisers didn't stand a chance, yet even then, they were more set on fighting than running away and regrouping with the Ravana to assist the counter-attack.

Taranis retreating. Lucifer tracking it to prevent terrans from acquiring technology. Shivans attempting to destroy captured shield generator tech. Lucifer jumping in to stop terran transport from taking ancient technology back to Earth. Shivans destroying homeworlds first to weaken the enemy.
I don't call that brute force. Sure, the Sathanas sitting in Capella waiting to be slaughtered is stupid, but that mission is stupid. Even the debriefing assumes that the Sath had at least one working beam when it entered the battle
That nebula mission was a bit more than two shivan cruisers slaughtered by two terran corvettes. IIRC there were bombers too.

It also suggests that the Shivans ran away from the Ancients, after all, it's already been more or less taken for granted that the Nebula on the other side of the Knossos portal was created by Shivans. Seems like a bit too much 'regrouping' to be feasible for the destroyers.

*snip*

The nebula beyond the portal may as well be a natural nebula, not one caused by the shivans, or one caused by the shivans ages before the ancients, because another race was a threat to them as the GTVA in FS2. Let's accept for a moment that the shivans returned home, possibly to bring reinforcements, by blowing up the Capella star, as proposed in the shivan manifesto (I know, it's not canon, but...). That's quite a desperate move, indicating that the GTVA WAS a threat to them (@ Flipside: they were not afraid, and the shivan manifesto explains this as well). The ancients, on the other hand, were not, the shivans came, they closed a Knossos and left the system. Then the shivans came again, entering normal space somewhere else, circumventing the locked Knossos, and the Ancients retreated etc.. Finally the Shivans got to their homeworld. (this is what the ancient cutscenes suggest)

*snip*

[Flipside]

Indeed, but that's the whole thing isn't it, both descriptions of the Nebula are valid without hard fact.

Taranis retreating was because, iirc (I haven't played FS1 for years) the Terrans were trying to capture it. The Lucifer tracking it is neither running away nor regrouping, I don't think the Lucifer had any trouble finding the Taranis. I also seem to recall the Taranis had nothing to attack with by that stage.

The Lucifer stopping the ancient technology is still an 'attack' theorum, as is  the destroying of homeworlds. Regardless of the motivation or thought, the answer to most problems for the Shivans is offence. Destroy the Taranis, Destroy Vasuda prime etc etc. The entire Lucifer fleet act in a different way to the later Shivans, indeed, far more of what would be called 'tactics' are used by the Lucifer, which, I think led to the brain-bug attributes assigned to it However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.

With the nebula encounter with the Lysander etc, yes there were other fighters and bombers involved on both sides, but the outcome of the combat was not in doubt from the moment the mission started, admittedly, partly that is plot device, since the Ravanna appearing is the whole purpose of that mission. But then, even the Ravanna, despite being damaged and low on fighters still continues to fight. Even the Sathanas, having lost at least 3 out of 4 of it's beam cannon, and thus reduced to 1/4 to no main firepower still continues on it's mission rather than head back for repairs or any kind of regrouping. It could be argued that the Sathy still thought that nothing could touch it, but what damage could one Sath without main weapons have done? It would have been a war of attrition, and the GTVA would have won in the end, but still it continued,

[knn]

:V: implies that the nebula was destroyed by the Shivans, which is bad, the Shivans had no reason to do that if they indeed exterminated the ancients as implied in FS1.

Taranis retreating was because, iirc (I haven't played FS1 for years) the Terrans were trying to capture it.

It was low on supplies and escorts. It was retreating to resupply.

Regardless of the motivation or thought, the answer to most problems for the Shivans is offence.

Well... they did destroy a star system...   

However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.

Maybe they couldn't retreat? It takes 80 Saths to do that, as far as we know. The Shivans who come to our space can't return, so they might as well die fighting. OTOH, the fleet in FS2 could return.

One other option is that the Shivans decided to jump to Earth with their entire juggernaught fleet using Capella. This is consistent with the FS1 tactics of going after the homeworld. Maybe they think other species are like them, they have a central mind, and if it's cut off, they become disorganized and easy to defeat. If this is the case, they don't know about the collapse of the Sol node(s), and there's a big surprise awaiting us in Sol.

[Flipside]

Heh, now that would've be nasty of

[Mr_Maniac]

To paraphrase Heinlein himself, any race that possesses enough skill to construct spacecraft is not stupid.

Well... Except of the terrans/vasudans (Command IS stupid after all! VERY stupid...)

SCNR

[NGTM-1R]

Odd thought I just had.

The Shivans do have limited resources, and we have indirect proof.

Consider: they have 80+ Sathanas juggernauts. Yet one for one, Shivan fightercraft tend to be inferior in terms of performance and armament when compared to GTVA. As I have observed before, in the race to build the better gun, the better reactor to power it, the better frame to mount them on, and the better engine to get that frame moving, the GTVA appears to be winning at the fighter level. Also when one considers Shivan destroyers in the main campaign...the same names keep popping up. It's like they don't have too many of them. There is evidence that larger ships were slighted somewhat too. The Ravana isn't a vastly superior design compared to the Demon; the Rakshasa is in the end less effective then the Lilth; the Moloch has trouble with a Deimos or Sobek.

