[Nico]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
However, I do like the idea of the Ancients/some older race making a few of the buggers and then watching aghast as their creations built a huge fleet of ships and attacked their masters...
 

so, you do like the idea of them being stupid?
Look, dudes, I've made big bad 5 legged ants! look! They're building thousands of juggernaughts! cool! each of of these ships is at least 10 times more powerful than our most powerful ship ! How proud am...ZAP!!!!

btw, big V stated that the ancient's tech is somewhere between FS1 and FS2 GTA tech level.

[mikhael]

Nah. The Ancients are just these guys, you know? They're just like Terrans and Vasudans. They didn't create the Shivans (who, of course, are naturally evolved, low-g creatures from an arboreal moon ). They encountered the Shivans in the same way the Terrans and Vasudans did: they showed up out of the inkyblack in a fury and started killing.

I'd be willing to believe that some Ancients escaped and lost all knowledge of their own history and were the ancestors of Terrans or Vasudans. Well, not really, because that would be a direct rip off of a Larry Niven plot concept.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Sidenote II: HLP bosses, how 'bout a symbol for two cents. Just a thought.

Good idea. I'm going to make one for 'OT' as well.

[Nico]

Originally posted by mikhael
I'd be willing to believe that some Ancients escaped and lost all knowledge of their own history and were the ancestors of Terrans or Vasudans. Well, not really, because that would be a direct rip off of a Larry Niven plot concept.

Never heard about this guy. Any idea would be a direct reap off of somebody's plot nowadays. I bet you give me any idea, and after some searches, I'll found the same idea in another obscure book, movie or something.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by venom2506
Never heard about this guy. Any idea would be a direct reap off of somebody's plot nowadays. I bet you give me any idea, and after some searches, I'll found the same idea in another obscure book, movie or something.

Larry Niven isn't exactly obscure. The Known Space stories and books were the inspiration for such things as Kilrathi. The game 'Halo' uses a ring world as its setting. The Ringworld concept was created by Niven as a logical alternative to Dyson's spheres.

In this case, having the Ancients be the ancestors of humanity is a page taken directly from Niven's Known Space stories of the Pak. In fact, in 'Return to Ringworld', it is revealed that humanity is descended from immature Pak breeders who crash landed on Earth millennia past. They wiped out the Neandrethals and slowly evolved into modern humans.

You are correct about every idea having been done before. However, that is no excuse for a blatant rip of an old idea. Further, if you're going to use an old idea, at least try to find a fresh angle for it.

[Nico]

Originally posted by mikhael


Larry Niven isn't exactly obscure. The Known Space stories and books were the inspiration for such things as Kilrathi. The game 'Halo' uses a ring world as its setting. The Ringworld concept was created by Niven as a logical alternative to Dyson's spheres.

In this case, having the Ancients be the ancestors of humanity is a page taken directly from Niven's Known Space stories of the Pak. In fact, in 'Return to Ringworld', it is revealed that humanity is descended from immature Pak breeders who crash landed on Earth millennia past. They wiped out the Neandrethals and slowly evolved into modern humans.

You are correct about every idea having been done before. However, that is no excuse for a blatant rip of an old idea. Further, if you're going to use an old idea, at least try to find a fresh angle for it.

I was saying this guy was an obscure reference. I just said that you could find about any existing idea in any book, and lots of obscure ones actually gather most of the best ideas. Anyway, your Niven invented nothing, I couldn't count the sci-fie ( old and new ) where terrans comes from an old space species, or were created/brought by that species

[mikhael]

Originally posted by venom2506
I was saying this guy was an obscure reference. I just said that you could find about any existing idea in any book, and lots of obscure ones actually gather most of the best ideas. Anyway, your Niven invented nothing, I couldn't count the sci-fie ( old and new ) where terrans comes from an old space species, or were created/brought by that species

Tsk. To nitpick, I should point out that Larry Niven is one of the grand old men of modern science fiction. Further, I'd also suggest that Niven DID invent at least two new things in his fiction: the concept of ringworlds and the concept of leadership by greatest cowardice. He may have also been the first to put forth the concept of ships engines as weapons, but I am not entirely sure of this. I am almost certain he was the first to describe life as evolved from non-baryonic matter, and he was certainly the first to conceptualize breeding for luck.

[Nico]

btw, sorry, typo:
I meant "I wasn't saying" obviously

[Hole in Head]

Originally posted by mikhael

You are correct about every idea having been done before. However, that is no excuse for a blatant rip of an old idea. Further, if you're going to use an old idea, at least try to find a fresh angle for it.

As my 9th grade L.A. teacher said: It's just creative plagerism(sp?)

[Reaper]

Maybe shivans are Ancients, that stayed in space, and allowed them to evolute to something tottaly difrent, bcouse there was no gravity,fresh air ect. And with that evolution they brain get tottaly rotten, And they started to think: hmm , maybe we should all die. But how. I know lets attack other races until they kill us. Hmm what about we throw outself in sun. Whats sun??. I don't know i just heard rumors....
Probaby they are only stupid ancients with difrently evolved bodys.

[Unknown Target]

Well, this is the one that I'm pushing in my campaign (short, simplified version):

The Ancients are actually a long-dead race that came to Earth (to scout), and show their amazing powers to the early terrans, and, hence, God was born.
Then, once they tired of humanity's ways, they signaled their space-borne bretheren, and told them to unleash a bio-mechanically engineered race (the Shivans)

[Liberator]

The Ancients, while not all that advanced by FS2 standards, just happened to get "lucky" by not having any sentient species close to their homeworld.

[HeX]

Either that or they were advanced and met the larger Shivan force that practically kicked our asses in Freespace 2. After all the Anchients said "Where we found life, we subdued it or crushed it".

After all...according to the cutscenes in Freespace, the Anchients were as confused when they met the Shivans as humans. And like Bosch said, what if there were countless races, each built on the ruins of the last, and each anihilated by the Shivans. Heck if they've been at this killing thing that long, no wonder they have 90 some Juggernaughts.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by mikhael


You are correct about every idea having been done before. However, that is no excuse for a blatant rip of an old idea. Further, if you're going to use an old idea, at least try to find a fresh angle for it.

No... if you're going to use an old idea, do it well.  In game terms, that's exactly what Freespace did, and is what 90% of all games do.

Likewise, it easily possible to use concepts that other people thought up, completely by coincidence.

Personally, I have literally no knowledge of sci-fi (beyond Star Wars & films like aliens) whatsoever, so all my ideas are at the very least intended to be original.