[Ghostavo]

So why couldn't they destroy the Lucifer? 

[Mars]

Cause' they didn't figure it out until it was too late, they were good at subspace, they didn't have shields.

@AlphaOne:Sorry, didn't check. Still, the Ancients were not ahead of the Shivans

[AlphaOne]

well not from a ship tech or weapons tech point of view. but i believe that they were in fact ahead or at least on the same level of subspace tech as the shivans.

[Mars]

Yeah, I agree.

[S-99]

In the fs1 tech description is where you find out about the lucifers flux cannonshttp://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/SD_Lucifer. I have no doubt command created they're own flux cannons from reviewing the scans of the lucifer. Otherwise i bet you in fs2 the weapons you'd be missing are beams. Plus, i bet sol could develop they're own beams since the lucy pretty much split in half via an explosion in the sol node, and the front half of the vessel is in sol probably to be salvaged and reverse engineered. Or perhaps earth got a transmission of the lucifer scans, since that mission happened much earlier to the demise of the lucifer
And also technically with the nebula thing. The shivans might not have been in the nebula from the start. Remember bosh did go and plunder ancient archeological sites, discover the knossos, and activate it. NTF ships were the first ships to enter the knossos from tv space. Bosh's objective was to find the shivans and then open relations, perhaps ntf nebula exploration ships did more than go through the nebula, they could have gone through the other knossos device to attract the shivans. I mean, bosch did have to find them first, after 8000 years you can't expect the shivans to still be at one place. This theory of course works off of an assumption of course that the shivans weren't in the nebula, this can't be proven. Something that can be proven is that the knossos did have to be activated. And since the knossos had to be activated, that proves you couldn't use that node until you flipped the on switch to the knossos. That's probably why the shivans didn't come through until bosch intervened.
What the knossos actually does could be ten fold. We do know that the knossos re-initializes dead and unstable nodes(i don't want to go so far as saying the knossos can create nodes, but i bet it can since it's one of the few luxuries the ancients had to colonizing galaxies). That's for sure, it's one of the reasons the node for that knossos still worked after the knossos was destroyed. Which breeds another question, why didn't the node with that knossos stay stable since the ancients left? Well, it was most likely an unstable node that required the use of a knossos, and over 8000 since the ancients were gone, seems more than enough time for a technically undependable node to become unstable again without the knossos being active.

[Xeandra]

Wasn't the Knossos device only on the Gamma Dragonis side of the node? So even if the Shivans knew how to activete it, it's not like they could get to it, because it was on the wrong side of the node for them.

[ilya]

Wait... the Shivan's are attracted to subspace activity, right? So when Bosch turned on the GD Knossos, the Shivans felt the ripples(?) in subspace. And just think about how large of a disturbance turning on a subspace node would create. If there were no Shivans in the nebula, they sure as hell could read that action from far away and came running (flying) thinking that maybe they had not killed all of the ancients (who else had Knossos portals?), and beacuse of this they sent much more powerful ships than they had used in FS1.

[karajorma]

I think the fact that the Trinity went through and started shooting Shivans might have helped them notice too.

[aldo_14]

well not from a ship tech or weapons tech point of view. but i believe that they were in fact ahead or at least on the same level of subspace tech as the shivans.

Because they built a whopping great expensive installation to do what the Shivans probably were been able to do with their regular engines?

[S-99]

Who says the shivans are attracted to subspace activity?
Shivans probably have superior sensors compared to the gtva and can detect when a single vessel warps in from somewhere. I wouldn't go so far as to say they are drawn to it. Probably so much as, hey look, something came through, lets go check it out. Once they find out what came through they decide what to do. Shivans aren't like moths in the fact that they go to the next bright light (subspace) that they see mindlessly. They were drawn to it just as i was to tapping that phat ass i saw last night.
Shivans are different about subspace than the gtva are. Where the shivans are located, it's just shivan territory, shivans only generally. Something comes through an unstable node after 8000 years, you're going to check it out, you're not going to be drawn to it. Plus, there's no freaking evidence of the shivans checking it out. The shivans probably weren't even aware that the unstable node was used.
The only thing we know is that ntf nebula exploration ships went through first with the intention of finding the shivans. The ntf found the shivans, the shivans came through the knossos next fully expecting terrans and vasudans because they quite frankly encountered terrans of the ntf in the nebula.