Which leads to the possiblity that those 80+ Sathanas juggernauts may represent the major investment of time, resources, and technology by the Shivans, to the point where developmental work on and production of other ships suffered.

However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.

Insufficent evidence to support that theory. Also counterexamples: ref. the Silent Threat mission Hellfire. The main Shivan fleet was cut off by combined T-V forces in Deneb as they tried to regroup. Your task was to sortie from Deneb to another system, via subspace node, and stop a Shivan cruiser group from getting to Deneb. Presumably a combined assault from both the other system and within Deneb was feared, probably for the purpose of breaking out of Deneb...probably to escape, since there were no notable GTA/PVN targets in the system beyond (otherwise the forces insystem could have dealt with it rather then you).

[Fragrag]

They have never taken a planet; just nodes.

We did see the Shivans, what I believe, trying to establish a base in the first 107th Ravens mission when you first meet the Shivans in FS2. You saw a cruiser and tons of cargo units with more cargo ships jumping in. So we know that they at least have rally points

[knn]

They have never taken a planet; just nodes.

We did see the Shivans, what I believe, trying to establish a base in the first 107th Ravens mission when you first meet the Shivans in FS2. You saw a cruiser and tons of cargo units with more cargo ships jumping in. So we know that they at least have rally points

Yes, and in FS1, in the mission where you capture the Dragon, it's located at something that seems to be a repair base, altough I might be confusing this mission with one from X-Wing

Odd thought I just had.

The Shivans do have limited resources, and we have indirect proof.

Consider: they have 80+ Sathanas juggernauts. Yet one for one, Shivan fightercraft tend to be inferior in terms of performance and armament when compared to GTVA. As I have observed before, in the race to build the better gun, the better reactor to power it, the better frame to mount them on, and the better engine to get that frame moving, the GTVA appears to be winning at the fighter level. Also when one considers Shivan destroyers in the main campaign...the same names keep popping up. It's like they don't have too many of them. There is evidence that larger ships were slighted somewhat too. The Ravana isn't a vastly superior design compared to the Demon; the Rakshasa is in the end less effective then the Lilth; the Moloch has trouble with a Deimos or Sobek.

Which leads to the possiblity that those 80+ Sathanas juggernauts may represent the major investment of time, resources, and technology by the Shivans, to the point where developmental work on and production of other ships suffered.

However, even after the Lucifer is gone, the Shivans are still automatically offensive, despite being disorganised and broken, they continue to fight to destruction rather than flee.

Insufficent evidence to support that theory. Also counterexamples: ref. the Silent Threat mission Hellfire. The main Shivan fleet was cut off by combined T-V forces in Deneb as they tried to regroup. Your task was to sortie from Deneb to another system, via subspace node, and stop a Shivan cruiser group from getting to Deneb. Presumably a combined assault from both the other system and within Deneb was feared, probably for the purpose of breaking out of Deneb...probably to escape, since there were no notable GTA/PVN targets in the system beyond (otherwise the forces insystem could have dealt with it rather then you).

You know I have an idea: what if the shivans are not so good at research? They come from subspace, normal space and everything in it is quite different for them. In FS1 they're quite a bit more advanced than the T-V, but by FS2 the difference diminishes. The BFRed is still better than anything we have, but the best fighter in the game is the terran Mara, modified by GTVA scientists to be better than the original shivan ship!

[Flipside]

Though, to play the devils advocate again, you could easily ask why should the Shivans build one hi-tech ship for one drone when they can build 2 medium tech ships for the same price. If Shivans relied on numbers, that could be an option too.

As for the Silent Threat mission, admittedly, I've never played Silent Threat, but from what I remember, there was a great deal of it that didn't make much sense when compared with the rest of the series?

[Lone Knight]

Another thought occured to me and I wanted to check something. In the final video, we see lots of Saths clustered around the Star. Some of them jump out. However, they are NOT in a jump node. Now, as far as I can remember, that means it was an in-system jump? If so, where did they go in-system that would be safe from a Supernova? I know Shivans had more control over Subspace the the GTVA did, but even they had to travel through known arrival and exit points?

Okay, I want to take this chance to point out something that may explain this answer that V left for us...

Remember in FS1, how just before Vasuda was destroyed by the Lucifer, that we had two jump points blockaded? Well, if you can remember one of the Command Briefings, it was said that the Lucifer "somehow circumvented then blockade". This suggests that the Lucifer created or found a jump node previously unknown and was able to dodge the blockade.  This also may explain how those Sathani escaped during the Capella incident before the Capella star went supernova.

