[Flipside]

Just because it rarely ever happens, do you think they don't have a plan for how to do it if they need to?
America and Great Britain both have contingency plans for almost every military situation, no matter how rare.

I didn't say they wouldn't have All I said is that evidence suggests that the Shivans don't use ground forces often, everything else is a blank page as far as I'm concerned.

[Goober5000]

Well, we know from (specifically, the FS1 ships.tbl) that Shivan planetfalls are quite rare, if not nonexistent:
"We have yet to see a Shivan land on a planet."

[Dark Hunter]

The Shivans have to get their resources from somewhere. You can't expect them to build that super-armada and 80+ Juggernauts using only stellar gas clouds. They must have used up a system's worth of resources for that!

Maybe they just don't make planetfall in wartime situations, due to afore-speculated weakness in gravity?

[Flipside]

Or maybe they have planet-sized processing plants that just do the whole lot in one go.... After all, the original plan was for ships the size of planets...

[Dark Hunter]

And where, may I ask, did they get the material to build said planet-size processors? 

[Flipside]

They grew them Yes! They grew them on big Star-sized trees.

[Taristin]

The same plae they got material to make 80 sathani

[brandx0]

They harvested the materials for the planet sized processors using massive planet-sized material processors

[NGTM-1R]

And where, may I ask, did they get the material to build said planet-size processors? 

Those annoying things that keep crashing into the Iceni/Hinton/Galatea. Kinda rocky and brown.

Asteroids, fool!

[Turey]

can we get back on topic? this is a discussion about GROUND TACTICS, not "'Things with space worms in them' for $300".

[aldo_14]

And where, may I ask, did they get the material to build said planet-size processors? 

Why not asteroids?  The Shivans didn't necessarily start in space, after all, they could quite feasibly have transited to being a solely space-borne species after developing the capacity to build and obtain resources without requiring planetfall or colonisation.

[Mars]

And where, may I ask, did they get the material to build said planet-size processors? 

Do you have any idea how big asteroids really are? There would be no resource problem if the Shivans mined asteroids.

[Mefustae]

The physical structure of Shivan bodies clearly indicates they are either evolved - or were designed - for zero-gravity environments, that's a given. Evidenced by the Iceni incident, the Shivans are obviously at a marked disadvantage in areas with gravity. It's no wonder the Shivans haven't ever landed on planets; they'd be going up against us on our home turf, and the Shivans obviously must prefer having the advantage themselves.

Shivans don't engage in ground warfare, end of story.

[aldo_14]

The physical structure of Shivan bodies clearly indicates they are either evolved - or were designed - for zero-gravity environments, that's a given. Evidenced by the Iceni incident, the Shivans are obviously at a marked disadvantage in areas with gravity. It's no wonder the Shivans haven't ever landed on planets; they'd be going up against us on our home turf, and the Shivans obviously must prefer having the advantage themselves.

Shivans don't engage in ground warfare, end of story.

Evidenced how?  By a few dying?

[Mefustae]

Indeed! In-game chatter between Command and the surviving Iceni crew indicates a moderate to high number of Shivan casualties. While Hallfight indicates that Shivans are formidable warriors, the skirmish aboard the Iceni appears to have led to equal losses on both sides, indicating that either the human crew were quite prepared for the scuffle [doubtful given that it was initially a peaceful encounter], or something was different in this instance that put the Shivans at a disadvantage. The only major difference between Hallfight and the Iceni is the presence of gravity.

The Shivans are obviously at a disadvantage when faced with a 0> gravity environment, and thus why the avoid conflicts on planets or other ships like the plague. In short, they avoid planetary combat for the same reason we avoid combat floating around in zero-g.

[Freespace Freak]

We can basically take it as two ways, either the opening cutscene is canon, or it's not.  If it is, then ground combat did occur, because of several reasons.

1.  All of those are combat troops.  To be massed in such away indicates they were organized.  If they were "debris" from a destroyer, they bodies would be scattered, you'd see mostly scattered body parts, not intact humans, not to mention you'd expect to see other debris interlaced between, and indeed, in them, which you don't see.
2.  If they were killed by Lucy beams, they'd be vaporized.
3.  If they were at the edge of the radius of an attack evacuating civilians, where are all the civilians.

Conclusion:  Logically speaking, if the cutscenes is indeed canon, then ground combat did, in fact, occur.  There is no other logical explanation for what we see in the cutscene.  However, it is possible that the cutscene is not canon, thus ground combat did not occur.

[Colonol Dekker]

Its a safe assumption the ground troops were dead for a while. Maybe they were from the T-V war era.............

[Freespace Freak]

Its a safe assumption the ground troops were dead for a while. Maybe they were from the T-V war era.............

Not likely, judging from the context of the scene.

[Herra Tohtori]

Its a safe assumption the ground troops were dead for a while. Maybe they were from the T-V war era.............

Not likely, judging from the context of the scene.

Well, considering the apparent Hades on the background, I wouldn't be so sure of anything...


Anyway, there might be several reasons for such a large amount of bodies concentrated in the area depicted in FS2 intro.

First, what planet was it again? A planet orbiting Deneb, apparently, if I'm not much mistaken.

There was certainly some troops down on the planet, doing what troops do - mainly arranging evacuation in this case, most likely. Now, there was this bigass space battle on the orbit of the planet. Much debris fell certainly to the planet, even though the Legion apparently stayed in the orbit for decades. So, let's say a ship with critical reactor plunged through the atmosphere and the reactor reached critical point while descending, and blew up? It'd be quite a nuke, I dare say.

So, the soldiers in the cutscene might've been killed by space ship explosions.

Other chance is that they died from Lucy beams that didn't hit them directly. I don't think that planet was completely wiped out like Vasuda Prime.

Had there been ground combat, there should've been Shivan corpses visible as well IMO.

[Flipside]

It's amzing how much 'info' people are pulling from 3 seconds of rendered cutscenes. The scene suggests nothing other than a lot of dead people, and if Shivans fare so badly in gravity, I hasten to note that there are no Shivan bodies, and I don't see command collectiing the Shivans for study and not burying the troops.

All we know is that at some point during the battle over Deneb, A Herc was hit and crashed into the surface of a planet. There is not even any evidence whatsoever to support that the Bodies on the surface are the same age as the Herc Pilots' body, it seems likely, but there little indeed about that cutscene which is 'obvious' in any way.

Edit : It appears I'm not alone in thinking this