[aldo_14]

Who says the shivans are attracted to subspace activity?

IIRC it's suggested within the species text in the techroom.  Somewhere in FS2, anyways, although it's not presented as any sort of conclusion.

[S-99]

Lol
In that case, maybe my rating for gtva scientists should be "flamboyantly gay". The shivans seem to be drawn to subspace.
How scientific, practical, and conclusive does this sound? It's a well documented light assumption
I know a successful rewording of this would put more praise and thought to it.
Something like shivan technology and even the shivan itself with it's body being what appears to be a technology melded with organic tissue seems to be attuned towards subspace disturbances.
Then that with the fact that shivans talk making use of the electromagnetic spectrum with quantum pulses, the usual shivan could be compared to a standard radio tower and cb radio.
Now the shivans sound a lot more likely to be in tune with subspace.

[S-99]

Some great proof right here on the box specifying the lucifer fleet as specifically a scouting party (shivan version)
I'll have to read the manual later for more stuff

[NGTM-1R]

Taking the box as canon is akin to taking the back of a novel as canon; at the very least questionable, more probably downright stupid.

[S-99]

Oh ok, but you've got to admit the box is really cool, i was surprised at the condition i left it in. On another note, there's nothing in the manual at all story related

[AlphaOne]

And why would the box be so untrustworthy? The sme can be said about countless other sources of cannon evidence. I mean come on its like saing that what the Volition beta testers knew about fs2 and or fs3 would be useless cuz well its not that cannon right?

[Mefustae]

Box art is not necessarily produced by the developers of the game in question, and is usually hype. Indeed, the blurb shown was likely created on the part of the marketing division to set the scene for the game. The fact is we don't know who the hell wrote that and what they could have meant by it, so it's a hell of a lot easier and significantly safer to just ignore it and focus on what's actually in the damn game. It's also worth nothing that the closest thing said in-game to that statement is Petrarch's comparison of the Lucifer Fleet to the Sathanas Fleet, which further invalidates the box-art hype as simple sensationalism.

[AlphaOne]

Errrr now that you say that way...it would make sence what youre sayng.

Also the fact that compared to the force used by the shivans during the second war was that much greater would sugest that the first fleet the shivans used was maibe in theyr version a scouting parti. For the GTA/PVN it was a god damn armada.

Btw. how many destroyers were actualy in FS1 2 or 3?

Also since we dont have any actual ancient ship in order to see how advanced thery subspace drives are we cannon say for sure if they were way behind the shivans, at an equal stand, or superior to the shivans in this respect. And sisnce we dont actualy know what nodes shivans can use and what know we also cant corectly asume the level of sophistication.

But we do have a good reference as to the level of advancement in subspace tech that the shivans and Ancients have/had . We do have the knossos which for all we know can stabalize jumpnodes but then agin how do we know they cant actualy create a subspace node for ships to travel. All we have seen so far is theyr use for stabalizing nodes that were unparcticable. But there is a posibility of it actualy creating a subspace node to another sistem. Also we do have evidence of the Ancints actualy colonizing other galaxies. this would imply they managed to somehow create a subspace node link to other galaxies. since i doubght there are nodes leading to other galaxies.

One can not asume that simply because they were anihalated by the shivans that they were inferior from a tech point of view. TEchnology is not the only determening factor in war but also strategi and numbers. For all we know they could of had hundreds of capships involved on either side. With the shivans having the upper hand in this. Since well we dont actualy know much about the shivan econimical status or anything like that. But for the ancients a war of this magnitude could of brought theyr economy to theyr knees. Rmember the terran-vasudan war lasted for 14 years and it nearly brought both economies to thery knees.

[Ghostavo]

Except for the bloody 4th time, they were defeated because they couldn't destroy the Lucifer. It is speculated ingame that the Lucifer Fleet was the same fleet that destroyed the Ancients IIRC.

So using your own argument, yes it was a war of numbers... 1 is a number.

[AlphaOne]

also using and arguemnt of somene else they mentioned "shields" this would sugest there were more then one lucy's and yes they could not bypasss the shields.  agree i never said they did i just wanted to provide an arguement that the fact they could not bypass the shields of the lucifer in time does not mean they were a backwater societe in terms of ship and weapon tech.