To answer the question about whatever pilots the Shivan fighters, I am almost certain that they are piloted by Shivans. This is for a number of reasons. The only example of craft without Shivan control is the turrets from both FS1 and FS2, as well as the Shivan Communications Units. Notice that these craft are all stationary. The clues from "Hall Fight" and general Shivan information suggests that they can fit into their ships. We can be sure that they are regularly in their ships because of when Admiral Bosch boarded the Shivan transport and the Shivans began to kill the NTF forces on the Iceni. In order to organize a crew of real Shivans from a long distance only a short time after receiving word from "ETAK" would take a longer time to do. Also, as in from "Hall Fight", the ship they are all boarding is Shivan freighter. In game, it looks somewhat small, but it was very large in reality. Don't forget that your own ships are large, too. It would not be hard to squeeze a Shivan into a ship.

I have another theory myself, and I would like some clarification or input about it. Because of the fact that the Shivans have a goal on the galactic, perhaps universal level and duty to destroy races too powerful, then they would have to constantly moving and/or positioned around the galaxy and/or Universe(?). Because of this, is it possible that the Shivans were from different "groups". The Lucifer fleet was a group that had already been damaged of years of fighting, and was carrying out its orders, nonetheless. Because they are in different groups, they perhaps have different technology. This may explain why in FS2, we saw a fleet of Sathani, not a fleet of invulnerable Lucifers.

[Charismatic]

 Good point, long knight.
To that effect: A thought that just came up.

If the lucy was big and had inpenetratable shields, why then, did the even bigger Sathy not have shields even more impenetratable?

The colossus was deisgned to kill a lucy and its shields, not a sathy. Then why do some people say the sahtys ran from a colossus or for preservation, when a sathy clearly pwnes a colossus?

[phatosealpha]

I'm personally of the opinion that the collapse of Capella wasn't actually the Shivans fault, and that they were actually just trying to stop the universe from breaking.  Capella went boom, but lord only knows what would've happened if the Shivans hadn't used it like that to stabilize the fabric of the universe that the humans and vasudans had been breaking with their primitive jump drives.

[karajorma]

This also may explain how those Sathani escaped during the Capella incident before the Capella star went supernova.

And that they just buggered off through the Gamma Draconis node isn't a good enough explaination why exactly?

[Lone Knight]

And that they just buggered off through the Gamma Draconis node isn't a good enough explaination why exactly?

No, you didn't get the point of my post. We are trying to determine how they did that. We know they esaceped to their other systems like Gamma Draconis. That's a given. We want to know how they did it.

[karajorma]

Through the Gamma Draconis node! I see no reason we need to say they had to use anything other than the same GD node that they and the GTVA had been using.

Earth for instance is 8.3 minutes from the sun at lightspeed. If the GD node was a similar distance from Capella then that gives the Shivans ample time to get the Saths to the node and exit the system. The only hiccup might be if the lead sath in the queue broke down and they all had to go round it at the Saths rather poor top speed

Hell if you're feeling really geeky you can do some calculations based on the size of Capalla and its size in Their Finest Hour. No one would take you remotely seriously if you did but it would be canon evidence
 I'd be willing to bet though that given the large size of Capella and it's rather small appearance in the mission that the GD node appears in that the node is actually further away than that.

[aldo_14]

If the lucy was big and had inpenetratable shields, why then, did the even bigger Sathy not have shields even more impenetratable?

Shields become somewhat useless when beams come into play.  Also the tactical advantage may have been viewed as lost, with the destruction of the Lucifer in subspace.  Or even perhaps the shields weren't primarily design to have that invulnerability effect, and it was a nice side effect.  Or the Sath could have had other power requirements ahead of shielding.  Like blowing up stars with its freaky-deaky powers.

[Flipside]

Thing is Kara, I don't see, even in 8-10 minutes, anywhere near 80 Saths getting through that Node. Ships seem to arrive a good few K from a Jump node, and the Sathy isn't exactly a speed demon, to get 80 through there in that sort of time is either impossible, or a recipe for the biggest fender-bender in the history of deep-space navigation.

[karajorma]

I gave some thought to that actually. What if the reason why ships arrive that distance is simply to give them time to recharge their engines while not being a moving target?

We already know that fighters can arrive pretty much where ever they want to

"Command, we're five clicks from that corvette! Those coordinates you gave us were bogus! We don't stand a chance of catching that ship!"

You're making the assumption that ships can't warp in where ever they want to. I don't buy that. There's too much evidence that they can (The Iceni for instance jumped in perfectly to get past the Colossus in Endgame and the Colossus itself arrived in a great position to control the node). I reckon the distance from the node is more to do with not being a sitting duck while engines recharge than it ever had to do with an inability to warp in close to the node.

So there is no reason I can see to think that the Shivans couldn't engineer their warp out to allow as many ships to exit as possible. They had all day to prepare and it would also explain why some ships got left behind (Why warp out ships that would just get in the way if they couldn't evacuate all 80 in time).

[WMCoolmon]

I gave some thought to that actually. What if the reason why ships arrive that distance is simply to give them time to recharge their engines while not being a moving target?

Plus, if you don't have control of the jump node, you can't ensure that someone hasn't moved a large asteroid or bomb right next to the jump node, which I imagine could cause problems if you jumped in right next to it.

Also, I think the Ravana in Into the Lion's Den made an intrasystem jump to cut you off from the node (appearing right next to the node). However I'm not 100% sure it wasn't an intersystem jump (the Manifesto seems to imply this).